The future was a place of uncertain promise in the best of times, where hope and optimism warred with doubt and despair, and there were those who fought such battles in the streets, or in the home, with the enemy no longer the shadow in one’s own soul, but someone else – a neighbour, a wife or a husband, a liege or a peasant. Doubt is the enemy. Despair a weakness, and hope becomes not something to strive for, but a virtue eager to draw blood from every sceptic.
