123:5 Meme

Here's a new one, and I'm procrastinating on the sermon, so...

Through HipPastorzWife2B through Mary Beth from Songbird , as seen at The Vicar of Hogsmeade.

The rules are:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest!

Dorothy Dunnett, King Hereafter

“And so he went to the top bench, where Thorfinn also was signalling him over, and where he sat down, as indicated, between an abbot from Devon and a bishop from Brittany. Thorfinn said, ‘I am not your brave sort of man who would enter into a marriage alliance without informing King Canute’s Queen, the Lady Emma. When she is in her dower town of Exeter, there is no one she leans on more than my lord Abbot Ealdred here, who rules Tavistock and all the trading ships moving from thereabouts over the sea, as far south as the river Loire—or am I exaggerating?’

‘You are,’ said the Abbot.”

King Hereafter is, as you may have guessed from the title, an historical novel about the “real” Macbeth. Dorothy Dunnett was a Scottish writer and historian who believed that Macbeth and Thorfinn were the same person. She writes dense novels, full of allusions and sometimes self-referential. They repay repeated readings. King Hereafter is, in my opinion, her very best ever. The ending touches me every single time. It’s a book I read through and put down, then pick up a week later and start again. Who, me, obsessive?