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readallthenewberys2012-07-22 07:29 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2012-07-22 07:29 pm
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Newbery Honor: Cedric the Forester (Bernard Gay Marshall)
Standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, books are not, Newberys belong to the ALA. No profit is being made from this endeavor. Anonymous commenting is enabled, IP logging and CAPTCHA are on, anon comments are screened for review.
This week I'm reading Cedric, the Forester by Bernard Gay Marshall, a Newbery Honor Book of 1922. Do you know how hard it is to come up with clever things to say above the cut here? ;-)
* "Gadzooks!" This is a very, very medieval style this author has chosen to adopt for his first-person story. I'll be interested to see how well it holds up. Our narrator is a fifteen-year-old boy - I'm assuming he's the eponymous Cedric till further notice.
* The kid is being addressed as Dickon, okay. His dad's getting ready to go off to war, his mom's worried about having enough men to defend the castle if anything happens, and Dickon is a bit miffy about not being taken seriously. But it isn't the sort of stupid miffy tone that makes him seem likely to go off on un-thought-out adventures; that's good, anyway.
* Well, the author can certainly handle his -ests and -eths. I've got no complaints about the terminology so far. I'm a little less sure about the daily-life research, this not really being my era.
* Oh, kid. *headshake* You know, I hope this keeps up, but right now - even though Dickon here's all about proving himself, and a little bit hotheaded, he's not being an idiot. He knows his age and what he's capable of. So far, he's very well characterized and I rather like him.
* (Plot update: the lord of the fiefdom next door wants to claim Dickon's family's lands as part of his own. Dickon's mom, the lady of the castle, just told him off hardcore; now there's going to be a battle / siege.)
* As of the end of Chapter 1, this is the most readable book of the four I've liveblogged yet. The author knows how to handle both language and pacing really well; I'm still a bit dubious about some of the technicalities of how the battle goes, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
* On to Chapter 2! :D
* Ooh, realistic. The leader of the attackers gets shot - not mortally - and the attacking army don't draw off and wait for him to get better. They just keep besieging, quite professionally. Good work, Mr Marshall.
* ...uh, how do they not have a priest in the castle? I see it's part of a plot point, but I do have to wonder. Things to see if they get explained later...
* Dude, this plot is moving fast.
* Okay, the village nearby the castle is cut off from them by the attackers; I'm assuming the priest and church are there. One of the villagers went north to fetch Dickon's father back, and here he is! By a secret passage, no less. This is a very well-paced, fun-to-read book.
* This plot is moving very fast. The first conflict which was introduced, the next-door lord wanting to take over Dickon's family's land, has already been resolved in two chapters, with the King confirming Dickon's family in their ownership of the land, and the old lord next door dying of complications from his wound.
* Chapter 3 is called "Cedric the Forester", so I'm assuming Dickon is not Cedric after all...
* And now it's six months later. Wow, this is a fast-paced book.
* And the kid, now almost sixteen, remarks in passing that he had a dream six months ago about going riding on a gorgeous fall day like this one. It's a good way to sneak a slew of description in here without stopping the story.
* Here is, I think, the eponymous Cedric - a teenage boy in Lincoln green, apparently poaching deer. Dickon has just run across him in the forest.
* "He seemed not like a forest lurker either, for he had a good and open English face with the wide blue eyes that low-hearted knaves but seldom have." Oh book. I've talked before about the problems of judging someone by their face, and especially by their coloring - although the "seldom" does redeem it a bit.
* Okay, this is Cedric the son of Elbert, who is the forester of a next-door earl different from the next-door lord who attacked Dickon's castle before. Cedric claims not to be stealing - the earl allows his family to kill four deer a year in the forest, he says - and refuses to be marched off to have his word checked with the earl, instead threatening to shoot Dickon for being high-handed and bossy. (Which he is.)
* So Dickon's on his way to said next-door castle, Pelham, to lodge a complaint, when he meets on the road one Lionel, son of the old guy who attacked Dickon's family and later died of wounds sustained. Lionel returned home from a squireship in Cumberland after his father died, and has sworn vengeance. He also wears fancy London-style clothes; oh book, oh American writers of the early twentieth century, your attempts at reverse classism are so laughable and kind of cute.
* Dickon, you hothead! Lionel sasses him and Dickon challenges him to a swordfight in return.
* At least Dickon is an excellent and well-practiced swordsman. He's hotheaded but not stupid; good work, Mr Marshall. Good balanced characterization.
* Lionel is wearing a mail shirt hidden under his fancy clothes! This book is highly unpredictable, but in a good way.
* So Lionel takes Dickon down, being the worse swordsman but having the advantage of height and weight in addition to his mail shirt, and demands Dickon yield the lordship of his house to him, Lionel, or die. This is a situation where "I'd rather die" is actually a sensible thing to say, and Dickon accordingly says it - my respect for Mr Marshall's plotting grows by leaps and bounds - but is of course saved in the nick of time by young Cedric.
* This is some extremely good plotting. Every time you hit a point where you'd think the book would be over (bearing in mind I'm only 20% in and here are two apparently main antagonists, Lionel and his dad, dead already), another perfectly logical plot twist comes in. In this case, here are some of Lionel's men-at-arms happening down the road toward Dickon and Cedric.
* I really don't think crossbows can fire as quickly as this guy has them firing, though. Aren't they a mass-fire siegeman's weapon because they take several minutes to reload?
* Seriously? This is some fair stormtrooper shooting: Dickon and Cedric escape most of the men-at-arms by riding through the woods (Cedric on Lionel's horse, which is Dickon's by right of spoil), but they meet one on foot with a crossbow who shoots at them. Whereon Dickon - oh you utter hothead - rides toward him to fight him instead of hiding sensibly behind a tree like Cedric does. At least Dickon-as-narrator lampshades that the soldier isn't nearly as good at fast reloading as Cedric! ;P I am becoming very fond of this book.
* And the man-at-arms is wearing a quilted, steel-reinforced jacket of foot-soldier's armor, so that Dickon is outmatched and Cedric has to save him again with another arrow. At least Dickon admits it was a dumb move. He's a very likable boy, for all his folly.
* They do finally get home to Dickon's family castle at the end of the chapter, but WOW. This is the kind of fast-paced excellent writing I expected from the much-adulated G.A. Henty; why is this book not better known? I hope it doesn't devolve into FAIL later on, I would be sadface.
* So Dickon introduces Cedric to his parents and explains the day's happenings, and Dickon's mother proposes that Cedric should come and live with them - Cedric's mom being dead - and maybe learn to be a clerk, in thanks for him saving Dickon's life twice. Dickon suggests Cedric should instead be his squire and teach him to shoot, and he will in turn teach Cedric swordfighting.
* Dickon's father, who seems a very sensible person - I like this writer - says "not so fast" about Cedric being Dickon's squire, because a lot of things still need to be arranged about Dickon's own knightly training, but he agrees that Cedric had better stick around where it's safe till the soldiers from Lionel's castle stop hunting him.
* So Cedric stays there for a while, and then King Henry (number not specified) writes officially to Dickon's dad, saying Lionel's mother Elizabeth has lodged a formal complaint saying Dickon was on Castle Teramore's land - that is, her land - without permission and had plotted with Cedric to kill Lionel. So now Dickon and his father and Cedric have to go to a trial before the King, and not fight any of the Carleton people - that's Lionel's family name - till then.
