The Scarlet Seed - Heaven Tree, Bk 3 Author:Edith Pargeter In the castle of Parfois, glaring down over the debated lands of the Welsh border, young Harry Talvace is held prisoner by his father's sometime patron and later destroyer, Ralph Isambard. The boy came to avenge, and keeps relentlessly to his purpose. Captive and captor, bound together by implacable hatred and reluctant affection, fight out ... more »their duel with weapons of pride and punctilio. Neither the efforts of Harry's foster-father, Llewelyn of Wales, nor those of Madonna Benedetta, once Isambard's mistress and now the holy woman of Aber, who returns to the world to save the boy after her own fashion, can resolve their stalemate.
Then the threat of civil war in England lays Isambard open to his enemies, and Harry abruptly reaches self-knowledge and maturity and precipitates a strange and violent climax. The Welsh prince, the old lord, the Venetian courtesan turned solitary saint, and the boy suddenly grown a man, are drawn together in the final siege of Parfois under the towering shadow of the first Harry's master-work, the great church of Parfois.« less