The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16) Read Online Free Page B

had been a loud gurgling sound, like water in a small stone-lined leat hurrying away from a moor.
    There was no pleasure in his victory, only more fear. The fellow had brothers, aye, and a powerful father who’d take pleasure in avenging him. Rather than wait for that, or the long, slow process of the law, Robert had taken the advice of the men with him and left home. He had never returned. He had run away to the coast, first to nearby Liskeard, thence to Falmouth, where he was taken on as a sailor and tried to learn his new trade.
    He spent much of his time aboard ship in terror. While the master was an unholy, drunken fool, prone to beating and lashing his crew-members, another sailor, Jack, was a sodomite who saw it as his duty to assault any youngsters – and he soon made it clear to Robert that he was next. One night – Christ’s bones, Robert could remember it so clearly still – he had been reduced to a gibbering wreck, trying to evade the man while he was hunted from stem to stern of the cog. Only by concealing himself behind boxes of merchandise had he managed to escape, his dagger gripped tightly in his hand, and then the ship had landed at Dartmouth, and Robert fled.
    Rather than seek another ship, he thought remaining on dry land would be preferable – and he should be safe so far from his home. Having found himself a job working in a tavern, which seemed ideally suited to his needs, since it not only paid his living but also employed a pretty serving wench whom he intended to know rather better, he was appalled one night to hear a familiar voice in the main room.
    Over the hubbub of thirty or more voices roaring at one another, as though all were talking in the midst of a storm, he recognised one:Jack. He was in the tavern. From the slurred way he spoke he was already drunk, and Robert made sure that he remained at the farther end of the hall, away from Jack, as he served customers. Someone else could serve him.
    There was a practical issue he hadn’t considered, though: that there was only one other servant there that night. When Robert heard the wench he desired give a short scream, he felt his blood freeze in his veins, but then in an instant it was boiling.
    Yes. That was why he was here on the island of Ennor: because of another woman. He had rushed into the hall as soon as he heard that cry of terror. The maid had been picked up and slammed down on a table; her skirts were thrown up and over her waist, exposing her lower body as far as her belly, and Jack was between her legs, holding her wrists with one hand, preventing her from covering herself and hiding her shame, while gripping her cheeks in the other hand and trying to make her kiss him, laughing uproariously the while.
    Robert had not hesitated. He ran in, pulling out his knife as he went. There was a rushing noise in his ears, and he felt an unholy thundering in his breast. Raising his arm, he struck once, twisting the blade deep inside his tormentor’s flesh. Then, when his victim roared and flailed his arms about, trying to catch his assailant and kill him, Robert began to stab and slash, again and again, desperate to kill Jack before the man could take him in those awful arms and break him to pieces, and then … all went black, as though he had fainted. Afterwards, all he remembered was waking, doused with water.
    ‘
Come with me!
’ The man’s voice was low and urgent.
    Robert couldn’t recall where he was, nor how he had arrived there. ‘I … who are you?’ he stammered.
    ‘You misbegotten son of a Southwark whore! Are you so stupid you need to question me? Isn’t it enough that I’ll save you? If you stay here, the watch will catch you, and then what’ll happen, eh? Follow me.’
    And he had. He was taken to a ship and hidden aboard, and later he felt the ship begin to heel over as she made sail. Only then was hetaken up to the deck from his hiding place to be introduced to his rescuer.
    ‘Who are you?’ he asked