When Christ and His Saints Slept (142 page)

Rhiannon politely joined in the laughter, but she marveled at Eleanor’s sangfroid. Had Ranulf not been there for Gilbert’s birth, it would have been a far greater ordeal. No, as much as she liked Harry and Eleanor, they were a breed apart, this king of twenty-one and his celebrated queen, surely the only woman who would ever wear the crowns of both England and France. She wished them well, but she was so very glad to be going home with Ranulf, who did not yearn to soar up into the heavens, who felt no need to see how close he could get to the sun without being scorched.

“Are we ready?” she asked, and Ranulf made one last joke, wished Eleanor a safe and easy lying-in, and promised to be back ere the new babe could learn to walk. Swinging up into the saddle then, he reached for the lead attached to Rhiannon’s mare, and they started off on their long journey back to Wales.

Ranulf had no regrets about what he was leaving behind. After nineteen years of fighting over the English throne, he had no doubts whatsoever that the most dangerous quarry was neither wild boar nor wolf. No hunt was so hazardous as the pursuit of power. Fortunately, his nephew Harry was a skilled huntsman, one of the best he’d ever seen.

He glanced back once. Henry and Eleanor were still out in the snow-blanketed bailey. They waved as Ranulf turned, and that was to be the memory he would carry into Wales: the two of them, standing together in the bright winter sunlight, smiling, sure that the world, like the English crown, was theirs for the taking.

Afterword

H
ENRY
II was one of England’s greatest kings, a man whose successes and failures were all on a grand scale. Even readers untutored in British history are familiar with the story of Henry and Eleanor’s turbulent, passionate, and—ultimately—disastrous marriage. Their firstborn son, William, died in 1156, at age three. But they were far luckier than most medieval parents, for Eleanor bore Henry eight children and all but William survived the perils of a twelfth-century childhood. Two of their sons, Richard Lionheart and John, succeeded to the English throne, and the dynasty they began would rule England for more than three hundred years. Henry died in 1189, betrayed by his own sons and murmuring, “Shame, shame upon a conquered king.” Eleanor survived him by nigh on fifteen years, dying in 1204 at the remarkable age of eighty-two. At a later time, I hope to continue with Henry and Eleanor’s unique saga.

Maude was one of the few people whom her son truly trusted, and he relied upon her judgment and advice until she sickened and died on September 10, 1167, in her sixty-sixth year. She was buried in the abbey church of Bec, although her body was reinterred at Rouen’s great cathedral in the nineteenth century. Chroniclers report that her epitaph read, “Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring, here lies the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry.”

Henry’s troublesome brother Geoffrey was made Count of Nantes but died unexpectedly on July 25, 1158, at age twenty-four. Henry’s brother William fared better, holding the vicomté of Dieppe and rich estates in fifteen English shires, but he, too, died young, on January 30, 1164, at age twenty-seven.

Maude’s half-brother Rainald prospered under his nephew’s reign. One of Henry’s most steadfast supporters and advisers, he died on July 1, 1175. Robert’s widow, Amabel, did not remarry and died in 1157. Their daughter, Maud, does not seem to have remarried either, after Chester’s death; she died in July of 1189. Her grandson Ranulf de Blundevill was the Earl of Chester who figured so prominently in my second novel,
Here Be Dragons
.

Stephen’s brother the Bishop of Winchester had a falling-out with Henry in 1155 and spent several years in French exile. He eventually returned to England, and in 1168, he gave away virtually all of his considerable wealth to charity. He died on August 8, 1171, “full of days.”

Stephen’s son William died childless in 1160. His sister, Mary, had lived most of her life in the cloistered quiet of the nunnery, becoming abbess of the convent at Romsey. Suddenly she found herself a great heiress, the Countess of Boulogne. Coerced by Henry into leaving the nunnery, she was wed to the son of the Count of Flanders. This marriage created a firestorm of controversy, and the outraged Pope excommunicated Mary’s new husband. Mary bore him two daughters and eventually gained his permission to return to the convent. In 1169, she took the veil again at the French nunnery at Austrebert, and died there in 1182 at age forty-five.

William de Ypres returned to his native Flanders at Easter, 1157. He spent his last years at the monastery of St Peter at Loo, dying there in January of 1165, at age seventy-five.

Waleran Beaumont’s influence waned drastically after Henry’s coronation. He died in April 1166. His twin brother’s star continued to rise, and until Robert’s death in April 1168, he stood high in Henry’s favor. John Marshal died circa 1164. His son William, spared the hangman’s noose by Stephen at Newbury, played a major role in the reigns of Henry’s sons, becoming Earl of Pembroke and a celebrated soldier-statesman, even serving as a regent of England at one point.

The French king wed twice more after divorcing Eleanor. He and his second wife had a daughter, who—improbably enough—was wed as a child to Henry and Eleanor’s eldest surviving son. His third wife bore him the son he so craved. Louis died in 1180.

After Eustace’s death, Constance returned to France, and the following year the French king married her to the Count of Toulouse. Regrettably, her second marriage was no happier than her first, and in 1165 she returned to her brother’s court.

Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, died on August 20, 1153, and probably never knew that Eleanor had given Henry a son just three days earlier. The Catholic Church canonized Bernard as a saint in January 1174.

I was unable to find a death date for Eleanor’s sister, Petronilla. Abbot Bernard had placed a curse upon her adulterous union with Raoul de Péronne, and when her son contracted leprosy and both her daughters had troubled, childless marriages, there were those to say that Bernard’s dire prophecy had been borne out. It is not likely, though, that Eleanor agreed.

