Karen Maitland's Blog

I’ve just been reading a John le Carré novel, A Most Wanted Man followed by his amazing autobiographical collection of stories - The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life. I was fascinated to learn from ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ how he drew on elements in the life of a man he befriended to inspire the main character in ‘A Most Wanted Man,’ even though the fictional character is so very different. But one of images that really struck me was the way Le Carre had watched the real man make and fly a little paper aeroplane, and much later used this small action to such powerful effect in the novel.

I imagine there isn’t a fiction writer anywhere who hasn’t at sometime taken insignificant image from their own life and crafted into their fiction, regardless of the genre they write. In my Jacobean thriller series, a humble wooden comb appears in two novels – ‘Traitor in the Ice and A Plague of Serpents. This comb was used by one of the characters to pass on a coded message to a would-be assassin. But it wasn’t until after I’d written the first draft of ‘Traitor in the Ice,’ that I was hunting for something in a seldom-opened trunk and came across a wooden comb which I’d been given decades ago, but had forgotten about. And as soon as I saw it, I realised where the comb in my imagination had come from.

In my thriller ‘Rivers of Treason my main protagonist, Daniel Pursglove, finds an object concealed between the pages of a book that leads him to suspect a group of traitors. Many years ago, I worked for in public library and we were always finding things left inside returned books. There were usual pressed flowers and seaweed, feathers, bus tickets, postcards, letters, bills, bank notes, and once, a gentleman’s ‘Will,’ still sealed in its envelope. I even found a locket on a chain, which happily could be returned to its owner, and an unused condom – imagine the stories you could weave around that one!

But more bizarre, was the shrivelled kipper I found sandwiched between the pages of returned novel. It was this image that, years later, was to resurfaced in my thriller, ‘Rivers of Treason.’ I vividly remember the indented shape and stain the kipper left on the pages, and the fragment of dried fish that stubbornly stuck to the paper, after the kipper was peeled off. What Daniel discovers in his book is not a kipper, but it was once alive and it too leaves a shape and a stain, just like that long-dead fish. Isn’t it strange what trivial images our brain cells somehow retain for years and even more, how our imaginations use them?

In the ‘Acknowledgements’ in my forthcoming historical thriller, The Drowned City, I thanked the staff at the museums in Bristol, including The Red Lodge Museum, which started life as a merchant’s house built around 1580.

The Drowned City is mainly set in Bristol in 1607, just after the towns and villages along the Bristol channel were devastated by a Tsunami or storm surge. Among other things I need to check in the museums were old maps, but I also discovered details I hadn’t set off to find, like the gee-hoes or sledges used to transport heavy goods all year round in Bristol for fear that the vibration caused by iron-rimmed wagon wheels trundling over the roads would shake the cellars beneath the city.

And it occurred to me as I was writing the acknowledgements how much I’ve always been inspired by what I’ve learned and seen in museums. In ‘The Vanishing Witch, the tiny golden boar’s head amulet studded with garnets which becomes a key detail, was based on one I’d seen in a Lincolnshire museum, which had been dug up by metal detectorists.

The Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle Cornwall is brilliant not only for discovering what people believed, but actually seeing what objects used in magic looked like, such a curse which might be left at someone’s door, which many people today wouldn’t recognise as such.

But its not just the famous museums of big city museums that can inspire your writing. The village of St Agnes, Cornwell– near where Poldark was filmed – has a little museum telling the history of the area. It is run and staffed by volunteers. They work there because they are passionate about the area, and want historic objects of ordinary people’s lives to be preserved for future generations.

Years ago, I worked in a public library in Lincolnshire which had once been a Barnardo’s children’s home. Many boys from the home had been sent to Australia and they sometimes returned, elderly men now, to wanting to show children and even great grandchildren where they’d grown up. Although the upper part of the house wasn’t open to the public, I used to take them upstairs. Standing in the old dormitories, watching them point out where their beds used to be and telling their grandchildren about the mischief they got up to or the daily life of the orphanage, I learned details not recorded in the official records that I, in turn, was able to pass on to other visitors.

The same is true for volunteers in museums like St Agnes. They learn from visitors reminiscing, and can then then pass on all this hidden knowledge to writers like me. A wonderful volunteer in St Agnes, not only took pity on me since I’d arrived an hour before opening time and he let me in, but he took the time to show me items on display that I probably would have missed or not realised were significant, one of which inspired the clue Daniel Pursglove find on a murder victim in The Drowned City.

So, I’d like say a huge thank you to all the staff and volunteers in all museums everywhere, large and small. Thank you for your dedication, passion and willingness to share your knowledge. I don’t know how many novels and stories have been inspired in part by a trip to a museum over the centuries. But I do know writers need you!

