-Part 1-
Sir Evan was under the rule of King Edward IV in the keep of his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester and lord of the Middleham Castle. Sir Evan had been knighted for his allegiance to the Yorks in the Battle of Barnet during the War of Roses. Evan had defended the Yorks and survived the bloody onslaught by the Lancastrian Army not only victorious, but showing true devotion to God and country.
Though King Edward and Richard were the shining stars of Yorkshire, and the majority of England, there was a dark stain in the hierarchy of the Royal Family. The third brother of the of the royal trifecta, George Plantagenet, the 1st Duke of Clarence. The black sheep. After King Edward IV's usurp of the Middleham Castle from the Neville family during the war, George played a dangerous game of shifting allegiance. He could not be seen publicly detesting and protesting his brothers, but he furtively allied himself with the Neville family. He married Isabel Neville to align himself with his newly received father-in-law, Richard, the 16th Earl of Warwick. George even more resented his brother Richard for marrying his wife's younger, widowed sister, Anne Neville.
Even more disturbed by the marriage of Richard and Anne, George could not stand the idea of the two bearing a child. But to his dismay, on a brisk Autumn's morning, just that happened. His name was Edward, named after his profound uncle, which only irritated George more. He felt the tinge of deception and disloyalty panging in his head. He could not stand the Yorks rule of England out of jealousy of his brother. He felt it time that deception and cruelty play a role in his brothers' lives.
-Part 2-
George had been a deceiver his entire life. That's how he fell into the likes of the Dionytes. When George was 17, before the brink of war, he loved to lounge and play a card game called glic at the local inns and taverns. It was in a shanty Dublin inn where he first encountered them. George was far down on his luck, and was not accustomed to being penniless. He thought he could challenge the locals in the inn to a game of glic, which he had in advance stacked the deck in his favor. The men he accosted looked like normal plebs of the region, but they had a strange feel to them. George could almost sense that they were more than just simpletons waiting to get fooled out of their money, but greed got the best of George and he started setting up the glic board.
George was not naive, nor was he asinine, he let the card game build up, allowing the simpletons to win the first rounds and losing a large portion of the little money he had left. When these towns-dwellers seemed to become more confident in their winning streak, George knew what to do. As it came to his turn to deal the game, he made a comment on how one of the players looked like he had extra in his winnings, and demanded a count for all earnings won. Given that he did not have that much to count, this gave him plenty of time to switch to the stacked deck in his tunic while the other players were distracted.
This time George really built up the suspense. He knew how to keep a stoic figure as he saw the amount of coins building on the table. He played the game well, and used deceiving facial expressions and gestures to throw off the other players. Every player had gone all-in for this hand, for George had stacked the deck to give every player the same top-scoring hand, just in a different suit. He had even given himself the same hand as the other three players, but he had one advantage to all of them. His hand was in the trump suit. Trump suit always wins, and George deceived them all into thinking they had extraordinary luck.
Once the cards were laid down, George couldn't help but smile. He had fooled them all, and was going away with four times what he came in with. But there was something disheartening that came over him as he collected the winnings. Usually, there would be an uproar, an unruly mob waiting to cut his throat just for his luck, but not this time. He looked at the other players, and they just stared at him. George could feel it again, that sensation that something was different about these men. That they had an extrasensory additive to them. He couldn't brush it away and soon became very uncomfortable. He quickly gathered the rest of his winnings, and thanked the men for a good game, the exited the inn.
George then suddenly woke up. He wondered what had happened, and why he felt so cold. His vision had not fully unblurred yet. Then a sharp pain panged on the side of his head. He quickly remembered winning the game, and groped for the satchel of winnings to see if it was still there. No, it was gone. Had he been mugged? He continued to feel cold, and even wet now. His vision just coming into focus, its pitch black, except for the torches hung around the cave. He could make out the faint figures of about a dozen men. Thats when he heard the faint chanting. He could not make it out, for he did not think they were speaking the native tongue.
