Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (39 page)

This book is not primarily about the past. Only a few of the events described in it actually happened. Rather it is about loyalty and betrayal—loyalty to, and betrayal of, one’s religion, one’s kingdom, one’s friends, and one’s spouse. Any of these loyalties and betrayals is likely to meet with a shrug of the shoulder if set in the modern world, but in the past they were treated much more seriously.

On the day I sat down to write this note, June 3, 2012—the day of the Diamond Jubilee royal pageant on the Thames—I heard an English republican being interviewed on television. He voiced his firm opposition to the continued existence of the monarchy. Such comments in the sixteenth century would have resulted in that man being drawn to the gallows, hanged, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, his guts burned in a fire in front of him, and then his body cut into four parts, each with a limb attached and displayed in his hometown, with his head being placed on a spike on London Bridge. He probably would have been tortured for several days beforehand, to extract the names and whereabouts of fellow antimonarchists. After his death, his wife and family would probably have lost everything they owned as his entire estate was confiscated on account of his treason. And that would have been the
official
reaction, not a psychotic individual’s vindictiveness. Women were burned alive for the same crime.

Loyalty to religion has undergone much the same shift. Today public opinion is not outraged if someone changes their faith from Catholic to Protestant or vice versa, or from Christianity to Islam or Judaism. Although in Elizabeth I’s reign the number of heretics burned at the stake went down, such executions still took place—as the burning of two Anabaptists in 1575 shows. Catholics were regularly tortured and hanged (especially later in the reign). Again, these were official responses. As for the crime of adultery, there were moral courts at which men and women could be presented even for the merest suspicion for being “lewd” or “naughty” with an unmarried person or someone’s spouse.

Loyalty and betrayal simply meant so much more in the sixteenth century than they do today. This is why I set the Clarenceux trilogy in that period.

I do not subscribe to the view that historical fiction has to represent past events accurately. If I wanted to write about the actual past (as far as it can be known from historical evidence), I would write a history book, not a novel. Besides, one cannot write a novel that is truly “historically accurate.” The historical record available to us is always incomplete, and often ambiguous, lacking in clarity and open to multiple interpretations. The “facts” (insofar as anything can be factual) are not in themselves coherent enough for us to tell a “true story” at anything more than a superficial level, or in outline. The very best one can achieve is a story that is put together in an intelligent, imaginative, and inspiring way, with integrity—like Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and Child, or the crucifixion, which are all invented and thus false. No painter knew what Mary or Jesus looked like in the flesh, nor what the weather was like or what the crowd was wearing on the day of the crucifixion: such paintings are symbolic, representative of aspects of Christian culture. But if they were painted intelligently and with integrity, they have purpose. Inaccuracy is neither here nor there when it comes to judging the meaning of imaginative work. Historical fiction is similar in that respect: it may be false but it is symbolic of the past and that symbolism is desirable—in my case to give a suitable backdrop to a story of loyalty and betrayal.

This perspective has brought me into collision with the more traditional historical novelists, most memorably for me in an exchange with Hilary Mantel at the “Novel Approaches” conference at the Institute of Historical Research, London, in November 2011. In her keynote speech Hilary emphasized the importance of being accurate and “authentic.” She picked out an example of two historical characters being conflated into one in the television series
The Tudors
to illustrate the depth of inaccurate, inauthentic writing common today. As it happened, I had been invited to write a blog post on this conference for the Society of Authors, and wrote the following reflection on the talk immediately afterward:

I could not help but put up my hand first when it came to question time, for I come from a very different point of view. This is because the social landscape of the past is much too interesting to be seen as a backdrop only to what actually did happen. Historians and novelists alike can investigate what didn’t happen, whether through “Virtual History” essays or wholly imaginary fictions. And as for simplifying characters, few people ever say that Shakespeare’s
Henry IV Part One
is a weak history play because it conflates the two Edmund Mortimers into one, so that the Earl of March becomes the husband of Glendower’s daughter. Hilary responded that “there is no excuse for ignoring the written record…many heinous crimes are justified because Shakespeare did them. But you are not Shakespeare.” Who did that “you” refer to, I wondered: had she aimed it directly at me? I suddenly felt as welcome as Coleridge’s man from Porlock. A little later, she charmingly suggested she might have been a little harsh, and that what she had said only really could apply to her own work. She does not make rules for other writers, she said.

