Free A Friar's Bloodfeud: (Knights Templar 20) by Michael Jecks

was warm enough, that the shutters were pulled shut
     against the cold evening air, that the dogs were settled out of the way so that they couldn’t upset the women. Only when he
     was satisfied that they were as comfortable as they could be did he quietly draw the heavy curtain over the doorway and retreat
     to his pantry to clear away the rubbish.
    He was one man who could always be relied upon, Isabel thought. There were so many who were unreliable. Men who would steal
     the rings from a widow’s fingers, whowould demand money before performing their services, who would eye her with a lascivious tenderness, hoping to receive a better
     payment in kind for their efforts, or simply pocket a portion of the manor’s wealth and fly the place, never to return.
    Pagan was not like them. A little younger than Isabel, his family had served Isabel’s dead husband’s for many years going
     back into the dim and distant past. The fact that Pagan was still here was a measure of his commitment to them, and a proof
     of his honour, although he was only a common peasant in truth. At the same time, knights who called themselves
honourable
were stealing manors from defenceless widows like her.
    She gazed into the flames, lost in thought.
    ‘Mother? Are you well?’
    Malkin’s soft voice drew her back to the present. ‘Yes! Of course I am,’ she snapped without thinking, and then regretted
     her harshness. ‘I am sorry, Malkin. It’s just …’ She waved her hands feebly. ‘I don’t know how to say it.’
    ‘I know,’ Malkin said. Tears appeared in her eyes again. ‘I can’t think how to face life without my man.’
    ‘That is easy,’ Isabel said sternly. ‘You survive. I have lost three men now. My father, like my husband’s, killed by the
     Scots in Ireland, Robert himself in that treacherous attack at Bridgnorth, and now my son. My beloved son …’
    ‘I loved him so much,’ Malkin said.
    ‘I know you did, little sweeting.’
    ‘It seems so hard to imagine that he’s gone.’
    ‘The thing to concentrate on for now is my grandson. You have to look after him, child. It is he who matters, who has to be
     protected. No one else.’

Chapter Six
    Sir Baldwin de Furnshill stood in the cool morning air wearing only a thin linen shirt and a fine tunic of flaming crimson,
     and drew his sword as he faced the rising sun on the grassy slope, tossing the scabbard aside on to the grass and standing
     still a moment.
    He was a tall man, broad and thickset about the shoulders and neck as befitted a warrior used to wearing armour, and his right
     arm was more heavily muscled than his left from working with heavy weapons. Yet for all his warlike appearance, his face showed
     a different quality. He lacked the brute arrogance and cruelty of so many modern knights. Instead, he had kindliness in his
     dark brown eyes – kindliness and a sort of wariness, a man always slightly on guard. A thin beard followed the line of his
     lower jaw. Once it had been dark, but now, like his hair, it was showing more and more grey. There was more salt than pepper,
     his wife had said recently, and he could not deny it.
    Today he felt unsettled, and it was not merely his wound: it was a curious manor, this, the small estate which had been his
     wife’s first husband’s.
    It had a lovely outlook, being some miles north of Tavistock but not quite on the moors, with a view ofDartmoor itself. The manor house was a good, solid moorstone building, with sound grey walls, lately whitewashed (Baldwin
     suspected because the local steward had heard that his mistress’s husband was coming to see the place) and thatched well only
     the previous summer. It stood on a small knoll, as though on its own shallow motte, and all about it at a distance of some
     sixty yards were woods, with the only bare aspect being to the south, where a man could see almost all the way to Brent Tor
     on a clear day, so it was said. Sir Baldwin didn’t know about that, but he