The Maiden and Her Knight Read Free Page A

not a Christian king.
    He hurried out into the cool night air, away from the noise and the smoke from the candles and torches, and especially those preening, bragging young fools as once again the screams of the unarmed, dying Saracens—twenty-seven hundred of them all roped together like animals—filled his ears. The glorious Crusade, fought in the name of God.
    He spit the bile from his mouth and leaned against the cool stones of the inner curtain wall. His eyes closed, he waited for the sick feeling to pass.
    He was in England, not the Holy Land. He had a job to do. He would think of the tournament, not the past.
    He slowly climbed the stone steps to the wall walk. Paying no heed to the sentry, he surveyed the field where the melee would take place tomorrow, a seemingly level field of grass kept short by sheep. Two lines of men, determined by their loyalties, the location of their lands and, in his case, by who he wished to capture, would face each other. Then, at a given signal, they would fight until some were captured and others the victors.
    At dawn, while the rest of the participants still slumbered, he would make a foray onto this field. He would find out if the ground was soft or hard. There might be small rises and gullies, or even holes that would cause a charging horse to stumble with disastrous results for beast and rider.
    He sniffed the air for signs of rain, but caught no scent of damp on the wind. That was a pity. Rain would likely disgruntle and upset his fine opponents, whereas it didn’t trouble him a bit. Nor did it bother his horse.
    The moonlight shone on the river flowing through the valley and illuminated the road leading through the village to the bridge over the moat and the well-fortified barbican, the gatehouse in the outer curtain wall. He had ridden beneath a giant portcullis, the grille made of wood cut into points at the bottom. It slid through grooves cut in the stone, ready to crash down to prevent invaders from entering. Further inside the barbican was the solid, bossed oaken door, with a smaller door for foot traffic called a wicket, cut into it. Above these two gates was the murder hole. If enemies became trapped between the outer portcullis and inner door, defenders could pour boiling oil or hurl stones from above to kill them.
    Square towers dominated each corner of the massive walls and overlooked the whole of the castle, village and valley. From their tops there was probably not a foot of Lord Montclair’s land that could not be watched.
    He looked past the village to a small plateau, where a large cathedral was being built. Now it was little more than a pile of stones and masons’ materials, but the foundation was sufficiently finished to tell him it would be a most impressive building.
    Hopefully there would be true men of God to lead it, men who were more concerned with men’s souls than enriching their purses.
    His gaze roved over the outer curtain wall and the large, grass-covered outer ward, where he was encamped along with many of the guests and their pages and squires, then the inner curtain wall and enormous courtyard befitting a lord of power and considerable personal wealth which came from being overlord to a prosperous valley. He noted the huge, round donjon, the keep which would have been the first fortification the lord of Montclair built when he took this land from the Saxons the century before.
    All in all, rarely had he seen such an impregnable, impressive fortress in England. It made his family’s castle overlooking a Welsh valley seem like a hovel. As for their land, it supported sheep and cattle, but little else.
    With a sigh, Connor trotted down the steps to the courtyard. He would retire and sleep, to wake early and refreshed tomorrow.
    As he headed toward the gate in the inner wall, a door suddenly banged open, the sound making him instinctively shrink back into the nearest shadowed alcove. He was just realizing his back was against a