Excerpt from "St. Louis' Knight: The King and All His Knights are Captured!

The Kingdom of Cyprus                    

April, Anno Domini 1250

  

“The French King and all his knights have been captured by the Saracens,” the herald intoned. His deep voice, more commonly used to proclaim the ancestry and deeds of knights at tournaments, was muted with both respect and shock. His bright livery was shrouded in a dark cloak as if he were in mourning for a lost cause, and his boots and hose were splattered with mud, betraying his haste to bring the news to the Dowager Queen of Cyprus.

His words provoked an eruption of shocked and frightened exclamations from the little audience. The Dowager Queen was on her deathbed, and had been for months. She lived in almost complete seclusion, served only by a household of Cypriot servants and four ladies, three of whom were almost as old as she was herself.

One of these ladies began crossing herself repeatedly and reciting the Rosary in a tone of almost hysterical desperation. Another clapped her hands over her mouth and stared at the herald as if she expected Saracens to come storming through the door behind him. A third protested, “But that can’t be! King Louis had the greatest army anyone had ever seen! He had scores of barons and nearly three thousand knights. They can’t all have been captured! Not all those brave knights! And the King’s brothers! And what of the French Queen and the ladies of the court?”

“When the messenger left Egypt, the French Queen and her ladies were still in Damietta with the handful of knights and men-at-arms left there for their protection, but I doubt that is still the case. With the King captive and his army destroyed, the Sultan of Egypt will undoubtedly try to recapture Damietta. The knights with Queen Marguerite are urging her to remove herself to safety immediately. If she chooses Cyprus over Acre, she could be here any moment.” The herald glanced toward the large double-light window that looked south, towards Egypt, as if expecting to see the sails of a Genoese round ship straining to bring the French Queen to safety. But the window offered only a view of the walled garden of this isolated manor.

The Dowager Queen clicked her tongue and drew the herald’s attention back to the interior of the room. “What did you expect?” the old woman asked rhetorically. “All these foreign kings and princes think crusading is a lark! They think we hang onto only the fragments of the Holy Land because we, the nobility of Outremer, have become weak, cowardly, and luxury-loving. They all come out here thinking that they, so splendid and so brave, will chase the Saracens back into the desert. Ha!”

The herald did not contradict her. There was some truth to what the old Queen said. Although King Louis himself had seemed a sober and far from lighthearted crusader, his younger brothers and many of his knights had been as arrogant and ignorant as the Queen suggested. Besides, the Queen was a woman who knew more about politics in the Holy Land than almost anyone else alive. Alice of Champagne had been widowed when her son, King Henry I, was only eight months old and had acted as his regent until he came of age ― by which time she had weathered a civil war on Cyprus and a crusade led by the Holy Roman Emperor. As if that hadn’t been enough, as the granddaughter of the Queen of Jerusalem, she had been Regent of Jerusalem for the under-aged King Conrad IV as well. While it was fair to say that Alice of Champagne’s politics had not been crowned by particular success, no one could deny that she understood the complexity of surviving in Christian Palestine.

“So,” the old woman scoffed, “the Sultan of Egypt has humiliated the most powerful monarch in Christendom. The Holy Roman Emperor must be dancing for joy to see the Pope’s favorite humiliated like this.”

“Madame! How can you think in such terms when a Christian monarch and all his knights and nobles are at the mercy of the godless Saracens?” one of Alice’s ladies admonished her ― inducing her praying colleague to raise her voice even more shrilly to the Mother of God.

The old Queen silenced both ladies. “Enough of your howling, Catherine! You have the brain of a hen, Eschiva! Godless or not, the Sultan loves gold. He’ll let them all go when enough ransom has been paid, and if France is beggared, then the Holy Roman Empire will be stronger.” The Dowager Queen had always sided with the Holy Roman Empire against the barons of the Holy Land, and now she smiled to herself. Then she cleared her throat and announced, “Thank you, Sir Herald. Blanche, give the herald ten livres for his trouble! Eleanor, see him to the kitchens and tell the cook to give him a hearty meal. I weary.”

