Whatever the reason, in the Year of Our Lord 1204, King John founded Beaulieu, a monastery of the order of Cistercians, or white monks as they were known, endowing it first with a rich manor in Oxfordshire and then with a great tract of land down in the eastern half of the New Forest - which included, by chance, the very place where his great-great-uncle Rufus had been slain a century before. In the ninety years since its foundation, the abbey had received further grants both from John's pious son, Henry III, and the present king, mighty King Edward I, who had also been a loyal friend. Thanks to all this beneficence, the abbey was not only rich: small groups of its expanding body of monks had even gone out to start up little daughter houses in other places; one, Newenham, even lay seventy miles away, down the south-west coast in Devon. The abbey was both blessed and successful.

The abbot sighed, closed the book, carried it over to a large strong box in which he placed it and carefully locked the box.

He had made a mistake. The last abbot's judgement, which he had so foolishly ignored, was right. The man's character was clear: he was flawed and possibly dangerous.

'So why did I appoint him?' he murmured. Had he done it as a sort of penance? Perhaps. He had told himself that the man deserved a chance, that he had earned the position, that it was up to him as abbot - with prayer and the grace of God, of course - to make it work. As for his crime? It was in the book. It was long ago. God is merciful.

He glanced out through the open window. It was a beautiful day. Then his eyes fell on a pair of figures, walking quietly together in conversation. At the sight of these his face relaxed.

Brother Adam. There was a very different type. One of the best. He smiled. It was time to go outside. He unbolted the door.

Brother Adam was in a playful mood. As he sometimes did when he was pacing, he had pulled out the little wooden crucifix that hung on a cord round his neck, under his hair shirt, and was thoughtfully fingering it. His mother had given it to him when he first entered the order. She said she had got it from a man who had been to the Holy Land. It was carved from the wood of a cedar of Lebanon. He was enjoying the fact that the afternoon sun was gently warming his bald head. He had gone bald, and grey, by the time he was thirty. But this had not made him look old. Thirty-five, now, his finely cut, even features gave him a look of almost youthful intelligence, while one could sense that, under the monk's habit, his thick, muscular body exuded a sense of physical power.