Revenge of the Rose

by Nicole Galland

  This text is strewn with terms that we associate with the Middle Ages but that were not actually in use in the time and place of the story— for example, “courtly love” (first used in the 1800s), “Holy Roman Empire” (first used in the 1200s), “the Crusades” (largely a post-Renaissance term), or “troubadour” (which should be confined to Provençal language and culture), where trouvier or “minnesinger” is correct. It would be confusing to speak to a modern reader of these familiar concepts with the unfamiliar phrases that actually described them in their own age and place. My aim was to create a narrative that flows easily to the modern eye and ear.

  Acknowledgments

  First, a salute to the thirteenth-century poet Jean Renart for the poem that inspired this project— The Romance of the Rose.

  Also:

  I am as ever deeply grateful to Marc H. Glick, Liz Darhansoff, Rich Green, and Jess Taylor, each of whom in their own inimitable way has been my champion.

  I am happily indebted to my cousin Stephie Goethals and her family for their boundless hospitality, patience, translations, generosity, and German lessons.

  Great thanks to my extraordinary team at HarperCollins. In particular, Jennifer Brehl, Pam Spengler-Jaffee, Lisa Gallagher, Kate Nintzel, and Juliette Shapland.

  I am grateful for the thousands of months of research that real historians have labored so painstakingly to attain, so that I may blithely wreak havoc with their wisdom (especially Georges Duby and James Brundage). Also much gratitude to the archivists of the city of Mainz, the librarians of the Bibliothèque Humaniste in Sélestat, the docents of the castles of Haut-Koenigsbourg and Oricourt, and various other sundry professionals I startled with my requests for information. If any of them ever reads this I hope they are not too appalled with the liberties I’ve taken.

  For aiding and abetting, in ways direct and indirect, big and little, I thank: Amy Utstein, Eowyn Mader, Lee Fierro, Jennifer Goethals-Miller, Janice Haynes, Lothlórien Homet, Brian Caspe, Alan and Maureen Crumpler, Shira Kammen, Laurence Bouvard, Leo Galland, Steve Muhlberger, Christopher Morrison, Jeffrey Korn, Lillian Groag, Elizabeth Lucas, Nicole Steen, Peter Sagal, Beryl Vaughan, Philip Resnik, David and Krista Parr, Bronwyn Eisenberg, Steve Lewis, Tony Taccone and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Nick Walker of Aikido Shusekai.

  THE HISTORY

  BEHIND

  THE STORY

  Meet Nicole Galland

  Nicole Galland hails from Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard University, she spent most of her time there doing theater, though she was actually getting an honors degree in comparative religion (and with that as an excuse, sojourned in India and Japan, her time abroad including a stint as a Buddhist nun near Kyoto).

  Galland repatriated to California and cofounded a theater company for teens that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She was granted a full fellowship to pursue a PhD in drama at the University of California, Berkeley, where she showed great promise at pretentious performance art. Before academia could entirely seduce her, however, she withdrew from the program and split the next several years between the Bay Area and New York City, eking out a living in theater, writing, editing, and, of course, temp work.

  After winning an award for her screenplay The Winter Population, Galland moved to Los Angeles and spent a few years as a screenwriter. In April 2002 she rediscovered the unfinished outline to The Fool’s Tale, which she’d begun in college, and was about to delete it from her hard drive when she decided, just for fun, to see what would happen if she finished it instead. Thanks to much serendipity, the book was completed in early 2003. She immediately fled from Los Angeles back to the Bay Area, where she worked for a while as literary manager/dramaturge at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. When The Fool’s Tale was published to positive reviews in early 2005, she left the Rep to write full-time.

  For about a year, she lived out of a backpack, researching and retracing the steps of the ill-fated Fourth Crusade for her upcoming novel, Crossed. Finally, after twenty-three years away from her home-town, Galland returned to Martha’s Vineyard to live year-round. Here she reconnected with an old high school classmate, Darren Lobdell, whom she hadn’t seen in more than twenty years. They became engaged with dazzling speed and will have eloped by the time this book goes to press, though they’re not sure it’s really eloping when you insist on telling everyone about it.

  A Conversation with Nicole Galland

  What first inspired you to write this book?

  A thirteenth-century poem called “Romance of the Rose, or William of Dole,” by Jean Renart. I thought it would make a great novel as soon as I read it, but I ended up writing something only partially inspired by it.

  What is the poem about?

  The plot’s too involved to explain quickly, but it’s a sarcastically comic jewel that depicts the medieval lifestyles of the rich and famous— as well as people trying to become the rich and famous. (Too bad there’s nothing like that in modern American culture….)

  And what about it made you want to turn it into a novel?

  It has a brilliant plot twist with a strong female character, Lienor, since Jouglet is just a supporting male character who disappears halfway through. Plus it’s notable for other things, like it’s an early form of musical comedy (the narrative has songs embedded in it, but the story works without the songs and the songs work without the story). And in researching it, I learned how much class-biased propaganda is in it, which piqued my interest.

  That’s all very interesting but a little academic, don’t you think? Anything else?

