Jack Whyte: Standard of Honor

“Wait here, Alec. There are Hospitallers close by. I am going to find one and bring him back here.” But when he tried to leave, he discovered that Alec had retained a firm grip on his wrist and would not let him go. Alec spat out a mouthful of blood and spoke again, his voice still strong but rattling in his throat.

“Don’t fret about the Hospitallers, Cousin. They can do me no good. I’m finished. Now listen. Listen to me … Will you listen to me?” André nodded, mute, and Sinclair continued. “You may hear people talk about me … about what I did … and they will probably make it sound shameful … And perhaps it was. I simply don’t know any more. I certainly did not set out to do it … didn’t know I would, or could, do such a thing. But there I was, and there was Ibn al-Farouch, about to be struck down … I don’t know what came over me, but suddenly he was down and on his knees, his sword gone, and I jumped down and was standing over him, seeking to defend him, I suppose … perhaps to take him prisoner … I know that was in my mind, that I could repay him for his kindnesses to me …

“But no one wanted to take prisoners. Everyone was mad for blood. I tried to beat them back, our own knights, to claim him as my prisoner, but then one of our fellows struck at me, and suddenly I was fighting for my own life, against my own people. Two of them came at once, one with an axe, and he struck me, hard. The second one I finished with my sword. And then you came … You say Ibn is dead?”

“Aye, Alec, he is.”

“Bring me his amulet, will you?”

When he had it in his hand, he looked at it and grunted, wincing with pain, then held it out to André, who took it and weighed it wordlessly. “Do something for me, Cousin,” Alec said in a hoarse whisper. “When all of this is over, will you find some way to send this back to Ibn’s brother?” He caught his breath again, sharply, on an indrawn hiss. “Sweet Jesus, that hurts. But thank God, not too much … His name is Yusuf. Yusuf al-Farouch … he lives in a village near Nazareth.” He stopped and held his breath for a long time before continuing. “The same Nazareth our Christian brethren tell us Jesus came from … It has an oasis … and they grow fine … fine dates there.”

“I know. I remember you telling me so. The brother is a mullah, is he not?” He was looking at the amulet, and Alec did not answer immediately. “Alec? Yusuf is a …” But Alec’s eyes were fixed and open, staring back at him unseeing.

“Brother? Are you well? May I assist you?” It seemed mere moments later, but as André looked up to see the black-robed Hospitaller standing over him, he knew that time had passed without his noting it. He glanced once again at Alec Sinclair, whose expression was unchanged, and then reached out one hand to the Hospitaller. “You can help me up, if you would. I fear I may have frozen here, for I have lost track of time.” When he was on his feet again, he nodded his thanks to the Hospitaller and then indicated the still form on the ground. “This man was my kinsman and also my closest friend. He was my cousin, the son of my father’s eldest brother. And I would like to bury him apart, I think. Perhaps down by the sea there, where his spirit might look out across the waters towards his home. Have you a shovel I might use?”

IT HAD TAKEN TWO JOURNEYS and several hours of backbreaking work to complete his self-appointed task, but now André St. Clair stood leaning on a longhandled shovel on a patch of firm sand several steps above the high-water mark that had been eroded over the years by the incoming Mediterranean tides. Before him at his feet lay a wide, deep grave, laboriously dug and wide enough to accommodate two bodies, side by side, and behind him lay the bodies of Sir Alexander Sinclair and his friend the Emir Ibn al-Farouch. He turned to where the bodies lay, then grasped Alec Sinclair beneath the shoulders and dragged him to lie along one side of the grave. Then he pulled al-Farouch to lie on the other. When they were both in place, he stood up and spoke to both of them, explaining how he would have enjoyed being able to treat them with more dignity, but that neither his honor nor their own would be besmirched by the means with which he, as a single man alone, was constrained to lay them down. He then bade them farewell in the name of the God they shared, albeit under different names, and when he had done so he went from side to side, rolling first Sinclair and then al-Farouch into the open grave. That done, it was the work of less than an hour to fill the grave again, tamping and tramping down the surface, then brushing it and scattering stones over it to conceal, as well as he was able, the fact that it was a grave and newly dug.

Finally, when his work was complete and the sun was close to setting, he sat down cross-legged at the foot of the grave and reached out to gather up the yellow piece of cloth that had been lying on the sand, pulling it towards him. It was the five-crescent pennant that had attracted his attention earlier that afternoon, and on it lay three objects. The first was the jade amulet that he had promised to send to the mullah Yusuf al-Farouch. The second was the magnificent dagger given to Alec Sinclair by Ibn al-Farouch, and the third was the emir’s own dagger, which André had taken from its place at the small of Ibn’s back, knowing he would find it there because Alec had told him, months earlier. Now, holding one of the sheathed daggers in each hand, he leaned forward and spoke conversationally, as though the two dead men at his feet could hear him perfectly well.

“Someone once read me a lesson from the Testament that said, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ I always liked the thought of that, but now I wonder if the love could be any greater because the friend in question was an enemy. Be that as it may, my lord Sinclair, it is what you have done and your honor will not suffer by it. Nor will yours, Amir al-Farouch, from being loved in such a manner. And as you have said to me so often, Cousin, honor is all we have. It is the only attribute that keeps us separate from the beasts, and most especially from the beasts who masquerade as men … But who will set the standard by which we govern honor when the men like you, the truly honorable men, are all gone? Another question that you posed and answered both. But is it one that you discussed with the emir? I wonder about that. For of course, the answer is immutable. We set our own standards, each of us, and each of us must cleave to his own distinctions.

“I never met you, Amir al-Farouch, but I wish I had. My cousin told me much about you and he painted you as a man of strictest honor. That makes you close to being unique, on either side of the gulf that divides your kind and ours. You are Muslim, Saracen, Arab, worshipper of the one, true God, whom you call Allah. This is your home, and Jerusalem is the Holy City of your Prophet, Muhammad, who ascended into Heaven from the Rock. Believing that, you believed, too, that you were privileged to fight in its defense, and you did so with great and unflagging honor. Your friend there, lying beside you, worships the same God, the One, the True, whom we call simply God. But his ancestors came, as did my own, from the self-same Holy City of Jerusalem. They were not Christian, but Jewish, and they called their God Jehovah, and His home, His temple, stood in Jerusalem, below where the Dome of the Rock now stands. And both of you have died in war, fighting against each other for possession of this sacred place. And for what? For honor? Whose honor? Certainly not God’s or Allah’s or Jehovah’s, for the very thought of that is blasphemy. God has no need of man, and honor is a human attribute. For whose honor, then, are these wars waged? And how can there be honor in slaughtering people for possession of a sacred place?