River of Sins Q &A Kathleen and Sarah Hawkswood
The Bradecote and Catchpoll series is set during the 'Anarchy' of King Stephen's reign in the 1140s. What prompted you to write about this point in the mediaeval period?
The Anarchy was a period in 12thC which was noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the increase in violence in comparison with the previous reign. Ellis Peters set her Brother Cadfael novels in the same period and often used the loyalties of characters to King Stephen or the Empress Maud within the plots. Other than an element to the first book, I have chosen to look not at national politics, other than it keeping William de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Worcestershire, with one eye always upon the political situation, and looked instead at how a period of increased lawlessness would affect ordinary people. I have no proof that the incidence of murder was higher during Stephen’s reign than during that of Henry I before him or Henry II after him, but it is logical, given the commentaries. It was certainly likely to have exacerbated rivalry between those with power, and created an atmosphere of distrust and fear.
How do you make your mediaeval characters vital to modern readers (I think you have a knack for it!)?
Thank you, I am glad that you think so, but it is a terribly difficult question to answer, because I do not set out to do that, rather it comes by chance. If I had to analyse it, I suppose it stems in part from accepting that whilst we have changed a lot in nine centuries when it comes to societal norms and accepted behaviours, human nature has not mutated. As an example of the former, in the 12thC religious belief was not ‘optional’. Being ‘godless’ was essentially like being an outlaw, setting a man apart from society, so Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin have genuine faith and expect it among their fellows, even law breakers. That could not be taken for granted today.
However, the motivations for murder, fear, greed, revenge, lust and anger, are no different today than in the 1140s.The essence of what it is to be human, the moral core (or lack of it), the fears and the desires, do not change. Why should one think that just because death was ever-present, that men and women grieved the less when they lost those they loved? Jealousy is jealousy, anger is anger. I just write people by ‘walking with them’. I write very visually, in that I can ‘see’ the layout of a village, watch a dog scratch itself for fleas, and I observe the people I write from close quarters, then step into their mind set, making adjustments for their historical period but treating them as people, not mannequins in odd clothes. This works for the vast majority of characters, but I admit that Catchpoll is different. Catchpoll is a part of me, because I gave him elements of my own father, grandfather and great-grandfather, all senior NCOs in the Royal Marines. He has their pragmatism, their awareness that with rank comes the need to ‘act’, to be what everyone expects a sergeant-major, or a sheriff’s serjeant to be - calm in all circumstances, unshockable, and yes, seemingly omniscient. Like them, Catchpoll does not deal in problems, but solutions, and he does not expect to fail. It is an attitude of mind.
The focus on the victimization of women in River of Sins really spoke to me (I was the Director of a Battered Women's Agency as a Social Worker and wrote many grants using the Violence Against Women Act co-sponsored by Joe Biden). What drew you to Ricolde's story?
The highlighting of the victimization of women has been within the series from early on - from the case of poor Nerys Ford, in the second book, Ordeal by Fire, a girl who, like Ricolde, ended up selling the only thing she owned, her own body. I was reminded of the case of German women at the end of WWII who prostituted themselves to Allied soldiers so that their children did not starve. Such women were not of low morals, not cheap, but absolutely desperate. Ricolde came into my head in the opening scene, and I wanted her death, the ultimate victimization, to also be her defiance of that status. She will not give her killer the sense of power and the pleasure of seeing her fearful. I wanted to show a woman who had become strong, as Christina Bradecote has become strong, having faced the worst men can do. It contrasts with other women in the series who remain victims in their own minds, who ‘conform’ to victimhood and never fight against it. That too has not changed much in nine hundred years.
I do not condone prostitution, but the sad fact is that it really is ‘the oldest profession'. That judging a woman solely upon her selling herself is inherently flawed is something Bradecote comes to realize, and Catchpoll already knows. I do show women who are sluttish from inclination (Mald, who hides the forger in Hostage to Fortune, is one and will reappear in Book 9) but she shows the opportunist rather than the woman driven by need. There is also the issue of the women whose husbands mistreat them, from Christina, to Sibbe, and three very different women in the next book in the series, Blood Runs Thicker.
At the same time, I am not flying some flag that says 'Men are all beasts'. In 'my boys' I show three very different men who are all revolted by the concept of cruelty to women. Now, that would not mean Catchpoll would not have smacked his wife's rump if he had found her flirting with another man in their earlier days, because he, being of his time, would accept that as 'just retribution', which is not acceptable now. However, violence that is for its own sake, violence that is repeated, excessive or even worse, for gratification, is abhorrent to all of them. I do not think that too modern a viewpoint either.
Where has some of the research for each 'case' series taken you?
The answer to that is some strange places, if one does not mean purely geographical, including doing experiments to work out what a heated and slowly evaporating salt paste would do to skin (using a piece of pork belly with the skin on it), to trying various substances as accelerants on a thick piece of wood to represent an oak plank. As an historian I have a reasonable sense of the period, but one learns more of the political and social history than the practical, so I have had to research how assorted trades were conducted in the twelfth century, and indeed not just what people ate but how they cooked and stored their food. That was never on any curriculum when I was at university.
Who are your biggest historical crime fiction inspirations?
I admire Ellis Peters for her ability to create a world into which so many people have chosen to step, and then kept them there with her main character, but my real inspirations come from not from historical crime at all but the ‘Golden Age of Crime’ fiction. Dorothy L Sayers and Ngaio Marsh both provide good plots, but it is the excellence of their characters, especially their central characters, that draws me. I freely admit I am not trying to see how few people work out ‘whodunnit before page X’. I do not mind. What I want is to entertain, in a decent historical context, so that the readers follow the series because they want to accompany Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpoll and Young Walkelin as they work out who committed the murder(s).
What next for Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin?
There is quite a bit to come for my trio of sheriff’s men, with the eighth book in the series, Blood Runs Thicker, due out in March 2021, and the ninth book to follow. I am currently working on book number ten.
