Kurtz, Katherine / Куртц, Кэтрин - Собрание сочинений (40 произведений) [1988-2016, fb2/epub, ENG]

Lammas Night 2016, epub, ISBN: 978-1-5040-3757-0, Open Road Integrated Media The Legacy of Lehr 2016, epub, ISBN: 978-1-5040-3759-4, Open Road Integrated Media Two Crowns for America 2011, epub, ISBN: 978-0-307-81354-1, Bantam Books St. Patrick's Gargoyle 2002, epub, ISBN: 978-1-1012-0800-7, Ace Books

“Set not thy heart upon goods unjustly gotten; for they shall not profit thee in the day of calamity.” —ECCLESIASTICUS 5:8

“I HEAR that you have a son at last,” Dominy de Laney said to Sir Sief MacAthan, as she settled beside him at the heavy, eight-sided table in the Camberian Council’s secret meeting chamber. “Congratulations are surely in order.” Across the table from them, Vivienne de Jordanet was absently twirling a dark ringlet around one forefinger as she read over the shoulder of the man to her right: Lord Seisyll Arilan, one of the Council’s two coadjutors. Both of them looked up at the other woman’s comment, and Vivienne gave the new father an indulgent smile. “Well done, Sief.” Sief’s face brightened, a boyish grin creasing his still handsome features as he basked in this affirmation of his male potency. After nearly thirty years of indifferent marriage, four living daughters, and a sad succession of stillborn or short-lived sons, he had all but given up hope of a male heir. This birthing had been difficult, for the child was large and his wife was no longer young, but the new babe was hale and lusty, if disappointingly unlike Sief in appearance. Of course, most infants were inclined to look like wizened little old men so soon after birth. Hopefully, the pale eyes would darken—and as yet, the babe had too little hair to tell what color it would be. . . .

IN MID-SEPTEMBER OF 1290, UNDER CLEAR SKIES AND WITH a brisk following breeze, a stout Norse-built cog set sail from the Norwegian port of Bergen, carrying to her wedding with England the seven-year-old Margaret Queen of Scots, known as the Maid of Norway. The marriage had been arranged, in part, through the offices of the bearded, white-cloaked man standing at the taffrail of the Maid’s ship. Frere Arnault de Saint Clair, Knight of the Temple of Jerusalem, had been among a number of outside negotiators whose assistance had facilitated the Treaty of Birgham; for the Temple’s reputation for impartial arbitration was recognized universally, and the fortunes both of Scotland and of England were of great interest to all of Europe. A singular array of qualifications commended Frere Arnault to his present assignment. Though a veteran of nearly twenty years’ service as a Knight Templar, much of it in and around the Holy Land, he had been based for most of the past decade at the Order’s Paris Temple, where he was regularly entrusted with sensitive financial and diplomatic missions on behalf of the Visitor of France, who was second only to the Grand Master, and the highest ranking Templar in Europe. Landless youngest son of a prosperous Breton knight, facile in a handful of languages besides his native French, Arnault moved with equal ease among courtiers and churchmen as on the battlefield, as glib of tongue as he was quick of wit and fleet of sword. Coupled with the fortunes of his birth, an accompanying spiritual inclination might have led him to a rich sinecure as clerkly chancellor of some great house or even an eventual mitre; but a parallel excellence in the knightly pursuits at which his elder brothers excelled had directed him instead to a vocation as a Knight Templar. . . .