If I Should Live So Long

Julian Plectrum of Chester is a minstrel who has grown up in Cheshire and lived there all his life. At the age of fourteen he made a lifelong friend of Stephen, son of a wool and textile merchant, whom he saves from drowning. He meets Porcull, an older hermit who lives on Stephen’s estate, and who sparks in him the need to travel afar, to London. Which he does, but only to end up in a lawsuit with an olde-tyme song-stealing music industry shark. His adventures of three years time between Chester and Penzance bring him renown and connections. These connections are a good thing to have, once he’s met his true love, Mary, the daughter of a Chester carpenter, and a budding puppet-mistress.
On his last return from Penzance he happens right into the battle of Shrewsbury, between King Henry IV of England and his once aide-de-camp, now turned rebel, Henry Percy, and his allies among the Cheshire gentry, the Scots, and the Welsh. Julian happens upon his long-left brother Simon among the wounded and dying at day’s end. Returning to Chester with Simon, the rebellion for the moment crushed, he marries Mary and they begin their new life with a trip to the new home in Penzance. They’d be all too happy to settle right down, but Stephen has asked them to come along with him on a trip to France.
IF I SHOULD LIVE SO LONG is the first in a series of three works of historical fantasy. Julian and his friends are common folk, but the breezes of war, and the complications of seeming peace, are never far from them, all too often, closer for comfort than they’d like.