Through the gates.
I’m through the gates, now. I’ve left them behind. I’m outside the abbey, for the first time in eight months: there are the fields, and the trees, and the road unrolling before me. And there, near the wall, sitting on a rock – it’s Saurimunda.
She looks up. Her mouth drops open. She scrambles to her feet and stretches out her hands, but I’m already passing. I can’t stop, I can’t help. I can’t even smile, because her face is breaking my heart.
Straining back over my shoulder, to watch her receding form. A drab little patch against the stonework. Beside her, the solid, grey weight of the gate-house, with its tiny windows and its crenellated towers. And its cross. And its carvings.
And its massive wooden gates, slowly shutting behind me.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CHILDREN’S
BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD (OLDER READERS) AND THE
VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS (CHILDREN’S LITERATURE)
‘Shrewd and scrappy, with an instinct for self-preservation and a strong sense of loyalty, Pagan Kidrouk makes an engaging and spirited narrator. From the beginning of Pagan’s Crusade, I found myself plunged into the thick of medieval Jerusalem, meeting a host of intriguing characters … A grand adventure!’
NANCY BOND, author of A String in the Harp, a Newbery Honor Book
‘The setting is medieval, but the issues addressed have twenty-first century parallels This reviewer cannot remember a more compelling or rewarding page turner. Jinks’s writing is a tour de force of young adult prose. Happy are they who read and introduce young readers to Pagan.’
Voice of Youth Advocates
WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS (CHILDREN’S LITERATURE)
‘No question about it, Catherine Jinks loves both Pagan and Lord Roland Roucy de Bram, the Knight Templar whom Pagan follows through the siege of Jerusalem, back to France and on into the Abbey of Saint Martin. Her delight in Pagan blazes through every sentence of his slangy, racy,
irreverent, witty first person narrative ...’
JENNY PAUSACKER, Viewpoint
A CHILDREN’S BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA NOTABLE BOOK
‘Pagan’s Daughter is rich in the historical detail of its setting … Jinks doesn’t sanitise, let alone romanticise, the medieval period she obviously adores recreating … Babylonne is very much her father’s daughter, not just in her resolve, courage and cheeky humour but in the chatty, of-the-moment voice that Jinks has given her. Pagan’s Daughter is alive with narrative energy.’
The Age
Pagan's Vows Page 20