Copyright Julia Templeton, 2003. All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing, Inc.

 

   
Prologue
 

       Kieran the Black was a notorious Norman Knight, who rumor has it, decapitated the heads of three Saxon soldiers with a single swipe of his sword?a sword that measured six and a half feet in size?the very height of the great warrior himself.

Six and a half feet! Lizzie smiled to herself and turned up the volume on the "audio tour" she had rented at the exhibition's front desk.

She, along with a dozen other journalists, had gained entrance into the coveted William the Conqueror exhibition two days before its scheduled opening to the public. Because she was a lover of all things medieval, and a member of the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA), this assignment had been right up Lizzie's alley, and she'd jumped at the chance to attend.

Now, standing before the relics of the ultimate warrior, Kieran the Black, Lizzie's heart gave a jolt. What would it have been like to be alive in the days of men like Kieran D'Arcy?when men were six and a half feet tall, and built like brick shithouses?

"Born 1036. Died 1067. You were only thirty-one," Lizzie said aloud, resisting the urge to run a finger over the fine gothic carving of the warrior's name on the marble plaque. Something about the Norman knight stirred her soul. Perhaps because at the age of seven he had left his impoverished family to serve as page to a ruthless knight who had physically and verbally abused him. Maybe that abuse had turned Kieran's heart black, earning him the name Kieran the Black. Maybe it had given him a warrior's mentality?kill or be ki...