The Lion At Bay, by Robert Low. Book review

Harper Collins, 2012. ISBN 978-0-00-733789-7. 389 pages

Set in Scotland, northern England and London in 1304-1307, The Lion At Bay is the second in Robert Low’s series about the Scottish Wars of Independence, following The Lion Wakes (reviewed here earlier). Robert Bruce, Isabel MacDuff Countess of Buchan, William Wallace and Edward I of England are important characters, and other historical figures including the future Edward II of England, ‘Red John’ Comyn of Badenoch and James Douglas also feature. The main characters, Sir Henry (Hal) Sientcler of Herdmanston, the members of his household, and Bruce’s henchman, spy and fixer Roger Kirkpatrick*, are fictional.

William Wallace is back in Scotland and resuming his fight against Edward I. Robert Bruce, whose secret ambition is to gain the Scottish throne for himself, has temporarily submitted to Edward I to further his feud with his arch-rivals, the Comyn family. Hal of Herdmanston is in the Bruce retinue, sick at heart for the loss of his home and his love Isabel MacDuff, who has reluctantly returned to her husband the Earl of Buchan. Murder, treachery and betrayal abound, as various factions search for the Black Rood of Scotland, stolen from Edward’s treasury in London. And when the Bruce-Comyn feud erupts into violence, Scotland is plunged yet again into war. 

Like its predecessor, The Lion At Bay is a gripping adventure novel with plenty of violent action, political scheming and a mystery sub-plot. Although the struggle that became known as the Wars of Independence has often been portrayed in later ages as a nationalistic fight between Scotland and England, at the time it was at least as much a Scottish civil war between powerful noble factions, chiefly the Bruce family and the Comyn family. This political chaos, with the Bruce-Comyn feud as apparently the only fixed point, provides a turbulent backdrop to the novel. Only one major battle features in this instalment, the battle of Methven (a disaster for Robert Bruce), but there is no shortage of other violent action, ranging from a knightly joust a l’outrance to a street brawl in a slaughterhouse, from siege to assassination and murder. The mystery sub-plot, a quest to recover the Black Rood of Scotland – necessary for the proper coronation of a King of Scots – and its fictional reliquary set with twelve magnificent rubies, forms a unifying thread to hold the narrative together. 

Robert Bruce is no idealised hero in this portrayal. He is harsh, ruthless, deceitful and capable of treachery and murder – occasionally with his own hand, more often via the enigmatic Kirkpatrick. Hal of Herdmanston, a minor Lothian lord who became a Bruce supporter almost by accident (recounted in The Lion Wakes) is ambivalent towards Bruce, repelled by some of his actions but fighting for him anyway.  If I have any quibble with this portrayal, it is that I am not entirely clear why men like Hal were willing to fight and suffer for Bruce, especially in the days after the disastrous battle of Methven when Bruce must have looked like a lost cause. Perhaps because Bruce was the last man standing; perhaps because Edward I (nicknamed in the novel ‘The Covetous King’) had earned himself the undying hatred of a lot of Scots by then; perhaps because by this stage many were concerned less with Bruce personally and more with the abstract ideals of independence and a contract between people and king. The stirring words of the Declaration of Arbroath make an appearance more than once in The Lion At Bay. 

Many of the characters introduced in The Lion Wakes reappear in The Lion At Bay, older now and many growing weary of war. William Wallace has dwindled to an outlaw leader, ‘a monstrous frightener of bairns’, as he wryly muses to himself. Hal and Isabel are older, their love undiminished but thwarted by circumstances. Their love affair has a terrible poignancy amidst the sweetness, especially for a reader who knows Isabel’s eventual fate.  Even the indestructible Kirkpatrick is not immune from age and injury. Conversely, Dog Boy, who was a child in The Lion Wakes, has now grown into an energetic and able young man and become a key member of Hal’s retinue (and I was right about his parentage, which is confirmed in the character list).

The writing is vivid, with a vein of black humour and a scattering of Scots words and phrases to set the scene. Readers who find the Scots words problematic may like to bookmark the glossary at the back of the book where many of them are explained. A list of characters identifies those who are fictional and those who are historical figures, and a short Author’s Note outlines some of the underlying history and the fictional additions and alterations.

Gripping, violent adventure full of action and intrigue, set against the turbulence of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the early fourteenth century.

*Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, he of the famous ‘Mak’ siccar’ line, is a historical figure. The Roger Kirkpatrick in Robert Low’s series is a fictional kinsman and namesake of the historical figure.