The interview was over. The Queen signaled for assistance to rise, and two of her ladies sprang to help her from her armed chair, while the third retrieved her mistress’ purse and doled out the promised reward. The herald found himself following the fourth of the Queen’s ladies, Eleanor de Najac, down the spiral stairs from the Queen’s tower chamber toward the kitchen on the ground floor.

Eleanor was the only one of the Queen’s women who was less than sixty years of age. The herald guessed she was no more than twenty or twenty-one. All the herald knew about her was that she was a ward of the Comte de Poitiers, the French King’s younger brother, and had had the misfortune to shipwreck on the coast of Cyprus or her way to join the Comtesse de Poitiers’ household.

The storm that struck in March of the previous year had been one of the worst in living memory, and it had scattered half the French King’s fleet then assembling for the voyage to Egypt. In the confusion following the gale, hardly anyone took note of a small French vessel that went ashore on the west coast with the loss of all hands ― especially since the only corpses found were those of common sailors and tonsured men, presumably clerics bound for the Holy Land.

Weeks later, however, a second ship from France brought letters making reference to the passage of the heiress of Najac aboard a previous vessel. The Comte de Poitiers, who was by then in Egypt with his brother, asked the King of Cyprus to find out what had happened to his ward.

A search for her corpse was instituted along the coast, and to the wonder and amazement of those sent to find her body, Eleanor was found alive ― albeit severely injured ― in a fishing village. Since Eleanor spoke no Greek and the fishermen spoke neither Latin nor French, Eleanor’s rescuers had not realized she was a high-born lady and heiress; they had not thought to notify the authorities.

The herald was familiar with the cramped, stinking cottages of the local fishermen. He was certain that for a French noblewoman the weeks in the Cypriot fishing village had been a hell ― especially since one of her legs had been crushed in the wreck and she was in pain and feverish.

Even now, more than a year after the wreck, she walked with a limp as she led him across the inner courtyard to the kitchen tract. The experience had also left its mark on her face and soul, the herald surmised, for her face was too guarded and sober for a gentle maiden still in the bloom of youth.

Furthermore, although the herald knew professionally that the sires of Najac were ancient and wealthy lords, Eleanor neither looked nor acted like a haughty heiress. The simplicity of her dress, a soft linen gown with a pale-blue surcoat, would not have been out of place on the wife of a country squire or town merchant. Her auburn hair was neatly braided down her back and her head covered with a flat, modestly embroidered hat, held in place by simple white veils. The effect was neat and attractive ― but not suited to an heiress. The Cypriot court was filled with young women who adorned themselves much more lavishly and brightly, although they claimed hardly more than a thimbleful of noble blood rather than a barony! They compared to Eleanor of Najac like butterflies to a moth.

Not that Eleanor was plain. The herald considered her with the eyes of a connoisseur of women as Eleanor gestured for him to sit at a table in the passageway before the kitchen. She was pretty in a soft, understated way, he decided. She had wide-set hazel eyes, dark straight eyebrows, and an elegant long nose in an oval face. Her skin was flawless and very pale. Her only bad features were her nearly colorless, narrow lips ― but even this defect would have been forgotten, if only she smiled.

 “Wait here, Sir Herald, while I inform the cook of your needs,” she told him simply, before lurching down the stone steps leading to the kitchen.

Waiting for her, the herald wished he had some means to make her smile. If only he had brought good news instead of word of this catastrophe! It was only too natural that Eleanor was deeply troubled under the circumstances. Her guardian was in grave danger, a prisoner of the Saracens, and even if the Sultan was unlikely to harm a prince of France, she must worry that the ransom he imposed would impoverish her, since the income from her inheritance flowed into the Count’s coffers as long as she was unwed.

 While the herald was still lost in these thoughts, Eleanor returned with a bronze aquarelle in the form of a lion and a linen towel.

“My Lady, it is unseemly that you wait on me. Send for a servant, and sit with me instead,” the herald urged, indicating the bench on the other side of the table from him.

She seemed flustered by his remark, hastily putting the aquarelle down and stepping back as if she had done something wrong.