Owain Gwynedd ruled North Wales for more than thirty years, until his death in November 1170. His actual name was Owain ap Grufydd, but he became better known to his countrymen as Owain Gwynedd, and eventually as Owain Fawr—Owain the Great. Readers of
Here Be Dragons
may be interested to learn that he was the grandfather of Llewelyn Fawr.

Author’s Note

I
ORIGINALLY
began including an author’s note in my books because “my” people led such extraordinary lives, filled with enough drama, tragedy, and eerie coincidence to put a Hollywood scriptwriter to shame, and I felt the need to verify the historical accuracy of the more improbable events. Well, this is my fifth book, but nothing has changed.

Maude truly did escape from the siege of Oxford Castle by donning a white cloak, climbing down a rope, and walking right through Stephen’s army in the midst of a blizzard. What writer would dare to invent an episode like that?

The account of John Marshal trapped in the burning bell tower at Wherwell nunnery comes from the epic medieval poem
Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal
and is confirmed by other contemporary sources. The only liberty I took was in making Gilbert Fitz John the unnamed knight who took refuge with Marshal in the tower. The near hanging of Marshal’s small son at Newbury also comes from the
Histoire
, which provides an appealing glimpse of Stephen, playing a game on the floor of his tent with the child he’d spared, using plantain leaves for swords.

Robert Fitz Roy did manage to march an army halfway across England in the dead of winter, catching Stephen by surprise and forcing the Battle of Lincoln, a feat that still has military historians marveling. His nephew Henry later duplicated this exploit on a lesser scale by racing to the rescue of besieged Pacy, the first time that Henry displayed his remarkable talent for speed beyond the reach of mortal men. Throughout Henry’s eventful reign, he was constantly baffling his foes with his uncanny ability to appear without warning at any trouble spot in his far-flung empire. The French king was once heard to complain that he could almost believe Henry had learned to fly.

Stephen had indeed planned to sail on the White Ship, but changed his mind at the last moment. Eustace’s bizarre death did occur as I describe, and on the very day that Eleanor bore Henry their first son. All of the odd omens I mention were reported by the chroniclers of the time. Were some of them conveniently remembered “after the fact”? Possibly. But theirs was a superstitious age. Ours is, too, of course. Times and beliefs change; people don’t.

This was the most challenging and difficult of all my books, in part because the sources were so often muddled or contradictory. Before I venture into that unmapped territory, though, I would like to anticipate some reader queries: Maude’s half-brother Ranulf Fitz Roy is fictional. Since Henry I is known to have sired at least twenty illegitimate children, I decided one more wouldn’t hurt! This was the first time that I’d allowed a fictional character to share center stage with historical figures, and I wasn’t sure I’d feel comfortable with Ranulf. Somewhat to my surprise, I discovered that I enjoyed playing God with him, having the sole say in determining his destiny. I’ve been told by readers that they approach my afterwords with some trepidation, knowing how rare “happy endings” are in real life, especially in the twelfth century. I am pleased to report, therefore, that it is safe to envision Ranulf and Rhiannon living out their days together in the beautiful Conwy Valley, in the protective shadow of Eryri.

I’ve chosen the medieval names for towns, just as I’ve preferred to use Welsh spellings for Welsh place names. Cantebrigge is known today as Cambridge, Stanford is now Stamford, Blancminster has become Oswestry, and Le Strete soon gave way to Stockbridge. I made a few minor changes with proper names, for clarity’s sake. The Earl of Chester’s Christian name is given as both Ranulf and Randolph; I chose the latter to avoid confusion with Maude’s half-brother. For the same reason, I sought to keep the number of Maudes and Matildas in the book to a minimum. For Henry I’s natural daughter who drowned in the wreck of the White Ship, I used an earlier variation of the name Maude: Mahault. Stephen’s doomed sister was reported by the chroniclers as Maude, but also as Lucia, and so Lucia she became.

This is probably a good time to explain that Maude and Matilda are essentially the same name. Matilda is the Latinized version, Maude the vernacular. The empress would have signed her charters as Matilda, but she’d have called herself Maude. Faced with two major female characters who bore the same name, I naturally decided to make use of both Matilda and Maude.

Readers of my earlier novels may have been puzzled to find Owain Gwynedd referred to as a Welsh king. Owain was the last Welsh ruler to use this title.

And for those familiar with the story that Geoffrey wanted Henry to cede Anjou to his brother once he’d become England’s king, I believe this myth was convincingly rebutted by W. L. Warren in his masterly biography,
Henry II
.

I’ve long wanted to refute a popularly held belief that the sidesaddle was introduced into England by Richard II’s queen in the fourteenth century. Although this legend has been disproved by historians, it still crops up occasionally in history books. But when Maude fled Winchester, the hostile Worcester Chronicle took gleeful note of the fact that she was forced to ride astride, like a man.

What Rhiannon called her “inner vision” was actually a reflection of sound waves off the facial muscles, hence its more common name, “facial vision.” Her total blindness was the result of sympathetic ophthalmia; the loss of sight in one eye put the other eye at risk, too. And Ranulf’s Norwegian dyrehund is known today as the Norwegian elkhound. For plot purposes, I needed an ancient breed, distinctive in appearance, not commonly known in England. The fact that I have a Norwegian elkhound myself may have influenced me, too—just a little!