chunk: The story begins in 1400, the year after the deposition of Richard II of England by Henry of Bolingbrooke, thereafter Henry IV. Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth is attainted for being King Richard's councilor, who strongly advised him to resist his cousin Henry's movement to seize the throne, and for protecting The Earl of Alban, a fictional conspirator against the succeeding King Henry. Falworth is blinded in a trial by combat with William Bushy Brookhurst, later created Earl of Alban, whom young Myles, son of Lord Falworth, remembers brutally killing Sir John Dale in the hall of Falworth castle where he lived with his parents.