Luca looked at the drawing in blood, the detail in crimson, then the lord dropped his hooded head to Luca’s wound. Luca gasped as the lord’s soft mouth came down on his flesh. He felt the prickle of the stubble on his lord’s chin and upper lip, erotic as a kiss against his sensitive flesh. He felt the man’s teeth nibble the inside of his arm, felt the touch of his warm tongue on his raw skin. Luca felt the blood well into the lord’s mouth, as he sucked the flowing blood from the little wounds, then he felt the cool wetness of the man’s saliva as the lord raised his head and pulled his hood forwards over his face so that Luca only glimpsed for a moment his mouth, stained red, and the gleam of his black eyes.

Without comment, the lord lifted his head and took a tiny brush, dipped it in the pot of ink, and painted, with meticulous accuracy, over the lines he had cut, the wounds he had sucked. Then, he took a linen napkin from inside the box and pressed it against the red marks, now darkened with black ink. He raised his head and looked into Luca’s face. The younger man was pale and his brown eyes were darkened, his breath quick and shallow. The two of them stood in silence, as if something very strange and powerful had taken place.

‘There,’ said the lord, quietly. ‘I have marked you with my symbol. I have tasted your blood. You begin to belong to the Order. You begin to be mine.’

THE END

AUTHOR NOTE

AUTHOR NOTE

I think any reader will be able to see the immense pleasure I have had in writing this book, which has given me the chance to imagine the characters of a wholly fictional story against an historical background. Luca, Freize, Isolde and Ishraq seem to be growing, almost of their own accord, into the people they will be later in the series. In this novel we see Freize’s courage and sense of humour coming to the fore, and also the complexity of Luca’s feelings: about his childhood, about his vocation, about the two young women.

These two are becoming clearly differentiated individuals; I am getting more and more interested in where Ishraq’s questioning mind and Eastern background will take her, and the way Isolde’s sense of privilege and nobility is being tested by being endangered and frightened in the hard world she encounters. The discussion between the two young women about whether it is better to be free or to restrict your own behaviour in accordance with the conventions, is one that medieval people discussed, as have subsequent generations. The debate about appropriate behaviour for women continues to this day.