Within the Hollow Crown, by Margaret Campbell Barnes. Book review

First published 1948. Edition reviewed, Sourcebooks 2010, ISBN 978-1402239212, 333 pages, uncorrected advance review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

Set in 1381 to 1400, Within the Hollow Crown tells the story of Richard II from the Peasants’ Revolt to the end of his reign. All the main characters are historical figures, including Richard II, his beloved queen Anne of Bohemia, his mother Joan “the Fair Maid of Kent”, his uncles, advisors and counsellors, his cousin Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV), his favourite Robert de Vere and the writer Geoffrey Chaucer.

Richard II came to the throne at the age of about ten, owing to the untimely death of his father Edward “The Black Prince”, and real power is in the hands of his uncles and counsellors. When the unprecedented Peasants’ Revolt brings England to the brink of revolution, the fourteen-year-old Richard gets his first taste of responsibility and success. Later, buoyed by the perfect love he finds with his wife Anne of Bohemia, Richard defies his council and takes power into his own hands, developing one of the most glittering and cultured courts in Europe. But in the wake of a devastating loss, Richard allows the shadows of old hatreds to grow in his heart, as much a threat to his crown as any of his enemies.

Like his later namesake Richard III, Richard II has had a bad press. He has a reputation for tyranny and for ratting on the promises he made to defuse the Peasants’ Revolt. Within the Hollow Crown appears to be aiming to redress the balance by giving a pro-Richard portrayal. Handsome, glamorous, intelligent, imaginative, courteous, sensitive and cultured, the Richard II in these pages is an attractive character. Not entirely without flaws, although the reader has to be alert to pick up small clues. Most of the novel is told from Richard’s viewpoint and his enemies, not unnaturally, tend to get an unsympathetic portrayal.

For example, Richard seems to be almost as unlucky in his choice of favourites as his great-grandfather Edward II (whose grisly fate is used in the novel to terrify the sensitive adolescent Richard), but as the reader only sees his tinselly favourite Robert de Vere through Richard’s eyes, there’s little to suggest that other people might have good reason to dislike the relationship until Richard himself is forced to recognise reality. Similarly, Richard regards his opulent, cultured court as the way things should be and those who complain about his extravagance as penny-pinching boors. Only one brief line from a wise advisor hints that Richard’s expenditure might actually give just cause for disquiet. Richard’s emotional vulnerability appeals to the reader’s sympathy, and even when he is callously contemplating murder he justifies it to himself and, by extension, to the reader. Only when Richard recognises himelf momentarily in a verse from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s poems does the reader get an inkling that Richard’s dictatorial rule may not be quite as benevolent as he thinks it is and that his opponents may have genuine grievances.

I found this focus on Richard’s personal life had both positive and negative effects. On the one hand, it’s a challenge to pick up the tiny hints of trouble ahead, and the reader gets almost the same shock as Richard when situations start to unravel. On the other, Richard’s political opponents appear as crude, obstructive, destructive and/or thick, and I doubt that the situation was quite as one-sided as that. I would have liked to see more of the other side of the story.

Richard dominates the novel so completely that everyone else fades into obscurity by comparison. Of the other characters, the charming lightweight Robert de Vere, the gruff pirate knight Edward Dalyngrygge, his sultry wife Lizbeth, and Richard’s old nurse, the enigmatic Mundina Danos, were the most strongly drawn. I admit I don’t quite see the significance of the subplot involving Lizbeth’s attempts to get Richard into bed. Mundina, on the other hand, is at the centre of a subplot that hinges on the medieval beliefs in damnation and redemption after death. I have no idea whether the events in the subplot are historically accurate, but the motivation is firmly rooted in the time and place, something I always admire in historical fiction.

Richard is sensitive to beauty in all its forms, and this is reflected in the graceful prose, especially the descriptive passages. The idyllic romance between Richard and his beloved wife Anne of Bohemia is a lyrical description of perfect love. Perhaps a little too perfect for realism, but that doesn’t detract from its beauty on the page.

A useful family tree at the beginning of the novel helps in keeping track of Richard’s various uncles and cousins and the relative strength of their claims to the throne. The very brief Author’s Note acknowledges that Richard II is a controversial figure and provides a bibliography of books consulted by the author. (How this relates to modern scholarship on Richard II, 60 years after the novel’s original publication, I have no idea).

Intelligently written, sympathetic account of Richard II and his reign.

Hugh and Bess, by Susan Higginbotham. Book review

Sourcebooks, 2009. ISBN 978-1-4022-1527-8. 276 pages.

