Richard de Montfort mounted his dappled gray stallion, and turned the beast’s head to begin the eight-mile ride back to his manor of Ashlin. He was unaccompanied, which was dangerous in these troubled times, but of late the countryside about Ashlin had been quiet, so he had taken the chance of riding alone. He had wanted his last moments with Elf to be between the two of them. How very much he loved his little sister. When their father had died four years ago in the fighting between King Stephen and the late King Henry’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, he had been eleven years of age. Guided by his mother, he had assumed control of their family’s manor. Elf, still at their mother’s breast, had just begun to toddle; she would never know the fine man who had sired her.

Fortunately Ashlin was not a large, important manor, or it might have been taken over by a stronger baron. Their small wealth was in sheep; they had enough serfs, along with a few freedmen, to do the work that needed to be done. Survival was the chief occupation at Ashlin. Their house sat upon a hill. It was stone, and surrounded by a small moat. About it clustered the barns, the outbuildings, and the huts for the serfs. There was a mill by a swiftly flowing stream near the barns. The little stone church, however, lay half ruined. A wall enclosed it all to protect them from the marauding Welsh. The sheep grazed upon the surrounding hills beneath which lay the arable fields, where they grew hay, oats, marrows, barley, and wheat, in rotation.

But his mother had suffered greatly the loss of her husband, for their marriage had been a love match, and without him she was lost. Isolated as Ashlin was, and with England at war with itself, they saw no one but an occasional passing religious brave enough to dare the road in hopes his devout vocation would protect him.