Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 108

Two men whose legends still live on

On September 2, 1192, Richard and Saladin came to terms and the Third Crusade ended. The sticking point had been the stronghold of Ascalon, which Saladin had destroyed rather than let it fall into Richard’s hands. Months later, Richard took control of Ascalon and spent a large sum rebuilding it, so he was understandably loath to surrender it. But because they did not see how they could hold Ascalon without Richard there to defend it, Balian and Outremer’s lords felt they had to sacrifice it in order to make peace. Although Richard was very ill at the time with malaria, they approached him in one of his lucid moments and were greatly relieved when he finally agreed. With Ascalon no longer blocking the peace road, progress was quickly made and on Sunday, August 30th, Saladin sent an envoy to Richard with a draft of the peace treaty. But things did not go as expected.
* * *
Lionheart, page 560-561
“No,” Richard said, shaking his head stubbornly. “I did not agree to yield Ascalon without compensation. I would never do that!’
There was a shocked silence, the other men looking at one another in dismay. “You did, Uncle.” Henri approached the bed, picking up the documents that Richard had crumpled and flung to the floor. “Andre and the bishop and I….we came to you and explained why Ascalon had to be sacrificed—“
“No! I would not do that.”
“Richard…it happened as Henri says. You do not remember….not any of it?”
Richard’s eyes searched Andre’s face, then shifted to Hubert Walter. “No….I agreed to this? You swear it is so?” When all three of them assured him it was, he sank back against the pillows. It was very disturbing, even frightening, to think he’d made such an important decision and had no memory of it. When he glanced up again, he saw that the sultan’s envoy was becoming agitated, asking Humphrey de Toron what had gone wrong. “Humphrey…tell him that if I said it, I will honor my word. And tell him to say this to Saladin—that I accept the terms and understand that if I receive any compensation for Ascalon, it will be because of his generosity and bounty.”
The envoy was ushered out, obviously greatly relieved that there was to be no eleventh hour surprise. By unspoken assent, the other men left, too; only Henri and Andre remained. “This is my fault, Uncle,” Henri said unhappily. “Andre insisted that we ought not to ask you until your fever broke. But I feared to wait—“
“It is your kingdom, Henri. It was your decision to make as much as mine.” Richard could not remember ever feeling so exhausted or so disheartened. “I need to sleep now…” He hoped it would come soon, stilling the questions he could not answer, the insidious voice asking what he’d truly accomplished here. So many deaths, and all for what?
* * *
The Lionheart chronicles spoiled me for any other sources. This sort of detail just does not exist elsewhere….sigh. I was able to find reliable chroniclers for A King’s Ransom, but the crusader and Saracen chroniclers were in a class of their own, offering a form of time-travel. I really miss that! I missed Henri in Ransom, too, so I couldn’t resist this opportunity to bring him back, if only briefly—at least until the next book. I think Balian will have to be on the alert, though, as I suspect Henri is one of my light-fingered characters who steals scenes with ease and might take it into his head to high-jack the entire book, the way Llywelyn swiped Dragons right out from under John’s nose.
Oh, and Richard cheered up considerably soon after this, upon being told that the Duke of Burgundy had died at Acre. And his reliance upon Saladin’s generosity was not misplaced, for the sultan voluntarily compensated him for all the money he’d expended upon Ascalon by agreeing that the Christians and Muslims would share the revenues of Ramla and Lydda.

A candle is quenched

A beautiful eulogy to a great poet, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who died yesterday. If we are all candles, his burned as brightly as the sun, a light we can ill afford to lose.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/opinion...

The sultan and the king

Two significant medieval deaths on this date. On August 31, 1218, al-Malik al-Adil, Saladin’s younger brother, died after a successful reign. I had fun writing his scenes in Lionheart as he and Richard amused themselves with some verbal jousting. Clearly the two men were on friendly terms—surprisingly friendly in the midst of a holy war and a jihad—for Richard knighted one of al-Adil’s sons and he gave Richard two Arab stallions after the battle of Jaffa as a tribute to the English king’s courage. This act would later give rise to the legend that Saladin sent a horse to Richard in the middle of the battle after his mount had been slain. I think the truth is remarkable enough, does not need embroidering. This legend would also give birth to another, that Richard’s Cypriot stallion, Fauvel, was the horse slain under him at Jaffa, but I am happy to report this is erroneous, too. In his haste to reach Jaffa once he learned it was under Saracen attack, Richard took no horses with him, one of his chroniclers being very precise about the number of horses his men had at the second battle of Jaffa: only eleven, animals they found in Jaffa or took from Saracens. Fauvel was safely back at Acre, not taking part in yet another Lionheart legend. We do not know his eventual fate, but I find it hard to believe Richard would not have shipped him back home, given how attached he was to the Cypriot stallion; the same is true for al-Adil’s magnificent gift, Arabs being highly prized both by the crusaders and the Saracens. So Fauvel gets to chase after the French in Ransom, as I am sure the real Fauvel did. And of course Al-Adil will be an important character in my next novel, The Land Beyond the Sea.
August 31, 1422 was the date of death for the English king, Henry V, sometimes called Harry of Monmouth for the place of his birth. He died of dysentery, a great killer in the MA, and was only 35, leaving a nine month old son as his heir. He has never been one of my favorite kings; there is coldness about him that put me off. But his premature death poses a huge What if. What if he had not died when he did? The history of England and France would have been very different; for better or worse, it is hard to say, but definitely different.