I’m delighted to share the news that paperback edition of my most recent medieval thriller, A Gathering of Ghosts, is published in the UK on 7th March 2019. It is set on Dartmoor, in 1316, but many of the places mention in the novel, have changed little since medieval times.

One of these, where I have set a key scene in the novel, is the mysterious Wistman’s Wood , It’s an ancient grove of twisted oaks growing in the steep-side river valley. The twisted branches of the trees are hung with shaggy lichen and their gnarled roots slither around huge moss-covered boulders. For centuries, this wood was a place of mystery and was once thought to been a sacred grove of the Druids. Although this is probably just a myth, the huge stone which stands like a spear at the heart of the wood was long known as ‘The Druid’s Stone’.

In daylight, Wistman’s Wood is an enchanted and beautiful place that looks as if it belongs more in Tolkien’s Middle Earth than 21st century England, but at night it takes on a sinister character and for centuries, locals refused to venture there after dark. Many legends are attached to this wood, not least that it said to where the spectral hounds known as the Wisht Hounds or hellhounds are kennelled. Wisht originally meant to bewitch or invoke evil. Wisht hounds were thought to be a pack of huge black dogs with red eyes and savage fangs that hunted across Dartmoor at night, preying on lost souls and unwary travellers, often lead by a dark rider who rode black or skeleton horse.

One of the other reasons, Wistman’s Wood has such a spooky reputation is that the ancient Lych Way or Corpse Path runs just along the northern edge of the wood, along which coffins were carried from the remote dwellings on the moor to be buried at Lydford. And over the years, there have many sightings of a ghostly procession of men in white robes walking the way of the dead.

I’ve just had a wonderful day exploring Snowdrop Valley on Exmoor, in South West England. At this time of year, a hidden river valley is covered with cascades of white snowdrops tumbling down its forested slopes. To see them you have to tramp down a steep muddy track from, Wheddon Cross, a village high on the moors.

When you arrive at the village, the first thing you see is a field of cars in neat rows like freshly hoed beans. Dogs are kept strictly on leads and people instructed to walk only on the footpath, and not to pick the flowers. This is not a criticism of the excellent organisation. It’s necessary to ensure that drivers are not trapped for hours on the single-lane road and this magical place is preserved. But it struck me that while us humans are obediently obeying instructions, down through the centuries, the little snowdrops have been quietly rebelling. They refused to stay near the holy spring, where monks planted them in the 11th century, but sneaked off while the Brothers were at their prayers, tunnelled silently through the earth, made a glorious bid for freedom and escaped into the wild forest.

Snowdrops or February-Fair-Maids were always the first flower to blossom in the medieval ‘Mary Gardens.’ They are believed to have been introduced to Britain by Italian monks. They were also known as Candlemas Bells or Purification Flowers, because it was an old medieval custom to remove any statue or image of Virgin Mary from the churches and chapels on Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification, and scatter snowdrops in the space where the statues had stood. Bunches of snowdrops were also brought into cottages at Candlemas to purify them from the evil spirits. Although, it was thought you shouldn’t bring a bunch of snowdrops into a house if you raised chickens, because the eggs wouldn’t hatch.

Legend has it that when the Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden it was winter in the world outside. Everything was dead and barren. They were so full of despair that an angel breathed on the falling snowflakes and turned them into snowdrops as a symbol of hope, reminding them that spring would always follow winter.

But don’t let those meek little snowdrops fool you. They have a nasty side. A single snowdrop was thought to be an omen of death, because it resembled a corpse in a shroud. Others said it was a death-omen because the flower droops towards the earth as if it belongs to the dead and they are calling it back. So, in the Middle Ages, it was considered really bad luck to bring a single snowdrop into a house or wear one on your clothes or in your hair. To give someone a single snowdrop flower was to curse them, because you were wishing death on them.

Over the years, that superstition evolved until in the twentieth century some people refused to bring even a bunch of snowdrops or a planted bowl of them into the house, because they were bringing in ‘death’. This belief may also stem from the Reformation when celebrating Candlemas was forbidden, and you might well have been bringing serious trouble to the household if neighbours saw you bringing snowdrops in and thought you were secretly practising Catholicism or hiding a priest.

But when I looked the snowdrops in my own garden today, I realised none of them were flowering where I planted them last year. So, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s those cunning little snowdrops themselves who’ve been spreading this ‘death’ rumour to stop us imprisoning them. Like the ones on Exmoor, I think they’re always trying to escape and run wild.

