EPILOGUE
‡
The Book of Battle
Immediate Present Day
“Usually, these boards are a closed session, but in your case, we’ve made allowances.”
Abigail already knew that. It was her viva voce, or viva, which was her final board review to determine whether or not she received her Ph.D. in Medieval History. She was here to defend her eighty thousand-word thesis that had taken her three years to write.
Sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Birmingham, she was facing a board of seven people, all of them hand selected from some of the most reputable and important Medieval and ancient historical academics in the world. She even had one guy from the Sorbonne in France whose sole focus was Medieval military battles – Hastings, Crécy, Agincourt, Towton, and everything in between. He’d been called in specifically because of the subject matter of the Battle of Hastings, but all of them had been invited to listen to something that no one had ever heard before.
The Book of Battle.
Abigail turned around and glanced into the audience behind her to see Queensborough and Mr. Groby sitting there, smiling encouragingly at her. Even grouchy Queenie seemed rather pleased by the whole thing. There was also another woman in the audience who’d been allowed to listen in because during the last year of Abigail’s studies, Anne Smith de Wolfe, a professional genealogist and owner of a company called Digging Up Your Roots, had been a massive help to her in ironing out the history of Warwolfe and his descendants. She was married to a de Wolfe, in fact, which made all of this right up her alley.
Now, it was time for Abigail to face the music, as it were. She had seven experts in her field, who had been experts longer than she’d been alive, and she was ready to take them head-on.
“We’ve all had the opportunity to review your dissertation, Abby,” her advisor, department head Dr. Sykes continued to speak. Then she grinned. “Of course, I’ve been looking at this and discussing it with you since it started, but our other panel members have only seen it as of late. I believe Dr. Sorkin wishes to begin the inquiry, so let’s start.”
Abigail turned to the scholar from the Sorbonne, who was looking at something on the table in front of him, his glasses halfway down his nose. When he realized the attention was on him, he glanced up at Abigail.
“The Book of Battle,” he said in his heavy French accent. “You list this as your main source.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is not a published resource.”
“No, sir.”
Dr. Sorkin was silent for a moment. “Young lady, if what you say is true, this source is potentially one of the biggest finds in the world of Medieval history. You do know that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is the book?”
Abigail looked at Dr. Sykes, who spoke up. “It is here,” she said, waving forward a department associate who had been sitting off in the shadows. “If you are worried about its authenticity, don’t. We’ve spent the past six months having it analyzed by independent sources. I will show you the reports. It’s completely authentic and we have two independent lab sources that date the book back to the era of William of Normandy’s conquest. This is the real deal, gentlemen.”
Dr. Sorkin was quite interested in the box the associate put on the table. In fact, they all were. As Dr. Sykes stood up and put on a pair of white gloves that were on top of the box, she spoke to Abigail.
“Abby, do you want to speak about this now?” she asked. “Because, honestly, I think this is the only thing everybody really wants to know about.”
A few titters of laughter came from the panel as Abigail nodded. She was a little nervous, but she knew this subject backwards and forwards. In fact, she was rather excited to finally speak openly about something she’d been keeping to herself for the most part for the past three years. This is what she’d studied hard for and researched until she saw the material in her dreams. Sometimes, she even saw her subject in her dreams.
Warwolfe.
This was the moment Gaetan de Wolfe and his men began to shine for all the world to see.
“As you know, my dissertation is entitled The unsung heroes of the Norman Invasion and their impact upon the Conquest,” she said. “It has been my goal, since the beginning, to give a voice to those men who helped the Duke of Normandy conquer England. The man didn’t do it all by himself and it was my goal to discover who made the biggest impact in his plans for conquest. Of course, as you know, information about the Battle of Hastings is fairly limited. There are only a few trusted sources in Barrow, Bates, Hallam, and other related scholars, but any first-hand account has been impossible to find. When I started visiting the Battle of Hastings museum a few years ago in my quest to find resources for my paper, I became acquainted with Mr. Peters Groby, who was a docent, but he had also lived in the village of Battle his entire life.”
She turned to point out Mr. Groby, who lifted a hand to wave at the panel. Abigail continued to speak even though she was looking at Mr. Groby and Queensborough, seated next to him.
“The man to Mr. Groby’s right is the man to whom I owe everything,” she said. She’d grown quite fond of Queensborough over the past two years. “Meet Mr. Queensborough Browne, a direct descendant of Sir Anthony Browne, who was a close confident of Henry VIII. It’s through Queensborough Browne that I was able to gain access to a Medieval journal that had been in his family’s possession since the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This journal, which is called the Book of Battle because of Battle Abbey, was written by a monk named Jathan de Guerre and when you read the transcript of the Book of Battle, you’ll see that he was probably the very first war correspondent. He gives a detailed account of not only the battle, but of a group of Norman knights known as the Anges de Guerre, led by a man known as Warwolfe.”
