The Young Lion (44 page)

Among the thrills of my childhood was the majestic boom of a bronze gong – a Chinese tam tam – announcing a J. Arthur Rank movie was about to begin. The gong’s sonorous voice, surging through the darkened cinema, seemed to roll out its doors, into the sky, perhaps to the constellations. Ever since, I’ve had a love of reverberating sounds – of chimes – whether literal or metaphorical. The story of
The
Young Lion
, set more than eight hundred years ago, is for me the echo of a mighty gong whose vibrations resonate through centuries.
Its
background is the crusades;
our
lives are lived against the background of jihad. The novel’s personal issue is the powerlessness of women; outside the Western world, and inside much of it, female disempowerment is a cancer on the soul. In the twelfth century the position and behaviour of the Christian Church was a matter of contention; as it is today. Even the right of a woman to inherit the English throne if a younger male sibling than she were available has only this year, 2013, been settled. And twining through all these distant and immediate issues is the difficulty of relations between men and women in an age when we believe in romantic love: an invention – or a discovery – of the poets of twelfth-century France.

Just over a decade ago I heard the boom of an even mightier gong than J. Arthur Rank’s: the king of the Western world
declaring in fury, ‘This is a crusade!’ I quaked because I recognised that a fateful drama, uncertain in its outcome, unknown in its consequences, was about to begin. The second crusade and the third crusade are the bookends, as it were, to Henry Plantagenet’s political life.

I’m grateful to many people for helping me change a knotted braid of imagination and research into this novel. First, Margaret Gee, my literary agent, who believed in its potential when the manuscript was still struggling to know its own name, at a time before the wonderful Hilary Mantel had been crowned with her second Man Booker. Back then agents and publishers threw up their hands at the mention of historical fiction. It was chick-lit in bonnets or hauberks, and certainly unsaleable. One senior publisher said my book would never fly because it was ‘not about ladies’ dresses’. Another refused to look at it because historical fiction ‘is just too hard’. Margaret had rejection after rejection. ‘Don’t underestimate my determination,’ she said. But finally she and I decided there was a problem with the book’s structure. She recommended Nadine Davidoff as a manuscript doctor. With some deft shuffling of scenes and two tiny cuts, Nadine restructured the narrative without changing any words. The first publisher who read it, Jeanne Ryckmans of HarperCollins, accepted it immediately. Jeanne saw
The Young Lion
to the last stages of editing by Mary Rennie, whom I frequently offered to murder before accepting what a meticulous editor she is. When Jeanne left to run a new publishing enterprise she handed the project to Catherine Milne, who, with perfect generosity and sensitivity, oversaw a final polish.

Besides these five women I owe a special debt to John Lonie who read initial drafts with the tact, patience, kindness and
erudition for which his friends treasure him. The staff of many libraries, too numerous to mention by name, assisted my research. One librarian in Sydney found in Western Australia the collected works in French and English of troubadour songs written by Eleanor’s father, the Duke of Aquitaine.

When I began research in France I was fascinated by how differently French historians viewed Henry from their Anglophone colleagues. They had personal glimpses of the man one cannot find in English books. I’m much indebted to the help of two women in France, historians Deborah Anthony and Odile Caffin-Carcy, who travelled with me and turned up numerous books unavailable in English. They translated as we tootled through the Norman, Maine and Aquitaine countryside, staying outside cities, in the least modern accommodation we could find, observing the land as it may have looked centuries earlier.

In the twelfth century land and horses were the basis of wealth. I needed to learn about horses. My friends John and Kris Messara had me as a guest at their thoroughbred stud, Arrowfield in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, where I waited, freezing in the dark before dawn, to watch foals born and, at more civilised hours, conceived. Staff at Arrowfield provided a trove of information about the mysteries of horses, especially that they communicate in an unknown, apparently silent, language. Another friend, Frenchwoman Julie Bechu, has a special equine affinity that she uses to help humans with problems. She provided more horse lore and translated for me French historical and geographical articles.

Finally I thank my husband, Bob Hawke, for his enthusiastic encouragement. He accepted without demur that I would not go out on school nights in case sociability interfered with the next day’s writing. He went solo to the many functions in Australia and overseas to which we were both invited. His support and matchless love have been a blessing.

Blanche d’Alpuget is an acclaimed novelist, biographer and essayist. She has won numerous literary awards, including the inaugural Australasian Prize for Commonwealth Literature in 1987. Her books include
Mediator:
A biography of Sir Richard Kirby
(1977);
Monkeys in the Dark
(1980), which
won the PEN Jubilee Award;
Turtle Beach
(1981), which won
The Age
Novel of the Year Award and the South Australian Premier’s Award;
Robert J. Hawke: A biography
(1982) which won the New South Wales Premier’s Award in;
Winter in Jerusalem
(1986); and
White Eye
(1993). She has twice won the Braille Book of the Year award, and her book
Turtle Beach
was made into a feature film in 1992 featuring Greta Scacchi and Jack Thompson. All her novels have been translated into other languages.

HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in Australia in 2013

This edition published in 2013

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Blanche d’Alpuget 2013

The right of Blanche d’Alpuget to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

d’Alpuget, Blanche, 1944-

The young lion / Blanche d’Alpuget.

ISBN: 978 0 7322 9669 8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978 1 7430 9874 5 (epub)

A823.3

Cover design by Jane Waterhouse

Cover images: Knight by Diana Hirsch/Getty Images; all other images by shutterstock.com

Author photograph by Kathy Luu