Paris, Tuesday, 10 October 1307

Poul Anderson's "Death And The Knight" is divided into four sections, headed:

Paris, Tuesday, 10 October 1307
San Francisco, Thursday, 8 March 1990
Harfleur, Wednesday, 11 October 1307
Paris, Wednesday, 11 October 1307

If Tuesday and Wednesday are the 10th and 11th of a month, then Friday will be the 13th and this in fact the original historical Friday the 13th when the Knights Templar were suppressed. Maybe the weather (see below) presages what is to come.

A Time Patrolman posing as a knight is arrested in Paris. Everard is informed in San Francisco, plans and prepares in Harfleur and rescues his colleague in Paris. Very neat.

Paris on 10 October assaults the senses:

clouds are low and dark;
wind booms and whines;
dust whirls;
chill counteracts smells from offal, horse droppings, privies, graves and smoke;
there are also Andersonian lists of city sounds and of eleven kinds of people surging through the streets.

As ever, even in foul weather and medieval squalor, Poul Anderson invites his readers to relish human life and activity.