* And coming into the hall of trial Dickon overhears someone saying King Henry used to fancy the Lady Elizabeth rather a lot when they were both young and single - thus adding a bit more tension to the trial scene. This is much better-paced writing than I'm used to in medieval-setting books; most people ape Sir Walter Scott's pacing pretty accurately. ;P Whereas Mr Marshall is fitting storylines into each chapter that could fill a whole novel by a padding-addicted writer.
* So anyway, the King finds the kids guilty on the word of two Carleton men-at-arms plus the Lady Elizabeth's dramatic grief; Dickon's only assigned punishment will be not bearing arms till further notice, but the King decrees Cedric shall be hanged.
* Dickon's father speaks out against Cedric's sentence and demands a trial by combat, himself against a champion for the Lady Elizabeth. I'm not sure how accurate the research is - isn't "trial by his peers" one of the big things in the Magna Carta, not just having the King randomly judge you? Was the Magna Carta being enforced at this time? What is this time anyway? Lady Elizabeth addresses the King as "Henry of Anjou" - but I do approve of the handling. The author's playing a good solid balance between accurate historical tone / attitudes and a proper modern "just because Cedric's of low social standing doesn't mean he's worthless" take on the matter. And not getting squeaky about *omg killing people*; I appreciate this. ;-)
* Lady Elizabeth's champion is an extremely good swordsman - one of those unfortunate ugly, agile gorilla-like minions with long arms who abound in certain sorts of writing (at least Tolkien had the sense to make them openly non-human) - and Dickon is sure enough his dad will be killed that he does a very convincingly in-character narratorial diatribe against trial-by-combat as a thing anyone ought to believe in. I'm not even sure his dad will survive, myself.
* Wheeeew! This is EXTREMELY GOOD WRITING, I will say that anywhere. Dickon's father does both win and survive, but it's very close... and instead of the standard-issue last-minute unexplained lucky blow that usually wins these duels, he actually is in the process of being stabbed when he stabs and kills the other champion. Thus the other guy couldn't parry, for the first time in the bout. :D Extremely clever, I do think. (Dickon's father is way lucky he survived, though. I'm not 100% sure of the logistics there; I assume the other guy just stabbed him in a slightly wrong place to kill him.)
* Chapter 5! Now it's December. This book moves fast.
* And now Dickon is proposing that Cedric should shoot a match against Old Marvin, the marksman who wounded Lionel's dad at the end of Chapter 1. Old Marvin is reputed to be the best crossbow marksman in all England.
* Dickon, boy, you are always getting ahead of yourself. :-) Now he's planning a whole big festival, partly to celebrate that his dad is getting well, and partly so that everyone can watch Cedric and Marvin shoot. And promising the best milk-cow in his father's barn as a prize to whichever one wins! O_O
* Dickon's father agrees to the match and all, but afterwards - being, it seems, a sensible man throughout - he gives Dickon a talking-to about his excitable heedlessness. And he suggests bringing in a third marksman to the shooting match, so that Marvin won't be the flat-out loser if he does lose to Cedric, since Marvin is about seventy years old and Cedric is highly talented for sixteen.
* Ooh, I think Cedric is cheating a bit to give Marvin the prize, or at least make it a fair contest, since a bad gust of wind took away a couple points from Marvin. Cedric did say earlier that his father would love to have a milk cow and his younger siblings would do well to have milk daily, but Marvin's been the best marksman in the area for thirty-odd years...
* So archer number three, who was only brought in to make up third place, winds up winning the first round. The second round will be to hit a wooden ball that's rolled down a chute and then let bounce over rough ground - a trick Marvin has always been best at, and archer number three second-best, and which it's not clear whether Cedric has ever practiced at all. OTOH, Cedric has done a lot of actual food-hunting of rabbits and such. This author is really good at suspense.
* Really, really good. Cedric's bowstring was frayed, and has snapped just as he stepped up to shoot at the bouncing wooden ball. So archer number three is going ahead to shoot while Cedric restrings his bow.
* So Old Marvin wins by one point overall, Cedric tying with archer number three for second place. This is a very clever writer, I do think. It's a shame this is the only one of his books on the list; I shall have to see if I can find his other four. This is his first book according to Wiki - I hope he kept up to this standard.
* Yup, Cedric was cheating. He frayed his bowstring to make archer #3 shoot before him, so he could either make Marvin win or make a three-way tie and require a rematch. But he's moping a little about it, because he doesn't want Dickon to think he's a (relatively) terrible archer... but first he makes Dickon promise to keep his mouth shut.
* BAHAHAHAHAHA! I like this book a lot. Dickon has to keep Cedric's secret because he gave his word, but earlier in the day there was also an unplanned longbow-shooting match which Cedric's father won, so Dickon talks his dad into giving them a milk cow for that! :D And archer number three from the crossbow match gets a new and fancier crossbow to practice with. I like Dickon and his dad both; I like this book altogether, so far. It ought to be better known.
* Chapter 6! Now it's spring and we're going to Coventry. ...I ought to remember what the slang meaning of that is, but I don't. ;-)
* The nature descriptions in this book are fabulous. Reeead it. YAY GUTENBERG.
* Dickon's dad, Lord Mountjoy, has sent an archer called Old William along with Dickon and Cedric to Coventry, because he doesn't trust them to be all of the sensible by themselves. I think Dickon's father is a VERY smart man. *g*
* Lionel had a younger brother Geoffrey, age fifteen, who's now being mentioned... the thick plottens! XD
* And now, stopping for lunch, the three see a well-dressed teenage boy and two stout retainers ride by. I think we can safely speculate the youngster is the aforementioned Geoffrey, unless he isn't. (Seriously, this writing is good enough I don't feel safe making assumptions.)
* After lunch they ride on, ~mysteriously~ depressed all of a sudden. Old William predicts rain before nightfall, so they're trying to strike a balance between hurrying forward and not wanting to catch up the strangers who passed them, in case those are unfriendly.
* They've just come up over the crest of a hill, and here are the three strangers fighting half a dozen brigands. Any other book I'd venture to predict the rest of the chapter, but this one - not even. :D
* Wow, they actually consider not helping because there might be yet more men in ambush. That doesn't happen very often in tales of "days of old when knights were bold" and (usually portrayed as) foolhardy. Everyone in this book seems to have an incredible amount of common sense; I am impressed.
* They do go to help, but Old William is killed - as are the other boy's two retainers - and the robber chief escapes and blows a horn to summon the rest of his band, so the three kids flee together on the single surviving horse. Robin Hood was mentioned earlier as a living person, though possibly of an earlier generation; I don't know if that fact is relevant at all here. :-)
* So they save Geoffrey's life a few times - it was Geoffrey - and he renounces his claim of vengeance, but it's a lot more complex and better-written than that sounds. I'm just liveblogging it on the bus, so I can't really do it justice.
(O tempora! O mores! Timeshifted liveblogging with pen and ink, how is my world so weird.)
* Chapter 7, by its title, should tell of hunting down and exterminating the outlaw band. Let's see.
* Yup, they arrange that when Geoffrey is well in the fall (he got badly wounded in the fight), the lords of the whole area will bring soldiers to surround the wood and kill or capture all the outlaws who live there. Cedric, Dickon, and Geoffrey practice at arms together once Geoffrey is somewhat recovered; Dickon is a bit pouty at being the worst archer of the three, but consoles himself he's still the best swordsman. Seriously, this is an extremely readable book - at least, if good quasi-Shakespearean English doesn't bother you.
