Cassandra Clark Blog

I don’t know whether anybody bothers with blogs that aren’t about cats, food or fashion but I thought it might be interesting to blog about the new novel I’m about to start as a way of tracking what happens when I write.   Readers often ask ‘how do you write?’ and I am myself always interested in how other writers go about it but it’s a mysterious process and I’ve always taken it for granted.  There’s no right way or wrong way, of course.  We all eventually find the way that suits us.

Put simply, I get up, shower while mulling over the story, quickly breakfast, then start.  Superficially it’s that straightforward.  About five thousand words later I stop.  End of story (or at least half a chapter).

Of course there’s more. For instance, I love that feeling right at the beginning, staring at a blank screen with nothing on it and then slowly beginning to find it filling with characters and events. Magic!  I love it.  There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.  It’s curious how that happens and this will be an attempt to find out how it does – and it’ll shadow the novel I’m working on in another way (see later) which will be about alchemy as well as a lot of other things.   Why alchemy?  I get bored when faced with the well-worn so I usually choose a theme I know nothing about. (Stained glass in The Law of Angels, palace of the anti-pope in The Butcher of Avignon).  I’m not all that interested in a lot of sword-play and spilled guts stuff. I find it superficial.   I like my people to have some heart-felt emotions, a strong motivation, a vibrant inner life, loves and hates and a desire to understand themselves, like the real people I know.  Apart from that, how I happen to write should reveal itself in what follows.

I have to admit I’m a little bit frightened.   Maybe the energy of the novel will disappear by writing it out?  Novels need darkness and silence, to lie undisturbed, like seeds underground.  Or so I’ve always believed.  Surely it’s a bad thing to talk out your story to anybody before you start?  Maybe in a general way it’s ok in order to firm up ideas, but not to talk about the characters before you’ve discovered them properly, surely?  I’d be devastated if I accidentally  killed my baby at birth.

Another thing – this is all going to be random, I see that – some writers, particularly women for some reason, talk about writing a novel as like baking a cake. I’m not really interested in cakes that much myself, but also I find this strangely prosaic.  How dull!  How domestic!  I see it as a much more exciting and magical process.  It’s more like delving into a magic pool and finding mysterious life beneath the surface. It’s discovery, revelation, secrets brought to light, frightening, dangerous in the places where it leads, always a walk into the unknown.  Nothing domestic about it.  But that’s me.  As I said before, there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I see I’ve already got a lot of different images here of what it’s like.  This is another reason why I’ve never risked writing about writing.  Too confusing.  Oh well, I’ve started.  Maybe I won’t go on with it tomorrow.

Just to clear the ground on this first day, though,  I’ll tell you that the next book is number eight in the Hildegard series, and is called The Alchemist at Netley Abbey and to answer another often-asked question, how do you get your ideas, this one came to me last summer when I was asked to read at a Waterstone’s book event and thought:  why not write something new for them?

Out of nowhere came  a short, quick piece about an alchemist.

That was the first mystery.  Why an alchemist?  I’m a rational type and don’t believe in ghosts and all that fiddle-faddle but it’s always interested me how and why people dedicate so much time to what we  call magic.  What do they hope to find?

When I was a teenager I read Aleister Crowley’s tome, ‘Magick,’  and was intrigued by the remorseless detail of his writing and the logic he applied to something that doesn’t exist.  Or does it?  I was uncertain at the time.  What if it was all true?   Was he really in touch with strange powers?  I dunno.  The interesting bit for me is that the medieval alchemists were, as the name suggests, our first chemists – al-chemist – and were open to ideas from the Islamic world where this sort of thing was being studied.  So the alchemists were proto-scientists and international scholars.  I find that intriguing and heroic. Without them we’d have no science and probably no internet.

So there we have this character, still shady, no name, no face, but a starting point.

This start actually has an earlier one as I suddenly realise.  Around the time of that same summer book event I was idly looking at a map to see if there was an abbey Hildegard might have visited after landing at Lepe on the south coast on her way home from Avignon and I came across the name Netley, googled it, found it was Cistercian (good) and on the coast (interesting) and had been a favourite of Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey) and many other writers of that romantic period.  It was apparently ivy-covered, swarming with ghosts and very beautiful. I decided to visit.  .

To clinch matters, I  was interviewed by some publicity people that same week and competely out of the blue (magic?) one of them happenef to mention Netley.  What!?  I exclaimed, the abbey!!?  I’ve just googled something about that place.  What’s it like?  They told me a bit then said they might run a literary festival there next year (this year now, of course) and what else they said made me really keen to see it.

Everything they told me was true.

It’s cleaned up a bit now but still beautiful and romantic and the ghosts can easily be imagined.  Better still was the intriguing coment that nothing had happened there (apart from a death or two) for over three hundred yeaars.  Wow!  Is that so?  No way.  Something would definitely happen when Hildegard arrived in the summer of 1388.

