Sharon
Penman.
Time and Chance.
London: Michael
Joseph, 2002.
xviii,
471pp.
Hardback ISBN
0718143086.
Publisher's
recommended price £17.99
The
second novel
in Sharon Penman's enthralling trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of
Aquitaine. Time
and Chance opens in 1156, a couple of years after When Christ
and
His Saints Slept ends. These were the productive years of Henry and
Eleanor's marriage, when Henry was redefining the role of medieval
kingship
and Eleanor was giving the lie to those who had called her a barren
queen,
bearing her young husband five sons and three daughters, heirs to a
dynasty
that would endure for over three hundred years.
But
even at noonday,
there were shadows lurking. War with the Welsh. Battles with Eleanor's
aggrieved first husband, the French king. And, most damaging, the chaos
unleashed by Henry's disastrous decision to have his friend and
confidant
Thomas Becket named Archbishop of Canterbury.
Henry
saw the
urbane, ambitious Becket as the ideal ally. He never expected that the
new archbishop would turn his back on his own worldy past and embrace
his
new role as defender of the Faith, putting aside silks for a hair
shirt.
In Henry's eyes, Becket's rejection of his king was a humiliating
betrayal.
And it was a tragic mistake, a decision that would end in murder and
Christendom's
greatest scandal.
And
for Henry,
worse was yet to come. A liaison with the lovely young daughter of a
Marcher
baron was to have consequences he could never have envisioned. In
taking
Rosamund Clifford to his bed, he would put his marriage and even his
kingship
at risk, not understanding until it was too late that his proud,
passionate
queen would make an equally passionate enemy...
|
|