"Where am I?" he finally lashed out, realizing he was bound and could not move his limbs.
"Why have you taken me captive?" He yelled, this time more fervently than before. He was starting to panic and become claustrophobic without having any free movement.
"You are foolish to think you can deceive us, miserable man." a voice hissed from one of the 12 men. George could not make him out in the darkness, but he could tell that this man was taller and dressed differently than the rest.
"Who are you, I demand you tell me!" George insisted in a regal tone, as if he were of higher class than these men.
"We are a band of traveling bards you might say. We serve a dedication to powers much greater than your God. You think you can steal from us? What ignorance!" continued the raspy, serpentine voice.
"You, who has been so foolish to make a mockery of us. We saw you before you entered that inn. We knew who you were, and your intentions even before you sought to con us."
"Who are you? Tell me now! You do not know what son of royalty you have taken captive!" George said desperately, seeking for the answer that he so badly desired.
"We have no names. As I said, we are a group of traveling bards, with a dedication to a deity of great power." The hissing voice glared, sounding more dubious than before.
"Who do you serve? Who is greater than the Lord, Almighty? No man should dare to challenge God!" George now sounding righteous, but still fearing the cave enclosing him.
"You, the men of England know him by one name. Dionysus. The god of harvest and wine, but also the god of ritualistic madness, ecstasy, and mischief!" boomed the man.
"Who are we to challenge your God? We are his followers, his devouts, his servants! We are called the Dionytes. The only men who can summon the power of the great god himself, and use it for our bidding!" The voice now prophetic and even more raspy.
"Why have you taken me captive? I demand to know!" George now shaken at the pagans' demeanor.
"You dared to steal from us and deceive us! You must suffer for your act of greed!" and with that, the man with the raspy voice approached George and began chanting in the ancient Greek.
George felt a strange sensation. The others started chanting with the leader, and the chorus echoed in the cave. George felt as though he was losing control of his body. He felt his arms go limp, and his breathe becoming more shallow. The leader then came up to George, so he could finally see his face. The leader was pale, and his skin taught over his bony face. His irises were black, and his tongue was blood read. As George analyzed the man, he started to feel less in control of his body. He noticed the leader was wearing a dark red tunic, and had absolutely no body hair. The sight of the man reminded George of the prisoners who died in the dungeons of the Dublin Castle.
The leader now looked George dead in the eyes, as though looking into his soul. George could not feel his limbs any longer. He had strange thoughts running through his mind. He wanted to harm someone, but not the leader. At this point, the leader unbound George's right arm, and the echoing chant changed, not only the words, but also the pace. The chanting was much faster and George began to see flashes of light. He felt self-loathing, and a hatred for his own body. He felt a searing hot pain scathe across his abdomen. He could not understand where the pain was coming from. The leader's hands were now in front of him, but they had never left that place, they had never touched him. Again, the hot pain came over him, this time running down his left arm. He saw the source, the cause of the pain. He was doing this to himself. His unbound right arm was indulging in self mutilation. He felt the madness creep over him.
With his last strafe of sanity he yelled:
"Stop! I beg you!"
The leader raised his hand and the chanting ceased.
"Why do you deserve anything better than this torment?" the leader asked glaringly.
"You have committed a felony against us, you shall receive no mercy from us."
The chanting started again, and George could sense the insanity once again, growing from the ground, starting at his feet and rising.
"Stop! I beg! I can pay you! I hail from the castle in Dublin. My Father is very rich." George cried begging for his life.
"Fool! We don't need money! We have more gold than you could ever fathom. Everything we need is provided to us." The leader said as he started to raise his hand again to restart the chanting.
"No More! I will give you anything! Anything! A sacrifice!" George screamed
At this, the leader stopped.
"A sacrifice to appease the great deity, Dionysus?" questioned the leader.
"Yes, anything you want, just let me live!" George said groveling, still unable to move.
"There will be a great aligning of the celestial bodies on the tenth Lupercalia to this date." The leader said considering the need for the sacrifice.
