Standard of Honor (43 page)

André's sword had been destroyed by the impact, its clean length twisted and warped beyond repair, and the hard-shot steel projectile, loosed from no more than a hundred feet, had driven a hole clean through the tempered, half-inch-thick blade. The King, struck by the full force of the bolt-driven blade, had been knocked senseless for a time, and the links of his light mail tunic, the only armor he had worn to the hunt, had been driven into the flesh of his chest, leaving a pattern of bruising. Unfortunately, it appeared that Sir André St. Clair's right
hand, fingers, and wrist had been broken, perhaps beyond repair, by the wrenching impact.

Within moments of the attack, Richard and his small group were surrounded by the remainder of their hunting party, and soon after that the scene of the attack was thronged with English soldiery. By the time Baldwin returned carrying the unconscious would-be assassin over his shoulder, Richard and André had been loaded onto stretchers and were being transported by wagon to the King's own tented enclosure, where the King's physicians busied themselves immediately in seeing to the comfort of Richard and his stout defender.

Baldwin's interrogation of his prisoner had been brief, simplified by the fact that the fellow was no hero and had no tolerance for pain, especially when that was coolly and systematically applied by someone like the big knight from Anjou. The would-be regicide had confessed immediately, spitting out every detail of what had occurred. The man turned out to be a sergeant of some description, in the employ of King Tancred. He had somehow learned that Tancred and Richard were sharply at odds with each other and had consequently decided, without forethought, to remove Richard as a threat to his own King's welfare.

The physicians eventually decided that nothing had been broken in St. Clair's hand or arm after all. But they agreed that everything had been outraged and that it might be weeks, perhaps even months, before Sir André would be able to use his arm again. Every bone and tendon in his hand, wrist, and elbow, and even his
shoulder, had been hugely wrenched and strained, not sufficiently so to tear the joints apart, but nearly enough so to provoke grave frowns and shaken heads among the King's august physicians. The bruising, they agreed, would be spectacular—the entire limb had already begun to turn black—and none of them was willing to speculate on how long its effects would last, but they were absolutely in accord that the only effective healing agent they could offer would be time, in whatever quantities might be required, so they encased the knight's arm in a rigid framework of splints, bracing the joints in such a way that they could not be moved before the physicians themselves deemed it appropriate to attempt to move them. And then, because he was in great pain, and because the King himself was greatly in the young knight's debt, they dosed him heavily with opiates for three whole days.

WHEN ANDRÉ ST
.
CLAIR
finally opened his eyes again and felt sane and normal, his father was sitting by his bedside, staring at him with unfocused eyes. André tried to sit up, but discovered that he could not move a muscle, and his effort produced only a grunt, which served to bring Sir Henry's attention back to the moment at hand. The Master-at-Arms straightened up in his chair and then bent forward, frowning in concern.

“André? Are you back?” He blinked in doubt. “Are you awake?”

André forced himself to relax, not even attempting to move his head. He had closed his eyes when he grunted
and now he lay still, mastering his breathing and wondering whether his voice would be as unresponsive to his mind as his body had been. But at length, when he felt ready, he worked his tongue to stir some saliva in his dry mouth and swallowed it, then spoke.

“Father? What are you doing here?” He blinked his eyes and looked about him, realizing that he was not in the Temple Commandery. “Where am I?”

“You are in King Richard's personal quarters, in his sick bay.”

“How long have I been here?”

Sir Henry sucked in a great breath and then nodded, as though satisfied with something, although he made no attempt to answer his son's question. “Good,” he said instead. “You are well. We knew you would be, but the King's medical staff cared only for your comfort, so they have kept you drugged. But they took the splints off yesterday. Now you are merely bandaged.”

André counted silently to five, absorbing that. “And how long have I been here?”

“Four days since you were … wounded. Three of them spent unconscious, lashed to a special framework built for you under the direction of Lucien of Amboise, the King's chief physician. An amazing device. Kept you completely off the ground, suspended in the air, on pulleys. I never saw anything like it.”