* But Geoffrey's mother, the Lady Elizabeth, neither forgives the Mountjoys nor sends any message at all to them.
* In the fall, the various lords' little armies go and attack the robber band - whose leader is apparently nicknamed "The Monkslayer" and is an overall nasty piece of work, so yeah, Robin Hood was irrelevant - and make a good first showing, capturing about half the band. Although Dickon mentions some unfortunate gaps in the cordon they tried to lay round the wood, the rest of the robbers are still apparently surrounded, because here come two messengers with a flag of parley.
* Oh, wow. The robbers have taken Geoffrey's mother to ransom! Apparently she went to visit Lionel's grave, without her usual armed escort because Geoffrey took a lot of the soldiers, and got herself captured. O_O
* In return, the robbers want all their men released unharmed. Lord Mountjoy tells the messengers they'll think about it, but Lady Elizabeth etc had better still be unharmed when they give their answer.
* Cedric, who knows these woods, thinks he might know where the robber baron's fastness is, so the three boys go off to snoop.
* They find the hidden fastness in a cave Cedric knows the layout of, and cook up a plan that might possibly succeed. No guarantees. But it's the best plan they can come up with, so they go back to the lords' camp to propose it.
* Ooh, awkward. They take about four dozen men for a sneaky dawn attack, but halfway there Lord Mountjoy turns his ankle crossing a stream in the dark and can go neither forward nor back. He has to wait in the forest with two men till the attack is over. Ooh, suspense. (...that's not meant for sarcasm. I'm quite admiring this writer's knack for plottery. As is, I think, evident. *g*)
* The battle is quickly over -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bethinexile noted just the other day in a post on writing fight scenes that they should be clearly written, exciting, but brief, and this one qualifies on all three counts - and Lady Elizabeth is properly thankful, forgiving Dickon and the Mountjoys freely. But narrative tension remains till the end of the chapter (we're only about halfway through the book here) because we don't yet know if Lord Mountjoy is okay.
* All right, now he's fine, it's a year later, Cedric is officially Dickon's squire, and there's a peasants' revolt going on to the south. What a lot of pacing! :-)
* A man-at-arms who's escaped the revolt somehow happens to know how it actually started - by the local lord being high-handed and also lied to by his steward, and accidentally killing a serf who wouldn't have his cottage used as a hunting base while the serf's wife was dying. Said man-at-arms turns up at Castle Mountjoy to ask for help, being wounded, and also to tell this story, because of Plot. *g*
* So then a messenger turns up to ask Lord Mountjoy for volunteer archers to help quell the revolt, and oh by the way there's a reward... so Lord Mountjoy asks Cedric "would you like to lead the volunteers and win honor and fame and also gold?" And Cedric says no. There ensues this great big quarrel over the rights of a lord versus the rights of a serf, though Lord Mountjoy's side could be a bit more convincingly argued, if you ask me, O writer of the book.
* Heehee, Dickon's mother Lady Kate doesn't get much to do in this book, but she could use to have a book of her own. She just keeps trying to break up the squabble until she succeeds. Temporarily. ;P
* Okay, Wiki is after telling me this book is set before 1215! O_O No wonder there's all this squibble being set up between (it's said) the old Saxon laws of freehold and trial-by-jury etc, and the more Norman strict-overlordship stuff that I can't remember the proper French name of.
* Now Lord Mountjoy is all "I can't have anybody around here under my protection who's going to be speaking against loyalty to their liege lord, Cedric", and Cedric is "okay, I'll just be leaving then." So he leaves.
* And now, some time later, news comes that Old Marvin the archer, who went to visit his dying brother on another lord's land, has been badly wounded in a scuffle there. The other lord's son - whose name was Boris for reasons nobody specifies, oh stereotyping(?) - took a notion to steal Marvin's just-dead brother's savings and wager it at gambling with some other lordlings, since he'd lost all his own stuff and nobody at the table would take any more IOUs.
* So old Marvin and a "stranger youth" who was staying with him in Marvin's brother's cottage, fought the lordlings and were both sorely wounded - the stranger lad apparently to the death. At which narratively apropos moment we learn that his name was Cedric! What... I don't even. O_O We're only at 59%!
* Okay, Cedric's not quite dead, but isn't expected to live the day out. So Lord Mountjoy hastens off to apologize to him, because apparently the principle of "a man's home is his castle" means more when you know the people involved. Sorry, I'm just a bit snarky about people like that. ;P Personal reasons.
* And Cedric is still alive, and on being apologized to, says he has no plans to die anytime soon, because awww, they like him after all. ^_^ And apparently now he's going to be all better. Sorry, it's just a bit hyper-cute; I do like it, it's just a little more handwavey Friendship Is Magic than I'd come to expect from this author. O_O
* Ooh, and now the Welsh are attacking. And we learn that the current king is Richard the Lion-Hearted, just crowned, and gathering forces for his Crusade, so that there aren't a whole lot of people around to fight back the Welsh invaders. So the lords who are directly under attack are calling a big muster of everybody they can, to come help fight.
* And because of reasons, the main lord calling the muster wants EVERYBODY mounted - no foot-soldiers even as archers - so that they can chase the Welsh raiders on their mountain ponies wherever they go. I think this lord is dumb, but whatevs.
* I think Dickon thinks this lord's command is dumb too, because he dwells a bit on how scroungy are some of the horses the lower-class archers have found to ride.
* Wow, Cedric and Dickon are nineteen years old already, and Geoffrey is eighteen. This book is moving fast, but the author always notes how old people are and what time of year it is before it's important. There's none of this "wait, they're how old already?" that I remember from reading some books (like Jane Eyre) when I was a kid. Admittedly I probably didn't read Jane Eyre very thoroughly, being four at the time... ANYWAY. *g*
* Awww, and Dickon thinks at first that it'll be an easy battle and home again. :P The tone here is very - I don't know, I'm suddenly reminded this was written only a few years after WWI. :-( Mr Marshall wasn't in the war as far as I can find out (he apparently worked as a shipbuilder, Wiki says), but it can't have been fun staying home either. :P
* Heehee, there's a very fine line for Dickon-the-narrator to walk here between proper historical classism, saying Cedric acts like a gentleman rather than a churl, and American-writer democratic equality. And he just about pulls it off. I approve. O_O
* Dickon's father being clever and strategic as usual, he suggests a move that lets our English heroes' army cut off the Welsh marauders halfway through fleeing across a rocky ford; and the battle begins. Ooh, this writing - excellently visual, as is standard here. :D
* Cedric and the archers cleverly keep the far half of the Welsh army from re-crossing the river to aid the near half in close combat. THIS IS ALL THE BEST WRITING I DO THINK, HOW IS THIS GUY NOT BETTER KNOWN. *flails*
* And now the near half of the Welsh raiders have been killed or scattered... but the English dudes want to take down the far half as well. So they're chasing them into a rocky defile. I do not know that this will end well.
* Hrm! Once again the archers manage to save the day, being sent in to shoot down the less-well-armed Welshmen who are bottlenecked in the pass to hold back the English fighters. And once again our heroes ride forward, keeping a keen eye out for ambushes, because we're getting into the mountains proper here. *squee detailed mountains* Sorry, geology major. ;-) *ahem*
* Ooh, thunderstorm! Night watches! But the night passes fairly uneventfully. Man, you never know with this book, though. ;-)
* Oopsie. The Welsh have taken the pass behind them and they're all trapped in the mountains. Wow. Howwww is this book not better known; it's way more suspenseful than the much-cited "chariot race in Ben Hur". ;P
* Eeee. Dickon's father knows a back way out of the mountains! And one which won't be easy to hold against them. It's called "The Pass of Eagles", mmmm classy names. ;D So the lord who called the muster, being not completely incompetent, acknowledges himself outmaneuvered and starts leading his army to this Pass of Eagles and - hopefully - out of the mountains again before the Welsh leader can trap them completely.
