Benjamin Albritton’s Guest Blog: Six Fish, A Falcon, A Wounded Washerwoman, and The Dissertation Blues

Benjamin Albritton sits in the rare books room in a cold library in England. It is 3:05 pm. It’s gray out, kind of rainy, his socks are wet, and he has just been shocked out of his late-dissertation torpor by a fact that seems to make his current chapter fall into place: the king of France, in 1359, has just bought six fish from Lady Pembroke.