Dragon's Lair

by Sharon Kay Penman

  The air in the crypt was cold and clammy, and it was easy to understand why it was popularly known as the Shrouds. A wooden screen ran the length of the vault, dividing the eastern and western halves, and it was toward the former that the sheriff headed. "The coffers are stored on this side, by the Jesus Chapel."

  Following after him, Sir Nicholas peered blindly into the dark. "We'll need torches to keep my men from stumbling around like so many drunks. Getting the coffers up the steps will be -"

  The rest of his comment was lost as he was shoved suddenly from behind, with enough force to send him sprawling. The air had been knocked out of his lungs by the impact and it was a moment or so before he could find enough breath to protest. "What in Christ..." Rolling over onto his back, he found himself surrounded by men with drawn swords. His words caught in his throat as he recognized the Earl of Arundel and Hamelin, Earl of Warenne, the king's uncle, both members of the council named to oversee the collection of the king's ransom.

  The sheriff was already claiming his sword, roughly searching his body for a hidden dagger. "You are under arrest, whoreson." Another man was pushing through the circle, and the sheriff gestured toward the newcomer, saying, "Let me introduce you to Sir Nicholas de Mydden, who truly does serve the Queen's Grace."

  Glaring down at the imposter, the knight cursed him in language that should never have been uttered in the presence of a prelate of the Church. The bishop did not object, though, understanding his outrage that someone would have dared to sully his family name and honor like this, putting out a restraining hand only when it looked as if the genuine Sir Nicholas's verbal castigation would become physical.

  Standing apart from the others, the king's half-brother looked on quietly. Justin felt a prickle of sympathy, for Will Longsword's fondness for John was well known to all. Will alone had defended John, and he looked very unhappy now to have been proved wrong. Becoming aware of Justin's gaze, he mustered up a sad smile, "More fool I for letting myself be duped once again. That writ was the finest forgery I've ever seen. I'd never have guessed that it was not the queen's seal. So what sparked your suspicions, Justin?"

  "It was the queen's doing, not mine."

  The imposter had been dragged to his feet by Hamelin, a man known to have gotten his fair share of the infamous Angevin temper. "Let's get this hellspawn somewhere where we can put some questions to him."

  The man raised his chin, looked defiantly at his captors. "I have nothing to say.

  "You will," Hamelin promised grimly, "you will."

  ~*~

  Eleanor listened without comment as the Earls of Arundel and Warenne vied with each other to inform her of the events earlier that day in the crypts of St Paul's. The theft had been painstakingly planned, no details overlooked, from the use of a man who bore a passing resemblance to Sir Nicholas de Mydden to the equipping of two sets of carts, the ones carrying the ransom to be driven to the wharves and the others to lumber slowly toward the Tower.

  "We are still not sure, madame, if the fake coffers - filled with sand - would have been delivered to the Tower to sow confusion, or if they were meant merely as a red herring in case all did not go as planned at St Paul's. Whatever the intent, the aim was to buy them enough to time to reach the docks and load the real coffers onto a waiting ship."

  When Hamelin paused for breath, Arundel seized control of the conversation, marveling at the amazing authenticity of the forged seals. "Both your signet and that of the Archbishop of Rouen were well nigh perfect, Your Grace. The mastermind behind this crime seems to have been very familiar with the royal court, knowing, for example, that both your seal and the archbishop's must be provided ere the ransom could be transported."

  Standing on the outer ring of the circle, Justin and Will exchanged wry looks. The queen had shared her suspicions about John's involvement with very few, and Arundel had not been one of them. Even those not privy to the truth had been quick to suspect the queen's son, though, and there was some rolling of eyes now as Arundel blundered on with his theories about the theft. John cast a long shadow, all the more obvious for being so studiously ignored.

  Eleanor was losing patience with the garrulous earl and interrupted brusquely with a question about the ship. It was Hamelin who answered, saying regretfully that by the time they'd gotten the false de Mydden to talk, it was too late. When they reached Billingsgate, they'd found that the ship had already sailed.

  "So they were clever enough to keep St Paul's under watch, and to anchor on the seaward side of the bridge," Eleanor said thoughtfully. "Why does that not surprise me?"

  She was not disappointed, either. At least that was Justin's reading of the inscrutable expression on the queen's face. It was a look he'd seen before, whenever one of John's misdeeds came to light. Justin had always had an instinctive sympathy for mothers, in part because he'd idealized his own, the unknown woman who'd died giving him birth. He believed that a mother's love was pure and eternal and unconditional, despite evidence to the contrary all around him. He was sure that Eve must have wept a river of tears over the fratricidal strife between Cain and Abel. As a boy, he'd felt great pity for the mother of Moses as she set him adrift in a basket of bulrushes. And he never doubted that in her heart, Eleanor still saw John as the "son of her womb."

  It occurred to him that John was protected by a great conspiracy of silence. Eleanor cared only about foiling his designs on the crown, not about punishing him for them. And the lords of the realm were willfully blind, too. Luke de Marston had spoken for legions during their search of Southampton. "We cannot very well arrest him by ourselves, and I do not fancy arresting him at all, not when the man might well be king one day."

  As Justin had expected, Eleanor showed no interest in speculating upon the identity of the thieves. "What matters," she declared, "is that the thieves failed and not a halfpenny was lost. We have collected enough to convince Emperor Heinrich's envoys of our good faith, and they are making plans to return to Germany with the ransom. It is my intention to do the same as soon as our fleet can be made ready."

  She paused and then smiled at the men, a mother's smile as memorable in its own way as the seductive, bewitching smiles of her celebrated youth. "God willing," she said, "I will be spending Christmas with my son, the king. And then... then we'll come home."

