At dawn on Easter morning 1343, a marauding band of French raiders arrives by boat to ambush the coastal English village of Hookton. To brave young Thomas, the only survivor, the horror of the attack is epitomized in the casual savagery of a particular black-clad knight, whose flag -- three yellow hawks on a blue field -- presides over the bloody affair. As the killers sail away, Thomas vows to avenge the murder of his townspeople and to recapture a holy treasure that the black knight stole from the church.To do this, Thomas of Hookton must first make his way to France; So in 1343 he joins the army of King Edward III as it is about to invade the continent -- the beginning of the Hundred Years War. A preternaturally gifted bowman, Thomas quickly becomes recognized as one of England's most deadly archers in King Edward's march across France. Yet he never stops scanning the horizon for his true enemy's flag.When Thomas saves a young Frenchwoman from a bloodthirsty crowd, her father -- French nobleman Sir Guillaume d'Evecque -- rewards his bravery by joining him in the hunt for the mysterious dark knight and the stolen holy relic. What begins as a search for vengeance will soon prove the beginning of an even higher purpose: the quest for the Holy Grail itself.

    . . A LARD raised his head. It was a pleasant voice, though a little drunken, and the words came clearly enough, a trifle blurred about the con sonants, to the high window of the Maison du Poirier. The window was open, for the June night was hot, and there were few noises after ten oclock in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame. Time goes by, And naught do I. Time comes again, . . . Et ne fais rien Abelards smile broadened. I am very sure, my friend, said he, that you do not. But at any rate he had found a good tune. The listeners ear was quick. He began not ing it on the margin of his manuscript, while his brain busied itself fitting Latin words to the original a pity to waste so good a tune and so profound a sentiment on a language that was the breath of a day, Fugit hora, Absque mora, Nihil facio . . . Not to that tune. The insinuating, if doomed, vernacu lar lilted again. Abelard realized that he was spoiling the 3 PETER ABELARD margin of his Commentary on Ezekiel, and turned back resolutely. Now, as Augustine says, our concern with any man is not with what eloquence he teaches, but with what evidence. But the thread of his argument was broken he got up and came over to the window. The singing had stopped, but he could see the tonsured head below him, glimmeringlike a mushroom in the dusk, while the legs tacked uncertainly across the broad pavement of the Parvis Notre Dame on their way to the cheerful squalors of the Petit Pont. Suddenly they halted the moon had come out from a drifting haze, and the singer, pausing on the edge of a pool of light, peered at it anxiously, and then lifted up his eyes. The voice rose again, chastened, this time in the venerable cadences of the hymn for dawn Jam lucis orto sidere Statini oportct bibere. The blasphemous pup, said Abelard. He leaned out, to hear the rest of it Now risen is the star of day. Let us arise and drink straightway. That we in peace this day may spend, Drink we and drink, nor make an end. This was a better parody, because a simpler, than the one he had made upon it himself ten years ago, to illus trate for his students the difference between the acci dents and the essential, the accidents being the words, the essential the tune. Lord, the Blessed Gosvins face when he began singing it Doubtless he would be the Blessed Gosvin some day so holy a youth could not fail of a 4 THE CLOISTER OF NOTRE DAME sanctified old age. St. Gosvin perhaps the youngster was Prior already at ... he had forgotten where. The im pudent, smooth-faced prig. Abelards mind was running down a channel it knew and did not like the moment in the classroom at St. Genevieve, when Gosvins reedy treble had interrupted the resonant voice from the rostrum with those innocent questionings, answered contemptuously, the masters eyes half averted and his mind less than half attentive, till the sudden horrid silence brought him to his senses and he realized that he was trapped, even as he had so often trapped that good old goat, William of Champeaux. He had recovered, magnificently but for the moment he had felt the hounds at his throat. And the cheering had been too vehement they knew. Somebody on the lie de Cite that night made a song about David and Goliath, not a very good song, but the name had stuck to him since, though not many remembered the origin of it. A pity, all the same, that Gosvin took to the cloister. It w r ould be very pleasant to have him lecturing to empty benches at St. Genevieve, while at Notre Dame the stu dents wedged open the doors and stood thick on the stairs...

    In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, usually violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods’ priests are worrying. Edwin of Northumbria plots to become overking of the Angles, ruthlessly using every tool at his disposal: blood, bribery, belief.Hild is the king’s youngest niece. She has the powerful curiosity of a bright child, a will of adamant, and a way of seeing the world—of studying nature, of matching cause with effect, of observing human nature and predicting what will happen next—that can seem uncanny, even supernatural, to those around her. She establishes herself as the king’s seer. And she is indispensable—until she should ever lead the king astray. The stakes are life and death: for Hild, her family, her loved ones, and the increasing numbers who seek the protection of the strange girl who can read the world and see the future.Hild is a young woman at the heart of the violence, subtlety, and mysticism of the early medieval age—all of it brilliantly and accurately evoked by Nicola Griffith’s luminous prose. Recalling such feats of historical fiction as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, Hild brings a beautiful, brutal world—and one of its most fascinating, pivotal figures, the girl who would become St. Hilda of Whitby—to vivid, absorbing life.

    

    Years pass, and Guinevere becomes a great beauty, riding free across Northern Wales on her beloved horse. She is entranced by the tales of the valorous Arthur, a courageous warrior who seems to Guinevere no mere man, but a legend. Then she finds herself betrothed to that same famous king, a hero who commands her willing devotion. Just as his knights and all his subjects, she falls under Arthur’s spell. At the side of King Arthur, Guinevere reigns strong and true. Yet she soon learns how the dark prophecy will reveal itself. She is unable to conceive. Arthur’s only true heir is Mordred, offspring of a cursed encounter with the witch Morgause. Now Guinevere must make a fateful choice: She decides to raise Mordred, teaching him to be a ruler and to honor Camelot. She will love him like a mother. Mordred will be her greatest joy–and the key to her ultimate downfall. Return to a time of legend–the days of Guinevere and Arthur and the glory that was to become Camelot