Templars and Pagans

Book excerpt: Templar and Pagans is a fictional story based on true historical events that took place on Friday, October 13, 1307, when the greedy sovereign of France Phillip IV decided to expel the mastic Templar knighthood from his lands; and with the viscid support of the Catholic Church’s edict, the Anjou Emperor struck without provocation. But before the French ruler could carry out his malign plan, he had the Templar grandmaster Jacques de Molay arrested in Paris and when the machinate suzerain found out through sessions of torture that a small caravan of Templar paladins were secretively transporting a culminated relic from the ecru dessert sands of Acre in the Holy Land to the Templar Commandery at Templecoombe. So, the clever Frankish monarch descended from a line of ancient Merovingian Kings hastily dispatched two ruthless knight-errant companies of men under the command of a malevolent Cathar chevalier known as Viktor of Gaul to intercept and kill the misguided zealot Knights before they safely reached the rocky shores of England via passage by ship from the seaport of Brunges under the renowned leadership of Derek of Holstein, an exemplary cavalier who is emotionally torn between the sworn duties of his Zionist sect and his love for his beautiful ex-sister-en-law Countess Nicolette, who bitterly blames him for the death of her late husband Bruno of Holstein who perished during the siege of Acre which claimed his life. Now with every Templar knight being systematically apprehended on sight throughout the poverty-stricken kingdom at the hands of starving peasants and by vengeful knight-errant mercenaries hoping to cash in on the frantic craze their apparently seems to be no escape for them. And, with everything escalating out of control there are other secret knighthoods eagerly awaiting the inevitable outcome of Clements’s papal decree which could also spell doom for their fraternal organizations if successful. . . Thanks, Dennis...