A King's Ransom cover

I want to wish all who celebrate Labor Day a very pleasant, peaceful holiday. I think it is also a Bank Holiday in the UK? True also for Australia or Canada? If not, just have a good weekend.
I was somewhat surprised that Amazon has A King’s Ransom up for pre-orders already since the publication date is not until March 4th. But this will give the curious a chance to see the Putnam’s cover, another Victorian painting as they did for Lionheart. Here is the link.
http://www.amazon.com/Kings-Ransom-Sh...

The North remembers

Well, King John wed his cousin, Isabel or Avisa or maybe Hawisa of Gloucester on August 29, 1189; there seems to be some confusion about her actual name. They did not get a dispensation so that made it easy for John to replace her with a trophy wife, Isabel d’Angouleme in 1200. She was never crowned and is not counted as one of England’s queens, so I do hope she was happy to be rid of John; otherwise she really got the short end of the stick.
The Deadline Dragon is still sulking about, the ultimate unwelcome house guest. Not too much else to report, so here is a link for my fellow Game of Thrones fans, recognizing that the mortality rate in Westeros is downright scary, much worse than in my novels.
http://www.today.com/entertainment/no...

The battle of Crecy

August 26, 1346 was the date of a very important medieval battle, fought at Crecy, which resulted in a victory of King Edward III and his eldest son, later to be known as the Black Prince, over the French. Here is an interesting website for those interested in learning more about it. http://www.britishbattles.com/100-yea... Among the dead was John, the blind King of Bohemia, whose insistence upon taking part in the battle was undoubtedly courageous if perhaps ill-advised.
And of course, Bernard Cornwell, who writes battle scenes better than any writer I’ve ever read, has dealt with Crecy in the first book of his Grail Quest novels, published in the US as The Archer’s Tale and in the UK and Down Under as Harlequin.
I am sorry I haven’t been around much again, but I had another back injury this weekend, nothing serious, I am sure, but painful enough to keep me away from the computer. I am trying to figure out a way to smuggle my chiropractor onto the plane with me next month.

Death of a duke, a king, and a sad queen

On August 25, 1192, Richard’s nemesis, the Duke of Burgundy, died at Acre after a short illness. Richard himself was lying gravely ill at Jaffa, stricken with another malarial attack after his remarkable victories on August 1st and 4th. He came close to dying—at one point, the Saracen chronicler Baha al-Din reported a rumor that he had died—but when he was told of Burgundy’s death, he was said to have taken a turn for the better. Of course the French then put it about that he’d poisoned Burgundy. Heinrich threw a laundry list of \accusations against Richard at his trial before the Imperial Diet at Speyer, but he did not raise the poison charge; that was too much even for Heinrich. The mortality rate for crusaders was very high, and most of them died of illness, not on the field of battle. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Count of Flanders, Heinrich’s brother Friedrich, the Count of Perche (Jaufre’s father) among the highborn victims, just to name a few.
The only French king to be canonized as a saint, Louis IX, grandson of Philippe Capet, also died on August 25th, in 1270 at Tunis, on his second crusading attempt.
And on August 25, 1482, Marguerite d’Anjou’s life came to a sad end, at age 52. I was not able to dramatize her death scene; by that point, Sunne was over 900 pages. But I did not forget her.
Sunne, page 860.
* * *
On the same day that Edward learned Berwick Castle had surrendered to Richard, Marguerite d’Anjou was breathing her last in the modest chateau of Dampierre in her native Anjou. Her death came eleven years after the battle of Tewkesbury, came for her eleven years too late, and was the occasion for little comment, either in England or in France. Upon hearing of her death, the French king at once wrote and demanded that all her dogs be sent to him. He was her heir, he said, and the dogs were all he’d be likely to get from her estate.
* * *
A man known as the Universal Spider was not much given to sentiment, but Louis seems to have genuinely liked dogs.

You won't believe all that happend on this date!

