Reconstructing daily medieval life through the 13th-century accounts of Reginald de Chen.

Imagine standing high on the wooden palisades of the royal castle of Kincardine in the late autumn of the thirteenth century. The wind sweeping down from the Cairn o’ Mount carries the sharp, undeniable scent of woodsmoke and damp earth. Below, the Howe of the Mearns stretches out in a patchwork of harvested fields, dense woodlands, and winding waters. Yet the peace of this rural expanse is an illusion. Within the castle’s thick walls, an atmosphere of frantic, organized dread prevails. The king is coming. In the cold, shadowy chambers of the keep, a man named Reginald de Chen sits before a heavy oak table, the scratch of his goose-quill pen echoing in the silence. He is the Sheriff of Kincardine, and he is not bracing for a military siege, but for an economic one.