<blockquote> <p> The Knights Templar </p> </blockquote> <p> They had all joined taking three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience?for they were monks: warrior monks, dedicated to theprotection of pilgrims in the Holy Land -- until stories spread by anavaricious king who wanted their wealth for his own destroyed the order. </p> <p> There was one knight, however, who escaped the stake, vowing justiceas he watched his innocent brothers die. </p> <blockquote> <p> A Dastardly Deed </p> </blockquote> <p> 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. </p>