Spring

"This day was utter springtime. Sunlight poured around tall white clouds, down among untold wings, through air soft and sweet-smelling and full of birdsong."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Four, Chapter XXIII, p. 370.

I quote these sentences because they describe yet another seasonal change again by appealing to three senses. The passage continues:

"A mist of green over land and trees had thickened to a foam, fast becoming a sea. Raindrops glinted on shrubs." (ibid.)

Anderson's characters need to look at this instead of plotting revenge and the seizure of power. In Norway, under King Haakon, laws are just, judgments are righteous, the land is at peace, trade thrives, harvests are good on land and at sea, the people and their gods love the king - yet Gunnhild and her sons lay long-term plans to disrupt all this.

Gunnhild and the priest Brihtnoth have "sinned" by behaving naturally. Brihtnoth will not confess until he is in England and:

"He had sworn to her that his confessor would keep the secret. Among other things, Brihtnoth belonged to a high-standing family." (p. 371)

I was brought up to believe that every confessor always kept every secret, whether the family was high- or low-standing, but what is the history of the seal of confession? Did it take a few centuries for it to harden into an absolute professional confidentiality?

When, at the end, Hercule Poirot murders a murderer, he cannot confess to a priest because the latter would withhold absolution until Poirot had confessed to the police. Poirot must resort to the Protestant position of facing God without a priest.