Passion and History

In 1154, Henry Plantagenet avenged his family honour by taking back the English throne. The kingdom he inherited was impoverished, and lawless. With his beautiful and indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine, this golden couple crushed rebellious barons and restored England’s prestige and glory. In her second volume of a four part series on Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Lion Rampant, Blanche D’Alpuget has recreated the twelfth century with its mysticism and power plays, personalities and triumphs. On Wednesday 10 February 2015, at the Sydney Institute, Blanche D’Alpuget joined Stephanie Dowrick in conversation about The Lion Rampart to discuss something of the task D’Alpuget has set herself.

PASSION AND HISTORY

BLANCHE D’ALPUGET

with STEPHANIE DOWRICK

Stephanie Dowrick: It’s a delight to welcome you to what I know is going to be an absolutely fascinating evening. And thank you to The Sydney Institute for asking me to speak with Blanche this evening. I reviewed Blanche’s first book in this series for The Sydney Morning Herald, and praised it. Only when I read the second one, did I realise that what Blanche has taken on is an extraordinarily daring and courageous feat. Not only creatively but also intellectually. And this for the amount of research that’s needed, and the depth of comprehension, not just of the characters but how characters move through time and are affected by events at the time. Those are the demands of historical fiction and when it’s well done it’s brilliant. Historical fiction is also an area where it’s very easy to fail. So I have admired Blanche’s courage so much.

This evening I wanted to focus mostly on the stories behind the stories. The stories themselves are rich and fascinating but we have the opportunity while Blanche is with us to hear some of what has evolved within her to allow this great feat. She’s only halfway through an enormously ambitious project. Some of you here may not have yet read the first book so I wanted Blanche to give us a little bit of the feeling of it, by reading two short passages. That’s how we’re going to start.

Blanche d’Alpuget: Thank you very much Stephanie, and thank you Gerard for inviting me. And thank you all for coming. I’m going to read from the second book not the first. This is just the opening scene.

One autumn morning when sunshine had burned the sea mist away and the outside air grew heavy with the scent of apples, the Duchess of Aquitaine looked from a window and saw the crew of a fishing smack arrive at the gatehouse of Rouen Palace. Guards with halberds demanded to know their business. When allowed access, the men trudged up a path towards the entrance reserved for villeins. Eleanor understood immediately. Across the channel, King Stephen was dead. Her young husband would be the next ruler of England. At each weary scrape of the men’s clogs against the stones of the path, her heart leapt. Wild southern music rang in her soul. At last, revenge! she thought. One’s mind moves with images as swiftly as angels’ wings. She snatched her infant son from his nurse to carry him to the arrow-slit window. Mama will be a Queen again, chou-chou. You, Willi, will be the English Crown Prince. It was more than a year ago and ten days’ ride away, but it seemed like an instant; the shouts of joy from her midwives when they lifted from the birthing tub a mass of raw red flesh. “A boy!” they’d cried. “Duchess, you have a son!” She’d grabbed him, as slippery as a fish and herself as wet as one, the cord connecting them still throbbing. Finally, the triumph of an heir.

And this is another little bit – from Chapter four.

A clear blue sky winter morning greeted the coronation crowds. Henry and Eleanor each mounted on a destrier caparisoned in crimson, rode from the crumbling war-damaged palace of Westminster to the Abbey to show themselves to their subjects. The Abbey and every building nearby flew the standard of the new king – two gold lions on a red ground. When Henry raised his blue velvet hat to wave it at the mob, arrows of sunlight flashed from his hair. “He’s crowned already!” somebody shouted. People ignored the swords of knights guarding the royal couple and rushed towards them, in their excitement forgetful of the danger from horses’ hooves. Henry was sending mental pictures to both steeds, ordering them to stay calm, not to rear. He blew kisses to the women and gave military salutes to men who came to the doorways of their shops wiping dirty hands on work aprons. Eleanor held out her arms and gave them joyous laughter. “Look at her belly, seven months gone” women said. One yelled ‘Highness, when will the baby come?” Eleanor did not understand English. “Prince!” she called back, patting her side, the French word was close enough. The crowd yelled and clapped. Henry leaned from the saddle to heave a child from his father’s arms to sit in front with him. With his left arm cradling the boy he wrenched the sword from his scabbard and shook it above his head. Tears stood in the eyes of old men and women. “We’ve got a real king again!” “Long live Henry!” Henry tossed his hat to the crowd. Hands snatched for it. A man cried, “A new sun shines in England’s sky!”

