When Christ and His Saints Slept Quotes

“I inhale hope with every breath I take.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“…she remembered watching a summer sunset from this very spot. Not so long ago; just a lifetime.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“For every wound, the ointment of time.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“…a cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed...”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“It was just like him, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him; she found herself believing in happy endings, too.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Why is it honesty when a man speaks his mind and madness when a woman does?”
― sharon kay penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“...Life without sinning was like food without salt, pure but tasteless.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“In time of war, the Devil makes more room in Hell.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“When people want to insult a man, they cast slurs upon his courage. But the worst they can say about a woman is to impugn her chastity.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“You might as well face it. You're not going to be able to fight for the crown. You'll just have to grit your teeth and let us hand it over to you at the bargaining table.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“It was a basic tenet of faith with men of Ranulf’s class that a knight, trained in the ways of war since boyhood, could easily vanquish lesser foes, as much a belief in the superiority of blood and breeding as in the benefits of battle lore and killing competence. Ranulf had accepted this comforting conviction, too, but no one seemed to have told his assailants that they were inferior adversaries.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“But Lord Harry has a good heart. Moreover, he truly likes women."
"Most men do, lass," Ranulf pointed out in amusement, and was surprised when she shook her head again.
"No, my Lord." She contradicted him with an odd smile, one that was both cynical and sad. "Most men like to lay with women.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Yesterday I heard some of the castle servants talking about a funeral for one of the stable lads. He went skating last week on the pond in the village, but the ice was not thick enough and he drowned. I like to skate on the ice,too, Papa, have my own pair of bone skates. I could drown crossing the Channel as Uncle Robert fears... or I could drown back in Angers, if I was unlucky like that stable lad." Geoffrey's mouth twitched. "God help me," he said, "I've sired a lawyer!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“She wanted to order him clapped in irons, as he so deserved. But she was stopped by what she saw in the faces of the watching men: disapproval, instinctive and involuntary, but disapproval, nonetheless. They were not comfortable when power was wielded by a woman, not at a man’s expense, a man who had just acquitted himself so spectacularly at Lincoln, winning their reluctant respect in a way she knew she never could.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Padarn was studying Rhiannon intently, as if seeing her truly for the first time. "May I ask you a question...a serious one? What is the worst of being blind?"
Ranulf had wondered that himself. He expected Rhiannon to need time to think it over, but she answered immediately. "Other people. It would be so much easier to accept my blindness if only they could accept it, too. But they shy away as if it were contagious. Or else they assume that since I cannot see, I cannot hear, either, and they shout as if I were quite deaf."
"Or they do not speak to her at all," Eleri said indignantly. "Rhiannon will be standing right at my side, but I'll be the one they ask, 'Has she always been blind?' God Above, but the world is full of fools!" And in the clearing by Rhaeadr Ewynnol, there was none to dispute her.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“There was no sleight-of-hand, she insisted, none of the "tricks of the trade" practiced by traveling jongleurs. It was just a matter of learning to heed her other senses, to rely upon memory, and to be patient. She made it seem so easy, and yet Ranulf knew it was not. He no longer saw her achievements as uncanny, even miraculous. But once he understood just how hard-won her victories were, he felt such admiration for her courage and perseverance that pity was crowded out. He thought of her now as " cousin Rhiannon who is blind," not as "blind Rhiannon," and so began what was to be one of the most rewarding and significant friendships of his life”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Stretching his legs toward the fire, Ranulf massaged his aching knee and watched the children as they ate their fill, probably for the first time in their lives. IT was Wednesday fast day, but he'd made a conscious decision to violate the prohibition against eating flesh; he could always do penance once he got back to his own world. Now it seemed more important to feed Simon and Jennet the best meal he could, and the innkeeper had served up heaping portions of salted pork, a thick pottage of peas and beans, and hot, flat cakes of newly baked bread, marked with Christ's Cross. To Ranulf, it was poor fare, and he ended up sharing most of it with Loth. But Simon and Jennet savored every mouthful, scorning spoons and scooping the food up with their fingers, as if expecting to have their trenchers snatched away at any moment. And Ranulf learned more than night about hunger and need than in all of his twenty-five years. What would become of them? How could they hope to reach Cantebrigge? And if by God's Grace, they somehow did, what if this uncle of their was not there? They'd never seen the man, knew only what their father had told them, that soon after Simon's birth, a peddler had brought them a message from Jonas, saying he'd settled in Cantebrigge.
That confirmed Ranulf's suspicions: two brothers fleeing serfdom, one hiding out in the Fens, the other taking the bolder way, for an escaped villein could claim his freedom if he lived in a chartered borough for a year and a day. It was a pitiful family history, an unwanted glimpse into a world almost as alien to Ranulf as Cathay. But like it or not, he was caught up now in this hopeless odyssey of Abel the eelman's children. In an unusually morose and pessimistic mood, he wondered how many Simons and Jennets would be lost to the furies unleashed by Geoffrey the Mandeville's rebellion.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Henry's qualms about not being recognized now seemed very foolish to him, for he was suddenly sure that his mother would have known him anywhere, on any street in Christendom. He liked the way her hair fell loose about her shoulders, black and shiny like the polished jet in the hilt of his uncle's dagger, and he liked it, too, that she did not pounce on him, swooping him up in one of those tearful, perfumed embraces that squeezed the air out of him. HE did not want her to act like the mothers of his friends. She said his name, making it sound like the "Amen" that ended prayers, and he was drawn forward into the room, straight as an arrow toward its target.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“They both laughed, and then Maude surprised herself by saying, "You've been a good friend, Brien, for longer than I can remember. You helped me get through the worst time of my life, and I never thanked you . . . not until now."