  Yeah, what really grabbed me was that the narrator is not playing it straight with his audience, and I began to wonder why. He lies by omission, he hides things from us. At least four times, I found myself wondering, “Hey, what’s really going on here?” To satisfy my own curiosity, I made up answers, and that became Revenge of the Rose.

  Can you say a little more about the “class-biased propaganda”? There’s a lot of political intrigue in the story, but it doesn’t seem to be a “political novel” per se.

  No, it’s not— and neither is the poem. It was written for a certain class, that being the lower aristocracy, from whence we get the fairy-tale knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, etc. The bad guy in the poem is an unnamed steward— a commoner (in fact, technically a serf) who actually has a job; he works his way up the socioeconomic ladder. To the aristocracy, that makes him and his class gauche. The two classes were in competition for a certain level of power, and so naturally a story written for one group would make a villain of the other, just like during the Cold War the obvious villain in American action flicks was a Russian spy. Once I realized that the steward was the villain largely because he worked for a living, my Yankee sensibility got riled, and I immediately decided to make him more sympathetic.

  Your chapter titles are all literary references; did you learn anything unexpected about the literature of the time?

  Yes— as I studied the medieval literary approach to “romantic love,” the code of chivalry, and all of that, I realized how intensely class-conscious it all was. The stuff that’s turned into our democratic, Hollywood-ized “once upon a times” and “happily ever afters” was originally a form of class control.

  You’ve got to be kidding.

  Nope. The main point of chivalry was to encourage armed soldiers (knights) to believe that they were bettered through selfless devotion— in romantic literature it’s devotion to a lady, but she’s just an attractive stand-in for either the Church (if she’s the Virgin Mary) or the local lord or king (if she’s a devout subject, daughter, or wife).

  But what about all the romances and fairy-tales featuring girls and young women? Isn’t the message there that anybody can be blessed with love and fortune?

  Ah, but most damsels in distress know and accept their place. They usually have an aristocratic pedigree, but they don’t complain that circumstances have led to their being disempowered an
d disenfranchised, and it’s their continued undemanding good nature and selflessness that makes them worthy of being saved…by somebody more powerful than they are. They don’t try to better their own lot; they are encouraged to be beautiful and passive and well-behaved, which is what Lienor, the damsel-in-distress in “Roman de la Rose,” seems to be until push comes to shove— and she shoves back!

  How did you balance the need for historical authenticity with the desire to take creative license?

  Although I did a huge amount of research, I don’t think of this story as historical fiction. That it happens to be set eight hundred years ago is, to me, a technicality; I think of it as literary fiction. It was inspired by a poem, not by history. The original poem was full of creative license, and I took creative license even with that. So, to answer the question, there was no need for balance. I was free to go after the creative license every time. This was especially true when it came to women’s behavior; just as the heroine’s behavior in the original poem turns out to be exceptional, probably all of my female characters are exceptional.

  What changed the most as you transformed the story into a novel?

  First, I’ve made Jouglet the central character, which isn’t the case in the poem. In the poem he (yes, he) just fades out of view after awhile. And as I said, the poet’s villainous steward becomes a sympathetic character in my story; I invented new bad guys: a count and a cardinal. Also, I created two female characters and expanded minor characters from the poem— all to add texture to a theme in my story that is also not in the poem: the attempt to control sexuality in general.

  What do you mean by “sexuality in general”?

  I have gay characters, prostitutes, a woman who unwisely gives away her politically significant virginity, a Catholic cardinal obsessed with using all such subversions to forward the church’s interests. None of that is in the original poem. It’s astounding how indifferent to religion the poem is; Renart cheerfully belittles the Church a few times and then his characters ignore it for more than five thousand lines. I at least have the Church and its repressive doctrines (made even more repressive by the cardinal) hovering in the background.

  What do you think changed least about the story in its new incarnation?

  I think the playful, teasing spirit of the thing. My aim is not so much to Depict Real Medieval Life as it is to Tell a Fun Tale. In that way I’m not changing the original at all; I am (I hope) honoring it. And the climactic plot twist I liked from the poem is still there, but it’s now just one of several twists in the story.

  Your novel has a pretty modern voice. What’s the point of setting it in the Middle Ages if you’re not going to make it feel medieval?

  What does “feel medieval” mean? I suspect a lot of people would read the original thirteenth-century poem and scoff that it doesn’t feel medieval enough. We think of the Middle Ages as being embarrassingly earnest, and we also think of sarcasm as the humor of modern times. But Renart’s humor is more sarcastic and cutting than mine is; his thirteenth-century poem almost feels more modern than my twenty-first-century novel does. I’m not saying the novel doesn’t feel modern; I’m just saying that we have a pretty limited and stereotyped sense of what is a “medieval feeling.”

  So you don’t think Jean Renart is turning over in his grave?

  No! It’s certainly true that the story is embedded with elements that would have been inconceivable in the poem— not inconceivable in actual medieval life, mind you, just inconceivable in a medieval poem depicting medieval life. There’s a perverse irony in there somewhere, of which I think Jean Renart would heartily approve.

