“She’s bringing herself,” the other said. “I’m to wait with the priest.”
A woman’s voice said clearly, “Hurry up.”
The man in the fine tunic looked imploringly at the priest. “If you please, Father?”
The priest sighed and gave himself over to the moment. He was here, was he not, and could not very well walk himself out of Sherwood and back to Nottingham. He was old. He tired easily. Better to be taken, as he’d been brought. The price was small enough; he’d have their confessions before he departed.
He glanced at the lute-player. “Begin.”
Grinning beatifically, the man obligingly brought the first notes forth. They were distinctly out of tune. The minstrel was horrified. “Oh, Jesu!”
“Just play,” someone muttered.
“But—”
The priest gaped as a woman stepped out from behind a cluster of bushes. She wore a somewhat wrinkled and soiled red chemise, ungirdled, a golden fillet on her brow to tame the loose black hair, and clutched a spray of flowers in her hand. Yet for all her loveliness, her expression was decidedly cross. “With or without music,” she said.
Meekly, the minstrel began to play again. The notes remained out of tune, but no one had the bad manners to comment on it.
The bride, however, did not appear to notice. Or else she did not care. A smile replaced the scowl. Beauty bloomed. The priest very nearly crossed himself.
And then she was coming, the smile in place, with her eyes locked on the fair-haired man in the checkered silk tunic, and the priest forgot all about stolen lutes and poached deer, the dangers of Sherwood’s outlaws. A wedding was a wedding.
But the lute truly was decidedly out of tune.
“Jesu,” the minstrel muttered.
“Hush,” the priest rebuked, “and, if it please you, cease taking our Lord’s name in vain!” Reprimand given—and heeded—he then bestowed a kindly smile upon the bride and groom, who now stood before him.
Sherwood, despite the arching of trees toward Heaven, was not a church. But God was everywhere.
And even outlaws could be forgiven.
In solid content together they lived,
With all their yeoman gay;
They lived by their hands, without any lands,
And so they did many a day.
But now to conclude an end I will make,
In time as I think it good;
For the people that live in the North can tell
Of Marian and bold Robin Hood.
—from Robin Hood and Maid Marian (a later ballad)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Lady of Sherwood is a historical novel; that is to say, a work of fiction in which the author has made up huge chunks of a story that never happened. History, however, offers writers fascinating and compelling glimpses of actual people—kings, queens, and commoners—whose lives were often documented, and we weave these actual incidents together with those springing from our imaginations. But as with any journalistic endeavor, the annals of the times cannot always be trusted for accuracy; the closest thing to the media in the twelfth century were generally clerics, men requested by their patrons to keep track of things for various reasons. Patronage often results in creative interpretation, then and now, which is why contemporary historians disagree with regard to the characters and actions of yesterday’s heroes and villains as reported by chroniclers of the times. (For instance, scholars are still arguing over whether Richard III or Henry VII had the Princes in the Tower murdered.)
Employing the storyteller’s license, I have significantly compressed and rearranged the events following King Richard’s death. He did indeed die laying siege to a nonexistent treasure at Châlus, killed by a minor wound that turned gangrenous. There was great consternation when Richard, lacking heirs of the body, decided his brother, John, the Count of Mortain, and Arthur, Duke of Brittany, his middle brother’s son, had equal claim to England. But there were no codified inheritance traditions in place at the time, and thus no one was certain who had better claim: the youngest son of Henry II, or Henry’s grandson. Richard apparently decided “may the best man win” was the most feasible approach to determining who would succeed. But acceptance of the claimant was actually determined by the most influential men of the land; hence, what the English barons thought of John vs. Arthur mattered a very great deal. It was William Marshal, one of the most powerful men in England, who, in debate with Archbishop Hubert Walter of Canterbury after Richard’s death, declared John should be king, and thus gave John the endorsement that won over many of the English barons. The Archbishop of Canterbury, however, had grave doubts, as shown by his response: ‘So be it, but mark my words, Marshal, you will never regret anything in life as much as this.’
