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- Herausgeber: BookRix
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 1553, a young Turkish princess is kidnapped and held captive by a Christian Knight. Her father sets out to rescue her but when his mission becomes one of revenge the princess vanishes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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The Turkish Princess
to "The Lady of the Forest"BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 MunichThe Turkish Princess
The time is 1554, the place Vieste, on the Italian Adriatic coast
Atop the white rock of the near island that was Vieste, crouched the citadel of the Norman lord, Herman De Wolfsden. This day the castle was wreathed in pungent smoke from the fired macchia scrub of a nearby headland; fired to flush out Saracen spies.
De Wolfsden was a big man; he towered above the heavily veiled, Saracen princess, Samira, a delicate, slight, brown girl kneeling prostrate before him.
A daughter of Abu Al Jarra, the well known Muslim pirate, Wolfsden had captured her on his recent raid on the Albanian coast.
She would fetch a good ransom, but he had heard that there were moves afoot to free her.
De Wolfsden spoke not only Latin but Greek and Arabic. An educated man then, but one with the cruel streak of the autocrat. He possessed a menagerie of leopards, lions and other wild beasts and, while yet a Christian, he kept a harem.
“I will put you somewhere safe where even your Saracen friends will not find you. Carry her to the Grotto of Due Occhii. Take clothes and food, her female companion, and guard them well.”
As the men left the citadel with the girl, clouds began to gather and the sky to darken.
Inland, lightning flickered over the Forestra Umbra.
As they wended their way down from the citadel, then along the Spiaggia dello Schialara, heavy raindrops patterned the sand; then the clouds opened and the rain swept down. Behind them the lightning flashed round the citadel, striking and striking again.
The girl looked quickly back. At least she was out of that depressing place, where she had been kept in a stone cell for three weeks with only the slightest glimmer of hope.
Perhaps, she thought as she made her way, the lightning would strike her captor.
De Wolfsden said he was negotiating; that these things take time; envoys have to be sent and returned. Terms agreed.
Would her father think her worthy of ransom? She was only a third daughter. But surely, yes. Her father was a man to whom family honour was deeply important. Someone would come.
They pushed on down the coast over the blackened macchia. Beneath their feet, rosemary and thyme lay crisped by the searing heat, the branches of small pines, like supplicating arms, clutched at her dress.
De Wolfsden’s work; it was destructive, vindictive.
Her own father could be strong but he had a gentler side. He loved trees and gardens filled with birds.
The guards ushered them down a set of steps cut in the white rock. As they descended doves flew off the nearby ledges with clattering wings.
Now she could hear the sea slapping on the rocks below. The steps twisted to the left and came to a spacious dry cave hollowed out in the rock wall, about two metres above the base of a collapsed sea cavern.
