crispin guest | Author Suzanne Adair

Medieval Beasties

Posted on August 29, 2018 by suzanneadairAugust 29, 2018

Relevant History welcomes back Jeri Westerson, author of the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels, a series nominated for thirteen national awards, from the Agatha to the Shamus. For her debut urban fantasy series, Booke of the Hidden, Publishers Weekly said, “Readers sad about the ending of Charlaine Harris’s “Midnight, Texas” trilogy will find some consolation in Moody Bog.” The next in the series, Deadly Rising, releases in October. Jeri is twice former president of SoCalMWA and OC SinC, and former vice president of SinC-LA. To learn more about her and her books, visit her web site, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

*****

In my latest Crispin Guest Medieval Noir, called The Deepest Grave, my disgraced knight turned detective Crispin and his apprentice Jack, are called upon to investigate the graveyard of a nearby church where the priest claims that he has seen the dead walk. In the book, Crispin speaks of “Revenants” from the Latin, meaning “the returned” specifically from the dead, which implies both vampires and zombies.

Hunting a vampire isn’t easy
Let’s look at some of the historical roots of vamps first. The dead have been walking a long time. Since even before biblical accounts. Long before Bram Stoker penned his bestseller in 1897. Matthew Beresford, author of From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth, notes, “There are clear foundations for the vampire in the ancient world, and it is impossible to prove when the myth first arose. There are suggestions that the vampire was born out of sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some other.” You’ll find the idea of vampires all around the world: Asian vampires, such as the Chinese jiangshi, evil spirits that attack people and drain their life energy; the blood-drinking wrathful deities that appear in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and from ancient Egypt.

Some vampires are said to be able to turn into bats or wolves; others can’t. Some are said not to cast a reflection, others do. Holy water and sunlight are said to repel or kill some vampires, but not others. The one universal characteristic is the draining of blood.

Hunting a vampire isn’t easy. According to one Romanian legend you’ll need a seven-year-old boy and a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed on the horse, and then both set loose in a graveyard at midday. Watch the horse wander around, and wherever the horse stops, that’s a vampire’s grave. Or…there’s just really good grass there.

In Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, folklorist Paul Barber noted that centuries ago, “Often potential revenants can be identified at birth, usually by some defect, like when a child is born with teeth. Or with an extra nipple (in Romania); or a lack of cartilage in the nose, or a split lower lip (in Russia).

The belief in vampires stems from superstition and mistaken assumptions about postmortem decay. The first recorded accounts of vampires follow a consistent pattern. Some unexplained misfortune befalls a person, family or town—a drought, disease—and then it’s blamed on a vampire.

The solution? Graves were unearthed, and surprised villagers often mistook ordinary decomposition processes for supernatural phenomenon. They assumed that a body would decompose immediately, but if the coffin is well sealed and buried in winter, putrefaction might be delayed by weeks or months; the body shrinks, making it look as if the nails and hair continue to grow. And weirdest of all to medieval people, intestinal decomposition creates bloating which can force blood up into the mouth, making it look like a dead body has recently sucked blood. In certain eastern block countries, they still believe this.

Many people in medieval England thought that corpses of evil or vengeful individuals were capable of “reanimating” in the ground and then rising from their graves to attack or harm or even kill the living. Historical accounts from Britain, Ireland, and Scotland tell of fear of revenants and blood-sucking.

A 12th-century Yorkshire cleric, William of Newburgh, described an evil man, who, escaping from justice, fled the city of York, but then died and rose from his grave. Pursued by a pack of barking dogs, he wandered through courtyards and houses while everyone locked their doors. Finally, the townspeople decided to put an end to the threat by digging up his dead body, mutilating it and burning it. This is Newburgh’s account of what happened when the townspeople opened the grave:

[They] laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons…

Zombies in long-deserted medieval Yorkshire village
Now—on to zombies. They are very closely related and can just as easily be called “revenants” as well. We see an emergence in our popular culture of zombies, but it originated from Haitian/African folklore, with the word “Zombi” being of West African origin. A witch doctor turns dead and living people into zombies. The belief in zombies in Haiti and certain places in Africa still persists today, the belief in either reanimating the dead or controlling living people to do their bidding in a perpetually dazed state.

Bringing it back to Europe, scientists from the University of Southampton completed a study of human bones from a long-deserted medieval Yorkshire village, Wharram Percy, and the study strongly suggests that they were from individuals regarded by their peers as revenants. The scientific analysis revealed that the individuals’ skeletal remains had been deliberately mutilated, decapitated and burned shortly after death. It is the first time in Britain that such skeletal evidence of a probable medieval belief in revenancy has been found. The work in Wharram Percy carried out on 11th- to 13th-century human bones is particularly important because it appears to confirm historical accounts of such beliefs.

