For a time I feared that Devil’s Brood would become a literary Flying Dutchman, doomed never to reach port or print. I am so grateful to so many for their support and encouragement when I most needed it. No writer ever had a better midwife for her books than Valerie Ptak LaMont. Lowell LaMont has exorcised more of my computer demons than either of us can count. My readers have patiently endured the long delay with understanding and humor; my all-time favorite query is the one that said simply, “Did Eleanor get lost in Aquitaine?” I have been blessed with wonderful agents, Molly Friedrich and Paul Cirone of the Friedrich Agency, and Mic Cheetham of the Mic Cheetham Agency. I owe so much to my editors, Clare Ledingham at Penguin and Kate Davis and the incomparable Marian Wood at G. P. Putnam’s Sons. I thank M. Markowski for translating the letter that Peter of Blois wrote on behalf of the Archbishop of Rouen to Queen Eleanor and then for generously posting it on the Internet Medieval Sourcebook website so that others might make use of it; I am grateful, too, to Dr. Paul Halsall, the ORB Sources editor for the Internet Medieval Sourcebook website, www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html, for giving me permission to use this translation. I am very grateful to Dr. Diego Fiorentino, who was kind enough to act as my “medical consultant” for Geoffrey’s accident. I do not think I could have done without Dr. David Crouch’s masterly work on L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, for William Marshal was an eyewitness to many of the events in Devil’s Brood. Lastly, I would like to thank Antony and Genie, two young French knights-errant in blue jeans who came to our rescue when our car broke down on a rainy autumn night in Saumur.