Rereading, Not Remembering, Finding Current Resonance

I just reread two novels, first Jo Walton's My Real Children and then Rosemary Sutcliff's Knight's Fee. I read both five to 10 years ago at most, but it amazes me how much I didn't remember about them.

I remembered a lot more about My Real Children — the basic story of the main character, and some important details of what happens in her alternate lives. But there are other very important parts of the story that I'm shocked I didn't remember, given that I read it only five or six years ago. I don't want to mention them because they're also spoilers (and everyone should read it!).

I'm even more surprised about how little I remembered of Knight's Fee, and even on rereading how unfamiliar it was. The book was published in 1960, but despite being a Sutcliff fan as a teenager, I wasn't aware of it until I found it in a used bookstore in Edinburgh in 2007. I finally read it some time around 10 years ago.

Despite my first reading, I didn't even have a recollection of its time period in English history (though I knew it was post-1066, given that it's about knights). I only remembered that I really liked it and that it made me cry.

On second read, it still made me tear up and I still liked it. 

The story takes place in a period of time that's little-covered in historical fiction: around 1100 BCE, when William the Conqueror's surviving sons were warring over who would control England and Normandy. But it concentrates on a young boy named Randal, growing to manhood in a particular part of Sussex. It's a vision of positive masculinity, friendship and loyalty, and deep connection to place (detailed with Sutcliff's trademark descriptions of the flora and fauna).

One particularly interesting part of the secondary plot concerns the actions of the villain, a fictional Norman knight named Thiebaut de Coucy. He wants to take over the manor where Randal is being raised by another Norman knight. The villain at one point dresses up as a wandering friar and goes to a village adjacent to the manor. He stirs up the people of the village, telling them there's a witch at the manor, saying all the usual stuff (she hexed your cow!). He brings an angry mob to the manor door, hoping there will be violence enough to kill Randal, who knows the villain has secretly plotted against the king and was using that as a way to prevent him taking over the manor.

The way the scene is written, portraying the villain's conscious manipulation of the gullible villagers and turning them to violence, felt all too familiar in our current situation. Sutcliff was writing in the late 1950s, so she had seen a lot in the world over the previous few decades, and movies like A Face in the Crowd had just been released as well. 

But despite knowing that witch hunts are said to have sometimes been motivated by property-grabs, I wasn't expecting that bit of current resonance from a book set around 1100.