"Forgive me, powerful one, but I do not know of a Lupercalia." George said, hoping this would not lash out into another violent chanting.
"Of course you wouldn't. It is the pagan tradition held on the last day of the winter-festival. We thank Dionysus for all he has provided throughout the time of harvest that lasted through the winter. It is held every year on the 15th of February on your calender." the leader said, now sounding satisfied with these terms not yet aware to George.
"What shall I do on the Lupercalia to appease your mercy?" George asked, now curious but relieved the torture was over.
"We shall need a young, virgin boy. No older than five years of age." the leader sounded cynical at this point.
"That seems almost too simple, my lord, such a small exchange for my life." George said trying to sound gracious.
"It's not that easy you naive man. This boy must be prepared, for he will become the incarnation of the mighty Dionysus! You shall have to prepare him! A task that needs constant vigilance and care, from the birth to the time of the Lupercalia. The preparation will kill any boy if done for more than five years. The body just cannot stand the constant bombardment of the ever-examining deities. Only a pure virgin boy can be used to infuse to body of Dionysus." The leader said, making sure everything was blatantly clear to George.
"Do you understand the price you must pay for your ignorance?" The leader inquired.
"Yes, but how will I know who to choose? Will I have to steal an infant and raise it on my own?" asked George, now worried about his plight.
"We shall choose a child for you. When the time is appropriate, we shall approach you and give you your commands." the leader said defiantly.
George then awakened back at the inn. The satchel of money tied tightly around the belt of his tunic. He could not make out what had happened, or account for the time he had lost traveling from the cave. He did not really care, for the next five years, he would not have to do anything, and maybe he could escape his fate from the Dionytes.
It was now just three months before that fateful tenth Lupercalia. George reflected on the past and what preparations that still had to be done. He had only seen the Dionytes once again after his first encounter. They told him of a baby to be born, that would become the incarnation of Dionysus. They gave him the materials for the preparations. He was to bathe the boy everyday in a mixture of pure freshwater and rocks from Mount Pramnos stained by the blood of Zeus when he birthed Dionysus from his loin.
The choice of the infant made by the Dionytes could not have made George happier. He didn't even have to steal the child. It was fateful little Edward, Richard and Anne's son. And for the last four years, George visited the boy everyday and offered to do the bathing duties, leaving his brother blind to the ill-will at work.
-Part 3-
Richard had noticed that his son seemed meek at the age of three, but thought little of it, but after a year of this, he decided to seek religious council from George Neville, the Archbishop of York, and the second highest religious authority in all of England. Being directly related to little Edward, the archbishop took constant care to watch after him. He petitioned many alms and raised many prayers for the boy, but they seemed to be of no avail. The archbishop became concerned that little Edward was not ill, but was being influenced by the deeds of Satan. He was not able to remedy the boy's ailment, and felt sorrow for his future.
After much deliberation, the archbishop informed Richard that the only man able to save his son would be the leading power of religious authority in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Thomas Boucrhier. The news shocked Richard and disheartened him greatly. The only man that could help his son was on the opposite end of England.
Richard could not lose his son. Mortality rates were around 40%, and the chance that he could lose his heir was a heavy burden on his heart. Richard decided to send a company of men to the Canterbury Castle seeking the aid of the archbishop. He appointed Sir Evan, knighted by his brother, and his most loyal knight, to lead the undertaking. Along with Sir Evan were three loyal servants, and two other knights, Sir James and Sir Peter. All were mounted on steeds, and equipped with the weapon of their choice. Sir Evan carried a longsword given to him by King Edward IV, while Sir James carried a longbow, for he was a skilled archer, and Sir Peter carried a hefty throwing ax, given to him by his father, who felled logs as a boy. The servants all carried long daggers, but were not trusted with much more.
Sir Evan mounted his steed, a white destrier, valued for its strength, speed and agility. He rode back to make sure the others had their provisions mounted and the horses ready. As soon as he assured everything was ready, the rode off just as the sun peaked over the horizon.
