The Chronicles of Pauncefoot and Longshanks

“The first time I met Lord Edward he flung me into the sea. I could not condemn him because I asked him to do so. It was an encounter that transformed my life and the fate of my mother country England and of barbarous Wales and quarrelsome Scotland.”

This is the purportedly long-lost account, based on true facts, of Hamo Pauncefoot, a crafty and ambitious jester who daringly insinuates himself into the service of the future King Edward I, known as Longshanks. Pauncefoot reveals his story of clever scheming but also courageous loyalty as he rises, through war and battle, to high rank and becoming indispensable to Edward's cause.

Pauncefoot relates how he serves and manipulates the future king through various situations, including the brutal war in Gascony and Edward's passionate marriage, while he is enraptured and ensnared by his own bride-to-be, his ‘woman of the sorrows’. He attempts to save himself and his royal benefactor by preventing Edward's downfall at the hands of his own father, and witnesses his redemption during the bloody battles of the Barons’ War before accompanying him on a crusade to the Holy Land to face assassination and a foe more formidable than any before.

Edward ascends to the throne in tragic circumstances but, during Pauncefoot's moment of greatest triumph, a shocking revelation means that everything he has built comes crashing down and leaves him in the thrall of a man who is a more cunning manipulator than Pauncefoot himself…

The medieval world, in all its piety, passion, romance, superstition and bloody barbarity, comes to vivid life in David Stedman's historical fiction.