I write this from a tent in Acre, the Mediterranean wind tugging at the parchment.
Reader, I write this from a tent in Acre, the Mediterranean wind tugging at the parchment. By the time you read it, my bones will have been dust for eight hundred years.\n\nI took the Cross in 1191, in the company of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. I have seen Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives — though I never entered it. I have buried friends in Outremer soil and prayed in tongues I cannot name. Crusade taught me one thing the chaplains never preached: faith is not certainty. Faith is the choice to act with honour when certainty has fled.\n\nIn your age — for I trust there is still an age, still a Brattleby, still a chapel where my ancestor's name is read — you will face crusades of your own. They will not be fought with sword and lance, but the principle endures. There will be a cause that demands everything of you, and there will be no certainty that the cause is just. Choose anyway. Choose with discipline. Choose without contempt for those who chose otherwise.\n\nDo not let the family motto become mere ornament. Fortitude is the will to suffer for what you love. Honour is the refusal to lie about why.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti — yours across the centuries.