Spectred Isle (Green Men Book 1)

by K.J. Charles

“During the wars of the King and Queen, when God and his angels slept, there lived a baron named Geoffrey Man-Devil, for he was the devil in human form. He turned his coat from King to Queen and Queen to King again as the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed between them, and at each turning, the treacherous baron was rewarded. Geoffrey became lord of three counties, and even Master of London. “But the people loathed him for his cruelty and arrogance, and at last his pride became too much for the King. He was arrested and given a choice: execution, or giving up his lands and his castles—which meant breaking his word. For Geoffrey had sworn as he hoped for salvation to serve as Master of London and Custodian of its Tower, and to renounce that oath put his soul at hazard. “Devil in man’s form as he was, Geoffrey chose disgrace over death. He gave up his castles and his honour with them, and fled to the Fens, raising an army of cut-throats and murderers as he went. Since he could no longer live as a lord, he chose to live as a monster. He seized the city of Ely, and from there took Ramsey Abbey itself, murdering the monks and driving out the Abbot, who rained down curses as he fled. Geoffrey’s killers used the Abbey as their lair, plundering and ransacking the lands around, dragging innocents back to the sacred ground for ransom, rapine, and torture. The very statues in the church covered their faces from what they saw, and as Geoffrey passed along the cloisters, the stone walls ...