HOW MEDIEVAL CAN YOU BE IN A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY NOVEL?

Not very, is the answer that first springs to mind. The disparities of perception, behavior, and language between medieval times and now seem to make it impossible for a fiction author to be true to the time and yet accessible to modern readers. Yet why set a story in another time if not to explore and experience the otherness of that time?

Certainly some authors prefer to do the Middle Ages "on the cheap", as only an excuse to parade characters around in fancy-dress -- the "Mary Jane visits the Castle" syndrome. They establish they're writing about the Middle Ages by trotting out the cliches -- filth (preferably dung but mud will do); hanging, drawing, and quartering and/or heads on pikes; general brutality; the (inevitable) Black Death -- and there you have The Middle Ages, with everyone waiting for the Renaissance to happen so they can have a bath and be civilized. (This presupposes a vast ignorance of the Renaissance, but that's another matter).

But suppose an author wants to deal honestly with a fictional medieval setting -- to have the characters in a story exist in something other than a crowd of cliches? Perhaps first among the problems of doing so is language. A book written in medieval prose style would sorely try the general reader, but to write a story with purely modern vocabulary is a vast falsification. In my own novels, set in England in the early 1400s, I try to keep most of my vocabulary pre-1500. For example, "nervous" meant something different in the 1400s, so when writing of a “nervous” man I found medieval ways to describe him rather than the modern word.

Or did a word exist at all in medieval England? Take “blackmail” – a Scottish word, first noted in the early 1500s. But blackmail was surely done in medieval England -- and it was. As “extortion”.

Trying to hold to medieval vocabulary provides me with an insight into the time and keeps me from imposing alien concepts on the characters while giving readers a subtle sense of being there instead of here, of being then instead of now. Likewise, a simple twist of sentence structure -- "It must needs be done as soon as might be.” – is easily understood but gives the feel of someone speaking somewhen other than the 21st century.

Then there is setting. Modern-set novels don't usually start along the lines of, "Here in the early 21st century, the air reeking of automobile exhaust, people dying of AIDS by the thousands, political scandals at every turn..." because we know we don't frame our everyday lives with a constant litany of horrors. Most of our days are ordinary days, and much of late medieval English life was surely the same -- ordinary days lived in ordinary ways.

Since I write mystery novels, something troublesome is going to occur in the course of the story, but around that trouble, I write of medieval life going its everyday ways, with the characters thinking, reacting, moving, and perceiving within the parameters of their time, not ours. A woman may be of independent mind -- that's perfectly medieval -- but should not wield modern feminist attitudes. The hero may be a bold thinker but as a follower of, say, Duns Scotus or John Wycliffe, not as an Existentialist. Modern attitudes, from cleanliness to warfare to religion to sex, do not belong in a medieval novel.

For instance, class structure was as normal as air to medieval people and informed everyone’s behavior. It should likewise inform the behavior of characters in a story without it being an issue unless the issue is specific to the story. Nor is there need to make elaborate point of what were ordinary, everyday ways of behaving. When sleeping arrangements are dealt with in a story, for instance, the reality that most people did not sleep privately should be part of the narrative flow, not an occasion for pining for privacy -- unless privacy is needed to commit a murder of course.

At the same time a balance needs to be kept between creating the medieval world for the reader and over-creating it. There must be details enough to move the reader into the place and time without gratuitous minutiae -- details thrown in just because the author knows them. To say of a moment in a nunnery “… a settled quiet. A sway of skirts along stone floors, the muted scuff of soft leather soles on the stairs...” presents how the women are dressed and something of the setting and its sounds. To describe how the soft-soled shoes are made of well-tanned leather, with low-cut tops, laced rather than buttoned, and bought in quantity from a cordwainer in Banbury last St. Ursula’s day is unnecessary. Unless, of course, the cordwainer and his shoes are going to figure in the plot.

But what of medieval elements not easily clear to the general reader? What’s to be made of “a breach of the assize of ale”? Happily, context or a parenthetical phrase can make most things clear. “Bess Underbush had been fined two pence for breach of the assize of ale, having begun to sell a brewing before the village’s ale taster had had chance to taste and pass it according to the rules of ale for sale.” Enough information for a reader to feel they understand what's going on; not enough to slow the story's forward momentum.

