A Place Beyond Courage

A Place Beyond Courage is a novel of John FitzGilbert (John Marshal). In the year 1130 John is a royal marshal to King Henry I - young he may be, but through his courage and cunning he earned his stripes and respect and men knew not to mess with him. As royal marshal, John was the gate-keeper to the king - if you wanted to see the king, you needed to get past John first. He was also in charge of the court's living arrangements, the horses, the dogs and hawks - there was nothing John didn't have his hand in, including the approval and upkeep of the court whores. This last part did have it's perks, as John says... "Where would the court be for information, madam, without the digging of prostitutes and priests?" When John gets to the point in his life where his thoughts turn to marriage and the begetting of an heir, he thoughts are to the practical, not romantic. He marries the daughter of an acquaintance, Aline - a nervous girl, afraid of her own shadow. These two could not have been more imperfectly matched. Despite all the time John was away on court business and all the time Aline spent praying on her knees, they did manage to produce two sons, thus securing the FitzGilbert name. So, things are going well for John...an heir with one to spare at home, the owner of many estates, a pretty, young wife - so what if she passes out at the sight of blood or gives all his money to the church - she's loyal and fertile, what else could you ask for? Then King Henry has to go and screw things up by dying without naming a successor, throwing the court into chaos and beginning the fight over the throne of England between the king's daughter, Mathilda, and the king's nephew, Stephen. As sides are chosen and loyalties are made, John has to tread carefully, as he has haters on either side that would like to see him knocked down the ladder a bit. He realizes that the only chance of securing his lands would be to align himself with his enemy, Patrick of Salisbury, who was his neighbor. And what better way than to marry Salisbury's sister, Sybilla. The little matter of getting rid of Aline is quickly dealt with and John is just as swiftly married to Sybilla. Even though you know Sybilla is a much better match for John, you can't help but feel for the cast off Aline, who was quite unsure as to what it was she had done wrong to be so treated, then had her children taken away from her and packed off like an unwanted guest. But, neither could you not like John's new wife, Sybilla, who was quite the opposite of his first. John had finally met his match in this fiery, strong woman and in doing so, fell deeply in love. The dynamic relationship of John and Sybilla was a pleasure to read, Chadwick excels at capturing love and describing it well. John saying that "if he lost Sybilla, he would be like a boat with a hole torn in it's keep and the sea bleeding in to sink it". They had many children together, including the famous William Marshal of Chadwick's novels The

After reading The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion, Elizabeth Chadwick's two recent novels about that medieval hero, William Marshal, I was very curious to find out more about his parents, especially his father, John Marshal, who is best known to students of medieval legend for his famous comment about 'hammers and anvils.' It was a statement that implied that parents of that time period didn't care very much about their children. When the novel opens, John Marshal is at Henry I's court in England. He is, as his name states, a marshal - a person responsible not for just the king's safety and security, but also for transporting the king's many servants and belongings. He's already proved himself a skilled fighter, defeating one man who has challenged his right to the job in battle, and he's well-respected and not a little feared by his peers and subordinates. But his most unusual duty is that of selecting the prostitutes that service the king and his courtiers. Lest the reader think that John is just a pimp, it's a logical problem - are the women attractive enough, can they entertain a sophisticated audience, and are they skilled in bed? And these women know quite well that it is John that they have to please, and in return he expects information. With his skills and good looks, John also has gathered quite a few enemies among the powerful. So far, he's managed to survive, and while he hasn't married yet, he expects to be rewarded some day with an heiress with lands. That heiress is Alien Picard, and as we discover, precisely the wrong woman for John to marry, especially when the king dies, and a bitter civil war erupts across England and Normandy. John at first serves Stephen, a cousin of the old king's who has seized power because he is a man, and has already tested his mettle in battle. Another faction supports Matilda, Henry's daughter, and it is thought, who has the stronger claim. But England in the twelfth century is very much a man's world, and many of the lords and knights won't follow a woman, even if she is the rightful Queen of England. But John has a powerful enemy in the sons of the Earl of Salisbury, and with a wife who is afraid of her own shadow; he is risking disaster with every day. When the new Earl of Salisbury offers his young sister Sybilla as a potential wife to John, not only will he gain security but also a powerful ally. All he has to do is give up his wife -- and his allegiance to King Stephen... This is one of the most intense novels of the middle ages that I have read. John Marshal is complicated, a honourable man who sometimes has to do things he doesn't agree with for survival. Ms. Chadwick gets right into his head, and lets us see what makes him tick. Unlike most of the heroes to be found in historical fiction, there's a lot that isn't perfect about John, but that just made me like him all the more. He's a ruthless man, but not a cruel one, and I think that a great many of the same men of his class a

I picked up this novel with some trepidation. How could the father of William Marshal (newly ensconced in my personal gallery of heroes) possibly be as interesting as his son? How could the maker of the infamous `hammers and anvils' speech possibly be a hero? Still, I was confident that if anyone could make this work it would be Elizabeth Chadwick. The painstaking research that made William Marshal come to life for me would surely do the same in respect of his father. I wasn't disappointed. I didn't expect to like John FitzGilbert as much as I did. But in the process of reading Ms Chadwick's novel I obtained an appreciation, admiration and respect for John that took me by surprise. In this novel, Ms Chadwick managed to make the man himself human without ignoring the apparent cruelty of the `hammers and anvils' speech. I devoured this book in a few short days. I know the broad history of this period so knew where most of the major turning points were and which directions events would take. But what I did not have, and what Ms Chadwick has so ably infused into the mixture was a sense of the people themselves and the impacts on their lives of the choices they needed to make. John Marshal doesn't quite displace his son in my gallery of heroes, but he certainly joins him. Thanks, Ms Chadwick, for making another relatively obscure and heroic figure come to life. Highly recommended to all who love well written medieval fiction. Jennifer Cameron-Smith