Set in 1341–1350, with flashbacks to 1326, Hugh and Bess tells the story of Hugh le Despenser (son of the notorious Hugh le Despenser who was the favourite of Edward II and was horribly executed for treason in 1326) and his wife Elizabeth (Bess) de Montacute. Hugh’s mistress Emma and the faithful laundress Alice are fictional; all the other major characters are historical figures.

Bess de Montacute is nearly fourteen, pretty, sharp, wilful and very aware of her status as the eldest daughter of William de Montacute, trusted advisor to King Edward III. So when she is told to she is to marry Sir Hugh le Despenser, who is not only aged 32 but also the son and grandson of disgraced traitors, she is not at all pleased about it, despite his riches. For his part, Hugh has mixed feelings too; he knows he has to make a grand marriage, but he is already in love with his mistress of ten years’ standing, a knight’s daughter named Emma. Bess soon comes to enjoy her role as a rich man’s wife, but on a personal level all Hugh’s kindness and consideration can win from her is a grudging tolerance. Only when Hugh is sent abroad to fight in a war that puts him in mortal danger does Bess realise how much he has come to mean to her – but is it too late?

Susan Higginbotham’s previous novel The Traitor’s Wife told the story of Eleanor de Clare, niece of Edward II, and her husband Hugh le Despenser (the notorious one, who used his position as Edward II’s favourite and homosexual lover to extort money from practically everyone in England, thereby achieving the remarkable feat of uniting the English nobility, at least until they had got rid of him). Hugh and Bess continues the story of the Despenser family into the next generation. This Hugh le Despenser was an attractive character towards the end of The Traitor’s Wife, as he patiently tried to live down his father’s appalling reputation by exemplary behaviour and loyal military service, so it was a pleasure to see him get a novel to himself.

Hugh and Bess is subtitled “A Love Story” in some editions, and that’s an accurate description. Although politics and warfare play a part in the story, and there is a harrowing portrayal of the Black Death, the focus of the novel is the relationship between Hugh and Bess. Bess is an immature and rather self-centred teenager at the start of the novel, which is fair enough considering her age, and becomes more engaging as she grows up. I found Hugh the most attractive and interesting character. He has to come to terms with the fact that the father he loved was also (deservedly) one of the most hated men in England, and imprisonment for four years in harsh conditions bordering on solitary confinement has taken a heavy toll. Somehow Hugh has to learn to cope with society again – not easy when everyone looks at him askance as the son of an extortionist and sodomite – as well as to face the gargantuan task of redeeming his family’s reputation. Hugh meets the challenge with pragmatism, courage, and a wry sense of humour. For example: musing on his relationship with the king, “…they would never be intimates; in any case, his father had been so close to his king that this would probably have to suffice for whole generations of Despensers”; when the Black Death arrives at his manor causing unwelcome guests to depart in a precipitous hurry, “That was one way of chasing off Lady Thornton, you have to admit”.

The narrative style has a similar light touch and occasional shaft of dry wit, which I found appealing. I like a novel that can make me smile. For example, the description of the dowager queen Isabella “…carefully dressed so as not to outshine the younger Queen, but somehow managing to give the impression that she could certainly still do so if she pleased”; Bess, as a flighty teenager on the day before her wedding, feeling that it would be disrespectful to pray for something to prevent her marriage and frivolous (not to mention impractical) to pray for her bosom to develop overnight; Elizabeth de Burgh, commenting on Bess’s desire for a sign from heaven about her marriage, “What, a lightning bolt?”.

Hugh and Bess is quite a short book, somewhere between a novel and a novella, and makes for a quick, easy read. Details of domestic life among the fourteenth-century aristocracy are well covered, including the ever-changing fashions (Queen Isabella on Bess’s attempt to dress demurely, “That gown and wimple are fit only for a soggy day in Wales”). The effects of the Black Death, known at the time and in the novel simply as “the pestilence” are also well described, covering not only the disease itself but also the remarkable stoicism with which the survivors picked themselves up and rebuilt their lives in the aftermath. A helpful Author’s Note sets out what happened to some of the characters after the end of the novel, and the history underlying the story.

Charming, uncomplicated short tale of domestic life and love in fourteenth-century England.

The House on the Strand, by Daphne du Maurier. Book review

First published 1969. Edition reviewed, Virago, 2003, ISBN 1-84408-042-0.

The House on the Strand is set in the area around Tywardreath (whose name translates as ‘the house on the strand’ and gives the book its title) on the south coast of Cornwall, in the 1960s and in the early fourteenth century. The 1960s characters are all fictional. The characters from the fourteenth century are historical figures from the region, known from records such as tax rolls.

