A Place Beyond Courage, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

Sphere, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7515-3901-1. 518 pages.

Set in England and Normandy between 1130 and 1153, A Place Beyond Courage tells the story of John FitzGilbert or John Marshal, his first wife Aline Pipard and his second wife Sybilla of Salisbury. Empress Matilda, King Stephen, Henry FitzEmpress (the future Henry II) and various members of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy appear as important secondary characters. And John and Sybilla’s son William Marshal, whose story was told in the author’s previous novels The Greatest Knight (reviewed here earlier) and The Scarlet Lion, makes a memorable appearance as a young child.

John FitzGilbert holds the important official post of Marshal at the court of King Henry I, responsible for the complex logistics of supply and transport required to keep the court functioning and to move it from place to place on its frequent travels. John obtained the post partly through inheritance from his father, partly through martial prowess (he and his father once fought a duel to retain it against a challenger), and partly through his own formidable competence. A minor lord, he has no great lands of his own, and his power and wealth depend largely on his role as the royal Marshal. When Henry I dies suddenly, leaving a daughter and a nephew as rivals for the throne of England, the aristocracy divides into factions and England descends into a brutal civil war. This was a cruel period of English history, ‘when Christ and his saints slept’ according to a contemporary chronicler, when arbitrary violence ruled and there was little to check the excesses of local tyrants. For the ambitious and able John Marshal, the chaos presents both opportunity and danger.  If he judges every situation accurately, he stands not only to survive but to gain lands and influence.  But a single wrong step could cost him – and his family – everything.

In common with the other novels by Elizabeth Chadwick that I’ve read, such as The Time of Singing, The Greatest Knight and To Defy a King, A Place Beyond Courage concentrates on the characters and the relationships between them. The political and military events of the day form a context that shapes the relationships and a background against which they develop. So the conflict between Stephen and Matilda provides an opportunity for John Marshal’s ambition, military skill, ruthlessness and calculating brinkmanship to come to the fore. It also puts an intolerable strain on the meek and timid Aline Pipard, who is utterly unsuited to life in high politics and on the front line of a war. John’s opportunism brings him into conflict with his powerful neighbour Patrick of Salisbury, and this conflict in turn provides the context for his second marriage to Patrick’s sister Sybilla. And the ongoing war, combined with John’s ambition and refusal to back down, puts not only John and Sybilla at risk but also their young son William.

The novel focuses mainly on John Marshal, Aline and Sybilla – although five-year-old William Marshal comes close to stealing the show when he makes his appearance.  John Marshal is the central figure, shaping events in war and politics as well as in his personal and domestic life. Able, charismatic, resourceful and pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, he is a hard man living in hard times. To survive, he has to be able to assess any situation and face it without flinching, from his desperate last stand at Wherwell Abbey and subsequent escape by walking miles across hostile country with a terrible face wound, to calling King Stephen’s bluff at the siege of Newbury.

Sybilla is the more obviously appealing of the two lead female characters. Forthright and confident, she is described as having a natural warmth that charms many of the other characters – even including the stern Empress Matilda – and will probably charm most readers as well. She makes good company for her share of the novel. Aline is less obviously attractive, although I have a good deal of sympathy for her. Having lived a sheltered life with her widowed mother in a quiet backwater, it should be no surprise to find that she is completely unprepared when marriage to John pitches her into politics and war.  I can see why the decisive and fearless John Marshal is irritated by Aline’s timidity and passivity – she is the kind of woman who would have been called a ‘drip’ when I was at school – but his disappointment is largely his own fault, since he married Aline for her lands on the grounds that she was the best bargain available to him at the time (I told you he was pragmatic). Poor Aline had no choice in the matter.

The secondary characters are also boldly drawn, even if they make only a brief appearance, from King Stephen as a tired man finding that the crown he grabbed so eagerly is rather more than he can handle, to the thuggish mercenary with a vulgar predilection for purple silk underpants (!), to the kindly Flemish washerwoman and her soldier husband. Pride of place among the secondary characters goes to young William Marshal, who runs away with the novel towards the end. The famous ‘hammers and anvils’ scene at King Stephen’s siege camp at Newbury* is recounted mainly from William’s point of view, and is beautifully done.

An Author’s Note at the end of the book outlines the historical background and there is a list of further reading for those who want to explore further. Maps at the front are useful for following the campaigns for readers who may be unfamiliar with the geography of Wiltshire and Berkshire, where much of the action occurs.

