Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] Read Online Free PDF

times,” she said.
    He stared into the distance. “I’m ashamed.”
    “Ashamed of having been captured?”
    “Nay. That couldn’t be helped. I’m ashamed of the things I did before I was captured. The men I killed.”
    “But they were the enemy. Infidels.”
    “They were men,” he said quickly. “Men like myself, men who believed as fervently as I did that they were fighting for a true and just cause.”
    “But you were!” she insisted. “You were fighting for Christ.”
    He laughed shortly. “That’s what I thought. But I was gullible. We all were. In fact, what we unwittingly fought for—and died by the thousands for—was power and riches, the protection of lucrative trade routes to the East. The only good the experience did me was meeting Thorne when I was taken prisoner by the Turks.”
    “Was it just the two of you, then, being held?”
    “God, no. There were dozens of us—in the beginning, that is.” He paused, and Martine sensed that he was considering whether to tell her more, to speak of those things that he would rather forget.
    Finally he said, “They were French peasants, most of them, but there were some Germans. Thorne was the only Englishman. This wasn’t really England’s Crusade, and only the most zealous among the English joined us. He was young—seventeen, I believe—but the most accomplished bowman I’d ever seen. His size helped. It takes a big man to handle a longbow. He spoke very little French, and I didn’t understand a word of English, but we became friends anyway. ‘Twas good to have a friend in that hole, I can tell you. Especially one who managed to stay alive. The others kept dying off. Their corpses were removed once a week, along with the other refuse.”
    “My God,” she whispered. She began to understand his reluctance to speak of these things.
    His voice became a low monotone. “‘Twas hell on earth. Those who didn’t die were all driven mad eventually. They’d howl and weep... Some would even laugh hysterically, hour after hour. ‘Twas their minds seeking to escape what their bodies could not.”
    “But you didn’t go mad. Did you?”
    “Nay. Nor Thorne. We kept our sanity by occupying our minds. We taught each other our native languages. I learned that he was a Saxon freeman, the son of a woodsman. He’d followed Louis out of idealism but soon became just as disillusioned as I. Thorne asked me to teach him what I’d learned at Cluny and Paris. I introduced him to the fundamentals of logic, the ideas of the Greek philosophers, geometry, arithmetic, and, of course, theology. I taught him to read French and Latin by scratching letters into the sandy floor with my crucifix.”
    “How did you get away from there? Did you escape?”
    His eyes were grim. “Death was the only way to escape that place. Nay, ‘twas Eleanor. She managed to locate me and paid a ransom for my release. I demanded that the others be let go as well, and our captors must have been bored with us, because they obliged with very little fuss. I brought Thorne back with me to Paris and introduced him to Eleanor. He adapted remarkably well to court life, although he didn’t like it very much. He admired Eleanor, but he had complete contempt for the silly romantic intrigues of her lords and ladies. And as a Saxon, he was an oddity. He told me he felt like Charlemagne’s elephant—an exotic, primitive beast on display for the curious to gawk at.”
    Martine studied the big Saxon’s distant form and imagined him towering over a gaggle of wide-eyed, overdressed courtiers.
    “Also,” Rainulf continued, “he missed his family in Sussex and was anxious to return to them. I asked Eleanor to write him a letter of introduction to Baron Godfrey, whom I’d met in Paris years before, and it must have been a good one. Godfrey knighted him six months after his arrival at Harford Castle, and made him his master falconer soon after that. They say he’s the finest falconer in southern