Defiant (44 page)

The Assassination Attempt on
King John’s Life and Simon de Montfort

There actually was an assassination plot against King John in 1212. Robert fitzWalter and other baronial rebels really did flee for their lives, and were let back only after John patched things up with the Church, as a condition of lifting the excommunication.

The Simon de Montfort most people know about lived some fifty years after this story is set. He was in conflict with King John’s son, Henry III, a struggle which helped, as did the
Magna Carta,
in forming the beginning of parliamentary rule. The de Montfort referenced in
Defiant
is the father. He was acknowledged, even by his contemporaries, to be exactly as Jamie described him: brutal, acquisitive, and a master military man. He led the Crusade against heretical Christian sects in the south of France (which resumed with much bloodshed a few decades later).

I fudged the history a bit and collapsed the time line. It’s possible that scions of the disaffected baronial forces did indeed offer the crown to de Montfort in 1210, but the foiled assassination attempt did not occur until 1212, two years later.

I could find no indication of whom the plotters thought to put forward as a candidate this time (even fitzWalter, pompous and a bully, was not so arrogant as to consider himself an acceptable candidate). I thought it plausible to guess they might offer it to the same man as before: Simon de Montfort.

What is more likely is that if they offered it to anyone, it was King Philip of France. Philip was occupied with other campaigns in 1212, but by 1215 and 1216, he’d become quite enchanted with the idea of invading England.

The Character Of Mouldin

There has never been a “Keeper of the Heirs.” But wards and heiresses and minor heirs used to be one of the Crown’s greatest resources. King John did not generally hold on to them; he sold the rights to them, as did all his contemporaries, as part of the complex and shifting network of patronage, fealty, and cold-hard business dealings.

But there
were
Keepers of many other things: of the (king’s) Body; of the Privy Seal; and by far the most important, Keeper of the Wardrobe. Keepers were vital positions in the king’s government. I thought to plug what was clearly a hole in the administrative functioning of medieval kings, and give John a Keeper of the Heirs.

On John’s Methods of Subduing Opposition:
Starvation and Murder

John is accused of having murdered his noble nephew, Prince Arthur of Brittany. There is no proof, but a great many people,
contemporaries and historians, believe it to be true. John had his father’s eruptive Angevin temper, and people had learned to be wary of it.

The idea of starving Mouldin’s family was modeled on the events surrounding William de Briouze (de Braose). De Briouze was an up-and-coming household knight who served King John in many roles, one of which was gaoler. Some said de Briouze saw John murder Prince Arthur of Brittany. Apparently, his wife talked about it.

This was unfortunate. Citing unpaid debts to the Crown, King John chased de Briouze across the length of England and all the way to Ireland, then to the Continent, and when he couldn’t capture de Briouze, he turned on the wife and son, and held them prisoner and starved them to death.

The War Following the Charter and Jamie’s Loyalty to the King

The peace of
Magna Carta
lasted approximately three months. There was double-dealing and a lack of will on both sides from the start, and the war was in full swing by the time the harvest ended. Throughout the winter, the rebels beseiged, the king marched, sent his
routiers
harrying the countryside, and soon enough, Philip of France came sailing over. England was ripe for conquest.

But some stayed true to their oaths to the king. W. L. Warren describes it in
King John
. I love his account of the outbreak of war and arrival of the French king, while a few men held to their oaths to the king, when they had every reason to turn on him.

“Up and down the country castles were held for him by determined men who owed everything to John. Engelard
de Cigogné hurled defiance at rebel besiegers from the walls of Windsor. Hugh Balliol held out at Barnard Castle against the Scots, and Phillip Oldcoates in Durham. Hubert de Burgh, now justiciar, sat tight in Dover against all that Louis [my note: King Philip of France’s son] could do against him from July to October. Odd sparks of loyalty fired local resistance movements: the citizens of the Cinque Ports had been obliged to take an oath to Louis, but their vessels harried French shipping; William of Kensham, operating under the name of ‘Willikin of the Weald’, organized a band of loyalists that preyed on Frenchmen in Suffolk and Kent. The west midlands were held securely for the king . . . by the vassals of two elder statesmen, William Marshal and Ranulph of Chester. They had served his father, and despite the insults they had suffered, would not desert the son.” (W. L. Warren,
King John
[University of California Press, 1961, 1978], pp. 252–53.)

I placed Jamie among these men: loyal when it was inconvenient; steadfast when everything sensible counseled flight; fundamentally bound by deeper ties of oath and fealty when the world was unraveling around them.

In the end, though, it was not loyalty so much that saved England but death. King John died in the spring. His son Henry was crowned ten days later, and ruled for fifty-six years, an impressive run for any monarch. He tried and failed to reclaim any French lands, suffered through another civil war, and (begrudgingly) called the first official Parliament. He was an extravagant king who loved architecture and blew with the winds of varied counsel and perhaps was not suited to being a king. His son was Edward I, a man suited to be a medieval king in no uncertain terms.

On Misselthwaite

Yes, I know. It’s my little homage to
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I love Misselthwaite Manor, and I imagine the cold, unfriendly castle as precisely the sort of place Eva could have transformed. The secret garden would have been her refuge. And whether he loved it or not (which he would have), Jamie would have been happy there, too, as long as he had Eva.

Look for

next sexy medieval romance,
coming from Pocket Books in Spring 2012.