* Ooh, wow, the Welsh army is there before them, and this is one of the best-laid-out battle scenes I have ever read EVER. Everything is very clearly described, briefly but well, and then the battle actually starts: messy and gory and this guy definitely was thinking about World War I, I'll warrant you. This is no glory-of-war armchair adventurer's writing.
* And Dickon is pretty sure they're all going to be killed before they can get through the pass, when once again Cedric saves the day: he's had all his archers dismount and scramble up the gorse-covered hills where no horse can go but lightly-armed foot-soldiers just barely can, and now they're sending mass fire down into the Welsh army, who can't manage to take them out. So the battle turns in favor of the English army, and they get safely home again.
* And then Dickon and Geoffrey and Cedric are all knighted for being awesome. XD And still there is more book!
* Now it is Chapter 11, and King Richard is off on Crusade, and John Lackland is Regent. (I bet when I finish this book I rewatch the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, because of reasons. *g*)
* "Many of the high places of Church and State were filled with [King John's] favorites"... *koff* Uh, NO. Thomas a Becket, anybody? Investiture Contest? ...do people who weren't raised in the Be A Catholic Martyr Like These Guys ideology really not know that English kings trying to appoint churchmen was a huuuuuuuuuge scuffle in this era, and one people got killed over, not a throwaway line about corruption in high places? *headshake* Research, sir. Do you some.
* And the seasons pass, and the boys grow up more. And one day Cedric is all fallen-faced, and tells Dickon (now Sir Richard of Mountjoy) that one of Cedric's old friends - of low degree but hey, so's Cedric - has been thrown in prison for not letting a bully of a bailiff take ALL his cart-pulling cattle at harvest time. :P
* So Cedric cooks up this plan to rescue his friend from the castle tower with a rope. (Luckily the guy isn't in the actual dungeons because they're being remodeled or something. BAHAHA.) And Dickon agrees to come along and help.
* Oh loooooooool Cedric, you are cute. A little too clever for your own good occasionally (as now), but really, really cute and extremely smart. Also, it is good always to have more plans when the first ones go wrong.
* Ooh, suspense. I like that Cedric isn't continuously as hyper-competent as he might have been - he's only in his early twenties at oldest, it's logical that he'd be muffing up some of the time.
* Aw, man, Cedric's friend dies in the escape attempt. *sadface* I mean, I appreciate that the whole book isn't just EVERYTHING COMES OUT PERFECTLY AT LAST, but it is still sadface.
* And now it's a year later. Wow. ...King Richard is back from the war (no mention of Blondel, but I squee *yay Blondel* on principle, because he rocks), and one of the knights has talked the King into giving Cedric lands and a manor house that were standing vacant since the dudes of the family died fighting the Welsh! Cedric just keeps getting AWESOMENESS happening to him. And so Sir Richard of Mountjoy and Sir Cedric Delaroche of Grimsby are riding out hunting on a fall day having fun. :D
* "Already we had meat enough for the roasting at our noon-tide campfire, and we little cared for more." Aw, early 20th century American conservationism. I do approve. ;-)
* Ooh, and now they're helping a runaway thrall (...is thrall the proper term, even, in England here? What's the difference between a thrall and a serf? *must research*), and getting themselves rather in trouble.
* HAHAHAHAHA. Cedric knows that the thrall's master did some scheming with Prince John to keep Richard from coming back to his throne; the master threatened to tattle on Cedric for protecting his runaway, and Cedric is flat-out blackmailing him to keep quiet, in return. :D It's always fun when evil characters don't manage to get the upper hand in a "he did something worse!" contest.
* Now it is apparently quite a bit later and we are going to have the Magna Carta signed! O_O I still think the details of daily life have been a lot more fifteenth-century throughout the book, but it's still fairly fun just to have this going on. XD
* Flashbacks to the recent scuffling: Sir Richard and Sir Cedric are still romping about with their strategems and disguises and so forth, winning battles in unexpected ways, and everyone thinks well of them, so they are going to be sent as part of a group of five lords from the westlands to deal with the King. Or write the Magna Carta, or something. (Wait, does that mean he's going to cut out Archbishop Stephen Langton as the person who made sure the Magna Carta secures the rights of all free men and not just the landed lords? Don't do that, sir, I beg you. Stephen Langton is ALL OF THE COOL, you had darn better leave him in. Please?)
* Ooh, this is not good. We have here a "smiling, crafty, smooth-spoken" abbot only interested in his own abbey's... uh, interests, and the rest of the group aren't churchmen. Don't be a stinker, sir, please.
* Okay, both Wiki and this book are confusing the heck out of me. Dickon and Cedric suspect the Abbot, who's basing the Magna Carta on the old charter of Henry I, of "secret communications with the Archbishop, who was still nominally of the King's party"... but Wiki says "Stephen [Langton] now became a leader in the struggle against King John. At a council of churchmen at Westminster on 25 August 1213, to which certain barons were invited, he read the text of the charter of Henry I and called for its renewal. In the sequel, Stephen's energetic leadership and the Barons' military strength forced John to sign the Magna Carta (15 June 1215)." I do not appreciate this evil-making of All The Churchmen, O writer, if that is indeed what you are doing. You've done such an excellent job so far; don't spoil it? :P
* Yup, Cedric's the one who gets the line about "any free man". Phbbbbbttt. I am disappoint.
* Hm. All right, Cedric's proposal to change the line to "any free man" doesn't pass; he's rewritten the charter to include provisions for making the King follow it, but now he and Dickon and a couple dozen of their men-at-arms are taking a long and dangerous ride to some disputed castles, for reasons I don't understand... but if there's one thing I'm sure of, it is that Cedric has a cunning plan. XD
* And now they're all disguised as pilgrims and - BWAHAHA - going to liberate the Abbot's abbey for him so he will be beholden to them and vote on their side! I think. Something like that. I still don't approve of erasing one of history's most awesome churchmen, but I do like my disguised sneaky shenanigans. :-)
* They capture the abbot King John has put up instead of the one working with the barons, and try to carry him away, but one of the younger monks from the abbey gets away and gives the alarm, so now there are soldiers from the castle coming to cut them off at thepass fork in the road.
* They fight their way through and get back tidily, and in the morning... oh wow. Cedric tells the proper Abbot a pack of half-lies, as much as to say "I have the King's Abbot imprisoned and if you vote the way I want you to I'll hold him till you can get back to your abbey, otherwise not." Hm. I am not so sure of the ethics or nobility of this; it's a bit un-knightly, I'd say, myself. Very clever, but slightly underhanded.
* Hrm. Yeah, I'm not so sure about all this. I think it would have done better to let Stephen Langton keep his place in history, and not have quiiiiite such a sneaky knight win the day. It's not proper. *is opinionated* Especially since the book ends with a narratorial speech by Dickon pretty obviously looking forward to OMG AMERICA WILL BE AWESOME...
