15-year-old Leo is an orphan being raised in an abbey in the days of King Richard the Lionhearted. He knows nothing of his parentage and has little hope for a future outside the familiar but sometimes restrictive monastery walls. Under the firm and loving hand of Abbot Michael, Leo has been well trained in piety, obedience and courtesy, and has begun to master a strong will and quick anger. Nevertheless, he is restless, longing to go out into the world for a time before renouncing it forever. Abbot Michael alone knows Leo's story and family line and unexpectedly, when the heir to the house of Wardlock is killed in the Crusades, he sets in motion events in which Leo will need every scrap of wisdom and endurance gained in the years at the abbey. For he is not only heir to Wardlock, but also to its rival—the house of Tremoine! Vividly set in the deeply pious and violently turbulent twelfth-century England, this authentic and stirring tale of suffering and courage shows a boy who—to claim his heritage—must first see it transformed by the power of love and forgiveness.
"Come here, my son. What am I going to do with you, Leo? For weeks at a time you are a pattern of all good, and then suddenly you seem possessed of a demon of rebellion. Lately I have hard nothing but bad reports of you. What have you to say for yourself?"
"I don't know, my lord," Leo answered the abbot in a subdued voice. "Sometimes everything seems to go wrong, and I can't please anybody, and all my tasks seem so hard, and life is so gray and duty-filled."
"...Tell me, my dear son, have you any fears concerning your future life? Are you unhappy at the thought of taking your monastic vows?"
Leo hesitated and the Abbot prompted him. "I want to see something of life in the world before I quit it," Leo said in a rush, and felt the warm blood in his cheeks.
The searching blue eyes held his. "Do you, Leo? How can I convince youth, which is convinced by nothing except experience, that it would find the world a very bitter place? Even if you went as page and then squire to some knight, you would find little honor, little peace, and more work, more blows than you receive here."
"But if I might try it!" Leo prayed. "My lord, you know who I am! Tell me now! Perhaps I'm not so ignobly born after all, and someone might be willing to train me for knighthood!"
Did you find this review helpful?