Ninety percent of what I research for a book is never overtly used, but it informs what I /do/ use -- and what I don’t, because knowing what couldn't be in a medieval setting is as important as knowing what could. Which brings up the on-going problem of what we simply don't know. There is where extrapolation from the known to the likely takes place. Prolonged speculation on the seating of jurors for a manorial court can come down to merely, “... the benches had been shifted end-on to the rood screen to serve the cour ... with space left between them for the court’s business to be done...”

And then, beyond books and speculation, there's the physical experiencing of what remains from medieval times. Not merely cathedrals and castles, but landscapes and the houses of ordinary people and their clothing and artifacts.

It alters perception to stand in a medieval hall and feel how differently the space relates to a modern living room; to go up and down the narrow, steep twist of a wooden medieval stairway; to be in a peasant house when a waft of damp wind through the wood slats of the window drifts the fire's woodsmoke into your face. And I promise you that a few days spent wimpled and veiled and in a floor-length gown makes it very clear how differently life is lived and work is done in such clothing. Or consider the difference in daily wearing a dagger slung from your hip as casually as you pick up a briefcase on your way out of the house.

This on-going attempt to write as true to the times as possible has caused me to think my way more deeply into late medieval England than I would have done otherwise, to step away from the cliches and look at the world as people then would have seen it, rather than how we see it here and now. So, to hark back to "How medieval can you be in medieval mystery novel?" -- if a fiction author has a will to move into the medieval mind and world, a devotion to the very much research needed to make that possible, and the skill to keep careful balance between being true to the times and accessible to modern readers -- then, yes, you can be very medieval, even in a novel.

But why bother at all?

For me, the answer to that is that to live only inside one's own particular time and shape of space and thought, is to live impaired in sight and understanding. To be able to see with other eyes, to think -- even peripherally or for a bare few moments -- in another's mind, to feel with another set of feelings than our familiar everyday ones, is to grow, to stretch our limits of individuality a little larger, to reach our minds a little farther, to open our perception of our world and selves a little wider.

And that, surely, is not a bad thing by any reckoning.

This article appeared in the Medieval Academy News, Fall 2005.

HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY CONFERENCE

I'll be attending the Historical Novel Society Conference in Schaumberg, Illinois this weekend!

It starts Friday evening and runs until late on Sunday morning. I'll be presenting on two panels.

Saturday morning I'll be on the panel discussing "Keep It Short: Writing the Historical Mystery Short Story". Saturday afternoon I'll be switching topics to "Historical Accuracy vs. Plot: A Debate on Balancing Fact and Fiction".I'll be part of the Group Signing for all attending authors between 4-6 pm that same day.

On Saturday evening, after the banquet, I'll be in the Costume Fashion Show and then take part in Return of the Late-Night Sex Scene Reading.

Sunday I'll spend recovering.

(Did I mention there will be booksellers? Oh my. There goes my budget.)

THE MASTER CHRONOLOGY

I had an email from a reader wanting to know where the Joliffe books fall in the sequence of Frevisse's books.  I've answered directly, but thought the list might be of interest to other readers wanting to read them all in sequence. Here's the master chronology for both series:

* - Joliffe's appearances in Frevisse novels.

- Margaret

A PLAY OF TREACHERY -- IT'S AWAY!

Some good news: The long wait is nearly over. I've at last finished the latest Joliffe book -- A Play of Treachery -- and sent it off to my editor. In it, Joliffe is summoned away from his company of players and sent to France to begin his training as a spy for the powerful Bishop Beaufort. France, in the throes of the Hundred Years War, is an especially dangerous place to be, with the tangle of warfare and politics thrown out of balance by the recent defection of the duke of Burgundy (England's long-time ally) and the even more recent death of the duke of Bedford (England's governor there).

Joliffe, on the other hand, thinks himself quite safe in the walled city of Rouen, the center of the English government in France. And even safer -- and comfortable -- in the rich household of Bedford's widowed duchess, a very young and very lovely woman with a mind of her own.

But the city walls that serve to keep enemies out give no safety against enemies from within, and all the wealth of a widow's household is no defense against murder.

- Margaret

THE TALE OF 2008

Since the year has come and gone with no new Joliffe book, I feel now is the time to explain in detail why.  I've written here about a friend's betrayal that's left me "in a bad place", and I'm grateful for the sympathy and support I've been given.  It's not the betrayal, though, that's done the damage to my writing.  All too obviously, my sometime-friend had some manner of massive breakdown and succeeded in hiding it from everyone until far too late.  There's sorrow and pity for that and, yes, sometimes anger at her.  But none of that would have kept me from writing.  Over the years, through the various traumas of disease, divorce, my mother's uhnexpected death, teenage sons, and multiple moves of house -- troubles worse than a friend's betrayal because she had a breakdown -- I've always been able to keep writing.

