The Ill-Made Knight (72 page)

Authors: Christian Cameron

BOOK: The Ill-Made Knight

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But I remain a novelist first, and I hope that I have taken the bones of history and made a good story.

My greatest thanks have to go, first and foremost, to the man to whom this work is dedicated – Richard Kaeuper of the University of Rochester. The finest professor I ever had – the most passionate, the most clear, the most brilliant – Dr Kaeuper’s works on chivalry and the role of violence in society makes him, I think, the preeminent medievalist working today, and I have been lucky to be able to get his opinions and the wealth of his knowledge on many subjects great and small. Where I have gone astray, the fault is all mine.

Not far behind, I need to thank Guy Windsor, who introduced me to the Armizare of Fiore di Liberi and profoundly informed my notions of what late-Medieval warfare was like among the skilled. Guy runs a school in Finland and I recommend his books and his research and offer my thanks. I’d also like to thank all the people with whom I train and spar – the Companions of Saint Eustachios in Greece and Canada. Reenacting the Middle Ages has many faces, and immersion in that world may not ever be a perfectly authentic experience – but inasmuch as I have gotten ‘right’ the clothes, the armour, the food or the weapons – it is due to all my reenacting friends, including Chris Verwijmeren, master archer, and Leo Todeschini and JT Palikko and Peter Fuller, master craftsmen.

Throughout the writing of this series, I have used, as my standard reference to names, dates, and events, the works of Jonathan Sumption, whose books are, I think, the best unbiased summation of the causes, events and consequences of the war. I’ve never met him, but I’d like to offer him my thanks by suggesting that anyone who wants to follow the real events should buy Sumption’s books!

As Dick Kaueper once suggested in a seminar, there would have been no Middle Ages as we know them without two things – the horse and Christianity. I owe my horsemanship skills largely to two people – Ridgely and Georgine Davis of Pennsylvania, both of whom are endlessly patient with teaching and with horseflesh in getting me to understand even the basics of mounted combat. And for my understanding of the church, I’d like first thank all the theologians I know – I’m virtually surrounded by people with degrees in theology – and second, the work of F. C. Copleston, whose work,
A History of Medieval Philosophy
, was essential to my writing and understanding of the period – as essential, in fact, as the writings of Chaucer and Boccaccio.

My sister-in-law, Nancy Watt, provided early comments, criticism, and copy-editing while I worked my way through the historical problems – and she worked her way through lung cancer. I very much value her commitment.

And, finally, I’d like to thank my friends who support my odd passions and my wife and child, who are tolerant, mocking, justly puzzled, delighted, and gracious by turns as I drag them from battlefield to castle and as we sew like fiends for a tournament in Italy.

William Gold is, I think, my favourite character. I hope you like him. He has a long way to go.

Christian Cameron

Toronto, 2013

An Orion eBook

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Orion Books

This eBook first published in 2013 by Orion Books

Copyright © Christian Cameron 2013

The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.