for Anne Boleyn, and hold great affection for her daughter, Elizabeth. I’m also rather fond of the historical women I’ve written about in my previous novels, the courageous Juana of Castile and the formidable Catherine de Medici. The Tudor court, however, is an especially interesting and dynamic place to explore, in that within a relatively short span of time so much happened politically and socially. The drama, intrigue, and tumult of the Tudors have, for good reason, captured generation after generation of readers; it seems there’s always something new to discover about them.
What was the inspiration for The Tudor Secret and its hero, Brendan Prescott?
Years ago, I read a fascinating book titled The Elizabethan Secret Services by Alan Haynes. I had known through my other readings that William Cecil and Francis Walsingham developed one of the most sophisticated systems of intelligence in the world on behalf of the embattled queen, who faced enemies both in England and abroad for much of her long reign. But I’d never really stopped to consider the details, such as what the nascent seed of that service might have looked like before Elizabeth took the throne or how an innately skilled but otherwise common person such as Brendan Prescott might have ended up working for her. I thought to myself, Hmm. This has promise. Within a few days, after a conversation with a friend who’s also a Tudor aficionado, I began to draft the outline for the novel you’ve just read, featuring a spy who becomes the secret confidant and protector of Elizabeth, rousing the enmity of her lover, Robert Dudley, even as the spy uncovers the key to his past—a key that threatens the kingdom’s future.
Do you adhere to historical fact in your novels or do you take liberties if the story can benefit from the change? To what extent did you stick to facts in writing The Tudor Secret?
While I believe historical novelists should adhere to historical facts whenever possible, even as we spin a tale that is by and large a fictional re-creation of past events, history can be complicated and even inconvenient, particularly for the novelist. We often walk a delicate line in balancing the factual requisites of our story with the obligation to entertain our reader. It’s not an easy feat, by any means. Nonfiction writers have the luxury of saying: “This and that happened, but we don’t know why or how,” but the fiction writer must make a determination. It should be an informed one, naturally, but still conclusions must be drawn. This is where historical fiction is so interesting to work in and why I think some nonfiction historians are drawn to it themselves: You paint in the empty spaces, the gaps where facts contradict each other or are simply not clear.
In The Tudor Secret, I weave three separate threads into the plotline: The first thread involves the events surrounding the demise of Edward VI in July 1553 and the Duke of Northumberland’s plot to raise Jane Grey to the throne. I have not so much altered the facts in this case as reexamined them from another perspective, conjecturing what Northumberland’s ultimate goal may have been. In the second thread, I deviate from the facts in that I speculate what may have occurred had Elizabeth decided to follow in her sister Mary’s footsteps and visit the court during those tension-filled days leading to Edward’s death. Historical accounts tell us that the princess in fact did not go to court, that she remained in Hatfield; however, it is not outside the realm of possibility that she undertook a secret trip, and that is my premise. I do not alter what is known about Elizabeth’s character or motivation. In the third thread, I create a purely fictional plotline that intersects with the above, involving Brendan, who is brought to court to serve Robert Dudley and is thrust into the drama surrounding the princess. While nothing in The Tudor Secret contradicts the known facts of what happened in the summer of 1553, I do mix things up and seek to reveal what might have been transpiring behind the scenes. This is, after all, a book about secrets—the secrets we carry; the secrets we use as weapons; the secrets we use to seek truth.
In your research, what was the most interesting/surprising/shocking thing you learned?
I was actually surprised to discover how truly ruthless people at court were. We tend to see the court as a glamorous place of gorgeous costumes, minstrels, and rumors—and