Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman

This is the place in Canterbury Cathedral where Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights who believed or claimed to believe that they were acting on the orders of Henry II. Becket’s martyrdom is the climactic event to which much of Time and Chance, sequel to When Christ and His Saints Slept, leads up. Sharon Kay Penman is known for her fidelity to the historical record, and while this has won her an appreciative international audience, it is an approach that brings its own difficulties. The murder of Becket was a turning point in English history, one of the most dramatic events of the Middle Ages. The trail of events which caused it amount to an ongoing squabble between Church and Crown, frequently petty, episodic, rambling and full of arcane legal and theological detail. It’s very hard to make compelling fiction out of this kind of material and so it’s understandable that Time and Chance doesn’t always succeed.

While the Becket thread didn’t quite work for me – it didn’t have the read-on factor and didn’t leave me with a better understanding of the beleaguered Archbishop, since none of the story is told from his point of view – I was delighted to meet Henry and Eleanor again. I love Sharon’s Eleanor and I can’t imagine a better depiction of a royal marriage where passion and politics combine. It certainly provided a refreshing contrast to the stilted, implausible sex-fest that was Alison Weir’s The Captive Queen.

The fictional couple from When Christ and His Saints Slept, Ranulf and Rhiannon, make a return, and Ranulf, an illegitimate son of Henry I by a Welsh mistress married to a Welshwoman and living in Wales, finds himself caught in the middle when his nephew Henry II makes war on Wales. The Welsh court is vividly drawn, especially the heir to the throne, the sociable and musical Hywel and his deadly enemy, glamorous royal mistress Cristyn (bastards could inherit in Wales so her sons have a chance to rule), so that as in When Christ and His Saints Slept, the reader’s sympathies are pulled both ways.

You also get a good sense of how much energy was required to rule a kingdom of the Middle Ages: Henry and Eleanor are perpetually on the move around their empire, and while I had thought of this period of Henry’s reign (1156-1170) as an interlude between civil wars, in fact he was constantly putting out fires in the form of risings and rebellions in one corner or another of his vast domains. One of my favourite scenes was Henry’s attempted invasion of Wales, which had to be called off due to weather which was, to say the least, inclement. In fact, this section put me in mind of the attempt of the Fellowship of the Ring to cross the Misty Mountains, thwarted by heavy snow and the ill will of the mountain Caradhras.

For the rest of his days, Henry was to refer to the squall upon the Berwyns with the very worst of the obscenities he had at his considerable command. Never had he encountered a storm so savage, or so long-lasting. Ironically, the English would have fared better had they still been down in the Ceiriog Forest they’d been so eager to leave behind. Here, upon the unsheltered moors, they were at the mercy of the elements. Fires could not be set as kindling was saturated, the ground soaked. The only food available was what could be eaten uncooked or raw and men were soon sickening, stricken by chills, fever and the feared bloody flux. Henry was far less superstitious than most of his contemporaries, with a sceptical streak that few besides Eleanor either understood or appreciated. But even he began to wonder if such foul weather could be dismissed as mere happenchance.

When the rain finally eased two days later, the English army resumed its march, only to discover that the mountain road was washed away in places, the streams swollen with run-off water, and the moorlands pitted with newly formed bogs. Still, they pressed on, driven by the sheer force of Henry’s implacable will. By now some of the ailing men had begun to die. They were buried with indecent haste, left to moulder in an alien, hostile land, and the army straggled on. They had a new concern now – their dwindling supplies – for some of their provisions had been lost or ruined during the storm. But when a hunting party was sent to search for game, it did not return. Hungry and dispirited, the soldiers trudged on, cursing the Welsh aloud and Henry under their breaths.

They were higher up now, and the air held a surprising chill for August. Henry had dismounted and was wrapping a blindfold around his stallion’s eyes, for there was a narrow stretch of road ahead and English horses were not as accustomed to these heights as the surefooted animals the Welsh rode. The wind still pursued them, shrieking at night like the souls of the damned, chasing away sleep and catching their words mid-sentence so that men had to shout to make themselves heard. Now a sudden gust ripped the blindfold from Henry’s hand and sent it flying. He was turning to get another strip of cloth when the screams began.

 

Cadair Bronwen, the highest mountain in the Berwyn range, where Henry II's expedition came to grief in 1165

 

While not the strongest entry in the trilogy, Time and Chance is a must-read for fans of Henry and Eleanor and for anyone fascinated by the turbulent twelfth century.

***

I borrowed Time and Chance from the library.

Tags: eleanor of aquitaine, henry ii, sharon kay penman, time and chance