The White Ship

by Nicholas Salaman

  History and guesswork

  History is the bones of this story; guesswork and romance are the flesh and the blood.

  In terms of history, much of the tale is based on fact – so far as we can retrieve accuracy from events that occurred nine hundred years ago. We have a kind of feeling that the people who lived at that time were not really flesh and blood, but moved in a series of Anglo-Norman attitudes, rather as in the Bayeux tapestry, in a life of great discomfort and semi-barbarism. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were as alive as we are, possibly more so; life was shorter, but the earth was closer, the water colder and the sky nearer. We are prepared to allow that the Tudors, for instance, were proper living people because they were able to tell us so much more about themselves – but the fact that we know less about the men and women of the twelfth century makes them, in a way, even more interesting.

  We do have a very good guide in the form of a monk called Orderic Vitalis, a man from Gloucestershire who moved over to the Abbey of Saint-Évroult in Normandy on which my Abbey of Saint-Sulpice is loosely based. He wrote an exhaustive Ecclesiastical History covering the years this story deals with, and considerably beyond them on either side. He had two names. Orderic was English, but the monks could not pronounce that in Normandy so they called him Vitalis. Using him and one of two others of his kind, plus a certain amount of intelligent guesswork, we can piece together what happened after the White Ship went down.

  When Bertold was brought back to shore, one of the first people to speak to him was probably Stephen, Comte of Mortain, Henry’s nephew and one of his two possible heirs. Henry’s daughter Matilda, of course, was in direct line to the throne, but there had already been rumblings and rumours that some of the barons would not accept a woman – a tendency that Stephen of course did his best to encourage. It is interesting to note that Stephen, along with one or two others, got off the White Ship just before it sailed. Stephen’s reason at the time was indeed diarrhoea, a plausible if somewhat uncourtly excuse, though he may well have had other ones.

  We do know that the consequence of the vacuum left by the death of the sole male heir, was (after King Henry died in 1135) nineteen years of civil war between Stephen, the King’s nephew, and Matilda, the King’s daughter. What happened to Bertold, history does not relate. He was on the ship and was the sole survivor. Whether he was the butcher’s accountant or a bastard is entirely open to question, but Juliana, Comtesse de Breteuil, did indeed enter a nunnery where she lived quietly until she died. Of her estranged husband Eustace there is no record. I have quite possibly traduced the man – but there seems little doubt that it was he who ordered the putting out of the Castellan’s son’s eyes. We know that the two little girls were blinded and disfigured by the Castellan (delivered by their grandfather, the Duke, who was holding them) in revenge for his son’s blinding. What happened to them subsequently is unknown.

  In terms of historical accuracy, I have tried to be as authentic as I could in relation to everyday life, table manners and so forth, and have immersed myself duly in contemporary reference and research…

  One can always do more but research can be a monster that devours the creative impulse. You use what you need and you try to avoid too many people saying ‘but that wasn’t invented until three centuries later’. Yes, in some respects I have followed the novelist’s desire to embroider and on the whole I incline to the Sir Walter Scott or even Shakespearian school of historical writing.

  I must freely confess that the current Chateau de Breteuil bears no relationship to the Breteuil of my story. It is in a different place and dates, I believe, from the seventeenth century. It is a very handsome building, but anyone making a pilgrimage to it will be disappointed if they hope to catch a whiff of the matters narrated here.

  There are some mouldering remains of the original version near the town of Breteuil, but I must admit that I have been geographically and architecturally promiscuous. I have re-designed my Chateau of Breteuil to suit the telling just as I have done with Breteuil town itself as it was in 1118, and the various other towns and cities that Bertold passes through. I have allotted lakes where there may have been none and abbeys where they did not exist, et cetera and so forth, but time has played tricks with geography too.

  I have absolutely no evidence that Prince William and his half-sister Matilda were having an affair – except we do know that she, above all the people on board, was the person for whom he turned his little boat back – and with whom he drowned

  In short, there is a great deal of historical fact in the book, much supposition, but few downright lies.