There have been other skeletons found in eastern Europe with stones embedded in the mouths of the corpse, presumably to keep them from wandering. I guess it worked, because the bodies were still there.

Crispin and Jack must put aside their fears and superstitions to find out what’s really happening in the graveyard of St. Modwen’s parish and solve two murders before an innocent child hangs for the crime.

*****

A big thanks to Jeri Westerson!

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Bloody Good Relics

Posted on August 5, 2014 by suzanneadairAugust 4, 2014

Relevant History welcomes back L.A. native Jeri Westerson, who combined the medieval with the hard-boiled and came up with her own brand of medieval mystery she calls “Medieval Noir.” Her brooding protagonist, Crispin Guest, is a disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. Jeri’s novels have been shortlisted for a variety of industry awards, from the Agatha to the Shamus. She is president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and speaks all over the southland about medieval history, including as a guest lecturer at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, CA. To learn more about Jeri’s books, watch a series book trailer, find discussion guides, and read Crispin’s blog, check out Jeri’s website. Friend Jeri on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter and Goodreads.

*****

My medieval mysteries always involve a religious relic or venerated object. And so part of my job is to explore relics and make the mythical real. Some of my “favorite” relics (in that they get a lot of attention) are the blood relics. My protagonist Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight turned detective, has a favorite oath: “God’s blood!” Yes, in the medieval period, swearing took on a whole different quality. But it is “God’s blood” and that of his saints that we want to explore.

Holy grail, Batman!
Joseph of Arimathea plays an important role in most Christ blood relics, either capturing the blood and sweat in a cup while Jesus hung on the cross (and here is where the complicated grail history begins and what we see in Cup of Blood, my latest medieval mystery, released 25 July 2014) or later keeping some as he cleaned the body before burial.

I must first explain the unlikelihood of such an event from the Jewish Pharisee that Joseph was. Surely he was aware of the blood prohibitions, of touching blood and bodies that would make him unclean to enter the temple. This would be a horrific situation for a priest of the temple, his being unable to enter it until he underwent many days of ritual bathing before he was declared clean again. The thought of even saving blood must have been completely foreign. But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that Joseph—for whatever reason—had the idea to preserve some of Jesus’ blood. What did he do with it from there?

If we were to follow the grail legend, then we would end up at Glastonbury in the southwest region of England, which gave rise to its co-mingling with the Arthurian legends (a complicated cross-pollination from the stories commissioned by Marie of France, Countess of Champagne and daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the twelfth century to include a love triangle. She had Chretien de Troyes, her court poet, invent Lancelot. Chretien also wrote the unfinished poem Perceval le Gallois, the keeper of the grail—and it only gets more convoluted from there).

The bloodier the better
But if we were to follow other blood legends, we might end up in Constantinople. During the fourth crusade it is said that the Holy Blood of Christ made its way from Constantinople to the Basilius chapel in Bruges on 7 April 1150. The relic consists of coagulated blood kept in a 12th century style rock-crystal flask. Since 1303, the relic was carried around the city walls in procession, called the Holy Blood Procession, which is still celebrated today.

Westminster Abbey was presented with Christ’s blood by King Henry III of England on 3 October 1247, that the king had received from the Masters of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers and the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was encased in a crystal vase. The Bishop of Norwich preached a sermon, promising an indulgence of six years and one hundred and sixteen days to anyone who venerated the relic (that is, six years and one hundred and sixteen days less in Purgatory). Unfortunately, it never made Westminster the pilgrim stop that Henry had desired. In fact, it was not lost on the populace that Henry was desperately trying to compete with the French king who a year later, dedicated his Sainte Chapelle with relics from the holy land, among them the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Lance, a portion of the sponge soaked with vinegar, purple vestments with which Jesus was mocked, and a sepulchral stone. In Hailes Abbey, not too far from Westminster, larger crowds came to see their vial of Christ’s blood. But when Hailes’ blood was scrutinized in the 16th century by Henry VIII’s examiners, it was reported that the vial consisted of not Christ’s blood but of honey mixed with saffron coloring. Yet another account says it contained oft-replaced goose blood. Whatever was in it, this vial, along with the one at Westminster, was disposed of by the Reformation’s agents.

Bleeding out
One of the more famous blood relics belongs to Saint Januarius or as he is known in Italy, San Gennaro. Born in Naples in 300 AD, he was a Bishop of Beneveto around the time of Emperor Diocletian, who was particularly nasty to Christians. While offering spiritual support to imprisoned fellow Christians, Januarius was himself arrested. The prelate, Timoteo, put Januarius through several gruesome tortures—thrown into a furnace, tried to tear his limbs apart on the wheel—but he seemed to come out of them unscathed. Finally, Januarius and his fellow prisoners were condemned to be torn apart by wild beasts. When this also proved useless, Timoteo ordered Januarius to be beheaded.

