INTERVIEW WITH PRISCILLA ROYAL

I am very pleased to welcome Priscilla Royal to my blog for

a discussion of her newest novel, The Sanctity of Hate.  In the interest of full disclosure, I want to

reveal that Priscilla is a friend of mine. 

She is also a very talented writer. 

She has an impressive understanding of the medieval world; while reading

one of her novels, you never doubt that her characters are men and women of the

thirteenth century.  No Plantagenets in

Pasadena in any of Priscilla’s books! 

Her people are wonderfully three-dimensional, too, with all of the

virtues and flaws of people everywhere.  

Stir this mix with a suspenseful plot line and the result is always a

book almost impossible to put down—at least for those of us who are fascinated

in history, who understand that our past was someone else’s present. (Thank

you, David McCullough, for that)    So….here is Priscilla Royal. 

 

Tell us about your

newest book.

 

The Sanctity of Hate

will be out soon, early December, in trade paper, hardcover, audio, and

e-reader formats. Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas are back at Tyndal Priory

after the events in A Killing Season.

It is the summer of 1276 and quite bucolic, until the body of an unpopular man

is found floating in the priory mill pond. No one mourns this death, and the

villagers do not want one of their own found guilty. Coincidentally, a Jewish

family is stranded at the inn, refugees under the relocation provisions of

Edward I’s Statute of Jewry signed in late 1275. The wife is about to give

birth and is in obvious distress. Concluding that the rumored crime details

conform to the usual anti-Semitic myths, the villagers decide that a member of

this family is the most likely killer. Prioress Eleanor, Brother Thomas, and

Crowner Ralf are not so easily convinced but must act swiftly to find the true

murderer before the family is simply condemned by popular choice.

 

Anti-Semitism was

prevalent at the time. How did you deal with this?

 

Not easily! But I wanted to recreate the complexity of the

moment while respecting the era. To do that, I kept one thing in mind which my

research did support. The farther we are from an historical incident, the more

we tend to simplify it. We forget or lose documentation of so many opinions and

nuances of the time. Some things are never even recorded. As a more current

example, I’ve heard some insist that the internment of Americans with Japanese

ancestry during WW II was necessary, unavoidable, and everyone agreed with it.

Fortunately, we still have documentation proving otherwise. But in five hundred

years, how will we see this event? Will we lose the evidence that many

protested the injustice, or will we forget the unthinking panic that created

the law? No matter what, we will simplify the circumstances and see that event

as more one-sided than it was. Medieval anti-Semitism is similar. Relations

between Christians and Jews were not simple Yes, there was an overriding

prevalence of anti-Semitism, but there were also Christians who tried to

protect Jewish families against mobs, respected their education and skills, and

befriended them. Nor was conversion all one way. There may not be a lot of recorded

instances, but Christians did convert to Judaism, often because of

intermarriage. The most interesting convert was a priest, not of Jewish

ancestry, who was then persuaded to recant, went back to Judaism, and was

finally burned at the stake when he utterly rejected Christianity. 

 

How did your primary

characters respond to Jacob ben Asher and his family?

 

I wanted them to show a range of reactions. Prioress Eleanor

had the hardest time. She’s a true believer and grieves that this family cannot

“see the error of their faith”. Brother Thomas, as an outsider and one who

freely argues with his deity, feels a kinship with the family although he, too,

never doubts that Christianity is the right belief system. A difficult birth

tends to bring good women together no matter what their faith. And Crowner Ralf

doesn’t care what anyone claims to believe. He just wants to hang the right

person. In deciding how each of these characters would act, I considered their

psychology, history, and the nature of their faith. It’s also important to

remember that we’ve always found justification for what we want to do or what

we think is right within the tenets of our belief system. During the debates

over slavery in this country, we used Christianity to support the conclusion

that slavery was wrong as well as the argument it was God’s will. Prioress

Eleanor and Brother Thomas find a way, within the logic provided Christians at

the time, to act with the compassion their nature demands.

 

You have said that

each of your books presents you with a different challenge. What was it in The

Sanctity of Hate?

 

Writing from a Jewish perspective. Although I did not grow

up in a church-going family, my ancestral heritage is also not Jewish. That

means I probably have blind spots and assumptions, many quite subconscious.

While I was thinking about this book, I read Mitchell J. Kaplan’s historical

novel, By Fire, By Water, which deals

with the expulsion from Spain

in 1492 of Jewish families. In one scene, he describes the refugees on the roads

to the ports that might take some to family members abroad while others had no

idea where they were going. Despite all the WW II films I’ve seen, documentary

and otherwise, and personal stories I have read of survival, near-misses, and

tragedies, I found Kaplan’s description uniquely powerful. Here were people

whose ancestors had suffered so much uprooting and violence for hundreds of

years that the knowledge of it must almost be stamped on the DNA. So I wanted

to create a family in that kind of situation, knowing that they can never

completely trust the world to be safe. And I wanted to do it with the respect

the experience deserves. Hopefully, my fictional family conveys the humor,

courage, creativity, and resilience that such survival requires.

 

What was the most

enjoyable part of writing this story?

 

The research required on Jewish history in medieval England was

fascinating. I won’t list the books because they are in the bibliography, but I

still have a stack on my bedside table that I can hardly wait to get into. The

other fun bit of research was medieval beekeeping. I have a friend who is a

local beekeeper, answered all my dumb questions, and loaned me books on the

history of honey harvesting. I learned that the medieval English bee was dark,

hairy, and larger than the black/gold one we are most familiar with. I found

that utterly charming!

 

What are you working

on next?

 

I just started putting ideas together for a medieval spy

story. There were spies at the time, but the organized system put together by

Walsingham under Elizabeth

I did not seem to exist. Of course, Brother Thomas has done his stint as a mole

for the Church, but this next story involves secular ones. As I often do, I

came late to the spy genre, but I fell in love with Le Carre’s novels about

Smiley and Alec Guinness in Tinker,

Tailor, Soldier Spy. No title yet, but I am having fun thinking about

possible characters.

 

How can readers

contact you?

 

Should anyone have questions about my books, they can reach

me through my website at www.priscillaroyal.com.

And I am one of several mystery writers blogging on The Lady Killers at

www.theladykillers.typepad.com.

 

Thank you so much, Sharon,

for inviting me to post on your blog. You have taught me so much about

research, and your beautifully written books have long been an inspiration. I

am very grateful.

 

Thank you, Priscilla, for agreeing to this interview.   It has been a pleasure, as usual.  And I forgive you for causing me to lose

precious sleep this past week.  Until I

finish A King’s Ransom, the only time I have for reading is after I’ve gone to

bed.  I am two-thirds of the way through

The Sanctity of Hate and I’ve found myself reading later and later into the

night, thinking “One more chapter, just one more.”   Of course I pay the price for that the next

morning, but The Sanctity of Hate is worth it. 

 

 

November 24,  2012