For the benefit of new readers, I would like to explain that I used Welsh spellings and place names wherever possible, e.g., the medieval Buellt instead of today’s Builth Wells. Bearing in mind, though, that the majority of my readers do not speak Welsh, I chose the slightly anglicized “Llewelyn” over the pure Welsh of “Llywelyn,” and I again used the medieval v for phonetic reasons, e.g., Davydd, Eva, Trevor, rather than the modern Welsh spelling of Dafydd, Efa, Trefor.
With just three exceptions, all of my major characters actually lived and died in medieval England and Wales. Caitlin alone is a creation utterly of my imagination; since some accounts credit Davydd with as many as six illegitimate daughters, I saw no reason not to make Caitlin one of them. Hugh and Juliana were both members of Ellen de Montfort’s household; nothing is known of them, though, but their names, and so I felt free to give each one a “history.” There are definite advantages in writing of people who really lived. At the very least, it gives me a road map. But there were times in The Reckoning when that map took me places I would rather not have gone.
Sharp-eyed readers of Falls the Shadow may have noticed a discrepancy between the two books as to the number of children I attribute to Edward and Eleanora. There is a simple, surprising explanation for that: medieval chroniclers could be careless in noting the birth of a baby, even a royal baby. Eleanora gave birth to at least fourteen children, possibly as many as sixteen or seventeen, most of whom died young. Some history buffs may have been puzzled by my portrayal of Eleanora as a woman little liked by her English subjects, for she is one of the best-loved of the English queens. But this is a verdict rendered by subsequent generations, influenced, perhaps, by the magnificent Eleanor crosses that her grieving husband erected to honor her memory. In her own lifetime, Eleanora was not a popular Queen; she was too “foreign” to win over the medieval English, and unfortunately she soon earned herself a deserved reputation for being avaricious and unscrupulous in her business dealings. She and Edward appear to have been more devoted to each other than to their vast brood of children; when their six-year-old son lay dying at Guildford, neither Eleanora nor Edward made the day’s journey from London to be at his deathbed. Theirs was undoubtedly, though, one of the most successful royal marriages, a political union that developed into a genuine and lasting love match.
For those readers who may have been disturbed by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s vitriolic anti-Welsh outburst in chapter 35, I can only say that the Archbishop’s actual diatribe was even more poisoned with prejudice than his fictional tirade. But history owes him a great debt, for his records proved to be a treasure-trove for scholars of later ages. The Welsh grievances set forth in chapters 28 and 34 come from the Archbishop’s archives; so do Llewelyn and Davydd’s responses to the English Crown’s offer of an earldom for Llewelyn, a crusade for Davydd. For such riches, the Archbishop can be forgiven much.
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten letters from readers curious as to how much history tells us about the color of a king’s eyes or the length of his hair. In most cases, we unfortunately know nothing about the physical appearance of people so long dead, and novelists have to rely upon the imagination to fill in those crucial blanks. Occasionally, though, we find a tantalizing clue, a dropped hint, even a fleeting glimpse into a medieval mirror. We have excellent, vivid descriptions of many English kings, even down to such intriguing details as Edward I’s slight lisp or Henry II’s bloodshot grey eyes. We often have effigies, too, of historical figures, e.g., the regal likeness of Queen Eleanora upon her tomb at Westminster Abbey. And because the Victorian historians had no qualms about disturbing the dead, we even have the dimensions of some royal skeletons. Sometimes a man’s name itself offers evidence: Owain Goch, Owain the Red. A son of Llewelyn Fawr’s Seneschal, Ednyved ap Cynwrig, called Iorwerth the Leper. Red Gilbert, the flaming-haired Earl of Gloucester. Llewelyn Fawr’s daughter, known as Gwladys Ddu in tribute to her dark coloring. But the chronicles are a novelist’s best window to the past.
Pertinent, precious details often come to us by chance. We are told that when Gruffydd ap Llewelyn was attempting his reckless escape from the Tower of London, the sheets broke because he was such a big man, grown heavy and lethargic in captivity. The English Chronicle of Dunstable tells us that Llewelyn ap Gruffydd was a most handsome man, and testifies to the force of his personality by reporting that all Welshmen followed Llewelyn as if they were glued to him. No less than three chroniclers extol the beauty of his wife, Ellen de Montfort, which is not surprising, for her grandmother, Isabella d’Angoulême, was one of the great beauties of her age, dubbed by later historians the Helen of the Middle Ages. So many of the women featured in my books were reputed to be beauties—Isabelle, Joanna, Nell and Ellen de Montfort, Blanche, Marguerite d’Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville—that I’ve occasionally wondered if the chroniclers were too easily dazzled by crowns. But then, they were not as kind to Richard I’s Queen, Berengaria, who was depicted as virtuous yet plain, or to Henry I’s Queen, Matilda, who was unenthusiastically described as “not ill favored.” How reliable are these medieval monks? It is a difficult question to answer, and perhaps also an irrelevant one, for the chroniclers are all we have, and historical novelists soon learn to be grateful for small mercies.
