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measure, “The Signaller,” is the tale of Rafe Big-land, a poor boy who has always been fascinated by the semaphore station located near his town. With electronic communication devices banned by the Church, the Popes and the state maintain chains of semaphore stations running throughout all of Europe. The Guild governing the signallers is one of the strongest in England; only twelve commoners are allowed admittance annually into the Guild’s training school. Rafe is determined to become one of the twelve, and with the help of the friendly sergeant at his local station, he obtains the proper forms, studies diligently, and wins a place in the school through a nationwide exam. The College is located in Londinium (the Latin name for London), and there Rafe learns all of the basic languages spoken in the realm—Norman French for the upper classes, Latin for the Church, modern English for commerce and trade, middle English, Celtic, Welsh, Gaelic, and Cornish for the peasant classes—in addition to signal codes and techniques, mechanics, and composition.
    After several years of work, Rafe passes his exams, and is posted to a training station, a major switching center called St. Adhelm’s. The final test is a daylong ordeal in which two trainees must transmit from one to the other an entire book of the Bible, signing on and off at the end of each verse. Rafe has finally become a Signaller, and is posted to his first assignment, a small personal station located in one of the great family estates. After a year’s service there, he receives his first independent command, a small station located in the hills of Dorset, a lonely outpost isolated from the next nearest station by two rugged miles. The winters are harsh in the uplands, but the Signallers must still maintain vigilance. On one of his daily walks during an off-duty period, Rafe is suddenly attacked by a wildcat, and badly clawed. He crawls back to his station, falling into his bed. There he is comforted by the Fairies, a race older than mankind, before succumbing to his wounds and the bitter cold. His body is found in the spring by his replacement.
    The third tale, “Brother John,” examines more closely the workings of the Church. John is an engraver in the monastery of St. Adhelm in Dorset. One day he is summoned by his Abbot, and told to report to the head of the Court of Spiritual Welfare, as the Inquisition is now called in England. The Church wants a record made of the torture sessions used to extract “truth” from heretics, criminals, and political dissidents. But the sessions with the Court destroy John’s artistic sense, and nearly drive him mad. When he leaves the city, John heads for the hills, plagued by visions, noises, and memories of the screams and pleadings of the victims whose sufferings he so faithfully recorded for the Pope. There he starts a revolution aimed at Church and state alike, and quickly gathers a following among the peasant class. Soldiers are assaulted and insurrections spring up around the countryside. The Cardinal Archbishop of England excommunicates the monk and puts a price upon his head in a letter dated June 21, 1985. But John escapes his pursuers when the commoners hide him from the searching soldiers, and the bounty on his body quickly escalates to two thousand pounds. John gathers a huge peasant army and marches to the coast, where he addresses the people, telling them of the great new age approaching when the Catholic Church will ease its grip upon the land, and when progress will ease the lot of the people. He turns to the sea, steps into a boat, and sails into the storm-tossed waves, on his way, he says, to see the Pope. The boat’s keel is found washed upon the shore the next morning.
    “Lords and Ladies” features Margaret Strange, niece to Jesse Strange, and the heir to the firm after her own father. Jesse is dying, and Margaret remembers her own adventurous life as she waits for the old man to expire. As a young