The Apothecary Rose (37 page)

She smiled. 'I think I will.'

'I will have to work at convincing you that life
is sweeter when I'm about, I see.'

Her eyes softened. 'You have made a good beginning.'
She bent to pet Melisende.

When Lucie straightened up, Owen reached across
the table and took her hand. 'I mean to make you
love me.'

Lucie looked at Owen, and already his scarred face
was dear to her. 'I think you just might, Owen
Archer.'

Bess found them in the shop, working side by side.
Something about the way they moved together told
her what had happened. She hurried back to the York
Tavern for a pitcher of the Archbishop's brandywine.

'What's that for, then?' Tom asked. It was but mid
day,

'Lucie and Owen. Just as I told you it would be.'
'Well, then, Bess, so you were right. Patch and all.'
'That eye was never his problem, Tom. I don't
even know why you would think it.'

England in the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) was an excit
ing, dangerous place. Change was in the air, as momentous
as a stronger Commons voice in Parliament and as frivolous as the greatest advances in fashions in centuries. The proud,
ambitious son of a deposed king and a ruthlessly ambitious
queen, Edward embroiled his country and France in a war
that would drag on intermittently from 1337 to 1453, at first
in an effort to save the last piece of the Plantagenet empire
in France, Gascony, but later as the self-proclaimed 'King of
England and France.' His constant requests to Parliament for new taxes to finance the war led to the stronger voice of the
Commons; the wealth brought by the spoils of the war led
to the frivolity of fashions.

It was in this war that my main character, Owen Archer,
lost the sight in his eye, defending French nobles who were
being held for large ransoms. As Captain of Archers for
Henry, Duke of Lancaster, Owen had been in the service of
the military hero of the age and an expert with the weapon that brought the English their resounding victories at Crecy
and Poitiers, the Welsh longbow. In losing this life, Owen
Archer mourned much more than his left eye. The longbow was the weapon of the day. It was fortunate for Edward III
that his grandfather Edward I saw the value of putting aside
the crossbow for the simpler but deadly Welsh weapon. A
good longbowman could shoot ten or twelve arrows per
minute to the crossbowman's two. Even though the range
of the crossbow was greater, by the middle of the fourteenth century the six-foot longbows of yew, maple, or oak were
capable of penetrating chain mail and had a range of about
275 yards, although above 165 yards they were less effective.
Edward III combined cavalry and archers, the archers literal
ly darkening the sky with their arrows, the horsemen then
rushing in to take advantage of the bloody confusion of the
enemy. It was a deadly combination. The archers proved so critical in battle that in 1363, Edward ordered that .regular
archery practice should take the place of football on Sundays and Holy Days.

This long war was fought on French soil, particularly
in the north of France. In the book, Lucie's mother, Amelie
D'Arby, is the daughter of a Norman noble whose land was
so devastated by the armies that he could not raise the money
for his ransom. He offered his marriageable daughter to Sir Robert D'Arby instead. She was brought to Yorkshire while
still in shock over the horrors of living in a war zone. She
had seen her brother's head on a pike, watched a schoolmate raped and murdered by an English soldier, and was now wed
to the enemy and brought to a country in which Norman French was being replaced by English. Today, Normandy
and Yorkshire don't seem so far apart; then the two were
separated by long, dangerous journeys and cultures in no
way homogenised by media coverage. Without the war and its consequences, there would have been no Amelie, and no
story.

All was not safe on the island of England. Edward was also
embroiled in intermittent wars with the Scots, who were in
league with the French and often co-operated by distracting Edward from his empire building. Yorkshire was not out of
the range of the skirmishes with the Scots. Edward actually
moved the government up to York in 1327 and 1333-38 to
have it handy while he was busy at the borders. He and Phillippa of Hainault were married in York Minster. It was in the fourteenth century, and because of the Scots threat,
that York's city walls were repaired and completed in stone.
Today the city centre is still within the walls, but the city
spreads out beyond them. In the fourteenth century, it was
the unfortunates who lived outside the walls. The Forest of
Galtres to the north was the haunt of thieves, there were roving
bands of outlaws, including Highlanders, on the roads, and in
preparation for defence it was a practice in the Middle Ages to
burn the 'vermin cities' and other shanty communities that
grew up outside the city walls. So although the population
might rise, the physical dimensions of a city remained the
same, causing crowding and taxing the sanitation systems
beyond their limits. Periodical and inevitable fires made
room for new buildings, often the stone houses of wealthy
merchants.

York, situated on the tidal River Ouse (no longer tidal because of a dam), and halfway between Edinburgh and
London, was considered the capital city of the north politi
cally and financially through the fifteenth century. It was an
important city to the Romans, who called it Eboracum and
housed a legion there; to the Vikings, who called it (orkvik
and settled there; and to William the Conqueror, who burned much of it to convince the rebellious northerners that he was indeed King. He built twin castles to guard the river, York
Castle on the east bank and what is known as the Old Baile
on the west bank.

As a crossroads, York became an important market town
and trading centre. Two rivers join to the south of the city
walls, the Ouse and the Foss. Ouse Bridge, with its city coun
cil hail, city jail, St. William's Chapel,
maison dieu
(hospital
for the poor), public privy, and assorted other buildings, was
the only bridge between the Ouse and the sea large enough for carts to pass over it. Upriver, a chain stretched between
Lendal Tower and what is now called the North Street Tower
to prevent the movements of ships without the payment of a
toll.
In the fourteenth century the York quays bustled with the wool trade that financed Edward's war.

