Knight’s Fee

Norman England, at the end of the eleventh century. Randal is an unwanted kennel boy at Arundel Castle until a minstrel wins him in a game of chess and places him in the household of Bevis, a boy being trained for knighthood. Their friendship gives Randal a place within the feudal world while exposing the insecurity beneath inherited rank and lordship.

As William Rufus dies and Henry I contests Normandy with his brother Robert, Randal and Bevis are drawn into campaigns across the Channel. The story culminates at Tinchebray in 1106, where personal loss and military service abruptly alter Randal’s status. Sutcliff links his growth to the unsettled formation of Anglo-Norman society, in which conquest, Saxon memory and new obligations remain uneasily combined.