In 1960s England, Dick Young is a failed publisher unhappily married to an American wife who is pressuring him to move to New York. Reluctant to leave England but with no clear alternative, Dick is at something of a loose end. When his boyhood friend Magnus lends him his house of Kilmarth in Cornwall for the summer on condition that he tries out a mysterious new drug, Dick readily agrees. The drug transports him back in time to the early years of the reign of Edward III in the fourteenth century. There he encounters Roger Kylmerth, his predecessor at Kilmarth house, and the bewitching Isolda Carminowe. Dick is drawn into their lives, loves, plots and rivalries, witnessing an attempted rebellion, adultery and murder. Soon the magnetic pull of the past begins to obsess him, threatening his real-life family, his health and even his life.

The narrative is recounted in first person by Dick, and the two plots are skilfully intertwined as he moves between the fourteenth century and his real life. Isolda’s romantic story unfolds in a series of vignettes, always leaving Dick desperate to find out what happens next. His attempts to find out more about Isolda and her world from surviving records and ruins ensure that the thread of the fourteenth-century storyline also runs through the present-day parts of the novel. Tension in the contemporary story is maintained by Dick’s growing realisation that his obsession with the past threatens to unravel his own real life, his fear that the drug might have toxic side effects, and the mystery when Magnus himself goes missing. An attractive feature of the novel is that both plots are resolved by the end. The reader is shown what happens to Roger and Isolda, and although Dick’s fate is not spelled out the reader isn’t left in much doubt.

As always with a Daphne du Maurier novel, the descriptions of the Cornish landscape are marvellous. The area around Tywardreath is brought vividly to life, both in the 1960s and in the fourteenth century. Details of fourteenth-century life in the vanished priory at Tywardreath, in the manor houses of the local aristocracy and in Roger’s simple farm at Kilmarth, are skilfully and convincingly drawn. A further dimension is added by the time-travel element in the novel, as the landscape has changed dramatically between Isolda’s time and Dick’s own time. Dick’s bewilderment at finding the familiar valley fields of his own day replaced by estuaries and tidal creeks in the fourteenth century, his struggle to locate the manor houses of Isolda’s world when all that remains is a few hummocks in a field or an ancient barn in a farmyard, and the sinister intrusion of the modern railway, all reinforce his sense of dislocation and add to the atmosphere of suspense.

Dick is not the most appealing of narrators. He comes over as rather selfish and irresolute, eager to shirk his real-life responsibilities and escape into a vanished private world. In the fourteenth century he is unable to touch or interact with any of the characters – however passionately they have engaged his feelings – and so he is condemned to the role of passive observer. In his real life, his obsession with the past makes him increasingly irritable, unreliable and erratic. His wife Vita, whom we see only through Dick’s eyes, is drawn as shrewish and interfering because this is how Dick sees her, but I can sympathise with her increasing irritation and anxiety. The characters of the fourteenth century world are sketched in, revealing themselves only through their actions and words as observed by Dick. I often dislike the claustrophobic effect of a first-person narrative, especially if I don’t warm to the narrator, but in The House on the Strand the unusual narrative structure was something of a saving grace. Dick’s passivity makes him fade into the background in the fourteenth-century narrative, an ideal observer through whom the reader can watch the people of Isolda’s world.

My usual problem with time-travel or time-slip novels is that I get interested in one storyline, usually the historical one, at the expense of the other. The House on the Strand was no exception, and I found Isolda’s story far more gripping than Dick’s. At times it was an irritation to be taken back to the 1960s – which I suspect was part of the point, as it effectively conveys Dick’s own resentment at being forced back to his real life. I found the idea of drug-induced time-travel unconvincing to say the least, and the attempts to justify it with vague fluff about brain chemistry made it worse. Give me a magic ring, a wardrobe, an insistent ghost or no explanation at all, any time. Perhaps it sounded more plausible in 1969 when the book was written.

For me, The House on the Strand stands out not as a time-travel story or even a historical, but as a superb evocation of the writing process. Dick’s glimpses into a vanished world remind me of the process of writing a historical novel (though, fortunately, most of us rely on our imaginations without the need for toxic drugs or a basement full of pickled monkeys). The sense of having entered a different world and watched its inhabitants. The jolt when summoned back to the real world, and the tendency to drift between the two, to the occasional consternation of family and friends. Piecing scenes together into a story, using the limited information in place names and surviving records, and trying to recreate a vanished landscape in the mind’s eye – what was this field like before the railway was built? where exactly was the priory? where did the coast and rivers run? All this is very recognisable, and is what draws me back to the novel time and again.

Has anyone else read it?