She was about to.
“The Book of Battle details the quest of Gaetan de Wolfe and his men as they went on a quest to rescue one of their comrades who had been kidnapped by a historical figure we all know as Alary of Mercia,” Abigail said, talking even though no one was really paying attention to her. “Alary is also sometimes called Amary, but Jathan de Guerre definitely calls him Alary. This is an account like I’ve never seen before and neither has anyone else because it’s very detailed. It really reads like a novel, actually. Jathan lists the men that went with de Wolfe on this quest and discusses them in fairly close detail.”
One of the scholars at the table, Dr. Rapkin, was listening to her. He stepped away from the table as the others pored over the journal. “De Wolfe is a fairly well-known name in England, still,” he said. “They’re still the Earls of Wolverhampton, I believe.”
Abigail nodded, pointing to Anne de Wolfe back in the audience. “That’s Lady de Wolfe right there,” she said. “She has helped me tremendously in discovering the history of the entire de Wolfe family, starting with Gaetan. We’ve been able to clear up a few misnomers starting with an old de Wolfe family legend that Gaetan de Wolfe met his wife, Ghislaine of Mercia, at the Battle of Wellesbourne. The truth was that Ghislaine of Mercia, the sister of Edwin of Mercia, was a warrior woman and she was at the Battle of Hastings. That’s where Gaetan first met her. You’ll read about it in the transcript. It was Ghislaine who helped Gaetan and his men hunt down her brother, Alary, and the Norman knight he’d abducted. The Battle of Wellesbourne didn’t come until well after the Battle of Hastings. You’ll also see in the transcript that one of Gaetan’s men, interestingly enough, bore the name of Wellesbourne.”
Dr. Rapkin nodded, very interested in this unique subject. “After reading your dissertation, I did a little research myself on the de Wolfe family. He became the Earl of Wolverhampton after the Battle of Wellesbourne.”
“That is correct.”
“But the de Wolfes that inherited the earldom of Warenton are a separate branch.”
Abigail shrugged. “Partially,” she said. “Those de Wolfes came from William de Wolfe, who was the first Earl of Warenton. William was the third son of the Earl of Wolverhampton, the man who had inherited that title through Gaetan. Since William de Wolfe was the third son, he was not in line for that inheritance. He received the title Earl of Warenton from Henry III, but he is a direct descendent of Gaetan de Wolfe.”
It was clearing up some rather complicated family trees and, by now, more of the panelists were listening. “I also read about the Roman factor in your paper as it had to do with Gaetan’s quest northward,” Dr. Rapkin continued. “Can you please clarify how a lost Roman legion was part of the Norman conquest?”
Abigail grinned. “Well, you’ll see in the Book of Battle that they weren’t really a lost Roman legion, but merely descended from one,” she said. “The leader was from the House of Shericus, but it was evidently de Wolfe who changed the name to de Shera because he felt it should be in the ‘Norman fashion’. At least, that’s what Jathan wrote. Anyway, several great English houses – de Lara, de Moray, and de Russe – have links to these Roman descendants because they married women from the tribe.”
Dr. Rapkin rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. “And the House of de Shera? What became of them?”
Abigail glanced back at Anne once more. “With Lady de Wolfe’s help, I did a little research on the House of de Shera and discovered it was de Wolfe who gave them properties up near Chester when Antillius de Shera, who was a widower, married a Norman woman,” she said. “He had a few sons by her and it was the service of the sons to the Norman kings that gave them the Earldom of Coventry. The House of de Shera and the House of de Wolfe remained allies for hundreds of years after that.”
It was a very neat story, all wrapped up in her dissertation and explained to the last genealogical detail. Dr. Rapkin picked up a copy of the text from the Book of Battle, scanning it as Abigail sat there and waited for the next question. Considering the fascinating subject, it wasn’t long in coming.
“De Lohr, de Russe, de Moray,” Dr. Rapkin muttered as he read. “These are some of the greatest Medieval houses during that time. And all of them came with Warwolfe with the Duke of Normandy?”
Abigail nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “You know that Edward I named his giant trebuchet Lupus Guerre, which means war wolf, but I couldn’t find any definitive information that stated that he actually named it after de Wolfe. But one can only assume he knew of the Normandy’s greatest knight, so maybe that was his homage to de Wolfe.”
Dr. Rapkin was still looking at the transcript. “It would explain a lot, actually,” he said. Then he began flipping around the pages. “I saw somewhere that Gaetan and his wife had eleven children.”
Abigail watched him flip around. “That’s in my paper,” she said. “William, Aaric, Elizabetha, Matthias, Juliana, Stefon, Dacia, Edwin, Quinton, Jarreth, and Catherine.”
When he looked at her strangely for rattling off all of those names so quickly, she knew his question before he asked it.
“I have an eidetic memory. I see words,” she said.
He understood. Dr. Rapkin looked back at the papers. “And they all lived into adulthood?”
Abigail nodded. “Seven sons and four girls, all of them growing up to become pretty great in their own right, but Lady de Wolfe can tell you more about that since it’s her family. My focus was on Warwolfe and Ghislaine of Mercia, not their children.”