The paperback edition of Karen Maitland’s latest medieval thriller, A GATHERING OF GHOSTS, set on Dartmoor, is published by Headline in March 2019.

Someone asked me recently what Christmas greeting they would have used in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t 'Happy Christmas'. There’s no record of people wishing each other that until the early 16th century.

Throughout the medieval period in England, you would have most likely heard people call out 'Wassail, wassail, wassail.' or 'Wassail, Sire', If you were greeting a guest.

Wassail comes from the Anglo Saxon Was haile meaning 'Your Health'. The word was commonly repeated three times, as three was the number of great magical power and helped to ensure the blessing or wish would be fulfilled. But it meant far more than simply wishing someone good health in the coming year, because health was tied to good fortune and prosperity. So, you were also wishing someone good crops, healthy cattle and protection for their home and family too.

In 'Gawain and the Green Knight', we are told that cries of nowel were shouted frequently through the Christmas feast, accompanied by the banging of drinking vessels on the table, but that seems to be more like a toast than a greeting. In "The Franklin’s Tale" (1395) Chaucer writes ‘And nowel crieth euery lusty man.’

But no one can agree on where the English word nowel came from. Some say it was from the French nouel, which in turn became became noël, meaning 'a word shouted or sung from joy.' The word noël was first used to mean 'Christmas', and later to mean a 'Christmas Carol'. Another theory is that it came from a different French word Nouvelles meaning tidings or news. Others claim it comes from the Latin natalis, from which we also get the word we commonly use in English ‘natal’ – birth.

Some say nowel could even be a corruption of Yule, one of the oldest winter festivals in the world, celebrated at the time of the winter solstice.

But I was talking about all this to scientist who came up with the best theory yet -
‘It’s obvious,’ she said, 'if they were calling out "nowell" during a medieval feast what they were actually saying was "No ale!", meaning "my drinking cup is empty. Would someone please fill it."

Not the real origin, I know, but it’s the one that makes me smile.

A Gathering of Ghosts

I recently paid one of many return visits to Castle Drogo, Devon, the last castle to be built in Britain. Although it’s constructed from granite and looks like a medieval castle it was only built between 1910 and 1930. This amazing building was designed by Edwin Lutyens for the millionaire, Julius Drewe, founder of ‘The Home and Colonial Stores,’ and Lutyens was determined to make the staff quarters and work places as comfortable and beautiful as those for the family, a rare thing in those days.

Unfortunately, the builders didn’t stick to the design for the roof Lutyens had specified, and exposed to the wild weather high on Dartmoor, it began to leak almost at once, corroding the metal ties that hold the stone work together. So, the National Trust who now own it, have undertaken a massive renovation project to save it. Why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s not so much the castle that fired my imagination, though it is magnificent, but it’s what I found in one of the rooms that really set me thinking.

The curators have set up five glass cases, one to represent each of the three sons and two daughters of Julius Drewe. They were remarkable people, because although their father became very wealthy, each of his children devoted their lives to service to others, including one son, Adrian who died in action in Ypres in 1917, along with 80 out of 100 men from his platoon; Basil who was awarded an OBE for his work on radar; and Mary who took into her house over 50 refugee babies and children made homeless through bombing during the World War II, and who set up a nursery at the end of the war for babies, so that women and young widows could continue to work.

Each glass case has a timeline with the major events of the person’s life running across the top and inside each cabinet are objects representing the life of person – a faded letter, a chair, a military cap, a battered travelling chest. But one of the most wonderful objects to me is a home-made stuffed toy with boot-button eyes, that has clearly been so loved and cuddled that it’s to tell whether it was originally a teddy, monkey or rabbit.

It made me wonder, if we could represent the lives of our favourite literary characters what objects would we put in the glass cabinets to represent each decade of their lives? What would we put in the case to represent the childhood and adult lives of Lisbeth Salander, Mr Darcy, Fagan, Jeeves, Madam Defarge or Gandalf?

Then, I began to think what a good way that is to flesh out the lives of the characters we are writing about. When I’m creating a character, I write a timeline of their life – what sort of families they were born into; what if any schooling did they have, if any; their first job and so on. 90% of this information will never be mentioned in my novel, but helps me to know and understand my character, and why they react in the way they do.

But somehow thinking of a series of objects that might illustrate their past gives them an even greater depth. Like that shapeless stuffed toy, what object might they have treasured most in their childhood? An old arrow head; a sea-washed stone that they pretended was a jewel; a doll made by a grandparent or perhaps it wouldn’t be an object they had owned themselves, but something they vividly remembered – a pipe an adult smoked; the fleece from the flock of sheep their brother tended.

