‘It is something I need to remember, but not something you need to know .’

In April 1219, at his Manor of Caversham near Reading in Berkshire, William Marshal’s life is nearing its end. Marshal, Regent of England and one of England’s greatest knights, served four English kings during his long and eventful life. Marshal has sent one of his knights to Striguil in Wales to collect the silks he brought home from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These are what he intends to be buried in. As he lies in his bed, shifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, between pain and relief, his thoughts turn to that pilgrimage. On his deathbed, Henry, the Young King, eldest son and heir of Henry II asked William Marshal to swear an oath to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on his behalf:

‘I want you to go to Jerusalem and lay my cloak on the tomb of Christ at the Holy Sepulchre .

In 1183, William Marshal was still a landless knight. Unattached, unmarried and dependent upon the patronage of others, there was no barrier to his undertaking the pilgrimage. And now, over thirty years later, he remembers the journey, the adventures, the people he met.

‘I was dreaming’, he said. ‘I was not in this time and place .’

William Marshal spent three years on this pilgrimage, but little is known about this period of his life. This lack of detail has enabled Ms Chadwick (who has written several novels about William Marshal and his family) to imagine how that time was spent. In this novel, William Marshal’s trip to Jerusalem took him via Constantinople, to the court of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (the Leper King), febrile with internal intrigue and threatened by Saladin. We meet the Patriarch of Jerusalem and his mistress, Paschia de Riveri. And amongst these historical figures, Ms Chadwick weaves a romance for William Marshal, and a possible explanation for decisions he makes.

I’ve fallen in love with the William Marshal of Ms Chadwick’s novels, and I enjoyed this novel as well. We know that William Marshal survived the pilgrimage, but I had to remind myself of this a couple of times.

For those who enjoyed Ms Chadwick’s novels about William Marshal as much as I did, this is a terrific read. As the novel alternates between William Marshal’s deathbed and the experiences of his pilgrimage, past and present move together.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith