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.