A L Berridge - In the Name of the King

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published 2011

Copyright A. L. Berridge, 2011

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195770-8

By the same author

Honour and the Sword

In the Name of the King is a work of fiction, but many of the people and events depicted are real. Andr de Rolands journey takes him through one of the most turbulent periods of French history, and would never have been possible without the map and compass provided by so many experts in the field.

I am particularly grateful for the inspiration of Robin Briggs of All Souls, Oxford, who first alerted me to the ambiguities surrounding the fate of the Comte de Soissons, and also to Dr Jonathan Spangler of Manchester Metropolitan University for his invaluable assistance in uncovering the mysteries of the Battle of La Marfe. I would also like to thank the many historians of the H-France community who have generously guided me in my research, especially Professor Melissa Wittmeier of Northwestern University in Illinois for her help deciphering some obscure passages in the Mercure Franois, and Professor Orest Ranum for advice on mid-seventeenth-century Paris. Theirs is the credit for any historical insights offered by this novel; any mistakes, Im afraid, are my own.

I have also profited enormously from the advice of experts in the use of historical weaponry, in particular Kevin Lees and Ian Shields for practical help with the musket, and Cris de Veau of the Tattershall School of Defence for his advice on swords and swordsmanship.

Id also like to thank my agent Victoria Hobbs and editor Alex Clarke for their faith and editorial help, Stephen Guise for his sensitive and meticulous editing of the manuscript, and my long-suffering husband Paul Crichton for his patience. Last but not least, I must express sincere gratitude for the encouragement and support of my colleagues in the Thirty Years War unit Hortus Bellicus. To them and the thousands of men and women just like them, who freely give their time to make history come alive for those who now rarely encounter it in schools, this novel is very respectfully dedicated.

It is with this present collection of the Abb Fleuriots documents that the story of Andr de Roland really begins.

The papers published under the title Honour and the Sword related those circumstances that shaped him as a national hero: the murder of his parents during the Spanish Occupation of Picardy, his upbringing among his former subjects, and his final victory in restoring the villages of the Saillie to French rule. Yet the man who survived these events is also a hybrid. Educated from birth to uphold a strict code of honour, he has since imbued not only the gentle humanity of his illegitimate half-brother, former stable boy Jacques Gilbert, but also the libertarian creed of soldier and former tanner Stefan Ravel. These qualities proved admirable in the defence of his home village of Dax, but now he is to encounter a France rigidly divided by caste and convention and already torn by civil conflict within the greater context of the Thirty Years War. How he fared there, this history will tell.

But it is not I who will tell it. I present the reader only with my translations of the Abb Fleuriots papers, comprising in this case a handful of letters, the diary of the girl Andr loved, and a series of remarkably frank interviews conducted by the Abb himself. As before, the translation preserves the informality of the verbal accounts by substituting modern idioms for those of seventeenth-century Picardy, but I have taken fewer liberties with both the written sources and the remarkably controlled and occasionally stilted expression of the tavern girl Bernadette. Hers is one of the voices new to us, while others are familiar, but the reader must use his own judgement to determine which are the most reliable.

Edward Morton, MA, LittD, Cantab

Cambridge, March 2011

From his interviews with the Abb Fleuriot, 1669

I know what youre thinking. Sometimes I wake up sweaty from nightmares I cant remember and think the same thing.

But its bollocks really, and I know that now. Theres nothing I could have done to stop it happening, not the boy the way he was. For Andr to be safe it was the whole world needed changing, but youd have had to be God to do that, and I dont think even God could have done much with France just then, back in the summer of 1640 and the middle of a war.

You cant blame us for not seeing it. Wed left Dax that morning with the crowds cheering because the Saillie was liberated and we were finally out of danger. Andr and I were travelling in triumph to his grandmother in Paris, with nothing to do when we got there but be looked after and made to feel important. The sun was shining, we were free and riding through Picardie with harvest starting all round us, fields of hops and golden barley and women with their skirts tucked up singing bawdy songs as they slashed. Andr was singing too, that slushy Enfin la Beaut de Chouy used to like, and I knew he was thinking about Anne. Everything felt exciting and full of hope, and it wasnt till we got clear of Lucheux I realized anything was wrong at all.

The landmarks were gone. I nearly missed the turning by Luchuel because the windmill had disappeared, and couldnt keep straight for Milly because I was looking for a spire that wasnt there. Then we came to the hamlet of Petit-Grouche, and I understood. I remembered it as a cluster of farm buildings, a wooden church, and a yard with a water trough and stone well where children used to play. Now the trough was dry and clogged with leaves, the wells rusty chain hung without a bucket, and the smell that drifted up was brackish and sour. There was nothing else but a circle of burnt stones where the church ought to have been and a field of sunken oblong patches with wooden crosses. The Spaniards had been through.