B0078XH7HQ EBOK (37 page)

I have indulged in one or two incidences of poetic licence. I have moved the death of Earl Hamelin de Warenne forward by exactly one year, from May 1202 to May 1203, in order to give him enough time to rescue and bring home one forlorn child. A lesser alteration is the cadency marks which Sir Geoffrey explains to Simon during his heraldry lesson: heraldic devices were in use in 1217, and it would certainly have been useful for a page to be able to recognise the arms of friends and foes, but heraldry had not yet evolved into the complex science of later centuries, and cadency marks representing the order of sons in a family did not become common until the fifteenth century. Still, Simon was having so much fun with his lesson that it seemed a shame to deprive him.

Finally, those familiar with Conisbrough Castle will notice that I have taken a couple of liberties with its layout. The chapel in the keep is actually on the upper floor which contains the bedroom, rather than the one below next to the council chamber; however, this did not suit the nefarious goings-on which are depicted in this story, so I hope that the moving of the chapel might be excused. Equally, the current layout of the keep means that visitors actually have to walk through each room in order to reach the next flight of stairs, but I was sure that the earl would not want people traipsing through his bedchamber in order to reach the roof, so I have invented passageways going round the rooms in the thickness of the walls. In this case I may only be reflecting an earlier plan: those who look closely at the architecture of each of the keep’s rooms will see the ghosts of other archways in the walls, suggesting that such passageways may actually have existed.

The castle at Conisbrough is well worth a visit: it is one of the most striking designs of any twelfth- or thirteenth-century castle, and is still surrounded by most of its curtain wall, and by the foundations of the stone buildings in the inner ward. Earl Hamelin’s spectacular white keep is still intact, a landmark which has dominated its setting for over eight hundred years.

C.B. Hanley has a PhD in mediaeval studies from the University of Sheffield and is the author of
War and Combat 1150–1270: The Evidence from Old French Literature
, and a number of scholarly articles on the period. She currently teaches on writing for academic publication, and also works as a copy-editor and proofreader.

First published by Quaestor2000 in 2009

This edition first published by The Mystery Press in 2012

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