by Anna Elliott
What kind of medical research did you do to establish Isolde’s role as a healer?
Very little concrete information about Dark Age medicine has survived, but I used a variety of period herbals (books of herbal cures) as resources to find remedies that Isolde might credibly have used. And then another of my favorite resources was a wonderful book called Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition: An Ethnobotany of Britain and Ireland by David E. Allen and Gabrielle Hatfield, which catalogs the various medicinal uses of most plants native to Britain and Ireland in traditional herbal healing and details the geographic areas where each folk remedy was most commonly found.
I also read a lot of firsthand accounts from army doctors and combat nurses—from men and women who served in WWII through Vietnam and the war in Iraq—to get a sense of what their experience was like, what the challenges and hardest moments were that they faced. Obviously the technology and medicines available to treat battle wounds have changed immeasurably since Isolde’s time. But I think the emotions of caring for wounded men are still very much the same.
You chose to portray the villainous Marche through flashbacks and allusions rather than actual scenes in the novel. Why?
One of the major themes that emerged in the writing of this book was the internal journey that Isolde makes to heal from the trauma in her past (which of course in some ways mirrors the literal journey she makes from Gwynedd to Wessex with Trystan). Marche is in many ways both part of and representative of the past trauma she needs to heal from in order to move on towards her future. So in this book Marche was more important as a part of Isolde’s internal journey—as a presence filtered through her own mind, in a way—than he was as an active character in the political or military aspects of the plot.
The dog, Cabal, is as compelling as the human characters in your novel. Did you base the relationship between Isolde and Cabal on any connection you’ve experienced with an animal in real life?
We did always have cats and dogs when I was growing up—and since my only brother was thirteen years older than I am, the pets were quite often my playmates. Though Cabal is really more of a composite of dogs I’ve known and what I knew from research about dogs trained for fighting and military use. My dogs were some bouncy, ridiculously friendly golden retrievers and a miniature poodle—pretty much as far from war hounds as you can get!
Why is Isolde so openly antagonistic toward Christianity? To what extent would her position be considered dangerous or provocative in her milieu?
Hmmm . . . That’s kind of an interesting reading, since I didn’t at all intend for Isolde to be seen as antagonistic to Christianity per se. The sixth century in Britain was a time of change, in which the old pagan religion was rapidly being replaced by Christianity. Isolde has been raised by her grandmother Morgan, who did follow the old pagan ways—and who certainly felt a great deal of antagonism for the new Christian faith. Isolde herself sees the differences between the old religion and the new—sees, in particular, the difference in women’s positions and power within the two faiths. But I don’t think I’d say that she feels the same hostility as Morgan for the Christian God. She’s simply seen so much tragedy and lost so much in her life that she’s suspicious of any faith, Christian or otherwise, that promises all the answers to life’s hardest questions. But she is searching for answers, since she believes that some higher power must govern her own gift of the Sight, as unpredictable and unreliable as it sometimes seems. And she respects those Christians that she meets—like Mother Berthildis—and even wishes a bit that she could have that kind of perfect faith at times.
Why does the figure of Morgan, Isolde’s grandmother, loom so large for so many characters in the novel?
I could say that thematically Morgan represents the legendary Arthurian world that forms the backdrop for the world of the Twilight of Avalon trilogy—and that would be true in many ways. But, honestly, the real reason that Morgan is such a force in the books is that from the moment I heard her voice narrating the prologues that frame the action of all three books in the series, she’s simply been one of the most vivid characters in my mind—and one of my favorites as well. She’s a very strong woman—very determined to make sure her influence is felt.
You end the novel with a bombshell of sorts—why does Isolde decide to keep Trystan in the dark about their changing future as husband and wife?
That was very tough to write! I’ve been pregnant twice now, so I do know exactly how much Isolde would want to tell Trystan and how heartbreakingly hard it would be for her to keep herself from giving him the news, especially when he’s going into danger and she’s not certain she’ll see him again. She’s very strong, though—probably far stronger than I would be—and she doesn’t want him burdened with worry for her and a baby while on a dangerous mission. And even more than that, she knows Trystan is still carrying the scars from his past and from his relationship with his own father. He’s not in a place yet to hear the news that he’s going to be a father himself. Isolde feels passionately that both Trystan and their baby deserve the pregnancy to be happy news—and she’s willing to wait to tell Trystan until that can be true. Of course, this is one of the key elements of the emotional journey they make individually and together in Book 3, Sunrise of Avalon.
What did you discover in the course of writing Dark Moon of Avalon that surprised you?
One of my favorite parts of writing Dark Moon of Avalon was the character of Fidach, because he was such a complete surprise. I’d penciled him in as more or less of a straight villain when I was outlining the book. But then I got to the point when Isolde was trapped in a burning building in Octa’s army camp and I needed a way for her to get free. I was pondering ideas when Fidach suddenly raised his hand and informed me that a) he was homosexual, which I’d not even considered before, and b) he was in fact a man of a rather high degree of honor who was going to risk his own life to save Isolde’s. Who am I to argue? I absolutely loved writing him after he’d taken charge like that.