"Katherine Kurtz - Knights Templar 01 - Temple and the Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

the armies of Qalawun's successor, Al-Ashraf. The Mameluke conquest of these two cities left the Latin
West bereft of their last bastions in the Holy Lands of the East. All that now remained of the Frankish
Kingdom of Outremer was the island fortress of Ruad, two miles off the coast.

Those most immediately affected by the loss were the Military Orders, who for nearly two centuries had
vied with one another in upholding the fervor of the Crusades. Subsequently, the knights who survived
the fall of Acre became wholly preoccupied with plans for a campaign of reconquest. While some
returned to Europe to recruit new members, others remained in the East, based at Cyprus, to monitor the
movements of the enemy.

On the last day of June 1292, a Templar galley entered the Cypriot port of Larnaca and dropped anchor
within sight of the town. The first boat ashore carried two disheveled and disreputable-looking
passengers in tattered desert robes, who immediately set out on foot along one of the cobbled streets
adjoining the waterfront. A brisk ten minutes' walk brought them to a walled town house on a terrace
overlooking the bay. The keystone of the gate arch bore the distinctive inscription of a cross pattтАЪe,
proclaiming the house to be a dependent preceptory of the Knights Templar.

The warden at the gate was a grizzled, bull-chested serjeant with a patch over one eye. As soon as he
caught sight of the two travelers his scarred face lit up in an incredulous grin.

"FrтАЪre Arnault! And FrтАЪre Torquil!" he exclaimed, quickly swinging the gate wide to admit them. "Praise
be to God, then you made it to Ruad! It's been nine weeks. I feared we would never see you again, this
side of heaven."

Arnault de Saint Clair produced a smile that flashed startlingly white in his black beard and dirty,
sun-bronzed face. "You may laugh to hear it, Ruggiero, but our old friend Eliphas ben Ephraim said much
the same thing when we met up with him in Beirut."

The Milanese serjeant's jaw dropped. "Beirut? You did well to get that far!"

Arnault's long-limbed companion, some fifteen years his junior, swept back his hood and Arab headdress
and ran a big-boned hand through shaggy black hair. The afternoon sun picked up glints of copper at the
roots, where a disguising application of dye was beginning to fade.

"Och, we didn't stop there," the younger man stated cheerfully. "FrтАЪre Arnault had arranged for the galley
to pick us up at Caesarea. Of course, we did have a few-ah-unexpected side jaunts. But nothing we
couldn't handle."

Arnault chuckled and merely shook his head at the youngster's ebullience, cocksure with the confidence
of youth. Torquil Lennox had come a long way from his native Scotland to fight beside Arnault and their
brother-knights on the walls of Acre thirteen months before-and the younger man's promise had been
emerging steadily during the months of their association.

On previous assignments in Palestine, Arnault had established an extensive network of informants and
friends of the Order among its indigenous neighbors. Following the withdrawal of the Order to Cyprus,
his prior successes had earned him the dangerous job of venturing ashore north of Tripoli to gather
information about the strength of the Mameluke occupation forces. By then Torquil had proven himself
upon the walls of Acre. Blessed with youth, a strong fighting arm, an iron constitution, and the tongue of a
born linguist, the young Scot had been Arnault's first choice of companions for the venture.