The Merchant's Partner

The Knights Templar: They had all joined taking three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience…for they were monks: warrior monks, dedicated to the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land -- until stories spread by an avaricious king who wanted their wealth for his own destroyed the order. There was one knight, however, who escaped the stake, vowing justice as he watched his innocent brothers die. A Dastardly Deed: When the mutilated body of midwife and healer Agatha Kyteler is discovered in a hedge one frozen wintry morning, it at first appears the lack of clues will render the crime unsolvable -- until a frightened local youth inexplicably flees his village and a hue and cry is raised. Sir Baldwin Furnshill, once a Knight Templar, however, has doubts about the boy's guilt, and enlists friend and bailiff of Lydford Castle, Simon Puttock, in the hunt for a murderer. But what they seek lies somewhere on the darker side of the village of Wefford, beneath layers of jealousy, suspicion, and hatred -- and the buried truth could prove fatal to anyone who disturbs it.