I need now to discuss the fate of Llewelyn ap Gruffydd. Even after seven centuries, controversy still surrounds his last days. We cannot be sure what drew Llewelyn out of his mountain citadel. Was he motivated by military considerations? Or was he lured to his death? There were those who believed treachery was involved, those who blamed the sons of Roger de Mortimer, blamed the English King. There are those who still believe Llewelyn was betrayed. But I am not one of them. Throughout his life, Llewelyn evidenced an intense and abiding suspicion of the English Crown. I can conceive of no circumstances under which he would have trusted any of the Marcher lords. I think he moved south into Buellt for the strategic reasons I set forth in chapters 34 and 35, and I think he died because the luck of a lifetime ran out in that frigid December dusk—for him and for Wales.
Davydd ap Gruffydd courted controversy all his life, so it is not surprising that it should have followed him faithfully to the grave. It is sometimes said that Davydd was the first man to be drawn and quartered for treason. This is not strictly so. There are a few documented cases of this brutal penalty being imposed prior to Davydd’s execution, but it was unquestionably viewed as an innovation by the medieval chroniclers, who much marveled at it; the Chronicle of Osney even claimed—erroneously—that it was a death of a type hitherto unknown. The true significance of the charges brought against Davydd—and the savage punishment inflicted—lies in the fact that here we find the origins of the state trial. It is not widely known that waging war against the king was not a crime in medieval England, not until Edward I chose to make it one, to classify it as high treason. There were no executions after Evesham. But Davydd was far more vulnerable than the de Montfort partisans, for there were none to speak for him. As J. G. Bellamy points out very succinctly in The Law of Treason in England in the Middle Ages, “The King could make an example of Davydd with impunity.” And at Shrewsbury, he did. Nine years later, another Welsh rebel suffered the same fate as Davydd. So, too, did the celebrated Scots patriot, William Wallace. By the end of Edward’s reign, at least twenty political rivals had been executed for treason, and for the rest of the Middle Ages, those found guilty of defying the Crown would be drawn, quartered, and disemboweled—as Davydd ap Gruffydd was on that early October morning in the border town of Shrewsbury.
Ironically enough, Edward’s merciless vengeance gave Davydd in death what he’d never gotten in life—the respect of his countrymen. The Welsh were outraged, did not forget how Llewelyn’s brother died. But not even in death could he escape Llewelyn’s shadow. Davydd ap Gruffydd was the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales. But it is Llewelyn ap Gruffydd whom the Welsh call Ein Llyw Olaf—Our Last Leader.
S.K.P.
January 1991
br /> Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their encouragement and assistance: My parents. My American editor, Marian Wood, of Henry Holt and Company. My American agent, Molly Friedrich, of the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. My British editor, Susan Watt, of Michael Joseph Ltd. My British agent, Mic Cheetham, of Sheil Land Associates. Valerie LaMont, for her consistent candor and her passion for medieval Wales. Joan Stora, for her unflagging enthusiasm—and for Viterbo. Cris Reay, for her help in filling in the tragic blanks of Elizabeth de Ferrer’s life. Jan Barnes, secretary to the Dean of Worcester Cathedral. Above all, Stephen Owen, for his valuable translation of J. Beverley Smith’s Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Tywysog Cymru. And last, the staffs of the National Library of Wales, the British Library, the University College of North Wales Library at Bangor, the University of Pennsylvania, the Caernarfonshire Archives, and the research libraries at Shrewsbury, Bristol, Worcester, and Builth Wells.
Also by Sharon Kay Penman
Devil’s Brood
Falls the Shadow
Here Be Dragons
The Sunne in Splendour
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE RECKONING. Copyright © 1991 by Sharon Kay Penman. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Penman, Sharon Kay.
The reckoning / Sharon Kay Penman.—1st St. Martin’s Griffin ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-312-38247-6
1. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, d. 1282—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—13th century—Fiction. 3. Wales—History—1063–1284—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E474R4 2009
813′.54—dc22
2008050579
Sharon Kay Penman, The Reckoning
(Series: Welsh Princes # 3)
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