Pagan In Exile

In this superb sequel to Pagan's Crusade, Pagan Kidrouk, the Jerusalem street-kid turned squire to a Templar Knight, accompanies his master, Lord Roland Roucy de Bram home to France.

They are there to promote the Second Crusade. Both Philippe of France and Richard of England (not yet king as his father Henry II is still alive) have vowed to go on the crusade and everything seems set. But when they reach home - near Carcassonne in the south of France - they find all is not as they expected.

For a start Richard and Philippe have fallen out and are fighting each other with the armies drafted for the crusade.

And Roland's family is not at all what Pagan had been led to expect. Roland is the image of chivalry (this is Pagan's description of him arriving in the village under the castle of Bram:

They're staring at Roland too, of course [...] You don't often see a vision of Saint George wandering past your scrap bucket on an overcast afternoon in the middle of nowhere. It's like watching a stained glass window come to life. People push and whisper and cross themselves. A sort of hush seems to follow us down the street)

whereas his family are savages, worse than animals, all of them.

There are no women here apart from a couple of young and brutalised "ladies" married to two of his brothers (for one of whom it is his fourth wife; they kill them off as soon as possible to get another dowry) and Roland's own mother died years ago.

And as if all this wasn't enough, on their land is a small community of Cathars, led by the beautiful Esclaramonde Maury. And while Roland's father and brothers don't care that Esclaramonde's people are heretics (they themselves are completely irreligious and are currently at war with the neighbouring abbey), Roland soon comes to feel that he is honour bound to defend Esclaramonde against whatever dragon comes against her.

Pagan's attitudes and comments are hilarious but don't expect to see twelfth-century France through rose-tinted spectacles or wait for a happy ending. This book is about politics, religion and human nature in the raw, and of course it is a tragedy.

Don't miss it!

MBG