Joan of Leeds, or The Nun’s Tale

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A Conspiracy of Wolves, Antonello da Messina, archibishop, Beverley, Joan of Leeds, The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery, The Nun's Tale, the Owen Archer series, The Virgin Annunciate, York

As the publication of A Conspiracy of Wolves (Owen Archer 11) approaches I have been meandering down memory lane, exploring the arc of what I think of as the first series, visiting characters confined to one or two books. One such character is Dame Joanna of Leeds, the mysterious woman at the center of my third Owen Archer mystery, The Nun’s Tale, whom I based on a woman I’d encountered in a monograph about Clementhorpe Nunnery in York. Though she was largely my creation, she challenged me–slippery, possibly mad, yet oddly compelling, she haunted me all the while I worked on the book. I still think of her whenever I see Antonello da Messina’s The Virgin Annunciate, which I stared at as I wrote. Those of you who have read the book will recognize the blue mantle, and remember its significance. I am so glad that my editor at St. Martin’s Press agreed to use it for the cover of the first US edition.

You can imagine my surprise when this past Monday I peeked at The Guardian online and discovered an article about “my” Joanna of Leeds!

As I wrote in the Author’s Note of The Nun’s Tale:

“Whence came Joanna?  In The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery (R.B. Dobson & Sara Donaghey, York Archaeological Trust 1984, p. 15) is the following item:

“ ‘In 1318 there is mention of [an] apostate, Joanna of Leeds.  Archbishop Melton ordered the dean of Beverley to return the nun to her convent…  Apparently Joanna had defected from her religious order and left the nunnery.  However, in order to make her defection credible, she had fabricated her death at Beverley and, with the aid of accomplices, even staged her own funeral there.  The archbishop was prepared to take a lenient view of these excesses.  He directed the dean of Beverley to warn Joanna of the nature of her sins and, if she recanted them within eight days, to allow her to return to Clementhorpe to undergo a penance.  Melton further urged the dean to undertake a thorough investigation of the case, and to discover the names of Joanna’s accomplices so that he might then take suitable action.’

“The story intrigued me.  Was Joanna discovered, betrayed, or did she request to return to St. Clement’s Nunnery?  If it was her choice, why make such an about face?  She had gone to great lengths to escape and make it permanent.

“I moved the incident to 1365-66, putting it in Archbishop Thoresby’s time, which provided me with a serendipitous relationship—Thoresby’s nephew, Richard de Ravenser, was a canon of Beverley at this time, as was William of Wykeham.  Nicholas de Louth is also a real person.  Because I moved Joanna’s story in time, none of the participants in the book had anything to do with the real story of Joanna of Leeds.”

Imagine my excitement when I read the article—more information!

“A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. ‘To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house,’ runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.

“Melton, writing to inform the Dean of Beverley about the ‘scandalous rumour’ he had heard about the arrival of the Benedictine nun Joan, claimed that Joan had ‘impudently cast aside the propriety of religion and the modesty of her sex’, and ‘out of a malicious mind simulating a bodily illness, she pretended to be dead, not dreading for the health of her soul, and with the help of numerous of her accomplices, evildoers, with malice aforethought, crafted a dummy in the likeness of her body in order to mislead the devoted faithful and she had no shame in procuring its burial in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place’.

“After faking her own death, he continued, ‘and, in a cunning, nefarious manner … having turned her back on decency and the good of religion, seduced by indecency, she involved herself irreverently and perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust and away from poverty and obedience, and, having broken her vows and discarded the religious habit, she now wanders at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all of her order.’”

Even better, the article announces that more material from the registers of the archbishops of York is to be translated and published! I can’t wait!

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Casting a Female Sleuth in a Historical Crime Series

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female sleuths, Kate Clifford, Lucie Wilton, Owen Archer, the Kate Clifford series, the Owen Archer series, writing medieval women

As promised, I’m sharing with you the three guest posts I wrote for the recent Kate Clifford blog tour, knowing that many of you would not have seen them. Here is the second, which first appeared here.

I remember the day my new sleuth, Kate Clifford, auditioned for the role. I’d stepped away from the crime genre to write two novels about women in the court of King Edward III, Alice Perrers and Joan of Kent (The King’s Mistress, A Triple Knot). They’d first appeared as secondary characters in my crime novels, and I’d been so taken by them that I wanted to get to know them better. My research for their books took me down paths I had not yet explored, and I came away with a deep admiration for both women. But great frustration as well. I’d grown accustomed to writing about the women who surround and support Owen Archer, the sleuth in my original crime series. They were women of the merchant class—tradeswomen, innkeepers, apothecaries, and midwives, independent, pragmatic, wise. The women of the court did not lack wisdom or strength of character, but they were anything but independent—such is the nature of life in a royal court. I found myself wanting to shake them and point to the door—especially Alice, who had been brought up in the merchant community. Go back! Step out of the shackles! But I was not writing that sort of book—I was filling in the blanks in their biographies, not revising history.

