Jack Whyte - Standard of Honour

Book Two of the Templar Trilogy

Jack Whyte

Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2008

Copyright © Jack Whyte 2007

Jack Whyte asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007207473

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007283354

2014-12-31

For my wife, Beverley, Endlessly patient, long-suffering, encouraging, supportive, and inspiring

Every Frank feels that once we have reconquered the [Syrian] coast, and the veil of their honor is torn off and destroyed, this country will slip from their grasp, and our hand will reach out towards their own countries.

—Abu Shama, Arab historian, 1203–1267 a.d.

The soldier of Christ kills safely: he dies the more safely. He serves his own interest in dying, and Christ’s interests in killing!

—St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090–1153 a.d.

THE PlANTAGENET EMPIRE

"OUTREMER," THE HOLY LAND IN 1191

Cover Title Page STANDARD OF HONOUR Book Two of the Templar Trilogy Jack Whyte Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Authors Note The Horns Of Hattin 1187 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five The County Of Poitou 1189–90 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven The Islands Of Sicily And Cyprus 1190–91 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Keep Reading Acknowledgments About the Author Also By Jack Whyte About the Publisher Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2008 Copyright © Jack Whyte 2007 Jack Whyte asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780007207473 Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007283354 2014-12-31 Epigraph Every Frank feels that once we have reconquered the [Syrian] coast, and the veil of their honor is torn off and destroyed, this country will slip from their grasp, and our hand will reach out towards their own countries. —Abu Shama, Arab historian, 1203–1267 a.d. The soldier of Christ kills safely: he dies the more safely. He serves his own interest in dying, and Christ’s interests in killing! —St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090–1153 a.d. THE PlANTAGENET EMPIRE "OUTREMER," THE HOLY LAND IN 1191 Authors Note The Horns Of Hattin 1187 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five The County Of Poitou 1189–90 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven The Islands Of Sicily And Cyprus 1190–91 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Keep Reading Acknowledgments About the Author Also By Jack Whyte About the Publisher

Where is France? If anyone were to ask you that question casually, you would probably wonder at the ignorance that must obviously underlie it, because you, of course, know exactly where France is, having seen it a thousand times on maps of one kind or another, and it has been there forever, or at least since the last Ice Age came to an end, about ten thousand years ago. So clearly, anyone with a lick of education ought to know where it is without having to ask. And yet, as a writer of historical fiction, I have been having trouble with that question ever since I began to deal with it, because I feel an obligation to maintain a standard of accuracy in the background to my stories, and yet, were I to stick faithfully to the historical sources and absolutes in writing about medieval France, Britain, and Europe, I would be bound to perplex most of my readers, whose simple wish, I believe, is to be amused, entertained, and, one hopes, even fascinated for a few hours while absorbing a reasonably accurate tale about what life was like in other, ancient times.

In writing my Arthurian novels, for example, I was forced to accept and then to demonstrate that the French knight Lancelot du Lac could not have been French in fifth-century, post-Roman Europe, and could not possibly have been called Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake) because the country was still called Gaul in those days and the French language, the language of the Franks, was the primitive tongue of the migrating tribes who would one day, hundreds of years in the future, give their name to the territories they conquered.