Free The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16) by Michael Jecks

preference he seated himself on the packed clay of the floor.
    ‘I’ll have to send for the castle’s men,’ William said. ‘But I’d dearly like to know how you came to survive and make it here.’
    ‘We were lucky.’
    ‘You mentioned a friend?’
    ‘Wewere chased by pirates,’ Simon said shortly. ‘They came upon us on our route home from Compostela.’
    ‘They are the devil’s own whelps, these foreign pirates,’ William said with feeling. ‘They plunder where they may, murdering as they …’ Then he noticed Simon’s expression and waved. ‘My apologies. Please continue.’
    Simon spoke as the man poured wine from a small barrel into a large pot, which he set on a trivet over his fire. There were three goodly-sized logs glowing, and William soon blew them into life.
    ‘We fought them. They came at us like wolves, and when they threw their grappling irons, it was all we could do to keep them away. They would have overcome us, but for my friend. He slew their leader, and they withdrew, but they had done the damage already. They’d killed the helmsman and three other sailors. There weren’t enough men to steer and man the thing. When the storm hit us, we were driven like lost souls in front of devils. It was a terrible sound, the way that the wind sang in the ropes.’
    William nodded. He hoped Simon wouldn’t speak of such things in front of any of the fishermen in the vill. They would mercilessly rib a man who didn’t know his cable from a sheet or a sheet from a shroud.
    ‘Then,’ Simon continued, ‘the sail burst. It was like a clay plate being struck by a hammer! One moment it was there – the next: nothing! A man went up to do something, but the next gust took him away. All we could do was lie down and cling on to anything that came to hand.
    ‘We survived like that for a good long while, and then there was a scraping jerk, and the ship spun around on her centre. One of the sailors cried aloud in prayer, saying we’d struck a rock and must be destroyed. Another one told him to shut up, that while there was life in our bodies, we had a chance, and then a great wave came over the ship.
    ‘My friend Baldwin was holding on to a baulk of timber that ran along the side of the ship. It was held rigidly in place, but this mass of water crashed over him, and when I could see again, there was ahole in the side of the ship. All that rail had gone, and with it, Baldwin.
    ‘I think that I gave up then. I wanted to be dead myself. It was awful to think of drowning in that sea, consumed by the waters, but the weather began to abate almost immediately, as though God was satisfied with our sacrifice. He had taken enough.’
    It made the tears spring back into Simon’s eyes to think of that moment. When he saw Baldwin was gone, he felt as though a great void had opened in his own chest. With a scream, he almost hurled himself into the water to try to find Baldwin, but Sir Charles had taken his arm and prevented him.
    William nodded. ‘I know, friend. I come from a seafaring family myself. My own brother Jan went to sea – and I am inordinately glad that I found a vocation in the Church. Our father died in the sea, and so do so many who depend upon it.’
    ‘You thought I was Jan, didn’t you?’ Simon recalled. The priest had called him ‘Jan’.
    ‘There was a resemblance,’ William said quietly. ‘Please, continue.’
    ‘Not long afterwards, the cog spun around a few times, and then seemed to shudder, and with that, she began to move again. I think the water rose and lifted her off her rocky spike. But she was badly holed. A man went to look, and came back to say that she couldn’t survive. She was about to sink. We jumped and found the beam you have left at the waterside, and held fast to it. When dawn came, we saw – God! with how much relief! – this island. I made for it with all the strength I had. The others …’
    ‘Don’t worry about them. If they all followed your example,