Lindsay Townsend's Blog, page 19

Which is which? The medieval Succubus and Incubus

The beliefs surrounding incubi and succubi in the middle ages were complex. Both were held to be supernatural beings but of which sex? It seems these demons, who sought to tempt mankind by seducing women and men into having sex with them, could be male or female at will.

As a female sexual demon, a succubus, the creature would beguile a man into intercourse and so obtain the man's seed. (The word succubus derives from the Latin 'to lie under'.)

Then, appearing as a handsome male spirit, an incubus, the demon would make love to a woman and spread the seed in her. (The word incubus comes from the Latin verb 'to lie upon'.) In medieval times, the wizard Merlin was believed to have been born as a result of a demon-woman mating.

Taking these ideas, I made the incubus in my Dark Maiden deliberately androgynous - eerily beautiful but possibly of either gender.
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Here's a brief excerpt:


Somewhere during their kissing her anger vanished.      From inside the hut she heard a broken sobbing. Father William, she hoped, finally poleaxed with remorse.The rowans shook with a sudden wind and the rooks cawed. She kissed Geraint again. Sensing the chill air trembling around them, she turned.      A sour-faced, beautiful being, neither male nor female, appeared immediately in front of them in the clearing beside the priest’s house.      “I cannot stand against you both.” With this complaint, the incubus scowled and pouted, like a young virgin of either sex. The winter light shimmered on the demon’s flawless skin, lit hair that at times looked golden, at times black and revealed a lissome body clothed in a white robe. Or was the long, sweeping tunic red?

More details of 'Dark Maiden' here.

Can be pre-ordered from Ellora's Cave here.
Can be pre-ordered from Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
Can be pre-ordered from Barnes and Noble here
Ellora's Cave (forthcoming, June 13 2013)

Read Chapter One

(The picture of Lilith is from a painting by John Collier.)

Historical Romance outside the Regency - please come and share here

Recently there have been discussions at Dear Author and All About Romance about the state of Historical Romance and the seeming dearth of stories set outside Regency high society. As readers and authors came in, it quickly became obvious that there are lots of historical romances out there. There's Georgian fiction, Medieval fiction, stories set in the ancient world, stories set in different cultures, stories set in the Regency period itself but featuring different classes and characters.
I thought I'd open this blog for readers and writers to share the huge range of historical romance now on offer. Please share your stories here in the comments section.

If you're a lover of Regency, pop over to my other blog for a chance to share your favourites.

Vampires in the Middle Ages - why then?

Medieval people believed in ghosts and in evil necromancers, using devilish arts to re-animate the dead or to control demons. They believed in witchcraft and charms and magic. They believed in succubii and incubii. Vampires, however, do not really make an appearance until the fourteenth century. Why then?

In 1348 the Black Death struck Europe. Thousands died and thousands of rotting corpses had to be buried, often in mass graves. Sights of these bodies was often grisly and bloody, and so the idea of the vampire, feeding on the blood of the living, came into force.

Recently a body in a medieval Italian mass grave on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo was found with a slab of rock slammed between its jaws – a crude anti-vampire measure. The dead woman was suspected by the grave-diggers of being a vampire, possibly because of gruesome sights around her decomposing body when they had re-opened the mass grave to bury more plague victims. So the frightened grave-diggers put a brick in her mouth to stop her chewing through her shroud and escaping the grave to infect others. A very grisly measure!

In my medieval historical romance,  The Snow Bride , I don’t mention medieval vampires but I do deal with witchcraft and necromancers. My heroine, red-haired Elfrida, is a witch and wise-woman and through the ‘magic’ of love she helps my scarred hero Magnus. Both Elfrida and Magnus must battle against an evil necromancer – a medieval wizard who summoned spirits and demons – and, in a desperate race against time, recover Elfrida’s younger sister. In The Snow Bride I show medieval magic and beliefs, but not medieval vampires.

I do touch on vampires in my latest medieval historical romance, Dark Maiden. My heroine, Yolande, spends a lot of time persuading others that the spirits or supernatural creatures they are dealing with are not vampires, mainly because she knows they are not and because the ways of dealing with vampires is very violent and would be distressing to bereaved families. I do have her fighting vampires however, if only in her dreams, and then she shows what a medieval exorcist would have to do.


Dark Maiden. Forthcoming from Ellora's Cave, June 13 2013. Available for pre-order here

More details of 'Dark Maiden' here.

Can be pre-ordered from Ellora's Cave here.
Can be pre-ordered from Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
Can be pre-ordered from Barnes and Noble here

Read Chapter One

[Vampire image published Paris, 1820. Sourced from Wikimedia Commons.]

The joy of weeding...

 I love our garden but don't do much in it apart from weeding. It's a task I try to do in the spring, writing deadlines permitting. Last year I couldn't get to it and the dandelions exploded. This year I was ready for them.

