Standard of Honour. Jack Whyte

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       Copyright

      Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 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.

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      HarperCollinsPublishers 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

      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

       AUTHORS NOTE

      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 СКАЧАТЬ