Evesham Abbey, England

January 1271

There were no stars. The sky was the color of cinders, and shadows were spilling out of every corner. Brother Damian was truly content with his lot in life, but border winters were brutal, and he sometimes found it hard to reconcile his monk's vow of poverty with his subversive yearning for a woolen mantle luxuriously lined with fox fur. Folklore held that St Hilary's Day was the coldest of the year, but he doubted that it could be as frigid as this first Friday in January, a day that had begun in snow and was ending now in this frozen twilight dusk, in swirling sleet and ice-edged gusting wind, sharp as any blade.

He had reached the dubious shelter of the cloisters when a snowball grazed his cheek, splattered against the nearest pillar. Damian stumbled, slipped on the glazed walkway, and went down. His assailants rushed to his rescue and he was soon encircled by dismayed young faces. With recognition, the boys' apologies became less anxious, more heartfelt, for Damian was a favorite of theirs. They often wished that he, rather than the dour Brother Gerald, was master of the novices, as Damian was young enough himself to wink at their indiscretions, understanding how bumpy was the road from country lad to reluctant scholar. Now he scolded them roundly as they helped him to his feet and retrieved his spilled candles, but his rebuke lacked sting; when he tallied up sins, he found no room on the list for snowball fights.

His duty done, Damian felt free to jest about poor marksmanship before sending them back to their studies. They crowded in, jockeying for position, warming him with their grins, imploring him to tell them again of the great Earl Simon and the battle of Evesham, fought within sight of the abbey's walls. Damian was not deceived, as able as the next man to recognize a delaying tactic. But it was a ploy he could never resist, and when they entreated him to tell the story "just one more time, for Jack," a freckle-faced newcomer to their ranks, he let himself be persuaded.

Five years had passed since the Earl of Leicester had found violent death and martyrdom on a bloody August morn, but his memory was still green. Evesham cherished its own saint, caring naught that Simon de Montfort had not been — and would likely never be — canonized by the Church. No pope or cardinal would antagonize the English Crown by sanctifying the Earl's rebellion as the holy quest he'd believed it to be. It was the English people — craftsmen and widows and village priests and shire gentry — who had declared him blessed, who flocked to his grave in faithful numbers, who defied Church and King to do reverence to a French-born rebel, who did not forget.

Evesham suffered from no dearth of de Montfort partisans. Some of the more knowing of the boys had concluded that if every man who claimed to have fought with the Earl that day had in fact done so, de Montfort would never have lost. But Damian's de Montfort credentials were impeccable, for all knew he had actually engaged the great Earl in conversation before the battle, that he had then dared to make his way alone to Dover Castle, determined to give the Earl's grieving widow an account of his last hours. Damian not only believed in the de Montfort legend, he had lived it, and the boys listened raptly as he shared with them his memories, his remembered pain.

So real was it still to Damian that as he spoke, the cold seemed to ebb away, and the boys began to breathe in humid August air that foretold a coming storm. They saw the Earl and his men ride into the abbey so that the captive King Henry might hear Mass. They experienced the rebel army's joy that salvation was at hand, for the Earl's second son — young Simon, known to friends and foes alike as Bran — was on his way from Kenilworth Castle with a vast army. And they shuddered and groaned when Damian told them that Bran had tarried too long, that through his lack of care, his men were ambushed by the King's son. Flying Bran's captured banners, the Lord Edward had swept down upon Evesham, and by the time Earl Simon discovered the ruse, it was too late. Trapped between Edward's advancing army and the river, he and his men had ridden out to die.

"Earl Simon knew they were doomed, but his faith never faltered. He told his men that their cause was just, that a king should not be accountable only to God. 'The men of England will cherish their liberties all the more,' he said, 'knowing that we died for them.'" Damian's voice trailed off. There was a somber silence, broken at last by one of the younger lads, wanting to know if it was true that the Earl had been hideously maimed by his enemies. It was a question Damian had often been asked, but it was not one he found easy to answer — even now. He hesitated and a young voice came from the shadows.

"They hacked off Earl Simon's head and his private male parts, dispatched them as keepsakes to Roger de Mortimer's wife. His arms and legs were chopped off, too, sent to towns that had favored the Earl, and his mangled corpse was thrown to the dogs. Brother Damian retrieved what was left of the Earl's body, carried it on a ladder into the church, and buried it before the High Altar. But even then the Earl's enemies were not satisfied. They dug his body up, buried him in unhallowed ground. It was only after Simon's son Amaury appealed to the Pope that we were able to give the Earl a decent Christian burial."

It was a grisly account, but none thought to challenge it, for the speaker was another who had reason to be well versed in the de Montfort mythology; Hugh de Whitton's father had died fighting for Simon on that rain-drenched Evesham field.

Damian gave Hugh a grateful glance, then sent them off to wash up before supper. He was not surprised when Hugh lingered, offering to help him carry his candles to the sacristy. Of all the boys who lived at the abbey, both novices and students, none were as generous, as open-hearted as Hugh. Damian was very fond of him, and he grieved for the bleakness of the boy's future. For a lad of fourteen, he'd...