Yes, but it can be no condescension for the son of a count to serve the son of a king.
What is a thing worth, if it comes with no risk?
There was even a small groundswell of sympathy for George, confined mainly among those who’d had no personal contact with him.
Oh, John is clever enough. But what do brains avail a man if he does lack for backbone?
Men always think God favors their cause. I am sure Ya’qūb of Aleppo never doubted it, either.
I’ll admit that my garden now grows hope in lavish profusion, leaving little room for anything else. I suppose it has squeezed out more practical plants like caution and common sense. Still, though, h...
Indeed. But I was not thinking of his immortal soul, Matilda. I was thinking that history is chronicled by monks.
Here I was, rushing off to save my little brother from pirates, only to find that he fancies being a pirate himself!
He supposed he’d always known he would not make old bones. Scriptures spoke plainly enough on that. For all they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword.
But such was her faith in Simon that it colored her faith in God; unable to conceive of defeat, she never doubted that the Lord, too, willed Simon to win, and falling asleep in Simon’s arms, she did n...
Yes, there were good memories, too, thirty-seven years of good and bad. Quarrels and reconciliations. Eight cradles and too many gravestones and Rosamund Clifford and power that rivalled Caesar’s, an...
When people want to insult a man, they cast slurs upon his courage. But the worst they can say about a woman is to impugn her chastity.
What followed was for him a very entertaining spectacle, with one of Edward's brothers seemingly intent upon the most subtle of seductions and the other barely able to force malmsey past the gorge ris...
We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?
There are secret sins and found-out sins, and it is foolish to worry about the first until it becomes the second.
She opened her mouth, clamped it shut again. This was new, this sudden favor shown Gloucester, had been brought back with him from Burgundy like some malevolent foreign pox.
Messages continued to arrive from the Earl of Warwick, urging Londoners to hold firm for King Harry. Marguerite d'Anjou and her son were expected to land at any time, while from St Albans, Edward sent...
John, watching in dismay, saw his great chance slipping through his fingers, and he swung around to demand of his father, Papa, does this mean Richard has bested you and Aquitaine is lost? Eleanor win...
Henry did not lack for physical courage; his was a moral cowardice.
For whatever reasons—which had never interested him in his youth but which he sometimes pondered as an adult—the Angevin House had always taken Cain and Abel as role models.