By this time, Dr. Sykes had the ancient book out of its box and the assistant was passing out copies of the transcripts. They hadn’t shared any of this before the viva because they had wanted this event to be the introduction of the Book of Battle to the world.
Dr. Sykes put the book on the table so that all of the panelists could get a look at it and, as they all stood up to see it, Abigail was essentially forgotten. For such an artifact to be presented to these historical scholars was like a drug to an addict; they were immediately filled with it, enthralled with it, and Abigail watched them as they fawned over it.
Turning her glance at Queensborough, she could see a hint of pride on the man’s face. From a man who had been terrified to even show her the book those two short years ago to a man who had now gained a great deal of pride for sharing it with the world, Abigail was thrilled with the change. An old man who was able, in the twilight of his life, to find something wonderful to be proud over. She smiled at him and he winked at her.
Bring them back to life, Miss Devlin.
She was about to.
“The Book of Battle details the quest of Gaetan de Wolfe and his men as they went on a quest to rescue one of their comrades who had been kidnapped by a historical figure we all know as Alary of Mercia,” Abigail said, talking even though no one was really paying attention to her. “Alary is also sometimes called Amary, but Jathan de Guerre definitely calls him Alary. This is an account like I’ve never seen before and neither has anyone else because it’s very detailed. It really reads like a novel, actually. Jathan lists the men that went with de Wolfe on this quest and discusses them in fairly close detail.”
One of the scholars at the table, Dr. Rapkin, was listening to her. He stepped away from the table as the others pored over the journal. “De Wolfe is a fairly well-known name in England, still,” he said. “They’re still the Earls of Wolverhampton, I believe.”
Abigail nodded, pointing to Anne de Wolfe back in the audience. “That’s Lady de Wolfe right there,” she said. “She has helped me tremendously in discovering the history of the entire de Wolfe family, starting with Gaetan. We’ve been able to clear up a few misnomers starting with an old de Wolfe family legend that Gaetan de Wolfe met his wife, Ghislaine of Mercia, at the Battle of Wellesbourne. The truth was that Ghislaine of Mercia, the sister of Edwin of Mercia, was a warrior woman and she was at the Battle of Hastings. That’s where Gaetan first met her. You’ll read about it in the transcript. It was Ghislaine who helped Gaetan and his men hunt down her brother, Alary, and the Norman knight he’d abducted. The Battle of Wellesbourne didn’t come until well after the Battle of Hastings. You’ll also see in the transcript that one of Gaetan’s men, interestingly enough, bore the name of Wellesbourne.”
Dr. Rapkin nodded, very interested in this unique subject. “After reading your dissertation, I did a little research myself on the de Wolfe family. He became the Earl of Wolverhampton after the Battle of Wellesbourne.”
“That is correct.”
“But the de Wolfes that inherited the earldom of Warenton are a separate branch.”
Abigail shrugged. “Partially,” she said. “Those de Wolfes came from William de Wolfe, who was the first Earl of Warenton. William was the third son of the Earl of Wolverhampton, the man who had inherited that title through Gaetan. Since William de Wolfe was the third son, he was not in line for that inheritance. He received the title Earl of Warenton from Henry III, but he is a direct descendent of Gaetan de Wolfe.”
It was clearing up some rather complicated family trees and, by now, more of the panelists were listening. “I also read about the Roman factor in your paper as it had to do with Gaetan’s quest northward,” Dr. Rapkin continued. “Can you please clarify how a lost Roman legion was part of the Norman conquest?”
Abigail grinned. “Well, you’ll see in the Book of Battle that they weren’t really a lost Roman legion, but merely descended from one,” she said. “The leader was from the House of Shericus, but it was evidently de Wolfe who changed the name to de Shera because he felt it should be in the ‘Norman fashion’. At least, that’s what Jathan wrote. Anyway, several great English houses – de Lara, de Moray, and de Russe – have links to these Roman descendants because they married women from the tribe.”
Dr. Rapkin rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “And the House of de Shera? What became of them?”
Abigail glanced back at Anne once more. “With Lady de Wolfe’s help, I did a little research on the House of de Shera and discovered it was de Wolfe who gave them properties up near Chester when Antillius de Shera, who was a widower, married a Norman woman,” she said. “He had a few sons by her and it was the service of the sons to the Norman kings that gave them the Earldom of Coventry. The House of de Shera and the House of de Wolfe remained allies for hundreds of years after that.”
