In Search of the Historical Arthur

The noted humanitarian to Africa, Albert Schweizer, wrote a book back in the twentieth century, "In Search of the Historical Jesus."  He and many others wanted to see what sorts of evidence there might be that would be considered the kind of record that historians use, in addition to the religious texts of the Bible, to tell us about the life of Jesus.  That is, he wanted sources that could be read and understood about Jesus's life whether or not one was a Christian, and also to see how the Gospels could be read historically.

The Roman governors of first-ccntury Palestine, the ones who put Jesus to death as a revolutionary, kept zero records of their decisions and activities, or at least none that have survived.  But there are scraps of mentions of Jesus in other (mostly Jewish) records and chronicles, and of course the Gospels themselves, written some two generations after the crucifixion for religious communities that considered Jesus their founder as well as the Messiah.  As Schweizer and other historians have concluded, there's no question of Jesus as a historical person, an itinerant Jewish preacher who attracted disciplines, who spoke of the brotherhood of all people, with special reference to the poor and marginalized, and who was put to death by the Romans.

Other aspects of Jesus's life, the miracles, the resurrection, being the Messiah, are aspects of faith, not subject to being supported or refuted by historical methods.  But a lot of Christians like having the historical underpinnings for their faith.  In a parallel way, a lot of people want to know about the historical underpinnings of the King Arthur stories.  (Big topical leap there, you say?)

Arthur is a far more nebulous historical figure than Jesus.  He didn't have four different accounts of his life written within 40-50 years of his death.  And the stories we think of as the "real" Arthur stories were compiled by Thomas Malory in the fifteenth century, out of bits and pieces spread out over the previous 900 years.

But there may still be a historical Arthur lurking somewhere in there, as I have previously noted.  In the fifth and sixth centuries, when the Roman armies pulled out of Britain and the Angles and Saxons arrived, some local leaders fought back, determined to keep their Christianized Roman culture.  The name Arcturus (Arthur) is a good Roman name, and in areas where the Saxons made little headway (Wales, Cornwall) the Celtic communities had occasional references over the following years to someone being "as brave as Arthur" or a vague mention of the "great warrior Arthur."  This Arthur would not have been a king but a military commander, and nothing we think of as "the Arthurian story" would have been attached to him (Camelot, the Round Table, the Grail, Lancelot and Guinevere, etc.).  There were also stories of the great leader Arthur leading a pig-rustling raid, but we'll let those pass.

A sixth-century account by the monk Gildas mentions the great and glorious battle of Mount Badon by the Britons against the Saxons, which certainly shows the presence of such war-leaders as the supposedly historical Arthur.  Unfortunately for Arthur fans, Gildas named the glorious leader as Ambrosius Aurelianus, somebody totally different.  But never fear!  Three centuries later, the chronicler Nennius retold the story of Mount Badon, and this time Arthur was the hero.  Whew, that was close.

 

But Arthur as we know him really begins with Geoffrey of Monmouth.  He was Welsh and a bishop, writing in the 1130s when the Normans had conquered England, and Geoffrey wanted to glorify his Celtic heritage, which was now threatened by Norman French culture on top of the Saxon influences that had dominated England (not Wales) since the sixth century.  His "History of the Kings of Britain" first made Arthur a king, first told the story of Uther Pendragon who impregnated the duchess of Cornwall while disguised as her husband (resulting in Arthur's birth), first mentioned the magic sword Caliburn (later Excalibur), and first noted a dying Arthur being taken to the isle of Avalon.  Geoffrey seems to have made everything up, including a great many other great British (Celtic) kings.  His book was hugely popular throughout the Middle Ages, and the story of Arthur was off and running.

While Arthur became a very popular hero in Britain, his reputation also spread to the Continent.  Chrétien de Troyes, writing at the court of the counts of Champagne in the 1170s, gave us the story of the Grail and of the adulterous love of Lancelot and Guinevere.  The latter he seems to have adopted from the somewhat older story of Tristan and Isolde, a story set in Celtic Cornwall as Geoffrey of Monmouth had set Uther and Arthur in Cornwall.  The name Arthur was given to a grandson of King Henry II of England in the late twelfth century (young Arthur may or may not have been done away with by his uncle King John, but that's another story).

