The Gleemaiden by
Sylvian Hamilton
hbk out February 04
Published by Review
at £12.99
This is the third of Sylvian Hamilton's tales of Sir Richard Straccan and I
hope that there will be another thirty! She is a delightful writer - witty,
colourful and exciting - and her books cry out to be read at a single sitting.
The time is the reign of bad King John and her hero is Straccan, a former
Crusader whose current profession is the acquisition of holy relics for sale to
religious houses. He has a daughter Gilla and a fiancé Janiva, both of whom
have the gift of second sight, for the author adds a little magic here and there
to good effect.
The plot is many-stranded, but these all come together very satisfactorily.
In a previous story, Straccan killed a man in Sanctuary, but he cannot get
absolved from this sin because England is under the Pope's interdict and the
church is paralysed. He strikes a bargain with the Bishop of Winchester, in
which he will be absolved if he oversees the transport of a huge bell from
London to Durham - a journey of many weeks which turns out to be a
nightmare series of accidents and incidents.
Interwoven with this task is a spin-off of the Cathar heresy in southern
France, cruelly crushed by the Bishop of Toulouse and Simon de Montfort.
A kinsman of one of Straccan's ex-Templar friends is a small boy, David,
who is rescued from France by Miles, another of Straccan's friends, along
with Roslyn, a gleemaiden who gives the book its title. However, the
dastardly Bishop of Toulouse sends three killers after David to destroy him,
for reasons I will not divulge in a review - but which I used myself in
one of my own Crowner John books.
Along with a baron's plot to kill the king when he goes to war with
Llewelyn of Wales (who is married to Joan, the king's bastard daughter), the
Queen's champion abducts her to have his way with her, and she is rescued from
a lonely castle in the fens. With assorted monks, priests, spies, assassins,
gleemen, beggars and Templars (not to mention the dog), the story is by
turns funny, cruel, mysterious, informative and exciting. As in the previous
book I reviewed, the author puts modern idioms and slang into the mouths of
her early thirteenth century characters, but the result is not incongruous and
often hilarious.
Sylvian Hamilton is rapidly becoming my favourite writer and I hope she
already has another Straccan on the stocks for me.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
The Gleemaiden by
Sylvian Hamilton
