While Science Fiction has always been my passion, historical fiction is a close second. I grew up on not only Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, but also C. S. Forester's classic tales of the adventures of Horatio Hornblower. It was Hornblower that gave me my enjoyment of all things Napoleonic. The Napoleonic connection is how I got into Cornwell. His novels of Richard Sharpe's adventures during that period, while different from those of Hornblower, Bolitho and Jack Aubrey, still are fun reads.
Another genre I'm a sucker for are Grail stories. Like most hopeless romantics, I love the notion that the Holy Grail is out there in some form or another, and I fully understand the passion of Grail Knights ancient and modern to chase the dream of finding it. Put a favorable experience with an author together with a trilogy of novels about a Grail quest and you've got me sold.
I just finished reading the second of Cornwell's three "Grail Quest" novels. In The Archer's Tale, we meet Thomas of Hookton, bastard son of a priest living in the south of England. The year is 1345, and Thomas, home from studies at Oxford. Unfortunately, the village is attacked by French raiders from Brittany. Thomas' father was killed and the village burnt. Thomas learns that the reason the village of Hookton was burned was because his father was keeper of an important secret. One of the French lords in the raiding party on Hookton was searching for that secret, the Holy Grail.
Knowing that the best way to hunt a Frenchman is to follow him back to France, Thomas leaves his village to join the English army fighting in France. King Edward marches through Brittany and Normandy, and is in need of men who can shoot the English longbow. Archers at this time were as deadly a weapon as modern artillery, raining death from the sky with their arrows. Hated by the enemy to the point where they would die violent deaths if caught, the bands of English archers fighting in France were cunning and tough men.
Archer chronicles Thomas' exploits with the English army, his encounters with French noblemen as well as Edward, Prince of Wales (the "Black Prince"), as well as his romantic encounters along the way. He befriends a French knight, Sir Guillaume, and falls in love with the knight's illegitimate daughter, Elanor. Encouraged by Guillaume and a monk he also befriends, Thomas reluctantly takes up the Grail quest.
Of course, Thomas is not the only one seeking the Grail. Hot on his trail are a Dominican friar, an Inquisitor, and Guy Vexile, the Frenchman who killed his father. Archer ends with Thomas, Elanor, and the monk, Father Hobbe, heading to the English city of Durham in search of clues to his father's secret.
In the second book, Vagabond, Thomas and Elanor make their way to Durham, pausing while Thomas fights with the English against David Bruce and the Scottish army. he sends Elanor and the monk ahead to Durham to interview an elderly priest who knew his father while he fights with the English. The Scots are defeated, but the Dominican and Vexile murder Elanor and the monk. Thomas allies himself with Robert Douglas of the Clan Douglas, who is an English prisoner, but wants to seek the Dominican to exact revenge because the priest killed his brother. In spite of the natural English-Scottish enmity between Thomas and Robbie, they become friends and comrades-in-arms as they return to France. Along the way through England from Durham, they return to the land near Hookton and receive a book of history and clues written by Thomas' father. (Of course there has to be a "Grail Book!")
Their adventures lead them through Brittany and Normandy as they re-encounter Sir Guillaume and others. They re-join the English army, fighting in raids, pitched battles, shipboard encounters, and seiges as they pursue the priest and Vexile. They unravel clues from the Grail book and make some progress in the quest. Vagabond closes with Thomas and Robbie exacting their revenge on the Dominican, but the elusive Vexile, the "Harlequin," escapes to pursue the Grail on his own.
I'm enjoying this series immensely. I'm going to pick up the third book, Heretic, tomorrow for reading on my trip next week.
Leave a comment