The Templar's Apprentice (The Outremer Chronicles Book 1) by Peter Tolladay

Author:Peter Tolladay [Tolladay, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure, Historical, Historical Fiction, Genre Fiction
Publisher: Geg Digital Ink
Published: 2013-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

My jaw must have dropped in astonishment but I quickly recovered.

“I have hardly slept in three days,” I blustered. “I have dragged our monarch through swamps filled with crocodiles and every pestilential and poisonous serpents known only to Job, been chased by thousands of followers of Mohammed seemingly intent only upon cutting my throat, slinked like a thief in the night from Barbarini renegades and now what do you want me to do? Think. I have been doing nothing else. Now, I want answers.”

Elspeth looked at me. There was no reaction for a moment then she raised an eyebrow. “That’s better. Grand Master Odo informed me that you had an incisive mind and a rather acerbic wit.”

She walked past me to the table. Encapsulated in a dull dress her breasts and buttocks undulated with perfect womanly motion. My eyes followed her movements as if mesmerised and a thought entered my head like an unwelcome guest at a wedding feast. I would dearly love to kiss her lips that were enticing without any form of feminine wile. Bloody Hell, I must be tired and silently reminded myself to keep my mind on the subject in hand. Besides, she must be twenty nine, possibly thirty years of age. A bit young for me. Suddenly I felt guilty, as if I had betrayed Agnes. Ballocks, whilst I do not know with whom Agnes sleeps, I know that she sleeps not alone.

Slowly Elspeth moved the wisp of blond hair from the left side of her face and pushed it behind her ear. Her head tilted. A scar the width of a thumbnail ran from the top of her ear to the jaw line. I resisted the urge to look away. This was a test.

“Tell me who did this to you and I will kill him myself,” I said.

“I find that rather touching,” she said with a small smile. “Most men would avert their eyes in disgust or embarrassment.”

I had passed.

Elspeth poured liquid from an earthenware jug into a pair of wooden bowls. My grandfather had been frugal, I decided. She handed a bowl to me and raised the other to her lips. I took a sip. The fiery liquid burned my throat. I coughed.

“What in Hell’s name is that?”

“You will never again drink from a cup offered to you by someone you do not know,” Elspeth said.

“But you are my grandfather’s spymaster,” I protested.

“My loyalty to your grandfather is beyond question but my loyalty to you is not yet proven.”

I grunted. The alcohol had not improved my headache at all.

“It seems to me that I have three great threats to retaining the Lordship of Toron,” I said. “The first is Farukh-Shah, but I think this can be contained eventually. The second is Laucon. He is an unknown quantity but I do not think that he has friends at court. The third is the Barbarini. If I do not have Hunin shortly, the King may lose confidence in me.”

“You have another,” Elspeth said, “Joscelin of Courtenay.

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