She did not need to elaborate; he understood. Their memories were suddenly functioning as one, taking them back more than thirteen years. She had been twenty-five, and no longer able to resist her father's will, agreeing at last to wed Geoffrey of Anjou. On her betrothal journey from England to Normandy, the old king had entrusted her to the custody of his eldest son, Robert, and his foster son, Brien. They had carried out the king's charge, escorted Maude to Rouen for the plight troth, and the following year she and Geoffrey had been wed at Le Mans.
"Why should you thank me? I did as the king bade, turned you over to Geoffrey of Anjou, when I ought to have hidden you away where he never could have found you."
Maude was started. "You did what you could, Brien, you made me feel--without a word being said-- that you understood, that you were on my side. That may not sound like much, but it was."
"If I had it to do over again . . ." His smile held no humor, just a disarming flash of self-mockery. "I suppose I'd do the same, however much I'd like to think I would not. But my regrets would be so much greater, knowing as I do now how miserable he'd make you. I never forgave your father for that, for forcing you to wed a man so unworthy of you--" He stopped abruptly, and a tense, strained silence followed, which neither of them seemed able to break.
Maude was staring at Brien, a man she'd known all her life, and seeing a stranger. Had she lost her wits altogether? How could she have confided him him like this ? She'd long ago learned to keep her fears private, her pain secret, all others at a safe distance, yet here in a barren winter garden, she'd lowered her defenses, allowing Brien to get a glimpse into her very soul. Even worse, she'd seen into his soul, too, discovered what she ought never to have known. She felt suddenly as flustered as a raw, green girl, she who was a widow, wife, and a mother, a woman just a month shy of her thirty-ninth birthday, a woman who could be queen.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“By their society's rigid standards, Annora was no beauty, for she bore no resemblance whatsoever to the tall, willowy, golden-haired maidens so admired by their minstrels and poets, fair maidens demure and docile and unfailingly deferential to male authority. No bards would be singing Annora's praises; she was short and dark and stubborn and so volatile that her brothers called her Hellcat.
So did Ranulf, but on his lips, it became an endearment. He wished now that he could have unbraided her hair; when loose, it put him in mind of a hot summer night, so black and sultry-soft was it.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“I know you do not care much for such revelries, but trust me—this one you will enjoy, Harry. You and I will sit at the high table, eating porpoise and swan, whilst we watch my male kinfolk eating humble pie!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“More than men had died at Lincoln. It seemed to Stephen that reality was a casualty, too, for nothing made sense anymore. What was he doing here in the solar of Lincoln Castle, bleeding all over the Earl of Chester’s wife?”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“They had gathered at Eastcheap to wait. At this time of day, the marketplace ought to have been thronged with people looking for bargains, moving from stall to stall, examining the fresh fish, choosing the plumpest hens, buying candles and pepper and needles. The stalls were open, but the fishmongers and cordwainers and butchers were doing no business, despite the growing crowd. The sun was hot, flies were thick, and the odors pungent; no one complained, though. They talked and gossiped among themselves, strangers soon becoming friends, for the normally fractious and outspoken Londoners had forgotten their differences, at least for a day, united in a common purpose and determined to revel in their triumph, for they were pragmatic enough to understand this might be their only one. Now they joked and swapped rumors and waited with uncommon patience, and at last they heard a cry, swiftly picked up and echoed across the marketplace: “She is coming!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“He'd never seen one so vibrant, though, or so vividly compelling... those glowing green eyes sparkling with sunlight and curiosity and silent laughter, and when she glanced in Henry's direction, she held his gaze, a look that was both challenging and enigmatic... He was utterly certain that this was Eleanor of Aquitaine, and no less sure that the French King must be one of God's greatest fools.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Fear cannot always be banished by force of will.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“A joke about the gallows would find no favor in the house of a man who'd been hanged.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“A blade that cannot bend will eventually break.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“It felt at times as if the very center of his world had become hollow, and try as he might to fill it with faith, the emptiness lingered. He was not sure why his faith was not enough, although he suspected that it was because it had come to him so late in life. If he were God, he'd look askance, too, at deathbed conversions. No matter what the priests might tell him, piety must lose some of its lustre when it was not altogether voluntary.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Stephen reached out to her then, entwined her fingers in his. "It was not difficult for me. You must understand that. For me, it was an easy choice, for it was the only choice."
"I know," she said again, and coming into his arms she clung tightly, resting her cheek against his chest as she sought to comprehend the ultimate irony, she who had no irony at all in her soul, that the qualities she most loved in Stephen were the very ones that were crippling his kingship.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept

“Women are the ones who must bear children, suffering the travails of the birthing chamber, and indeed, often dying to give life. And yet we have no say about what happens to the child afterward. It would never even have occurred to James Marshal to consult his wife ere he dared Steven to hang their son. No more than Louis cared how he grieved Petra by putting her children's future into the hands of a self-seeking lout like Waleran Beaumont. It is so unfair, Harry, so outrageously unfair.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, When Christ and His Saints Slept