Banners of Gold

Home in England from the crusades (Shield of Three Lions, Lady Alix now is stranded and vulnerable at her Wanthwaite domain with husband Enoch off at war. Trouble brews when Bonel, one of the king's protected Jews, recruits Alix as a hostage to Germany where Richard the Lion Hearted is imprisoned. Homosexual King Richard finds himself once again attracted to Alix, the charming hoyden, and decides she must bear his needed heir to the throne. Alix's flight from this unwanted honor takes her to a nunnery that is a hotbed of erotic piety, then to a refuge with kindly, eccentric Sister Tiberga, who is both whore and healer. Richard's fanatic Spanish queen, Berengaria, persecutes Alix, but ultimately our heroine engages in a sporting interlude of courtly love with Richard before she discovers the perfidy of the Plantagenets. Details abound concerning the treatment of Jews, whose plight Alix seeks to alleviate. All told, this is another frothy, zany and irreverent medieval escapade that will delight readers who enjoyed Lady Alix's earlier misadventures. (October 24