Strong as Death (Catherine LeVendeur)
Page 37
Professor Lynn Nelson, University of Kansas, for information on the French in Spain, good advice on where to drape a body in church and for not being too proud to hang out with writers.
Professor Jeffrey B. Russell, University of California at Santa Barbara, for moral support, Latin translations and corrections, editorial comments and champagne.
Professor Richard Unger, University of British Columbia, for boats, beer and sympathy at also having to write a book in summer.
Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell, Gethsemani Abbey, for boundless enthusiasm, liturgical corrections and informing me that Peter the Venerable always rode a white mule.
By Sharan Newman from Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Death Comes As Epiphany
The Devil’s Door
The Wandering Arm
Strong As Death
Praise for Sharan Newman and the Catherine LeVendeur series
STRONG AS DEATH
“Colorful characters and thoroughly researched culture add up to wonderful historical fiction. A necessary purchase.”
—Library Journal
“Extremely intelligent, highly suspenseful, and richly textured historical fiction.”
—Booklist
THE WANDERING ARM
“Sharan Newman has done it again. The Wandering Arm is a triumph—a sweeping historical of romance and dark mystery.”
—Faye Kellerman
“This well-researched, glittering historical evokes Paris in 1141 so clearly that you’ll taste the foods the characters eat, shiver against the cold of a Parisian winter, and pray for the souls of infidels in a time when religious apostasy was as serious as murder … .Newman has created a highly addictive series.”
—The Drood Review of Mystery
THE DEVIL’S DOOR
“History, philosophy, religion, socioculture, murder, and mayhem combined with a sharply defined sense of time and place, original characters, and a magnificently medieval plot—there is little else one can ask for in a book.”
—Ellis Peters Appreciation Society Journal
DEATH COMES AS EPIPHANY
“A sweeping historical novel—meticulously researched, with humor, richness, and detail.”—
Anne Perry
“A tapestry with colorful period detail, an intriguing plot, and a golden thread of romance … .Fans of Ellis Peters will appreciate.”
—Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
Afterword
Like Catherine and Edgar, I followed the pilgrimage route from Le Puy to Compostela. When I began, I viewed the journey as a research trip much like my earlier ones when I would visit archives and buildings and perhaps get a sense of the countryside that my characters would have passed through 850 years ago. What I didn’t expect was to become involved in a tradition that has endured for over a thousand years and is still very much alive today. Perhaps a higher percentage of modern pilgrims now follow the route from a sense of adventure, rather than piety, but even today, it is impossible not to feel a kinship with all those who have made the journey before one. The road to Compostela is still crowded with pilgrims.
Many of the places mentioned in the book are not terribly changed from the twelfth century. That made it much easier to envision my characters’ experiences. It was while climbing the volcanic cone to the chapel in Le Puy that I first realized Edgar was afraid of heights. In the village of Conques the tympanum is intact, although the paint has worn off. The torments of Hell are as fascinating today as they were then. All along the route, on both sides of the Pyrénées, there are still hostels for the pilgrims and churches that were old when Catherine and Edgar visited them. The scallop shell is still on signs pointing the way to St. James.
While I don’t think I’ll do the entire route on foot or even a bicycle, I would very much like to travel along it again, more slowly, in order to appreciate the magnitude of the journey that the pilgrims made. From the tenth century on, Compostela was the third most important pilgrimage site in Christendom, after Rome and Jerusalem. Even though there were many people who took the trip more than once, it was considered dangerous. Before leaving, pilgrims made provisions for their families in case they did not survive. Often, a pilgrimage was made late in life, and the four knights in their sixties and seventies were not atypical.
Peter the Venerable did make the journey to Spain. He collected the back tithes from the emperor and commissioned the first Latin translation of the Koran. However, he returned to Cluny without ever visiting Compostela.
As always, I have done my best to make this book as accurate as possible, both as to historical data and the medieval worldview. But this is a work of fiction, designed to entertain. I hope that the reader enjoys the story. There will not be a quiz. As usual, most of my research never got into the book. So, for those of you who are curious about the period and especially the Pilgrim’s Way, I have a bibliography which I will be happy to send if you send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope, care of the publisher.
Valete! Sharan
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STRONG AS DEATH
Copyright © 1996 by Sharan Newman
The Hebrew poems and translations on pp. 251 and 269 are from The Gazelle by Raymond P. Scheindlin, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1991, pp. 85 and 105. Reprinted by permission.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Cover art by Harvey Parker
eISBN 9781466817227
First eBook Edition : April 2012
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 96-1410
First edition: August 1996
First mass market edition: September 1997