Chapter 9

Many of the village children would satisfy their curiosity about the members of the Knight Templar in their midst simply by squatting in the dust or the stones and watching them as they practiced mayhem with either sword or axe. It was at times like that the true nature of their fighting spirit surfaced on their calm and peaceful exteriors. With teeth bared and sharpened blades splitting the air with a song of violent intent, they whirled and stamped about the courtyard halting all thought of distraction from the spectacular sight.

Rowena actually pitied the fate of the deluded followers of an evil God preying on the pilgrims to the Holy Land. Her sense of pity was short-lived because the tales of rape and torture endured by the travelers to the paths of the Son of God seemed to hit into every village and home inside the realm. Her mother’s two sisters had been subjected to unspeakable indignities right out in public whilst the supposed authorities of the foreign powers laughed at the sight. They even encouraged their subjects to further outrageous displays of inhumane treatment of innocent and defenseless faithful. The pilgrims wanted to follow the sacred route of Christ that ended with his three years of public life and the ultimate sacrifice on a Roman cross. They wanted to see the places that witnessed the mystery of the Resurrection and quick Ascension into the kingdom of God. Those that were robbed of their lives in simple attesting of their faith would certainly be martyred as true believers shriven of their transgressions by a priest of the church before their final moments in this dimension of existence. Saints, one and all, they were too numerous to enumerate in the Canons of the one, holy and apostolic church Dogma. The most valiant of the populace traveled to the Holy Land for reasons of piety or to defend the faith and the remainder of the common folk suffered under the brutal authority of a regime too greedy for its own good and under a purported ruler with no sense of loyalty to his own people.

Rowena confessed her sinful thoughts about Sir Lawrence to the ancient priest still assigned to the convent where she had spent so many of her youthful years. It was there that she had learned the intricate conflicts of right and wrong in a world gone crazy with so many easy paths to “instant gratification”. The priest was so lost in his own little world of bad hearing, sour stomach and aching knees to the extent that he only listened with one ear and gave her a modest penance that inconvenienced her for only a few moments on her knees on the hard wooden pew.

She felt it was not enough to compensate for her guilty heated pleasure thinking about the handsome, long-haired knight fully in control of her slightest movement and only inches from her face and eager lips. She remembered with some degree of shame her pitiful whimpers of emotion-laden bliss each time he clove unto her with masculine certainty forcing her to part the depths of her femininity like the powerless waves of the Red Sea spread open by the word of God. She took little comfort in the fact that she was still a technical virgin because of the many sinful thoughts and close encounters of the physical kind that she had endured for several years. The fact that she was a willing accomplice in many of these escapades was a source of constant guilt to her convent trained logic and her conscience weighed heavily on her mortal soul causing her to make the silliest of vows to do this or that or to not do this or that thinking all she had to do was to promise and hope her will power was enough to forestall any fall from grace that would ensure her an eternity in the fires of Hell.

It was with a sigh of relief that she pushed all such negative thoughts from her constantly optimistic mind and allowed a smile cross her face when she was seated directly behind Sir Lawrence in the small chapel. He noticed her change of attitude almost immediately and his mind wandered from his dutiful piety as he focused on the secrets beneath her modest attire.

Lady Cordelia was fully aware of the cross-currents of sexual tension sweeping the pews around her. In her own way, she was much attuned to the urges of appetites long suppressed by the fear of eternal damnation and the condemnation of rumor-mongering peers. She had many sins to atone for but had no intention of curtailing her nocturnal impulses until she was much closer to her final breath.

In all honesty, the good lady was much impressed with the handsome Sir Lawrence and she harbored some dark thoughts about his possible needs for feminine companionship whilst a guest in the privacy of her castle. It was during that season of the year when her disinterested spouse was depleting the nearby forest of abundant game with the help of subordinates and sporting neighbors from near and far. Needless to say, she was in a mood of disappointed boredom and the tempting Knights Templar was a dish she was wont to turn down. Her crafty mind began to construct a court-styled intrigue that involved the handsome knight, her new friend Rowena and, of course, she would be right in the middle to sample all the physical pleasures she imagined waiting for her in the secrecy of a darkened room. The mature lady was remarkably well-preserved for a female of her years, but the advantage of position and ready-cash to pay for her cosmetic needs helped her immensely in maintaining her illusion of beauty. She was all too well aware of the fact that in the middle of the night in the privacy of a dimly lit room, the reality of female skin exposed for masculine inquisitiveness broached no obstacle to normal cupidity and seldom raised the hint of a conscience until the following light of day.

Poor Sir Lawrence had not the slightest inkling of the plots swirling about him and he did his best to concentrate on the prayers at hand. The giggling young things that pestered him in other places than the chapel were at bay in the somber surroundings. Only the chilly beauty of the clear-eyed Rowena and the sultry mystery of his hostess, Lady Cordelia stayed in close proximity to his person and he could actually inhale their dual scents of feminine arousal aided, no doubt, by the fine potions purchased from foreign lands. In a certain way, they were similar to his highly developed sense of smell, but he noticed one of them had an element of wildness to the odor that he had encountered rarely in his worldly travels. In those instances, he was almost certain it identified a practitioner of the dark arts.