Standard of Honour. Jack Whyte
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had been eating and wiping his greasy hands on the sides of his much-stained leather jerkin. But despite the apparent harshness of his shouted rebuke, there was no doubting the obvious pleasure with which he stepped towards the older man, his arms spread wide to welcome him in a great embrace. St. Clair barely had time to register a second man, also rising from the table, before he was swept up in a bear hug and swung off his feet, incapable of doing anything other than clinging to his dignity as well as he might. The big man holding him swung him around only once, however, before releasing him and holding him at arm’s length, locking his eyes with the piercing blue of his own.
“You are looking wonderful, my old friend, as well as I had hoped to find you, and that is the best tidings these eyes of mine have looked upon in weeks. How long has it been, seven years? Eight?”
“Five, my liege,” Henry murmured, smiling, aware that Richard Plantagenet would know to the day precisely how long it had been since last they met. “But do not interrupt your meal on my behalf, for you have evidently traveled far and must be hungry.” A quick glance to the right had shown him a pair of wet, mud-spattered riding cloaks thrown over the back of a high chair and two long swords lying across its arms. April had been a long and dirty month of hard rain and blustering gales, and May, mere days away now, seemed set to be even bleaker and more unseasonably hostile.
“You’re right, old friend, and I am ravenous.” Richard spun away and returned to the table, where he picked up his discarded joint of fowl again and waved it towards his companion before sinking his teeth into the meat and ripping off a mouthful, which he chewed a few times and then thrust into his cheek, permitting himself to speak around it. “You’ll know de Sablé, I suppose?”
The knight called de Sablé was still standing and he nodded courteously to St. Clair, who shook his head politely and stepped forward, offering his hand.
“No, I fear I do not know the gentleman, but he is most welcome here, as are you, my liege.” He sized the man up briefly as their hands came together, looking up a few inches to meet de Sablé’s bright eyes. The other bowed his head in return, smiling slightly, the pressure of his grasp tentative at first, then growing firmer in response to St. Clair’s warmth.
“Robert de Sablé, Sir Henry,” he said. “Knight of Anjou, and vassal to Duke Richard, like yourself. Forgive us for the lateness of the hour.”
“Nonsense,” Richard growled, then belched softly. “Forgive us? What is to be forgiven, that we remind him of his duty? Henry is my vassal, as you said, bound like yourself to keep the hours I keep, and if I am out and about all night, my vassals must resign themselves to accommodating me, even be it but once in five years. Is that not so, Henry?”
“It is, my liege.”
“My liege, my lord, my lord, my liege. You used to call me Dickon, and beat me if I failed to please your every whim.”
“True, my liege.” St. Clair permitted himself a tiny smile. “But that was many years ago, when you were but a boy and needed shaping, as all boys do from time to time. Now you are Count of Poitou and Anjou, Duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine, and Lord of Brittany, Maine, and Gascony. I imagine few would dare call you Dickon to your face today.”
“Hah!” Richard’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Dare call me Dickon? Few would dare even to say what you said there. I’m glad to see your balls have not gone soft.” He turned to de Sablé. “This is the man who taught me all I know of weaponry and warfare, Robert—taught me the elements of using sword and lance and axe and crossbow long before William Marshall of England came into my life, taught me to strive every day for perfection, to lift and throw, to build muscles. Marshall gets the credit for my youthful training, but I had learned most of what I know from this man here while I was yet a stripling lad. I’ve told you this before, I know, but now he stands before you in the flesh: the man who made me who I am.”
May God forfend! The thought sprang unbidden to Sir Henry’s mind, for although the compliments were flattering, there was much about who Richard Plantagenet was that scandalized every moral fiber in the elderly knight’s being. He had taught the boy to joust and fight, that was certainly true; he had dinned weapons craft and military discipline into him from the age of eight until he was fourteen. And he had done it with a stern, single-minded tenacity born not of love, or even of admiration, but of duty, because in those days Henry was Master-at-Arms to the boy’s mother, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Eleanor who had been the Queen of France before she divorced her husband and married King Henry II of England to become Queen there, retaining her Duchy of Aquitaine, the largest and most powerful fiefdom in France. She had once been called the strongest woman in Christendom, but her strength had somehow failed her sons, of whom Richard was the third born and said to be his mother’s favorite. Even in his boyhood, notwithstanding that he was soon known as a swordsman and fighter without equal among his peers, there were aspects of the young man’s character that both chilled and repelled Henry St. Clair. And now, after long years of not having set eyes on his liege lord, he found he had no slightest wish to be regarded, even in error, as the man who had made Richard Plantagenet into who he was.
“Sit, man, sit you down. This is your own house and I am but a guest in it. Sit you and join us and tell us what you have been up to, hiding yourself away here for all these years.”
Ector stepped forward and pulled a seat out from the table for his master, and Sir Henry sat, arranging the folds of his cloak carefully so that they did not impede his movements.
“Here, have some capon,” Richard growled, pushing the serving platter towards his host before Henry could say anything. “Nothing wrong with your kitchen staff, I’ll give them that. My meat never tastes this good. Spices or something…” Richard savaged his meat again, his short red beard glistening with grease. De Sablé ate more fastidiously, nibbling at his fowl rather than rending it, and St. Clair took the opportunity to examine him more closely. The Angevin knight appeared to be in his late thirties, perhaps five years older than his liege, and his face was nobly formed, with clear brown eyes above a long, straight nose and a jaw that was clearly square beneath his spade-shaped dark brown beard. It was a stern face, yet not devoid, Henry guessed, of either humor or compassion, and he wondered briefly who the fellow was and why he should be here alone, in the company of Richard Plantagenet, one of the most powerful and mercurial men in all Christendom. Henry pulled a wooden trencher towards him, then served himself a wing from one of the cold capons. It held little meat, but he was not hungry. His mind was racing with the possibilities and portents of this unexpected visit. He picked up the meat and then laid it down again untasted.
“I was saddened to hear but recently that your father is still at odds with you over the succession. I had hoped that question might have been resolved long before now.”
“Aye, as did we all. And it was, in truth, until the old boar changed his mind again. He is a stubborn old pig, for one who thinks of himself as a lion. I will have the better of him yet, though. God’s throat, I will. Wait you but a while and see with all the world. He’ll make me heir to England ere he dies, and he will not last long now, pray God.”
Even although he knew there had been little love between the father and son, and he had heard reports of how the old King was visibly and rapidly declining, Henry St. Clair was nonetheless affronted to hear the son speak of his father’s impending death so callously. Before he could think of anything to say, however, Richard continued.
“Still, the old boar did well for himself during his life, I’ll grant him that…and for me, as well, now that I think of it. Built me an empire, did he not? I’ve detested him all my life and even hated him at times, and yet I can weep for him, too, upon occasion. He may be a miserable tyrant but by God, he has been a man, and a king, to reckon with. I swear I know not how he and my mother lived together for so long without killing each other.”
“Perhaps because he has kept her in jail for the past sixteen years.”
Richard’s head jerked back and he looked at his old tutor in shock, and then his face broke into a grin and he loosed a great guffaw.
“By God, you have the right of it. That probably had