I have some sympathy for Hilary’s complaint. In an article in the
Guardian
, “The lying art of historical fiction,” I had similarly criticized the suggestion in the film
Braveheart
that William Wallace (who was executed in 1305) seduced Princess Isabella (born 1296, queen of England from 1308), and was thereby the father of Edward III (born 1312). That lacked intelligence, as well as integrity. However, the message of my article was that the real test of historical fiction is not how accurate it is but how
good
it is. I stand by the opinion expressed above: “the social landscape of the past is much too interesting to be seen as a backdrop only to what actually did happen.” If you follow the example of my
Time
Traveler’s Guides
and make a journey into whichever kingdom or country in the past interests you, then why not set a story in that country? The sixteenth century was the ideal setting for my trilogy.

There are some aspects of this book that
are
based on historical evidence, however, and it may be useful to draw attention to some of the more interesting ones, as some of the details are surprising or little known.

To begin with, the document that lies at the heart of this story—although it probably never existed—reflects circumstances surrounding the marriage(s) of Anne Boleyn that might well have been true. For further details about this, see my Author’s Note to
Sacred
Treason
. In that book, the key to the location of the document is hidden in the chronicle of Henry Machyn, a parish clerk and a Merchant Taylor, who wrote an account covering the years 1550–63 (today this is in the British Library:
Cotton
MS
Vitellius
F
v
). He was first married to Jone, who bore him several children, including his son and heir John; and later to Dorothy, by whom he had three daughters, all of whom died in infancy. At his death in 1563 he bequeathed his chronicle to his friend, the herald William Harvey, Clarenceux King of Arms, on whom I based my William Harley. I changed the name to emphasize the fictional nature of this character. Likewise I changed the name of Henry Machyn’s wife from Dorothy to Rebecca to allow a greater degree of latitude with the facts (and because too many people said the Yellow Brick Road came to mind when they read the name “Dorothy”).

Obviously certain other characters in this book are based on real people—Queen Elizabeth; Sir William Cecil; Francis Walsingham; Lady Percy; the earl of Shrewsbury; Sir Gilbert Dethick; Sir Peter Carew; John Hooker; Sir William Drury; Richard Grafton; John Stow; and various Scottish persons, including Lord Henry Stewart (also known as Lord Darnley), Mary Queen of Scots, and Lord Bothwell. I will not insult the reader’s intelligence by pretending my characters closely reflect their historical namesakes; they do not. The queen, Sir William Cecil, and Walsingham all carry something of their real selves, but they appear here primarily as signifiers of power—Elizabeth I representing the throne, Sir William Cecil the authority of the queen’s Secretary, and Francis Walsingham the connivance of a “spymaster.” However, the details concerning the succession and the circumstances of Elizabeth’s birth and official illegitimacy are correctly related, as are the details of the plot to kill Lord Henry Stewart (Lord Darnley).

It is in the social detail that I have taken pains to represent past reality—to describe what England looked and smelled like, and, above all, how its people behaved. The hanging scene and the bullbaiting are, as you may expect, heavily imagined, as I have never witnessed either, although some rather unsavory images on the Internet assisted in the recreation of the bull-baiting scene, and I bore in mind Dickens’s famous letter to
The
Times
when writing the hanging scene. Similarly, the level of violence toward women is extrapolated from what I know of the legal cases of the time. It is important to remember that violence was endemic in Elizabethan England—and so was sexism and belief in the divinity of the social hierarchy. Today we cannot tolerate such sexist and hierarchical attitudes, but they were normal in the sixteenth century, and violence against women was much more commonplace than we could possibly accept today. Anyone who thinks I have overdone this aspect should reflect on a case I noted in my
Time
Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England
. As Joan Somers tended to her mistress’s cattle in a field in late 1590, a man called Rice Evans came up to her. He seized her and told her that she could cry out as much as she wanted, for there was no one to hear her. He then raped her violently. Later she realized that she was pregnant. When others noticed, she was summoned to court and prosecuted for the sin of fornication. That is the measure of the degree of sexism inherent in the law. As there were no witnesses, Evans was not prosecuted; instead
she
was the one taken to court to face the consequences and ultimately punished for
his
crime.

