'We story-tellers have a delightful time playing with history, perhaps finding something fascinating, perhaps making dreadful mistakes.'
Here, in
The Oath-Takers
, the 'central maypole round which the people ... must swing and fall' is Charlemagne, and one of 'the people' a young man who makes his journey to manhood in a world of feudalism and a powerful Church.
In the second short novel,
Sea-Green Ribbons
, the reader enters the political, religious and social tumult of the English Civil War through the story and choices of a young woman, Sarah, from a radical Leveller family in London.