He smiled to reassure her and gestured to the bench opposite him again, urging, “Sit with me a moment, My Lady. Perhaps I can be of service with some information? My travels take me all over the island.” The herald had long since learned to use his natural access to information to satisfy the interest of others in gossip.

Eleanor nodded, but not with eager curiosity as he had expected. Instead she sat very stiffly on the bench opposite, and there was so much tension in her that the herald felt compelled to reassure her. “You must not distress yourself too much. I’m sure the Comte de Poitiers is in no great danger.” In the herald’s experience, maidens of Eleanor’s age were rarely interested in the fate of their fathers or guardians. It was far more likely that Eleanor was worried about some young knight who had courted her or otherwise caught her fancy. But no modest maiden would confess such an interest to a strange man, so the herald knew he had to pretend to talk about her guardian.

Eleanor drew a deep breath, “Would you ― would you mind telling me more of what has happened in Egypt? I have been very isolated here,” she hastened to excuse herself.

Read more... buy now!

Finding the Languedoc

Finding the Languedoc of the troubadours is not really difficult, but it is easy to be misled by modern labels. The Languedoc of the Middle Ages was much broader than the modern French Department, Languedoc-Roussillon. The cradle of chivalry was essentially the territories held by the largely autonomous lords in the South of France. The borders of such lands changed with the tides of war and marriages, but essentially was composed of the Duchy of Aquitaine, the Counties of Toulouse, Provence and Foix, and the Visounties of Montpellier, Beziers, Carcassonne and Albi.

A visit to this region shatters misconceptions about the Middle Ages being dark, cold, colorless, primitive and brutal. This is a sun-soaked corner of the earth, enriched by sufficient rain to be perpetually fertile. The scents of the Languedoc are lavender and rosemary, and the colors are the yellow of sunflowers, the green of plane and cypress trees, the blue-turquoise of the Mediterranean and the off-white of limestone -- all things that were no less abundant in the age of chivalry than now.

Because that limestone was used to build both the churches and the castles of the age, the buildings of the region are not grey or even red, but off-white and correspondingly cheerful. The medieval monuments, furthermore, demonstrate just how developed the artistic traditions of the region already were  a thousand years ago. The quality of the sculpture and painting, not to mention the symmetry, harmony and lightness of the architecture testify to the very high culture that reigned. One should never forget that here the Romans had built great cities with fountains fed by magnificent aqueducts and connected by broad, straight roads; they built coliseums, temples, bridges, barracks and luxury villas. The transition from Roman grandeur to Christian splendor was seamless. Ideology, religion, forms of government and the symbols changed, but the fundamental ability to live well remained.

To find the cradle of chivalry, therefore, one needs only go Southeastern France -- to Provence and what is now called "Languedoc-Roussillon" and look for the remnants of the Age of Chivalry. Leave the Cote d' Azure to the hoards of "wannabe" tourists gawking at the nouveau riche, and head inland instead to the great Romanesque Abbey of Senanque - set like a jewel among the fields of blooming lavender.  It is unquestionably one of the most beautiful and harmonious places on earth. Visit the stunningly elaborate palace of the Popes in Avignon -- and you will never again think life in the Middle Ages was drab, primitive and without luxury. Go to St. Gilles, the seat of the Counts of Toulouse, and to the symmetrical and efficient medieval harbor of Aigues Mortes, from which St. Louis sailed with 2,000 knights to re-capture Jerusalem for Christianity.

My secret tip, however, is Moustiers-Ste.-Marie. Here in a gorge in the Haute Provence a monastery was founded in the 5th century. At the mouth of the gorge, nestled in front of the sheer cliffs behind, is a small village with a crooked church (it bends in the middle), and over the gorge stretches a heavy, iron chain with a star hanging from it. According to legend, the star has hung from this chain in the 13th century by a knight called Blacas.  Blacas, so the legend says, had gone on crusade to the Holy Land and been taken captive by the Saracen.  When he was eventually freed, he came to Moustiers-Ste-Marie and hung the star on the chain -- a remarkable feat of engineering for the time! -- as a symbol of his gratitude.

