The Love Knot

Начало книги

Oliver Pascal drew on Hero's rein and sniffed. 'Smoke, he said.

Gawin de Brionne, his companion in arms, halted his own mount and inhaled deeply. 'There's only the hunting lodge at Penfoss nearby. Aimery de Sens holds it for Earl Robert.

Oliver grunted and shifted his position to ease his aching buttocks. New saddles were always hell, and this one was scarcely a week old, purchased from a craftsman in Bristol. It would take at least a month to mould it into a comfortable shape. What Oliver wanted to do was cross the Severn at the ferry and ride on to the Earl's keep at Bristol where he was assured of a hot meal and a safe place to sleep. With civil war raging through town and shire as King Stephen and his cousin Mathilda fought tooth and nail over England's throne, opportunities to sleep sound were rare.

A man more inured to the depredations of this particular war might have ridden on, but Oliver was still tender to the game of raid and counter-raid, of pillage and slaughter which was becoming so commonplace that men's morals and sensibilities were bludgeoned from existence. For most of the conflict, he had been absent on pilgrimage, dragging a burden of prayers for his dead wife's soul over the stony ground to Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre. It was only in the last six months that he had returned to a burning, bleeding land, and discovered that, like so many others, he was now a landless man.

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