Margaret Lyford-Pike and Rosemary Sutcliff combine their talents to recreate seven hundred years in the life of an imaginary Scottish burgh. The folk of Drumfyvie tell their own stories—of castle and alehouse, of battlefield and workshop, of merchants waxing rich and beggars clapped in the stocks, of witch-hunts and Covenanters, of death at Flodden Field and devastation by the Plague.
The great folk in the high castle play out their power struggles and private tragedies. The traders carry Drumfyvie's wares to the world outside, and bring back wines, spices, new fashions and ideas. And the common people go on as they always have, working their trades and fighting the wars, like Jamie, the herd-boy who saved Drumfyvie from the English, or Old Nannie, who knew more about herbs and healing than was good for her, or Daft Geordie Breck, hero of the day at Queen Victoria's jubilee.
Drumfyvie's history is Scottish history seen in microcosm, through the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, shaped and transformed by the great events outside.
—from the dust jacket
Jacket illustration by Michael Whittlesey
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