http://www.christiedickason.com/index.htmlHot News!enthf24@cam.ac.ukCopyright 2007 Christie2008-09-28T18:12:32+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:33:24 +0100thf24@cam.ac.ukReading Groups2008-09-28T18:12:32+01:00http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/7eca9474694164f90c4023518f03b0c7-4.html#unique-entry-id-4http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/7eca9474694164f90c4023518f03b0c7-4.html#unique-entry-id-4

Introduction to the plot of The Firemaster’s Mistress
The spirited Kate Peach, the only survivor of the plague that wiped out her family, earns a precarious living among whores and con men in London’s red-light district as a glove-maker. Although economic need compels her to play the part of mistress to the powerful Hugh Traylor, Kate dreams of Francis Quoynt—her former lover, who abruptly abandoned her when the duties of war obliged him to travel to the Continent.
When Francis, firemaster and gunpowder expert, returns from Flanders, a chance meeting throws them together. But Kate, who has successfully managed to conceal her Catholicism until now from the newly Anglican eyes of London, has begun to shelter fugitive Jesuits.
Recruited by Robert Cecil, the inscrutable and dangerous English Secretary of State, Francis finds himself spying on Guy Fawkes’s plot to blow up Parliament. The gaudy, teeming streets of London hum with rumors of conspiracy as the Papist hotheads secretly pursue their plans for apocalyptic destruction., and when the former lovers meet again—this time as enemies—the flame of their passion is dangerously rekindled.



Questions for Discussion

1. How is Francis Quoynt’s intimate knowledge of gunpowder and explosive compounds responsible for drawing him into serving as a secret agent of Robert Cecil?

2. How would you characterize Kate and Francis’s feelings for each other? What explains their getting back together after the abrupt end to their relationship?

3. To what extent has Kate’s experience of losing her family to the plague made her incapable of trusting others?

4. Why does the religious fervor of the Gunpowder conspirators fuel their hatred of the English crown?

5. How does Kate’s willingness to shelter Jesuits make her Hugh Traylor’s co-conspirator?

6. What does Meg, the Caledonian bear, represent to Kate, and why?

My answer: The trapped female power. In the end, Meg’s strength helps to save Kate’s life, just as Kate’s own wits and energy have done, once released in her new life at Powder Mote.

7. What does Francis’s exposing his affiliation with Robert Cecil to the Robin Catesby reveal about his sympathy for the conspirators?

8. Why does the violent birth of Robert Stuart continue to agitate Boomer Quoynt?

My answer: I won’t say, because that would give away a big plot twist. However, I will say that I thought, when I first wrote him, that Robert Stuart might be pushing historical gossip a little too far. Then I met someone (who should know) who told me that the descendants of the noble family involved have always taken the reality of such a person for granted.

9. How does the presence of Francis Bacon, Robert Cecil’s adversarial cousin, at Pangdean Place thicken the plot considerably?

10. How did you feel about the conclusion of the novel, and Kate’s much-altered relationship with Francis Quoynt?

My answer: I’m very happy with the ending. It feels right to me, as a woman who has been through many of the familiar female struggles with love and marriage. I know that some women, mainly the younger ones, ask why I chose that happy ending instead of the other possible happy ending. I feel I’ve given Kate, after all her struggles, the wisdom of experience. She has learned how to recognize and value a good man. Anyway, what woman could resist a gift like Caledonian Meg?
]]>thf24@cam.ac.ukInterview2008-09-28T18:08:46+01:00http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/d43ce103667f686c556bb9e39dd9cc92-3.html#unique-entry-id-3http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/d43ce103667f686c556bb9e39dd9cc92-3.html#unique-entry-id-3

Q: What drew you in the first place to a fictional representation of the origins of the Gunpowder Plot?

A: I had already written my hero Francis Quoynt as a very minor character in my previous novel, THE MEMORY PALACE, when he was an older man, a retired soldier and friend of the main male character. And for some reason, I couldn’t let go of him. It was a little like falling in love. I daydreamed about him, began to see him in more detail – the height, the pale hair, the wry humor – and his amiable, self-effacing intelligence linked to hidden strength. When I started to mull over a possible story, the Gunpowder Plot jumped out as an obvious historical event for him – an explosives expert - to get tangled up in. Right period, right subject. A done deal! Also, by chance, (honestly) my next book was going to coincide with the anniversary of the plot.

Q: Your account of a small group of religious extremists bent on terrorizing a population has many contemporary resonances. To what extent did your awareness of modern terrorism inform your depiction of it in a historical context?

