Warlord (Outlaw 4) (57 page)

In my portrayal of the mercenary captain, I may, like the chroniclers of old, be doing him a disservice – and if so, I apologize to his ghost, and to his descendants: he was certainly an effective soldier, much feared by the enemies of his lord, and a man who carried out the brutal tactics of the day with a ruthless efficiency. It is always a mistake to judge the actions of people in the past by
the moral standards of the present: in the twenty-first century, Mercadier would doubtless be viewed as a war criminal – but then so too would Richard the Lionheart.

Angus Donald

Kent, February 2012

Acknowledgements

There are a large number of people who deserve my gratitude for helping to bring this book into the light, but sadly I do not have time or space to name them all. However, the people mentioned below have been of particular help in ensuring that this copy of
Warlord
is now safely in your hands. Firstly I’d like to mention my brilliantly efficient agents at Sheil Land Associates, Ian Drury and Gaia Banks, who have been so supportive during the making of this book. I’d also like to thank the talented editorial team at Sphere – Daniel Mallory, Thalia Proctor and Anne O’Brien – and the many others in the Little, Brown family who have been so kind, helpful and enthusiastic: Carleen Peters, Sally Wray, Rhiannon Smith, Sarah Shrubb, Darren Turpin and Felice Howden.

I owe a very large debt of thanks to the historian Professor John Gillingham for his magnificent
Richard I
, which I used as the main source for the historical parts of
Warlord
; and, for the second part of my story, which is set in Paris, I am very grateful to John W. Baldwin for his book
Paris, 1200
and also to the wonderfully named Urban Tigner Holmes, Junior for
Daily Living in the Twelfth Century: Based on the Observations of Alexander Neckam in London and Paris
.
Professor David Crouch was very helpful on the subject of Mercadier, and his riveting work
William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219
has also been of enormous value to me over the years. Finally, Professor Joseph Goering’s
The Virgin and the Grail: Origins of a Legend
is by far the best book I’ve ever read on that subject, and I must confess that I lifted the Chretien de Troyes passage that Master Fulk reads aloud to Alan from its pages.

My friend and former colleague Dr Martyn Lobley was most obliging when consulted on certain medical matters – particularly in helping me to confirm that Alan could have survived his chest wound at the end of the second part of the book. He also pointed out that this plot device had already appeared in Ian Fleming’s
Dr No
. I don’t think I’ve read that book and I can’t remember the film all that well, but the idea was out there before I used it and it may be that I subconsciously lifted the idea from Bond – if so, I’m sorry, Mr Fleming, it was too good a wheeze to pass up.

While we are mentioning physical oddities – the idea for the split thumbs on Trois Pouces came from my time as a youthful beach-bum in Greece. I used to hang out at a small café in Crete in the mid-1980s and the kindly man who ran the place had this same condition. He used to give me credit when I was broke and always made sure, on the rare occasions that I went off to work picking tomatoes or cucumbers in the local greenhouses, that I had a hot drink and a thick piece of bread and jam inside me beforehand. Last time I visited the café, on a holiday with my wife a few years ago, I heard that he had died. So I’m lifting a cup of milky coffee to you, Costas. Thank you for the inspiration for Trois Pouces – and all those
marmalades
.