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Glasgow, Scotland, if I’d rather be François, the Chevalier de Recci, or a time lord, I’d say, “Pass me my sword!”
    “What they’re saying doesn’t fit what their mouths are doing,” Lemur points out.
    “Shut up,” I warn him. “Watch now, talk later.”
    It’s the opening episode. The castle is under attack from the Spanish, who think they’re going to storm it easy-peasy. They hit it with one cannonball after another. It’s already a smoking ruin and you can’t see how the people inside the castle can possibly hold out. But this is the one where the French heroes, François and Guillot, sneak up behind the Spanish troops and start firing on them with their own spare cannons. They set fire to a barrel of gunpowder in a horse-drawn cart and send the horses careering madly into the Spanish camp. It’s infectious, the obvious delight of François and Guillot. They laugh like madmen – big HA HA HA HA! laughs – and jump up and down with joy as theSpaniards die on all sides, usually in an impressively acrobatic way.
    I have to confess that we’re a bit hazy on where and when the story takes place. I mean, at the start it does say Casal 1630, but that doesn’t give us a lot to go on. We’ve wondered, we’ve discussed, we’ve debated. Given all the Spanish and French soldiers involved, it seems obvious Casal is in or near France or Spain (or potentially both). Though Hector raised the interesting possibility that it could be an actual country that doesn’t exist any more. (We like this idea.) We’re as shaky on dates as we are on geography. We’ve no idea what else was going on in the world in 1630, not a clue. For us history is made up of odd, brilliant, disconnected stories, against a background of dull bits. We pad it out a bit with stuff we read in books and comics and watch on television, and to be honest we’re not always sure what really happened and what details we’ve added to make it more exciting. I wonder if that matters? We’ve agreed there are some advantages to not knowing. François and Guillot seem much more heroic out of time and place. They’re pure heroes. And we want to be them.
    I hear Lemur’s intake of breath as François and Guillot are nearly caught by the Spanish soldiers. They leap onto their horses and gallop away just in time.
    It’s very busy,
The Flashing Blade
, with people arguing and fighting, all determined to find some way to either capture the castle or repel the attackers. You can’t be totally sure who’s telling the truth. There’s a fair amount of double-dealing going on (and the dubbing can make all the characters seem a bit shifty). Even after a fewrepeats (and Kit, Bru, Skooshie, Hector and I are totally obsessed and reckon we’ve seen every episode at least three times, apart from the last one, which isn’t shown very often and we’ve only managed to see once –
once!
– and even then the picture was rubbish and kept going fuzzy), we haven’t quite grasped all of the reasons behind the different ploys each side uses. (To be honest, I have to make some of it up when Kit asks.)
    But it’s clear the Spanish are the bad guys and the French are the good guys. We know this because the French are outnumbered and are fighting against the odds and François and Guillot laugh in the face of this, while the Spaniards are arrogant and have no sense of humour. They also have ridiculous moustaches. I have a theory that those may slow them down when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, because the French usually win. The fights are brilliant! We are 100% behind François, even when he gets into trouble with his own side – because he’s thinking for himself and doesn’t do what he’s told when he knows it’s wrong. He’s the best sword fighter by miles and is also really good at disguises – both very handy skills, as it turns out.
    “That was fantastic!” shouts Lemur, bouncing up and down on the cushions as Kit and I treat him to a rousing