Murder by Misrule: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 1) (29 page)
Read Murder by Misrule: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Anna Castle
Bacon wasn't really banned from court, at least not this early in his life. He did annoy the queen & Lord Burleigh with some importunate request around this time. The consensus was that he was too young to be granted the said request. He did make proposals to revise the common law, later in his life. He published a set of legal maxims in 1597 which were still being used by law students well into the nineteenth century. He worked on things for years before publishing, so it's not improbable that he was thinking about these things in 1586. The Queen's fury and his banishment from court are entirely my invention.
Sticklers will observe that I got the Reading schedule backwards. Lent was only for double readers — established benchers reading a second time. First-timers read in August. I made the switch to get Francis's reading closer to the season of Misrule. He really did give his first reading at Lent in 1588, however. Why this exception was made for him isn't known. Strings were pulled, but we don't know whose or why.
I like to use actual historical people whenever I can. Some are unavoidable, like the queen, her chief courtiers, and members of Francis Bacon's family. Others are minor figures, mere footnotes, now, in some book, but once the stars of their own lives.
Here's this book's roster of real persons:
- Francis Bacon
- Queen Elizabeth I
- William Cecil, Lord Burghley
- Captain Sir Walter Raleigh
- Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
- Penelope Rich, née Devereux, Lady Rich
- William Danby, the Queen's Coroner. He makes a cameo appearance in chapter 2.
- Elizabeth Moulthorne, surgeon. I found her in Liza Picard's delightful
Elizabeth's London
. Tracing the footnotes yielded nothing more than her name, origin, and profession. I like her, though; maybe I'll try harder for a later book. - Sir Christopher Yelverton. Member of an important legal dynasty. Heard walking up the stairs in chapter 9.
- William Philippes. Francis's close friend and assistant. He was the son of a Customs House official, also a friend of Francis's who probably lent him money in exchange for helping his son into higher social circles. Son's real first name isn't known, so I named him after his father. He was the brother of Sir Francis Walsingham's cryptographer, Thomas Phelippes, who spelled his name differently for reasons known only to himself.
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A warm and hearty thank you goes out to everyone who supported me through the writing of this book, especially through the seemingly endless editing process. The book is the better for the wise counsel of my fellow Capitol Crime Writers: Russell Ashworth, Jerry Cavin, Will Chandler, Donna Daniel, K.P. Gresham, David Hansard, and Julie Rinaldi. It was further improved by the sharp eyes and excellent taste of my editor, Jennifer Quinlan of Historical Editorial.
I also wholeheartedly thank the Sisters in Crime Guppies, especially the members of PressQuest, for giving me the courage and support to venture forth into publication. Extra thanks are due to my role models Kaye George, Diane Vallere, and Susan Schreyer. Without you, this book might never have started its climb up the winding stair.
Anna Castle holds an eclectic set of degrees: BA in the Classics, MS in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics. She has had a correspondingly eclectic series of careers: waitressing, software engineering, grammar-writing, a short stint as an associate professor, and managing a digital archive. Historical fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas, but mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.
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Book 1,
Black & White & Dead All Over
What happens when the Internet service provider in a small town spies on his clients' cyber-lives and blackmails them for gifts and services?
Murder; that's what happens.
Penelope Trigg moves to Lost Hat, Texas to open a photography studio and find herself as an artist. Things are going great. She's got a few clients, some friends, even a hot new high-tech boyfriend. But when Penny submits some nude figure studies of him to a contest, she gets hit with a blackmail letter in her inbox. "Do what I want or your lover's nudie pix get splattered across the Internet." The timing couldn't be worse, so Penny is forced to submit to the blackmailer’s demands. Then people start dying and all the clues point to her. She has to rattle every skeleton in every closet in Lost Hat to keep herself out of jail and find the real killer.
Book 2,
Flash Memory
Nature photographer Penelope Trigg has landed the job of her dreams: documenting the transformation of over-grazed rangeland into an eco-dude ranch and spa, owned by her boyfriend Tyler Hawkins. Then a body is found on the ranch and Ty is arrested. The victim was an aggressive real estate developer with his greedy eyes on Ty’s land and Ty’s sister Diana, who is almost engaged to the senior deputy sheriff. Clues put her at the center of the puzzle.
Determined to prove Ty’s innocence, Penny stirs up Diana’s old flames, trying to shed enough light to develop an alternative suspect. She mainly learns how to lose friends and annoy people, until she realizes someone has been manipulating the evidence. But is Ty the framer or the framee? Penny uses her eye for detail and her camera's memory to put the picture together and reveal the killer.
Book 1,
Murder by Misrule
Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule.
Death by Disputation
Thomas Clarady is recruited to spy on the increasingly rebellious Puritans at Cambridge University. Francis Bacon is his spymaster; his tutor in both tradecraft and religious politics. Their commission gets off to a deadly start when Tom finds his chief informant hanging from the roof beams. Now he must catch a murderer as well as a seditioner. His first suspect is volatile poet Christopher Marlowe, who keeps turning up in the wrong places.
Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and harangued daily by the exacting Bacon, Tom risks his very soul to catch the villains and win his reward.
The Widows Guild
In the summer of 1588, Europe waits with bated breath for King Philip of Spain to launch his mighty armada against England. Everyone except Lady Alice Trumpington, whose father wants her wed to the highest bidder. She doesn't want to be a wife, she wants to be widow; a rich one, and the sooner, the better. So she marries an elderly viscount, gives him a sleeping draught, and spends her wedding night with Thomas Clarady, her best friend and Francis Bacon's assistant. The next morning, they find the viscount murdered in his bed and they're both locked into the Tower.
Lady Alice appeals to the Andromache Society, the widows’ guild led by Francis Bacon's formidable aunt, Lady Russell. They charge Bacon with getting the new widow out of prison and identifying the real murderer. He soon learns the viscount wasn’t an isolated case. Someone is murdering Catholics in London and taking advantage of armada fever to mask the crimes. The killer seems to have privy information — from someone close to the Privy Council?
The investigation takes Francis from the mansions along the Strand to the rack room under the Tower. Pulled and pecked by a coven of demanding widows, Francis struggles to maintain his reason and his courage to see through the fog of war and catch the killer.
Murder by Misrule
A Francis Bacon Mystery
Kindle Edition | June 2014
Also available in print
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Copyright © 2014 by Anna Castle
Cover design by Jennifer Quinlan
Editorial services by Jennifer Quinlan,
Historical Editorial
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9916025-1-3
Produced in the United States of America