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Countess Matilda is the widow to Earl of Athlin. Her husband was slain by the uncontrollably passionate Malcolm of Dunbayne, with whom the Earl of Athlin had battled since Malcolm encroached on Athlin's lands. The Countess lives with her daughter Mary, who is seventeen, and her son Osbert, who is nineteen.
One day, wandering through neighboring lands, Osbert meets peasant Alleyn, who says his clan, although living on Malcolm's lands, sides with Athlin. Alleyn is victorious at Athlin's annual festival and Mary and he fall in love, though neither is quite aware that they are in love. Osbert leads an attack on Malcolm against the wishes of his mother, who does not want to lose her son as she has her husband. Malcolm wins, capturing Osbert, who is comforted in his imprisonment by sounds of a lute and singing. Alleyn is also captured.
Matilda offers to pay a ransom to regain her son but Malcolm balks; he decides that the only ransom he will accept is Mary, although he does not yet say so. She is kidnapped but Alleyn saves her and tells her and her mother he had escaped with a grateful guard he had caught but liberated. They are joined by other of Malcolm's men who are sick of him. During their escape, they come across corpses and are temporarily stopped by a spring-locked door. Matilda permits Alleyn to fight for Osbert's release. While still in Malcolm's castle, Osbert sees a couple of women and assumes that they are also Malcolm's prisoners. Matilda discovers Mary's love and tells her to overcome it because Alleyn, being a peasant, will not be accepted by her family as a spouse for her.
Malcolm then says that he will accept Mary as ransom for Osbert, but his deserters plan Osbert's escape with Alleyn. Osbert, meanwhile, meets the women, a Baroness and daughter, Laura, and he falls in love with the latter. The Baroness is widow to the previous Baron, brother to the current one: they had gone to Switzerland to settle her father's estates and learned, while away from home, that their son has died. The baron himself then died and his successor to the title and estates - Malcolm - said that all the baroness's estates would be his until they paid for his brother's diminishment of the estates. He keeps the disempowered women prisoners and drowns his guilty conscience in battle.
Osbert's escapes. The good characters rescue foreigners from a grounded ship and one, the Swiss Count de Santinorin, falls in love with Mary. Osbert discovers that Alleyn loves Mary and grows angry because Alleyn is from a lower class and therefore an inappropriate spouse for her. The Count is the baroness's relative and she learns from him that she has more estates. Osbert tells Mary not to think of marrying Alleyn and she says she won't, but she refuses to marry the count. Malcolm then attacks but loses. He is carried to Dunbayne and tells the Baroness her son is alive; no-one can find him, however.
Alleyn then disappears. So too does Mary, who has been kidnapped. Alleyn reappears to fight her kidnappers, and they are saved by Osbert. The kidnapper turns out to be the passion-driven Count de Santinorin. Alleyn had fled Osbert's anger and Mary, knowing that his love for her was forbidden, and Osbert, recognizing Alleyn's heroism and selflessness, wishes Alleyn had been born in a higher social class so that he would be an eligible husband for Mary. Then the Baroness recognizes him as her son, Philip, from a birthmark on his arm. Since he clearly is therefore highborn, Mary’s family agrees that he can marry her. He does so, and Osbert marries Laura. Osbert tells the theme, that virtue may temporarily suffer under vice's triumphs but that Providence will eventually reward virtue even on earth.
© 1999 Julie Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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