In a similar vein, people might wonder about the plight of women in jail. The situation as related here—that women sentenced to death were not hanged if they “pleaded their bellies”—is true. So are the processes alluded to herein; a woman might try to get a jailer, fellow prisoner, or some other man to make her pregnant to put off the day of execution, hoping to slip through the system. Many failed to escape, being hanged not long after their child had been born, taken away and given to a wet nurse. But some were successful in evading the noose. Other aspects of women’s roles in society reflected in this book include cleaning—all laundry was performed by women—and the restrictions on women obtaining professional positions. As alluded to by Mr. Wheatsheafen, a woman in the diocese of Exeter did receive a license in surgery in 1568: this was Mary Cornellys of Bodmin, who qualified as a medical practitioner a full three centuries before Elizabeth Garrett Anderson—but exceedingly few women did likewise. And, apart from midwifery and the duty of being a churchwarden, that was the only professional or official role permitted to women at the time.

There are a number of characters in this novel who are called John, William, and Thomas. Not only is Clarenceux called William, but Sir William Cecil also appears regularly, and there are passing references to Sir William Drury and William Willis. As for Johns, there are John Beard, John the Egyptian, John Blackwell (“Sir John”), John Greystoke, John Lucas, “John Black,” John Parker, John Hunter, John Machyn, John Stow, John Wyclif, John Badby, and John Hooker. Why so many? The last-mentioned five were historical personages. I did think of removing some of the others—but the fact is that more than 50 percent of the entire male population was called John, William, or Thomas, and John was the most popular of the three—so thirteen Johns was about right. In case readers are wondering about a clergyman being called “Sir John,” in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, incumbents of parishes still were addressed in this honorific way. As for children’s words for their parents: according to the
OED
, supplemented with further references by my friend Susannah Davis, these were “Mam” and “Dad,” and even “Daddy” is to be found in a fifteenth-century poem by John Lydgate.

I ought to admit that I have not always been consistent in using the correct sixteenth-century nomenclature. I have made no attempt to reflect the speech patterns of the period, which many people would find very awkward to read. Moreover, I have been deliberately anachronistic with some terms, such as “nursing.” This did not relate to looking after the sick in the sixteenth century; women “attended,” “tended,” “helped,” “kept,” and “watched” with the ill, but “nursing” was synonymous with wetnursing. However, explaining such things in a novel—and not using such terms when otherwise I was using normal modern speech—seemed counterproductive and unlikely to enhance the reader’s enjoyment.

Certain places are described with verisimilitude—Wynkyn de Worde was actually buried in St. Bride’s Church, and its vine-covered columns were a notable feature. The church was indeed lacking a vicar in 1566. Greyfriars Church had lost all its monuments, as described here, including the alabaster tombs of queens, in the 1550s. Portchester Castle was being used as a military hospital. Thame Abbey was a Cistercian house of monks; parts of it survive that indicate the layout was unorthodox. The lake or great fish pond on the east is still there; the church however, has entirely vanished, even though it was about 230 feet long and had a Lady Chapel extending it another forty-five feet. Henry of Abingdon was a real person and he did attend the Council of Constance—but he did not write a chronicle. The Lollard knights are partly based on reality but the story about them taking shelter in Thame Abbey is fiction. The actual hiding place used by Clarenceux exists—but not at Thame. I don’t know where it is. I was told about it at an event by a member of the public and promptly forgot about it until thinking through the end of this novel.