York was also an important ecclesiastical centre. One
must never underestimate the power of the Church in the
fourteenth century. In York alone there were ten religious
houses, forty-seven churches, sixteen chapels, and the cathedral. York was the seat of the second most powerful Church
man in England, the Archbishop of York. All of England was divided into two metropolitan provinces, Canterbury
and York, which were further divided into dioceses (about
twenty-one). The Archbishops of Canterbury and York sat in
the House of Lords, at this time known as the Great Council.
The Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Mary's in
York also sat on the Great Council. When Abbot Campian
and Archbishop Thoresby discuss Owen's inquiries over a
flagon of wine, two great men are protecting their consider
able interests.

In fact, they were lords of their own liberties in York.
Although the city had a mayor and two councils, areas of
the city called liberties were under separate rule. York Castle was one such liberty. Abbot Campian was lord of the liberty of St. Mary's, and Archbishop Thoresby was lord of the liberty of St. Peter's, or York Minster. A liberty represented an
immunity from royal administration because the officials of
the liberties, not the King's officials, carried out royal orders.
Each liberty had jurisdiction for crimes committed in it and
contained its own courthouse, jail, and gallows. Hence the
deaths at the abbey occurred in Abbot Campian's jurisdiction, and Thoresby's inquiries were intrusive.

But Archbishop fohn Thoresby was much more powerful than Abbot Campian because he was both Archbishop
of York and Lord Chancellor of England, one of the chief offices of the state. This was not an unusual dual career. In
fact, because archbishops and bishops were politically active,
it was understood that they depended on their archdeacons
to carry out most of their duties. York was divided into five
archdeaconries: York, East Riding, Cleveland, Richmond and
Nottingham.

Writing a historical mystery novel requires the author to
wear three hats, novelist, historian, and mystery writer. The novelist guards the integrity of the form, the growth of the
main character, and glories in the creation of the character's world, freely using the imagination. But the historian groans
at anachronisms, agonises over chronologies, and corrects descriptions according to archaeological studies, from city
plans to the heights of the people. The mystery writer
doesn't want too much superfluous historical description to
confuse the clues, has to postpone some of the revelations
of the novelist in order to maintain suspense, and yearns to move things around in time and place to serve the mystery.
Compromises must be made in order to finish the book in one's lifetime.

I have chosen not to dwell on the filthy, unsanitary conditions in fourteenth-century York, how narrow the streets
were, how dark because of the overhanging upper storeys.
Owen notes that it stinks like Calais and London when he first enters the city, and wonders why anyone would live
there. But the rest of the characters are residents of York
and would take no more notice of the conditions than we do of our own cities. To the city dwellers, the much-discussed
filth of the medieval city was like our modern-day pollution,
something that was part of urban life.

I chose York as the base for my series character because of
its varied importance in the period. I made Owen an outsider
because the best detectives have been people outside the
immediate society, never quite a part of the community,
and because his past experiences and connections would make him more flexible. A Welsh archer who climbed so
high in the household of the Duke of Lancaster would be
intelligent and resourceful. And, of course, physically strong.

I had similar motives of isolation and flexibility in creating
Lucie Wilton's situation. I wanted her to be as independent
as a woman could be in the Middle Ages, and a strong
woman so unlike the court and camp women Owen had
known for so many years that he must go all the way
back to memories of his mother to have a clue to how to
please her. She is an ambitious woman, and one much like Queen Elizabeth I, who learned in childhood that a woman must learn to count on herself. Unfortunately, apothecaries
did not become regular members of a guild in York until
the fifteenth century, when they appear on the rolls of the
Merchants' Guild. Guilds developed differently from city to
city. In Paris, apothecaries were part of the Brewers' Guild.
And in fourteenth-century Paris, Lucie might very well have
taken over the shop at her husband's death. So the novelist
used Paris guild rules in York, but the historian made sure
they were historically accurate rules. The mystery writer placed Lucie outside the hierarchy, the daughter of a lord
but the wife of a master apothecary, a woman with a troubled
past and the skill and ambition to make her satisfactorily
suspicious.

Most of my characters are fictional, but the old Duke, Henry of Lancaster, was indeed a powerful military hero
who died in 1361. John of Gaunt, third son of King Edward
III, did become Duke of Lancaster on Henry's death. John Thoresby
was
both Lord Chancellor of England and Arch
bishop of York, although he had resigned his posts as Lord
Chancellor by 1363. I postponed his resignation in order to
consider the two sides to such a statesman’Churchman, a common coupling in medieval England. In this book he is
still comfortable with his dual role, hut later he will find
it intolerable. Archdeacon Anselm is my own creation. His obsessive character was necessary for the story.

And what of the Digbys? Chaucer sketched a sordid,
unlikeable Summoner in
The Canterbury Tales.
What kind
of person chooses a career as a snoop? Owen sees an unpleas
ant similarity between his job and Potter Digby's. But Digby
saw the post as a legitimate way to climb out of the vermin
city that clustered on the ever-flooding riverbank north of the
abbey walls. The Ouse still floods after winter storms up on the moors. In December of last year I woke one morning to
discover that the riverside street below my townhouse was
a frozen lake. Overnight, the river had risen several feet. In
the morning, as the day dawned sunny and cold, the lake
froze. When the river receded, frozen, rutted mud remained.
Gradually it thawed into a muddy mess. What must it have
been like in the fourteenth century, when your house was
mud and sticks?