And what would that mysterious and unseen curate choose to put in a cabinet to represent my life, or yours?

I have a confession to make - I have a serious addiction. Put me in the basement of museum or the archives of a library and I behave worse than a four year old kid left alone in a toy shop. If I trip over the smallest hint of an intriguing real-life story in history, I have to follow that story just to find out what happened. Even when I know it has nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be researching for my next novel. I can't help myself. I scoff stories from history, like chocoholic left alone with a giant box of chocolates.

And that's really how my new ebook short , Wicked Children , began. If you've read some of my novels, you'll know I have created some nasty children in a few of my novels, and I'm often asked whether they are based on real children. I think many people want to believe that deep down children are, in the words of the nursery rhyme, 'sugar and spice and all things nice'.

But during my research for these novels, I've stumbled across some real-life cases of children in history who have brought about the deaths of adults in some pretty ruthless ways. We all know about the mischief the children at Salem caused when they started to accuse innocent men and women of being witches, which was immortalised in the play The Crucible, so it is easy to forget the lesser known cases of children who played those witch games in England and Europe too, revelling in the power they had to bring about the imprisonment and deaths of innocent adults.

But I found some children in history who didn't simply manipulate adults into playing their games, they actually committed murder themselves. We like to think that if a child does kill, they do it accidentally, a game that went too far - they didn't realise what the consequences would be. But one of stories I came across of a 14 year old girl in London who quite coldly and deliberately planned the murder of her godmother and her godmother's sister, shows that some knew exactly what they were doing. We often blame social media or computer games for turning children into killers, but all of the stories I researched happened centuries before phones, films or computers had even been dreamed of.

The historical novelist Liz Harris who wrote The Road Back and The Lost Girl, talked about the history that appears on the page of the novel being only the tip of the iceberg of the research that supports it, which the reader never sees, which I think is an excellent way of describing it. So for once, I am really delighted to be able to expose just a bit more of that iceberg in Wicked Children: Murderous Tales from History. Or maybe, it just stops me feeling quite so guilty about all those hours I spent crouched behind dusty library shelves secretly pigging out on those illicit tales.

When I was a child, in idle moments I often used to stare up at the ceiling ask myself – WHAT IF all the buildings in the town turned upside down? I’d imagined myself walking from room to room on the ceiling, which would now be the floor, opening upside-down doors and planning how I would climb the stairs. It was always the beginning of a exciting adventure story for me.

What if … is always a great question for author and you can use it to generate an idea for story, or ask it even half way through the novel if you get your characters stuck and don’t know what to do with them next. When I first had the seed of an idea for my medieval thriller ‘THE RAVEN'S HEAD', one of the questions that popped into my head was – What if Vincent tries to blackmail the alchemist? And it was that question that led me straight into the heart of the action.

But last week I was one of the tutors on week-long residential writing course on Historical Fiction. It was a brilliant week because of creative sparks that began flying round the group and when I read some of the students' work, I was in awe, wishing I could write anything half as good as some of those pieces. But listening to how the students had got their ideas for novels, it began to strike me that for many historical novels based on real characters the question is not so much WHAT IF ...? but HOW DID THEY ...? or WHY DID THEY ...? And when you read some historical novels that ask these questions, the first thing that hits you as a reader is why has no one thought to ask such obvious questions before about this historical character?

This has just happened to me when I read Manda Scott’s new novel ‘INTO THE FIRE’, a split time novel, alternating between a police investigation into series of arson attacks in Orléans set in the modern day, and a historical thriller about the warrior Joan of Arc, set in 1429.

Having read about an extraordinary discovery by a orthopaedic surgeon who examined the bones of a woman at the basilica in Cléry-saint-André in France, Manda Scott found herself asking the question – HOW DID an ordinary peasant girl, who legend claims Joan of Arc to have been, learn to ride a warhorse in full armour and fight battle-hardened knights in just a few days – skills that would take anyone years of intensive training to achieve? And if Joan wasn’t a simple peasant girl, WHO on earth was she and why was her true identity kept secret?

I have great empathy for the novel because both in ‘THE RAVEN'S HEAD’ and in‘THE FALSE VIRGIN’ which I co-wrote as one of the MEDIEVAL MURDERERS, I was exploring how legends are started and what the consequences might be as the legend grows and gains a life of its own. The science of spin-doctoring was born in the Middle Ages. We think of it as something new, but the medieval spin-doctors were just as skilful as any of the modern ones.

