Hitorical Fiction/ orphan riased in monestary as a boy but is a girl

Desperately seeking this book title and have been for years. I read it in the 80's.
Knights, Wars, mid-evil time period, I think,
Here's where I get confused..this may be about the lead character having gender issues..but I think this is about either a boy or a girl being raised and abused in an orphan type monastery. Not to be too graphic, but I do remember something about pig fat.
Anyway, moving on, He/She grows up to become an assistant or something like that for someone important, a man, who they fall in love with.
There is def. soldiers and some type of war going on.
Sorry I do not have more details than this. It was a long book. I loved it and for years have been trying to find it again so I could add it to my personal library. At the time I had borrowed it from the local one and had to return it.
Thank you so very much in advance!

Could be An Excellent Mystery by Ellis Peters. A woman disguises herself as a man and enters a monastery so she can serve her long-lost betrothed who is also there. The book is set during the twelfth-century English civil war.

It reminds me a little of Raptor by Gary Jennings. The hero/ine is a hermaphrodite and spends some time in a monastery. It is a very fat book set in late antiquity with lots of fighting, and very graphic violence.

Thank you Thank you! So very much! really, I have been searching for that book title for over 20 years..lol.
I'm going to order it straight away!
It was, indeed, Raptor!
This website is AWESOME!!
Let me ask, what did you think of the book? I remember it being good and a lot of detail!

>4 dckimberly: I'm glad I could help. I remember that I thought it was very well researched, but the violence was a little too much.

I thought it was very good, based on what I can remember, at least through its first half. Not too many hermaphrodite protagonists out there. I believe the "someone important" in this novel is Theodoric the Great: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoderic_the_Great

Also by this author I liked Aztec and The Journeyer. I've yet to find a copy of Spangle.

>6 Cecrow: Spangle taught me a lot about Eastern Europe, because I was always looking things up. It seemed a bit of a freak show, but then it is a novel about a traveling circus...there was one accident which gave me nightmares.

Indeed.
I'm reading it now.
Very violent, but the research is just amazing.
He wrote Aztec too, which was well reviewed for his research.
It seems he actually goes to these places & spends considerable amounts of time to learn about them.
Oh, and sorry I called you sir..lol. It's Miss, as I've just realized! :)
Take Care & again, thank you!

Yes, Theodoric The Great is a main character. I also have to look for Spangle.

Gary Jennings was one of my all time favorite authors.

After he passed away, another author wrote some sequels to Aztec. They were far below the quality of Jennings writing and I would advise to forget they exist.

Gary Jennings books are

Aztec
Spangle (3 books in series)
Raptor
Journeyer An excellent story of Marco Polo.

Pretty sure Spangle was originally one volume, then I guess was later split in an effort to boost its sales. Either way I can't find any of it. Yeah, I could probably resort to ordering online, but I reserve it as one of those "read it if I happen across it as a lucky find".

Mostly agree about the Aztec sequels. Aztec Autumn was tolerable, Aztec Blood had a tone that wasn't really Jennings, then I quit without seriously contemplating the rest.