Galiene

“That morning had come like any other fair dawn in the cool of spring: crisp and sparkling and fresh with the air of change.”Though rumours of war are buzzing around her, the young woman who wrote these words could not have imagined the catastrophic change that was coming that day. Before the morning is over, her home is destroyed, her family murdered and she taken captive by the Scottish army that invaded northern England in 1138.Brave and clever, the woman resists her captors, speaks her mind and fiercely protects those she calls her friends, but she refuses to reveal her name, adopting the name Galiene used by the warriors to mock her pride and spirit. She quickly becomes the spark that reignites ancient animosities among the Scottish forces, but she also uses the healing arts her mother taught her to help the wounded, both the Scots and their victims. Galiene eventually earns the respect, even the love, of the tempestuous men whose behaviour she is quick to condemn, but her own hopes for a peaceful life of learning lie far beyond the war she comes to see as a great untameable “beast” devouring everything and everyone in its path.Galiene’s wishes also conflict with the desires of the wild and charismatic King Fergus of Galloway, who claims her for his own and chooses to call her Amadan De (meaning “Butterfly” or “God’s Fool”). A reluctant participant in the war, Fergus is tormented by guilt over the fate of a mysterious woman he loved in the past, yet he loses his heart the moment he looks into the eyes of his fiery captive. Galiene is wrestling with her own demons, however, and fears the feelings that would bind her to the barbarous “enemy” who continues to wreak havoc in the lands she calls home.Lost for centuries, Galiene’s remarkable record of her experience was discovered during renovations in one of Durham’s oldest houses. Her manuscript offers a rare and memorable glimpse of a twelfth-century woman’s struggle to survive and find happiness in a world twisted by greed, hatred and violence.