For my next project, I wanted to return to fictional characters whose circumstances might be derived from the archives, but whose stories, whose fates were in my hands. Kate Clifford answered the casting call. She came striding down Stonegate in York, flanked by Irish wolfhounds, her step bold, her gown craftily hiding the small battle axe she wore for protection. She rounded the corner into High Petergate and entered a well-appointed house, received by an elderly couple with the respect due an employer. Curious, I invited her to stay awhile, tell me her story. Once I knew more about her, I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role. Kate was my new sleuth.

Someone interviewing me about the new series commented that there would seem to be more scope in historical novels for male characters rather than female, and then asked, “do you prefer to write one sex or the other?” I answered that a male sleuth has a potentially wider range of activities in 14^th-15^th century England than a female sleuth, which is why I crafted Kate Clifford’s background with an eye toward making plausible the ways in which she seems unconventional. And strong. Kate’s background is a combination of women I’ve found in the records, women who took control of their lives and overcame adversity. They are there in the archives if you look; strong women aren’t a modern phenomenon. They took charge of manors and farms when their men went off to war, took over businesses when widowed, or when their husbands were imprisoned, away, incapacitated. Taking charge included defending those manors and businesses as well as managing them. Women knew how to use weapons; I’ve given Kate a childhood on the border with Scotland where that would have been a given.

So Kate’s responsibilities give her a wide scope in the city of York and beyond, where she and her family own property. That doesn’t mean she can plausibly ride off on adventures far afield, as my sleuth Owen Archer does on occasion. She’s more like Owen’s wife, Lucie Wilton, who remains in York when Owen rides off on adventures. She’s an apothecary with a clientele who count on her, and the mother of young children. So, yes, a male character has more geographic scope than a female character. But what I might lose in a variety of locations I gain in the richness of women’s social networks—which in the late middle ages meant humans communicating face to face. Where there’s a community, there’s plenty of material for a mystery writer. So which sex do I prefer writing? Depends on the story. At the moment, I’m enjoying Kate. And even in the Owen Archer mysteries, some of the most dynamic characters are the women in his life.

***

I must share this amazing statue in Beauvais because–well, she could be Kate, couldn’t she? According to Wikipedia: Jeanne Laisné (born 1456) was a French heroine known as Jeanne Fourquet and nicknamed Jeanne Hachette (‘Joan the Hatchet’). She was the daughter of a peasant. She is currently known for an act of heroism on 27 June 1472, when she prevented the capture of Beauvais by the troops of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. The town was defended by only 300 men-at-arms, commanded by Louis de Balagny. The Burgundians were making an assault, and one of their number had actually planted a flag upon the battlements, when Jeanne, axe in hand, flung herself upon him, hurled him into the moat, tore down the flag, and revived the drooping courage of the garrison. In gratitude for this heroic deed, Louis XI instituted a procession in Beauvais called the “Procession of the Assault”, and married Jeanne to her chosen lover Colin Pilon, loading them with favours. As of 1907, there was still an annual religious procession on 27 June through the streets of Beauvais to commemorate Jeanne’s deed. A statue of her was unveiled on July 6th, 1851.

Series vs Standalone

Tags

A Triple Knot, A Twisted Vengeance, the Kate Clifford series, The King's Mistress, the Margaret Kerr series, the Owen Archer series, The Service of the Dead, The Writing Life

As a reader, if you asked whether I favor books in series or standalone books I’d say I have no preference. However, as a writer I much prefer working on books in series. The following is a glimpse into what I’ve learned about myself in this regard.*

The Pleasures of Writing a Series

Working on a novel is a long process, consuming my days and nights for months of work and worry. I live with the characters, coax them, argue with them. They wake me in the night with suggestions for plot twists, secrets about their pasts, reminders of threads I’ve dropped. On long walks I eavesdrop on arguments among them. And then, one day, the book is ready to send off to my editor. Such a rush of relief—I’ve done it again! I’ve completed another novel.

And then… I don’t know what to do with myself. I could tackle all the things that fell through the cracks while I rushed toward the deadline, but busywork isn’t satisfying. I’m lonely. I miss the characters.

The only cure is to dive into the next book, which is easy when writing a series. I go for a walk or go out to work in the garden while imagining what might be going on in Owen’s, Maggie’s, or Kate’s life, continuing a thread that began in an earlier book, something not quite tied up. It might be a blooming relationship, a potential conflict, a long-awaited opportunity, the unexpected return of a character from an earlier episode. This might not necessarily be the central plotline, but it primes the pump, puts my characters in play.

I lost this continuity when I stepped away from writing mysteries to work on two standalones (The King’s Mistress and A Triple Knot, by “Emma Campion”). Once completed, I had no easy entrance into the next story. With these, once each book was finished,  that was that. There was no “and then” to play with.

