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'Marie de France, poet and lover of the famed Richard the Lionheart, is determined to free her faithful knight Llew from the spell that has transformed him into a swan. But to do so she must travel from France to St Non's Well in the magical land of Wales.
'Frustration mounts as the very heavens themselves seem to conspire against Marie's departure from the court of Richard's father, Henry II, at Anjou. And when at last she embarks for Britain, Marie finds she must interrupt her journey again to pay homage to Richard's brilliant, exiled mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Salisbury.
'On reaching Eleanor's court, Marie's strange and vivid dreams of an ethereal lady of the flowers are the first hint of the machinations of the magical Otherworld in Llew's fate. And so begins an extraordinary adventure which will change Marie's life irrevocably'.
Source: bookseller's website.
Epigraph:
L'adventure d'un autre lai,
Cum el avaient, vus cunterai:
Fait fu d'un mut gentil vassal,
En bretans l'apelent Lanval.
Here now's another lay to tell,
So listen, for I'll say it well -
it was about a noble knight,
Lanval, of ancient British might.
Marie de France, The Lay of Sir Lanval
