The Cross and the Dragon (51 page)

In legend, Hruodland is often portrayed as Charles’s nephew, the son of the monarch’s sister, a close relationship in medieval times. In fact, Charles’s only sister to survive to adulthood, Gisela, was a nun. If Hruodland and Charles were kin, the exact relationship is unknown. However, they must have been allies, and Hruodland must have been important for Einhard to list him with two high-ranking court officials. Hruodland’s parents, uncles, brother, and wife are all my invention.

For the royal family, the personal and political were intertwined, as illustrated by the early years of Charles’s reign. On his deathbed in 768, King Pepin split his kingdom between his sons, Charles and Carloman, following Frankish tradition to divide the inheritance.

At the time, Charles was married to the Frankish noblewoman Himiltrude, a bride chosen for him by his father. Queen Mother Bertrada thought she had a better idea and arranged for Charles to marry a Lombard princess, which meant he would divorce Himiltrude, the mother of his eldest son, Pepin. Hearing the rumor of the marriage to a Lombard, Pope Stephen, Hadrian’s predecessor, wrote a strongly worded letter to both brothers against the idea.

Charles and Carloman did not get along, and Bertrada worked for peace between them. But Carloman died in December 771 at age twenty, and Charles wanted his lands, even though Carloman had sons. Out goes the Lombard princess. In comes Hildegard of Swabia, part of Carloman’s realm. Charles apparently was a steadfast husband to her. Hildegard bore Charles nine children, three of whom died in infancy. After Hildegard’s death in 783 in her mid-twenties, he married Fastrada, and after she passed away, Liutgard. After his fifth wife’s passing in 800, he had four recognized mistresses.

The early decades of Charles’s reign were dominated by wars, which usually lasted a summer — the men had to get back and harvest the crops. He did not always call for one freeman (as opposed to a slave) from each house in every city in the realm to go to war, but the Frankish armies that fought the Lombards and the ruler of Cordoba likely were particularly large.

At the beginning of his long reign, he crushed a rebellion in Aquitaine, and the pope asked him to come to his aid and fight the Lombards. The Franks were at war with the Saxons on and off from 772 to 785, then the mid-790s to 804, the year Saxons living beyond the Elbe River were deported into Francia. The pattern was the Franks would conquer, the Saxons would surrender, the Franks would turn their attention elsewhere, and the Saxons would rebel again, burning churches and slaughtering indiscriminately. Those wars became more and more brutal over the years. Perhaps the 782 massacre of 4,500 Saxon leaders in Verdun (if we are to believe the Royal Frankish Annals) was a manifestation of Charles’s frustration.

In 777, Charles mistakenly thought the Saxons were “pacified” (beaten into submission) when he held his assembly at Paderborn, where a delegation of three emirs asked for Charles’s help against the ruler of Cordoba. They may have told Charles the emir of Cordoba would encroach on his territories, as evidenced by a letter from Pope Hadrian referring to Charles’s fear of invasion. In the campaign against Hispania the next year, the Basques (also called the Gascons) ambushed the rear guard and baggage train at Roncevaux, and the Franks were slain “to a man,” according to Einhard.

The challenge of writing fiction is this era is what to leave out for the sake of not bogging down the plot. One intriguing character I had to omit was Charles’s first cousin Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, also married to a Lombard princess, Liutberga, daughter of Desiderius and sister of Charles’s second wife. Charles and Tassilo had a thorny relationship. Nor did I mention that Desiderius was brought back to Francia as a prisoner or that he had yet another daughter married to a duke in Italy.

I also cheated a little by using Karl (the German form of Charles) as the name for the first son of Charles and Hildegard instead of Charles the Younger. Their second son was originally named Carloman, but his name was changed to Pepin in 781, when he was four. Yes, Charles had two sons named Pepin (also spelled Pippin). The eldest is often called Pepin the Hunchback.

History is silent on what happened to Carloman’s widow, Gerberga, and her sons. That they were sent to the cloister is plausible. Gerberga did surrender voluntarily. In an age of punishment by blinding, drowning, beheading, and other brutality, sending one’s political rivals to the cloister is an act of mercy. It happened repeatedly in Charles’s reign: Desiderius, Tassilo, even his eldest son Pepin, who rebelled against him as an adult.

Those who have read the Royal Frankish Annals will note no mention of Charles visiting Aachen in 774. According to the annals, Charles spent Christmas and Easter in Quierzy in today’s France. It’s possible he spent time in Aachen in today’s Germany. I had him going to Aachen because it is the site of the villa that became Aix-La-Chapelle. Built in the 790s, it was his most famous palace and one of his favorites. The Royal Frankish Annals also say Charles found out about the Saxons’ 778 revolt in Auxerre, rather than Bordeaux as he does in this novel. At the time of this story, Charles’s realm included today’s France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, along with the lands he conquered in northern Italy. With that vast territory came several languages, including a form of German; Roman (also called the Romance language), a form of Latin whose pronunciation varied from place to place; and the Latin used at Mass and written down in official records. The Bretons and the Gascons spoke their own tongues.

As Charles expanded his kingdom even more, he had to figure out how to govern from afar and protect borderlands. Like his father, Charles established marches, or to use modern parlance, buffer zones, between Francia and foreign entities such as Brittany and Hispania. He would then appoint a count (or prefect) to govern the march. Hruodland was one of those counts.