Warning, this book is FULL OF PLOT TWISTS and I pretty much spoil them all. If you prefer to read well-plotted stuff unspoiled, you might want to wait for the review post... or just read the book on Gutenberg. It's worth your time. ;-) The ending is a bit weird and un-historical, but overall it is an extremely good book.
This week I'm reading Cedric, the Forester by Bernard Gay Marshall, a Newbery Honor Book of 1922. Do you know how hard it is to come up with clever things to say above the cut here? ;-)
* "Gadzooks!" This is a very, very medieval style this author has chosen to adopt for his first-person story. I'll be interested to see how well it holds up. Our narrator is a fifteen-year-old boy - I'm assuming he's the eponymous Cedric till further notice.
* The kid is being addressed as Dickon, okay. His dad's getting ready to go off to war, his mom's worried about having enough men to defend the castle if anything happens, and Dickon is a bit miffy about not being taken seriously. But it isn't the sort of stupid miffy tone that makes him seem likely to go off on un-thought-out adventures; that's good, anyway.
* Well, the author can certainly handle his -ests and -eths. I've got no complaints about the terminology so far. I'm a little less sure about the daily-life research, this not really being my era.
* Oh, kid. *headshake* You know, I hope this keeps up, but right now - even though Dickon here's all about proving himself, and a little bit hotheaded, he's not being an idiot. He knows his age and what he's capable of. So far, he's very well characterized and I rather like him.
* (Plot update: the lord of the fiefdom next door wants to claim Dickon's family's lands as part of his own. Dickon's mom, the lady of the castle, just told him off hardcore; now there's going to be a battle / siege.)
* As of the end of Chapter 1, this is the most readable book of the four I've liveblogged yet. The author knows how to handle both language and pacing really well; I'm still a bit dubious about some of the technicalities of how the battle goes, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
* On to Chapter 2! :D
* Ooh, realistic. The leader of the attackers gets shot - not mortally - and the attacking army don't draw off and wait for him to get better. They just keep besieging, quite professionally. Good work, Mr Marshall.
* ...uh, how do they not have a priest in the castle? I see it's part of a plot point, but I do have to wonder. Things to see if they get explained later...
* Dude, this plot is moving fast.
* Okay, the village nearby the castle is cut off from them by the attackers; I'm assuming the priest and church are there. One of the villagers went north to fetch Dickon's father back, and here he is! By a secret passage, no less. This is a very well-paced, fun-to-read book.
* This plot is moving very fast. The first conflict which was introduced, the next-door lord wanting to take over Dickon's family's land, has already been resolved in two chapters, with the King confirming Dickon's family in their ownership of the land, and the old lord next door dying of complications from his wound.
* Chapter 3 is called "Cedric the Forester", so I'm assuming Dickon is not Cedric after all...
* And now it's six months later. Wow, this is a fast-paced book.
* And the kid, now almost sixteen, remarks in passing that he had a dream six months ago about going riding on a gorgeous fall day like this one. It's a good way to sneak a slew of description in here without stopping the story.
* Here is, I think, the eponymous Cedric - a teenage boy in Lincoln green, apparently poaching deer. Dickon has just run across him in the forest.
* "He seemed not like a forest lurker either, for he had a good and open English face with the wide blue eyes that low-hearted knaves but seldom have." Oh book. I've talked before about the problems of judging someone by their face, and especially by their coloring - although the "seldom" does redeem it a bit.
* Okay, this is Cedric the son of Elbert, who is the forester of a next-door earl different from the next-door lord who attacked Dickon's castle before. Cedric claims not to be stealing - the earl allows his family to kill four deer a year in the forest, he says - and refuses to be marched off to have his word checked with the earl, instead threatening to shoot Dickon for being high-handed and bossy. (Which he is.)
* So Dickon's on his way to said next-door castle, Pelham, to lodge a complaint, when he meets on the road one Lionel, son of the old guy who attacked Dickon's family and later died of wounds sustained. Lionel returned home from a squireship in Cumberland after his father died, and has sworn vengeance. He also wears fancy London-style clothes; oh book, oh American writers of the early twentieth century, your attempts at reverse classism are so laughable and kind of cute.
* Dickon, you hothead! Lionel sasses him and Dickon challenges him to a swordfight in return.
* At least Dickon is an excellent and well-practiced swordsman. He's hotheaded but not stupid; good work, Mr Marshall. Good balanced characterization.
* Lionel is wearing a mail shirt hidden under his fancy clothes! This book is highly unpredictable, but in a good way.
* So Lionel takes Dickon down, being the worse swordsman but having the advantage of height and weight in addition to his mail shirt, and demands Dickon yield the lordship of his house to him, Lionel, or die. This is a situation where "I'd rather die" is actually a sensible thing to say, and Dickon accordingly says it - my respect for Mr Marshall's plotting grows by leaps and bounds - but is of course saved in the nick of time by young Cedric.
* This is some extremely good plotting. Every time you hit a point where you'd think the book would be over (bearing in mind I'm only 20% in and here are two apparently main antagonists, Lionel and his dad, dead already), another perfectly logical plot twist comes in. In this case, here are some of Lionel's men-at-arms happening down the road toward Dickon and Cedric.
* I really don't think crossbows can fire as quickly as this guy has them firing, though. Aren't they a mass-fire siegeman's weapon because they take several minutes to reload?
* Seriously? This is some fair stormtrooper shooting: Dickon and Cedric escape most of the men-at-arms by riding through the woods (Cedric on Lionel's horse, which is Dickon's by right of spoil), but they meet one on foot with a crossbow who shoots at them. Whereon Dickon - oh you utter hothead - rides toward him to fight him instead of hiding sensibly behind a tree like Cedric does. At least Dickon-as-narrator lampshades that the soldier isn't nearly as good at fast reloading as Cedric! ;P I am becoming very fond of this book.
* And the man-at-arms is wearing a quilted, steel-reinforced jacket of foot-soldier's armor, so that Dickon is outmatched and Cedric has to save him again with another arrow. At least Dickon admits it was a dumb move. He's a very likable boy, for all his folly.
* They do finally get home to Dickon's family castle at the end of the chapter, but WOW. This is the kind of fast-paced excellent writing I expected from the much-adulated G.A. Henty; why is this book not better known? I hope it doesn't devolve into FAIL later on, I would be sadface.
* So Dickon introduces Cedric to his parents and explains the day's happenings, and Dickon's mother proposes that Cedric should come and live with them - Cedric's mom being dead - and maybe learn to be a clerk, in thanks for him saving Dickon's life twice. Dickon suggests Cedric should instead be his squire and teach him to shoot, and he will in turn teach Cedric swordfighting.
* Dickon's father, who seems a very sensible person - I like this writer - says "not so fast" about Cedric being Dickon's squire, because a lot of things still need to be arranged about Dickon's own knightly training, but he agrees that Cedric had better stick around where it's safe till the soldiers from Lionel's castle stop hunting him.
* So Cedric stays there for a while, and then King Henry (number not specified) writes officially to Dickon's dad, saying Lionel's mother Elizabeth has lodged a formal complaint saying Dickon was on Castle Teramore's land - that is, her land - without permission and had plotted with Cedric to kill Lionel. So now Dickon and his father and Cedric have to go to a trial before the King, and not fight any of the Carleton people - that's Lionel's family name - till then.
* And coming into the hall of trial Dickon overhears someone saying King Henry used to fancy the Lady Elizabeth rather a lot when they were both young and single - thus adding a bit more tension to the trial scene. This is much better-paced writing than I'm used to in medieval-setting books; most people ape Sir Walter Scott's pacing pretty accurately. ;P Whereas Mr Marshall is fitting storylines into each chapter that could fill a whole novel by a padding-addicted writer.