The monastery of Glastonbury decided in the 1190s that it was actually located in the isle of Avalon and "discovered" the tombs of Arthur and Guinevere, leading to much better tourist trade than had ever shown up for their saints.  The earl of Cornwall, younger son of King Henry III, built a castle at Tintagel, in Cornwall, in the mid thirteenth century, explicitly to tie himself to the spot where Geoffrey of Monmouth said Arthur was conceived.

Tintagel today is a spectacular ruined castle high above the sea, and people still come there in search of the historical Arthur.  While there they can enjoy Guinevere's English Tea and Merlin's Beer and buy toy swords.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022

For more on kings, legends, and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available as a paperback.

Miracle Stories, Part 2

 In my previous post, I discussed miracle stories, the kind that would be collected at a shrine to extol the power of the local saint in healing the sick.  But how about saints like Mary, who were not nearly as closely tied to a specific locale?  (Though she too would have special veneration in certain places; the most important healing shrine today, that of Lourdes, is dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.)

Miracle stories of the Virgin would be told and retold in many places.  Although she was entirely capable of healing, many of her miracle stories involved other sorts of intervention in human affairs.  At one time modern scholars tended to be a little embarrassed by some of these stories, and tried to pass them off as the superstitious tales of the unlettered.  But these were stories told by monks and clergymen.

They may have been embarrassing (now) because a lot of them lacked what you might call a clear moral lesson.  Rather, they emphasized the power of the Virgin in helping those who called on her.  In one story, a knight on the way to a tournament stopped at a shrine to Mary to pray, and he prayed so long and so hard that he forgot all about the tournament.  In the evening, he proceeded into the town where it had been held to find a place to stay and was shocked to be heralded as winning the tournament!  It turned out that Mary had been so impressed by his piety that she put on armor, took his horse and lance, and fought disguised as him, winning the prize.

Okay, you can see why some scholars would rather not talk about this as the product of learned priests.  In another story, a criminal, caught and deservedly condemned to death, prayed so hard to the Virgin that she came to the gallows where he was to be hung and, when the trap door opened to drop him and break his neck, she held him up.  After a few hours the authorities realized there was a miracle going on (man with a noose around his neck hovering, unhurt, in the air) and carefully lowered him and set him free.  In this story at least the criminal was reformed, having learned his lesson, and lived the rest of his life very virtuously.

So what is going on?  These were stories both about the power of the saint and stories to tell sinners that anyone can turn to the saints for help.  The greatest sin has always been despair, feeling that you are so evil that you are beyond redemption (which of course requires pride in one's wickedness).  These stories say that anyone, even knights (routinely branded as sinful) and criminals, could count on mercy if it was sought with a truly contrite heart.  Mary took the role especially of the mother who always will love you, no matter what.  (That's a medieval wooden statue of her below.)

 

Other saints would also listen even to sinners.  In fact, a lot of miracle stories were quite subversive, with those in authority, both secular lords and church leaders, being given their comeuppance by the saint.  For example, at Conques (see previous post), Saint Foy routinely broke the chains of escaped criminals, and when the monks tried to lock the church doors to keep poor pilgrims out, she swung the doors open herself.  Not just sinners but the poor and downtrodden were depicted in the miracle stories as helped by the saints.

The New Testament parallels were entirely deliberate.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022


For more on religion, saints, and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available as a paperback.

Miracle stories

 Medieval people, like modern people, believed in miracles, as I've discussed previously.  But miracles were not free floating events, being usually attached to a place, a relic, and a saint.

Miracles were one of the chief attributes of saints.  All saints worked miracles, and from the twelfth century onward one could not become a saint without sufficient post-mortem miracles, all properly verified.  (This is still the case for the modern Catholic church.)  Throughout the Middle Ages, an account of a saint's life and activities, his or her vita as it was called, was routinely accompanied by a second volume, stories of the miracles the saint worked after death.

Major shrines to particular saints all had collected stories of miracles their saint had performed.  By far the majority of these miracles involved healing, everything from the pox to a broken arm to gout, even an infected toe.  In an era without modern medicine, when few people could expect to live past their 50s, they turned to whatever healing procedures might be available.  And they may well have worked!  Who are we to dismiss their testimony, when we weren't even there? (and are in a society that has seen some, well, unlikely "cures" promoted for Covid-19).