A: Funnily enough, I think the energy worked the other way round. Studying the historical event made me look more closely at the contemporary situation, to try to get behind the headlines. Obviously, the problems of a mixed society trying to deal with a violent threat were very much in my mind – and I think that issues around identifying and dealing with that threat resonate between the centuries. The parallel was uneasy coincidence, which may well have heightened my need to deal with that aspect of a story originally chosen for other reasons. I am also convinced that Guy Fawkes, who had military experience of gunpowder, knew that he could not possibly escape an explosion, on that scale, in time. A review in the LondonTimes drew the parallel between my fictional terrorists and terrorists everywhere throughout history. It delighted me that my ‘felt’ impulse had surfaced even more clearly than I consciously intended.

To be totally honest, writers often don’t know exactly why they choose to write what they do. If you analyze too much, you can lose the juice and freeze. You go with an impulse of what feels important and trust the readers to be in active partnership with you. If you do your job right, they feel the hum.

It’s worth remembering that in England, before Henry VIII broke with Rome not that long before my story, almost everyone’s grandparents or great-grandparents had been Catholics, now the ‘enemy’. Many of the ruling class were still Catholics. Many other people were still secret Catholics. It was the extreme violence of the Gunpowder Plotters, more than their religious or political views, that set them apart. Other huge complexities – too tangled to go into here - also surrounded this event, including the position of the Church in Rome and the religious wars on the Continent.


Q: You have written: “Novelists live in the gaps in the landscape where scholars’ maps peter out or disagree.” Can you describe more concretely how you inhabited that fictional gap in your account of the Gunpowder Plot?

A: By being hungry, hungry, hungry for the known details, and somehow getting them inside my head, mainly by research, and then beginning to imagine ‘what next?’ For example, I visit the houses, look at details of daily life in museums, wear the clothes, read what my characters would have read. I study the real documents, like the confessions of Guy Fawkes - and the awful, speaking difference in his signature before and after he was tortured. I try to build up a vivid, ‘felt’ picture until I have a film that runs in my head. Then I describe it, plausibly. Informed plausibility is the key. Even imagined reality follows its own rules of logic.

In FIRE MASTER’S MISTRESS, I invented three main fictional characters to give myself a little freedom to roam into the unknown and to speculate. I can put words into their mouths and give them emotions for us to care about, more freely than with known historical characters. Through Francis, Kate and Boomer, I can build tension and excitement beyond the known events. After all, the Gunpowder Plot failed – which makes a bad newspaper headline but challenges a writer’s imagination all the more.

But, please do ask me this question again when I’ve finished the book I’m writing now, about a real historical English princess, with a large supporting cast of fairly-well documented real people. Reality can be unhelpful! At the moment, I’m wrestling with a documented order of events that is the opposite way round to what I would have chosen for the greatest plot tension. I have my fingers crossed. I might still find a contradictory record, to raise doubt and give me one of my cracks. Otherwise, I’ll have to invent a way around the problem.

In search of more ‘felt’ detail, I’ve just scheduled a lesson in riding sidesaddle, which was the period norm for women. So far, in my books, I’ve wriggled around finding ways to justify having my women ride astride. In the future, it will be from the horse’s mouth… To be continued…

Q: Guy Fawkes is the ultimate scapegoat for the Gunpowder Plot, or at least its most infamous culprit. Is much known about his co-conspirators?

A: A few details can be found here and there, particularly about the leader of the conspiracy, Robert Catesby, though much of the information changes depending on the source. But not that much is really known about Fawkes either. As Antonia Fraser said in her book, THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, there are almost no unambiguous facts known about the whole event. It’s like seeing a landscape by flashes of lightning. Ironically, Fawkes may have been brought in almost as ‘hired help’, as their demolitions expert. I suspect that he may have been chosen as scapegoat by the government because he was not a gentleman, like most of the others, nor related to prominent aristocrats, like Thomas Percy.

Q: What historical accuracy issues did you experience in narrating a book in seventeenth-century English vernacular?

A: I don’t narrate ‘in period vernacular’! I’ve spent too many hours trying to decipher ‘period vernacular’ letters and documents. Instead, I start with the idea that all my characters sound as normal to each other as we do to ourselves. And that we should experience them in the same way. They certainly don’t speak a quaint period pastiche. I try to suggest the period flavour without self-conscious - and irritating - literal imitation. I was lucky enough to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company for almost 4 years, where I heard Shakespearean language spoken all day, every day, so that both the rhythms and vocabulary became second nature. In fact, the actors and crew even began to order Green Room bacon sandwiches and cups of tea in blank verse.

One of my special language techniques, funnily enough, is to ‘think American’. Many of the older forms of English (including folk songs) survived in the States long after they died out in England, particularly in mountain regions, or parts of the Mid-west where I did some of my growing up. ‘I ain’t done nothing yet,’ is perfectly good 17th c. speak. I’m always battling proofreaders to keep my double negatives.