Stephanie Dowrick: As some of you would know, after having a very successful writing career, Blanche had some years of not writing. In a sense, she was storing up her creativity. What I’m very interested to know, with all the kind of inspirations that fleet across a creative mind, before a word was put on the page of The Young Lion which was the first in the quartet, what really pulled you to this one, pulled you to this medieval period, pulled you to Henry, pulled you to Eleanor.

Blanche d’Alpuget: I’ve been interested in the twelfth century since my 20s. I’d done a lot of reading about it, and when I started thinking of the great figures of that century Henry was more or less an obvious choice. He was one of the greatest kings in English history. He was founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, which is still the longest lived dynasty in England. He was also the bringer to the world of the concept of the rule of law. I’ve lived in countries where there is no rule of law and greatly appreciate somebody who brought it into government. As a governor, he was an extremely good king, he was a very thorough king and it was a fascinating age. Henry II was a larger than life character. Eleanor, of course, is one of the most interesting women in Western history. She stood up for herself, big time.

Stephanie Dowrick: And sometimes under incredibly difficult circumstances. When you began this, did you think of it as a quartet? Were you kind of in that marvellous phase of innocence and rapture of a love affair with this idea? About something as daunting as this? Were you daunted or were you just ecstatic?

Blanche d’Alpuget: You know how reckless writers are, they just rush in. I was ecstatic. I did think of it as a trilogy to start with. It was only as I did more and more research that I realised it had to be a quartet. At the end of the first book I realised that I had enough material for a quartet. I didn’t feel daunted and I was madly in love with Henry.

Stephanie Dowrick: Yes, we can feel that sometimes reading this book. Though you have your fondness for some of the other characters too. Before we talk about those characters, and they are incredibly fascinating, there are four characters by the way in The Lion Rampant who are front and centre stage. Henry dominates. Sometimes I was startled, and I think Blanche meant us to be startled, because every now and then she reminds us how young this King was when he had already achieved so much. He’s conquered here and he’s conquered there, and he’s 23. It’s shocking how accelerated his vigour and his breadth of conquest. But before you got to all of that you‘ve had to do research. Can you tell us something about how you do that research and what you look for? And how does research move into your whole imaginative comprehension of this time?

Blanche d’Alpuget: Well, there’s a mysterious process of writing that I don’t understand and I am not sure many writers understand. Obviously, I did an enormous amount of reading of very serious blockbuster history, and I did a lot of work in the libraries. I also made, specifically, a tour of twelfth century palaces, castles and Abbeys – anything I could find the ruins of. Just to look at the landscape, if for nothing else. Gradually, through a combination of things and that mysterious process, a kind of yeast, the characters started to come alive for me. I now know them and know what they’ll say and what they think and what they want to eat, as well as I know my best friends.

Stephanie Dowrick: Maybe, you know them better in some ways because you also have more control. Your four main characters are very fascinating. There’s Henry, obviously, the young lion who’s now the “lion rampant”; and there’s Eleanor, who’s almost impossible to think about without seeing Katherine Hepburn’s face. Although Eleanor in your work is more complex than the Katherine Hepburn figure. There’s also a very brilliant, totally amoral, young man called Aelbad. I’ve tried to find out where you got his name from. As well, within this book, is the very complex character of Thomas Becket who represents a gluttony for power. While all four are greedy for power, Thomas has it most of all. So I want to ask you more about that gluttony for power and what it tells us. But first, I want to ask you a much simpler question. Did you feel quite early on that this was your story to tell? Did you feel that you were in service to this story somehow?

Blanche d’Alpuget: Yes, absolutely. It’s one of the things I pray for that I do justice, for Henry, in particular. Nobody has ever written a biography of him in either English or French. Only when I started book three, did I realise I am in fact writing his biography. I didn’t know that before.

Stephanie Dowrick: So, in giving yourself also to these other characters maybe we need to go to the two most difficult characters – in a way one is a younger version of the other. One is Aelbad, a fictional character, though he lives truly in Blanche’s mind and creative imagination. The other is Thomas Becket and some historians will argue with you about your understanding of him and your presentation of him. Can you tell us a little bit about how you arrived at this quite controversial picture of such a well known person in English history.

Blanche d’Alpuget: What’s controversial about it is that I say that he’s a sodomite. I say that based on pretty good historical grounds. When he was Archbishop, he surrounded himself with what he referred to as the eruditi, the scholars. Those who didn’t like him used to call them the catamiti, his catamites. He was extraordinarily flamboyant in character; in every description, including those made by people who were great admirers of his, he was in every way a queen, an over-the-top, marvellously brilliant queen.

