The Jester

Here we have an unusual situation: a best-selling modern thriller-writer turns to the medieval period. And produces another best-seller.

The Jester is a long book divided into 154 ultra-short chapters (which make it astonishingly easy to read: will this become a new fashion?) and the story it tells is a gripping one.

We open with a brief prologue set in modern times, in which we are told of the finding of the Spear of Longinus, the most sought-after relic in Christendom, the spear with which the Roman Centurion Longinus pierced Jesus' side as he hung on the cross. It has been discovered in Blois, in France, in the tomb of a Duke of Blois; only, local legend always associated it not with a duke, but with - a jester.

And then we go straight back to 1096, and the village of Veille du Père in southern France. The jester in question is one Hugh de Luc, who (at this stage still a simple inn-keeper turned soldier) sets out on the First Crusade.

He only gets as far as Antioch.

There, homesick and disgusted, he turns back for home. His war is not with the Turk/Saracen (one has just spared his life!), but with two of the most appalling specimens of "nobility" ever to make a nice place hell, and their sidekick, the Tafur, Morgaine. (If you don't know what a Tafur is - was - you have that pleasure to come.) And Hugh will fight this war as a jester.

It is both high adventure and a love-story, a world-defying and death-defying love between the highest and the lowest in the land, and it keeps the reader frantically turning the pages till the very end as the bad guys get badder and the good guys, again and again and again, seem to have no chance whatsoever of holding out another moment against them.

It is also occasionally overtly erotic - both the jester's jokes and, more importantly, the descriptions of the love scenes. But that is fine by me: I do not like it when the bedroom door closes in my face.

An aside: It is interesting to note that at critical moments the authors slip from First Person narrative ("I smiled and lifted myself through the narrow window") to Third Person with a different viewpoint ("A shiver of dread rippled through Anne's blood. She had brooded over this moment for weeks now ..."). This is something we authors are told we MUST NOT DO. However, as a matter of interest, JM, I notice, did it in The Witch of Balintore: ("I wondered was he on his way to me through the storm. And he was, indeed he was ... He looked at the girl. Was she a local lass? She did not look local.") and I myself did it consciously and conspicuously, switching backwards and forwards between the two in Human Voices (not of course reviewed on this site as it is a modern novel, but anyone interested can click here.)

Fans of Bernard Cornwell might like to know that there is a certain resemblance between this story and the Grail Quest series of novels (Harlequin etc): both the milieu and the characters - not to mention that the murderous hunt in both cases is for the same super-relic, the Spear of Longinus.

MBG