So many important historical events occurred on an August 24th that I’ll practically have to write a novella to mention them all. In chronological order, here they are
August 24, 79 BC Mt Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, on the day after the festival of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.
August 24, 410 AD The Visigoths sacked the city of Rome
August 24, 1113 Geoffrey le Bel, Count of Anjou, reluctant husband of the Empress Maude, father of Henry II, was born.
August 24, 1200 King John wed 12 year old Isabelle d’Angouleme
August 24, 1215 Pope Innocent III obligingly annulled the Magna Carta, unwillingly signed by John barely two months earlier
August 24, 1217 In a sea battle fought off the coast of Sandwich, the English prevailed over the French. The pirate chieftain Eustace the Monk was captured and beheaded on the deck of his own ship. John’s illegitimate son, Richard, an important character in Here be Dragons, was one of the heroes of this battle—and am I the only fascinated by the fact that John would have named not one, but two sons after the brother he’d tried to destroy? An interesting aside; if my memory serves, the English sailors threw powdered lime into the French ships, blinding some of the crew.
August 24, 1349 In a panic as the bubonic plague swept across Europe, people looked for scapegoats and, sadly to be expected, blamed the Jews. Over six thousand men, women, and children died in the German town of Mainz. In a scenario reminiscent of the massacre of the Jews of York in 1191, the Mainz Jews, trapped in their barricaded houses and knowing they were doomed, set fire to their homes and died in the inferno. It was never easy to be a Jew in the MA, but it was particularly dangerous to be a German Jew, for the worst pogroms occurred in the German cities, starting with the First Crusade.
Lastly, on August 24, 1572, the St Barnabas Day massacre began in Paris, with the slaughter of at least two thousand French Huguenots. The killing then spread into the countryside; it is impossible to be sure of the number of people who lost their lives, with 10,000 often given as the most likely figure. The man who would become my favorite French king, the 19 year old Henri of Navarre, who’d just wed the king’s sister, Marguerite of Valois, was saved by his bride, although he was then forced to embrace the Catholic faith. He was held at the royal court, but when he was able to escape in 1576, he at once renounced his forced baptism and proclaimed himself still a Huguenot. His marriage to Marguerite failed and ironically he would later voluntarily become a Catholic when that was price of kingship, supposedly saying “Paris is worth a Mass.” These bloody events are dramatized by C.W. Gortner in his novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici,, which I recommend.

The worst way to die?

On August 23, 1305, William Wallace was put to death in a truly barbaric fashion by being drawn and quartered. Readers of The Reckoning know about this gruesome, savage form of execution. It is sometimes said that Davydd ap Gruffydd was the first to suffer this fate. There were a few other cases prior to Davydd’s death in 1283, but in Davydd’s execution we see the origins of the state trial, and drawing, quartering, and disembowelment then became the official method of executing those charged with treason. It was Edward I’s legacy to future kings, and while I am sure he wanted to intimidate would-be rebels, I do not doubt that he also wanted Dayvdd and Wallace to suffer greatly as they died—and they did. In the Reckoning, I was faced with the challenge of dramatizing Davydd’s agonizing death. I suspected that my readers did not want to read a detailed blow by blow depiction of his suffering; my mother said if I did that, I was out of the will.  So I chose to write about Davydd’s last hours as he sought to fend off his fears, his ghosts, and his regrets, determined that he would show his enemies how a Prince of Wales died. In some ways, that just as difficult to write.

Death of a dynasty

August 22, 1138 was the date of a victory of the English over the Scots at Cowton Moor, known as the Battle of the Standard
According to Wikipedia, August 22nd, 1358 is the date upon which Isabella, queen of Edward II, died. But the Dictionary of National Biography says she died on August 23rd, and I think that is a more trustworthy source. I suspect that Kathryn Warner will write something about Isabella on her excellent blog, http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/ The fourteenth century is not my bailiwick, but I do have two comments about Isabella. She did not have an affair with William Wallace! Mel Gibson cannot be trusted. Wallace was dead by the time Isabella set foot on English soil, so any tryst would have given necrophilia a new twist. And she was not called The She-wolf of France until the eighteenth century.
August 22nd is also, of course, the day in 1485 when Richard III was slain at Bosworth Field, ending the three hundred year reign of the Plantagenet dynasty. Way too much has already been said about the Tudors—ad nauseam—so I will merely point out that Tudor dated his reign from the day before Bosworth so he could then charge with treason men who’d fought for an anointed, crowned king. That tells us all we really need to know about the sterling character of the first of the Tudors. I often post a passage from one of my novels on a date relevant to the book’s events. But too many readers have told me that they reread Sunne often, yet always stop before they reach the Bosworth chapter. I can understand that; it took me three weeks to get Richard out of his tent and onto the field at Bosworth, and the reluctance was mine, not his.
So in deference to their feelings, no battlefield scenes from Sunne. And since this is always a sad day for Ricardians, I am going to share with you all a wonderful video that my friend Owen recently sent to me. Take a few minutes away from the grim reality of the medieval past and today’s equally grim present and watch this baby elephant experience his first mud bath. Trust me, you won’t be sorry. http://www.youtube.com/embed/bu_E2f0m...