“When Christ and His Saints Slept,” by Sharon Kay Penman

“When Christ and His Saints Slept,” by Sharon Kay Penman (901p)

When Christ and His Saints Slept is one of American author Sharon Kay Penman’s masterpiece novels of the Middle Ages. Written in 1994, this one tells the story of a bleak time in English history as rival claimants to the throne of England, Stephen of Blois and Empress Maude, fought a needless war for two decades that devastated England. It was the time of England’s history called The Anarchy.

It is 1120, and the son of King Henry I of England, William, is readying to return to England on the brand new royal vessel, the ill-fated White Ship. The seas are rough and the passengers drunk, too drunk to spot the sudden appearance of a reef in the ocean. It tears a hole in the boat and sinks, destroyed and drowning all of its passengers, including the heir to the throne. With no male heir, Henry I is forced to name his daughter, the widowed Empress Maude, as successor and forces his barons to swear allegiance to Maude. But none of Henry’s vassals wanted a woman ruling in heir own right, least of all one married to the hated Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. And so on Henry I’s death one of his barons breaks his agreement and claims the throne himself, making Stephen of Blois the fourth King of England since the conquest. Maude’s allies are outraged and immediately declared war on Stephen, but they were otherwise hemmed into Geoffrey’s Anjou, left with attempted sieges and small fights in Normandy while Stephen controls England. Stephen tries to consolidate his kingdom but the blunders which would characterise his reign surface soon after, eventually forcing the public support of Maude by her powerful half-brother, Robert of Gloucester. Eventually, the war tide favoured Maude enough for her to leave her exile in Anjou and return to England, ready to claim her rightful crown.

When Stephen is betrayed by his cowardly allies at the first pitched battle of the war, the Battle of Lincoln, and captured Maude is able to make her formal claim and hurries across country to be crowned. But she, like Stephen, makes far too many mistakes so quickly and quickly offsets the people of London. Londoners unite to scare Maude and her supporters out of the city before she could be officially crowned. The Queen consort, Matilda, rallies and begins a campaign to free her husband – eventually doing so after the destruction of Winchester, capturing Robert of Gloucester. Robert was traded for Stephen’s freedom, so the King returned to the throne, and Maude would never be Queen.

The two then fight a bloody, desperate and at times pointless war across the length and breadth of England with Maude narrowly escaping capture at Oxford, her legendary escape in the snow to Wallingford brought to life. Intermittent between this is the de facto protagonist, the fictional Ranulf, and his sorry tale of lost love and redemption as he seeks to find his happiness in the world while being one of Maude’s key supporters. After six years of getting nowhere, her dream of being Queen ends when Robert of Gloucester dies, and Maude decides to return to Anjou a defeated woman leaving her campaign in England to the rest of her allies and the Earl of Chester, as Stephen lurched from one political mistake to another, his kingship held together by his brilliance on the battlefield.

The final part of the novel deals with the rise of the future Henry II into adulthood. Together with his entertaining father, Geoffrey, the Angevins sweep across Normandy and completely take it out of Stephen’s control – not only pacifying the Norman barons but then becoming Duke of Normandy in his own right. The young Henry is a brilliant character – confident, intelligent, quick-witted, polite yet commanding. Henry surges to the fore of Anglo-French politics and becomes such a headache for Stephen and Louis VII that they try anything to get an advantage over the rampant Angevins. While on a visit to Paris Henry meets his future bridge, the teasing beauty Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France. Henry conspires with her to force her divorce from Louis and the two fall in love, secretly marrying weeks after Eleanor’s divorce from Louis. Henry was on top of the world then and continued to storm through the campaigning season with victory after victory, not even the sudden death of Geoffrey could keep him down for long. Eventually, Henry returns to England to reignite the Angevin cause in the sickly England, and beats Stephen across the length and breadth of the country. When Eustace, Stephen’s son and heir, suddenly dies, Henry forces Stephen’s hand and gets himself named as the heir to the throne, ending the bloody war at long last. At novels end, Henry Fitz Empress, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou, becomes King of England as Henry II and the Plantagenet dynasty was born.

Compared to a lot of historical fiction readers, I’m a very late comer to Sharon Kay Penman’s books. Everything I have heard about them indicates the very tip of excellence in this genre … and I totally see why. This was just superb. Superb writing, superb characters, superb plot devices, and superb dialogue. The latter is particularly true. One of the things I noticed is that most of the story is told in the dialogue, as in it moves from event to event in the dialogue. I kind of imagine each chapter as a short play and the various characters lay out their lives like that. It is quite different from a lot of the things I read where the story moves from various action scene to another, but that did not deter from the reading experience at all. Instead of seeing castles under siege and torrid fighting, you hear about it, and it is left up to your imagination to picture it. I liked that.