Only by stepping away did I appreciate how much I enjoy writing crime series. In a standalone, everything is wrapped up in one book. In a series, my characters are on stage across a variety of adventures and through time. In the Kate Clifford series, I’ve burdened my main character with her late husband’s debts, his bastard children, an unfriendly clause in his will, a violent past, and a difficult mother. Kate’s issues are presented in book 1, The Service of the Dead, but, as in life, not all are resolved by the end of the first episode. Kate will cope with the hand I’ve dealt her over time, while investigating the crime that propels each book.

Having the leisure of following all the recurring characters over time is a perk of writing a series. Their characters deepen as they face new challenges. In The Service of the Dead, Kate’s uncle Richard Clifford, dean of York Minster, is someone whom she trusts, someone who is there for her when she needs a safe place for her ward, Phillip. But in A Twisted Vengeance he steps back, looking to his own interests as the conflict between the royal cousins, King Richard and Henry Bolingbroke, the heir to the duchy of Lancaster, comes to a head. Because I’ve already established the warm niece/uncle relationship in book 1, this estrangement is all the more disturbing and disappointing—and signals just how dangerous the politics have become.

Or take Kate’s mother, Eleanor Clifford, who arrives at the end of Service, giving Kate an outlet for her pent up anger. In book 2, A Twisted Vengeance, Kate realizes that her mother holds a secret that is endangering her own and Kate’s households. The challenge for Kate is to put her resentment aside and find a way to break down the barriers between them.

The children in Kate’s household are certain to change the most through the series, as they move from childhood to adolescence and beyond. I look forward to exploring how Kate’s headstrong ward, Marie, will adjust to the new member of the household, Petra. And it will be fun to show Marie’s brother, Phillip, finding his way as an apprentice stonemason in the minster yard.

And what of Kate’s heart? She has two intriguing men in her life, Berend (her cook, a former assassin), and Sir Elric, a knight in the service of Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland. With the country split apart by the warring royal cousins, the two men might very well find themselves on opposite sides. What of Kate? Whose side will she favor?

Stay tuned!

*I am aware that many of you who read this blog don’t follow along on blog tours, so in the next few weeks I’ll share the posts I wrote for my recent tour. This is the first, which appeared at http://booksofallkinds.weebly.com/:

Snippets about Writing & Fairy Tales

Tags

George Saunders, Kate Clifford, Medieval Women's Choir, the Owen Archer series

First it was the run up to the Medieval Women’s Choir concert (songs of pilgrimage), and the concert itself, and now I’m deep into the middle of Kate Clifford #3, in which I’ve been reacquainted with a beloved cast member of the Owen Archer series who is now elderly but still vibrant. At such times, my blog is sadly abandoned.

But it needn’t be! I thought I’d share some snippets of things that have caught my attention recently.

This morning, it was this exchange on Twitter, where it’s #folkloreThursday. I tweeted a quote I’d come across that I love:
A fairy tale is a story where one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar.–Angela Carter
The moderator of the hashtag for that hour responded, Ouch – that’s a bit cynical – I’d have thought it was where one king visits another to borrow some unicorn horn.
And I said, Cynical?! Not at all! Down to earth.
And loads of women expressed delight at my tweet (one adding The queen’s words.)
How much better it would be for all of us if kings/queens/presidents/etc. peaceably swapped homely things like cups of sugar instead of sending armies to take all the sugar cane in the fields. I’m channeling Magda Digby here.

And then recently there was this article by the writer George Saunders, in which I discovered a kindred spirit. We have such similar processes! No, I don’t imagine the P and N on my forehead, but in essence, it’s spot on for me, especially section 7, about the pins.

“A work of fiction can be understood as a three-beat movement: a juggler gathers bowling pins; throws them in the air; catches them. This intuitive approach I’ve been discussing is most essential, I think, during the first phase: the gathering of the pins. This gathering phase really is: conjuring up the pins. Somehow the best pins are the ones made inadvertently… Concentrating on the line-to-line sound of the prose, or some matter of internal logic, or describing a certain swath of nature in the most evocative way (that is, by doing whatever gives us delight, and about which we have a strong opinion), we suddenly find that we’ve made a pin. Which pin? Better not to name it. To name it is to reduce it. Often “pin” exists simply as some form of imperative, or a thing about which we’re curious; a threat, a promise, a pattern, a vow we feel must soon be broken. Scrooge says it would be best if Tiny Tim died and eliminated the surplus population; Romeo loves Juliet; Akaky Akakievich needs a new overcoat; Gatsby really wants Daisy. (The colour grey keeps showing up; everything that occurs in the story does so in pairs.)

