Enjoyed this perhaps the most of medieval novels I've read. After the final defeat of the Crusaders at Acre in 1291, Beltran, a Templar, Treasurer of the Order and Keeper of the Rule, brings their treasure out of the Holy Land and keeps it with him. He and other faithful Templars journey to several islands in the Mediterranean [Cyprus, Crete, Ruad] for years, then arrive in France, travelling up the Rhône to give it over to headquarters. The Templar Order is condemned as heretical, destroyed through efforts of the French king and the Pope, its members burnt at the stake. Now an old man, after years of living as a hermit, Beltran makes his way to the wilds of Scotland to keep a promise made years before....

Drenched in melancholy, the passing of a way of life. Gorgeous writing.

Highly recommended. Variant [and original] title: Beltran in Exile. ( )

Perhaps nobody has written on the Crusades like this since Tasso. And if Tasso is known for a gallows poetry, if he wallows in the terror and the pity, in his footsteps W.W. ( )

A novel about the life of a devout Templar, born and raised in the Holy Land, at the time of the fall of the last bastion on the coast of Palestine to the Saracens. Beltran, the protagonist, is ordered to guard the vast treasury of the knights. He keeps it on an island in the Mediterranean for many years, then attempts to deliver it to the central monastery in France, at a time when the King is falsely accusing the Templars of heresy. It began to get a bit mystical and unrealistic at the end, but was a generally good novel. ( )