AD 1062. In an age when women are merely pawns in the marriage game, Countess Matilde refuses to play by someone else’s rules. Across the Alps, her overlord King King Heinrich comes of age and rebels to his fate. Their paths are destined to cross.
Is Charlemagne’s prophecy about to come true?
Melding fact and fiction, Lotharingia weaves the swirling political intrigue and religious maneuvering of early medieval times with a touch of supernatural and a compelling love story that has the potential to change the course of history. Inspired by historical characters and events, it is an immersive journey through the Europe of AD 1000.
Targeted Age Group:: Adults
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I love early medieval history and have always been fascinated by the gaps in the surviving sources on the Investiture Controversy, and by the larger-than-life personalities of its great actors, Pope Gregory, King Henry, and especially Countess Matilde, a trailblazer who deserves to be better known.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
My main characters are all historical, although parts of the plot are fictional.
Countess Matilde/a of Tuscany was the first medieval ruler I am aware of who ruled without a husband by her side. Not very well-known in the Anglosaxon world, she met and in all likelihood inspired Matilda/Maud of England, whose first husband was none else than my male lead King Heinrich's son and successor.
For insights on the historical figures that inspired Lotharingia, you can visit my blog: https://www.larabyrneauthor.com/blog.
Book Sample
Bay of Ostia, 25 April 1062
Being sixteen and a woman, Countess Matilde had never set foot on a warship, or even travelled by sea. Yet here she was, on her fifth day aboard the admiral galley, a few knots from the fleet’s destination.
The previous week, the German troops of Antipope Cadalus had breached the Civitas Leonina. Saint Peter had fallen, and Cadalus had recited Mass over the tomb of the Apostle.
Holed up in the walled hilltop monastery of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, the legitimate pope, Alexander, could not hold out forever.
Dawn was spreading across the water when she joined the first officer on the stern. She was dressed to blend in, in black hose and tunic, light leather armour protecting her chest and back.
‘Not long.’ The first officer’s eyes scouted the shore, silhouetted by dark woods. ‘The south-westerly blew us all the way.’
Gottfried, her stepfather, arrived, helmet in hand, with the defiant grin of a warrior before battle. ‘The hard part begins now.’
He had agreed a truce with Cadalus to escort the Holy Father out of Rome. A squad of his best fighters was waiting on the starboard side.
She looked him in the eye. ‘I am ready to play my part.’
‘You are untested in battle.’
‘You made a promise to my mother.’
‘Follow me.’ He descended the command platform. Even before they were out of earshot, he waved an admonishing finger at her. ‘Do not question my orders. Do you know what the punishment for insubordination at sea is?’
‘I only ask that you keep your promise—’
His chest heaved under the armour. ‘I made two promises to your mother: you will play a role in this, and you will be safe.’
‘What role do I play sitting here?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Would you rather take charge of the fleet?’
‘Of course I would.’
He studied her, both eyebrows raised. ‘The fleet is yours then – until I come back.’
Nerves made her feel sick, but she would not have it any other way. In charge, despite her sex. ‘What are your orders?’
‘Avoid interception. If intercepted, flee. Preserve the ships at all costs. No fleet, no journey back.’ He put the helmet on. ‘Marco, the first officer, stays with you. Rely on his knowledge. No-one sails like a Pisan.’
He climbed back onto the command platform as the ship prepared to anchor. Sailors lowered the square sails, and below deck the oarsmen slowed their pace to the rhythm of the rolling waves.
Gottfried was talking to Marco, presumably about her being in charge; the first officer received the news expressionless.
They had reached the mouth of the Tiber, the contours of the riverbanks hazy in the early morning light. The fleet scattered around the admiral. Rowers locked their oars and sailors dropped the anchor. Ropes lowered launches into the water.
Gottfried patted her on the shoulder. ‘May God be with you.’
‘And with you.’
From the bulwark he slipped into the launch on the starboard side. Four of his men joined him, with another five lowering themselves down the port side to fill the second launch.
Similar operations took place on all galleys, and soon a swarm of small vessels rowed off, disappearing past a bend in the river. Local henchmen waited there, ready to let them into Rome for handsome pay.
Matilde scanned the deck. She had to assert her authority at once, or they would question her abilities. ‘Place lookouts along the bulwark and up in the crow’s nest. Everyone else on standby.’