I'm a fair weather weeder and no fan of slugs and snails, so insist on gloves as well as a trowel. We have couch grass in our garden which is a pest, although dragging the long roots out is fun. Some grass I leave, such as round the fritillary. The cowslips are already blooming and have seeded themselves in our lawns as well. The birch is in pollen and the fruit trees are coming. I'm crossing my fingers, hoping that a late frost won't zap the blossom. Our onions and strawberries are thriving. Yesterday I spotted two huge bumblebees and cheered to see them.

What would a medieval person recognise in our 'flowery mead'? The primroses, cowslips, celandines, bluebells, snowdrops. The wild daffodils (which have shorter stems and longer trumpets than the cultivated kinds). Some of the older roses. The bluebells, teazels,  meadowsweet and pot marigolds that will appear later. The tulips would have been unknown to them, but I'm certain they would have loved them.




May Day's coming up and the weather's fine for now, so I'll keep weeding.

The restless dead in the Middle Ages

Did people in the Middle Ages believe in ghosts? They certainly believed in restless spirits, which they called revenants, from the Latin meaning ‘to return’. It was believed that the unquiet dead, particularly those who had died by violence or by reason of a grudge, or those who would not give up strong passions and carnal pleasures, would return to haunt the living. These revenants might appear within a graveyard or in a particular area, known to them in life, and terrorize the living.


In Dark Maiden I have a woman who is tormented by a lusty revenant who comes to her bed and tries to lie with her. Yolande, my heroine, learns that in this case the restless dead is the woman's husband. As an exorcist, Yolande takes certain steps to ensure that his widow is no longer plagued. You can find out what she does in the novel.



Here's an excerpt to give you a flavour. Yolande is talking to the villagers in their church. All the things she speaks of were believed or done in the Middle Ages.

“Godith, I have said it already. This is no vampire,” Yolande repeated for the third time.
       “How do you know that?”
       “Because there is no plague, pestilence or disease here. There is a restless soul, a revenant, yes, but one drawn by love and desire, not by hate.” Her lips quivered slightly, the only sign of tension in her. “I will write a letter of absolution and the soul will find his rest.”
       “Does that mean the dreams—”
       “Another matter altogether. I will work on that when I have finished with the revenant.”
       “Yet how can that be, and so simple? A letter?”
       “Being a sacred scribe is not simple,” Geraint put in. He wanted to wag a finger at the noisy goodwife, but confined  himself to folding his arms across his chest. “Can you write, Mistress Reeve?”
        Even in the dim orange flames, he could see Godith blush. “We heard his dogs outside,” she exclaimed, as indignant as a hen pushed off its nest and determined to have her say. “They come because they dread him and how is that good? How can he be good?”
       “Whose dogs?” Yolande stepped forward into the heart of the nave and bore down on Godith. “Was he a huntsman, a forester? I promise I will harm nothing, do no injury to any of your kin, be they living or passed on.”
        She stood tall and slim as a lily, a gentle dark Madonna. The drooping garland of Christmas roses hung from her belt like a perfumed cloud, the candle and brazier flames surrounded her like a halo. “Please, let me help you. Let me help this poor soul to his final, honored rest.”
        “He was a huntsman for our lord. Martin, his name was,” remarked a quiet, weary voice. “He was my husband. He owned the dogs, though they come to me now, and often not only them… We buried him last month by the church gate so he can see our house.”
        A squat ball of a woman pushed through the reluctant villagers, with a son and daughter trailing behind like ducklings. When she looked up at Yolande, Geraint saw the grooved shadows under the woman’s eyes and could not help but notice how her homespun dress bagged on her.
       Martin liked his woman very plump, but she has lost much flesh of late.
       “Perhaps we buried him too close,” she was saying. “He can find us—find me—so easily. Father William said he would rest.”
        Father William knows little of rest himself these days. Geraint disliked the clergy but even he could find a little pity for this less-than-holy father.
       “Daughter, I can give him peace,” Yolande said gently. “He loved you greatly, yes?” And more gently still, “He seeks to remain with you? By day and by night? Does he come as himself, or as shadow?”
       “Shadow. Ah God!” The woman shuddered and fresh tears burst from her. Yolande swiftly drew her aside to the south wall of the nave, talking to her and her children in a low, urgent way. Geraint could tell it by the set of her shoulders and by the way she lifted and stretched out both arms as if to shield the stricken family.
       “She yours?”
        Geraint deigned to glance at the smith, disliking the fellow already, the more so because the fellow was still looming in church. “My lady is her own.”
        “Bitten off more than she can chew here, I wager.”


More details of 'Dark Maiden' here.