Januarius’ old wet-nurse Eusebia, gathered his blood into vials, and his body and head were wrapped and hidden until the time that Christianity was no longer persecuted. Eusebia was now free to display the glass vials of the martyr’s dried blood, and for the first time, they became liquid. Januarius was one of the many honored saints in Italy for many centuries, but there is no mention of his blood or it’s “liquefaction” until 1389. By then his skull and blood had come to rest at the Real Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, located near Pozzuoli. And to this day, on 19 September, the feast day of Saint Januarius, his blood relics are displayed with much praying, novenas, and other celebrations. If the blood liquefies, it is signaled by the firing off of cannons.

Certainly in Crispin’s era of the late fourteenth century, such things were well venerated. And much money could be made for the church or monastery that housed such a relic, paid by the pilgrims who came to see them. No wonder my detective remains skeptical as to the authenticity of such objects. And that, and a few murders, keeps him embroiled deeply in the mysteries.

*****

A big thanks to Jeri Westerson. She’ll give away a trade paperback copy of Cup of Blood to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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Crispin vs the Alchemist

Posted on December 12, 2013 by suzanneadairDecember 12, 2013

Relevant History welcomes back Los Angeles native and award-winning author Jeri Westerson, who writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir mysteries. Her brooding protagonist is Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth-century London. Jeri is president of the southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and is vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime. When not writing, she dabbles in gourmet cooking, drinks fine wines, eats cheap chocolate, and swoons over anything British. You can learn more about Jeri’s books, watch a series book trailer, and find discussion guides on Jeri’s website. For more information, read her blog, friend Jeri on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter and Goodreads.

*****

My sixth Crispin Guest medieval noir, Shadow of the Alchemist, has hit the bookstore shelves. Crispin, my disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth-century London, has faced many foes, dealing with many religious relics and venerated objects. Each object seems to possess a power of its own, either something everyone wants to get their hands on, or can’t wait to get rid of. A Veronica’s veil, Crown of Thorns, the Spear of Destiny, and now the Philosopher’s Stone. Crispin doesn’t believe in the power of these mortal objects, preferring his intellect to the suspicious ramblings of priests and frightened and greedy merchants. But there is something about these objects, something that gives him pause.

Men of power have tried to thwart him, either wealthy merchants, noblemen, or lowly servants. Crispin has seen them all. But this time, he comes up against his Moriarty of sorts, involving a chase down the shadowy streets of London, between men who know the secrets of poisons and purges, sorcery and forbidden sciences. An alchemist.

There are many challenges for the author when writing historically. First and foremost is the contract the author has with her readers. That is, the history must be true and correct. Only with this solid framework in place may the author hang her fiction upon it. Without the proscenium of real history, there is no reason for the reader to stick around and dally in the rest of the play on offer. So a worthy foe for Crispin must be a man of his time. He’s had his share of noblemen to cross swords and wits with. He was once a nobleman himself and so to clash with those he used to know works well. But this time, I thought it would be fun to set him up against an alchemist, those medieval scientists whose lives and works were a mystery to those around them.

We have a perception of the alchemist, of the medieval equivalent of the mad scientist. And we have it also from the time period itself. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for instance, Chaucer gives us the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, from which we can derive that many alchemists were deemed to be charlatans. And no doubt, many were, the precursor to the snake oil salesman. And yet many were also quite sincere in their doings. They were truly the first scientists, truly trying to understand the chemistry around us and doing experiments rather than relying on the faith of philosophers of the past. The Greek philosophers influenced physicians in the medieval period with their conclusions of the human body and its cures—without ever picking up a pipette and seeing if any of those conclusions actually possessed a basis in fact.

We do know of some alchemists of the past: Paracelsus was a scholar and alchemist from the fifteenth century, and the embodiment of what we will later call “scientist.” Among his many accomplishments: he founded the discipline of toxicology; insisted upon using observation rather than merely relying on the word of the philosophers of the past; coined the terms “zinc,” “chemistry,” “alcohol,” and “gas”; and even delved into psychology by daring to suggest some illnesses were caused by the mind.

Michał Sędziwój was a Polish alchemist and medical doctor from the seventeenth century. One of his greatest accomplishments was discovering that air is not a single substance but in fact is made up of many, one being what would later be called oxygen.

Even Sir Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy. He believed that metals possessed an inner life of their own and tried in vain—much to the embarrassment of some of his colleagues—to create a Philosopher’s Stone.

These varied men led the way to a better understanding—and a better method to understand—the world around us. Such men, with the wrong intent, can be very dangerous. And so in a dark and dangerous London, an alchemist is on the loose who would do anything to get what he wants. A Napoleon of Crime? Perhaps. It’s up to our hero to bring him to justice one way or another.