“Then: up go the pins. The reader knows they are up there and waits for them to come down and be caught. If they don’t come down (Romeo decides not to date Juliet after all, but to go to law school; the weather in St Petersburg suddenly gets tropical, and the overcoat will not be needed; Gatsby sours on Daisy, falls for Betty; the writer seems to have forgotten about his grey motif) the reader cries foul, …  and she throws down the book and wanders away ….

“The writer, having tossed up some suitably interesting pins, knows they have to come down, and, in my experience, the greatest pleasure in writing fiction is when they come down in a surprising way that conveys more and better meaning than you’d had any idea was possible. One of the new pleasures I experienced writing this, my first novel, was simply that the pins were more numerous, stayed in the air longer, and landed in ways that were more unforeseen and complexly instructive to me than has happened in shorter works.”

It’s a rich, thoughtful article.

Until next time!

The Launch of the Kate Clifford Mysteries…the Video

Tags

Kate Clifford, Owen Archer, the Kate Clifford series, the Owen Archer series, The Service of the Dead, University Bookstore

For the launch of The Service of the Dead, the first book in my new Kate Clifford Mysteries, I approached a member of Seattle’s Medieval Women’s Choir about performing at the event. Happily, they loved the idea, and the collaboration with them was a dream come true.  As if that weren’t wonderful enough, the University Bookstore created a You Tube video of the event!

And here it is– Enjoy!  Then read the book!

Celebrating Owen and Maggie with Virtual Tours

Tags

blog tours, HFVBT, the Margaret Kerr series, the Owen Archer series, TLC Book Tours

I’m celebrating the reissue of the Owen Archer and Margaret Kerr mysteries in the US and Canada with two “blog tours” this autumn, one for each series. What is a blog tour, you ask? It’s a form of online publicity, like a traditional book tour except the stops are all virtual. Instead of going from bookstore to bookstore, the author goes from blog to blog–or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that either the author or the books go(es) from blog to blog. The tours are arranged by small businesses who maintain connections with active book bloggers–in my case TLC Book Tours and Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. Some of the bloggers review the books, others interview the author or the characters, and occasionally they invite the author to write a guest post. The Margaret Kerr tour extends for two weeks from this past Monday, the Owen Archer extends through mid November–several bloggers are reviewing multiple books.

Here’s a guest post that I wrote before leaving for the world mystery convention (Bouchercon) last week, for the Owen Archer tour:
http://bit.ly/1Qor4l8

And an interview for the launch of the Margaret Kerr tour:
http://tonyriches.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/guest-interview-with-candace-robb.html

If you’d like to try your luck at winning e-books from either series, you can enter via any stop on the tours. The links are here:
http://tlcbooktours.com/2015/08/candace-robb-author-of-the-owen-archer-series-on-tour-october-2015/
and
http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/margaretkerrmysteryseriesblogtour/

It’s always wonderful to meet readers in person, as I did in Raleigh, NC, last week. But the blog tour is a delightful addition. Check it out!

 

 

In Celebration of the E-book Launch of the Owen Archer Series

Tags

Patricia Bracewell, the Kate Clifford series, the Margaret Kerr series, the Owen Archer series

Today’s the day! And in honor of Owen Archer’s return to North America (an interesting feat for a mid-14th century Welshman, eh?), my friend Patricia Bracewell, invited me to appear on her blog for a Q&A about my mysteries. Check it out! I enjoyed answering her questions.

http://t.co/TkrZtbWZxf

And Diversion Books has arranged a great deal to entice you:

http://t.co/RSJZ5gkGNU

I’m feeling pretty good about all this, can you tell?

Wishing You a Warm Holiday Season and a Wondrous New Year

Tags

Bootham Bar, The Apothecary Rose, the Owen Archer series, York

I woke this morning thinking of Christmas in York, 1992, a few weeks after The Apothecary Rose sold to St Martin’s and they expressed interest in a series. I was walking on air. My husband and I took a number of photos on Christmas morning, while the city was quiet. My favorite is his photo of a frozen rose bud in the minster yard. We also took the author photo that appeared on the US hardcover that day, me standing just without Bootham Bar, wearing a grey beret I still love. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric photo, just the thing for a mystery. Whenever I look at it I can feel how incredibly cold I was–we’d been out for hours in a freezing fog. But I didn’t mind, I was just so happy that I now had an excuse to spend as much time as I could in York. It is still one of my favorite places. Each time I’m there I find new delights and make new friends. It truly feels like my second home.

And it’s all been made possible by you, my readers. A series takes off because of the readers–you are the ones who make it happen. So this Christmas Eve I give thanks to you. You’ve been such delightful companions, writing to me about your favorite characters, asking after their health, suggesting places to explore in Yorkshire and beyond, telling me about people in your lives who are so like a particular character, and always urging me to keep writing. (And I am, I assure you.)

THANK YOU! May you all be blessed with good health and warm companions during this holiday season, and may 2013 be filled with wonder.