This is the tale of Once Was Willem, who - eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England - rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham.

Pennick for all its beauty was ever a place with a dark reputation. The forests of the Chase were said to be home to nixies and boggarts, and there was a common belief, passed down through many generations, that the castle housed an unquiet ghost of terrible and malign power. These rumours I can attest were all true; indeed they fell short of the truth by a long way . . .