Smoke! What had been a vague smudge on the horizon was now a towering black plume framed by circling vultures. A sudden downdraft engulfed us in an acrid cloud that fouled our nostrils with the stench of scorched flesh. We were too late, Chastellet had fallen.
Without any sense of urgency, three riders carefully picked their way up the rutted road that led to the ford on the Jordan River. My turcopole scouts.
I held my arm high to halt the column. Behind me three hundred and seventy six mounted knights, serjeants, squires and grooms ground to a halt at the shouted orders of the squadron commanders. Although we were not travelling at any great speed there were curses and squeals of protest from hastily reined in horses. The heat of the August sun had stupefied some of the less experienced men.
I exchanged glances with Rancon and read in his the same bewilderment. Here we were within a league of the enemy and they were asleep. It would not be the Templars or even my own men; it would be the lay knights newly arrived, unused to the heat. Rancon was the constable of Toron and I relied heavily on him. “I’ll teach the bastards to stay awake,” he growled through his thick black beard.
“No need,” I replied, turning in the saddle to stare at the richly armoured figure directly behind me. Count Henri d’Champagne swayed in the saddle as an aide passed a wineskin to him. I hoped that he had watered down the wine for his master’s sake. I spurred the destrier forward. The old stallion was named Beauchance. His stamina was not what it once was but he was still a fiery tempered fiend when roused. I halted before the three scouts. They all looked grim.
Dawud, the youngest of the three, shook his head. “Chastellet is no more. The walls have been breached. None was spared.” This came as no surprise. Chastellet was a Templar fortress and I did not expect any mercy from Salah eh Din to the warrior monks. How had a newly built castle succumbed so quickly? It was supposed to be impregnable.
“And Salah eh Din? What is he doing now?”
“There is plague,” one of the other two answered. “He’s retreating.”
Dawud confirmed that this was so. He had been with me a long time now and I trusted him. His two companions I did not trust at all. They both wore the red sash of the Barbarini family about their waists and looked at me with barely concealed insolence. There was no love lost between myself and the Barbarinis of Hunin.
“Is there a rearguard?” I asked. It was Angelus who replied shaking his head. “Didn’t see one.” I stared at him. “How is he retreating? Is his army in good order or do they panic? You are my eyes and ears out there, man, tell me.” Angelus’s swarthy features flushed at my reprimand.
“They are in disorder, Lord Honfroy,” Dawud interjected.
“I was asking him,” I snapped at the young turcopole who looked crestfallen.
Angelus cleared his throat. I would wager he was a devil with the women for he was about twenty five years or so of age with saturnine good looks and a roguish eye.
“It is as he says,” he muttered.
“Do not push my patience, Barbarini. I will have respect.” Beneath me Beauchance tensed in anticipation. If it had not been for Dawud, I would have let the stallion have his head and ridden Angelus down.
I stared at him and finally he lowered his wild eyes. He grunted an apology and then gave me a succinct account of what they had witnessed.
“Follow them at a distance,” I addressed Dawud and turned Beauchance back to the main column. Sometime in the near future I would have to give the Barbarini family another lesson. Hanging Angelus would serve, I suppose.
Joscelin d’Courtenay, the Count of Edessa, had taken the opportunity of having refreshments whilst the column had halted. A small table had been erected well to the rear, away from the acrid smoke. A servant filled a goblet with red wine as the count relaxed into a fabric campaign chair that strained under his not inconsiderable weight.
I dismounted and passed the reins to Rancon.
Joscelin watched my approach with heavy lidded eyes that gauged my every move. He was only the titular Count of Edessa for his lands in the north now lay in Moslem hands. Following the fall of his county, the count had languished in Aleppo prison and only been released upon payment of a ransom of fifty thousand dinars three years ago. As the uncle of King Baudoin he had been made the Seneschal of Jerusalem upon his release. I could see the hand of the king’s mother, Agnes in this. I would have left him to rot but the decision was not mine.
Since his release he had acquired a substantial fief that was called unofficially the “seignurie d’Joscelin”. The Courtenay trait for greed and avarice ran deeply within him and I would not be surprised if he had not already cast covetous glances at my fief of Toron which bordered his new lands. “Have some wine, Honfroy,” Joscelin said, and pushed a goblet towards me. His was an avuncular presence rather than the overpowering might expected of the kingdom’s highest officer of state, a benign façade that hid the Courtenay lust for power.
I shook my head. Due to the privations of his captivity, Joscelin had returned to Outremer a thin broken reed of a man. It had not taken him long for his girth to increase and he had now two infant daughters that by all accounts he doted upon. At the count’s right hand stood Guy d’Lusignan. The handsome young Poitevin adventurer had removed his helmet and coif. His fair hair was flattened by sweat. I was glad to see that he had the good sense to refuse the wine as well.
A Templar greeted me with a nod. James Mailly, the Marshal of the Temple, was a lean man well used to Outremer’s climate but even he had removed his helmet and coif for instant relief from the heat. Unusually for a Templar he affected shoulder length hair that was now tied into two braids. It made him look like a Germanic shepherdess rather than a warrior monk. Count Henri appeared less drunk than usual. His moustache twitched. This I had learned normally presaged a complaint.
