AUTHOR’S NOTE
I HAVE ALWAYS LOOKED upon an Author’s Note as a necessary evil, for I find them very difficult to do. I do think they are essential, though, serving several purposes. They enable me to clear my conscience if I have had to take any liberties with historical fact and they lift the curtain to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a novel. They are also important to my readers, who have often told me they enjoy them almost as much as the books themselves. I can understand that, for I feel cheated when I read a historical novel and then discover that the author has not included an Author’s Note. So I have no intention of abandoning them; I even included one for my contribution to George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s anthology, Dangerous Women, surely the first short story to have its own Author’s Note! Yet I will always approach them warily, my view of the Author’s Note being perfectly expressed by Dorothy Parker, who said that she hated writing but loved having written.
I’ll begin with Richard’s dangerous and dramatic adventures upon his departure from the Holy Land; it is remarkable how reality so often transcended fiction whenever the Angevins were involved. I’ve seen it suggested that Richard’s crusade was his Iliad and his homeward journey his Odyssey. I am inclined to see Lionheart as the story of Richard the legend and A King’s Ransom as the story of Richard the man. I realize that Ransom’s early chapters may read as if they were written by a Hollywood scriptwriter, but what I describe really happened—the two shipwrecks, the encounter with pirates, Richard’s temporary reprieves in G?rz and Udine.
The site of his first shipwreck—La Croma—is today known as Lokrum Island (and the shore where Richard and his men landed has become a famous nudist beach). The Republic of Ragusa is now Dubrovnik, Croatia. Sadly, the cathedral that Richard’s money helped to rebuild was destroyed in an earthquake in 1667, but his memory lived on in local folklore, and, during World War I, a Serbian diplomat seeking British aid reminded that government of the warm welcome their king had received in Ragusa more than seven hundred years before.
As with virtually every episode of Richard’s life, there are conflicting stories about his capture outside Vienna. The most reliable English source is the Cistercian monk Ralph of Coggeshall, for he is believed to have gotten his information from Richard’s chaplain, Anselm, and his is the most detailed account. Roger de Hoveden reported that Richard was sleeping when Duke Leopold’s men arrived, which makes sense in light of his illness. Years later, the German chroniclers put about a more colorful story—that he’d attempted to escape detection by pretending to be a servant, roasting a chicken on a spit in the hearth, and he was given away because he’d forgotten to remove a valuable ring. But this rather unlikely tale appears in none of the accounts by Austrian chroniclers, as the German historian Dr. Ulrike Kessler points out in her biography of Richard. I was skeptical, too, even before I realized the “chicken on a spit” story was refuted by the Church calendar itself, for Richard was captured on December 21, during Advent, when Christians were forbidden to eat meat of any kind.
The letter that the Holy Roman Emperor, Heinrich, wrote to the French king gives us a glimpse of Heinrich’s nasty nature, while providing invaluable details about Richard’s capture. The English chroniclers said that Richard was accompanied by only one knight, Sir Guillain de l’Etang, and a young translator. But since Heinrich claimed that Richard had two knights with him, I was able to bring Morgan along for the ride. Arne is a name of my choosing, as the boy’s real name was not reported. We know only that he spoke German, that he was courageous, and very loyal to Richard, for he had to be tortured by Duke Leopold’s men before he finally revealed that the English king was in Ertpurch, today called Erdburg.