Although not as bitter as the conflict with the Saxons, the tensions between the Franks and Bretons continued after Hruodland’s death. In 786, Audulf the seneschal invaded Brittany and brought Breton leaders back as prisoners. In 799, Wido, then the prefect of the March of Brittany, led a force into Brittany and won.

The fate of Sulaiman, one of the Muslims who traveled to Paderborn to ask for Charles’s aid, is unclear. One source says he was killed as a traitor to the Muslim cause. Another has him being brought back to Francia as a prisoner.

In addition to Hruodland, the other characters who are drawn from real life are Charles and his family, Widukind the leader of the Saxon rebels, Sulaiman and his fellow emirs, and Fulrad the archchaplain, along with Eggihard the seneschal, and Anselm, the count of the palace, both of whom also died at the Pass of Roncevaux. Ganelon is the antagonist in
The Song of Roland
, so I borrowed the name. The poem’s author may have named his villain after Guenelon (also spelled Vénilon), a ninth-century bishop of Sens accused of betraying one of Charles’s grandsons.

Most of the cities I named existed at the time of this story, but their leaders are my invention. Bonn was not a bishopric. Dormagen was not a county. Drachenhaus and its inhabitants are fictitious, as are the Abbey of Saint Stephen and the Sisters of the Sacred Blood. Convents have made their homes on Nonnenwerth, but the first one was established on the island in 1126.

The inspiration for this story is Rolandsbogen, the ruins of a castle on the Rhine, where I have placed Drachenhaus. One of the legends is that Roland built the castle for his bride and went off to fight the Saracens. The bride heard false news that he had died in battle and joined the cloister on Nonnenwerth. When Roland returned, he spent the rest of his days gazing out the castle window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. In truth, Rolandsbogen was built in the eleventh century.

All that remains of this castle is an arch, which on a sunny day can be seen clearly from the castle ruins at Drachenfels, a small mountain across the Rhine from Rolandsbogen.

— Kim Rendfeld, New Castle, Indiana, 2012

A Conversation with the Author

What inspired you to write
The Cross and the Dragon
?

I was on a family vacation in Germany and came across a story about the ruins at Rolandsbogen — an ivy-covered arch on a hill — in a guide book. There are variations, but the legend is that Roland (Hruodland) built the castle for his bride and then went off to war. His bride heard that he had died in Roncevaux and went to the convent on Nonnenwerth, where she took a vow of chastity. The news the bride heard was false. When Roland returned, he spent the rest of his days in the castle, looking at Nonnenwerth, trying to catch a glimpse of her as she went to and from prayers.

The legend is not true. Both the castle and convent are centuries after Roland, and the only thing we know of the historical Roland is that he died in Roncevaux. But the story would not leave me alone. On the flight back to the States, I wrote about it in my journal, and I kept wondering why someone would tell the bride this false news. The story grew from there.

How much did you know about the Middle Ages when you started writing?

Very little. I had heard of Charlemagne, knights, and feudalism, and I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings series along with Arthurian legends and Grimm’s fairy tales. However, I had to research historical events along with how people lived and thought. The former is much easier than the latter. I owe a lot to my friend and fellow novelist Roberta Gellis for correcting my errors and misconceptions and explaining why medieval people did what they did. (And I will echo the disclaimer of all historical novelists: mistakes in my book are mine and mine alone.)

It’s a shame that many modern-day Americans know so little of the Middle Ages and the Carolingian period in particular. There are so many fascinating people and stories. The melding of the political and personal is fertile ground for a writer. Still, I would much rather write about the Middle Ages than live in that era. I like my microwave, cell phone, and Internet, not to mention women’s right and modern health care. I also like that family scandals among today’s leaders are fodder for the tabloids rather than cause for war.

Did all the wars in the story really take place?

Yes. Charles, as he was known then, went to war for much of his reign. In his later years, his son Charles the Younger (called Karl in
The Cross and the Dragon
) led the army. The authors of the Royal Frankish Annals even noted when there was no war a particular year.

One of my challenges was to portray the history and politics without bogging down the story.
 

You portray some real historic people such as Charles and his family in
The Cross and the Dragon
. Where did your information about them come from?

One of Charles’s courtiers, Einhard, wrote a biography about him between 830 and 833, almost two decades after the emperor’s death. The physical descriptions of Charles, including his voice, are based on this work. A coin he had minted also bears his image.

Those who are familiar with
The Song of Roland
know him as a hero who stubbornly refuses to use his horn to call for help. The poem portrays the battle and the brutal justice that follows in gory detail. Why did you take a different approach?

To use modern parlance, I suspect the poem was a propaganda piece for the Crusades. Although it has artistic merit, especially about courage and betrayal, any resemblance between it and what actually happened at the Pass of Roncevaux is purely coincidental. However, the copyright has long run out, and I did borrow some names.

I read the poem after I had encountered the love story, and I like the love story better. The Roland in the poem would be difficult for a 21st century audience, especially those of us who consider ourselves tolerant.

Your characters aren’t tolerant.

Nor were most medieval people. For example, the Saxons’ conversion to Christianity was at the point of a sword (not that the church-burning Saxons were innocent). If you expressed horror of forced conversions to eighth-century Franks, they would think you were crazy.

Being tolerant of differences, even celebrating them, is a modern concept. Another reason I am glad to live in my century.

Why do you make so many references to religion throughout the story?

Religion was a central part of medieval life, although church attendance interestingly spiked on Easter. This was an age that believed in divine intervention. During his first war in Lombardy, Charles did meet with the pope in Rome, probably seeking God’s help to end the siege at Pavia, which has dragged on for months.