Stephanie Dowrick: Becket was untrustworthy in many ways. And his overwhelming desire for power in a sense cost him the tenderness that he so desperately wanted.

Blanche d’Alpuget: His viciousness is historical. He was ruthless and merciless in putting people to the sword and he had whole towns consigned to the flames. I’ve got all of that from the straight histories. He craved power – but he was a commoner, just a London banker. When he was working in London his nickname was Oily Tom. He craved the glamour of court life and the grandeur of power. And he was determined. There is also evidence that his mother had very much encouraged him in the idea that he was born to do great things on earth.

Stephanie Dowrick: I’m going to ask you a bit more about Eleanor but I want you to tell us a little bit about this strange boy Aelbad. He’s about as untrustworthy as you can get but extraordinarily brilliant. And you have a kind of fascination with his brilliance and almost a kind of forgiveness of his amorality. Do you?

Blanche d’Alpuget: You asked before about the name, Ael is the word for Elf so it’s just bad elf.

Stephanie Dowrick: What a bad elf he is.

Blanche d’Alpuget: He is an extremely bad elf. Really he is a Luciferic character. He is a Satan in the Garden of Eden or in this beautiful court. Which in many ways is a latter day Camelot. And indeed he has a very strong connection with the serpent. Of course Lucifer was brilliant. And beautiful.

Stephanie Dowrick: And immensely seductive. In the first book there’s a very lovely, complex beautiful character called Rachel. We won’t tell you very much about Rachel but in the Lion Rampant the character who has most natural tenderness and warmth, particularly as the book develops, is Henry’s half brother. A man who goes through an extraordinarily transition. His name is Guillaume. Did Guillaume, in this second book, carry goodness to balance Aelbad?

Blanche d’Alpuget: He does. Guillaume is a very good character. He’s a good person in the first book as well, a very good hearted person. But, as he gets older and as he goes through the terrible suffering, his goodness becomes stronger and sweeter. He was an historical figure. In the first book, I called him Guillaume but halfway through this book he changes his name to what it actually was historically. I made up a story about him and then months and months later I discovered it was true. These are the very strange things that happen when you have done your research.

Stephanie Dowrick: Because you’re giving yourself to this in a way that a straightforward historian would not, giving it your creative imagination, you’ve allowed those stories to inspire further stories. I’m sure you dream about this and are visited by it in all the realms of the mind. That’s one of the strengths of Blanche’s writing. She’s so open to this and because she is such an accomplished writer she can express it. It’s not enough to simply receive it; one also has to express it. I want to ask you a bit about Guillaume’s transition. Before I do that, can you tell us something of your developing relationship with Eleanor of Aquitaine. She’s not so prominent in this book but I’m hoping that she will come to greater prominence in the later books. I want to know a little bit about how you see her.

Blanche d’Alpuget: I’m a great admirer of Eleanor. First up I’d just like to say one thing about the twelfth century. People have the view that all humans then died at 40 and were very short. Eleanor had 10 children and died at 81. Her horrible son Richard the Lion Heart, an absolutely vile man, was six foot five. We know that from the tombs. Her lover, Henry’s father, was about 6 foot 4. She does play a greater role in the book I’m writing at the moment, Book 3. And she will play a greater role in Book 4. Of course, Henry put her in jail for almost 16 years after she raised a rebellion against him. During that time there wasn’t a lot she could do. But I admire her greatly as a woman; she was very determined to have power.

Stephanie Dowrick: Yes she was very determined to have power. She also understood what power was. In a way, the connection between Henry and Eleanor is a constant kind of transference of power. There are moments of great accord but then they are very quickly disrupted and become moments of discord again. They were fighting for territory. He was fighting for the territory that was her body because she brought him heirs. She was fighting for territory beyond her body. It’s very potent stuff. In fact, I made several notes thinking, gosh the twelfth century was not for the faint hearted.

Blanche d’Alpuget: It wasn’t for the faint hearted. There’s a lot of sex in this book but I should point out that it was the major past time for the upper classes. Hunting, of course, during the day.

Stephanie Dowrick: War.

Blanche d’Alpuget: War, yes. Henry avoided war if he could. But, at night, they weren’t watching television and they didn’t attempt to read at night because the light wasn’t bright enough. So they did spend a tremendous amount of time engaged in sex and were consequently very good at it. As happens, if you practise a lot. There was also the strong belief that a woman couldn’t get pregnant unless she had an orgasm. So they concentrated on helping that happen. It wasn’t such a bad thing at all. It should be brought back.

