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Yup - a bit different from Harry Turtledove's more recent Shakespearian romp "Ruled Britannia", which we group-read not too long ago!

The stories that together make up Pavane were published in the early issues of the British science fiction/fantasy magazine Impulse, which was a retitling of the long-running Science Fantasy, and a companion magazine to the better-known New Worlds. While Kyril Bonfiglioli and later Harry Harrison were the main editors, Keith Roberts himself did the majority of the editorial work - and also the majority of the covers! Here are the two Pavane-related ones:

I think, given that Keith Roberts was on the inside there, that the idea was to have a "serial that isn't a serial", to encourage people to buy every issue without having prospective "impulse purchasers" think that a quarter of the magazine was a mid-part of a novel. Having parts of the book approach the central theme in different ways can be a strength, and I'd say that that is what it is here...

Well, it is a rather extraordinary concept, as the first "stanza" introduces it. The Spanish invade Britain after the assassination of Queen Elizabeth leads to an anti-Catholic pogrom, and thus the Roman Catholic church gets into a very strong position, and is able as the years pass to crush protestantism. And so, even in the second half of the twentieth century, the middle ages linger on. Granted, there are petrol-driven automobiles, but a papal edict restricts them to 150cc, so the steam engines that pull a series of trucks from town to town are the kings of the road. But there are bandits out on the moors... and wolves, and, apparently, some more exotic creatures are still with us...

The steam engine "The Lady Margaret", as portrayed on one of the covers above, is a great creation, rolling through the frosts of late autumn, and it's all very evocative.

It's strange that "Ruled Britannia" by Harry Turtledove, another recent "Read" here, also had those darn Spaniards taking over, but that was set back at the time, and really chimes in with the sensibilities of the "Shakespeare In Love" movie for me. If anything, we are more in "Lord Darcy" territory, the stories by Randall Garrett thoughtfully compiled by Eric Flint for Baen in 2004 - though there England had the upper hand, not an ultra-strong, ultra-rich Vatican, and the tales tend to be mysteries.

The first tale is certainly strong, standing on its own, and manages to introduce us to this strange old England very well. The road-running, coal-fired steam engine, drawing its six or more wagons through the small isolated towns, and across the wide lawless moors after dark, with a hard frost stinging, the clear night sky, the distant sounds of a more feral wildlife... And our main character himself, clearly on a path to something painful, from his father's funeral to the less-than-successful proposal of marriage to the woman the engine was named after, to the chance encounter with an old college friend and its consequences. If it hadn't been subsumed into Pavane I think it would have ended up in quite a few antholigies!

Maybe there are different versions - my copy is the 1968 "Ace Science Fiction Special" paperback, from the 1966 Doubleday hardback. After a brief prologue, "first measure" is "The Lady Margaret", followed by "The Signaller"; "Brother John" comes third.

"The Signaller" tells the story of a young member of the Guild which runs the series of semaphore-signal towers that pass messages throughout Christendom. Through them, from dawn to dusk, passes all the information from city to town and back again, from news to private messages to food prices. We start with Rafe injured almost to death by a wildcat, a catamount, and his struggles, slashed and almost disembowelled, to get back through the snow to his lonely tower. We then flash back to his childhood, and his induction into the Guild, before the fae, the faeries, make their first real appearance in the book. A faerie maiden comes and cares for him, nurses him back to health, and then carries him away, leaving a shocking surprise for the Guild members who later come to investigate.

I'm not entirely convinced that the book needs faeries and other supernatural beings. I suppose they do add to the "middle ages lives on" atmosphere, and that the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic church, as it tended to absorb older superstitions as it grew, would provide more fertile soil for such beliefs than would Protestantism, but still... It certainly all makes for a page-turner of a tale, though!