"The taller lad will do very well, but I cannot offer the other a place." With these words from the royal steward, the Audmar twins were separated for the first time in their lives. Edmund, who had been selected as a personal page to King Henry II, joined the royal household, while Simon went to France to serve the King's most bitter rival, Thomas Becket, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury.

For Edmund, life as a page was smooth and pleasant; only the occasional rages of the King interrupted the pageantry of the court and terrified everyone within earshot. For Simon, service with the banished Archbishop brought him under the influence of an extraordinary man whose spiritual strength inspired his fellow exiles to keep their faith and to hope for reconciliation with the King. As he earned his way, sometimes as an altar boy, sometimes as a scribe, Simon shared the privation, the moments of exultation, the periods of searching self-doubt that marked Becket's fight to save the church from domination by the Plantagenets. 

Edmund and Simon—two brothers living in different countries, sworn to the service of the two most powerful men of their time, are firsthand witnesses to the historic clash of wills that led inevitably to Becket's martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral. Their story and the story of the mighty men they served is movingly told by Barbara Willard against a rich and colorful background of twelfth-century England and France.

From the dust jacket