Alinor (68 page)

For a moment Ian was laughing too hard to answer, but finally he swept Alinor into his arms. "Madwoman," he gasped, kissing her again and again. "Madwoman, there can be no woman more beautiful than you." Then he laughed again for a while. "Thus are great decisions made. Not on right or wrong or deep necessity, but on the whim of jealousy of one headstrong woman. So be it If the keep at Kemp is ours and if Salisbury and Leicester agree about the children, I will take you to Ireland."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Although scholarship in the past 30 years has redeemed King John as a king, not even Alan Lloyd in his
Maligned Monarch
(Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y., 1972)—who makes a strong effort—can really explain away the evidence concerning John's unpleasant character. The fact that John was not a bad king in modern terms (in modem terms he was a far better king than Richard) is irrelevant. In terms of the period in which he lived, John was a despicable person, and Richard was a hero. It is hard for us now to understand because, by and large, the difference between the brothers turned upon the word "honor," a term which is not only obsolete at present but very nearly laughable.

Richard was a bad king. He was not only disinclined to the "business" of kingship but also extravagant in everything. He was far too generous in giving away crown property, thus impoverishing the throne and making it dependent upon taxation; he made extravagant vows, like taking the Cross, and fulfilled them to the political and financial detriment of his subjects; he was profligate in war, fighting everyone and anyone who would give him the opportunity. John was none of these things. He was efficient and attentive to the "business" of being a king; he reformed the courts, being very much interested in the law; he was more careful than ungenerous in rewarding those who served him; he fought only when war was forced upon
him
or when he could foresee a quick and easy victory.

In medieval terms, however, the characteristics we see as failings in Richard were considered virtues; although damaging to those he ruled, the extravagance in war and in giving were "honorable." That John lacked these characteristics was not seen as an advantage. Worse yet, John inherited the fiscal and political disaster Richard left when he died. John was unlucky. He reaped the whirlwind that Richard had sowed, and he did not have the personality for riding whirlwinds.

Modern historians ameliorate John's military incompetence by pointing out that he did win battles and that he often lost them or was forced into retreat by the defection of his supporters. This is true. It is also probably the strongest indictment that can be brought against John's military ability or personality, or both. Never did Richard's nobles refuse to fight or desert him. They believed in him, trusted him, and died for him when he was wrong. Obviously John's did not believe in him, did not trust him, and were not willing to die for him. This behavior was relatively consistent over a period of more than 15 years and must be meaningful. There can be no avoiding the fact that John's subjects did not like him or respect him.

The distaste for King John cannot be traced to political causes, and this seems to induce surprise in modern historians. But the people John reigned over were not historians looking back at the development of a nation. They were concerned with their own codes and mores. The contemporary hatred for John was based not in faults in the king but in "faults" in the man himself. John murdered subjects from time to time—but so did Richard. The difference in the reactions to the act brings us back to the word "honor." Richard murdered his subjects in fits of rage or after open challenge. He did it in person, confessed, and grieved loudly after the act. John murdered by stealth, by the hand of an assassin, and denied complicity. This was "dishonorable."

Moreover, John preyed upon women. In the late 12th and through the 13th century, the status of women was rising; Queen Eleanor (John's mother) had brought the conventions of
amour courtois,
which venerated women and set them up as goddesses, into fashion; this was also the time of the cult of Mary, when the Mother came close to surpassing the Son in religious significance. This does not mean in hard fact that women were really venerated and well treated, but a conscience about them was developing. John did not even pay lip service to this conscience. He starved the wife and young son of William de Braose to death; he seduced and sometimes raped (by political if not physical force) the wives and daughters of his noblemen.

Lloyd points out that John did not have more illegitimate children than other preceding English kings (except Richard, who acknowledged none) and therefore claims that his reputation for lechery was unjust. This is nonsense. No one (except possibly a religious fanatic) expected a king, or any other man for that matter, to be chaste. Some were, and were praised for it, but those who were not were criticized very tepidly, if at all. Despite religious fervor, sins of the flesh were not important in medieval times; they were confessed and absolved as a matter of course. There was nothing Victorian in the medieval view of the body and its needs. The number of bastards a man fathered and acknowledged was irrelevant. What gave John a reputation for lechery was the fact that he dishonored "honorable" women, using his power to force compliance.

Worst of all, John did not keep his word. He reneged on promises. Often these were unwise promises, and he was right, in modern terms, to go back upon them. In his own times his behavior was, again, "dishonorable." To the medieval mind an "honorable" disaster was preferable to a "dishonorable" happy outcome. Of course, every man probably sidled around strict honor from time to time. John was simply unlucky or not astute enough to get away with his defections from the code.

In any case, in his own time King John was accused of horror upon horror. It is unlikely he was guilty of all; it is equally unlikely that there was
no
real cause for the way his people and noblemen felt about him. John was the "evil king" of legend (Robin Hood and others) and the legends began in, or very shortly after, John's reign. These legends were not generated by political considerations (as the legends about "evil" King Richard III were generated by the conquering Tudors), because John's own son reigned after him.