Miracle stories tended to be very detailed.  The person who was healed was named, as was the specific ailment for which they had suffered.  We often learn a lot about such a person, their social status, their occupation, even which friends and relatives helped them reach the shrine if they did not walk there themselves.  (Pilgrims on the Santiago route, from Burgundy to northwestern Spain, walked 20 miles a day, pretty impressive considering a lot of them were sick and seeking healing or redemption.)

The specificity of the miracle stories added a note of verisimilitude that would not have been possible if they just spoke of generic people being healed of generic diseases.  The stories always stressed that saints were ready to help even the poorest petitioner, and that even the mightiest might need their help.  The miracle stories also tended to stress one particular kind of healing if the saint had a specialty; Saint Foy of Conques, for example (village seen below), was noted for cures of the eyes.

 

Often the miracle stories would speak of someone who had long suffered from an ailment, had visited shrines to other saints without relief, but had finally found healing when appealing to this particular saint.  Those healed were expected to be suitably grateful.  They needn't make a monetary offering (though it was never refused), but they would leave their crutches as a marker of being able to walk again or the like, and they were expected to live a properly virtuous life in the future.  A sinner who had been cured of an ailment was likely to sicken again if he returned to his sin.  And of course it was hoped that those healed would spread the good word about the saint's power.

The miracle stories then could be seen as a form of advertisement for a particular shrine, but they also stressed that the saints listened to people of all economic or social status, and that a moral, virtuous life was needed to accompany a healthy life.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022


For more on religion, saints, and other aspects of medieval history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available as a paperback.

Medieval summer

 We think of summer as vacation time, a break from school, a chance to get to the beach or just sit under a shady tree sipping lemonade in a welcome break from work.  A medieval summer had different expectations.

On the one hand, one didn't have to worry about keeping warm, a major worry in the winter.  On the other hand, one did need to worry about keeping cool.  We now take air conditioning for granted, but it only began to spread in the second half of the twentieth century.  Working outdoors on a scorching hot day (and most medieval work was outdoors work) was just as much a pain then as now.  Their only advantage is that the weather was overall cooler, before global warming really kicked in during the last generation or two.  (And Europe is still cooler than much of the US—parts of Britain recently recorded 104 F, the highest temperature ever recorded, though parts of the US get there repeatedly all summer.)

A medieval summer was a time to work, not to vacation.  For most of the population, who were all farming, the spring was the time to plow, sow, and plant.  Hay was cut in June, winter wheat in July.  Vegetables had to be tended all summer.  Their harvest began in August, along with dry beans and lentils.  September was time to reap the rye or barley and to pick and press the grapes, October to bring in the root vegetables and start planting winter wheat.  All spring and summer livestock farmers were busy helping with baby animals being born and getting established.  Life didn't calm down until after the great November pig-slaughter.

At least there was food.  Last year's grain would be mostly gone by early summer, as would last year's pork, but there were plenty of vegetables coming along (peas, beans, lettuce, celery, summer squash, cabbage), and once the winter wheat was harvested there would be lots of bread again.  Young animals (lamb, veal) and extra chickens could be eaten.  The woods and wild places provided song birds to be caught as well as mushrooms and wild berries.

And one could look forward to the root crops (turnips, onions, and the like) and especially the pork of autumn, before settling down for winter repose.  (Being cold a lot and wondering how long the food would last.)

All this summer work was why, when modern schooling was established in the nineteenth century, it was determined that children (and teachers) would not be in school during the summer.  They were needed to work on the farm.

For the aristocracy, summer was a time for activity and adventure.  It was hopeless trying to go to war in the winter, when you'd get bogged down in cold mud and have trouble finding food to scavenge.  Tournaments were always summer events, as were most trade fairs.  And landlords also wanted to keep an eye on their peasants.

In spite of the constant rush of work and activity in the summer, everyone was delighted in the spring to see winter go and to get outdoors again.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022

For more on  medieval food, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.

Editing

 One of the challenges for any author is editing.  Traditional publishing houses have full-time editing staffs, but the author had better edit her manuscript pretty thoroughly before submitting or the publishing house won't want the book anyway.  And for indie authors (like me), everything the publishing house would do is up to the author herself:  editing, cover design, layout, marketing....

