Stephen and the Sleeping Saints

In 1144 England was in the grip of anarchy. The Empress Matilda and her Angevin followers in the West Country were challenging Stephen's right to the English throne. In the fenlands, whence he had fled following his revolt against the king, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, plundered, burned and destroyed everything which lay before him. Whilst men wept, saying that Christ and his saints slept, the paths of four people crossed unexpectedly in the small hell which de Mandeville had created. In the depths of misery, famine and despair the human capacity for love survived , as even the rebellious earl himself discovered when he took prisoner a woman he professed to scorn.