  An Excerpt from Crossed

  Coming from Harper Paperbacks in February 2008, another thrilling novel from Nicole Galland that deftly blends historical fact with imaginative storytelling, wit, and sharp characterization. Crossed tells the story of the Fourth Crusade and the dramatic, disastrous sack of Constantinople in 1204.

  From San Niccolo, that sweltering sand-bar of an island off the coast of Venice, rose a strange tent-city milling with ten thousand unwashed soldiers and their unwashed squires, whores, cooks, priests, horses, heralds, armorers, and smiths. They called themselves pilgrims, having taken the cross, having sworn to carry out the pope’s wishes. This meant they were going to an unknown desert, to wrest an unknown city from its unknown inhabitants.

  Their transports and warships, waiting in the lagoon— heavy, strong, capacious, lethal— had been built by the Venetians, would be sailed by the Venetians, and at this moment were being stocked with food and water by the Venetians. In two days, the army and its fleet would finally— finally— set sail, after a season of political and financial delays, to do great good for Christendom.

  But before they decamped, this would be the site of a gruesome murder-suicide, of such ferocity men would speak of it in fearful whispers, crossing themselves, for years to come.

  At least, that was my plan.

  As with so many things in this life, I was mistaken.

  I leapt from Barzizza’s boat when the water was ankle-deep, trudging angrily through the oily green until I had splashed myself to dry land and the edge of the army camp. Venice was mostly paving stone and water; this was the first time in a month I’d been on living soil. Earth felt comforting under my bare wet feet, but I didn’t want comfort— I wanted death, and was panicked at the thought of being cheated of it. I’d learned half a dozen languages, taught myself to play music I did not like and eaten food I could barely stomach, grown my beard and my hair and woken up every day forcing myself to go on, for three years, to prepare for my exquisite, redemptive death— a death I now feared I’d been robbed of.

  I had no weapon, just a spit of iron small enough to fold my hand around: a spike with a hook on one end, stolen from Barzizza’s house, some sort of fishing spear. I don’t remember how I learned which pavilion was the high commander’s nor what trick I used to distract the guards at the door, but the trick was fast accomplished; I was still seething as I scrambled inside, I could still hear my heartbeat pulsing in my temples as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  There were only two men in this cool, open space: the army commander himself, and a large young knight kneeling to his right, presumably his bodyguard. Both wore tunics decorated with broad gold braids. They were whispering together. Neither was the man I wanted.

  “Where are the English?” I shouted.

  They started, stared at me; the knight lumbered to his feet grabbing for the dagger in his belt, as the leader responded, in a droll voice, “They are in England, I imagine.”

  So it was true, what Barzizza had told me; this final trek had been for nothing. A howl of humiliated rage escaped me. Across my mind flashed the journey back to Britain. I would never survive that. My one chance for revenge had been illusory; my intended victim had never even been in reach. With the warped logic of despair and rage, I decided then that I would still forfeit the one life that was yet mine to take: my own.

  Both of the men staring at me now were armed. This would be simple, then: I had only to hurl myself upon the leader, and the bodyguard would kill me instantly.

  When you know this one is your final heartbeat, time slows for a final savoring of the senses. In less than a blink I noticed more about my surroundings than I had in years: the feel of the woven-grass mats under my feet, the elaborate, bright decorations on the tent walls, the smell of rosewater and woolly must that pervaded the pavilion, the commander’s aristocratic handsomeness, the likeable face of the young man who was about to skewer me. He had both sword and dagger in his belt; I wondered which he would use.

  I also noticed, in that flicker, that I was interrupting something significant. Although the knight had been kneeling, there was an informality between them, as if they were kin. The lord looked oddly relieved by my interruption— until I raised the spike above my head and threw myself at him.

  The young man was quick for one so large, but he was nowhere near as quick as I was,
and I realized that I could accidentally kill the lord. The lord cringed, but he did not move to protect himself, trusting his knight. I myself did not trust his knight, and as my hands descended, I shirked, pulled back a hair, so that the hooked point of the spike just missed the lord’s skull and only my knuckles glanced off his bald brow; by then the knight had me, huge left paw grabbing me around the throat, huge right one shoving the dagger-point against my liver. So this was it: I was over now, finally and despite everything. Suddenly I was flooded with euphoria and involuntarily, I grinned at him— my executioner, my liberator. His hair and beard gave his face a golden glow. I literally loved him more than my own life.

  Our eyes locked; all my weight rested in his clenched left fist around my throat, the knife at my gut, as I waited for him to plunge it in.

  He didn’t.

  He yanked the blade away and shoved me hard to the matted ground, where I choked on a mouthful of straw.

  Something had gone horribly wrong: I wasn’t dead.

  The knight said something in a garbled language to the lord, who answered similarly. There was a brief debate, which to this day I cannot remember understanding. Listening in stunned outrage, I gradually recognized it as a Lombard dialect I was familiar with; at that point they could have been speaking in my native tongue and it would have sounded like so much nonsense. I was removed from my own skin, too dazed to understand what was happening.