Sir Richard Straccan, hero of The Bone-Pedlar, continues his adventures as a dealer in sacred relics during the period known as the Interdict, when (King John having fallen out with the Pope) the whole of England was placed under interdict and no religious ceremony of any kind was permitted to take place.
This time, the King sets Straccan to find a banner woven by Queen Guinevere and carried into battle by King Arthur, a banner reputed to contain, sewn up inside it, the napkin used to wipe blood from the face of Christ during the agony in the garden of Gethsemane. His antagonist is the brutal Lord William of Breos, who wants the banner (said to guarantee victory in battle) for his own sinister purposes.
Meanwhile, Janiva, the healer and wise woman with whom Straccan fell in love during his previous adventure (as readers of the first book will remember) is accused of committing murder by means of witchcraft: 'In malice, she also sought to kill you, my lady, and your child ...'
From the bosom of his tunic he drew something wrapped in a rag and threw it down on the board. 'There's proof.'
Richildis reached and picked it up. The rag fell away. Something dark, dry and shrivelled, something that seemed to have arms and legs and perhaps a head, like a small mummified monkey, rolled onto the board. ...
And Julitta, the wicked witch, sometime mistress of King John himself and now mistress of William de Breos, is up to all her old tricks again - including child-sacrifice.
This book is as crammed with eccentric characters and vivid medieval detail as the first one was, and is as wonderfully readable. My only complaint is that the Prologue, in which we are present at the death of Guinevere hundreds of years earlier, is so well-written that we want (or at least, I wanted) that story to go on. The Prologue read more like an introduction to the life of Guinevere. After that, for a couple of pages anyway, it was an anti-climax to find myself back in the fourteenth century with Sir Richard: the fourteenth century had suddenly become reality, the sixth the exotic escapist dream.
JM
THE PENDRAGON BANNER
Sylvian Hamilton
Medieval Magic and Mystery
> relics of all description
> witchcraft; both black and white
> the manipulation of evil spirits
> astral travel
> two quite separate miraculous healings
Medieval Outsiders
> a wise woman/healer arrested and accused of witchcraft
> lepers, including one who was once a bishop
> two quite different kinds of hermit
> a man who has lost his memory and is accused of murder; the corpse is brought into the court to testify against him