Here is why this time is different.

Five years ago, knowing I needed a much smaller house (children grown; arthritis flaring), I started making plans to sell where I was living.  As it happened, my then-friend's marriage was not only far gone to the bad, but her estranged husband's secret mishandling of their money (at least that's what she told me; since then I've come to wonder just when her lying to me started) meant their property where she was breeding and raisig Irish wolfhounds and Italian greyhounds was foreclosed on.  She desperately needed somewhere with a large house, outbuilding, and acreage if she was going to keep her dogs and her work.  My property suited her needs, and she wanted it -- needed it, because with a foreclosure on her record, getting any sort of financing was going to impossible.  She told me over and over how she loved my house, and we made an agreement that set her on the way to buying it, while I found, bought, and moved into somewhere else, all on the assumpition that she would carry through her part of the deal within the next few months, making montly payments to me toward the purchase while she got the money to complete the purchase.

Through the next few years the monthly payments continued, but one legal difficulty after another -- problems with her divorce, etc. -- kept her from completing the purchase as agreed on.  I don't know when she started lying to me.  Maybe she was lying to me from the very start.  There's no knowing, now, when her breakdown began, but the end was that after almost four years she abruptly broke off all payments toward buying the house and all contact with me.  Eventually I had to force the issue through a lwayer, and because of my erstwhile friend's bad-faith dealings, she lost claim to the house and was evicted.

Now, because she had been buying the house, not renting, I hadn't had a landlord's right to demand entrance during the years she lived there; and being reclusive myself, protective of my privacy, I could understand why she never had company in but always got together with people elsewhere.  Besides that, my own health problems limited my energies to my work and my survival, and I let things slide with her when probably I should have been pressing them.  But when we and other friends got together, or when we talked on the phone, she seemed to be as she had always been -- sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, fun, and funny.  What distresses to this day is the thought of the inward nightmare she was living, the disintegration that was going on behind her outward seeming.  Because what I found in that house the day she was evicted was nightmare.

By then I expected to find some significant mess to be cleared and cleaned, some damage to be repaired.  What I found was what a judge eventually ruled was "an indoor landfill . . . the indoor equivalent of a city dump".  There was almost nowhere clear floor to walk on, because trash and garbage were everywhere, in some places piled more than knee-deep.  The stairs to the basement could not be used for the trash dumped down them.  The kitchen counter, sink, and stove were half a foot deep in trash and garbage.  The refrigerator door could not be closed because it was crammed with stuff, but neither could it be opened because of the trash heaped high agianst it -- and it was still running.  And anywhere, all through the house, that was not deep in trash and garbage, there were feces and urine.  Not all of it dog.  The stench was horrendous, the damage incomprehensible.

Just having the property cleared so the damage could be asessed cost more than half what I earned that year.  A realtor who'd known the house said that at that point it was worth nothing: I could sell it for the acreage and garage, nothing else.  I couldn't afford to sell for that little, but probably I should have and ended the nightmare then.  Supposing I could have sold it.  Instead, through this past year, I have been working with contractors and blessed volunteering neighbors to bring the house back to itself, doing all that I could myself in the way of scrubbing, painting, and carpentry.  (I have my own electric jigsaw and power drill and I'm not afraid to use them!)  Through these past months, day in and day out except when my strength gives out or the arthritis flares, I've been dealing with the horror she left me.  I've worked until I was staggering with exhaustion, until I literally could not see straight, I was so tired.

During all this, my erstwhile friend took me back to court -- claiming I owed her $20,000 for "improvements" she had made to the property.  Why she wanted the affidavits against her -- and the photographs of what she had done -- to go into the Sherburne County public record I don't know, but countering her claim ballooned my legal fees beyond what I already owed for the eviction.

Now the house is mostly restored and -- I have to say it -- beautiful again.  Unfortunately, the very things about it that originally most appealed to me -- its octagon shape and clerestoried living room -- seem to be against it with most people.  After several months on the market, there's been no interest in it.