That said, although I try to make my characters speak as naturally as possible, I do work very hard to avoid words that were coined after the period of my books. ‘Interface’ is an obvious one, but ‘plan’ (18th c.) often sneaks past my guard. I know that some writers think it doesn’t matter, but I’m convinced that readers feel a cumulative sense of ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ even if they can’t say why.

You can also have fun trying to show subtle differences of class, education and nationality. Shakespeare leads the way there, particularly in the History Plays, even if a little caution is needed - the 17th century English made fun of all foreigners with uninhibited relish.
]]>thf24@cam.ac.ukInterview2008-08-12T17:25:00+01:00http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/bd814226cb31c26a89f6c873e90efecd-2.html#unique-entry-id-2http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/bd814226cb31c26a89f6c873e90efecd-2.html#unique-entry-id-2
Listen to the interview...]]>thf24@cam.ac.ukArticle2008-02-15T14:09:00+00:00http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/d6aca8cc97348f1505aa3f3a36a555e0-5.html#unique-entry-id-5http://www.christiedickason.com/extras_files/d6aca8cc97348f1505aa3f3a36a555e0-5.html#unique-entry-id-5
KATHERINE by Anya Seton. I’m afraid to reread this one in case it’s not as wonderful as I remember from the age of 11 or 12. But whenever I mention it to other readers, I get back a fervent ‘Oh, yes!’ There’s a secret sisterhood out there of Katherine Swinford fans, all of us as teen-agers in love with John of Gaunt – a heart-throb across six centuries. Reading it, I understood for the first time that you could learn real history from riveting, colourful and gently erotic fiction. Then came,

THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey, in which a modern day detective re-examines the supposed villainy of Richard III and his alleged murder of the two princes in the Tower. Years later, Tey became the role model for what I try to do – to look closely at the facts ‘everyone knows are true’ and imagine what else might really have happened. Has every other historical novelist listed this book? I suspect so.
And,

THE BULL FROM THE SEA by Mary Renault. Renault takes her imagining a step farther, into explaining myth in human terms, in this case, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. I followed her example in my novel, QUICKSILVER, where I explore what a real-life werewolf might be, without the supernatural or the gothic. And what it might be like if you or I suddenly found ourselves turned into that werewolf.


THE ONES I READ NOW.

I think it’s a little dangerous to read other books in your own genre while actually writing, because it’s too easy to imitate, whether you mean to or not. Or to limit yourself to what others have done. Or to get discouraged by comparison. But, of course, I read them all, during the safe fallow times – Rose Tremain, Anthony Burgess (DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD), Tracy Chevalier, Sarah Dunant, Dorothy Dunnett, James Lee Burke writing about the American Civil War (WHITE DOVES AT MORNING) or anything else, for that matter. But the current queen of them all for me is Philippa Gregory, whose wonderful story-telling is underpinned by solid, historical scholarship that you can trust.


THE ONES I USE. My house is one huge sliding heap of reference books, but (painful choice!) here are a few that I’ve found particularly helpful.

While writing THE FIRE MASTER’S MISTRESS I was grateful for Antonia Fraser’s THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, both exhaustive and entertaining. And she confirms my experience that the ‘truth’ in history is a much more slippery beast than we tend to assume.

THE A to Z OF ELIZABETHAN LONDON (published by the London Topographical Society) is a detailed street map put together from a number of 16th century maps – invaluable when I want to know what used to be there instead of that modern bank head-quarters. I used it to help me build up my imagined worlds, in particular the Southwark ‘red-light-district’ of my heroine Kate Peach, on a base of reality.

For detailed first hand information about England in the 16th and 17th centuries, I use the diarists and chroniclers, like John Stow’s A SURVEY OF LONDON ((1598, but reprinted by Sutton in 1994 and 1997). And John Leland’s ITINERARY (put into modern English and edited by John Chandler, again published by Sutton, 1993).

And if you put on your most sceptical hat, you can have a delightful time reading THE VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE (My copy is was published by Cassell in 1886 and cost one pound in a charity shop.) Brilliant lies most of it, but also an insight into what many people believed at the time. Read it to learn where the Mouth of Hell is located and where to find men who carry their heads under their arms.

My time at Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company helped set my ear for the language - the period cadences, vocabulary and sense of comedy. I still try to see every Shakespeare play that I can and read not only his plays but those of Jonson, Marlowe, Dekker and Chapman. Their themes and subjects are often veiled references to contemporary events and can give us an insight into the popular opinion of what was going on.

For THE PRINCIPESSA, my latest book just published in England, I used THE LOST PALACE OF WHITEHALL (and a number of guide-books to northern Italy. WALKING IN ITALY (Lonely Planet) helped me work out how long it took people to get from one place to another before modern transport.

(I’m preparing a fuller list of reference books for my web site (christiedickason.com) for anyone who wants to know more about the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods.)
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