by S. D. Sykes
‘I promise, most solemnly, not to annoy you.’
She couldn’t help but smile again. ‘And perhaps we could invite Sir John to come back to Somershill?’
‘If you like,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘But maybe it might be better to ask him next year?’
My lack of enthusiasm for this idea didn’t seem to upset her. ‘We could visit Hugh in Oxford, or Sandro in London?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I want to pray at St Paul’s and I want to walk across London Bridge.’
‘We can do whatever we want, Filomena.’
She cocked her head and looked at me. ‘Do you love me, Oswald?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Filomena. You know I do.’
‘Really?’
‘Forever.’
And so we turned our horses for Somershill.
Author’s note
March 2021. The Good Death was written during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020/21, and I must say that it was unnerving at times to be writing a novel about plague against this backdrop. So many families have been affected by this dreadful pandemic, and for some it has been truly tragic. As you would expect, our current experience has given me an even greater appreciation of the horrors endured during the Black Death of 1348-50 – a plague which killed around half of the people in western Europe. If such a horrific mortality rate were not bad enough, the people of the 14th century had no real idea what was causing the disease, nor how to cure it. They had no hospitals, no vaccines and no furlough schemes.
Naturally, fears fermented and suspicions grew, often into wild and, to our modern minds, ridiculous theories. Of course, we now know that the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague as it is often called, is a bacterial rather than a viral infection. This deadly bacterium lives in the digestive tract of fleas which themselves live on rodents – the infamous rats of plague – and wasn’t identified until 1894 by the scientist Alexandre Yersin, hence its name Yersinia Pestis. For many years, rats were held solely responsible for the spreading of plague throughout Europe, but it’s now thought that the disease moved with such speed, especially in the winter months, thanks to another vector – via airborne transmission. If you were unlucky enough to inhale flea faeces, or blood droplets from a plague sufferer, then your lungs became infected with the pneumonic form of the Plague. This form quickly spread from person to person simply by coughing or sneezing – rather like flu. Those who contracted the bubonic form (via flea bites that infected the lymphatic system) at least had a slim chance of survival. However, if you caught the pneumonic form, then you died, without question.
There are many brilliantly informative books that delve deeply into the history, the epidemiology and the after-effects of the Black Death. My own favourites are The Scourging Angel by Benedict Gummer and The Black Death by John Hatcher – a book that first introduced me to the medieval concept of a ‘good death’. In our more secular world, it’s difficult for us to fully appreciate the importance that medieval people placed on having a ‘good death’. For them it was vital to follow the correct religious procedures in the days and hours before death to make sure that they left this earth with their spiritual estate in order – having received the sacraments of confession, communion and anointing. A ‘good death’ would hasten the passage through Purgatory, and ensure that the gates of Heaven would be open on arrival. In his book, The Black Death, John Hatcher tells us that, ‘In the later Middle Ages the deathbed was commonly portrayed as a battlefield where the forces of good and evil, mercy and condemnation, fought over the soul of the dying.’ I hope to have given some flavour of this battle in my novel.
I’ve been writing books set in the 14th century for much of the last decade, and I have never failed to find myself intrigued, surprised and entertained by the texts of the medieval age. For a long time I’ve been fascinated by a book called The Travels of Sir John Mandeville – an account of one man’s epic journey across Europe, the Middle East, India and China at a time when few left their own parish. The eponymous author of this book is the inspiration for my own character, Sir John.
In 1332, Sir John Mandeville left England to travel the world – returning 34 years later to tell the tale… or did he? Was his account a true description of his travels and his own, warped interpretation of the people and places he visited, or was the whole book a work of fiction? His account falls largely into two sections. In the first part, his account gives a recognisable and reasonably sensible description of Egypt, Cyprus, Syria and Jerusalem – acting almost as a guidebook for those who wished to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But the further east Sir John travels, the more bizarre his stories become – as he visits lands that are populated with a host of imaginary savages and monsters. A couple of my own favourite descriptions include the land where people live solely on ‘the smell of wild apples’. Or the isle where ‘there are people whose ears are so big that they hang down to their knees’. It is easy to now laugh at Sir John’s wilder descriptions – but there was a time when his book was widely read across Europe, and his stories were loved and completely believed. If nothing else, it gives us an incredible insight into the medieval mind – its love of the bizarre and its fascination with the ‘other’.