Colourful portrayal of the ambitious and resourceful John Marshal, and his rise to power during the wars between King Stephen and Empress Matilda in turbulent twelfth-century England.

*If you found your way here, you probably know all about that, but if not I won’t spoil the suspense of the novel by describing what happens.

Lady of the English, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

Sphere, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84744-237-6. 521 pages. Edition reviewed: advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Lady of the English is set mainly in England, Normandy and Anjou between 1125 and 1149, spanning the years in which Empress Matilda (daughter of King Henry I of England) was first heir and then contender for the throne of England. All the main characters are historical figures, including Empress Matilda, her father Henry I, her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou, her eldest son Henry FitzEmpress (later King Henry II of England), her stepmother Adeliza of Louvain and her supporter Brian FitzCount.

Empress Matilda is the only surviving legitimate child of Henry I after the death of her brother in a shipwreck. When her husband the Emperor of Germany dies, leaving her a childless widow, Henry I summons Matilda to England and makes his barons swear an oath to her as his heir, as his second marriage to Adeliza of Louvain is childless and looks likely to remain so. But then Henry forces Matilda to marry Geoffrey of Anjou, a boy barely into adolescence, a marriage that is as unpopular with some of Henry’s barons as it is with Matilda herself. When Henry I dies unexpectedly, Matilda’s cousin Stephen and his unscrupulous brother the Bishop of Winchester conspire to seize the throne. Matilda is determined to fight for her rights and those of her young son Henry – but the conflict will exact a terrible price.

As with the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I’ve read, Lady of the English concentrates on the personal and emotional lives of the historical characters and the relationships and conflicts between them. Not just romantic relationships – indeed, the novel is refreshingly free of invented adulterous love affairs, a big plus point for me – although readers who like a strong romantic storyline will find one in the love story between Adeliza of Louvain and her second husband Will d’Albini. Adeliza is as much a central character in the novel as Matilda, and her longing for a child and then her second marriage and family life with Will d’Albini give the novel a strong domestic focus. Apart from a few vivid vignettes, such as the Battle of Lincoln and Matilda’s dramatic escape from Oxford, most of the action takes place off-stage. So does much of the political manoeuvring; there’s an intriguing hint of foul play around the death of Henry I that I would have liked to know more about, and I would also have liked to see more of Matilda’s dealings with the influential men who joined her cause and left it again. For the most part, war and politics are seen through their effects on the personal lives of the characters and the conflicts they cause.

As well as the conflicts due to the war, and personal conflicts between the characters, there is also an interesting look at conflicts arising from social conventions. Matilda is the most striking example; a ruler is expected to be stern, a woman is supposed to be soft and pliant, a contradiction in terms that causes difficulties for Matilda at every turn. Adeliza’s agonised yearning for a child during her barren marriage to Henry I is in part due to the pressure on a woman to fulfil her social duty of providing her husband with heirs, and part of her joy in the family she raises with her second husband Will d’Albini comes from being able to fulfil the expected role of mother as well as wife. Social expectations can weigh just as heavily on a man, as shown by Brian FitzCount who (as portrayed here) is a warrior by expectation and a scholar by temperament, and pays a heavy emotional price for that conflict (among others).

Brian FitzCount was one of the most memorable characters for me, a honourable man trying to do his best in a marriage and a social role neither of which was of his choosing. Young Geoffrey of Anjou was another memorable character, a childish bully who thinks the way to make himself look big is make someone else look small and whose attitude to his marriage to Matilda is to think that he will “have an Empress at his beck and call”. Henry FitzEmpress was also convincingly drawn, no mean feat as he develops from a baby through a precocious child to the threshold of adulthood during the novel. I also liked Brian FitzCount’s wife Maude of Wallingford, doggedly getting on with the unglamorous but vital business of managing the logistics of a household under siege and reflecting that she feels “like a donkey staggering along under a heavy burden of firewood, while Brian ignored her to look at the fancy glossy horses prancing past with bells tinkling on their harness”.

As well as the main characters, readers of Elizabeth Chadwick’s other novels may enjoy spotting appearances by secondary characters from other novels, such as John FitzGilbert the Marshal (from A Place Beyond Courage) and Hugh Bigod (who appears briefly at the start of The Time of Singing*, review here).

