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

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. FrтАЪre 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.
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A singular array of qualifications commended FrтАЪre 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.

These circumstances, along with an awareness of Scottish affairs-by dint of collateral cousins in
Scotland-had earned him an appointment to the Birgham delegation beside FrтАЪre Brian de Jay, the
English-born Preceptor of Scotland, who had knowledge of both English and Scottish law. The two had
not met prior to their present assignment, and Arnault could not say that he had warmed to Jay in the
months they had spent at the negotiating table; but the English knight did seem to know his business
where the law was concerned. Having seen the treaty signed and sealed, the two men were now
accompanying the little princess to Scotland, where she would be met by a suitable escort of her Scottish
nobles. From there, she would travel south to London, where a new life and a new home awaited her.

The wind freshened, shifting a few degrees to the north, and Arnault breathed deeply of the brisk sea air,
always welcome after the years spent in the deserts of Outremer. Unarmored here at sea, though his
sword was girt always at his side, he wore beneath his mantle the formal white habit of Templar monastic
profession, emblazoned on the breast with the splayed, eight-pointed red cross of the Order. His dark
hair was barbered close to his head, as required by the Rule, but he had leave to keep his beard neatly
trimmed, out of deference to the more fastidious circles in which his diplomatic duties obliged him to
move.

He allowed himself a contented sigh as he swept his gaze around him. The royal ship was threading her
way along the last of the deep fjords leading out to sea. The rigging was bright with pennons in the colors
of Norway and Scotland, lifting gaily on the wind, and the princess's half-dozen Norwegian attendants
made a colorful gathering around her on the deck below.

Margaret herself was almost lost in the midst of them: a diminutive, flaxen-haired doll muffled in furs,
sheltering in the grandfatherly embrace of Bishop Narve of Bergen. To Arnault's discerning gaze,
watching from the machicolated platform of the ship's stern castle, she appeared somewhat frail and not
entirely well, her small face pinched and white under its rich coif of silk and gold netting.