Can be pre-ordered from Ellora's Cave here.
Can be pre-ordered from Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
Can be pre-ordered from Barnes and Noble here
Ellora's Cave (forthcoming, June 13 2013)

Read Chapter One

Two interesting literary houses and a lovely museum

Recently my husband and I attended a family wedding. We drove from Yorkshire and stayed in a cottage in the village of Chawton in Hampshire, almost next door to the house where Jane Austen lived.

Chawton is a delightful country village, close to the market town of Alton. The manor house where Jane Austen's brother Edward sometimes lived lies a short walk away and Jane knew it well. Her sister and mother are buried close by,  in the grounds of St Nicholas' Church, and you can see their well-tended graves.

The cottage where Jane lived with her sister Cassandra and her mother and where she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and wrote Mansfield Part, Emma and Persuasion, is airy and spacious with beautiful gardens. Inside you can see the tiny table on which Jane wrote her novels. Chawton itself was within walking or donkey-cart distance of Alton and a surprisingly bustling place in Jane's time since the main coach road ran through the village.


Four miles from Chawton in Selborne, the house of the naturalist Gilbert White is larger, with extensive gardens. You can see his study and writing desk. I would have liked to have walked up the Hanger on the path Gilbert White made but sadly could not - I had a chest infection and was too ill. But an interesting visit, nonetheless.


On one of my better days, when I wasn't coughing so much, we also visited Alton and Alton Museum. This is a wonderful place, full of fascinating exhibits dating from the Stone Age onwards. Being especially intrigued by the Middle Ages, I loved the Anglo-Saxon gold Alton buckle. This had obviously a much-treasured item, as it had been carefully repaired. [Picture from Hampshire Council's pages for Alton Museum.]

A Medieval Female Exorcist - Dark Maiden

Yolande, the heroine of my latest medieval historical romance novel, 'Dark Maiden' is an exorcist. Her father, who was born in Ethiopia (a country with very ancient Christian roots) was an exorcist. Her mother was born in York.

As is now being discovered, there were people of African descent living and working in Britain, especially in cities and ports like York. Archaeology discovered a Romano-British grave in York where a woman of black African and mixed race heritage had been buried in a rich tomb with grave goods. Archaeology also uncovered a tomb of a man of north African descent buried at a medieval friary in Suffolk, England, close to the port of Ipswich. According to bone specialists he had a bad back! The thirteenth century statue of Saint Maurice in Magdeburg cathedral in Germany clearly shows him as African.

Half-African, half-English, Yolande is the dark maiden of the title, a spiritual wanderer and warrior, helping those tormented by the restless dead and assisting the restless dead themselves to find final peace. She lives and works in England during the time of the Black Death.

Statue of St. Maurice at MagdeburgI chose this time period quite carefully. Women during the Middle Ages could not be priests but during the period of the Black Death, when thousands died, including hundreds of priests, the church allowed women to take confessions from dying people. In early 1349 the bishop of Bath and Wells wrote to his priests to encourage all men to confess, before they were taken by the pestilence. He added that if they had no priest they should follow the teaching of the Apostles and confess to each other 'or, if no man is present, even to a woman'.  (From translation in Philip Zeigler, The Black Death, page 125).

Medieval people also believed that in a crisis anyone, priest or lay person, could perform an exorcism because every Christian has the power to command demons and drive them away in the name of Christ.  I took these ideas and developed them, allowing my Yolande to become an exorcist.

In 'Dark Maiden' I have Yolande and Geraint  (a travelling player who becomes her friend, help-mate, lover and finally husband) face several encounters with both restless spirits and also demons. My ideas have always been shaped by the real beliefs of the time. So in 'Dark Maiden' there are evil spirits, restless ghosts called revenants, an incubus and vampires - all paranormal creatures with a medieval slant.

I'll talk about these in other blog articles.

More details of 'Dark Maiden' here.
Can be pre-ordered from Ellora's Cave here.
Can be pre-ordered from Amazon US here and Amazon UK here.
Can be pre-ordered from Barnes and Noble here

'Dark Maiden': the cover for my forthcoming romance

This is the cover for my forthcoming medieval historical romance Dark Maiden, due out this summer from Ellora's Cave. I think it's super! I feel the artist has captured Yolande, my heroine, exactly.

'The Snow Bride' now an Audio Book

My historical romance, 'The Snow Bride,' is now an Audio Book. It has a beautiful cover.

It's available from Audible.

Award for 'The Amorous Chatelaine'

What perfect timing for Valentine's Day! Today I heard from Ally and Donna at the review site Single Titles. CataNetwork reviewers have presented me with their prestigious 2012 Single Titles Reviewers’ Choice Award for The Amorous Chatelaine.












I'm honoured and delighted!

'The Amorous Chatelaine' is half-price today at All Romance Ebooks.