“Are you aware that I have not asked for your name?” he asked. “That is because I have no interest in knowing it. But it also leaves you with the knowledge that I will not speak about this afterwards. Be satisfied with that, and do not even think about evening the score on this. Do I make myself clear? For if you do, so help me God, I will cause you great grief. Now go back to the King and tell him I have to dress, but will be in his quarters within the hour. Go!”
“WHAT DID YOU DO to young Dorville?”
More than an hour had passed since his arrival in the King’s quarters, and from the occasional veiled reference that Richard had made but not pursued, Andre had suspected this question might be coming in one form or another, and so he was able to keep his face innocent and empty of expression. “Dorville, my lord? I know no one called Dorville. Should I?”
“You know damn well who I’m talking about. The knight I sent to summon you.”
“Ah, that fellow. I merely gave him a small lesson in humility, my lord. It should not go to waste.”
“Humility. Dorville. How did you do that? And don’t even think to lie to me. I want the truth.”
“I simply pointed out to him that I believed I deserved more respect than he was showing me, my lord.”
“And where exactly was he while you were pointing this out to him?”
“He was on his back, sir, at my feet. His Adam’s apple was beneath my heel.”
“What did you enjoy most about doing that to him?”
“The expression on his face when he realized where he was, my lord.”
“Hmm. And what did you like least about him?”
“His smell, sir. It was too … sweet, too womanly.”
“I shall have him change it. I will enjoy doing that, too. You realize he is not one of us?”
Andre frowned. “Not one of us? I don’t understand.”
“No reason why you should, but he is one of Philip’s men, born and bred in the Vexin, during my father’s occupation of it. I believe he detested my father, the old lion, even more than I did. Anyway, he was left here with us, when Philip flounced away, to act as messenger and liaison between France and us should the need arise. He is supercilious, tends to be overly … critical. Seems to believe that everything we do and everything we have is not quite to the standards that he would impose, given the opportunity. But then he is very young. I find him occasionally hard to stomach, but he is pleasant to behold. Now, I need you to take the ladies hunting in the morning.”
Andre stood motionless, caught off balance by what he had heard and rendered incapable of responding, but then he found his voice and his mind started working again and he shook his head. “No, my lord, forgive me but I may not do that … I am forbidden, as a novice of the Order, to consort with women. It is expressly forbidden, one of the strictest requirements of the Order. Failure to observe that would disqualify me for acceptance.”
“Aye, it might. But would that really trouble you? I have work enough to keep you employed on my behalf forever, if you but say the word.”
“No, my lord, that cannot be ... although I realize that even saying such a thing is unforgivable. But I cannot, in honor, withdraw from my situation now. I am already committed, not yet under oath but clearly understood to be within an inch of committing fully. Besides, I cannot understand your objections now. It was your idea that I should join the Order.”
“Aye, it was. But that was before I’d had the choice to think things through—and those damned priests were yet alive. Everything has changed since then, and now I need you.”
Andre began to shake his head, but Richard held up an imperious hand. “Enough, say no more now. I was but jesting, although not completely so. Perhaps half jesting. And perhaps testing … Take some time and think this matter through thoroughly. You yet have time before anyone expects you to take formal vows, and that means you have time to change your mind for good and sufficient reason. In the meantime, I still need you to take the women hunting in the morning. I can arrange a special dispensation for you, through the Master of the Temple in Poitou, the man de Troyes, and I will. You have no choice in this, Andre. It is not a request, it is a command. I can’t take much more of this, being surrounded constantly by women … it will make me mad. Joanna has decided that she wishes to go hunting and I know my sister. She will not stop harping on it now until she has her way, but I want her to go hunting, and to take my lady wife Berengaria with her. She hunts well, I’m told—rides like a man and kills like a fox, as does Joanna. You will enjoy them, I believe, once you overcome your monkish reluctance, but that is the way it has to be …
“I offered to send my guards with the two of them, but Joanna would hear none of it. She wants someone she can converse with, someone with sufficient brains, as she put it, to walk and talk at the same time without tripping over his foreskin. The main thing is, she wants no guards at all. She simply wants to hunt—no pomp, no panoply, and no visible presence. She will dress as a huntsman, as she always does, and no one seeing her from more than ten paces’ distance will ever suspect she is a woman. Berengaria will do the same, apparently. She has her own hunting armor, Joanna tells me. Joanna says, and I agree, that they have no need of any massive escort. But at the same time, Berengaria is my wife, the Queen of England, so I cannot allow her to go off into the countryside unattended, at the utter mercy of the gods. There must be someone with her, someone trustworthy and responsible, in case they encounter an emergency or have an accident.” He shrugged. “So you became my natural choice as custodian of my bride.”
Andre spread his hands in protest. “But why me, my lord? There must be—”
“Joanna asked for you by name, Andre, so there’s an end of it. You obviously impressed her greatly.”
“Impossible, sir. I was with her and the lady Berengaria for less than an hour.”
The King smiled slightly, his eyes crinkling. “That, my young friend, is far more than enough time for women to weave plots and make plans. I shall inform my sister that you will await her at the stables at dawn. You will be there, will you not?”
“Of course I will, my lord, if you insist.”
“Excellent, I do insist. And you will dine with us tonight. It is time you met King Guy, anyway, and came to know some of his knights. You will enjoy them. They are our kind of people, Andre, honorable, straightforward, unafraid to speak their minds. Besides, your father will be at table tonight. I sent him to Famagusta a few days ago, at the head of an armed sweep, and he returned this afternoon. He’ll be looking to see you, as you will be him, so you will enjoy the evening. I’ll see you at table.”
RICHARD MAY HAVE SEEN Andre at table that evening, Andre had no way of knowing, but the two of them certainly did not speak. There was too much noise to converse without shouting anyway, and too many new people to meet. Andre liked almost all of the Latin knights that he met, and he asked if any of them had knowledge or recent tidings of his kinsman Sir Alexander Sinclair of the Templars. Three of them remembered Alex more or less clearly, although none of those could recollect having seen him after the Battle of Hattin. Andre swallowed his disappointment and continued asking questions, not about Alex Sinclair now but about anything he could think of having to do with Saladin and the Saracens and their ways of waging war. He ate well, this being the King’s table, but he drank sparingly because he did not want to miss a word of what was going on around him. He found himself fascinated by these men and with what they had to say in response to his questions, because they were all veterans of the desert wars and every man of them had fought the enemy face to face.
He went looking for his father later, at that stage of the evening when the amount drunk began to dictate the volume and intensity of the arguments, debates, and outright quarrels that were taking place everywhere, but Sir Henry was nowhere to be found, and Andre guessed that he had simply slipped away to his own quarters, satisfied that both his presence and his absence would go unremarked at this time of the night. Despite his profession of Master-at-Arms, Sir Henry had always been decidedly fastidious and generally avoided exposing himself to occasions like these, where there was always a danger of being felled by an unexpected blow from some overheated drunkard.
Now, sober and looking around him detachedly, Andre decided that his father was a clever man and his example was worth following. Besides, he reminded himself, he had to be up early, to take the two Queens hunting, although he thought he would rather have stuck thorns in his eyes than be committed to that. He knew, without thinking about it, that the activity would bring him grief from his fellows, no matter how loud or public the dispensation from Etienne de Troyes might be. Women, he was learning quickly, were anathema to the Temple. Even the brief association he had had with Queen Joanna and Queen Berengaria, mere conversation and initiated at the King’s personal insistence, had been noted and unfavorably viewed. Tomorrow’s outing would not go
