Three Reivers, the third book in the Bones of Christ series, is set against the Second Crusade.

Told in the first person, Cayler weaves a story around Christian and Muslim heresies, the complicated alliances between the eastern and western fiefdoms of the Holy Lands, and who might be the rightful heir of The Prophet and Christ based on their direct blood lines.

Daniel, who is perhaps thirteen, seemingly ‘woke-up’ when he was six. All he knows of his previous life is that someone taught him to read. As part of a traveling theatrical troupe, he and his sister, Rachel, have traversed the Languedoc for eight seasons with their master, Gerard, before Daniel is thrust into the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, as a squire to Sir Mareschal, and Rachel becomes one of the Little Sisters of the Field, a nunnery attached to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Hugh, a mute boy Daniel ‘rescues’, becomes part Daniel’s and Mareschal’s ‘household’ forced to follow Queen Eleanor and King Louis VII to the Holy Lands. Who Hugh may or may not be is the crux of this tale. Some of the crusaders come to believe that Hugh carries the ‘Sangreal’, the blood of Christ. The Second Coming would be fulfilled if a descended of Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, were to take the throne in Jerusalem.

When Hugh, Daniel, and Mareschal arrive in Antioch, however, the Shia of Islam regard Hugh as the Mahdi, the reincarnation of the Twelfth Iman who will unite all the Muslims, Sunni and Shia, and expel the non-believers.

Daniel’s crusade becomes protecting Hugh from all who would use him for their own purposes, including the Knights Templar.

What began more than a thousand years ago, still propels the political and religious conflicts of today. And the internal struggles between mainstream and radical Islam and Christianity may have more in common than anyone is willing to admit.