“Was I raving?” André was suddenly smitten with fear of what he might have said in his sickness, thoughts of the Order of Sion and its secrets whirling through his head, but his father's eyebrows rose in astonishment.

“Raving? Not at all. You were like a dead man most of the time … most of the time when I was here at least, and I have spent much of the past few days here, with King Richard's permission.”

“Am I still drugged?”

“No. Master Lucien estimated that you would awaken naturally …” Sir Henry looked about him in mild surprise, “about now. He said mid-morning, and that is what it is. How do you feel?”

“I can't move.”

“No, you can't, because you are still tied down to prevent you from moving carelessly. Apart from
that
, how do you feel?”

“Better than I did before. I remember vomiting … It hurt abominably. And I remember not being able to think clearly … seeing strange visions and hearing strange noises. I feel better now, and I'm relieved to know that I am not paralyzed. I thought I was, when I first awoke. Otherwise I feel well. Can you undo these ropes?”

“No ropes, they are leather straps. But I think you had better keep them on until Master Lucien decides they can be removed.” Sir Henry fell silent for a moment, and then in a voice filled with wonder he asked, “How did you do that?”

“Hmm? Do what?”

“What you did in the marketplace. How could you be that swift, to bring your blade up like that, to exactly where it needed to be?”

André turned his head slightly on the pillow until he could look directly at his father, expecting to find
the older man smiling at him, teasing him, but Sir Henry's face betrayed no humor and it was now André's turn to frown.

“You mean blocking the shot? I could not. I didn't
do
that, Father, not intentionally. It was an accident … happenstance. I moved, trying to shout a warning and wave Richard down, but I was too slow … far, far too slow. How is the King?”

Sir Henry cocked his head, wrinkling his eyes as he deliberated with himself over what his son had said, and then he murmured, “His Grace is in perfect health, and all the world believes he owes that health to the brilliance of your defense of his royal body in the face of attack.”

André shook his head slightly, rolling it gently from side to side on the pillow. “Not so. He owes it to Fortuna, the Roman goddess of chance, for it was sheer good fortune that I was there and moved when I did. I didn't see the bolt coming. It was loosed from within thirty paces, too fast to see, and I barely saw the man who fired it … What happened to him, was he caught and killed?”

“Caught, but not killed. He was an idiot and he acted alone, thinking he would be rewarded for it by Tancred. Baldwin captured him and Richard pardoned him, gave him five silver pieces, ostensibly in gratitude for his poor aim, and let him go. Richard came out of the affair well in everyone's eyes, Sicilians as well as our own, by forgiving the fellow and making light of his attempt. But look you …”

André waited, and when his father said no more he prompted him. “Look you what, Father? What were you going to say?”

Sir Henry shrugged. “I—I was going to say something that seemed to make no sense, but I think it needs to be said anyway. You are convinced—” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Yes, you are convinced that your saving the King's life was an accident. I can see that. But I disagree. You could not have done what you did had you not been prepared to do it, poised to do something. You did what you did because you were ready to do it, to react to whatever came. I believe that just as strongly as you believe your own explanation, but what is even more important is that
Richard
believes it, and so does everyone else. If you get up from the bed now and declare that the entire thing was an accident and your actions were completely without merit, you will do yourself a great disservice, my son.”

“How? It seems to me to be the honorable thing to do … to speak the truth.”