A helpful Author’s Note summarises some of the underlying history and sketches out some of the reasoning behind elements in the narrative, and a family tree at the front of the book may be useful to keep the family relationships straight for readers who are not familiar with the period. The plethora of Matildas in the period is neatly dealt with by using variant forms of the name – Matilda, Maheut, Maude – to differentiate between different individuals. The advance review copy only has placeholders for the maps, which will no doubt be included in the final edition and which should help interested readers follow the action and the characters’ journeys from place to place.

Colourful portrayal of Empress Matilda and Adeliza of Louvain, against the background of the Anarchy in twelfth-century England.

*For The King's Favor in the US

To Defy a King, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

US: Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-5089-7, 508 pages.
UK: Sphere 2010, ISBN 978-1847442369, 550 pages.
Uncorrected advance review copy of the US edition kindly supplied by publisher, UK edition sourced independently.

Set in England in 1204-1218 during the turbulent reign of King John, To Defy a King tells the story of Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and her marriage to Hugh Bigod, heir to the Earl of Norfolk. All the main characters are historical figures.

Ten-year-old Mahelt Marshal is the beloved eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and the greatest knight in England. Used to doing as she pleases and getting what she wants, Mahelt expects the same when she goes to live with the Bigod family, Earls of Norfolk, as the betrothed bride of eldest son Hugh Bigod. But the Bigods are less indulgent, and Mahelt finds herself having to navigate the tricky transition to adulthood at the same time as adapting to a different set of family values and loyalties. When the tyrannical King John turns against her father, Mahelt’s sense of security is severely undermined, and not even the growing love between her and Hugh can make her forget her fears for the Marshal family. As John becomes ever more cruel and unpredictable, the Bigods find their own loyalty tested to breaking point – and as England lurches towards civil war, Mahelt’s marriage and future happiness may be among the casualties.

Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal and Bigod novels are beginning to take on some of the character of a multi-generational family saga. John Marshal’s story was told in A Place Beyond Courage, and his son William Marshal’s in The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion. The Time of Singing (US title: For the King’s Favor) told the story of William Marshal’s colleague Roger Bigod and his wife Ida de Tosney, previously mistress to King Henry II. Now To Defy a King moves to the next generation, and brings the Marshal and Bigod storylines together with the marriage between Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and Hugh Bigod, son of Roger Bigod. Like the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I have read, the heart of To Defy a King is in the relationships between the characters. Hugh and Mahelt’s romantic relationship forms the core of the story, shaped and influenced by a complex web of familial and other ties. The family relationships between Hugh and his father, between Mahelt and her father and brothers, between Mahelt and her family by marriage and between Hugh and his illegitimate royal half-brother William Longespee (son of Ida de Tosney by Henry II) interact to create a vivid, complex picture of the workings of medieval high society.

Readers with fond memories of Roger Bigod and Ida in the hopeful days of their marriage from The Time of Singing may be saddened to see them in To Defy a King. Gentle Ida has been worn down by constant loneliness and strain and now retreats into the background with her sewing. Mahelt, as vigorous and strong-willed as her great father – but, it has to be said, sadly lacking in his tact – is determined not to fade away as Ida has, but she will face a hard struggle to learn to assert herself without alienating her husband and her new family.

Although the novel covers the events that culminated in the signing of Magna Carta and the eventual French-allied rebellion against King John, most of the political and military events take place off-stage. Like The Time of Singing, To Defy a King focuses on the domestic lives of the characters, particularly Mahelt. Political upheavals in the wider world are experienced mainly through their personal effects, introducing tensions in the characters’ feelings, fortunes and relationships.

King John has long had a reputation as a Bad King, and in To Defy a King he thoroughly deserves it. Here he is not just a tyrant but almost a psychopath, obsessively inflicting hurt and humiliation just because he can, apparently regardless of the destructive consequences, and he is a disgusting sexual predator into the bargain. If this King John has a redeeming quality I missed it; even gentle Ida has difficulty finding excuses for his behaviour.

John’s half-brother William Longespee, the illegitimate son of Ida de Tosney by King Henry II before she married Roger Bigod, is a particularly interesting and complex secondary character. He has an uneasy relationship with his Bigod half-brothers, developing into an outright feud with Hugh at one stage, perhaps rooted in the same sense of insecurity as his love of fine clothes and his obsession with seeking glory on the battlefield. Longespee has it all – and never misses an opportunity to flaunt it – but only on John’s sufferance, and he knows it only too well.