  A Note on Alcohol

  It was, if not discovered, at least developed by the Arabs who used it for perfumes and possibly medical purposes. I have not been able to ascertain if it was taken as medicine – though later writers have praised it for ‘puffing away ventosity’ and ‘preventing the bellye from womblying’ and so forth. The influence of Arab knowledge was notable in many areas as it spread upwards from Spain in the eleventh and succeeding centuries, especially via the Jews, some of whom had converted to Christianity. It suited my purpose for alcohol to make an appearance in the story, and though it may be hard to prove it was around at that time, it is also hard to disprove. The same might be said for the appearance of Arabic numerals and the marvellous concept of 0. Now physicists tell us that nothing is full of particles popping in and popping out, a bubbling vacuum pregnant with latency. That is how a novel is, before it is written.

  Acknowledgments

  I must acknowledge with grateful thanks all manner of people who have helped me, and who cannot be held responsible for some of my more flagrant leaps of imagination or ignorance. The historian whose work has held me together and provided the ‘skeleton’ for my fleshing out of a story, and sometimes the framework of my narrative where it deals with the troubles Duke Henry had to face in Normandy, is Professor Judith Green. Her indispensable book Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy has been constantly beside me from start to finish as I have embarked on this journey. And indeed it was on the pages of that history that I found embedded the seeds of what I have taken to be the dark flower of Juliana’s fearful revenge. I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this intriguing king and his times. Any historical bêtises in my narrative are down to me and certainly not to her.

  I must also gratefully acknowledge the scholarship, patience and kindness of Dr Linsey Hunter who has read and re-read the manuscript for me, and spent far more time than she should have done as a busy academic herself, hunting down and listing my historical howlers and suggesting ameliorations. Any mistakes that remain, I say again, are all my fault or pig-headedness and cannot be laid at her door.

  I should also give grateful thanks across the years to Orderic Vitalis, the twelfth-century monk from Gloucestershire who spent most of his life in Normandy. His Ecclesiastical History is the main source of contemporary information on King Henry’s struggles in Normandy, and on the wreck of the White Ship. Thanks are due also to William of Malmesbury who gives us the poignant detail of the prince’s half-sister calling to him from the sinking ship as he is rowed away. I am most grateful to Trinity College, Oxford, for protractedly lending me the copy of Orderic’s Ecclesiastical History. I have had further reference and inspiration from Robert Bartlett’s England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, and more mid-mediaeval information and indeed encouragement from Ben Lake, also of Trinity College, Oxford. On the naval side, Dr Ian Friel has given me invaluable help with his knowledge of the history of ships and in particular (for my purposes) of twelfth century shipbuilding. There is not much doubt that the White Ship was a standard Viking-type ship with square sail and oars, and a steerboard on the starboard side. The fact that I have decided to make FitzStephen, my shipwright, into an innovator who has introduced a rudder and vestigial castles to his ship is entirely my own vision or mulishness. It is possible that such innovation occurred, but there is no wreck or v
isual confirmation of such innovations until they appear on town seals more than fifty years after the wreck, also on the Kalmar boat, found in a drained castle moat in Sweden, in the thirteenth century. That is not to say that they could not have happened. The Arabs used rudders and so, on occasion, did the Romans. I liked the idea of my shipwright, a man of whom we know next to nothing, being an innovator obsessed with making a special ship. So I have flown against expert opinion – but sometimes innovations happen that way too. I though it made the shipwright a more interesting character. After all, there must have been something about the White Ship for everyone to have been so excited about it – even before it sank. I am told it was not unusual to paint royal ships, but a white ship must have looked especially mystic and wonderful.

  Finally, but not least, I would like to express my enormous gratitude to Francis Bennett for his support and encouragement, to my agent Laura Morris for her belief, experience, wisdom and good advice, and to my patient and creative and long-suffering editor Rebecca Lloyd as well as Penny Hunter, Bethan James and everyone involved at Accent Press.

  Difficile est longam subito deponere amorem. Catullus

  It is hard, after a long and great love, suddenly to say goodbye.

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  Published by Accent Press Ltd 2016

  ISBN 9781910939420

  Copyright © Nicholas Salaman 2016

  The right of Nicholas Salaman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN