Free Knights of the Black and White by Jack Whyte

dagger, mace, and spear, and even the crossbow, and was unbeatable either in the lists or in the butts, where his accuracy with the steel crossbow bolts quickly became a matter for awe. At the same time, he maintained a constant and focused attention to his studies within the Or-60

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    der of Rebirth, spending far more time with his tutors and elders than he did with people his own age.
    Commitment on such a scale carries a certain penalty in that it leaves little time for things that are considered unimportant. Had anyone thought to ask for Hugh’s opinion, they might have been perplexed to discover that, at such an early age, he considered relaxation or leisurely behavior of any kind unimportant and frivolous. He had no interest in carousing with his fellow knights, and he made no secret of the fact that he found the drinking of ale, for the mere sake of drinking until one grew drunk, to be a useless, feckless pursuit. That earned him little liking among his peers. But Hugh had friends enough, he believed; Godfrey St. Omer and Payn Montdidier had been his friends since boyhood, and even then he would have trusted them with his life. In later life he was to do exactly that, time and time again.
    Godfrey’s family, the St. Omer clan, held great estates in Picardy, and Godfrey had spent almost half his boyhood there, usually the winter months each year, obediently but under protest, since he was by far a younger son, fifth in line to inherit. He much preferred the other half of his life, where he spent the long summers in his mother’s domain, which was close to Payens and the residence of her favorite cousin, Hugh’s mother, and the friendship between their mothers had made it almost inevitable that the two boys should be friends, too.
    Godfrey, much like Hugh in many things, was the perfect foil to him in others. The two were of an age, a mere ten months separating their births, with Godfrey the elder, and there was not a single item of physical similarity 62
    KNIGHTS OF THE BLACK AND WHITE
    between them to indicate that they might be related to each other. Godfrey, with bright golden hair, had always appeared, at least from a distance, to be the more comely of the two youths, but on closer view, his blue eyes were set perceptibly closer together than were Hugh’s brown ones, and although both lads had open, friendly countenances, the few girls of their acquaintance seemed to prefer Hugh’s dark, saturnine appearance to Godfrey’s sunny, golden one. The sole exception to that rule, as might be expected, was Hugh’s younger sister, Louise, who had never had eyes for anyone other than Godfrey St. Omer since she grew old enough to recognize him from a distance. Godfrey, for his part, saw nothing out of place in that and was happy to return her high regard in equal measure.
    Perhaps because of their close association with each other since childhood—Godfrey felt closer to Hugh than he ever had to any of his own brothers—they were equally skilled with weapons, although when he had to, Hugh could usually outfight Godfrey with swords. With the crossbow, however––a controversial weapon at the best of times, since its distant and impersonal lethality seemed inconsistent with the spirit of chivalry––Godfrey always performed dismally and therefore tended to dismiss it contemptuously as being a weapon for old men and cripples. He was also as literate and well read as Hugh, thereby sharing an attribute that was viewed with deep suspicion by their fellow knights, most of whom were as ignorant as fence posts and regarded literacy as a Beginnings
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    clerical vice on a par with self-abuse and homosexuality.
    But where Hugh tended to be serious and single-minded to the point of sometimes appearing rigid and aloof, Godfrey was mercurial, with a sparkling wit; an irreverent, endearing, and never-failing sense of humor; and an in-exhaustible willingness to see another person’s point of view. He could cut