So what is editing anyway?  And why is it necessary?  Short answer, editing means that the story is told in a way to engage the reader, without sloppy mistakes or contradictions that will pull the reader out of the story.  Here's an example of the opening of a story that could sure use some editing (I've made this up, but unfortunately a lot of indie-published books have the same problems).

-----

Sue was very bootiful. she long hare; and blue eyes.

"One day sue go shoping for booty products on sail, oh look! say Sue its' the rite shade for my brown eye,' And a good prize.  She bouhgt some makup and went home she was so happy!

-----

Okay, you would doubtless stop reading right there, and a story that started like this would be, I'm afraid, beyond redemption.  But even good writers need an editor, at a minimum a well educated friend or family member who will read carefully and be able to make critical comments when needed (the author of course has to be able to take criticism).  A professional editor can also be hired, but plan to spend a lot of money.  Before hiring someone, the author needs to figure out what kind of editing is needed.  There are several kinds.

Content Editor.  This is mostly for non-fiction or fiction set in a real time and/or place where accuracy matters.  You don't want the hero to look up at the Empire State building while walking through Chicago, or have a historical novel about the court of Henry VIII set in the seventeenth century.  Similarly, a non-fiction book about battles of the Civil War should not discuss their use of bazookas.  These are the kind of things that make readers put down a book in disgust.

Developmental Editor.  This can be a very important person, and a friend/family member who reads widely in your genre can work well.  A developmental editor addresses such issues as having the story start with something interesting happening, or suggesting that another scene is needed to make the transition between when the guy and gal meet and when they declare their undying love, or pointing out unnecessary scenes where the characters just stand around having boring conversations, or urging the author, who has been building up to the big climax for 100 pages, have the crisis not resolved so quickly and easily.  Sometimes a developmental editor will get over-excited and suggest major plot changes, which the author is free to reject, but remember that the editor is also a reader, and readers like and expect certain kinds of scenes and events.

Continuity Editor.  This is a variation of a developmental editor, keeping track of the story's continuity.  They watch for things like the hero wondering about something he had explained to him the chapter before, or the heroine's eyes changing color inexplicably, or the scene changing in the middle of a conversation from the characters driving down the highway to eating in a diner without any indication of how they got there (this can happen if the author originally set the scene in a diner, then decided it would be more interesting if they were driving, and didn't entirely follow through).  For a mystery, the continuity editor also makes sure that there are clues throughout but that they are obscure enough that the hero solves the mystery before the reader does.

Line Editor.  Here the editor is looking at sentences, to assure that there is a variation of kinds of sentence, that the same word isn't repeated unnecessarily, and that there are no obvious grammatical mistakes or misused words.

Copy Editor.  A copy editor may be the same person as a line editor, but they are looking mostly for minutiae, for misplaced punctuation (as in the example above), or missing words, or misspelled words (like booty for beauty or sail for sale).  This may seem trivial, and some authors say, "Who cares about a few typos? it's the story that counts."  But there are plenty of readers who will return a book for a refund or decide never to read a particular author again if the typos mount up.  No author wants that.  (And typos are the kiss of death for anyone trying to interest a traditional publisher--they're looking for reasons to reject, so don't make it easy for them).

For those deciding to hire an editor for money, start by having them edit a sample or one chapter.  See how well author and editor can work together.  If you're not satisfied, pay them for what they did and try with someone else.

But at last your book will be finished!  And after editing and polishing you decide to self-publish.  The self-publishing platforms (like KDP for Amazon or Nook Press for Barnes & Noble) give you step by step instructions for formatting and uploading, but what happens next?  I've written a book that gives you tips, available from Amazon, "Know your Self Publishing."

© C. Dale Brittain 2022

Medieval Childbirth

 Childbirth is always a perilous time.  Even with modern medicine, it is among the leading causes of death for younger women (especially those in communities without good access to health care).  It was, not surprisingly, even more perilous in medieval times.

Girls hit puberty then rather later than they do now, around fourteen or fifteen rather than at the age of eleven, which has become the most common age in the US.  Partly they didn't have all the hormones now found in the water, and partly girls were skinnier then (onset of puberty is governed in part by body mass).  So they didn't have the cases one hears about now, of ten year olds discovering they're pregnant, but by a time a girl was in her mid-teens she was considered of marriageable age, with the assumption that she would soon start having children.

