A little while ago I saw someone post their bookmark graphics to Facebook. And I thought: “I have some of those!” So here’s a little Joliffe for your enjoyment…

The image of Joliffe here is taken from a 15th century painting by Carlo Crivelli — “The Virgin and Child With Saint Jerome and Saint Sebastian”. When I saw it in a book of period paintings, I immediately thought, “That’s Joliffe”. I pointed it out to my son, and he surprised me by putting together these very handsome bookmarks (which I’ve been handing out for the past several months).

– Margaret

The almshouses which feature in both “Heretical Murder” and “Lowly Death” were founded in 1424 as part of the Charity of Sir Richard Wittington. This is the same “Dick Wittington” of nursery tales and Roald Dahl’s poem “Dick Whittington and His Cat”.

Whatever the reality of the cat and of the bells of London bidding him return, the historical Whittington was indeed “thrice Lord Mayor of London town” and died an extremely wealthy man, leaving provision in his will for the endowing of a library in London and these almshouses connected to a college of priests at St. Michael Paternoster church, all of which was duly done by his executors.  Much disappeared in the next century, courtesy of the Tudors, and the church burned in the Great Fire of the century after that but was rebuilt on the same site and is still there; and although Whittington’s library is gone, his almshouses still exist. Here’s an engraving of them from 1850:

Another from 1827:

And a last from 1880:

In 1966, the charity rebuilt the almshouses, moving from Highgate to East Grinstead. They now provide 56 homes for elderly ladies and a few married couples. Although no longer in the center of London, they still serve their original purpose after almost 600 years.

– Margaret

Over the past few months I’ve gotten many e-mails from Nook owners all asking the same thing: When will your stories be available for the Nook?

And the answer to that is: Right now. We got the Frevisse e-books up a few weeks ago and I’ve just received word that the conversion process has been finished for all of my e-books and they’re now available for sale at the Barnes & Noble website. Going forward, the Nook and Kindle versions will be getting released simultaneously whenever that’s legally possible.

 

(click any cover for its Nook page)

Kobo Owners: I know many of you are also waiting for these titles to be available through the Kobo store. Unfortunately, we have no idea when that will happen. Although you can buy the e-books available from Berkeley, Kobo has not made the other Frevisse e-books available despite the fact that they were submitted weeks and/or months ago. I have no control over this, and I recommend writing directly to Kobo if you want to see any action taken on it. It is within their power to offer the books; they simply haven’t done so.

However, the older Frevisse e-books (the ones that I have control over) are currently available through Smashwords. And if you buy them through Smashwords, you’ll be able to download them in a wide variety of formats, including the ePub format which will allow you to read them on your Kobo. (In fact, the formats available on Smashwords should let you read the books on any e-reader you might own.)

We’ll be converting the rest of the novelettes and short stories to Smashwords in the near future, and I’ll post an update here when that happens.

My tech person also tells me that we do not use DRM at any of our digital outlets, which means that it should be relatively easy to convert file formats. (Although, honestly, I’d be lost if you asked me to do it.)

– Margaret

“Lowly Death” has been released for the Kindle and Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

A CUNNING AND CLEVER GREED…

Come down the Paternoster Passage, cross the church’s yard, and knock on the doors of Master Whittington’s Almshouse. Master Pecock, a man of the cloth and the greatest detective of 15th century London, will answer your call.

Just as he answers Dick Colop’s call. The mother of young Colop’s friend has slipped, fallen, and died. But something doesn’t feel right about it. There’s a strange uneasiness creeping at the back of Colop’s mind.

And then there was the matter of the candle.

It was in the kitchen. A burned down stub of a candle. It had rolled under a table. And left a thick splattering of wax on the floor a foot or so away.

That was enough. Master Pecock was on the scent. The scent of lies. The scent of wrongs. The scent of murder.

Kindle Edition – Nook Edition

“Lowly Death” is the third tale of Bishop Pecock, coming after “Heretical Murder” and after “The Simple Logic of It”. It was first published in Murder Most Catholic, edited by Ralph McInerny. Master Pecock has advanced in his priestly career and is now head of the well-endowed Whittington Almshouses in London.  Rather than the tendrils of national crime, here he deals with a domestic matter.

The plot came – as so many of my plots do – from an actual medieval situation.  I will often be innocently reading some scholarly study or else the documents themselves, when something catches at the criminally-inclined corner of my mind and I suddenly ask, “Yes, but what if…” and away I’ll be, the twisty mind of a mystery writer turning what – in the document – was a perfectly straightforward business matter into a full-blooded (and usually bloody) convolution of human relationships and situations. And when I look back from the finished story to the innocent document that started at all, I’ll often be surprised at how far the transmutation of imagination has taken the original few facts.

One small but continually niggling thing stays with me from this story: The editor’s note at the beginning of the anthology.  There Mr. McInerny stated that, although the story “uses medieval setting for color, it remains a thoroughly modern deductive mystery”. In fact, the methods of deduction used in the story are perfectly medieval, drawn directly from the methods of deduction outlined by Master Pecock himself in his own works of circa 1450, wherein he urged people to seek truth through the use of reason and demonstrated how to do it, very much in the way he uses logic and reason in this story.