* So anyway, the King finds the kids guilty on the word of two Carleton men-at-arms plus the Lady Elizabeth's dramatic grief; Dickon's only assigned punishment will be not bearing arms till further notice, but the King decrees Cedric shall be hanged.
* Dickon's father speaks out against Cedric's sentence and demands a trial by combat, himself against a champion for the Lady Elizabeth. I'm not sure how accurate the research is - isn't "trial by his peers" one of the big things in the Magna Carta, not just having the King randomly judge you? Was the Magna Carta being enforced at this time? What is this time anyway? Lady Elizabeth addresses the King as "Henry of Anjou" - but I do approve of the handling. The author's playing a good solid balance between accurate historical tone / attitudes and a proper modern "just because Cedric's of low social standing doesn't mean he's worthless" take on the matter. And not getting squeaky about *omg killing people*; I appreciate this. ;-)
* Lady Elizabeth's champion is an extremely good swordsman - one of those unfortunate ugly, agile gorilla-like minions with long arms who abound in certain sorts of writing (at least Tolkien had the sense to make them openly non-human) - and Dickon is sure enough his dad will be killed that he does a very convincingly in-character narratorial diatribe against trial-by-combat as a thing anyone ought to believe in. I'm not even sure his dad will survive, myself.
* Wheeeew! This is EXTREMELY GOOD WRITING, I will say that anywhere. Dickon's father does both win and survive, but it's very close... and instead of the standard-issue last-minute unexplained lucky blow that usually wins these duels, he actually is in the process of being stabbed when he stabs and kills the other champion. Thus the other guy couldn't parry, for the first time in the bout. :D Extremely clever, I do think. (Dickon's father is way lucky he survived, though. I'm not 100% sure of the logistics there; I assume the other guy just stabbed him in a slightly wrong place to kill him.)
* Chapter 5! Now it's December. This book moves fast.
* And now Dickon is proposing that Cedric should shoot a match against Old Marvin, the marksman who wounded Lionel's dad at the end of Chapter 1. Old Marvin is reputed to be the best crossbow marksman in all England.
* Dickon, boy, you are always getting ahead of yourself. :-) Now he's planning a whole big festival, partly to celebrate that his dad is getting well, and partly so that everyone can watch Cedric and Marvin shoot. And promising the best milk-cow in his father's barn as a prize to whichever one wins! O_O
* Dickon's father agrees to the match and all, but afterwards - being, it seems, a sensible man throughout - he gives Dickon a talking-to about his excitable heedlessness. And he suggests bringing in a third marksman to the shooting match, so that Marvin won't be the flat-out loser if he does lose to Cedric, since Marvin is about seventy years old and Cedric is highly talented for sixteen.
* Ooh, I think Cedric is cheating a bit to give Marvin the prize, or at least make it a fair contest, since a bad gust of wind took away a couple points from Marvin. Cedric did say earlier that his father would love to have a milk cow and his younger siblings would do well to have milk daily, but Marvin's been the best marksman in the area for thirty-odd years...
* So archer number three, who was only brought in to make up third place, winds up winning the first round. The second round will be to hit a wooden ball that's rolled down a chute and then let bounce over rough ground - a trick Marvin has always been best at, and archer number three second-best, and which it's not clear whether Cedric has ever practiced at all. OTOH, Cedric has done a lot of actual food-hunting of rabbits and such. This author is really good at suspense.
* Really, really good. Cedric's bowstring was frayed, and has snapped just as he stepped up to shoot at the bouncing wooden ball. So archer number three is going ahead to shoot while Cedric restrings his bow.
* So Old Marvin wins by one point overall, Cedric tying with archer number three for second place. This is a very clever writer, I do think. It's a shame this is the only one of his books on the list; I shall have to see if I can find his other four. This is his first book according to Wiki - I hope he kept up to this standard.
* Yup, Cedric was cheating. He frayed his bowstring to make archer #3 shoot before him, so he could either make Marvin win or make a three-way tie and require a rematch. But he's moping a little about it, because he doesn't want Dickon to think he's a (relatively) terrible archer... but first he makes Dickon promise to keep his mouth shut.
* BAHAHAHAHAHA! I like this book a lot. Dickon has to keep Cedric's secret because he gave his word, but earlier in the day there was also an unplanned longbow-shooting match which Cedric's father won, so Dickon talks his dad into giving them a milk cow for that! :D And archer number three from the crossbow match gets a new and fancier crossbow to practice with. I like Dickon and his dad both; I like this book altogether, so far. It ought to be better known.
* Chapter 6! Now it's spring and we're going to Coventry. ...I ought to remember what the slang meaning of that is, but I don't. ;-)
* The nature descriptions in this book are fabulous. Reeead it. YAY GUTENBERG.
* Dickon's dad, Lord Mountjoy, has sent an archer called Old William along with Dickon and Cedric to Coventry, because he doesn't trust them to be all of the sensible by themselves. I think Dickon's father is a VERY smart man. *g*
* Lionel had a younger brother Geoffrey, age fifteen, who's now being mentioned... the thick plottens! XD
* And now, stopping for lunch, the three see a well-dressed teenage boy and two stout retainers ride by. I think we can safely speculate the youngster is the aforementioned Geoffrey, unless he isn't. (Seriously, this writing is good enough I don't feel safe making assumptions.)
* After lunch they ride on, ~mysteriously~ depressed all of a sudden. Old William predicts rain before nightfall, so they're trying to strike a balance between hurrying forward and not wanting to catch up the strangers who passed them, in case those are unfriendly.
* They've just come up over the crest of a hill, and here are the three strangers fighting half a dozen brigands. Any other book I'd venture to predict the rest of the chapter, but this one - not even. :D
* Wow, they actually consider not helping because there might be yet more men in ambush. That doesn't happen very often in tales of "days of old when knights were bold" and (usually portrayed as) foolhardy. Everyone in this book seems to have an incredible amount of common sense; I am impressed.
* They do go to help, but Old William is killed - as are the other boy's two retainers - and the robber chief escapes and blows a horn to summon the rest of his band, so the three kids flee together on the single surviving horse. Robin Hood was mentioned earlier as a living person, though possibly of an earlier generation; I don't know if that fact is relevant at all here. :-)
* So they save Geoffrey's life a few times - it was Geoffrey - and he renounces his claim of vengeance, but it's a lot more complex and better-written than that sounds. I'm just liveblogging it on the bus, so I can't really do it justice.
(O tempora! O mores! Timeshifted liveblogging with pen and ink, how is my world so weird.)
* Chapter 7, by its title, should tell of hunting down and exterminating the outlaw band. Let's see.
* Yup, they arrange that when Geoffrey is well in the fall (he got badly wounded in the fight), the lords of the whole area will bring soldiers to surround the wood and kill or capture all the outlaws who live there. Cedric, Dickon, and Geoffrey practice at arms together once Geoffrey is somewhat recovered; Dickon is a bit pouty at being the worst archer of the three, but consoles himself he's still the best swordsman. Seriously, this is an extremely readable book - at least, if good quasi-Shakespearean English doesn't bother you.
* But Geoffrey's mother, the Lady Elizabeth, neither forgives the Mountjoys nor sends any message at all to them.