So that’s the first little seed of the idea and all I have to do now is find out everything about alchemy (by next week)  and why it has any relevance to Netley and Hildegard’s visit.

I do so want to start writing but I know nothing about anything and am going to have to hold back for a few days.  I’ll start next Monday morning (still knowing nothing) and see what happens.

Before then I might have a look at one or two related writers apart from the alchemical ones, for the arbitrary reason that my little house is built in the grounds of one of the most famous English novelists to write about the occult.  He was a massive best-seller in his day and the locals say he was possessed by the devil.  His beautiful manor house was pulled down in the 60’s and the developers saw fit to build a prosaic group of ‘homes’ in his once magnificent rambling gardens.  I haven’t read anyting he’s written yet but if Amazon do their stuff I should have some of his novels in my hands by tomorrow morning.  I’d like to feel his spirit watching over me but fear that it’s all fantasy.   Facts are what I want.  I must remember that.

Well, I think that’s all for today, folks.  The sun is shining.  It’s the beginning of a new year and a great time to set out on a journey into the unknown.

I hope you’ll come with me.

P.S If you follow me @nunsleuth on twitter you’ll find some pictures of Netley as it is today.

I thought it might be in the spirit of Christmas to offer a free download of a prequel to Hildegard’s first appearance in Hangman Blind.  Readers often ask: why did she become a nun?  or:  what did she do before she joined the Cistercians?  Consequently I’ve spent the last week staring with ever straining eyes at my screen trying to get 14,000 words onto Kindle and offering it for nothing more than the ability to download it.  Imagine my dismay after all this to discover that it can only be offered for 5 days for free and afterwards will have to have a price.  I’m hoping this will be at the lowest  allowed on Kindle, something like 99p.  So if you want it free you can try downloading it from tomorrow, Saturday.  I hope it will fill in a few blanks in Hildegard’s story.  I should warn you it’s a bit of an experiment in style – with no publisher to please, I was able to write as I felt.  I hope you like it.

Hildegard has  never had her back story written down although I had a vague idea of what she did when I first discovered her and it has been great to trace her origins from the time of her marriage to the big and nasty Hugh de Ravenscar to her unexpected decision to become a nun. Knowing how much she likes men I’ve always felt it was a strange decision for her to make.  But then,  being the independent woman she is, I always knew she hated the idea of being a wife without personal power.  To be a  femme sole puts her more or less on equal legal footing with men of her class.

The prequel opens at the point where Hildegard is in London to establish her claim on her husband’s lands in the Welsh Marches.  Seven years before the series opens a vitriolic and important parliament was called by King Edward III.  The Commons decided that enough was enough.  If they were to be taxed to kingdom come they wanted a say in things.  It was really important in terms of opening up government to the people although at this time ordinary folk (like me and maybe you) still had no chance of getting a say in how we were governed.

All topical now with the same question still being asked:  where does sovereignty reside, with the people, or with parliament?  Or, as recently and as also in Plantagenet times, with a foreign power?  In their case much power lay with the pope in Rome, in our case…?  It took someone like Henry VIII to wrest power from Rome and with it the payment of taxes and an affirmation of national sovereignty.  Let’s hope that this time around there is no unfortunate Anne Boleyn to pay the price.

Now that Hildegard is making a showing on twitter I’m also going to put up a few factoids  @nunsleuth on some of the things that interest her.  I hope you’ll follow her and ask a few questions to keep her on her toes.

All the best!  Keep those messages rolling in.  It’s lovely to find readers so keen on medieval matters and that Hildegard has so many friends around the world.

Once upon a time there was a small patch of London owned by German merchants.  It was called the Steelyard and was a walled off area on the banks of the Thames near where Cannon Steet tube station is now.  The group of Germans refused to allow Englishmen to enter its gates along with prostitutes, goldsmiths and barbers.   You might think these were an odd bunch to exclude but it was not, surely, as odd as allowing a foreign power to establish ownership of this area at the heart of the City of London.

It was in fact the headquarters of a commercial monopoly called the Hanse.  Established in 1157 the league persuaded the English king Henry II to exempt its merchants from paying tolls in London and to trade freely at the lucrative fairs then being established across England.  Did the German merchants give reciprocal privileges to English merchants wishing to trade in Germany and the Baltic?  No, they did not.  To make their monopoly even stronger they obtained a charter from King Henry III confirming their rights.

How on earth did they do this?   What posssessed the ruler of England to hobble his traders in this way?  That’s what English merchants wanted to know but, as now, deals were done in secret and those people lower down the line only got to know about them when they were done deals and they were forced to comply.

Naturally a power struggle began between the Hanseatic League and the English merchants with parliament refusing to accept the charter of privileges granted to the Germans without the same terms being offered to English merchants.  The Hanse merchants refused to compromise and although England was riven by its own internecine factions in the late fifteenth century war broke out and the Steelyard was attacked and destroyed by an angry mob of London traders.

