Crusader's Torch is the second of Yarbro's novels about Olivia, the Roman woman who becomes the Count Saint-Germain's truest love. In the year 1189 AD, battle rages on the islands of Crete and Cyprus; Saladin sits in Jerusalem, threatening Antioch and Tyre alike; Richard Coeur de Lion rules England and France; and the Pope talks of preaching a new Crusade. Olivia lives in Tyre, but dares not face its occupation by Islamic forces. She is determined to return to the city of her birth...and death: Rome, the Eternal. Accompanied only by young Valence Rainaut, a Knight Hospitaler who much against his will has fallen in love with her, she makes her desperate way by land and sea through a world ruled by Death... and by men whose bloodlust runs stronger than her own.