But no one knows anymore which crusade it was or how long "Blacas" spent in captivity. No one knows why he chose a star rather than a cross or some other symbol. Did it represent the "Star of Bethlehem"? Had he been taken captive in Bethlehem or been held prisoner there? Had he rotted in a dark dungeon with only a single window from which he had seen, night after night, a star that came to represent freedom or salvation to him? And why hang his star at Moustiers-Ste-Marie? Had he made a vow to the Virgin Mary here? Did he come from the region? No one knows anymore, any more than we know who paid his ransom, and who was praying for him to come home.

Moustiers-Ste-Marie is just one of many places in the Languedoc that contains the seeds of a novel waiting to be written.

The Ideal of Chivalry

Chivalry evolved out of the military and literary traditions of antiquity, and emerged at the beginning of the High Middle Ages as a concept that rapidly came to dominate the ethos and identity of the nobility. Chivalry is inextricably tied to knighthood, a phenomenon distinct to Europe in the Middle Ages. There have been cavalrymen in many different ages and societies, but the cult of knighthood, including a special dubbing ceremony and a code of ethics, exists only in the Age of Chivalry.

Chivalry was always an ideal. It defined the way a knight was supposed to behave. No one in the Middle Ages seriously expected every knight to live up that ideal. Even the heroes of chivalric romances usually fell short of the ideal at least some of the time – and many only achieved their goal and glory when they overcame their baser instincts or their natural shortcomings to live, however briefly, like “perfect, gentle knights.”

Chivalry was a code of behavior that young men were supposed to aspire to – not to already have. The code was articulated and passed on to youths in the form of romances and poems lionizing the chivalric deeds of fictional heroes. It was also recorded in the biographies of historical personages viewed as examples of chivalry, from William Marshal to Geoffrey de Charney and Edward, the Black Prince. Finally, there were a number of textbooks or handbooks that attempted to codify the essence of chivalry.

So what defined chivalry? First and foremost, a knight was supposed to uphold justice by protecting the weak, particularly widows, orphans, and the Church. He was also supposed to be upon a permanent quest for honor and glory, sometimes translated as “nobility.” The troubadours, meanwhile, had introduced for the first time the notion that “a man could become more noble through love." Thus love for a lady became a central – if not the central – concept of chivalry, particularly in literature.

The chivalric notion of love was that it must be mutual, voluntary, and exclusive – on both sides. It could occur between husband and wife – and many of the romances such as Erec et Enide by Chrétien de Troyes or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival revolve in part or in whole around the love of a married couple. But the tradition of the troubadours put love for another man’s wife on an equal footing with love for one’s own – provided the lady returned the sentiment!  The most famous of all adulterous lovers in the age of chivalry were, of course, Lancelot and Guinevere, closely followed by Tristan and Iseult.

Likewise noteworthy in a feudal world was the fact that the lover and the beloved were supposed to be valued not for their social status or their wealth, but for their personal virtues, albeit only within the band of society that was “noble.” By definition, the heroes of chivalry are knights, and their ladies are just that: ladies. Stories about peasants, priests, and merchants are simply not part of the genre, any more than lusting after a serving “wench” qualifies as “love” in the chivalric tradition. But within the chivalric class, a lady was  supposed to be loved and respected for her beauty and her graces regardless of her status, and a knight was supposed to be loved for his chivalric virtues, not his lands or titles.

In more practical terms, one of the handbooks on chivalry written by the Spanish nobleman Ramon Lull lists the virtues of a knight as nobility, loyalty, honor, righteousness, prowess (courage), love, courtesy, diligence, cleanliness, generosity, sobriety, and perseverance. Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzifal, on the other hand, stresses a strong sense of right and wrong, compassion for the unfortunate, generosity, kindness, humility, mercy, courtesy (particularly to ladies), and cleanliness.

