Prologue

Surrounded by a thick wall of rammed earth topped with sharpened staves, more hill fort than manor house, Cotswold was rank with the melting slops of a long, iron-gripped winter. Ankle-deep in mire, littered with broken barrels, scraps and bits of rusty armor, leaking water butts, and other things best left unmentioned, the courtyard was filthy. White hair straggling down the back of her tattered penitent's robe, her heart of oak staff a foot taller than her erect head, the woman walked through the gate, across the stretch of muddy stink, and into the great hall like a queen entering a tapestry-hung, sweet-scented palace.

She was a stranger, but the whispers had preceded her, had run like chain lightning, up and down the land, striking chords of hope, rekindling dreams, burning like small vigil fires in the dark night of despair.

She was a stranger, but they knew her. They knew each step of the ritual, each word, each gesture that must precede before her tale could be told.

And they knew, too, the reason it must be performed in every cot and hold throughout the land.

Red, chapped hands on the hilts of their broadswords, the guards stood at attention when she passed. Round-eyed and silent, swaddled babes stared at her, forgetting to gnaw on rusks or suck on honey-dipped rags.

Even the hungry hounds stopped growling at the children, snapping at each other, fighting for tossed bones, and watched the woman--not with fear or anger, but with something else in their eyes. That something made them wag their tails and belly-crawl after her as she crossed the greasy rushes that covered the stone floor, circled the smoking firepit. The dogs stopped when she halted before the man sprawled drunkenly in a huge, gilded chair on the raised platform at the far end of the hall.

Small eyes nearly buried in fat, swollen fingers splayed wide, clutching at the carven arms of his throne, the man, Robert of Cotswold, took a deep breath and swallowed hard. He said nothing. He could say nothing yet.

As was her right and god-given duty, the woman invoked the ritual.