The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25) Read Online Free Page A

reign of King Edward II
    Assart in Forest near Crowborough
    Agnes set down the milk and leaned back, hands at the pain in the small of her back where the muscles were so tense, and then
     took up the butter-churn’s paddle and began the laborious work of converting the milk.
    There was a time when she had been small and wisp-like, she remembered, but childbirth and the famine had stopped all that.
     When first she had been married, she had been a child, really. Only fourteen years old, and yet old enough to wed and conceive.
     She hadn’t needed too many muscles in those days. All she had known was some easy cookery, a few chores about the house, and
     then the grim effort of suckling her boy. And then the girl, too, and another boy.
    The priest had been a great support at first. She told him about her vow when her father kicked up a fuss, and the priest
     listened to her and Matthew, and checked with all the witnesses to make sure, before declaring the marriage perfectly valid.
     After all, a marriage wasn’t something that was a Church matter. If people wanted the blessing of the priest at the church
     door, that was fine, but it didn’t invalidate the wedding if they chose not to have it. No, and so Agnes was married.
    It was the famine that did for her, though. All the children starved during the winter of the second famine year. One after
     another, as though they couldn’t bear to stay alive amid so much sorrow. There was no food for anyone, but it was one thing
     to see men and women with their gaunt features andswollen bellies, their arms and legs withering, eyes sinking, teeth falling out, until only skeletons clothed with a thin
     layer of skin appeared to remain and another to see the children suffer.
    All suffered, but families in the woods suffered more than most. Their scrappy land wouldn’t support much by way of crops
     in good years, and they must depend on the grain they could buy from those with better land. But during the famine, they lost
     their animals, for there was nothing for them to eat. The animals that could eat, succumbed to a murrain before long. All
     were dead. And with them Agnes and Matthew’s wealth.
    Matthew had never been particularly demonstrative. He’d not taken to beating her before the famine. Only a couple of thrashings
     a week was his norm. But it had eroded her confidence even then. When Matthew’s father had roared at her for making his pottage
     too thin, too garlicky or too cold, Matthew had taken his side, and would slap her face to show his discontent. But that was
     nothing to the pain she endured when she must pay the marriage debt. After her third babe, it was unbearable, but he wouldn’t
     listen to her, and forced her to take him. That was why she grew to hate him. The routine manner of his beating her was one
     thing, but forcing her to open her legs each night when it felt as though there was a dagger in her belly already, made her
     despise him.
    The sound of hooves came clearly, and she leaned on the paddle, listening, before continuing with her work again, the paddle
     thudding more heavily as the cream began to separate into buttermilk and butter.
    ‘Maid, you look good enough to eat!’
    She turned and felt her face break into a broad smile. ‘Richard!’
    The King’s herald grinned and opened his arms, and it was then that she heard her husband’s roar, and she saw him hurtling
     towards them with a billhook in his fist, and she screamed as it rose and sliced down at Richard’s head.

Chapter One
    Monday following Easter in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II
4
    Eltham Palace
    He was not yet thirteen years old, but he could still remember the horror of those days. Three years had passed, but he would
     never forget them. Not if he lived to be a hundred.
    At first he had been confused. Only a boy, he had grown to appreciate the men of his household, great men,
good
men, who were entirely trusted. Knights, squires, even lords, had been