It was a great read from beginning to end, and it reminds me a lot of the Cadfael series of books in that it is set in the same time period but follows the fortunes of the young Hugh Corbaille (de Leon) and his search for his true identity and the murderer of his true Crusader father Roger de Leon.
We are treated to a mystery within a mystery, first there is the mystery of who Hugh actually is and then there is the mystery of who murdered his real father.
Hugh has been raised the as the adopted son of the Sheriff of Lincoln but his early childhood is shrouded in mystery.
The Sheriff took him in after finding him half dead one winter's night and quickly realised the boy was not a Saxon child as he spoke Norman French and for the next thirteen years Hugh lived a happy half life, unable or unwilling remember his past but with the death of his beloved Foster Father, he finds himself travelling down a path that could either free him from his unspoken nightmares or kill him as it had killed his real father so many years before...
Joan Wolf obviously did a lot of research before writing this book and I found it exciting and interesting, even enjoying the romance between Hugh and the 16 year old daughter of the Knight Nigel Haslin along with a cast of other savoury and unsavoury characters such as Hugh's Uncle, now the Earl of Wilshire, a title that in reality belongs to Hugh as his father' heir, and his troubled birth mother, the beautiful Isabel who has many secrets of her own she'd rather keep to herself.
All in all it was a very good book, enjoyable all the way through and well worth reading if you get the chance.
Bereft at the loss of his adoptive father, the Sheriff of Lincoln, Hugh Corbaille is unprepared for a further shock from a visiting knight. Hugh may actually be the sole child of the Earl of Wiltshire, mysteriously abducted thirteen years before on the day the nobleman was murdered. With no memory of his early years, Hugh begins to believe he may be the missing heir and sets off to find his past.
The journey, however, is far from easy--or safe. Finding himself caught in a web of death and intrigue, and surrounded by a court of scheming strangers, Hugh must turn to the mother he has never known and a supportive young woman to piece together the truth. A cold-blooded killer stands between Hugh and the answers he seeks, answers that may prove his birth--and his death.