Stephanie Dowrick: I want to return to this quite mysterious Guillaume, Henry’s half brother. In the book, you allow him to carry a kind of potency of spiritual transformation. There are other moments in the book where people are either experiencing something through a dream or from an inner voice or inner wisdom. Blanche gives a very strong picture that people had a sense of inspiration from beyond themselves and from beyond the material world. It is very convincing and I found it completely unproblematic. Because of those experiences. people were brought degrees of spiritual meaning or piety in its real sense, not as something fake but as something committed. On the one hand you bring us characters who access the spiritual in a very natural way, yet they don’t grow compassionate. Guillaume is the exception.

Blanche d’Alpuget: In the first book, there were genuinely pious people, Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, who built Chartres cathedral. I don’t know that he was so compassionate, now that you mention it, but he was a mystic. It was a time of mysticism; it was a time when people believed themselves cured of all sorts of illnesses by praying to relics, or through being in the presence of relics. It was a time of great superstition, of course, and of ignorance. People made up stories to explain things they didn’t know about. One example is that birds in winter turned into fish and lived underwater and when spring came they suddenly leapt into the sky again and turned back into birds. When you have such beliefs about the natural world while the supernatural world was presented to you as being helpful or punitive, it’s not so strange.

Stephanie Dowrick: And what inspired you with that? What inspired you to explore that, because it adds a marvellous dimension to the story.

Blanche d’Alpuget: Well I’m somebody, as you know, who’s had a long spiritual path and life. You and I first got to know each other in a Quakers’ meeting. Those many years of spiritual practice allowed me able to be in accord with people of that medieval period, people who also had spiritual experiences. I would say what brought me to write about it was my own many spiritual experiences though meditation and spiritual practise. Spiritual experiences are just natural to me now. I know they’re real.

Stephanie Dowrick: That’s one of the lovely things that Blanche is able to really bring forward – the naturalness of those so-called supernatural experiences even in the most dramatic of them where Guillaume is taken care of by forest women. It’s one of the most beautiful and where so much is at stake, where there is so much ruthlessness. Then we go into the forest, and we begin to see the trees. It’s quite a beautiful, powerful contrast.

Just before we run out of time, I also want to ask you Blanche, as you move so much between the twelfth and twenty-first centuries, what insights are you able to take from the twenty-first?

Blanche d’Alpuget: Oh Stephanie, I don’t think I can answer that, I don’t know. I do live it 24/7 so I appear to be living in the twenty-first century but actually I’m living in the twelfth. So that’s where my head is all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes when I’m driving it’s where it is too.

I think my understanding of power has informed a lot of the writing. And power is something that doesn’t change much; the exercise of power is something that doesn’t really change over time – even though Henry II was an absolute monarch and we live in a democracy, the tensions, the nature of the pulls and pushes of power remain the same.

Stephanie Dowrick: But would you say, to return to Henry who is your central figure, that he learnt something about what power does to one, or did he learn also how to use power with greater skill and subtlety? And how have you brought those lessons into your writing?

Blanche d’Alpuget: That’s impossible to answer because you have to wait until the end of the series. Henry certainly learns how to use power and how, when he’s misused it, there is punishment. I don’t think I can say anything more because it’s jumping ahead too far. The book I’m writing at the moment is about the power struggle between him and Thomas Becket.

Stephanie Dowrick: Before we turn to questions from the floor, I would like to know in the first two books, what it was that most surprised you, either about Henry, or about Eleanor, or the struggles between them or the struggles of the time or the introduction of Thomas? Where has there been a real surprise for you?

Blanche d’Alpuget: It’s like this intricate carpet. There are lots of surprises. In the first book, I didn’t imagine I could ever write a battle scene. I didn’t imagine I could ever write a long scene about a boar hunt, never having hunted a wild boar myself. Those kinds of things surprise me. I surprised myself writing about the forest people, because I wanted to convey how thickly wooded England was. I was talking to a very knowledgeable man on the weekend who pointed out that in Julius Caesar’s day you could travel from Paris to Warsaw, in the height of summer, and never see sunlight because the forest was so thick. Obviously, in the intervening centuries the trees were cut down. And when the Roman Empire collapsed the trees took over again. During the dark ages, they grew back. And the spirits that people feel, even in Australia, live in our forests.