– Margaret

“Heretical Murder” has been released for the Kindle and Nook. It can also be read on any iPad, Android, Windows PC, Mac, or Blackberry device using the free Kindle Reading Apps for those platforms.

BETWEEN DUTY AND BLOOD…

Questionable matters? Strange deaths? Mysteries most foul? The cleverest man in 15th century England lives at Master Whittington’s Almshouse! Turn right off College Hill Street, go through the narrow Paternoster Passage, and knock on the third door on the left.

Dick Colop, student and scrivener, knows those directions well. They take him to the quiet study of Sire Pecock, priest of the Church and scholar of both man and book. A man has been cut down in the busy streets of London. The sheriff thinks it nothing more than a tavern brawl, but Colop knows that he never made it through the door.

A terrible accident or something worse? Sire Pecock will follow the dark and murderous ways of heresy to find the truth of sin.

Kindle Edition – Nook Edition

“Heretical Murder” was originally written for the Mammoth Book of More Historical Whodunits. (Which was published as the Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits in England; which is not to be confused with the previous volume of the exact same name which contained a completely different set of stories including “The Witch’s Tale”.  I take no responsibility for the vague ways of publishers.)

I don’t remember why the allowed word-count for this story was so high, but I took full advantage of it to write a story that roamed through the streets of London, keeping company with one of my favorite people from the 1400s – the scholar and churchman Reynold Pecock (otherwise called “Reginald” by modern scholars).

He had crossed my path more than once in my years of research and reading but never caught my interest until I attended a session at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and heard two scholars – Stephen E. Lahey and Brent Moberley — discussing Bishop (as he became) Pecock.  Talking with them afterwards, I confessed that, rather than a legitimate scholar, I wrote medieval murder mysteries.  After what I read as a startled pause, they both declared with delight that Bishop Pecock would make a great detective.

Somewhat taken aback by the idea but intrigued by what they had been saying about him, I set to taking a longer, deeper look at Reynold Pecock, even going so far as to read some of his religious treatises in Middle English.  I found him a delightful, interesting, complex man and knew I had to use him in a story or – better yet — stories.
This particular one is chronologically the first of the three short stories in which he figures and finds him early in his career in London after a long while as a scholar and teacher at the University of Oxford.

The uprising that is a background to this story is historical, and it may be worthwhile to note that although the use of the word “pamphlet” forty years before the introduction of printing to England may jar with some readers, it is not an anachronism.  It is the actual word used in a contemporary chronicle regarding Lollard activities in London at this time.  More than that, the copying of books was indeed a commercial enterprise in London at the time, and a family named Colop was prominent in it.

– Margaret

LaVonne Neff, a very nice woman who also wrote Dame Frevisse: Someone You Should Know, has written a very charming review of Winter Heart.

This was originally meant to be part of the Winter Heart Blog Tour, but technical difficulties delayed things considerably. (Sorry about that, LaVonne!) So this can be thought of as a somewhat belated epilogue to the tour.

This audio book of Die Novizin (the German translation of The Novice’s Tale) has actually be available for awhile now, but I’ve only recently sorted out my author’s copy of it. With that in hand, however, I’m able to offer this sample from the beginning of the book courtesy of Youtube:

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I will NOT be appearing at the Historical Novel Society Conference in San Diego, CA. The panel I was hosting (Keeping a Series Fresh), however, is still happening. Medieval mystery author Priscilla Royal has graciously agreed to take over the hosting duties. I’ve turned over the materials I had prepared to her, and I think the panel should still be a great deal of fun.

Keeping a Series Fresh
Saturday, June 18th, 2011
8:30 – 9:30 AM

My apologies to anyone who is unduly inconvenienced by this. I would have dearly liked to go, but it just wasn’t possible this year.

– Margaret

Most of The Murderer’s Tale takes place at Minster Lovel, the church and manor house of the Lovell family. As I mentioned in my author’s note for the book, this is a real place. You can still visit the ruins, which are both beautiful and haunting:

It was strange to so recently revisit a place filled with such life and hope in The Murderer’s Tale and then see these beautiful but utterly different photographs from centuries far-removed.

– Margaret

The Lovell family and their manor of Minster Lovell were not made up for this story.  The effigy of Lord Lovell mentioned here is still in the parish church, and the ruins of their lovely manor house can still be visited beside the Windrush River under Wychwood in Oxfordshire.  I recommend it.

As for Lionel Knyvet’s affliction, epilepsy has been known throughout history.  It takes many different forms and is better understood now than ever before, with ways to often control the seizures, but through most of the centuries it was seen as either a mental disease – madness – or else as a spiritual one – possession by either demonic or shamanistic spirits, depending on the culture in which the person lived (and lives; such beliefs persist in many places) – or of course as madness brought on by demonic possession.

In medieval English law, madness was a recognized defense.  The legal ramifications of Lionel’s supposed crime, given he had apparently committed it while mad, were as compassionate as laid out in the story.  Instead of a legally-recognized madman’s property being seized into the king’s hands and lost after he was found guilty of committing a crime, his property would be held in trust for him, in the hope of him regaining his wits, whereupon his property and his freedom would be restored to him.

Of course the law also includes a warning to beware of someone feigning madness in order to avoid punishment, which goes to show that human nature holds true through the years – and that medieval lawyers and juries were no fools.

– Margaret

Kindle Edition / Nook Edition
Other Editions