Road to Jedburgh

Whilst developing ideas for this novel, I wanted to find a way to tell two separate yet curiously parallel tales. On the one hand, there is the story of the effect of terror and prejudice by those in power on a whole society. On the other hand, there is a story to be told of the effect of personal tyranny and abuse on a single family. For the first, I wanted to imagine life in York, England, in the time of Clifford's Tower, in 1190; and also, a scant one hundred years later, King Edward's Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from the entire realm of England in 1290. Apart from actual historical persons and catalogued events, the entire story is fiction. For the second story, also set in 1290, I have to thank my mother's cousin, Neville Kerr. His genealogical research led him to ponder the cause of the feud between the two branches of Kerrs, and why they built a castle with a defence stairwell favouring left-handed sword play, in Jedburgh, a small town in the Border lands between Scotland and England. While it would have been tempting to imagine a Romeo and Juliet story, I followed a different idea: namely, that of Cain and Abel, whose story I will summarise here for you. Apart from Ralph and Johannes Kerr, noblemen who travelled with many others over to England in the wake of William the Conqueror, in my fictional account of the next few generations, all other events and characters are entirely imaginary.