A set of family trees at the front of the book will help readers new to the Marshals and Bigods keep track of the characters and the complex family relationships between them. At the back, an extensive Author’s Note explains the history underlying the novel and the (sometimes scant) historical sources, and there is an interesting interview with the author.

Third generation of Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal-Bigod family saga, exploring family and social relationships in medieval England through the marriage between Mahelt Marshal (daughter of William Marshal) and Hugh Bigod (son of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk).

The Time of Singing, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

Sphere, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84744-097-6, 506 pages

Set in 1173–1199, The Time of Singing covers the later years of the reign of Henry II, all of the reign of Richard I (Lionheart) and the beginning of King John’s. It centres on Roger Bigod, heir to the earldom of Norfolk, and his wife Ida de Tosney. William Marshal (hero of the author’s earlier books The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion), is an important secondary character. All the main characters are historical figures.*

Roger Bigod, eldest son of the earl of Norfolk, has been at odds with his boorish father, his stepmother and his two younger half-brothers for years, and when his father rebels against Henry II Roger defies his father and joins the king. Victory in battle sees Roger’s father forfeit the earldom, and although Roger has won Henry’s cautious regard, Henry is afraid of the Bigod earls’ power and uses the inheritance dispute between Roger and his half-brothers as a convenient excuse to withhold the earldom from either. Now Roger has a protracted struggle ahead of him to regain his inheritance. When he encounters Ida de Tosney, Henry’s young ward and reluctant mistress, Roger is immediately attracted to her and is happy to accept her as his wife. But Ida has to pay the price of giving up her young son for Henry to rear at court, and Roger has his own insecurities to deal with. As Roger’s work in the King’s service takes him ever more from Ida’s side, the emotional scars they both bear threaten to destroy their marriage.

As with the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I’ve read, The Time of Singing is especially strong on human relationships. I felt it had a more domestic focus than the Marshal novels. Roger is embroiled in a protracted legal battle for his forfeited earldom and inheritance, there are some murky political shenanigans to negotiate while Richard I is away on crusade, and there are a couple of short battlefield action scenes, but the heart of the novel is in Roger and Ida’s relationship with each other and the people around them. Their marriage forms the centrepiece, but it is only the central one among the many other relationships that form the warp and weft of their lives. Ida’s relationship with her illegitimate son by Henry, who is taken from her to be raised at court when she marries Roger, is perhaps the most poignant. Roger’s family ties, including the difficult relationships with his thoroughly unpleasant father, his stepmother and his two contrasting half-brothers, and his growing friendship with William Marshal, shape his life choices and influence his relationship with Ida and their children. The novel illustrates how medieval society was held together by a complex web of kinship, lordship and friendship ties.

The main characters are well rounded and believable. Roger makes an attractive contrast to the charming and self-assured William Marshal. He is practical, patient, level-headed and reliable, but painfully shy around women and his self-containment can be all too easily mistaken for emotional coldness. Ida is sweet, caring, almost as innocent at the end of the novel as she is at the beginning, and traumatised by having to leave her eldest child behind at court. Left alone at Framlingham with her other children for increasingly long periods while Roger is engaged on legal and administrative duties, Ida’s loneliness and growing resentment are easy to understand. Roger is jealous of her previous affair with the king, and resentful of her pining for her missing son. The growing distance between them, and their struggles to find a compromise that will sustain their marriage (aided by some informal marriage guidance from William Marshal!) is convincingly drawn.

The novel shows an unglamorous side to Henry II, as something of a dirty old man not above exploiting a young girl placed in his care. The secondary character I found most intriguing was Ida’s illegitimate son by Henry, William (later known as Longespee, “Long Sword”). Brought up in the lap of luxury as the king’s son but insecure about his illegitimate status and anxious about his unknown mother’s identity, William develops an obsession with status and show that makes him behave like an arrogant snob as he reaches adolescence. It would be easy to dismiss him as a jerk, but Roger’s cool compassion is able to recognise the genuine worth underneath and build a wary acceptance between them.