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  A few years ago the Richard III Society asked me to write an article about the role of novelists in shaping history. I have no illusions about the novelist's ability to influence public opinion. How could we ever compete with Hollywood? But I do think the topic raises some interesting questions. What is the responsibility of the historical novelist? How much license can we take in our depiction of people who actually lived and events that truly happened? What do we owe our readers - and the long-dead men and women we write about? (If any of you are interested in my views upon this subject, you can read the article at www.r3.org/penman.)

  I have always tried to build a strong factual foundation for my novels, relying upon my Author's Note to tell my readers if I've taken any liberties with historical fact and thus keep my conscience clear. This approach has worked well for my six historicals. But the mystery format is different, and I've been having some difficulty reconciling my two personas. In writing the mysteries, I've given my imagination much more free rein than in my historicals, and while this freedom was fun, it was initially somewhat unsettling.

  The essential elements of Dragon's Lair are historically accurate. Richard was indeed taken prisoner on his way home from the Holy Land. His mother moved heaven and earth to raise the monumental ransom demanded for his freedom. Brother John did everything in his power to thwart Richard's release, including armed rebellion, an alliance with the French king, and forging the great seal in an attempt to steal Richard's ransom. But all of the other plot twists in the book are mine and cannot be blamed upon anyone else.

  In fairness to Davydd ab Owain, I must admit that he did not mastermind a scheme to hijack the rans
om. Having said that, I do not think I owe Davydd's ghost any apologies. Those of you who've read my novel Time and Chance will understand why I had no qualms about depicting Davydd in such an unflattering light. I don't mean to be cryptic about this; it will all become very clear if you read Time and Chance!

  Emma of Anjou presented the greatest challenges. We know very little about her. She was King Henry's half-sister, said to be beautiful. She was believed to have wed a French lord, Guy de Laval, bore him a son, and subsequently wed Davydd ab Owain, by whom she had two children, perhaps more. She was dead by 1214, a footnote in Welsh history.

  I am not sure why I felt misgivings about my treatment of Emma. Even in my historical novels, I've had to "fill in the blanks" and rely upon conjecture more often than I would like, for medieval chroniclers could be utterly indifferent to the needs of modern novelists. But I still had this vague dissatisfaction, this nagging concern that I'd not done right by Emma.

  One of the reasons why I find history so fascinating is that it is not static. It is always in a state of flux, and we never know what unexpected artifacts might be turned up as the tides go in and out. I recently made an eleventh-hour discovery that much of what we think we know about Emma might not be true. While browsing in the Medieval Genealogy Internet archives, I came upon a spirited discussion about "my" Emma. To my surprise, I found that Emma's marriage to Guy de Laval - accepted by historians for generations - is open to challenge. Citing a thirteenth-century charter to Evron Abbey, the argument was made that Emma de Laval and Emma of Anjou were two different women. Is this claim valid? I honestly don't know, but it is certainly deserving of further study.

  Learning that half of Emma's past might be based upon a case of mistaken identity could have been a writer's worst nightmare. Instead, it was liberating. I was reminded that the Emma in Dragon's Lair is my creation, and my only obligation is to make her interesting, as "real" as any fictional woman can ever be. And it will not be historians who judge this Emma; it will be my readers. I no longer worried that I was being unfair to the actual Emma, and came to terms with my Emma by promising her a role in my next mystery.

  Now on to the more mundane aspects of the Author's Note. I always mention for the benefit of new readers that the bishopric of Chester is a fictional one. Although the title was used in the Middle Ages, it was an unofficial usage, as the diocese was under the control of the Bishop of Coventry, John's crafty ally, Hugh de Nonant. I used Welsh spellings throughout, although Llewelyn is a slightly anglicized version of his name; the pure Welsh is Llywelyn. While daggers were in use in 1193, they had not yet become standard equipment for medieval knights. The area around Halkyn Mountain in North Wales was an important mining center for the Romans, and the horizontal adjoining shaft is called an "adit." The most horrifying fact that I unearthed in my mining research was that Roman slaves were sometimes kept underground until they died, never allowed to go up to see the sun or breathe pure, untainted air. And while chapels were not built on every Cistercian grange in medieval Wales, they were known to have existed on some, so I felt comfortable adding a chapel to the grange at Mostyn.

  The theory that the brilliant poet Marie de France, the Abbess of Shaftsbury, was Emma's half-sister is widely believed but not conclusively proven. I hope it is so, for there is something very appealing about the image of this gifted woman penning her worldly verses in the quiet of the cloister. Lastly, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth is not a figment of my imagination. He was indeed challenging Davydd for supremacy in Gwynedd in 1193. He would become the most successful of all the Welsh princes and history has accorded him the deserving accolade of Llewelyn the Great. He would also become King John's son-in-law. For those readers who will want to know more about this remarkable man, he is the central character in my novel Here Be Dragons.

  S. K. P.

  APRIL 2003

  www.sharonkaypenman.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To quote my favorite line from Casablanca, "Round up the usual suspects." My family, my friends, my editors at Putnam and Penguin, and my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, Molly Friedrich and Mic Cheetham. I would like to make special mention of the following: Marian Wood, Editor Extraordinaire; Earl Kotila, whose offhand comment about Justin's love life inspired the creation of Molly; John Schilke, M.D., for confirming what I'd learned about decomposing bodies; Lowell LaMont, my computer exorcist; Jill Davies for helping me keep the faith; Marilynn Summers for giving me the benefit of her nursing experience; and above all, Valerie Ptak LaMont, midwife for all my books.

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