So -- at this point, with legal fees and builders' costs and extreme exhaustion -- my savings are gone and my writing is at nearly a standstill.  I've borrowed from friends and lately been forced to borrow from the bank, which means I can lose my present home if something desn't happen to the good very soon.  For the first time in mylife I'm severely in debt and going deeper -- merely to meet my daily expenses.  I'm told that most mid-list authors do not make an actual living from their writing but have signifcant others and/or other income to keep them financially viable.  I have no significant other or other income.  By dint of living close to the bone and being willing to gamble on continuing contracts from my publisher, I've managed to live on what I made by my writing.  Now -- physically and mentally exhausted by this past year and on the verge of financial ruin -- I must look at trying to sell (in this housing market!) not only the house I thought to be rid of five years ago, but the house where I presently live.  One or the other has to go if my complete financial destruction is to be averted.  But because I'd expected to stay here, I've made this house very idiosyncratically mine -- there are lots and lots of bookshelves, for one thing -- and a great deal is going to have to be packed up and put in storage to make the place marketable.

All in all, this is why, over this past year, I've lacked strength and focus to do much writing and why there is no new Joliffe book this year, because instead of focusing on my writing, I am going to be packing up my house -- including my reference library and notes -- and hunting for at least a part-time job (which is as problematical as selling either house, given my physical limitations and with all my once-marketable skills woefully out-dated).

Effectively, my erstwhile friend has succeeded in exhausting me physically, destroying me financially, and crippling my writing.  But her betrayl of me is nothing compared to how deeply she's betrayed herself, her life, her home, her dogs.  She's gone away, I don't know where.  The last I knew, she had abandoned the Italian greyhounds at a kennel and they were bound for greyhound rescue.  What's become of the Irish wolfhounds I don't know.  I only hope that somehwere someone has been able to get her the help she so desperately needs, poor, destructive and destroyed woman.

Meanwhile, please be assured that Joliffe is not abandoned.  His present book limps onward -- he's in Rouen, doing work for Bishop Beaufort and hoping not to be caught up in a war.  Please wish him luck!

- Margaret

RICHARD II

 - Margaret

LAST CHANCE FOR A PLAY OF ISAAC (HARDCOVER)

For anyone wanting a hardcover copy of A Play of Isaac, I have received word from my English publisher that it will be going out of print shortly. (There are only a few left in stock.) They're still available from Amazon.co.uk, but they may not be for long!

Of course, the American paperback edition is still available, as well.

And if you haven't read the Joliffe books yet, there's no excuse not to start right now. Here's a sample chapter to get you started.

- Margaret

MY APOLOGIES

I want to apologize to everyone who has written me in these past few months and whom I haven't answered yet. I also want to apologize for the slow rate of updates here at the website and to anyone else that I have slighted.

Matters have not been going well for me this past year. Someone that I once considered a very dear friend betrayed a long-time trust and has left me close to financial ruin and physical exhaustion while trying to cope with restoring the property that she completely destroyed instead of buying, as she had agreed to do. Perhaps some day I will feel equal to the task of telling that story in full, but for now I shall simply say this: If you have a copy of The Hunter's Tale, I strongly suggest that you take a black marker and blot out the first line of the dedication, leaving the book dedicated simlpy to the grand wolfhound Brighton.

In the meantime, I continue to be burdened with the emotional wound of the betrayal and the seemingly never-ending investment of time and energy necessary to repair the unimaginable physical and financial damage. Almost inevitably, my proper work of writing and everything else in my life has suffered, too, during this time. And I wanted to let you know that, if you haven't heard from me, it's not from willful neglect but simply because I'm rapidly losing ground on every front. You are in good company, perhaps, for I fear that both Dame Frevisse and Master Joliffe have been neglected as well.

I hope that this personal ordeal will soon be over so that I can once again turn my attention to the things that truly matter -- my friends and my writing. But until that happens, I hope that all of you can accept my apologies.

(And if you know anyone who might want to buy a house on ten beautifully-wooded acres just north of Becker, MN, please let me know! I loved it dearly when I lived there. It was once an elegant home, and it will be again.)

- Margaret

The Novice's Tale

The Servant's Tale

The Outlaw's Tale

The Bishop's Tale

The Boy's Tale

The Murderer's Tale

The Prioress' Tale

The Maiden's Tale

The Reeve's Tale

The Squire's Tale

The Clerk's Tale

The Bastard's Tale

The Hunter's Tale

The Widow's Tale

The Sempster's Tale

The Traitor's Tale

The Apostate's Tale

A Play of Isaac

A Play of Dux Moraud

A Play of Knaves

A Play of Lords

A Play of Treachery