Readers who enjoy the minutiae of life (at least among the aristocracy) in years gone by will love the details of domestic life, including Roger’s (fictional) love of extravagant hats and the detail of food, clothing and life in a great house (complete with aggressive geese in the bailey). As the novel covers over twenty years, the narrative often skips forward several years at one jump, and I had to remember to pay attention to the dates given in the chapter headings. A helpful Author’s Note summarises the history underlying the novel and the gaps filled in by fiction.

Warm-hearted exploration of romantic, family and social relationships in twelfth-century England.


*I should note that I’m familiar with Roger Bigod’s castle at Framlingham and the castle Henry II built at Orford to clip the Bigod earls’ wings, so it was particularly appealing for me to read about the men who built them.

The Greatest Knight, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

Edition reviewed, Time Warner, 2006, ISBN 0-7515-3660-1

Set in England and France in 1167-1194, The Greatest Knight tells the story of William Marshal and his involvement with the Plantagenet King Henry II, his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and their brood of wayward sons. Most of the major characters are historical figures, while William’s mistress Clara is a fictional character created from an un-named woman briefly mentioned in the sources.

A younger son with few prospects of inheritance and little money, William earns a living by serving as a household knight. His prowess on the jousting field earns him fame and prizes, but the great turn in his fortune occurs when he saves Eleanor of Aquitaine from capture by enemy knights. Queen Eleanor herself ransoms William and rewards him with a place in the royal household as tutor to the princes Henry and Richard. William is now at the centre of the maelstrom surrounding the House of Plantagenet, as Henry II, Eleanor and their growing sons fight amongst themselves. Royal favour makes William rich beyond his dreams, but one false step in the fickle world of the court and he could lose it all for ever.

William Marshal is the central character and the reader sees much of the story through William’s eyes. He is a thoroughly sympathetic character, level-headed, down-to-earth and with a gift for getting on with people, who somehow manages to look out for his own interests and yet still stay a decent man. Other important characters are rounded individuals with their own personalities. Henry II’s eldest son Henry, known as The Young King after being crowned King of England in his father’s lifetime, is a spoilt brat when we first meet him riding William’s war-horse without permission and manages not to grow up at all throughout his career. William’s elder brother John seems to be unlucky in all things, growing more embittered as his failures contrast with William’s success, until he and William eventually end up on opposite sides of a civil war. John’s unhappy love life, and the troubled marriage of the Young King to the lonely Marguerite, form a counterpoint to William’s much more satisfactory romantic relationships, first with his (fictional) mistress Clara and later with his wife Isabelle de Clare. Isabelle was a great heiress and many years younger than William, and their marriage as portrayed in the novel rests on the twin foundations of expediency (Isabelle needed to marry to escape her restricted status as a ward of the Crown, William needed her lands) and mutual affection. Isabelle brings William not only financial security in the shape of her landed estates, but emotional security too. On several occasions William, who has led a peripatetic life around royal courts and the tourney circuit, refers to Isabelle as his “safe harbour”.

Loyalty forms a major theme in the story. A medieval knight swore fidelity to a lord, and also owed loyalty to his king – so what was he to do when his lord quarrelled with the king? If he joined the king he had broken his oath, but if he stayed with his lord he had rebelled against the king. William has to confront this dilemma several times, and struggles to emerge with both his life and honour intact.

The novel is rich in historical details such as the food, clothes, buildings and weapons of the time. Much of the story concentrates on the personal and political battles of the court, with some battlefield action scenes such as the attack in the first chapter and William’s rearguard action to defend Eleanor’s escape. A welcome feature is the occasional note of humour, with comic vignettes such as the incident in which William gets his head stuck in a jousting helm and has to have it (the helm, fortunately, not the head) removed by the local blacksmith.

As the novel covers nearly three decades, the story sometimes leaps ahead by months or years at a time, so you need to pay attention to the dates in the chapter headings. A useful Author’s Note explains the main sources for the novel, and notes where controversies remain and where fiction has filled in gaps in the history. Before reading this novel I knew two things about William Marshal. The first was the celebrated story of his father handing him over to King Stephen as a child hostage, promptly breaking the terms of the deal and then defying Stephen to hang young William by declaring, “I have the hammers and anvils to forge more and better sons!”. The second, I’m afraid to say, was the scurrilous ballad The Confessions of Queen Eleanor, which is most unlikely to have any basis in fact. So it was very helpful to have a note of the history behind the novel and suggestions for further reading.

Convincing and colourful portrayal of William Marshal, one of the unsung champions of the Middle Ages.