Ironically, John was visiting his nephew in Brittany when word of Richard’s death arrived. He immediately rode for Chinon where the Angevin treasury was kept; money was the key to all. But Arthur’s mother, Constance of Brittany, made her son’s claim all the stronger by entrusting the care of the twelve-year-old boy to Philip of France. The Bretons and French formally accepted Arthur as the rightful successor; John ended up in Normandy where he had himself named Duke, as the Normans wanted nothing to do with the Bretons. There he had his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, bring up Richard’s mercenaries, under the command of Mercardier, to control things on the Continent, while he hastened to England to be crowned king in Westminster Abbey approximately one month after Richard’s death.
After a few years of a contested reign, John eventually realized that if Arthur, whom he had taken hostage in 1202, remained alive, a threat to his rule would always exist. Reports indicate John sent men to blind and castrate Arthur, though it was not done. For a while there were rumors of Arthur’s death, though others swore he was alive. Eventually the truth came out, reported by the chroniclers of William de Briouze, one of John’s most loyal companions, who wrote that in 1203 King John himself personally murdered his nephew:
After King John captured Arthur and kept him in prison for some time, at length, in the castle of Rouen, after dinner on the Thursday before Easter, when he [John] was drunk and possessed by the devil (ebrius et daemonio plenus), he slew him [Arthur] with his own hand, and tying a heavy stone to the body cast it into the Seine. It was discovered by a fisherman in his net, and being dragged to the bank and recognized, was taken for secret burial, in fear of the tyrant, to the priory of Bec called Nôtre Dame des Pres.
John kept Arthur’s sister, Eleanor, hostage as well, though she lived in luxury until a natural death in 1214.
Controversy over who should rule after the death of a popular monarch always provides fodder for novelists, and so I selected the turbulent days immediately following the Lionheart’s demise for the focus of Lady of Sherwood. But even in fiction a logical progression of events provides a vital underpinning for the story arc, so I developed my own extrapolation of what might have happened to the central characters of the classic Robin Hood ballads, following events in my earlier novel, Lady of the Forest. The concept of robbing from the rich to give to the poor is central to the Robin Hood legend, as is the feud between Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham and conflict over taxation policies, but even as I told the tale of how such seemingly disparate parties as peasants, a knight’s daughter, and the son of an earl might come to be co-conspiritors in Lady of the Forest, I chose to depict the resultant activities in the sequel as an outgrowth of the very real political conflict between John and Arthur. In the interests of accuracy, it should perhaps be noted that while Mercardier truly was captain of the Lionheart’s mercenaries, for my own purposes I transported him from France to England and made him central to this version.
The story of Robin Hood, Marian, and the others, regardless of interpretation, remains a vital and viable part of contemporary society, one of the few universals in literature, and I am certain they shall continue to inspire novelists and screenwriters for centuries to come.
A NOTE ON REFERENCE MATERIAL
S
When undertaking to write any historical novel, an author relies on an infinite number of sources for information and documentation. Sometimes only one small kernel of information is mined from a fat reference work; other times there are whole chapters that inspire much of the resultant novel. With this in mind, I must say that, as usual, I am indebted to numerous reference materials. The primary sources I consulted for this novel include W.L. Warren’s King John; Elizabeth Hallam’s The Plantagenet Chronicles; The Ballads of Robin Hood, edited by Jim Lees; Longbow: A Social and Military History by Robert Hardy; and Swords and Hilt Weapons, by various contributing authors.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Roberson has long been known for her award-winning fantasy series, Chronicles of the Cheysuli and Sword Dancer. Her historical fiction includes the award-winning Lady of the Forest and her Scottish novel, Lady of the Glen. Along with Melanie Rawn and Kate Elliott, she is an author of The Golden Key, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Jennifer Roberson lives in Arizona, where, in addition to writing, she raises Cardigan Welsh Corgis. Visit her on the web at cheysuli.com.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 1999 by Jennifer Roberson
Map by Elizabeth Danforth
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-9219-3
eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9222-3
eISBN-10: 0-7582-9222-8
First Kensington Electronic Edition: July 2013
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