Under the circumstances, I have felt free to make John the "villain" of this book, although I have tried to express the duality of his personality. Because the central characters are fictional, all the machinations against them are, of course, constructed for the purposes of the story and are not real. However, the rumors about the death of John's nephew Arthur (although not the story told by Sir Guy, who is also fictional), of his treatment of William, Earl of Pembroke, and his conflict with the Church and his barons are historical fact. The "evil" characters of Fulk de Cantelu and Henry of Cornhill are, again, contemporary judgments and come from a prejudiced source (Roger of Wendover's
Flowers of History).
These men did the bidding of the king. Fulk disappears from history, but two other de Cantelus and Henry of Cornhill served John's son with honor and distinction. Perhaps Roger of Wendover was unfair to these gentlemen, or perhaps it is true that a "dishonest master makes dishonest servants." All in all, although I may have maligned the latter gentlemen, I do not believe there is any serious inaccuracy in my portrayal of King John.

Certain words, however, have been used anachronistically as a convenience. The word "English," as in English lords, English vassals, and so on, is the most important inaccuracy. These men were, of course, not English at all. Some had English blood, owing to intermarriage of the Anglo-Saxon nobility with the Normans who came with William the Bastard, but each successive king had brought followers from his own provinces. By the time of King John, there were Normans, Angevins, Poitevins, and many others. The mixture was complex, but, by and large, the entire nobility of England in the early 13th century was French. Thus, when the word "English" is used in this book, it means those noblemen whose major estates were in England and who spent most of their time in that country.

The word "fewter" is another convenient inaccuracy. The fewter was a rest for a lance attached to the saddle, which had not been invented in the early 13th century. However the verb form of the word has been used to obviate the necessity for a long, involved phrase describing how a spear was held. A few other similar anachronisms appear, but I ask the reader to remember that styles in clothing and furnishings, in the wording of oaths and challenges, and so on, did not begin or change according to strict dates.

The spelling of names is the final problem I must mention. There were no rules for spelling in medieval times, and when names had to be transliterated from one language to another, difficulties were merely multiplied. For example, the name of the Welsh Prince is Leolin in Roger of Wendover, Llywelyn in the
Oxford History
series, and Llewelyn in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica;
de Cantelu in Roger of Wendover becomes de Canteloupe in the
Dictionary of National Biography;
Alberic in Wendover is Aubery in the
Oxford History
and in the
Encyclopaedia.
Under the circumstances, I have felt free to be arbitrary, choosing the name I preferred for aesthetic reasons.

If more serious errors appear, I would be most grateful to have them called to my attention. Although the "story" is a fiction, a real effort has been made to keep accurate the history that impinges upon it and into which it is set.

R.G.

GLOSSARY OF MEDIEVAL TERMS

BAILEY any open area surrounded by the walls of a castle

BAILIFF a person charged with the administrative duties of an estate; the agent who collects and manages an estate or farm for the landlord

CASTELLAN the governor or constable of a castle, assigned at the will of the "holder" of the castle and liable to removal at that "holder's" will

DEMESNE the land held and possessed by the owner and not rented or controlled by any subordinate, such as a vassal or castellan

DESTRIER a war horse, a highly bred and highly trained animal

DISSEISE to put out of possession; to dispossess a person so that his legal heirs were also disqualified from inheriting; the term was usually used when the dispossession was wrongful

HAUBERK' armor; the mail shirt made up of linked rings or chains of metal

INTERDICT a sentence issued by a high ecclesiastical officer (bishop, archbishop or pope) who debarred a place or person from church functions

JUSTICIAR technically a judge, but one with considerable power

KEEP innermost, strongest structure or central tower of a castle, the place that served as a last defense; in general used to mean the whole castle

LEECH a person who treated injuries and sometimes illness, sometimes combining this with the profession of barber; not a learned physician but a doctor of sorts levy a calling up of men for war or other purposes, the men being those who were required to do military service to "hold" their lands

OFFAL garbage, refuse provender food, especially dried or preserved, like corn or salt meat and fish reavers technically those who tear, split and cleave; thus, robbers who use great violence

SQUIRE a young man in training to be a knight; he attended upon a knight, exchanging personal service (combined valet, secretary, messenger, and bodyguard) in exchange for lessons in manners, fighting techniques and military tactics

TRENCHBUT a machine of war used for throwing stones; it could be mounted on ships or castle walls or carried

TUN a large barrel in which wine, ale or beer is stored

VASSAL a nobleman who held his lands on conditions of homage and allegiance, which included military service, from an overlord Vassals might be very great lords who held many large estates from the king or could be minor knights who held one small estate from another nobleman. In any case the tenure of a vassal was permanent and heritable by his children. The property could not be taken away from them legally except for high crimes, such as treason.

VILLEIN one step above the serf; equivalent to the sharecropper of the early twentieth century The villein was a free man (not bound to the land like the serf), but he did not usually own his land.

WIMPLE a veil of linen or silk worn by women and so folded as to envelop the head, hair, chin, sides of the face and neck