LORDS OF THE WHITE CASTLE Elizabeth Chadwick Little, Brown and Company December 2000 ISBN# 0-751-52957-5 {Click here to buy this book}NOTE: This book is being offered through Amazon.co.uk Once again, as if by magic, Elizabeth Chadwick's talents as a historian are exhibited as much as her talents for storytelling are.

The FitzWarin family appears to be the perfect family. This is a marriage of love as much as it is by arrangement. Raising several sons, it's Fulke le Brun's pride that his eldest son, Fulke, should serve in the King's court during his training and eventual knighting. And his greater pride that all of his sons will follow in Fulke's footsteps, also gaining their knighthood, and become the best team at the jousting tournaments. But there is an underlying resentment that he cannot leave the family estate, Whittington Castle, to his sons as it had been captured years previously. This becomes an overwhelming power in him which will eventually lead to his death. Fulke inherits this resentment and set out to gain back the family estate, regardless of the cost. Under King Richard the estates are eventually granted back to the FitzWarin family but his untimely death puts the final decisions in King John's hands. When Fulke refuses to swear fealty to John because of the disagreement over the childhood chess game Fulke is instantly made an outlaw and escapes into the woods with his brothers. It's this expertise in combat that keeps John's mercenaries at bay and leads Fulke and his brothers to Prince Llewelyn ap Iorworth of Wales. Swearing his fealty, and his sword, to Llewelyn Fulke regains Whittington and holds it as one of the border estates to protect Wales. Still an outlaw in England, Fulke steals into Canterbury to take a wife, Maude Walter, who is the widow to Theobald Walter whom Fulke trained under after leaving court because of the incident over the chess game. Fulke had met Maude when she was a girl and respected her marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather, but deep down there was much more between them. Marriage between them was inevitable and even encouraged through Theo's last wish.

Maude Walter married Theo by arrangement by her father and grew to car for him quite deeply but more as a mentor and protector than as a husband and lover. Deep down those feelings were reserved for a man she could not acknowledge nor allow herself to be in the company of for fear of falling prey to her more lustful feelings. This was echoed in Fulke's heart as well but both were surprised when, at his passing, Theo's will had indicated a wish for Fulke to take Maude to bride. With Theo's consent they were married immediately and lived many happy lives together and raising three children. However, no matter how much love and happiness she shared with her husband there was always the underlying resentment between Fulke and King John and was the cause for Fulke's repeated skirmishes in the woods near Whittington and his constant desire to bring a fall to John's tyrannical reign.