The hostages

Nine stories about boys and girls living between the 4th century B.C. to the 11th century A.D., "in a kind of frame-work of history, showing what happened between each story and also where they happened.... There are Greeks, Romans and barbarians, sometimes early Britons, Byzantines, inheritors of both Greece and Romne, and finally some English of the time of the Norman conquest." -- Jacket flap.