Much of my novel The Good Death is set inside the world of the medieval monastery. Kintham Abbey is a place of my own imagination, but based on a typical Benedictine monastery of the times – the likes of which would have been commonplace in England until the Reformation, when the monasteries were dissolved on the orders of Henry VIII. The monasteries of the middle ages were incredibly wealthy organisations, holding great swathes of land across England and behaving towards their tenants in much the same way as a feudal lord. In addition to their role as landlord, the monasteries were also central to many local livelihoods, employing a great number of workers and servants from the villages on their estates. The profits from renting land to farmers was considerable, and allowed the monasteries to support a small body of monks whose life was primarily devoted to prayer and contemplation. The monks themselves were rarely recruited from the highest echelons of society, but neither were they the sons of poor farmers or labourers. They tended, like Oswald, to be members of the minor aristocracy, as the church was seen as a respectable and stable career for a young man of some status. The perfect place for a noble family to deposit a spare son!
Inside these monasteries, the monks lived in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict. Written by Saint Benedict in 530, this rulebook espoused a way of life that centred on obedience, hard work and humility, and was the model for countless monasteries across Europe. Although Oswald finds the rigors of this life difficult to stomach, I should say that the Benedictines enjoyed a more lenient and relaxed regime compared to some of the other, more austere orders such as the Cistercians and the Carthusians. The Benedictines would find ways to circumvent the strictest rules on poverty, possessions and diets, and were known for the generosity of their hospitality. They believed in creating a community spirit within their abbeys and reaching out to the poorest in their parishes – an important function in a society that provided no other safety nets.
I have strived to re-create the world of the 14th century in each of my novels, though it has sometimes been uncomfortable to sit inside the heads of some of my characters, and reflect the prevailing opinions of the time. This has been particularly true with this novel, when the attitude towards women, especially the poorest in society, was sexist at best and repugnant at worst. Whilst, as a writer, it’s tempting to return to the past and retrospectively empower women, I wanted to create an accurate portrayal of their lives. That said, I’ve pushed the influence and the agency of my female characters as far as I’ve felt possible, given the historical setting. If they sometimes feel too compliant or accepting, then I’m afraid that this is a sign of those times. As Ian Mortimer tells us in his excellent book The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England, ‘From birth until widowhood they [women] are living under the control – nominall
y, at least – of someone else, in most cases a man.’
Acknowledgments
My first thanks, as ever, go to my wonderful editor Nick Sayers and my agent Gordon Wise – for their guidance, feedback, support and friendship. Thank you also to Claiborne Hancock and Jessica Case at Pegasus Books in the US, and to my US agent Deborah Schneider. I am very grateful to work with such a great team! It’s been a strange and lonely year in lockdown, so I want to thank my friends – both inside and outside the writing world – for helping me to keep sane during the last twelve months. Being at the end of a telephone line, zoom call or meeting for a socially-distanced walk, has been such an important link back to normality. Thanks as well to my sister Kathy and my Mum for all their encouragement, understanding and patience – particularly when I’ve been holed away writing, editing or researching for weeks. Lastly, I wanted to express my gratitude to my husband, Paul, and adult children Natalie and Adam. Thank you for listening, reading and caring about my books. I am blessed to have your love and support.
About the Author
S. D. Sykes is the author of Plague Land, The Butcher Bird, City of Masks, and The Bone Fire, all available from Pegasus Crime. She lives in England.
Also by S D Sykes
Plague Land
The Butcher Bird
City of Masks
The Bone Fire
THE GOOD DEATH
Pegasus Crime is an imprint of
Pegasus Books, Ltd.
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Copyright © 2021 by S. D. Sykes
First Pegasus Books hardcover edition September 2021
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ISBN: 978-1-64313-779-7
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