*****

A big thanks to Jeri Westerson. Shadow of the Alchemist was named to Suspense Magazine’s “Best of 2013” list and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery. Jeri will give away the hardcover version of Shadow of the Alchemist to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Monday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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Degradation of Knighthood

Posted on February 19, 2013 by AdminNovember 8, 2013

Relevant History welcomes Los Angeles native and award-winning author Jeri Westerson, who writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir novels. Her brooding protagonist is Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth century London, running into thieves, kings, poets, and religious relics. When not writing, Jeri dabbles in gourmet cooking, drinks fine wines, eats cheap chocolate, and swoons over anything British. You can read more about Jeri’s books, watch a series book trailer, find discussion guides, and read Crispin’s blog on Jeri’s website.

*****

Once you’re knighted it’s permanent, right? Not necessarily so.

Under what circumstances would someone lose their knighthood? By the time my fifth book, Blood Lance, is set, my protagonist Crispin Guest had been degraded for about ten years and living with the consequences. He did commit a fairly heinous offense, that of treason, but for a very good cause.

Most often, when a knight or lord was handed the treason card, the lords didn’t bother degrading him. The knight in question would simply be executed in a most foul manner. In the words of the Scarecrow in the movie The Wizard of Oz, “They tore off my arms and threw them over there! And then they tore off my legs and threw them over there!” You get the picture. Crispin was lucky
enough to have a person in a pretty high place speak up for him and so he didn’t lose his life; only his wealth, lands, title and a smidgeon of his self-respect.

Because degradation of knighthood is such a rare event, there are only two recorded cases. The first was during the English War of the Roses where the Lancastrians went up against the Yorkists. In a rebellion against the Yorkist King Edward IV, Sir Ralph Grey allowed the Lancastrians to hold several fortresses in Scotland. Even when many other castles were taken, Grey held Bamborough. But after a siege, they surrendered it in June 1464. Grey was sentenced by the Constable of England to be degraded. His coat of arms was torn from his back and another with his arms reversed was put in its place. And then the Constable declared, “Then, Sir Ralph Grey, this shall be thy penance—thou shalt go upon thy feet to the town’s end, and there thou shalt be laid down and drawn to a scaffold made for thee, and thou shalt have thy head smitten off they body; thy body to be buried in the friary, thy head where it may please the king.”

As the Tinman would say, “That’s you all over.”

It was a little different in 1621. This time, it wasn’t a case of treason, but one of old-fashioned graft. Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell were tried before the House of Lords for the political offence of “exercising harsh monopolies over the licensing of inns and the manufacture of gold and silver thread.” Doesn’t sound horrible when put that way, but essentially, Mompesson dishonored the very notion of knighthood with his activities. Apparently, he was the go-to person for licensing inns, and he was supposed to be overseeing the manufacture of gold and silver thread and imprison those manufacturing said thread without a license. Instead, he ran a good trade in extortion on the goldsmiths of London and pulled a few fast ones conning taverns into putting up guests overnight and then fining them for running an inn without a license!

Mompesson was tried by the House of Commons, which referred it to the House of Lords where he was sentenced to quite a unique punishment. Not only was he to pay a £10,000 fine and lose his knighthood, but to show his full degradation, he was to be secured behind a horse and walk down the Strand in London with his face in the horse’s anus. And then be imprisoned for life. And in case that wasn’t enough, a few days later they came back with banishment for life.

This is what happened to Mitchell, as reported by the College of Arms: “Sir Francis’s sword and gilt spurs, being the ornaments of Knighthood, were taken from him, broken and defaced, thus indicating that the reputation he held thereby, together with the honourable title of Knight, should be no more used. One of the Knight Marshal’s men…cut the belt whereby the culprit’s sword hung, and so let it fall to the ground. Next the spurs were hewn off his heels and thrown, one one way, the other the other. After that, the Marshal’s attendant drew Mitchell’s sword from the scabbard and broke it over his head, doing with the fragments as with the spurs.” (Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms.)

Mompesson was banished and allowed to return to get his affairs in order and then banished again, but the slippery Mompesson managed to get back into the country and stay, retiring in Wiltshire till his death. Mitchell was imprisoned.

Crispin took his degradation very hard, and he still has a tough time reconciling his life on the Shambles of London to the resplendent life he used to have at court. But, of course, this only makes him a better detective, for unlike Mompesson, he took his honor very seriously and never more so than in the latest novel Blood Lance, where he is obliged to uphold the honor of an old friend, find a religious relic, and bring a murderer to justice.

*****

A big thanks to Jeri Westerson. She’ll give away the audiobook version of Blood Lance or a signed hardcover copy of Blood Lance (winner’s choice) to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.