A Conspiracy of Wolves

Author’s Note

Writing this book was a homecoming for me. A few of the series characters could not wait for my return and infiltrated my other series set in medieval York, the Kate Clifford mysteries, but in Kate’s world they are a quarter century older, so not quite the same. I hope those of you who are returning to the series enjoy being back as much as I do. And for those of you new to Owen and Lucie’s world, welcome!

With the death of Archbishop Thoresby in A Vigil of Spies my sleuth was out of work. What next for Owen? A period of mourning, perhaps returning to his earlier interest in apprenticing to his wife as an apothecary, a survey of the manor Thoresby had directed William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, to cede to Owen in gratitude for his considerable efforts on his behalf – all this might occupy him for a year or two, but I could not imagine him staying idle. Nor would the people of York (and Princess Joan’s household) forget his skill in solving crimes.

But who could I find to replace John Thoresby, whose patronage brought Owen to York in the first book of the series? Theirs was a prickly partnering. It was not long before Owen was questioning the wisdom of choosing to serve Thoresby rather than John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. He’d expected a churchman to be far more ethical than a duke of royal blood, but he realized that was not always so. The ensuing friction between Archer and Thoresby added a tension that was a gift to me, the writer. A gift that ended with Thoresby’s death. Who would now be Owen’s foil?

In A Vigil of Spies Thoresby recommends Owen to Princess Joan, wife of Prince Edward, heir to the English throne. But I did not want to shift the main stage to the royal court. What to do? I briefly flirted with his working for Alexander Neville, the new archbishop, but failed to find a plausible scenario in which Owen would agree to serve him; nor could I imagine Neville trusting Owen, who had worked so closely with members of the Thoresby/Ravenser clan. R. B. Dobson captured the character of Alexander Neville, Thoresby’s successor as Archbishop of York, in referring to him as ‘so stormy an ecclesiastical petrel.’[1] A younger son of the patriarch of the increasingly powerful Neville family, the new archbishop saw rivals everywhere, and he was infamous for his aggressions against the powerful Bishop of Durham, the chapter of Beverley, and even the treasurer of York Minster, among others. He particularly disliked the ‘stranglehold on the exceptionally lucrative canonries there exercised by members of the great Thoresby clerical affinity.’[2] Dobson sums him up: ‘Neville suffered in his confrontations with the highly professionalised clerical elites of late fourteenth-century England by being every inch a non-professional.’[3]

The Nevilles arrived in England in the army of William the Conqueror, establishing themselves in the Northeast and rising through political and military service, as well as strategic marriage alliances. Alexander was born in Raby Castle, the family seat at Staindrop. His father, Ralph, was the hero of Neville’s Cross, his mother, Alice, the sister of the Earl of Gloucester. With three older brothers, it was natural that Alexander and his twin Thomas sought careers in the Church. Family influence brought them early preferments. When Thomas died young, Alexander benefitted by becoming the focus of his family’s ambitions in the Church. But he proved to be a man never satisfied, aggressively fighting for the offices he felt he deserved, which led him to the papal court, where he sought the pope’s favor and influence against the hierarchy of the English Church, a majority of whom he had alienated. His efforts were rewarded when he won the vote of the chapter of York to become their new archbishop. No doubt his being a member of one of the two most powerful families in the north appealed to the canons, as well as his connection with the court – his brother John was steward of the royal household and brother-in-law to the chamberlain. The chapter would regret their decision. And therein lies a delicious tension for the ongoing series.

But what of Owen?

In 1374, King Edward III was in failing health, as was his heir, Prince Edward, who suffered a debilitating illness – a perilous situation for the realm. The crown depended on the Northern nobles, particularly Percy and Neville, to keep an eye on the border with Scotland, but in the circumstances such dependence could be construed as weakness. Prince Edward would want spies in the North, especially now with a Neville at the head of the Northern Church, and who better than Owen Archer, who had served the previous Archbishop of York for a decade. In the years since writing A Vigil of Spies I have delved into the history of Edward III, his family, and his court. Where I once thought of Thoresby’s recommending Owen to Princess Joan as a compliment, I now realize he was throwing his captain and steward into the lion’s den. Prince Edward was not a man to tolerate rejection. Owen would know that the prince’s offer was a command.

So you see, when he lost Thoresby, Owen gained two antagonists – Prince Edward and Archbishop Neville. But I anchored him in York by using the tension of the times to motivate the city to seek Owen’s help in keeping the peace as the series moves forward.

Speaking of keeping the peace, the inspiration for Bartolf Swann, coroner of Galtres, came from Sara M. Butler’s book Forensic Medicine and Death Investigations in Medieval England (Routledge 2015). Ever on the lookout for the telling detail that distinguishes the past from the present, I was struck by the medieval emphasis on the communal interests in the juries’ considerations. Although the coroner was an official ostensibly seeing to the crown’s best interests in criminal investigations surrounding sudden and unnatural deaths (including suspicious and accidental deaths as well as homicides), the coroners’ juries made their recommendations based on what was best for the community, predicated on what they understood as truth. Paraphrasing Butler’s comments in an interview on my blog, the jury was not so interested in the details about the crime itself as they were with the character of the perpetrator. Did they feel remorse? Were they repentant? If they were acquitted would their return to the community restore peace and harmony, or would they commit more crimes?[4] Of course, being a crime writer, I was interested in the ways in which this process might be exploited by the more powerful members of the community.

I gave Bartolf the position of coroner of the forest of Galtres, which is just north of the city walls. The royal forests were established to provide good sport for the king, and a complex institution of laws and officials protected the animals and their habitat. The word ‘forest’ can be confusing in this context, because within the boundaries of the royal forests were villages, manors, towns, even castles such as Sheriff Hutton in Galtres. What distinguished these properties was their placement in the jurisdiction of a particular body of law, forest law. (Though there are exceptions.) Tales of Robin Hood made familiar the strict poaching laws in royal forests. Slightly less well know is the law that dogs inhabiting the forests larger than, say, lap dogs were to have three claws removed from their forefeet to prevent their attacking deer. This rendered them ‘lawful’, from which we get the term ‘lawing’. Technically, only the nails were to be removed, but the process inevitably took off a portion of the toes as well, and sometimes the pads, maiming the dogs. A horrific practice. The dogs were to be checked every three years by officials known as regarders. As with the poaching laws, loopholes and opportunities for corruption abounded.

And what of wolves? Magda Digby asks – or rather prompts Owen: What do folk see when they see a wolf, Bird-eye? The animal? Think again. Down through time the wolf has become symbolic of our fears as we walk through the night glancing back over our shoulders. Although it is generally believed that wolves were hunted to extinction by the end of the Middle Ages, the exact dates are still debated. In his book Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages, Aleksander Pluskowski cites ‘a marked decrease in the number of documented wolf hunts in the fourteenth century and the last reliable reference to wolf trapping in England is dated to 1394-6, from Whitby Abbey in East Yorkshire.’[5] Officials boasted of wolf-free territories, but folk still feared them, especially in hard winters. We still do.