Marco shouted the command to the second officer at the bow, who repeated it across the water. The watchmen took their positions.
The silence amplified the murmur of the waves. All twelve galleys, sails furled, lay waiting in half sleep. Twelve galleys, twelve like the apostles – a good omen, according to her stepfather. She tried not to think of Judas.
Gottfried expected the mission to last most of the day, even provided things went to plan, inside the city, and there, on the Tiber.
The fleet’s presence would not go unnoticed; German silver made easy friends; the Normans ventured along the coastline and upstream, in search of ransom; as for the Saracens, she could not afford to worry about ending up a slave in Cordoba or North Africa.
Her mother had not let fear deter her when, two months earlier, Antipope Cadalus’s army had crossed the Alps in the melting snow. While the subalpine lords, torn between their oath to the child king Heinrich of Germany and their oath to the Holy Roman Church, had laid low, she alone had stood in his way.
‘God will be with us,’ she had said, ordering her soldiers to dig a trench across the Roman road between Verona and Modena, forcing the Germans to a temporary but humiliating halt.
Trust God, not fear, Matilde reminded herself, slipping into the commander’s seat.
Blinding sunshine flooded the deck, conferring on the events that had led a young woman to lead a fleet in the Tyrrhenian Sea the texture of a strange dream.
Her father, Margrave Bonifacio of Tuscany, the most feared warrior of his generation, killed when she was six… Her brother and sister’s deaths… She becoming her father’s unlikely successor, unless her overlord King Heinrich objected… Her mother who saw herself as equal to men and taught her to do the same… Her confessor Anselmo da Baggio, who had strengthened her faith in God and in herself with the love of a father for a daughter, before being called to Rome and becoming Pope Alexander.
She was here because could not bear to lose him. ‘Trust God, not fear.’
The lookouts were intent on their jobs. If they were uncomfortable with the idea of a woman in charge, they were careful not to show it. Marco was checking the horizon.
‘Time for fresh men?’
He went off to execute her order, and she sat, cross-legged, staring into the blue.
Marco re-joined her. Still no news. Peaking, the sun started its descent into the sea. Neither spoke, and she was grateful for the silence.
‘They are coming!’ One lookout pointed his tanned forefinger towards the bend of the river.
The rowers were spitting their lungs out, as if they had enemies on their tail. Gottfried, on the first vessel, was slamming an oar. He was sharing his seat with another man, wrapped in a dark hooded cloak. It had to be him. The launches pushed closer, and the sailors threw rope ladders to help the men onboard. Hands grabbed hands.
The anulus piscatoris, the pope’s ring, caught the pink light on top of the bulwark. Gottfried’s solid frame helped the Holy Father onto the deck.
Matilde kissed the ring and Pope Alexander lifted her face to his. ‘God will not forget your courage, daughter.’
Gottfried tugged his cloak. ‘Let’s lift anchor. I don’t trust that snake. Your Holiness, let me show you to my cabin. You and I need rest.’ He winked at her. ‘Matilde and Marco, sail us back to Pisa.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Her face was neutral, but her heart was singing. She had won Gottfried’s trust as a leader of men.
The sun was fanning flames, low on the water. On the platform, the air was heavy with the living smell of the sea, and foam wetted her plaited tresses and sprayed her face.
She did not wipe it off; it would dry on her skin. A few drops of it slipped through her lips and she tasted salt on her tongue; the taste of adulthood, the taste of freedom.
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Author Bio:
After spending too long in a corporate career, Lara Byrne has decided to follow her dream: turn the period and characters she loves into stories. Her novels re-imagine the great political dramas that marked the history of the Holy Roman Empire in the middle ages. Blending fact and fiction, romance, politics, and mystery, she casts in a fresh light the women who changed Europe at the turn of the first millennium.
Lara's debut novel, Lotharingia, won the Best World Historical Fiction award at the 2021 HFC Book of the Year contest, was shortlisted for the 2020 Page Turner Awards, and is a Historical Novel Society Editor's Choice.
Currently based in the UK with her family, cat and dog, Lara visits all the settings of her novels, be it Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands, or Germany – using research for her writing as an excuse to travel as much as possible.
