Jack Whyte - Standard of Honor

“How old are you now, Henry?”

“I will be fifty within the year, my lady.”

“Why, man, you’re but a child. I am sixty and seven, and my Henry was fifty-six when he died.” She paused. “Richard is to be King of England. Did you know that?”

“Aye, my lady, I know. I saw him recently. He stopped at my door on his way to Paris, bare two months ago.”

“Did he, by God’s holy blood?” Eleanor’s face had hardened. “And why would he do that?”

Henry half shrugged, his face void of expression. “He had need of me, he said. I am to sail with him to Outremer, as Master-at-Arms.”

“Master-at—” She checked herself. “Well, he is clearly not witless, for all his other faults. Misguided, certainly, but not witless.” Her eyes transfixed him, no whit less hypnotic than they had been decades earlier, when she could beguile even a pope. “And like a fool, you intend to go. I can see it in your face. You are going with him. Why, in the name of everything that’s sane? The Holy Land is a place fit only for young men, Henry—virile, muscular idiots full of the wildness and passion of their youth and their endless lust for guts and glory … idiots and lost souls. There is no life there for women, and even less for elders without crown or miter. Believe me, I was there and saw it for myself. Why, a’ God’s name, would you even think of such folly at your age?”

He raised one hand, then let it fall to his lap. “I have no choice, my lady. It is my duty, called upon by your son.”

“Balls, Henry. God’s entrails, man, you have spent a lifetime giving naught but the finest service to our house—to me and to Henry and to Richard himself. Enough, man. You have earned your right to die at home, in your bed. You could have declined with honor. Not even Richard would be so—” She stopped suddenly, her great eyes narrowing to slits. “No, there’s more to it than that. My son manipulated you somehow. Coerced you. That is his way … But what was his lever? What hold did he find over you, to bring you to this? Tell me.”

It was a command, peremptory and not to be evaded. Henry sighed and looked away from her to where the slowly passing countryside was visible between the curtain halves, seeing the dust lie thick and heavy on the cow parsley that lined the road. “I have a son, my lady.”

“I know. I remember him as a child. His name is … André, is it not?”

He looked back into her eyes, impressed again by her seemingly limitless capacity to remember such details. “Aye, my lady, André.”

“A man now … and a weapon against you. Is that not so? Tell me.”

He told her the entire tale, up to and including Richard’s intervention and solution, and throughout the hour that took she sat silent, her eyes never leaving his as she absorbed every nuance and inflection of his voice. When he finally fell silent, she nodded and pursed her lips, thinner than he remembered them, and the gesture drew attention to the hollowed cheeks beneath the high cheekbones that had always defined her startling and still-present beauty. He waited, and watched her eyes grow softer.

“And that, of course, explains why you look so rudely healthy. You have been driving yourself these past two months to recapture your lost youth. Well, you have not suffered ill from it, old friend. So, what happened to these damnable priests? Did Richard hang them?”

“The priests were tried before the Archbishop of Tours and their guilt clearly established beyond doubt, although, lacking the authority and single-mindedness of your son in prosecuting them, that might not have come to pass so easily. They were then disowned by the Holy Church and bound over to the secular law of the Duchy of Aquitaine for execution.”

“And in the meantime you and your son were bound to Richard by unbreakable ties of gratitude and fealty …”

Henry St. Clair noticed the irony in her tone, but he paid it no attention. “Aye, my lady. By gratitude more than even fealty, if such a thing be possible.”

“Hmm …” Eleanor shifted in her seat and then reached out and pulled aside the curtain on her left, and spoke as she gazed out at the long, slanting shadows thrown by the trees on the sloping hillside above them. “It is growing late, my friend. We should be stopping soon, but it may be too late by then for you to ride back home alone. You must dine with us and return in the morning. In the meantime, come what may, I have a thought for you to dwell upon, Henry, and it is this: there has never been a tie, of any kind, that is unbreakable, given sufficient will, and power.”

She turned her eyes back on him again. “Absolve yourself of any guilt you feel, even be it born of gratitude. I will talk to Richard about this. I will not tolerate this idea of forcing you to sail to Outremer. It is a nonsense. Besides, you know my son almost as well as I do. He was yours to mold for years. He is a creature of great passions and enthusiasms, ungovernable and unpredictable to all save me, it seems.”

Sir Henry spread his hands apologetically. “My gratitude for your concern, my lady, but if it please you, I have no wish to be excused from this duty. I would far rather travel with my son to Outremer than bide alone here and fret for him. He is all I have left of family in this world, and life without him holds little attraction for me now that I am growing old. I might be a fool, as you suggest, but I would rather be an old fool near my son than be a lonely old hermit awaiting death here without him.”

Eleanor gazed at him for long moments, then nodded her head slowly. “So be it, my lord St. Clair. I will say no more on it. We are both of us too old and gray to quarrel over the manner of our deaths. The Reaper will find us wherever we may be …” She nibbled her upper lip between her teeth in a mannerism he had long forgotten, and then she added, “You know why Richard was so intent upon enrolling you, don’t you?”

When St. Clair shook his head in honest ignorance, she sniffed. “Well then you should. And take note, if it please you, that I said he was intent on it—knowing my son as I do, it would not astonish me at all to learn that he has either forgotten all about involving you or has changed his mind since then. A move’s afoot in England to have him take the Marshal of England, William Marshall, into his train as Master-at-Arms, but Richard will have none of it, and I would be surprised were it otherwise. Marshall was Henry’s man, dyed in the wool, as fierce and lifelong-loyal as a hunting hound. In Richard’s eyes, Marshall will always represent Henry himself. And, truth be said, I cannot find it in my heart to fault my son for that.”

She paused. “Besides, Marshall is all for England, first, foremost, and above all else. Richard, on the other hand, has more to govern. England is but a by-blow of his empire, and a backward one at that. God’s throat, he can barely speak the language that they growl over there.”

She stopped again, mulling her next words. “I suppose you know about Alaïs?” She read the answer in his face and grunted. “Aye, of course you do. You would need to be both blind and deaf not to know of it. It was inevitable, given what was involved, but yet I find myself feeling sympathy for the poor creature, goose though she be, for none of what happened to her lay in her control. She has been used and abused her whole life long and she never had sufficient backbone to brace herself for any of it. Myself, I would have killed someone, years ago, had any man tried to do the half to me of what was done to her. But Alaïs is not me, and now she is home in France again, disgraced, and unlikely to find another husband soon … What is it?”

“What is what, my lady?”