A knight, asking for directions to get lodgings from the gate captain, gets sent to the White Swan, Chaucer’s stamping ground. He is persuaded to recount his story. So from orphan to knight we follow Sir William through battle after battle during the 100-year war starting with the Battles of Poitiers in 1356 and going through to 1362. It is a great period of history which begins a new series.
William Gold comes into the world as his family slides down the social ladder. His head filled with tales of chivalry, instead he is branded a thief, and must make do with being squire to his childhood friend Sir Robert, a knight determined to make a name for himself as a man at arms in France. While William himself slowly acquires the skills of knightly combat, he remains an outsider - until the Battle of Poitiers when Sir Robert is cut down by the greatest knight of the age, Sir Geoffrey de Charny, and William, his lowly squire, revenges him. But with his own knight dead, no honour acrrues to William for this feat of arms, and he is forced to become a mercenary. Scavenging a mis-matched set of armour from the knightly corpses, he joins one of the mercenary companies now set to pillage a defenceless France, and so begins a bloody career that sees William joining forces with the infamous Sir John Hawkwood and immersing himself in a treacherous clandestine war among the Italian city states. But paradoxically it is there, among the spies, assassins and hired killers serving their ruthless masters, that William finally discovers the true meaning of chivalry - and his destiny as a knight.
Christian Cameron is a writer, re-enactor and military historian. He is a veteran of the United States Navy, where he served as both an aviator and an intelligence officer. He now lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter, where he writes full time.
