Some readers may have felt a sense of déjà vu while reading several passages in A King’s Ransom—the garden scene between John and Joanna after he’d made his submission to Richard at Lisieux and the scene in Chapter 33 in which Eleanor accused John of conniving again with the French king. Your memories were not playing you false; variations of both scenes first appeared in Here Be Dragons. And readers of my mysteries will have noted the occasional appearances of Justin de Quincy and his nemesis, Durand de Curzon, both serving Eleanor as they have done since the publication of The Queen’s Man.
A few readers may also have been struck by the ambiguous way I described an ugly episode in the war between Richard and Philippe in Chapter 33, where I related that both kings had blinded prisoners, each one accusing the other of committing the atrocity first. The French chronicler Guillaume Le Breton claimed that Richard, in a fury, had ordered French prisoners blinded after several thousand of his Welsh mercenary troops had been slain in an ambush. The English chronicler Roger de Hoveden also reported the blinding of prisoners, only he placed the blame on the French king as the instigator. Historians generally give greater credence to the English chroniclers, for they were more independent of the Angevin kings, not penning court histories as Guillaume Le Breton and Rigord were, and were therefore much more critical of Henry and his sons than the French chroniclers were of Philippe Capet. And Roger de Hoveden, in particular, is considered one of the most respected historians of the twelfth century. Nonetheless, I found it difficult to decide which of the conflicting accounts—Hoveden’s or Guillaume Le Breton’s—was likely to be the true one, probably because I could see both Richard and Philippe giving such a command in a royal rage; there is no doubt that their war had become very bitter and very personal by then. So I finally decided to include both accounts of the atrocity and then discuss my ambivalence in the Author’s Note, allowing readers to make up their own minds.
We do not know the fate of Richard’s Cypriot stallion, Fauvel. According to a later legend, Richard was riding Fauvel at the second battle of Jaffa and after Fauvel was slain, Saladin dispatched a stallion to the English king in tribute to his courage. Only that is not true. Richard did not take Fauvel with him as he sailed to Jaffa; he had only eleven horses at the time of Saladin’s surprise attack upon his camp, those they’d found in Jaffa or captured from Saracens. And of course, Saladin never sent him a horse during the battle. The gift of two Arab stallions was made by his brother, al-Malik al-Adil, and that was done afterward; not even the most chivalric of souls was going to provide his foe with another horse in the midst of a battle. Fauvel was safely stabled back at Acre while his master was burnishing the Lionheart legend. I am sure Richard would have arranged for the transport of Fauvel and his two Arab stallions; horses were highly valued in their world, especially horses of Fauvel’s caliber. So unless Fauvel was unlucky enough to encounter a fatal storm at sea, he and Richard would have been reunited after the latter regained his freedom. A chronicler mentioned Richard’s fiery Lombardy stallion; since he did not give us the Lombardy destrier’s name, I called him Argento.