" A road's a kind of holy thing," said Roger the Minstrel to his son, Adam. "That's why it's a good work to keep a road in repair, like giving alms to the poor or tending the sick. It's open to the sun and wind and rain. It brings all kinds of people and all parts of England together. And it's home to a minstrel, even though he may happen to be sleeping in a castle."

And Adam, though only eleven, was to remember his father's words when his beloved dog, Nick, was stolen and Roger had disappeared and he found himself traveling alone along these same great roads, searching the fairs and market towns for his father and his dog.

Here is a story of thirteenth-century England, so absorbing and lively that for all its authenticity it scarcely seems "historical". Although crammed with odd facts and lore about that time when "longen folke to goon on pilgrimages," its scraps of song and hymn and jongleur's tale of the period seem as new-minted and fresh as the day they were devised, and Adam is a real boy inside his gay striped surcoat. Follow him on the road and see the shifting throng: rich merchants, pilgrims with cockle shells upon their hats, farming folk driving pigs to the fair, noblemen with retinue, minstrels and priests, saints and thieves and honest country bodies, and somewhere in the crowd tall Roger the Minstrel, and Nick, a small red spaniel.

From the dust jacket