Читать книгу Redeeming The Rogue Knight - Elisabeth Hobbes - Страница 4

Author Note

We first met Roger Danby in The Blacksmith’s Wife, which ended with the disreputable knight heading to York for one last tournament and then planning to go abroad, determined to make his fortune after realising too late the value of the woman he had spurned. His story was going to end there, but readers kept telling me that they wanted to know what had happened to him. I too became curious to see how this knight who had jousting ‘groupies’—to use a slightly anachronistic term—dropping at his feet coped when he didn’t have his flashy armour, his fine horse and his noble connections to tempt them.

Brewing was once a female task, with many women making a living as ale-wives, selling from their houses. When I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on ‘The Changing Role of Inns and Ale houses in English Rural Society’ I never suspected I would get to use the information for writing a book!

Lucy brews so frequently because back then beer and ale—there is a difference—did not last. An anonymous source from Saxon times wrote: ‘After two days only the bravest or silliest men of the village would drink the ale, but usually it was only fit for pigs.’ I planned to brew some myself, but decided against it—partly because I suspected I’d end up very drunk or very ill, and partly because an acquaintance told me I’d need a much bigger bucket!

As always, this story has a theme song. Roger chose ‘I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ by Meat Loaf.