Geoffrey de Charney, the French hero from the Hundred Years’ War, also wrote a handbook on chivalry that is particularly valuable because he was a man with a powerful reputation as a chivalrous knight. (He was killed at the Battle of Poitiers defending the French battle standard, the oriflamme.) Charney puts the emphasis on love as a spur to great deeds and stresses that a knight must love “loyally” (with exclusive devotion to his own true love), but includes good manners, generosity, humility, fortitude, and courage among the qualities of chivalry as well. As a reflection of his career, Charney places greater value on fighting – stressing its hardships, deprivations, and risks – over frivolous tournaments.

On the other hand, the biographer of William Marshal, writing in the early 13th century, sees in tournaments a means of giving men a chance to demonstrate their “worth” – i.e., their courage, audacity, and skill at arms. For Marshal these are the skills, combined with unwavering loyalty to his liege, that enable him to rise from landless knight to regent of England. While Marshal (or at least his biographer) put the emphasis on courage, the themes of courtesy and discretion with respect to ladies, and generosity, are also present.

It is lamentable that nowadays the discussion of "chivalry" is so often confined to whether a man should open a door for a woman and similar nonsense! Chivalry wasn't about a set of anachronistic manners, it was a fundamental code of conduct that put the strong in the service of the weak -- a concept that ennobled both.

For more about chivalry, I recommend especially the following sources:

Barber, Richard W. 1970, 1974, 1995. The Knight and Chivalry. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1970, 1974, 1995.

Duby, George. 1985. William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry. New York: Random House, 1985.

Hopkins, Andrea. 1990. Knights: The Complete Story of the Age of Chivalry, from Historical Fact to Tales of Romance and Poetry. London: Quarto Publishing, 1990.

Why Write Tales of Chivalry?

Chivalry, a vague and ill-defined concept, emerged from the mists of the so-called Dark Ages to become the dominant ethos of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages.  It was neither a form of government nor a religion, yet it shaped societies. It dominated the art and literature of its age more powerfully than any king – indeed as powerfully as Christianity itself.

To be sure, Chivalry was amorphous and ephemeral. It defied definition. It was different things to different people, and it changed over time and across space. Yet it was not mere fantasy or pose. It had a very real impact, because it shaped the way men and women in the Middle Ages thought about themselves and others.

Telling tales of chivalry has a tradition that stretches back to the origins of chivalry itself. Indeed, we can trace the roots of Chivalry to Provence in the 11^th Century.  There a new style of literature emerged: the songs and poems of the troubadours.  These works represented a sharp break with past literary traditions and their style and content produced a completely new view of knights -- and their ladies.  Chivalry, unlike earlier warrior cults from Ancient Greece to the Vikings, was unthinkable without the fairer sex that inspired the great deeds of the male heroes. 

Tales of chivalry soon evolved beyond the poems of the troubadours to full-fledged romances, such as Tristan et Iseult, Perceval, and Le Morte d’Arthur, tales characterized by magic, mythical beasts and romance.  This was the “fantasy fiction” of the Middle Ages.

Alongside these fictional works, however, were tales of chivalry that recorded real events and described the lives of real men. Examples are the biography of William Marshal in the early 13^th century, Jean de Joinville’s biography of King Louis IX half a century later, and Chandos’ Herald’s account of the deeds of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, written at the end of the 14^th century. 

These contemporary tales of chivalry have been the inspiration for my own works set in the Age of Chivalry. Like the originals, my novellas and novels set out to entertain and educate, to honor historical figures -- and create fictional ones. They seek to make the heroes of this age – and the period itself -- more comprehensible to us by writing in the language and style of today.

But I am a historian, and my works are historical fiction -- not fantasy or mystery. Each of my novels is rooted in historical fact and I strive to recreate the period and events with accuracy.  It is because the concept of chivalry exercised such a powerful influence on the historical figures of the 12^th-15^th centuries, that I am pleased to call them Tales of Chivalry.  My characters believe in chivalry – past if not present – and so chivalry embraces them.  

These are tales of brave knights and fair ladies – and of not-so-brave knights and not-so-fair ladies. They are tales of adventure and romance, of faith and betrayal, of treachery and salvation, of cruelty and generosity -- in short, they are tales of humanity.

 I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them – and that Chandos’ herald did not err when he wrote:   The telling of good deeds is like alms and charity; it is never lost labor, but always has its return.