His battered fleet, a ragbag of caravels, carracks and pinnaces, as well as a few old-fashioned cogs, had regrouped on the open seas south of Southampton. Warwick’s attack on the docks, to try and capture his flagship, Trinity, and a number of other vessels, had been beaten off with heavy loss...
He was stout and greying, like an old badger, and beginning to spread around the middle, but he was a steady man. “Your pardon,” he said, twisting his cap in his hands, “but a man is at the gate and begs leave to enter. My lady” – he looked direct at Mary – “he claims to b...
Abbey of Rhuys, Brittany, 571 AD No father should have to bear the loss of his son. Of all the cruelties and hardships God saw fit to heap upon my head, this was the worst. Abbot Gildas, who knows something of my history, sometimes asks to join me in praying for the...
The Hungarians brought artillery with them. Bombards and cannon, and a monstrous piece of ordnance called the Varga-mortar, so large it had to be drawn by a team of eighty horses. “Let the garrison at Hainburg see my little toy,” growled Matthias, King of Hungary, “a...
I must have lain unconscious for several hours. When I woke, night was slanting across the battlefield, and the thumping pain in my head was as nothing to the stench of death in my nostrils. Happily, Photius was not half the swordsman he thought he was. His blow had s...