Elizabeth Chadwick Guest Posts with a Giveaway!

I’d like to thank My Friend Amy for inviting me to be a guest on her blog.

When I set out to write The Greatest Knight, all I knew was that I had found a great subject – the rags to riches tale of one of the most famous knights of the Middle Ages, a man who has been mostly forgotten by the world at large. Once I began researching, I realised that I had much more than just a good script from history on my hands. I had a story that was destined to be written on my heart.

William Marshal was one of six sons born to a Wiltshire baron who was the senior marshal at the royal court. Among other things, this job involved keeping the court on the move, providing supplies, paying the wages

of the hired mercenaries, and keeping the royal prostitutes in order!

William survived nearly being hanged as a little boy when he was taken hostage during a battle over a castle his father was occupying. Fortunately for William, his captors couldn’t bear to do the deed and he survived. As a youth he was sent away to Normandy to train to knighthood. His uncle Patrick was the governor of Poitou and took William into his household. Here William met and associated with Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II’s famous and infamous queen. When Eleanor was attacked and ambushed by enemies while out riding, William put himself in the path of her attackers. He was badly wounded in the leg and taken prisoner, but his courage gave Eleanor the change to escape.

While William was a prisoner, he had to bind his leg injury with his own garters. A lady saw his plight, took pity on him, and sneaked him fresh bandages hidden in a loaf of bread. An early thirteenth century history

written to celebrate his life says: ‘The noble-hearted kind lady….took a a loaf of bread from her room, removed the inside and filled the crust with fine linen bandages.’ Naturally, I had to make use of this incident in The Greatest Knight, and in so doing found the character of Clara, who goes on to feature as one of the women in his life.

Always someone to pay her debts with interest, Eleanor ransomed William and took him into her household, appointing him tutor in arms and chivalry to her eldest son, Henry. William’s rise from the ranks was well and truly on the way.

William, as earlier proven, was a skilled warrior, and he excelled at the joust. These days he’d have been the world champion or Olympic gold medallist! In William’s day, the tourney was not the kind of sport we see today where one knight charges another with a barrier set between them. The tourney in William Marshal’s time was a full on contact sport and brutal. ‘They manhandled him terribly, turning the helmet on his head by force from back to front, and tug and pull as he might, he could not free it.’ On one such occasion, William actually had to go and have the helmet removed from his head by a blacksmith!

William’s life wasn’t just about the fighting and the glory of the tourney though. What endeared him to me just as much as his courage and strength, was his ready humour, his cheerful open-handedness, his loyalty and his sharp intelligence. He wore a smile, but he was no man’s fool. While writing the novel I was struck by how he faced up to adversity, treating it as a challenge to be overcome and never giving in to self-pity. He was always open to life and to opportunity.

I like to think that his best reward was his marriage to a great heiress, Isabelle de Clare. Certainly at a time when matches were arranged for matters of political interest and love and mutual attraction were seldom part of the equation, William and Isabelle seems to have been fortunate. One of the things that made this a matter of the heart for me was discovering that William had the sensitivity to take his wife away with him on honeymoon. Just the two of them, getting to know each other in an idyllic setting. It may be the stuff of romance novels, but it happened. ‘The Marshal took the lady to stay…at Stoke, a peaceful spot, well appointed and a delight to the eye.’ Of course, life being what it was, there was stormy weather ahead and I follow William’s later career in The Scarlet Lion, due out from Sourcebooks in the spring.

But The Greatest Knight is about the young and eager knight in the pay of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the developing politician learning to survive the back-stabbing of the Angevin court, the proud warrior and husband - and the empowered man. And it comes straight from the heart.

About the Author

Elizabeth Chadwick lives near Nottingham with her husband and two sons. She is the author of 17 historical novels, including Lords of the White Castle, Shadows and Strongholds, A Place Beyond Courage, The Scarlet Lion, the Winter Mantle, and the Falcons of Montebard, four of which have been shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Awards. Much of her research is carried out as a member of Regia Anglorum, an early medieval re-enactment society with the emphasis on accurately re-creating the past. She won a Betty Trask Award for The Wild Hunt, her first novel.

GIVEAWAY
Sourcebooks is sponsoring a giveaway of two copies of this book! This giveaway is open to the United States and Canada. To enter, leave me a comment and tell me about a historical figure you'd love to read about. Make sure you leave an email address so I can contact you. I'll pick winners on Labor Day!