Jack Whyte - Knights of the Black and White

Montdidier grinned and removed his flat-capped helmet, thrust the mailed cowl back off his head, then shook his head to loosen his matted hair and scrubbed it with one hand before replacing everything. That done, he drew his long sword and stood up in his stirrups.

“Tonight, friend Stephen, we will drink a cup of wine to that. To the betterment of people’s lives throughout the world. But it will still require armies of people with these—” he swung his sword around his head—“to see to their safety. So we will drink a second cup to ourselves, and to our friends and brethren, the monk knights of the temple, Poor Fellows that they are.”

FINIS

JACK WHYTE is a Scots-born Canadian who has been around long enough by now to have done most of the things he ever wanted to do, and all of those seem to have been connected, in one way or another, to storytelling. His novels on King Arthur have been translated into a number of languages and are sold worldwide. Jack’s new trilogy examines the rise and fall of the Knights Templar. The first two volumes, Knights of the Black and White and Standard of Honor, are now available from Penguin. Jack Whyte lives with his wife, Beverley, in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Also by Jack Whyte

A DREAM OF EAGLES

The Skystone

The Singing Sword

The Eagles’ Brood

The Saxon Shore

The Sorcerer, Volume I:

The Fort at River’s Bend

The Sorcerer, Volume II:

Metamorphosis

Uther

THE GOLDEN EAGLE

Clothar the Frank

The Eagle

THE TEMPLAR TRILOGY

Standard of Honor

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First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2006. Published simultaneously in the United States by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Published in this edition, 2007.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright © Jack Whyte, 2006

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Whyte, Jack, 1940–

Knights of the Black and White / Jack Whyte.

(Templar trilogy ; bk. 1)

ISBN 978-0-14-301736-3

I. Title. II. Series: Whyte, Jack, 1940– Templar trilogy ; bk. 1.

PS8595.H947K55 2007 jC813’.54 C2007-902889-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-301736-3

ISBN-10: 0-14-301736-5

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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