The Stained Glass Window

by Penelope Lively, Ian McCaig (Illustrator)

This is the story of a knight and his lady. It is an old story, locked in the floating colours of a stained glass window, and nobody remembers it- until one day, for Jane, sitting in the pew beneath, the knight and the lady come to life...

56 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger.

Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra’s Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began.

She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List, and DBE in 2012.

Penelope Lively lives in London. She was married to Jack Lively, who died in 1998.

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 58-page, large print book for early readers tells the tale of a local knight "in a small town, somewhere in the middle of England", and a local girl who is his bethrothed. The girl is angry and unwilling to be wed.

She did not want to be married. She was very young and she wanted to run barefoot in the woods with her sister, and ride horses, and play: she did not want to be a lady and sit spinning and sewing. But her father wanted to build a friendship with the knight, whose lands lay next to his lands, and who had more horses, and more cattle and mills and woods than he had. A daughter, in those days, was not just a daughter: she was also a thing that could be used to buy other things, like a horse could be traded for sacks of corn or a fine hawk. A daughter could be used to buy more land, or powerful friends. The lady's father loved her, but he paid no attention to her sulks, and told her that she would have to be married and put up with it.

Neither is the bridegroom particularly happy.

The knight was not very pleased to be married, either. He, too, was young, and he did not much care for girls because he had had sisters who teased him and told tales of him to his parents.

(There are more and better reasons listed in the following sentences, but this one was my favourite).

Of course, as this book is about two figures set in glass in the local church window, facing each other lovingly since time immemorial, we can deduce that they do manage to get on with each other rather famously, in spite of an inauspicious start.

The brief story of their lives together as lord and lady outlines the structure of the feudal system, and the challenges and worries of the time (disease, famine, war, and the like). But soon the knight is called to ride with his baron to Jerusalem, to fight the Saracens in the Crusade to make the Holy Land safe for Christian pilgrims.

"Men come back from Crusades", said the lady, as bravely as she could ... He knew, and the lady knew also, that many of them did not come back.

A good third of the book now follows the knight as he crosses the sea to France, then on to Italy, and across the Mediterranean into the Levant, where the reader is given a good overview of how the battles and skirmishes with the Saracens were fought.

They had been travelling many months now, and the knight thought less of the lady and of his home because each day was a battle against heat and thirst and weariness. Riding under the fierce sun, with his skin on fire where the hot mail rubbed it, the flies swarming on his face where the sweat trickled from his brow, his throat parched and his limbs aching, he thought only of water and of food, which had somehow to be dragged from this bare place for the great straggling crowd of men and horses that was the Crusade.
Men were hard in those days. Hard on themselves and upon each other. Many Crusaders died of disease or of hunger and of thirst and their comrades moved on without them.

We hear of barons dropping out, claiming castles and calling themselves princes; of the massive losses of the armies of the Crusaders; of poor organization; of desertion in the face of insurmountable odds. We also visit the impenetrable and impressive fortress of Krak (near modern-day Homs, in Syria), a Crusader stronghold, which is described in (comparatively) great detail.

This story is hard to categorize, in terms of which gender of young reader it would most appeal to (and this is not a practice I believe in to begin with, so I'm unlikely to be deft at it). It was probably written with the view to appeal generally to students and to be used educational applications. It begins with a quick introduction to the stone church and the men who built it.

The church was built nearly one thousand years ago by men who carried the stone on their backs, in baskets, up fragile ladders. They could not read or write, these men, but they knew how to build a church that would stand long after they were no longer there to see it.

Then we are introduced to some of the current attendees of today's Sunday service, one of which is Jane, who is not lost in her own thoughts, but is staring at the stained glass window and wondering about the story behind the two figures.

In attempting to avoid spoilers, I would say it slips back into the sentimental and romantic briefly at the conclusion, as we are brought back to the present time and Jane watching the stained glass figures. There is some 'miraculous' content in this story (in two places), but this is not heavily religious in theme in spite of the context (or at least, is done with a very light hand).

I tracked down this rarer book of Lively's because I love her children's novels. There's just something about her style that really appeals - she manages to capture the imagination and emotions without over-playing her hand. Even in this sentimental story, she is not soppy, and she leaves a good amount open-ended for the reader's consideration.

I would like to recommend this book for fans of Penelope Lively to pass on to the early readers in their lives. It would also make an excellent quick read for a child learning about the Crusades or British ecclesiastical history, though I rather was surprised that it was a local lord and lady depicted in the windows and not the patron Saint. Perhaps this is not unheard of - I do not know.

This edition (ISBN: 0200722646) has dimensions of 19 x 12.5 x 0.5cm: I suspect it would potentially slip inside a hymnal or pew Bible, as a pleasant surprise to a bored child during a traditional church wedding. ;)

[Neon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, graceful story with an easy to read way about it. I've always loved tales of love being separated by war only to be returned. Would read it again, easily.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most deceptively profound books I've ever read. You can read it online for free at archive.org. Basically, a young girl observes the entire origin story for a knight and medieval lady depicted in stained glass form on her church's windows. It is beautiful, moving, heartrending, and historical, full of Crusades and romance and miracles. Gobsmacked right now.

[Melainebooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un très beau petit roman sur la puissance de l'amour au temps des chevaliers et des croisades.