I wondered this time if it was because he was in relative close confines with the Grand Master of the Order of St Lazarus. Grand Master Bertrand sat on his destrier, slightly away from the group. Like the Templar marshal he wore a white surcoat over his armour, however, in place of the red pattee there was a green cross. The grand master was still a vigorous man but his eyes gauged me from a countenance the colour of a day old corpse. He was a leper as were all his men.
I gave them my news about the Templar fortress. It came as no surprise to them for they too had eyes. “We have not come all this way to let the Saracen slip away from us,” Henri d’Champagne said with barely a slur.
“They are already in full retreat and full of plague,” I said. Henri d’Champagne’s bloodshot eyes turned on me. His ever gleaming war helm covered his balding grey hair whilst a wispy beard attempted to hide a receding chin. “We are here to fight the Saracens not to sit and debate.”
Henri, I decided, had probably drunk more wine this morning than I would in a year. We had taken an instant dislike to each other at our first meeting. King Baudoin had thrown a banquet in my honour a month ago. I had arrived at the palace with the Constable of Jerusalem, Guy’s brother, Amalric. We were announced to be met by a figure resplendent in a gold and silver robe, ruby red shoes with pointed toes that turned back on themselves and a drunken grin that stretched from ear to ear.
“Let me be the first to welcome the hero of Marj Ayyun.” Henri had wrapped his arms about Amalric, slopping wine from an overfilled goblet down the constable’s back.
I have to say that Count Henri’s mistake is all too easy to make for Amalric is a well-built mature man with an air of authority whilst I am a good half a head shorter than the Lusignan with Adonis like features that make women swoon and pederasts quake with desire. It was small wonder that Henri d’Champagne had blinked in disbelief.
Joscelin interrupted my train of thought and raised his bulk from the straining chair. “They must feel God’s punishment for their transgression against the Temple of Solomon.” Chastellet was a Templar stronghold and it would have been expected that the relief force would have been led and manned by the Templars. Two months ago, though, Odo d’Saint-Armand, Grand Master of the Temple, had been captured at Marj Ayyun. Over a hundred Templar knights lost their lives in his ill-considered attack on Salah eh Din’s greater forces. Now the number of men the Temple could put into the field was a fraction of what it once was and Salah eh Din had taken the opportunity to be rid of a dagger that pointed at Damascus: Chastellet.
It had taken me nearly three weeks to convince the King of Jerusalem that we needed to move swiftly against Salah eh Din, the Sultan of Egypt and Damascus. My friend Baudoin’s experience at Marj Ayyun had tempered his overly aggressive nature into one of extreme caution. Eventually, I had badgered him into sending a flying column to relieve Chastellet until he could muster his main force. To my disappointment I was not given command. Instead Baudoin had appointed Joscelin.
As he had said he could not place a mere minor baron in charge of two Counts, a Templar Marshal and the Grand Master of a religious order. I had suggested that he make me a Count and we would have no problems. Baudoin had been quite amused at my solution but that was all. Joscelin, however, had insisted on a conservative pace to keep the horses fresh. He had halted the column during the heat of the day, started well after dawn and made camp before twilight. Instead of a lightning dash it had degenerated into an amble so slow that even priests and merchants would have no trouble in keeping pace.
“I would urge caution,” said Grand Master Bertram.
“We do not want plague in the column.”
“What difference would it make to you and your putrid brothers?” the count of Champagne hissed at him. “Only a coward would procrastinate.” The Grand Master’s back straightened with the insult. “Have a care Champagne and thank yourself fortunate that my vows prohibit me from harming any Christian, even one whose tongue is loose from drink.”
I despair of my fellow nobles.
We are the guardians of this Holy Land but their pride and arrogance, I swear, will bring the Kingdom of Jerusalem to its knees. They are donkeys in armour. Even Joscelin had become impatient of the internecine bickering, and before Count Henri could verbally retaliate, thumped his fist on the flimsy table, spilling the goblets of wine.
“We will now cross the Jordan and severely chastise the infidel.”
The Harsh Mistress Description:
Outremer. It is this land of ours that is the harsh mistress. She has spawned saints and false prophets for centuries, and I have lost nearly all that I have loved in her service – Honfroy d’Toron.
THE HARSH MISTRESS is the blazing sequel to THE TEMPLAR’S APPRENTICE.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Marj Ayyun, the Kingdom of Jerusalem is once again under threat from its most powerful enemy, the Sultan of Damascus and Egypt, Salah eh Din. Honfroy, a young lord of Outremer, is in a conflict that rages along the River Jordan, the frontier between the Christians and Moslems. Once a truce has been agreed, he yearns to return to Toron and his beloved Elspeth, but King Baudoin has further tasks for his favourite baron. Honfroy finds himself once again embroiled in court intrigue, and with its major participant, the devious but beautiful Agnes d’Courtenay.
The greatest threat to Honfroy, and to his beloved Elspeth and their unborn child, lies not in the court at Jerusalem but in the forests of Lebanon. An enemy has sworn vengeance and is now ready to strike. Set in 1179 against the backdrop of the bloody period that was the crusades, THE HARSH MISTRESS is a tale of lost love, of passion, retribution and high adventure. Its story will relentlessly sweep you from the banks of the River Jordan to the mountains of Lebanon, from the deepest dungeon in Damascus to bitter hand-to-hand fighting aboard medieval war galleys as they clash on the Mediterranean Sea.
