And with Charlemagne gone, the terrible Viking Norsemen had begun their raids. On one shameful occasion, Paris had bought them off and sent them to ravage Burgundy—the Burgundians had never forgiven the Parisians for that. Even when, finally, the Norsemen had settled down in Normandy, their rulers were still restless. And when William of Normandy had conquered England in 1066, his family’s wealth and power had become greater than that of the French king in Paris.

But worst of all—more greedy, ruthless and frankly vicious—were the rulers of a smaller territory below Brittany, on the mouth of the River Loire: the counts of Anjou. Ambition had led the Plantagenets, as they were called, into marriage with the ruling families of Normandy and Aquitaine. Worse still, by outrageous dynastic luck they’d gotten their hands on the throne of England too.

“By your grandfather’s day,” Roland’s father had told him, “the Plantagenets had almost surrounded the Île-de-France and they were ready to squeeze.”

France had been saved by a remarkable man. King Philip Augustus of the Capet dynasty, the grandfather of the present king, had been brave and cunning. He’d gone on crusade with England’s Plantagenet king, Richard the Lionheart, but he never missed a chance to set one Plantagenet against another. And when the heroic Lionheart was succeeded by his unpopular brother John, the wily French monarch had soon managed to kick him out of Normandy and even Anjou. Indeed, after John’s own English barons rebelled against him, it had looked for a moment as if the French kings might get England as well.

And during all these years of strife, no one was more loyal to the French king than the lord de Cygne. He was only a poor knight. The warhorse Roland was his most valuable possession. But he had gone on crusade with Philip Augustus, and the king called him his friend. So although his small estate lay within Anjou, and the Plantagenets might take it away at any time, he stayed at the side of his king. And when Philip Augustus had triumphed, he was able to reward his modest friend with lands that more than doubled the family’s wealth.

But the de Cygnes had not prospered since then. Roland’s father had sold some of his lands. Perhaps his brother could marry an heiress. That would be good. But there was something else that Roland could do for his family. He could rise in the Church.

The universal Church was many things: a source of comfort and inspiration, of scholarship and dreams. For the crusading family of de Cygne, it now offered another life-giving support. There was money in the Church—a lot of it.