* In the fall, the various lords' little armies go and attack the robber band - whose leader is apparently nicknamed "The Monkslayer" and is an overall nasty piece of work, so yeah, Robin Hood was irrelevant - and make a good first showing, capturing about half the band. Although Dickon mentions some unfortunate gaps in the cordon they tried to lay round the wood, the rest of the robbers are still apparently surrounded, because here come two messengers with a flag of parley.
* Oh, wow. The robbers have taken Geoffrey's mother to ransom! Apparently she went to visit Lionel's grave, without her usual armed escort because Geoffrey took a lot of the soldiers, and got herself captured. O_O
* In return, the robbers want all their men released unharmed. Lord Mountjoy tells the messengers they'll think about it, but Lady Elizabeth etc had better still be unharmed when they give their answer.
* Cedric, who knows these woods, thinks he might know where the robber baron's fastness is, so the three boys go off to snoop.
* They find the hidden fastness in a cave Cedric knows the layout of, and cook up a plan that might possibly succeed. No guarantees. But it's the best plan they can come up with, so they go back to the lords' camp to propose it.
* Ooh, awkward. They take about four dozen men for a sneaky dawn attack, but halfway there Lord Mountjoy turns his ankle crossing a stream in the dark and can go neither forward nor back. He has to wait in the forest with two men till the attack is over. Ooh, suspense. (...that's not meant for sarcasm. I'm quite admiring this writer's knack for plottery. As is, I think, evident. *g*)
* The battle is quickly over -
bethinexile noted just the other day in a post on writing fight scenes that they should be clearly written, exciting, but brief, and this one qualifies on all three counts - and Lady Elizabeth is properly thankful, forgiving Dickon and the Mountjoys freely. But narrative tension remains till the end of the chapter (we're only about halfway through the book here) because we don't yet know if Lord Mountjoy is okay.* All right, now he's fine, it's a year later, Cedric is officially Dickon's squire, and there's a peasants' revolt going on to the south. What a lot of pacing! :-)
* A man-at-arms who's escaped the revolt somehow happens to know how it actually started - by the local lord being high-handed and also lied to by his steward, and accidentally killing a serf who wouldn't have his cottage used as a hunting base while the serf's wife was dying. Said man-at-arms turns up at Castle Mountjoy to ask for help, being wounded, and also to tell this story, because of Plot. *g*
* So then a messenger turns up to ask Lord Mountjoy for volunteer archers to help quell the revolt, and oh by the way there's a reward... so Lord Mountjoy asks Cedric "would you like to lead the volunteers and win honor and fame and also gold?" And Cedric says no. There ensues this great big quarrel over the rights of a lord versus the rights of a serf, though Lord Mountjoy's side could be a bit more convincingly argued, if you ask me, O writer of the book.
* Heehee, Dickon's mother Lady Kate doesn't get much to do in this book, but she could use to have a book of her own. She just keeps trying to break up the squabble until she succeeds. Temporarily. ;P
* Okay, Wiki is after telling me this book is set before 1215! O_O No wonder there's all this squibble being set up between (it's said) the old Saxon laws of freehold and trial-by-jury etc, and the more Norman strict-overlordship stuff that I can't remember the proper French name of.
* Now Lord Mountjoy is all "I can't have anybody around here under my protection who's going to be speaking against loyalty to their liege lord, Cedric", and Cedric is "okay, I'll just be leaving then." So he leaves.
* And now, some time later, news comes that Old Marvin the archer, who went to visit his dying brother on another lord's land, has been badly wounded in a scuffle there. The other lord's son - whose name was Boris for reasons nobody specifies, oh stereotyping(?) - took a notion to steal Marvin's just-dead brother's savings and wager it at gambling with some other lordlings, since he'd lost all his own stuff and nobody at the table would take any more IOUs.
* So old Marvin and a "stranger youth" who was staying with him in Marvin's brother's cottage, fought the lordlings and were both sorely wounded - the stranger lad apparently to the death. At which narratively apropos moment we learn that his name was Cedric! What... I don't even. O_O We're only at 59%!
* Okay, Cedric's not quite dead, but isn't expected to live the day out. So Lord Mountjoy hastens off to apologize to him, because apparently the principle of "a man's home is his castle" means more when you know the people involved. Sorry, I'm just a bit snarky about people like that. ;P Personal reasons.
* And Cedric is still alive, and on being apologized to, says he has no plans to die anytime soon, because awww, they like him after all. ^_^ And apparently now he's going to be all better. Sorry, it's just a bit hyper-cute; I do like it, it's just a little more handwavey Friendship Is Magic than I'd come to expect from this author. O_O
* Ooh, and now the Welsh are attacking. And we learn that the current king is Richard the Lion-Hearted, just crowned, and gathering forces for his Crusade, so that there aren't a whole lot of people around to fight back the Welsh invaders. So the lords who are directly under attack are calling a big muster of everybody they can, to come help fight.
* And because of reasons, the main lord calling the muster wants EVERYBODY mounted - no foot-soldiers even as archers - so that they can chase the Welsh raiders on their mountain ponies wherever they go. I think this lord is dumb, but whatevs.
* I think Dickon thinks this lord's command is dumb too, because he dwells a bit on how scroungy are some of the horses the lower-class archers have found to ride.
* Wow, Cedric and Dickon are nineteen years old already, and Geoffrey is eighteen. This book is moving fast, but the author always notes how old people are and what time of year it is before it's important. There's none of this "wait, they're how old already?" that I remember from reading some books (like Jane Eyre) when I was a kid. Admittedly I probably didn't read Jane Eyre very thoroughly, being four at the time... ANYWAY. *g*
* Awww, and Dickon thinks at first that it'll be an easy battle and home again. :P The tone here is very - I don't know, I'm suddenly reminded this was written only a few years after WWI. :-( Mr Marshall wasn't in the war as far as I can find out (he apparently worked as a shipbuilder, Wiki says), but it can't have been fun staying home either. :P
* Heehee, there's a very fine line for Dickon-the-narrator to walk here between proper historical classism, saying Cedric acts like a gentleman rather than a churl, and American-writer democratic equality. And he just about pulls it off. I approve. O_O
* Dickon's father being clever and strategic as usual, he suggests a move that lets our English heroes' army cut off the Welsh marauders halfway through fleeing across a rocky ford; and the battle begins. Ooh, this writing - excellently visual, as is standard here. :D
* Cedric and the archers cleverly keep the far half of the Welsh army from re-crossing the river to aid the near half in close combat. THIS IS ALL THE BEST WRITING I DO THINK, HOW IS THIS GUY NOT BETTER KNOWN. *flails*
* And now the near half of the Welsh raiders have been killed or scattered... but the English dudes want to take down the far half as well. So they're chasing them into a rocky defile. I do not know that this will end well.
* Hrm! Once again the archers manage to save the day, being sent in to shoot down the less-well-armed Welshmen who are bottlenecked in the pass to hold back the English fighters. And once again our heroes ride forward, keeping a keen eye out for ambushes, because we're getting into the mountains proper here. *squee detailed mountains* Sorry, geology major. ;-) *ahem*
* Ooh, thunderstorm! Night watches! But the night passes fairly uneventfully. Man, you never know with this book, though. ;-)
* Oopsie. The Welsh have taken the pass behind them and they're all trapped in the mountains. Wow. Howwww is this book not better known; it's way more suspenseful than the much-cited "chariot race in Ben Hur". ;P
* Eeee. Dickon's father knows a back way out of the mountains! And one which won't be easy to hold against them. It's called "The Pass of Eagles", mmmm classy names. ;D So the lord who called the muster, being not completely incompetent, acknowledges himself outmaneuvered and starts leading his army to this Pass of Eagles and - hopefully - out of the mountains again before the Welsh leader can trap them completely.
