Seven Noble Knights by J.K. Knauss
J. K. Knauss’s epic of medieval Spain, Seven Noble Knights, debuted on Kindle yesterday from Bagwyn Books. You can order it here, check out the softcover (coming January 16, 2017) here, and find out all about the Grand Book Launch Blog Tour at JessicaKnauss.com.
Spain, 974. Gonzalo, a brave but hotheaded knight,
unwittingly provokes tragedy at his uncle’s wedding to beautiful young
noblewoman Lambra: the adored cousin of the bride dead, his teeth scattered
across the riverbank. Coveting his family’s wealth and power, Lambra sends
Gonzalo’s father into enemy territory to be beheaded, unleashing a revenge that
devastates Castile for a generation.
A new hero, Mudarra, rises out of the ashes of Gonzalo’s once
great family. Raised as a warrior in the opulence of Muslim Córdoba, Mudarra
must make a grueling journey and change his religion, then chooses to take his
jeweled sword to the throats of his family’s betrayers. But only when he strays
from the path set for him does he find his true purpose in life.
Inspired by a lost medieval epic poem, Seven
Noble Knights draws from history and legend to
bring a brutal yet beautiful world to life in a gripping story of family,
betrayal, and love.
“Let Seven Noble Knights welcome
you to historical fiction! …it’s a rich saga populated with characters you will
grow to love (and a few you will love to hate). The ancient empires of Spain
are a beautiful backdrop to the struggles of humankind across all generations
of all lands: romance, revenge, war, and adventure.”
—Pushcart Prize nominee Reneé
Bibby, The Writers Studio
Excerpt from Part One, Chapter III: The
Wedding
Young Gonzalo’s uncle, Ruy Blásquez, is
receiving Doña Lambra as a bride in exchange for his service to Castile.
Gonzalo isn’t at all sure Lambra should be marrying his uncle, and during the
ceremony his sensations run toward the culinary.
Doña
Sancha shooed her sons away from the cathedral door and drew dried herbs
and flowers from pockets Gonzalo hadn’t known were inside her tunic and cloak.
With a stick, she carved a large circle on the hard earth. Doña Sancha set the
herbs and flowers inside the circle in a pattern with meanings she might have
shared with a daughter, but were a mystery to Gonzalo.
“You’ll stand
here,” she told her brother, Ruy Blásquez. “When your bride comes from that
side, you’ll step inside the circle together.” She arranged her husband and
sons on Ruy Blásquez’s side of the circle. Gonzalo ended up next to his uncle,
so close he could hear each shallow breath he took.
Count García
arrived with a full complement of knights and squires and four banners in white
with red castles, as well as a fiddler and a flutist who made ready to play. So
many people in the plaza must have been making the loudest ruckus since the
city had been won from the Moors, but Gonzalo heard nothing.
From between
the buildings at the far end of the plaza emerged forty women who walked with
their hair covered to emphasize their married status. Their laughter and
singing couldn’t distract Gonzalo from Doña Lambra, who tottered on their
shoulders.
An heirloom
beaded necklace competed with her yellow hair, shining in tight plaits on her
shoulders with ornamental brass tips that looked as if they had come out of a
treasure chest long ago. A mail girdle, inlaid with brass and pieces of jet at
the edges, cinched her bright blue tunic from under her breastbone to down over
her hips. Gonzalo shivered at the thought of the bitter touch of the matching
mail sleeves, from the decorated wristlets up to her shoulders. A
burgundy-colored cloak edged with three rows of golden braid was fastened over
her shoulder with a gilded brooch in the shape of a lion rampant. A square cap,
decorated all around with braid and gold carbuncles, looked like a royal crown.
Gonzalo imagined he wasn’t at his uncle’s wedding, but that this bride had come
from the farthest reaches of Christendom to marry the King of Navarra or León.
The married
women set Lambra down in the middle of their ranks. She let the cloak fan out
behind her unsteady stride. Her face was frozen into a grimace like the one the
Virgin Mary wore as she cradled the Savior’s dead body inside the cathedral.
Gonzalo
remembered Lambra’s grin at the banquet days before, when her mouth had dripped
red with juices from the roasted bull’s testicles and the sauce-engorged bread
trencher. Each time she received the goblet, she had made sure to turn it so
that her lips didn’t touch the same spot as Ruy Blázquez’s. She didn’t take the
same precaution against Álvar Sánchez, seated on her other side. Gonzalo could
hardly taste his food through a choking desire to throw his eating knife across
the table into the gloating knight’s hand so it could never touch Lambra so
familiarly again.
There he was
now, that upstart Álvar Sánchez, wearing just as juicy a grin, so close to Doña
Lambra that the obnoxious curl on the toe of his boot intruded on the magic
circle.
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| Meet author J.K. Knauss |
Gustio knocked
his elbow into Gonzalo’s ribs. “Why? Were you hoping it would be you, little
brother?” He chortled until their mother hissed at them to be silent.
Count García
was addressing the crowd. “…with these deeds, Ruy Blásquez has earned as a
bride my loveliest cousin, probably the most beautiful woman Castile has seen
since my mother joined the Kingdom of Heaven. May they live many more years and
have many loyal Castilian children.” He raised his arms, which the crowd took
as a sign to cheer and shout.
Gonzalo noticed
that his uncle had already moved into the circle and reached for Lambra’s
hands. She was looking at Ruy Blásquez, but not with love or even curiosity. It
was a look of judgment. Gonzalo tried to imagine how his uncle’s soft eyes,
long nose, and weak chin fared on Lambra’s scale.
“I receive you
as mine, so that you become my wife and I your husband,” Ruy Blásquez said.
Gonzalo was relieved to glimpse him smiling widely, displaying his straight,
white teeth to his judge in the form of a bride.
Ruy Blásquez
smiled and waited, waited and smiled. Gonzalo witnessed a thousand expressions
cross Lambra’s face like clouds in a stormy sky. At last, Lambra’s maid emerged
from the crowd and leaned over the circle. “I receive you as mine…” she
prompted so quietly that Gonzalo had to read her lips.
“I receive you
as mine so that you become my… husband… and I your… wife,” said Doña Lambra,
her eyes narrow. She pulled her hand away from Ruy Blásquez to wipe at her
plump lips, as if the words had sullied them.
She craned her
neck to look at Álvar Sánchez and Gonzalo knew she wished she had said the
words to him. His heart beat faster. Then she shifted her gaze to Gonzalo. He
felt as if he were smothered with the parsley, fennel, red carrot, and beet
sauce from the banquet. Such was the hunger he saw in her eyes, a hunger he
couldn’t help but feel, too, and which raged all the more, the more he tried to
contain it. He remembered the way the bull’s testicles had flopped onto Doña
Lambra’s trencher under their own weight and the way they deflated when she
plunged her knife into the center of the sacs.
He stopped a
startled cry in his throat.
“Long live the
newlyweds!” The crowd shouted until they were the only words Gonzalo remembered
ever hearing.
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