“Honorable, perhaps, but foolish in this instance. Think about where we are and what lies ahead of you.” Those words struck home, although not in any way Sir Henry could have understood. “Look at the people who surround you, André, in this endeavor of ours. Do you see much there of honor? Of nobility and integrity? I think not. Not in the way you and I were taught to think of those attributes.” He shook his head in frustration. “Look, I speak here as your father who loves you, and I have nothing but your good in mind, even if
I seem to be saying things. André, none of us can afford to neglect or to give up any advantage offered to us. Each of us is a single soul among an army too vast to count, marching against another army that some say outnumbers us as the grains of sand in the desert outnumber the stones …

“You have an opportunity to improve yourself here, perhaps an opportunity to outlive your fellows and survive this coming war with honor—although that is, as ever, in the hands of God. You saved the King's life! It matters not that you believe it to have been an accident. That you were there at all was an accident. That Richard was standing where he was at that precise moment was an accident. And it was an accident that the Sicilian bowman recognized the man walking through the marketplace as the King of England. But the fact remains that when the fellow's missile reached for the lion heart of England's King, it struck and pierced your sword blade, punching a hole clear through the metal of your blade. Had your blade not been there in place, that bolt would have sundered Richard's heart and ripped on through his spine. That. Is. The truth! And that truth can work to your advantage. Known as the King's Rescuer, you will walk apart from other men. The word of your speed and skill will run ahead of you and warn lesser men to treat you with respect. But only if you keep your counsel to yourself about what you say you believe happened. No one will give a rotten fig for a common knight who had a momentary flash of good fortune then threw it away.”

“Aye, Father, I hear you …” André's tone was sufficient to interrupt his father's warnings, and Sir Henry fell silent, eyeing his son and waiting for him to speak. André lay thinking about what in fact lay ahead of him in Outremer, and how his task there might be simplified were men to think of him in the way his father had described.

“Very well, then, so be it. You have convinced me and I am persuaded. I will speak no more of accidents.” He paused, then grinned. “So what will happen now? Paragon or not, I am yet the meanest creature in the world: a novice brother in the Order of the Temple.”

His father smiled. “Aye, mayhap, but that will not last for long. Your hardships will be easier to bear after this, I believe.”

Flat on his back, André raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Think you so? I fancy Brother Justin, the Master of Novices, might be unimpressed by my new-won fame … Will we stay here long in Sicily, think you?”

“Well, yesterday I would have wagered that we would not stay here long. Richard has thoroughly cowed Tancred and his rabble now, and I'm sure the thought of a long sojourn in Messina, with Philip crying and whining at every imagined slight, holds no allure for him. But all of that changed this morning, with the arrival of enormous tidings. Barbarossa is dead, his army scattered. The entire world has been cast off balance. I doubt now that we will leave here before spring.”

For several moments André could not speak. Frederic Barbarossa, who had held the title of Holy Roman
Emperor for more than three decades, was a leviathan among men, aged in years now but hardly less fit and battle ready than he had been when he first claimed his empire, thirty-five years earlier. At the age of sixty-odd, he had retained sufficient power and influence to recruit an army more than two hundred thousand strong and to lead it in person, overland by way of Constantinople, to Outremer. He was a legend by any standard, truly a name with which to conjure.

“Barbarossa is dead? How? What happened? Are you saying Saladin defeated him?”

His father shook his head. “No, not at all. Barbarossa never reached the Holy Land. He drowned, apparently, somewhere near Byzantium, crossing a mountain river, they say. Fell off his horse, fully armored, into icy water. The armor held him down and he was dead by the time they pulled him out. He was an old man, you know. They are saying it was the shock that killed him … the icy water …”

“Sweet Jesus!”

Sir Henry's voice was firmer now. “We had word this morning, on a ship out of Cyprus. The vessel was crammed with Barbarossa's people—high-ranking ones, barons and counts, lords and knights, all of them making their way homeward. Apparently the army began to break apart the moment the old man died. No one strong enough or politically acceptable enough to the others to rally the forces and keep them together. Within a week of the event—his death—his army had all but disappeared. More than two hundred thousand of them,
there were, and they scattered to the winds, blown into nothingness.”

“What about his son, the Swabian fellow, Frederick? What happened to him? He would not simply have abandoned his father's body and fled. There must be more to the tale than you are telling me.”