More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 14 - November 6, 2020
Lust does not vanish with happiness, Lady. Besides, what merit is there in fidelity if it is never tested?’
‘It’s my hearing, Derfel. Quite gone.’ He banged an ear. ‘Deaf as a bucket. It’s age, Derfel, sheer old age. I decay visibly.’ He did nothing of the sort.
panoply
‘Don’t be absurd, Gawain,’ Merlin snapped. ‘Derfel’s fame hasn’t gone anywhere, except maybe to his fat head.
Sit! You will find the floor quite comfortable.
‘Several, probably,’ I answered. ‘He was forever raping girls.’ ‘As kings do,’ Merlin said carelessly, ‘and princes too. Do you rape girls, Gawain?’
‘especially ones named Cywwylog. Find her, Gawain.’
the scarlet whore of Babylon.
it was with us at Dun Caric.
He bared his soul only to Ceinwyn,
Their friendship with arthur is so beautiful
I reminded Arthur of an ancient oath that had been buried on a stone beside a far-off tree.
We call that stolen territory Lloegyr, the Lost Lands,
‘So what message,’ Aelle demanded, ‘does Arthur send?’ ‘Why should he send any?’ ‘Because you wouldn’t be here otherwise. You think you were whelped by a fool, boy?
He really is just so much better at writing than just about everyone else. Holy shit
‘My Lord King,’ a voice said behind me, ‘ordered me to kill you if I found you alone.’
This is not an accident. Its supposed to read like someone is callingn Prince Derfel, son of Alle, “King” after Derfel was just accepted by his father for the first time.
‘You owe me a hand, Derfel.’
I shall pay it with Hywelbane.’
‘Pliny mentions the phenomenon, but then he mentions so much that it’s very hard to know quite what to believe. Most of his notions are arrant nonsense, of course. All that rubbish about Druids cutting mistletoe on the sixth day of a new moon! I’d never do that, never! The fifth day, yes, and sometimes the seventh, but the sixth? Never! And he also recommends, as I recall, wrapping a woman’s breast band about the skull to cure an aching head, but the remedy doesn’t work. How could it? The magic is in the breasts, not in the band, so it is clearly far more efficacious to bury the aching head in
...more
‘What if he had never come?’ he asked in puzzlement. ‘Suppose the Christians were all ready, all in their best cloaks, all washed and scrubbed and praying, and then nothing happened?’ ‘Then in the year 501,’ I said, ‘there would be no Christians.’ Merlin shook his head. ‘I doubt that.
It is just that in Christianity it was the Son of God who was killed so that no one again would ever need to be knifed on an altar,
‘Cut it!’ she screamed. ‘This is a night for the death of kings’ sons!’
‘So unless we give Meurig the kingdom,’ I said angrily, ‘he won’t help us?’
This is 25%
have known, feared, dreamed and achieved. When you are in trouble it helps to discover someone who has been in the same predicament before. It explains things.’
‘Well? Go on.’ ‘Odi at amo,’ I quoted the unfamiliar words slowly, ‘excrucior.’ ‘Which means?’
‘Of the plague,’ I said. ‘It was a very normal death.’ Christ.
‘The women in your caer will know much more than I do,’ I said, ‘but whenever Ceinwyn gave birth we always made sure there was iron in the bed, women’s urine on the doorstep, mugwort on the fire, and, of course, we had a virgin girl ready to lift the newborn child from the birth-straw. Most important of all,’ I went on sternly, ‘there must be no men in the room.
We Christians, of course, do not believe that touching iron will affect any fortune, whether evil or good, but the nailhead on my desk is still much polished by my touching. ‘Is it true about the Saxons?’ I asked.
the stories that were attached to the valleys and hilltops have been lost as well.
he had seen a generation of children grow to adulthood in that time, but he still seemed like a visitor.
He showed no revulsion at such things in battle, but that, Ceinwyn declared, was because in battle it was men who were bloody and men who were fallible, and Galahad had never idealized men, only women.
That was the first time I saw Argante, Princess of the Uí Liatháin and Iseult’s sister, and in many ways she resembled the doomed Iseult.
Ah fuck. I can’t believe you’ve done this.
Gwydre, I saw, was staring in disbelief at his stepmother. She was not much older than Gwydre.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed.
Derfel isn’t married
‘Don’t you think there are more fires this year than last?’ she asked.
Fucking genius. Start with your girl being passive aggressive that you got wasted, but because thats a fine reason to be drunk, she just brings something up you’re supposed to do while you’re tryna be wasted, but she needs the last word. Then she says there seems to be more fires. And boom. Shit is hard
Or perhaps I knew that in this terrible time we needed every strong soul we could muster, and there were few souls as tough as that of the Princess Guinevere of Henis-Wyren.
Why does this asshole insist on giving me chills every few pages?
‘Fear? Oh, don’t fear, Derfel.’ She laughed with an exhilarating happiness. ‘You all forget how good Arthur is when nothing goes right. It will be a joy to watch him. So when do we leave?’
‘Nothing at all, Lady.’ She whooped like a girl and kicked back her heels,
Dude stop givingg me chills why is Gwen such an interesting character?
‘And soon the only people who can understand the intricacies of the harmony,’ Guinevere argued, ‘are other skilled craftsmen, and so you become ever more clever in an effort to impress your fellow poets, but you forget that no one outside the craft has the first notion of what you’re doing.
Guinevere had been clever enough to be kind to my daughters so that Morwenna and Seren both now slept on the ground beside her.
‘He certainly didn’t want her dead.’
I dunno arthurs been weird
‘You’ve got a spear!’ I snarled. ‘That gives you the right to choose what you want.’
Be mysterious, my dear, and never let men know what you’re thinking. Your power lies in the shadows, but in the sunlight men will always overcome you.’
‘Did I not name myself, child?’ Guinevere asked with a delicate scorn. ‘I’m the Princess Guinevere.’
‘If we share an enemy, Derfel,’ Guinevere said with a smile, ‘then that makes us allies at last. I like that.’
‘In a week,’ I said, ‘it will be a temple of Thunor and they’ll be sacrificing your children where you stand. Are there spears here?’
A king could let his champion fight but a warlord had no business sending men where he would not go himself, and so I closed the cheekpieces of my helmet, touched a gloved hand to the pork bones in Hywelbane’s hilt, then pressed on my mail coat to feel the small lump made by Ceinwyn’s brooch.
This is probably the most epic sentence ever written
but I had no objection to fighting an enemy champion.
‘My name,’ I answered him formally, ‘is Derfel, son of Aelle, King of the Aenglish. And I am the man who put the scar on Liofa’s cheek.’
‘Don’t use it in battle,’ I said, ‘but you can chop wood with it.’
A man should love peace, but if he cannot fight with all his heart then he will not have peace.
‘Over two thousand men, they reckon,’ Bors said. ‘I have less than three hundred.’ Bors grimaced. ‘But Arthur’s here, yes?’ I shook my head. ‘No.’