* Ooh, wow, the Welsh army is there before them, and this is one of the best-laid-out battle scenes I have ever read EVER. Everything is very clearly described, briefly but well, and then the battle actually starts: messy and gory and this guy definitely was thinking about World War I, I'll warrant you. This is no glory-of-war armchair adventurer's writing.
* And Dickon is pretty sure they're all going to be killed before they can get through the pass, when once again Cedric saves the day: he's had all his archers dismount and scramble up the gorse-covered hills where no horse can go but lightly-armed foot-soldiers just barely can, and now they're sending mass fire down into the Welsh army, who can't manage to take them out. So the battle turns in favor of the English army, and they get safely home again.
* And then Dickon and Geoffrey and Cedric are all knighted for being awesome. XD And still there is more book!
* Now it is Chapter 11, and King Richard is off on Crusade, and John Lackland is Regent. (I bet when I finish this book I rewatch the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, because of reasons. *g*)
* "Many of the high places of Church and State were filled with [King John's] favorites"... *koff* Uh, NO. Thomas a Becket, anybody? Investiture Contest? ...do people who weren't raised in the Be A Catholic Martyr Like These Guys ideology really not know that English kings trying to appoint churchmen was a huuuuuuuuuge scuffle in this era, and one people got killed over, not a throwaway line about corruption in high places? *headshake* Research, sir. Do you some.
* And the seasons pass, and the boys grow up more. And one day Cedric is all fallen-faced, and tells Dickon (now Sir Richard of Mountjoy) that one of Cedric's old friends - of low degree but hey, so's Cedric - has been thrown in prison for not letting a bully of a bailiff take ALL his cart-pulling cattle at harvest time. :P
* So Cedric cooks up this plan to rescue his friend from the castle tower with a rope. (Luckily the guy isn't in the actual dungeons because they're being remodeled or something. BAHAHA.) And Dickon agrees to come along and help.
* Oh loooooooool Cedric, you are cute. A little too clever for your own good occasionally (as now), but really, really cute and extremely smart. Also, it is good always to have more plans when the first ones go wrong.
* Ooh, suspense. I like that Cedric isn't continuously as hyper-competent as he might have been - he's only in his early twenties at oldest, it's logical that he'd be muffing up some of the time.
* Aw, man, Cedric's friend dies in the escape attempt. *sadface* I mean, I appreciate that the whole book isn't just EVERYTHING COMES OUT PERFECTLY AT LAST, but it is still sadface.
* And now it's a year later. Wow. ...King Richard is back from the war (no mention of Blondel, but I squee *yay Blondel* on principle, because he rocks), and one of the knights has talked the King into giving Cedric lands and a manor house that were standing vacant since the dudes of the family died fighting the Welsh! Cedric just keeps getting AWESOMENESS happening to him. And so Sir Richard of Mountjoy and Sir Cedric Delaroche of Grimsby are riding out hunting on a fall day having fun. :D
* "Already we had meat enough for the roasting at our noon-tide campfire, and we little cared for more." Aw, early 20th century American conservationism. I do approve. ;-)
* Ooh, and now they're helping a runaway thrall (...is thrall the proper term, even, in England here? What's the difference between a thrall and a serf? *must research*), and getting themselves rather in trouble.
* HAHAHAHAHA. Cedric knows that the thrall's master did some scheming with Prince John to keep Richard from coming back to his throne; the master threatened to tattle on Cedric for protecting his runaway, and Cedric is flat-out blackmailing him to keep quiet, in return. :D It's always fun when evil characters don't manage to get the upper hand in a "he did something worse!" contest.
* Now it is apparently quite a bit later and we are going to have the Magna Carta signed! O_O I still think the details of daily life have been a lot more fifteenth-century throughout the book, but it's still fairly fun just to have this going on. XD
* Flashbacks to the recent scuffling: Sir Richard and Sir Cedric are still romping about with their strategems and disguises and so forth, winning battles in unexpected ways, and everyone thinks well of them, so they are going to be sent as part of a group of five lords from the westlands to deal with the King. Or write the Magna Carta, or something. (Wait, does that mean he's going to cut out Archbishop Stephen Langton as the person who made sure the Magna Carta secures the rights of all free men and not just the landed lords? Don't do that, sir, I beg you. Stephen Langton is ALL OF THE COOL, you had darn better leave him in. Please?)
* Ooh, this is not good. We have here a "smiling, crafty, smooth-spoken" abbot only interested in his own abbey's... uh, interests, and the rest of the group aren't churchmen. Don't be a stinker, sir, please.
* Okay, both Wiki and this book are confusing the heck out of me. Dickon and Cedric suspect the Abbot, who's basing the Magna Carta on the old charter of Henry I, of "secret communications with the Archbishop, who was still nominally of the King's party"... but Wiki says "Stephen [Langton] now became a leader in the struggle against King John. At a council of churchmen at Westminster on 25 August 1213, to which certain barons were invited, he read the text of the charter of Henry I and called for its renewal. In the sequel, Stephen's energetic leadership and the Barons' military strength forced John to sign the Magna Carta (15 June 1215)." I do not appreciate this evil-making of All The Churchmen, O writer, if that is indeed what you are doing. You've done such an excellent job so far; don't spoil it? :P
* Yup, Cedric's the one who gets the line about "any free man". Phbbbbbttt. I am disappoint.
* Hm. All right, Cedric's proposal to change the line to "any free man" doesn't pass; he's rewritten the charter to include provisions for making the King follow it, but now he and Dickon and a couple dozen of their men-at-arms are taking a long and dangerous ride to some disputed castles, for reasons I don't understand... but if there's one thing I'm sure of, it is that Cedric has a cunning plan. XD
* And now they're all disguised as pilgrims and - BWAHAHA - going to liberate the Abbot's abbey for him so he will be beholden to them and vote on their side! I think. Something like that. I still don't approve of erasing one of history's most awesome churchmen, but I do like my disguised sneaky shenanigans. :-)
* They capture the abbot King John has put up instead of the one working with the barons, and try to carry him away, but one of the younger monks from the abbey gets away and gives the alarm, so now there are soldiers from the castle coming to cut them off at the
* They fight their way through and get back tidily, and in the morning... oh wow. Cedric tells the proper Abbot a pack of half-lies, as much as to say "I have the King's Abbot imprisoned and if you vote the way I want you to I'll hold him till you can get back to your abbey, otherwise not." Hm. I am not so sure of the ethics or nobility of this; it's a bit un-knightly, I'd say, myself. Very clever, but slightly underhanded.
* Hrm. Yeah, I'm not so sure about all this. I think it would have done better to let Stephen Langton keep his place in history, and not have quiiiiite such a sneaky knight win the day. It's not proper. *is opinionated* Especially since the book ends with a narratorial speech by Dickon pretty obviously looking forward to OMG AMERICA WILL BE AWESOME...
Warning, this book is FULL OF PLOT TWISTS and I pretty much spoil them all. If you prefer to read well-plotted stuff unspoiled, you might want to wait for the review post... or just read the book on Gutenberg. It's worth your time. ;-) The ending is a bit weird and un-historical, but overall it is an extremely good book.