Now I See The True Old Times Are Dead

But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walk'd,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
Morte d'Arthur, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Having finished reading Harry Blamires' The Kirkbride Conversations, my interest took a little turn and I pulled Hope Muntz's The Golden Warrior out of the stack of books I want to read. It is a good, sturdy-looking book, hardback and royal blue, dedicated (to my heightened interest) to none other than "The Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill." I plan on reading such works as The Conquering Family and When Christ and His Saints Slept, so I thought it would be logical to start the race off with Harold and William. I am told that the beginning (which this is, strictly, not) is a very good place to start.

This is strictly not the beginning of the saga. Enormous figures have already strode across the haunted hills of England and the prologue, which I am in the midst of, is summing up the imprint of those giants. I have a suspicion that, if anyone cared, you could do a sort of Godfather-styled retelling of Earl Godwin and his family, but perhaps that is a proposition for another day... Now, in the Earl's confiscated hall at Guildford King Edward and his cousin Duke William Bastard (an un-charming if accurate appellation) have sat down to dinner and, under the natural genius of the hall's former owner, have fallen back on accounts of Godwin's heavy-handed dealings. I already know a little bit of all this so I was jigging slightly in my chair, reading along with an eye to get to the Hector of the tale (don't hit me, Abigail), when the Norman Achilles, a dark, terrible kind of figure, says darkly of the exiled Godwin:

"He is a man who will dare all things."

I am always on the look-out for inspiration. You never know where it might show up and you have to be ready for it. This, on the other hand, was a summing-up (far better than I could have done, though I tried) of my own Plenilune antagonist. Across nine hundred forty-something years I could still feel the fear, not of some over-bearing villain, but of a foe to be reckoned with. As I pen-stab at my own story, trying to translate it out of my own mind into ink, I feel among the lords of Plenilune that same worry: that the wolf, which does not sleep, will come out of the dark, and will dare all things.

So here is to Hope Muntz, and Duke William, and Earl Godwin for that matter. What a horrible time of horrible men! They make good models for stories, even if they made bad men. Well, with histories like these, who needs novels?

"I smell a rat."
Centurion of Darkling-law, Plenilune