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My previous books have been built around historical characters, men who had accomplished rather remarkable things but had been almost completely forgotten. I started The Black Rose with three great men in mind. One was a king of England, the greatest of English kings in my humble opinion, Edward the First, sometimes called the Lawgiver. His determination to conquer Scotland cast a shadow on his memory (he was the “proud Edward” of “Scots, Wha Hae”), but in spite of that he was a man of serious and noble purpose and the real father of parliamentary rule. The second was a Mongolian general briefly mentioned in histories as Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, who conquered China for Kublai Khan in a series of brilliant campaigns. Time has draped thick cobwebs over this page of history, and only the bare outline of Bayan’s aggressive warmaking can be seen, but I have a very strong conviction that, if military historians were in a position to study his operations, they would rank him high on the roster of generalship. The third was Roger Bacon. Interest in this extraordinary friar has grown with the years until today it amounts almost to a cult, and so it is not necessary to say anything about him save to register my personal belief that he was potentially the greatest scientist the world has produced.

That these remarkable men adorned one span of years in what otherwise was a dark page of the Dark Ages was a chance not to be overlooked, and so I set myself the task of inventing a tale in which all three would figure prominently. However, the story which grew out of my efforts refused to be subordinated to the narration of history. It took the bit in its teeth and left me no chance to do more than introduce my three enthusiasms at rare intervals; but in spite of the fact that none of the illustrious trio appears except in brief scenes, their accomplishments dictate the direction of the story.

The story itself grows out of a legend, a most beguiling and romantic legend which is found in a very few old English histories. As I have endeavored to retain an element of surprise to the very end of the book, it would be highly inexpedient to relate here, before the story begins, just what this legend was. All I can afford to say, therefore, is that it concerns an English crusader, who later became the father of Thomas à Becket, and an Eastern girl who knew just two words of English. It is pure legend, of course, but it has always seemed to me too engaging a tale to be buried away between the covers of forgotten histories; and so I have borrowed it and adapted it to my needs.

It should be mentioned also that the incident of the imprisonment of the children in Bulaire Castle is based on a story from Scottish history which is mentioned briefly in Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather.

To forestall possible criticism I wish to say that I have not been “riving a bow beyond my reach” in the incident of the building of the ship in the Arsenal at Venice. Authentic records show that the urgent needs of the war with Turkey drove the Venetians to the construction of ships in a single day and that, moreover, they had conceived the idea of the assembly line, although they did not call it that. They were splendid ships that they built, great wooden biremes with towering superstructures and an imposing spread of sail. Speed, it is clear, is not an invention of the present day.

In addition to an almost endless labor of research, I have kept many books in front of me all through the arduous work which has gone into the writing of this story: Three volumes by Harold Lamb, Genghis Khan, The March of the Barbarians, The Crusades, several versions of Marco Polo, Agnes Strickland’s sketch of Queen Eleanor from her Lives of the Queens of England, a number of Chinese histories, Pearl S. Buck’s remarkable translation of All Men Are Brothers, by Shui Hu Chuan. Without these, and others too numerous to mention, the task of presenting this rather detailed picture of a colorful time would have been an impossible one.

Thomas B. Costain