by Diane Magras
Castles
Medieval castles of this period were built in the Norman style: hulking stone brutes with rectangular towers, surrounded by stone walls. These were considered modern castles. Not long before the thirteenth century, castles were built in the motte-and-bailey style: a mound of earth with a wooden tower (the motte) surrounded by a grassy space and a wooden fence (the bailey). Those castles were easy to burn and didn’t last long in sieges. When William the Conqueror came up from England in the late eleventh century, he began building stone castles—and so did the Scottish lords and knights who sought to defend their lands.
A strong defensive castle would have at least one gatehouse, a wall, and a stretch of land between the wall and the keep. Castle defenders used crossbows, which could penetrate chain mail and were very easy to fire.
Castles often had more than one kind of prison: one for noble prisoners, which was in a tower with windows and light; and one for commoners lower down, in a pit. Prisoners in the first type could expect to eventually leave; they might have been defeated on a field of war and were being held for ransom, so it was in the lord’s best interest to keep them alive. Prisoners in the second type, though, could expect to perish in their prison. That Faintree Castle planned to execute the Mad Wolf and his war-band outside of the prison (rather than simply letting them starve) shows that its rulers were willing to go to some expense and trouble for their revenge.
There is no castle like Faintree Castle in Scotland today. There may have been a similar castle once, but the famous Scottish warrior king Robert the Bruce would have probably destroyed it; during his lifetime, he saw many Scottish castles taken over by English forces, and so when he gained them back, he tore down the castles to prevent that from happening again. I always feel sorry for those ruined castles.
Swords
In just about every medieval movie battle, you’ll see a dramatic clash of blades between characters. And that’s where movie battles go horribly wrong: No warrior in his right mind would do that to his sword (at least not before the two-handed claymore, a fifteenth-century weapon).
A sword was an expensive piece of weaponry made of steel, a specialized and pricey metal. A sword that met a shield or chain mail would just need to be sharpened. And that was expected. But swords that met other swords would get nicked, and that was bad (or broken in half, which was even worse). To repair a nicked blade, a swordsmith would need to sharpen the edge down until the nicked part was gone. Do that enough times, and you no longer have an edge. That’s now a pretty useless, expensive piece of weaponry. A knight would always try to dodge a blow or use his shield to block it; that’s why each of the Mad Wolf’s sons sleeps beside his shield. (Drest doesn’t carry a shield because there aren’t any left on the headland when the knights depart. Even if she had found one, it would have sunk in the sea.)
The Landscape
The setting for The Mad Wolf’s Daughter is a fictional Scotland. It takes liberally from the Scottish Lowlands, a historic region that encompasses the southeastern coast and the Scottish Borders, goes west to Dumfries and Galloway, and reaches up past Stirling, and then to part of Aberdeenshire.
There is no coastline in Scotland that looks like the route between the Mad Wolf’s headland and Faintree Castle. There are, however, rocky beaches and cliffs up the east coast that are reminiscent of the headland and Faintree Castle’s natural defenses. And there are many spots of woodland that, combined, would replicate the landscape along Drest and Emerick’s journey. I adjusted Scotland’s historical geography to fit the story. I hope my Scottish friends will forgive me.
The Characters’ Names
Early in the novel, Emerick notes that Drest’s name is that of a savage Pict. All the characters’ names stem from specific cultures of the region, but Grimbol’s children bear names that hint at war or invasion, and history.
Wulfric and Thorkill are, respectively, Germanic/Saxon and Nordic (think Northmen or, as many people like to call them, Vikings). Those were two cultures that invaded and helped to shape Britain in the centuries before this novel takes place.
Gobin comes from Gobert, a Norman name (another invading culture), and is a diminutive. So is Nutkin, for Cnut (another Northman name, and also a warrior king of England).
Uwen comes from the Pictish Vuen. The Picts were the people of ancient Scotland. They were known as savage warriors and were the main reason that the Romans built their wall.
Drest comes from a whole lineage of Pictish kings: There were ten of them named Drest, from 412 to 848, and their names might have been spelled Drest, Drust, or Drost. Yes, Grimbol gave his daughter the toughest name of the lot.
Diane Magras, Maine
Acknowledgments
Writing a novel is a journey rife with danger. I am grateful to the brave souls who strapped on their sword-belts, grabbed sacks of provisions, and kept by my side on the way.
There were those who were crucial from the start. Thank you to my son, Benjamin, my first reader and editor, who has read and critiqued every draft. At the very beginning, you urged me to take the risky but exciting path at the cliff’s edge. You always posed incredible questions, and never stopped helping me perfect those cliffhanger chapter endings. Thank you also to my husband, Michael, my next reader. You read draft after draft and told me what you honestly thought of each one. Along this journey, you pushed and supported me. I am grateful to you both for always believing in me.
Thank you to my incredible agent, Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, whose suggestions and advice helped me to pull this novel out of the waves and onto the cliff-points to which we really could cling; and who found me my perfect editor, Kathy Dawson. Kathy, your questions and suggestions challenged and inspired me to race up to the highest point of the highest cliff. Thank you for never letting me take the easy trail. You regularly gave me the flush of courage that I needed to go ever farther.
I am immensely grateful to Antonio Javier Caparo for putting his extraordinary imagination and skill into the work of art that is my cover. Thank you, sir, for interpreting Drest so perfectly, and creating such a work of art to draw readers into Drest’s world.
Thank you to the whole team at Kathy Dawson Books and Penguin Young Readers: in particular, Susie Albert, Claire Evans, Maggie Edkins, Regina Castillo, Mina Chung, Judy Samuels, and Lily Yengle.
To my critique partner Anita Saxena and to Casey Lyall and Salma Wahdy: Thank you for reading drafts, sharing advice, and being stalwart supports and friends along the way. To the Freeport Community Library, the Maine State Library, and all the Maine libraries that are part of the Minerva and MaineCat networks: Thank you for providing the crucial resources I needed during my research. Special thanks to librarians Mary Lehmer and Joanne Libby, and librarian/teachers Julia Colvin and Lynne Perednia for their support, enthusiasm, and friendships. Many thanks as well to Nicole Rancourt and my other talented colleagues at the Maine Humanities Council for the same.
To my parents: Thank you for giving me own vast granite headland in which to grow up and for filling my young life with books. And to Mom: I wish you could have been here to see what this story has become. Your positive outlook even in the darkest times spurred me to write the tale of Drest. She would have loved you as much I do.
Diane Magras grew up on Mount Desert Island in Maine. She is the editor, writer, and chief fund raiser for the Maine Humanities Council. She volunteers at her son’s school library, and is addicted to tea, toast, castles, legends, and most things medieval. The Mad Wolf’s Daughter is her debut novel.
Find Diane online at www.dianemagras.com and
@DianeMagras
/DianeMagrasBooks
@Diane Magras
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