By the year 1215, King John had lost most of England's continental holdings. He taxed and humbled his barons. So enraged were they by John's excesses that by winter, they had offered England to Louis, King of France, if only he would land an army and take it. This, Louis was about to do. But, King John, the wrong man for the times, stubbornly would not yield. Despite his many faults, John was a tire-less organizer, and with a third of England's nobility behind him, and in resolute command of his mercenary army, he began to turn the situation around. The barons recognized it was time to change tactics. If battle could not win the day, perhaps assassination could.

To little villages hidden away in the Cotswold Mountains, all this grand activity seemed little more than the words of a troubadour song -- until Cadmon Druce, a knight not seen since the Third Crusade, returned home.".