Shadows and Strongholds

Boy and Girl
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Youth and Maiden
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Man and Woman
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine

Also by Elizabeth Chadwick

The Conquest

The Champion

The Love Knot

The Marsh King's Daughter

Lords of the White Castle

The Winter Mantle

The Falcons of Montabard

I'd like to extend a brief but heartfelt note of thanks to the support team working in the background while
Shadows and Strongholds
has been in the writing.

Please take a bow before the audience: Carole Blake, my agent par excellence and fellow Meat Loaf fan.

Barbara Daniel, my wonderful editor at Time Warner Books who, no matter how busy she is, always has time for her authors.

Richenda Todd and Sheena-Margot Gibson, who get the dirty work of putting the commas where they should go, checking up on me and making sure that no one suddenly changes eye or hair colour halfway through the novel.

My husband and sons Roger, Ian and Simon, who keep me grounded in reality and make sure that my tea drinking and chocolate eating habits are thoroughly indulged during the course of my writing.

Our dog, who makes me laugh and whose walks in all weathers gives me plenty of thinking time and enables me to really appreciate the changing seasons (and we won't mention the incident with the pheasant!). My two cats, but since they steal my typing chair, walk all over the keyboard and stick their bottoms in my face when I'm trying to write, I'm not sure that they really deserve a mention!

All the great friends I have made on the Internet, but particularly the members of the Penman Review list who have provided so much fun and genuine support. I would also like to thank my e-list… especially for the Aragorn action figure.

The many members of Regia Anglorum Living History Society who have put up with my endless questions and charred offerings from the cooking pot, and especially the members of the Conroi de Vey. I promise that whatever superficial similarities there may be, I have not based the characters in my books on any of you.

A special thanks goes to Dr Gillian Polack for Brunin's name—a possible childhood diminutive of Le Brun.

St Peter's Fair, Shrewsbury, August 1148

On the day that Brunin FitzWarin encountered the men who were to change and shape his life, he was ten years old and wandering the booths of St Peter's Fair unchaperoned.

Mark, his father's serjeant, who should have been keeping an eye on him, had allowed his attention to be diverted by a brimming pitcher and an alewife's buxom daughter at one of the refreshment stalls. Growing bored with the adult dalliance, Brunin had meandered off to explore the booths on his own. He was a lanky child with an olive complexion and eyes of so deep a brown that they were almost black, hence his nickname, his true appellation being Fulke, the same as his father. His five brothers were fair like their parents. Brunin, it was said by the charitable, was a throwback to his grandsire, a Lorraine mercenary of doubtful origins. Those less generous muttered that he was a changeling child, a cuckoo laid in the nest by the faery folk of the Welsh hills.

He passed a cookstall where soft oatcakes were being smartly turned on a griddle and sold to passers-by. A woman had bought several and was dividing them amongst her swarming offspring. She reprimanded one child with exasperation, but a moment later ruffled his hair. Catching Brunin's wistful gaze, she smiled, tore a side from a remaining oatcake and offered it to him as if coaxing a wild thing. Brunin shook his head and moved quickly away. It was not the oatcake that had caused his yearning look.

'Jugs and pitchers!' a trader shouted in his ear. 'Pottles and pots! Finest wares of Stamford and Nottingham!' The man waved aloft a green-glazed jug with the design of a grinning face carved in the spout. Red-cheeked and pugnacious, a thrifty housewife was haggling vigorously with his assistant over the price of a cooking jar.