Meanwhile the Norwegian guilds attacked the Hanse merchants who were trying to close down Norwegian trade in the Baltic by blockading their ports.  Other countries also objected to this unfair monopoly and took steps to protect themselves.  In England it was not until Elizabeth I over one hundred years later thought to protect her merchants by abolishing the Hanse in London that the Steelyard was finally closed down.

Why was Henry II so sot-witted that he did not see the sense of protecting his own people from this aggressive trading faction working within his own domain?  We might well ask similar questions now as the City is again under attack from a German Stock Exchange monopoly which will eventually lead to the demise of our own stock exchange when the Germans will then no doubt do a ‘Cadbury’ on it.

Medieval hat making

Just back from the fabulous Herstmonceux Castle medieval weekend where I was lucky enough to sign a few books and talk to old friends who have been with the series from the beginning.  It gave me the opportunity to have a look at Hangman Blind, the first book about Hildegard and her gang of sleuthing friends.  In the back I discovered a useful note which I’d forgotten,  about how I came to write the series in the first place.  It really came down to finding the chronicle from the Abbey of Meaux written in 1396, exactly the period when the series is set.  It was by one of the abbots (not Hubert de Courcy, alas, only a figment of my imagination) but Abbot Thomas Burton who was abbot throughout King Richard II’s reign.  I’ll say a bit more about him another time.  For now I want to try to show you some of the pix from Herstmonceux of the many amazing medieval craftsfolk I met there and show you something of the wonderful  work they do.  Here’s the apothecary’s work bench with an alembic for distilling herbs.  From book 1 Hangman Blind to the new book 8 The Alchemist at Netley Abbey – this will definitely be a feature. Alchemists, from which we get our word chemist, and apothecaries, licensed to sell cures, were the scientists of their day.

Salisbury 1388 and Hildegard arrives on the south coast of England after a daring dash back into the country, eluding Woodstock’s spies all the way from Avignon.  When she left London six months previously Parliament, led by Woodstock, head of the King’s Council, had just impeached King Richard’s great ally, Michael de la Pole.  But now things are  worse than her worst nightmare.

Woodstock, recently made duke of Gloucester, has now turned his malice to the rest of Richard’s supporters.  With no chance to speak in their own defence Parliament puts them on trial.  One by one, thoughout the Lent Parliament, they are culled.

First it was Chancellor de la Pole, then the Archbishop of York, Alexander Neville, both forced to flee for their lives to refuge overseas.

Then it’s Richard’s  Chief Justiciar, Tresilian, beheaded despite the magic charm he wears.  Then the courageous Mayor of London, Nick Brembre.  Then loyal Lord Salisbury and half a dozen chamber knights, some clerks, some servants.   And so it goes.  Inexorably, the chief supporters of the king are executed.  Any opposition is savagely put down.

And then, ever closer to the king himself, his own tutor, Sir Simon Burley, a national war hero, the man who has been loco in parentis ever since Richard’s father, the Black Prince died, is dragged to the Tower in chains.  Who next?  The accusation is treason.  The penalty, death.

Into this terror, Hildegard, Abbot de Courcy and his two monks militant, have to find their way.  And Sir Simon must be freed.

With spies at every port they were lucky to get back into the country through the harbour at Lepe.  From there, to Beaulieu Abbey, and, for Hildegard and Brother Gregory, on to Salisbury through the treacherous Royal Forest with its quagmires, outlaws and enemy militia.

Hildegard’s aim is to see her fourteen year old daughter, Ysabella, who is at nearby Clarendon Palace as damozel to a powerful  countess but from day one she suspects that she has been followed.  She is horrified when she hears a stranger asking around the taverns for a Mistress York.  How can he know that name?   Only the king’s chief spy, now reduced to low status in his flight from London to the safety of Salisbury Cathedral can know it.  But surely he would not betray her to the enemy?  And who is this stranger?  Is he really Gloucester’s man or is he loyal to the king?  Does he mean good or ill for Hildegard and, more diabolically, for her daughter, Ysabella?

Before she can discover the truth the body of an apprentice is discovered within the cathedral precinct and Hildegard is drawn into a further mystery where no-one is what they seem.

With Brother Gregory beside her, she is set on a collision course with the dark forces driving Gloucester to rule England at any price.  And, just as the great windlass in the cathedral tower begins to turn like the wheel of fortune, some rise – and others fall to their doom.

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So here they are again, wearing the latest gear for King Richard II’s famous joust in Cheapside in 1394 – or something close.  The usefulness of this form of protection lies in its flexibility.  These guys can do press-ups in their armour as well as ride war horses at full gallop.

Do you know the difference between a sallet, a barbute and a close helm?

Send me a tweet if you do!