Eleanor has shed two years since Here Be Dragons and my first mysteries; it was always assumed she’d been born in 1122, but Andrew W. Lewis convincingly demonstrated that she was actually born in 1124. Sometimes my mistakes are revealed by subsequent research, such as my women wearing velvet in the twelfth century or Richard III having the world’s longest-lived Irish wolfhound. Until now I considered my most infamous mistake to be the time-traveling little grey squirrel in Sunne. But that squirrel has been utterly eclipsed by the mistake I recently found in Chapter Seventeen of The Reckoning, where I have Edward I telling Roger de Mortimer that crossbows were more difficult to master than long bows. I was truly horrified, for just the opposite is true. What makes this so baffling to me is that I knew this at the time I wrote The Reckoning, and I never drink and write at the same time. So how explain it? I haven’t a clue, but it is extremely embarrassing, and I’ve been doing penance the only way I can—by calling as much attention to this bizarre blunder as I can.
After the mea culpa, the apology. In the Author’s Note for Devil’s Brood, I did something well intentioned but foolish—I offered to provide material from my blogs for readers without access to the Internet. I did not anticipate the volume of letters and found it impossible to respond to them all, for I do not have any assistants to help with correspondence, reader requests, research, etc. So I would like to say I am sorry to those who wrote to me and received no response. The sad truth is that e-mail, blogs, websites, and social networking sites like Facebook have become the only realistic means for writers and readers to interact.
I’d initially intended to tell Richard’s story as one book, but I soon realized that I’d underestimated the extent of the research I’d need to do, though this is Richard’s fault more than mine. The man’s travel itinerary would put Marco Polo to shame—Italy and Sicily, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Austria, Germany, France; a pity he didn’t have frequent-flier miles. As the deadline loomed and Richard and I were still stuck in Outremer, I began to panic. Fortunately, my friend Valerie LaMont came up with a brilliant idea; why not write two books about Richard? It made perfect sense, for there is a natural breaking point—the conclusion of the Third Crusade. Much to my relief, my publisher was amenable to this approach, and so A King’s Ransom will pick up where Lionheart ended, as Richard sails from Acre for home. Of course he has no idea what lies ahead—an unlikely encounter with pirates, shipwreck, capture, imprisonment, ransom, betrayal, his deteriorating marriage, and an all-consuming war with the French king. A King’s Ransom will also be my final farewell to the Angevins, surely one of history’s most dysfunctional and fascinating families. I will miss them.
S.K.P.
February 2011
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My acknowledgments pages must sometimes read like that classic line from Casablanca—“Round up the usual suspects.” But few writers have been as fortunate as I have been in the course of my writing career, for I have had the same editor and agents for nigh on thirty years, almost unheard of in the publishing industry. So once again I want to thank my editor extraordinaire, Marian Wood, and my wonderful agents, Molly Friedrich and Mic Cheetham. At the risk of embarrassing them, I feel truly blessed. I would also like to thank Kate Davis of G. P. Putnam’s, Paul Cirone and Lucy Carson of the Friedrich Agency, and Dorian Hastings for a superb copyediting job. The “usual suspects” list includes Valerie and Lowell LaMont; no writer could ask for a better book midwife than Valerie, and Lowell continues to exorcise my computer demons with his usual finesse. I want to thank my friend and fellow historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick for pointing me in the right direction as I sought to envision Fauvel, Richard’s famed Cypriot stallion. The admiring chroniclers described him as a dun, but there are bay, red, and grey or grulla duns. Elizabeth reminded me that Fauvel was a popular medieval name for chestnut horses, thus giving me a eureka moment—Fauvel was a red dun! I am very grateful to Dr. Larry Davis, Dr. Diego Fiorentino, and Ellie Lewis for their efforts to diagnose Richard’s mystery ailment, the mystifying Arnaldia, which has been baffling historians and physicians for over eight hundred years. I allowed Morgan