It was a very neat story, all wrapped up in her dissertation and explained to the last genealogical detail. Dr. Rapkin picked up a copy of the text from the Book of Battle, scanning it as Abigail sat there and waited for the next question. Considering the fascinating subject, it wasn’t long in coming.
“De Lohr, de Russe, de Moray,” Dr. Rapkin muttered as he read. “These are some of the greatest Medieval houses during that time. And all of them came with Warwolfe with the Duke of Normandy?”
Abigail nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “You know that Edward I named his giant trebuchet Lupus Guerre, which means war wolf, but I couldn’t find any definitive information that stated that he actually named it after de Wolfe. But one can only assume he knew of the Normandy’s greatest knight, so maybe that was his homage to de Wolfe.”
Dr. Rapkin was still looking at the transcript. “It would explain a lot, actually,” he said. Then he began flipping around the pages. “I saw somewhere that Gaetan and his wife had eleven children.”
Abigail watched him flip around. “That’s in my paper,” she said. “William, Aaric, Elizabetha, Matthias, Juliana, Stefon, Dacia, Edwin, Quinton, Jarreth, and Catherine.”
When he looked at her strangely for rattling off all of those names so quickly, she knew his question before he asked it.
“I have an eidetic memory. I see words,” she said.
He understood. Dr. Rapkin looked back at the papers. “And they all lived into adulthood?”
Abigail nodded. “Seven sons and four girls, all of them growing up to become pretty great in their own right, but Lady de Wolfe can tell you more about that since it’s her family. My focus was on Warwolfe and Ghislaine of Mercia, not their children.”
Dr. Rapkin simply nodded as he went to reclaim his seat, still looking at the papers in his hand. In fact, all of them were starting to settle back into their seats and Abigail took the opportunity to plead her case before the heavy questioning started. There were a few things she wanted to clear up.
“I had someone tell me once that writing about English history like this wasn’t my right because I’m not British,” she said. “As I explained to him, my love of England is in my blood. I may not have been born here, but my heart is here. I didn’t set out to change English history as we know it but I did want to give a voice to those men, those warriors, whose deeds and names had been lost to time. Maybe it was arrogant of me, but just maybe I actually did something that will make people look back on these knights – the Anges de Guerre – and appreciate them for their accomplishments. Yes, I know they conquered a nation, but it goes beyond that – these were men of great honor, and when you read the transcription of the Book of Battle, you’ll see how much they were devoted to each other. Nowadays, we just don’t see honor and duty like that. These men literally risked their lives for a colleague, just to rescue the man, and that’s a kind of heroism that is largely lost these days. People have forgotten what it means to love your friends like these men loved each other. I think that’s the greatest thing I took away from this whole project – the love these knights had for each other. They were the original band of brothers.”
By the time she was finished speaking, the entire panel was looking at her. They were reclaiming their seats, refocusing on the task at hand even though there wasn’t one of them that didn’t want to run off with the Book of Battle and bury themselves in a room with it for the next six months. Such history, and such artifacts, were rare in their field. But even more rare was the passion from this young woman who spoke of men who had been dead for almost a thousand years as if they were her real-life heroes. That alone infused her dissertation with a glow that was difficult to describe, but one that was most worth listening to.
“Then let’s talk about these men, Miss Devlin,” Dr. Sorkin said, a smile playing on his lips. “You speak as if you know them personally.”
Abigail was dead serious as she looked at them. “I do,” she said. “Let me tell you about them.”
As Abigail began to speak of Gaetan de Wolfe and his humble origins, Groby and Queensborough sat back and listened with the pride of fathers listening to their children. Abigail was articulate and intelligent, and she spoke of Warwolfe and the Anges de Guerre as if she knew them all personally. But, as she’d said, she did. She truly did. These weren’t simply men on paper; these were men who had lived and died but, now thanks to her, they were living once again. Now, the world would know what Abigail and Queensborough knew.
The world would know the importance of the Duke of Normandy’s greatest knights.
Therefore, this was a satisfying moment as well as a defining one, at least for Queensborough. He was proud; so very proud to have been part of something that brought the honored dead to life. From that old book that had remained buried in his family’s artifacts, he was glad he’d been the one that allowed the story to finally be told. It gave him a sense of satisfaction he’d never known before.
“She told you she would make these men breathe again, Queenie,” Groby leaned over and whispered to him. “Do you believe her now?”
Queensborough smiled, remembering those words from the day he’d first met the determined Abigail Devlin.
I’ll make you proud, I swear it. I’ll make these men breathe again.
She had. And somewhere in the halls of heaven, he was pretty sure Gaetan was smiling, too.
* THE END *
De Wolfe Pack Series:
(Saxon Lords of Hage – Also related to The Questing)