If you haven't yet read Manda Scott’s novel, 'INTO THE FIRE', do try it. Whether you agree with her theory or not, you’ll certainly never think of the Joan of Arc legend in the same way again.

And now I find myself wondering what tiny seeds of legends are being sown today without us noticing, which in a hundred year’s time will have grown in a huge tangled forest. You see, I just can’t help it. I’m already off again on another story – WHAT IF …?

I have just been dipping into a new book out this month called How to sound really clever: 600 words you need to know by Hubert van den Bergh. It is a really fascinating read, because as well as defining some impressive but seldom used words, it also gives the odd snippet of history about more common words and phrases such as how obeisance which came from the old French ‘an act of obeying’ came to mean showing reverence by bowing or kneeling.

The book brought to mind a phrase the great Stephen Fry coined, I think possibly in his novel The Liar , when he referred to ‘sixth form words’. I always remember that phrase when I am tempted to use a flowery word when writing a novel. After all, as a novelist I want people to be caught up in action and atmosphere, not to be jerked out of story by a word that makes them stop and think what on earth is the author rambling on about. So much as I am tempted to adumbrate instead of outline , I try to resist the urge. Unless, of course, one of my characters is fustian in his speech.

But I adore books like this one by Van den Burgh, just because I love interesting words and I want them to go on being used, so they don’t become extinct.

I collect old words too, just because they are so delicious and sound so right. Among my personal treasures are words like burbles – the rash you get when you touch stinging nettles. Shuckish - isn’t that a wonderful word to describe unpleasant , showery weather?

And who could resist the word scurryfunge which means to hastily tidy the house between the time you see someone walking up the path and answering the door to them. I am the first to admit I regular scurryfunge, a habit which I am sure started as a child whenever I heard an adult’s footsteps on the stairs when I had to hastily shove the book I shouldn’t have been reading out of sight and pretend to be doing my homework instead.

Are there any other scurryfungers out there or am I just talking dildrums ?

I’ve just returned from taking part in the fantastic Scarborough Literary Festival as one of the Medieval Murderers. I was amazed at the brilliant organisation and the warm welcome that all the festival team gave to the authors. I was even met at the railway station and guided to the wonderful hotel where the staff could not have been more helpful or kind. Thank you so, so much to everyone at the Scarborough Festival and to the lovely audiences!

One of the reasons I felt like hugging and kissing everyone at Scarborough was that that book talks and festivals don’t always go as smoothly as that and whenever authors get together, they usually end up swapping horror stories of the times when everything goes wrong – in fact we could write a book about them! I’ve many strange book events myself with tents flooding or caretakers going on holiday taking the key to the venue with them, but one of memorable for me was when I nearly drowned in the middle of a town High Street before I’d even arrived at the venue.

The train had been packed thanks to earlier cancellations and I’d been standing squashed for hours. I was in need of the loo, but couldn’t get anywhere near the lavatory on the train, so I rushed to the ‘ladies’ at the station as soon as I got off, but it was closed. No taxis outside the station. No bus stop. No one from the event to meet me and according to only person I saw walking on the deserted main street of the town, the venue where I was giving my book talk was two miles away.

Then to my great relief I saw it, one of those automatic circular loos in the street, the sort which you have put money into and the doors fly open. I confess I’m always nervous about these, fearing that the door will open before I’m ready, but I was desperate by that stage. So put my money in the slot, the doors slid open and in I went clutching my suitcase.

The doors closed on cue, but to my alarm, water starting running down the walls to clean the whole unit, which is only supposed to happen after you’ve left. To make matters worse, it wasn’t draining away, because some prankster had blocked off the drainage holes outside so the whole sealed unit was gradually filling up with water. It was like being trapped in giant goldfish bowl when someone’s left the tap running.

Frantically I punched the unlock and open buttons – nothing happened. To escape the rising water I was forced to clamber on top of the lavatory clutching my suitcase. But even as I was yelling for help, it did cross my mind what a great murder plot this would be.
Thankfully, just as the water reached the top of the loo, the allotted time for cleaning must have elapsed because the doors suddenly slid open and the water cascade out.

More than a little damp, I plodded the two miles to the venue where the talk was to be held. It was clear the moment I walked in that the people setting up were grumpy – apparently it was the organiser’s day off. After hours on the train, I was hoping for a cup of coffee, but I pitched in helping to put out chairs and set up tables. Just before the talk started I tentatively asked if I could possibly have a glass of water. The staff member glowered at me. ‘Haven’t you brought your own? We don’t provide drinks.’

I glanced down at my sodden shoes and trousers, wondering if I should mention that I probably had brought more than glassful with me, but I didn’t.