Jack Whyte - Standard of Honor

“One of them had. The woman. And with her body, the priest’s head.”

“The priest’s head …” Richard was frowning. “What happened to the rest of him? And who was the woman?”

“No one knows who the woman was, my lord. No one has asked after her or come looking for her, and none of our local women are missing. All the women within a circle of twenty miles from here have been accounted for. It would appear safe to say she was not from these parts.”

“It would be equally safe to say she might not have existed at all, save in the mind of her creator, Sir André St. Clair—” The Duke forestalled Sir Henry’s protest with a chopping motion of one hand. “I am not saying I believe that to be true, Henry, but were you and I judges, seeking the truth, we would have no choice but to consider that. With no proof of this woman’s death, and no faintest knowledge of her identity, there is no evidence, other than the word of your son, that she ever existed at all. Even were she a stranger, she must have come here to visit someone, and her disappearance would have given rise to questions. So we will come back to that matter. Now tell me about the priest’s body, headless as it was.”

“The body of the priest was presented as evidence that the poor fellow had been murdered by my son.”

“Explain that.”

Sir Henry St. Clair nodded his head in acquiescence.

“From what I have been able to piece together, my liege, the three miscreants stole the bodies, cut off their dead companion’s head, and threw it into the Devil’s Pit along with the woman. They then took his body back with them because he had a deformed hand that identified him beyond doubt as one Father Gaspard de Leon, a visiting priest from Arles. They then told a tale of how, on their way to join their nowdead brother, they had witnessed him in the act of apprehending a sinner in the act of committing sodomy with a young boy—”

“Pardon me—,” de Sablé began, but Richard waved him to silence.

“Go on, Henry. Were you about to say they accused young André of sodomy with a boy?”

“Aye, my lord. I was.”

“Say on, then. Tell me.”

“They said that they had seen the scandalized priest challenge the pederast and attempt to save the boy, but the sodomite had sent the boy scurrying away and then seized his sword and killed Father de Leon, cleaving his skull. He had then cut off the priest’s head and taken it away with him, wrapped in de Leon’s priestly garments, leaving a naked, unidentifiable body behind him. He had not seen them, they said, being separated from them by the swollen river.

“As soon as he had gone, they made their way to the bridge and back to the scene of the murder, then followed the tracks of the killer’s horse down the hillside to the Devil’s Pit, where they arrived in time to see him throw the severed head down into the abyss. Fearful for their own lives, they hid and waited until the killer left, then made their way directly to the castle of their landlord, Baron Reynauld de la Fourrière, and testified under oath to him, and to their superior, Abbot Thomas, about what they had seen, and adding that one of them, the priest called de Blois, had recognized the murderer, a local knight called André St. Clair.”

St. Clair looked from one to the other of his listeners, both of whom sat stone faced. When he saw that they had nothing to say, he continued. “I found out all about this the morning after, when a squad of Baron de la Fourrière’s men came hammering on my door, demanding that I surrender my son to answer the charges of sodomy and murder brought against him. Fortunately, André had left before they came, and I sent a messenger to find him, warning him to stay away.”

“Sodomy.” Richard’s voice was flat and hard. “They accused André of sodomy?”

“Aye, my lord. They did.”

“And you did nothing? I find that hard to credit.”

“What could I do? For that matter, what could they do? André was beyond their reach at that time, and I knew I needed to make sure he stayed there, for I saw no hope of his receiving justice in this matter in the verdict of the Church. I asked myself what man of goodwill, in his right mind, would publicly give consideration to the possibility that three distraught priests might have beheaded their companion and disposed of his head to protect themselves, or that the single man accused in this case, who made no denial of having killed the dead man, might be telling the truth when he condemned his three priestly accusers for the rape and the murder of an innocent girl?

“And so I have not set eyes on my son or spoken with him since.”

“Not once? Why not?”

“Because I dare not, my liege. I am watched constantly and, with very few exceptions, I know not whom to trust. There is a price on my son’s head, sufficiently high to tempt any man to turn him over to the Church and what it must see as justice.”

Sir Robert de Sablé glanced at Richard. “May I speak, my liege?”

“Of course you may. Speak up.”

“It unsettles me that the woman has not been either identified or claimed, or even reported missing. I find that to be not merely incredible but deeply troubling, for much of it makes nonsense of both sides of this sorry tale.” He looked directly at St. Clair. “Have you discussed this with your son at all?”

St. Clair’s headshake was brief. “No. When first he told me of it, her identity did not appear to have great import. The urgency for me at that moment lay in taking immediate steps to retrieve her body, and her assailant’s. There should have been ample time thereafter to establish who she was. But then the bodies vanished, and that set everything at odds.”

“But surely—”

“Surely we should have discussed it later, is that what you were about to say? We would have, without fail, but la Fourrière’s people arrived soon after dawn the following morning and by then André was already gone.”

“Hmm …” De Sablé looked down at his hands and then back to his host. “I trust you will believe me when I say I have no wish to cast doubts upon what you have told us, Sir Henry, but much of this affair, as I see it, bears upon the total absence of this woman’s body and the apparent fact that no one has stepped forward to enquire about a missing woman. That, in itself, speaks strongly on behalf of your son’s accusers, as I am sure you are aware. So I must ask you this, because your son’s accusers will present it as their case: is it possible, or is it even remotely probable, that there never was a woman there and that these priests are telling the truth? Might not your son, taken in a guilty and forbidden act, have panicked and done murder to protect himself? And then might he not have taken the step of beheading the priest to conceal the true nature of the man’s fatal wounds? If that were the case, then, he might easily have lied about the supposed woman and lied to cover up his own guilt and save his own life.”

Richard laughed aloud, interrupting his earnest vassal, and as de Sablé’s eyes opened wide in astonished protest, the Duke rose swiftly to his feet and turned his back on both men, walking away only to swing around again and lean forward against the high back of his own chair.

“Then where’s the boy , Robert, the boy who was being buggered? Think you a gaggle of mortified priests would not have turned this county of Poitou upside down to find the little brat—and all of Anjou and Aquitaine too, should that have been required—merely to prove their case beyond all doubt?” He grinned. “Besides, it’s evident you know nothing at all about young André St. Clair. I do. I knighted him myself three years ago, and he was foremost among all my candidates that year, and most other years, to tell truth. I found him honest, upstanding, courageous to a fault, and utterly, completely masculine in every aspect of his character. I swear to you, Robert, I have never met— and nor could you—a more unlikely pederast. André lacks nothing in charm and seductive powers, but it is all of it reserved exclusively for women, and he has never suffered from any lack of those. So let there be an end of this nonsense. The priests are lying, and I feel sure God in His Heaven is amazingly unsurprised. And as for the missing head, were it to be produced in evidence, transfixed from crown to chin with a bolt that obviously fell on it, it might cast the priestly version into doubt, would you not agree?” He glanced from one to the other. “Surely both those points are self-evident?