Childbirth is more risky for humans than for most mammals because of our upright stance.  To keep all our internal organs from slopping down around our knees, our pelvic bones provide a solid floor to the torso, with only a narrow opening in the middle, through which a baby has to squeeze.  A cat or dog can flop down on the floor and pop out half a dozen kittens or puppies through a wide gap in the pelvis, but not humans.  The baby has to go through head first, so if a baby is upright in the womb (breech position), having a leg go through first is just not going to work.  If the baby gets stuck halfway through, both baby and mother are going to die.  King Louis VII of France lost a wife that way.

Through the first half of the twentieth century, obstetricians would practice reaching in and twirling a breech baby before it entered the birth canal, but this of course required a special touch.  If medieval midwives did something similar we don't know about it.  These days the usual answer for a breech baby or for prolonged contractions that aren't pushing the baby out is a Caesarian section, cutting open the mother's abdomen and womb to bring out the baby.  This is fine for the baby, but the mother has to recover from fairly major surgery.  It was impossible in the Middle Ages, because without antibiotics and microclamps to stop the bleeding the mother would die, so it was only undertaken if the mother was going to die anyway.  (Caesar, after whom the procedure is named, was cut out of a dying mother.)

Medieval women of course gave birth without pain killers, but at least they did not give birth lying on their backs with their feet in the air, which works fine for the attending doctor but works against gravity.  They were attended by midwives, who had a wide mix of fanciful and accurate ideas about how the procedure worked.  They would help with things like breathing exercises and would keep the procedure fairly clean, while also muttering charms, putting knives on the floor to "cut the pain," and the like.  Here they were ahead of nineteenth-century doctors, who might go straight from treating a patient with an infectious disease to treating a woman in labor, without bothering to wash up, and who would often chloroform the mother.  She'd miss the worst pain that way, but by being out of it she wouldn't be able to consciously push.

Women all lactate after giving birth, although not all give enough milk, and some babies have trouble figuring out how to latch on.  Most women nursed their own babies, but one could also hire a "wet nurse," someone who'd recently had a baby herself.  She might nurse her own baby on one breast and the baby she was paid to nurse on the other, though it was considered best by those hiring wet nurses if her baby had died, because then there was no competition.  Fashionable women might prefer wet nurses as it kept their breasts from getting as large (small breasts were considered attractive).

Contraception, without modern pills and devices, was always tricky.  Medieval people knew perfectly well "where babies come from," but humans lack the "being in heat" condition that defines the fertile period for most mammals.  There were lots of supposed ways to prevent pregnancy, including herbal suppositories, condoms made from animal intestines, and various concoctions to drink.  Some may even have worked, though humans are not nearly as fertile anyway as many creatures, and being underfed or nursing reduces the chance of pregnancy.

If they got pregnant anyway when they didn't want to, there was always abortion, or at least herbal concoctions that were supposed to end the pregnancy.  One saint, still a saint in the Catholic church, miraculously caused an abortion.  A nun, the story went, had been raped, and she was very worried that her abbess would not believe her and would cast her out as a wanton woman.  But when she realized she was pregnant she prayed to the saint, who miraculously restored her to her previous condition, as though she had never been pregnant at all.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022

For more on women, children, and hygiene in the Middle Ages, see my book, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages, available in paperback or as an ebook from Amazon and other on-line booksellers.

A Bad Spell in Yurt

 Although for most of the time here I blog about medieval social history, occasionally I like to discuss my fantasy novels, which are informed by real history even though they are not historical fiction.  So today I'm going to talk about A Bad Spell in Yurt, my first published novel, and comment on publishing in the thirty-plus years since it first appeared.

 It was originally published by Baen as a mass-market (small size) paperback and, after going through three printings, went out of print some time ago.  But it's now available again in a variety of formats:  ebook on all major e-platforms, trade paperback (larger size) that can be ordered through any bookstore, hardcover from Amazon, and audio book from Audible and iTunes.  Here's the link on Amazon.

Sometimes an author will be embarrassed by their first book (especially these days when it's so easy for anyone to self-publish).  Alternately, sometimes an author will pour years of ideas and writing and rewriting into their first book, and it remains their favorite and the readers' favorite, as they throw together later books without the same prolonged attention.  For me, Bad Spell is somewhere in between.  It's my favorite, but I don't think it's my best.