The risk of having a novel mainly confined to dialogue is the characters rather morph into one and become the same person. But this is not the case in When Christ and His Saints Slept. All the characters have their own voices and their own defined yet easily recognisable personalities. You know it is Robert when caution and planning is spoken of, you know it is Stephen when chivalry and doing the right thing is spoken of, and you know it is Maude when it is a quick tongue and an impatience with the world around her. I enjoyed these recognisable personalities a lot with characters properly brought to life. Particularly I liked Geoffrey of Anjou, so often over-shadowed by his illustrious son. I felt pity for Stephen, he seemed like a nice person but never suited for rule, and I enjoyed reading so much about what is probably England’s most forgotten monarch. The only character I particularly didn’t enjoy as much was the fictional Ranulf – I felt him to be a little too perfect, you know? He seems to say and do everything right, and I found him to be a little on the nauseating side at times, and would have preferred him to have a little more chinks in his armour like some of his real contemporaries, people who could not be any more flawed if they tried. But he is an exception, and the rest of them are brilliantly developed and constructed people with a very clear voice that beam off the page.

At 901 pages this is one of the meatiest books I have ever read. I think only War and Peace is longer but I made my way through it reasonably fast. It took me a little longer than it should have but that is more because I stupidly chose to begin reading it in the middle of writing a couple of essays, so I went a couple of days without reading. For blokes who have reservations about historical fiction written by woman with a fear that it might be too mushy with romance (hey, there are some), fear not, for there is little of that. It is a rollercoaster ride of ambition, treachery and politics set against the backdrop of the turbulent 12th century, one of the most important in English history. Through Maude, the fictional Ranulf, Stephen, Robert, Geoffrey and Henry the twenty year civil war of The Anarchy unfolds in a truly excellent way, told in a style that is guaranteed to captivate any reader. Despite the length it is easy to read and very simple to understand with a style of dialogue that resonates in this century as well as one 900 years ago. It is very much worth taking the time to read this fantastic novel.

9.5/10.

“Wolf of the Plains,” by Conn Iggulden

“Wolf of the Plains,” by Conn Iggulden (560p)

Wolf of the Plains (Genghis: Birth of an Empire in the US) is the first part of a planned six-part series by British author Conn Iggulden depicting the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire. This first instalment deals with the childhood of Temüjin, better known as Genghis Khan, before he became the infamous Great Khan of the Mongol peoples. Wolf of the Plains is also the first of the trilogy solely about Genghis, the remaining three in the series will focus on his descendents.

Temüjin and his four brothers – Bekhter (who is actually his half-brother), Khasar, Kaichun and Temüge – embark on a quest to retrieve two eagle hatchlings high on a hill as a gift for their father, the khan Yesegui. Temüjin’s childhood rivalry with his brother Bekhter is thoroughly explained by Iggulden in these opening passages, as his primary reason for capturing the eagle was to annoy Bekhter. Temüjin is soon disappointed when, after he had risked his life to capture the eagles, his father gives one of them to his bondsman Eeluk. He had been hoping to receive one himself. From there, Yesegui further disappoints his wayward second son by taking him to the camp of his mothers people, the Olkhun’ut, where he is to spend the next year of his life.

Temüjin’s fortunes then take a turn for the severe worse. His father is murdered by Tartar raiders on his way back to his own camp. Upon hearing of the news Temüjin races back to camp and prepares to assume the role of khan, despite only being about twelve at the time of Yesegui’s death. But someone else had plans of becoming khan and Temüjin and his family are betrayed by Eeluk and banished from the camp, left to fend for themselves in the deadly climate of the Mongolian steppe.

Thus begins the second part of Wolf of the Plains. Eeluk assumed Temüjin and his family would die in the first winter alone on the steppe, the freezing weather alone would be enough to see them off let alone the sparse food. But Temüjin and his brothers, with their mother helping, manage to make it through that winter. They then make it through five more and etch out a living as tribeless wanderers, but still they constantly live in fear of Eeluk returning to finish them off for once and all.

From there, the story heads towards its conclusion. Temüjin begins to morph into Genghis Khan as he tries to unite the Mongol tribes against their common enemies, the Tartars and the Chinese. Through force he takes the Olkun’ut, through political cunning he takes the Kerait from Togrul Khan and through his own thirst for revenge over Eeluk he takes his own tribe back. Wolf of the Plains ends with Temüjin proclaiming himself to be Genghis, Khan of Khans and the leader of all Mongols.

By no means is Wolf of the Plains faultless. Iggulden explains where he had taken liberties in the authors note at the end – for instance, in the novel Temüjin only spends a few days when captured by Eeluk but in reality it was several months – but mostly that is for the sake of the story and unless you are well read on Genghis Khan it goes unnoticed. Other historical inaccuracies are minor, although the exclusion of Jamuka, Temüjin’s childhood rival, is noticeable but his role is done by Bekhter.

It is not serious fiction either and should not be taken as such. It is simple, fun and entertaining. Iggulden’s style is similar to that of an action movie – Diehard will not win an Oscar, but it will keep you entertained the whole way through at any rate. Wolf of the Plains is the same. It is a very entertaining read and I flew through it. If you are after a good story with an interesting historical figure as the lead, and don’t mind a bit of blood and gore from time-to-time, then I heartily recommend this.

8.5/10.