For one thing, it was the first published but by no means the first written.  I've been writing stories since I was five, studying "how to write better" guides since high school, and I'd been intermittently submitting stories to publishers for twenty years before Baen bought the book.  The editors did suggest some changes that I believe strengthened the story.

The title of course is something of a pun, and the book is fairly light-hearted.  Probably this shouldn't be a surprise.  After all, when I lecture about medieval history to my students, there's plenty of humor there.  I think I tend to see the incongruity and humor in a lot of situations.  (I get my sense of humor from my father.  Unfortunately he didn't live to see this book.)

But it's not intended to be a laugh-fest.  In fact, I've gotten some grumpy reviews about how they expected it to be funnier, and what was with all these serious themes?  Because the book does include themes of mortality and redemption and similar knee-slapping topics, and a lot of it concerns people with very different perspectives needing to learn to get along.

My husband persuaded me to make it into a series, our young wizard hero having other adventures over the next 35 years or so of his life, becoming actually decent at magic in the process.  For those of you who like a series, there are six novels, three novellas (short novels, maybe a third the length of the novels), and a three-volume "next generation" series.

After the book went out of print, I got my rights back and published it as an "indie," an independent author/publisher on Amazon, initially as an ebook and then with the other formats.  It's my best-selling ebook (I have about 20 now), in part I think due to Tom Kidd's excellent cover (seen above) which I think captures the flavor of the book, even though it does not illustrate any specific scene (for one thing, no Oriental princess with a princess phone ever appears).  Some people who read the book in the 90s are happy to read it again, and I'm also reaching a new generation of readers, which is very gratifying.

Indie publishing is in something of a wild-west stage right now.  Far more indie books are published each year than traditionally published books.  "Get rid of the gatekeepers!" would-be published authors cry.  The problem is that the "gatekeepers" at the traditional publishing houses do keep some good books from being published, but they also turn away a lot of really really bad books.  This makes it hard for the well-written indie book to emerge from the haystack.  I've done surprisingly well as an indie, in large part I believe because I already had a fan base from before (we love you, fans!).

To whet your appetite for the book, here's the opening of Bad Spell.

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I was not a very good wizard.  But it was not a very big kingdom.  I assumed I was the only person to answer their ad, for in a short time I had a letter back from the king's constable, saying the job was mine if I still wanted it, and that I should report to take up the post of Royal Wizard in six weeks.

It took most of the six weeks to grow in my beard, and then I dyed it grey to make myself look older.  Two days before leaving for my kingdom, I went down to the emporium to buy a suitable wardrobe.

Of course at the emporium they knew all about us young wizards from the wizards' school.  They looked at us dubiously, took our money into the next room to make sure it stayed money even when we weren't there, and tended to count the items on the display racks in a rather conspicuous way.  But I knew the manager of the clothing department—he'd even helped me once pick out a Christmas present for my grandmother, which I think endeared me to him as much as to her.

He was on the phone when I came in.  "What do you mean, you won't take it back?  But our buyer never ordered it!"  While waiting for him, I picked out some black velvet trousers, just the thing, I thought, to give me a wizardly flair.

The manager slammed down the phone.  "So what am I supposed to do with this?" he demanded of no one in particular.  "This" was a shapeless red velvet pullover, with some rather tattered white fur at the neck.  It might have been intended to be part of a Father Noel costume.

I was entranced.  "I'll take it!"

"Are you sure?  But what will you do with it?"

"I'm going to be a Royal Wizard.  It will help me strike the right note of authority and mystery."

"Speaking of mystery, what's all the fuzzy stuff on your chin?"

I was proud of my beard, but since he gave me the pullover for almost nothing, I couldn't be irritated.  When I left for my kingdom, I felt resplendent in velvet, red for blood and black for the powers of darkness.

It was only two hundred miles, and probably most of the young wizards would have flown themselves, but I insisted on the air cart.  "I need to make the proper impression of grandeur when I arrive," I said.  Besides—and they all knew it even though I didn't say it—I wasn't sure I could fly that far.

______________________________________________________________________

© C. Dale Brittain 2022