Seven Noble Knights in Modern Life

My recent trip to Spain had many life-changing moments. Most relevant to my writing, I got to see the legend upon which I based my novel Seven Noble Knights "out in the world." The events, if they ever really took place, happened more than 1000 years ago. That's a lot of time for historians, minstrels, and everyone else to make the story their own.

Most amusing to me was the way entrepreneurs could use the characters' names and count on their buying public to know what they're referring to. For example:

Mudarra Café and Grill in Salas de los Infantes

This restaurant is named for the hero of the second part of the saga, who redeems the González family after fifteen years.

Los Infantes Bakery in Salas de los Infantes

An enterprising pastry chef knew "Los Infantes" (the seven noble knights of my title) would lend his wares credibility.

Doña Lambra Hotel and Restaurant

More surprisingly, this hotel and restaurant flaunts the name of the legend's supervillain, Doña Lambra. Granted, it's located in Barbadillo del Mercado, her territory.

Barbadillo also boasts a Lambra Street!

And a twentieth-century sculptor was moved to honor Barbadillo's most notorious ruler with a rather nice statue. The inscription reads, "Doña Lambra. Between history and legend, she ruled this village in the high Middle Ages, immersed in the events that would end with the betrayal of the seven noble knights and Mudarra's revenge (10th century)." Behind Lambra, on the left, is an impression of her husband, Ruy Blásquez, the seven noble knights' uncle. On the other side, Mudarra, the great hero. The statue tells a lot of the legend with no need for reference elsewhere. My husband and I weren't sure where the statue was, so we walked what we thought was the whole town with no luck, and then asked a couple of different residents before we found it. I was thrilled to be able to speak the name of the antagonist of my novel and see recognition on people's faces. They needed no explanation!

Stories are powerful, and apparently they last through time. I'm proud to continue the legend of the seven noble knights.

My book of stories, Unpredictable Worlds, releases for Kindle on May 15 with a softcover edition available the same day. Unpredictable Worlds is already available for preorder for only 99 cents. Once it’s out there in the world, the price will go up, so save at least 66% now and have this strangely amazing book delivered to your device on release day. 

(Originally posted at jessicaknauss.com)

A Glimpse into the Life of My Hero

Imagine for a moment that you are Mudarra González. You’ve just come of age, having been raised in tenth-century Medina Azahara among splendor the world hasn’t seen for a thousand years. You’ve met Christian travelers before, but they all seemed kind of dumb to you because they walk your palace city with mouths agape. Now you’re traveling in Christian lands, having to interact intimately with Christians for the first time, and a woman who claims to be your new mother takes you across an icy bridge to a small stone chapel, the likes of which you never imagined you’d see inside.

It’s as dark as night, with only a few candles before the altars and tiny windows letting the smallest bit of winter light in. A priest comes from some dark corner to greet your “mother” briefly before drawing back a curtain.

In the gloom, you can make out the shapes of a painting very much like this one:

I went to the local art museum this weekend. The place is impressive in the context of this area, and only makes sense when you consider that it was established during the city’s industrial heyday. It holds remarkable treasures from every corner of the globe. Of course, I’m partial to the medieval galleries. They even transported a chapter house and reassembled it just off the main atrium, complete with medieval stained glass windows. (My fondest hope is to make a presentation of Seven Noble Knights in that setting once it’s published.)

The painting above resides in the darkest gallery in the building. When I came upon it, I felt as if I had been transported into my own novel!

It’s a Catalan altar frontal from the late eleventh century (about 100 years in the future of Seven Noble Knights). It shows the ascension of Jesus, while in Seven Noble Knights I had imagined a dynamic portrait of a "Moor-slaying" saint. But the colors, the cartoonish outlines, and the presence of crosses and gesturing hands are exactly what I had in mind. Mudarra finds the red and yellow garish, but I recognize these shades as the favorites in northern Spain for hundreds of years. The serious expressions and outstretched hands are the dramatic expressions of a visual story, meant to instruct anyone, whether or not they could read, whether or not they’d had previous instruction.

I wanted to take this piece of art with me because it accomplishes in an instant what I’m attempting to do with more than 100,000 words: it brings anyone who sees it close enough to my characters to imagine themselves in their shoes.

Characters: Long-Suffering Justa

This is the artist's rendition of Doña Lambra.
Justa looks a lot like her, but she never gets to throw a fit. 

Justa is one of the characters I added to the mix from the original epic story I based Seven Noble Knights on. In the old draft of the story that no one will ever see, Justa was conceived as a snarky maid for Doña Lambra, a narrator and a commentator on the story.

When I started over, I decided Doña Lambra was negative enough. She didn't need a snarky sidekick. So Justa became a sweet girl who longs for a normal life, but her ties to Lambra won't permit the freedom to pursue it. She took on more of the characteristics associated with her name, which has to do with fairness or justice, and then it turned out that she needed a snarky foil. That sassy role is filled by Gotina, a minor character.

Partly because my critique group really liked her character, and partly because it fit brilliantly into the plot, Justa turned into a major character with a fairly complex arc. If I get to write a sequel to Seven Noble Knights, it will focus largely on Justa, the decisions she makes before and after Seven Noble Knights comes to a close, and their ramifications.

She was born into a family of the minor nobility the same year as Lambra, and she looks enough like her that they could be sisters. In Part II of Seven Noble Knights, our hero Mudarra is afraid she might be Doña Lambra when he first meets Justa. She comes into Lambra's household as a foster child when her parents are killed in a border raid, and lives as if she were Lambra's sister until Lambra's parents are killed. From that moment on, Lambra treats Justa as her personal servant, and Justa takes it because she has nowhere else to go. The ties created when Lambra's family took her in are not easily broken, but everyone has their breaking point. When Justa finds hers, the story comes to an end.

It's a pretty important role for someone who started out as a snarky maid.

A Medieval Coin

A little coin appears in Seven Noble Knights, once Mudarra has been in Castile for a while. He wants to give money where it wouldn't be seemly, so he mitigates his crime by casting a few obolos into the street. Described as parchment-thin and barely worth enough to buy a loaf of bread, Mudarra's coins are based on something I have in my possession.

I got this little coin on Ebay (what can't you get there?) for little money ten years ago. The vendor told me it was from the reign of Alfonso X el Sabio, pretty much my only reason for being alive at the time, so I couldn't resist. I was later able to verify in a museum in Burgos that this is just like other obolos out there, so I feel pretty confident that it's the real deal.

The front shows a castle, the emblem of Castile, and the Latin letters CASTELLE.

The back shows the lion of León and bears the inscription LEGIONIS.

Of course, Mudarra couldn't have thrown a coin that bore the emblems of both kingdoms because he lived during a time when Castile was an independent county officially still part of León. It's still likely obolos were struck at the time because of the eternal need for very small values of coins. Aside from the thinness and small circumference, one mark of a coin of small worth is that it hasn't been cut to make even smaller values. Most important to me as the author, this coin was minted during the reign of my favorite king in the history of the world and the same king whose team compiled the books where we find the first traces of Mudarra's story.

This coin weighs almost nothing, but I can feel the seven hundred years in the patina. It brings me that much closer to the realities of the lives of my characters.

Happy holidays! See you again from my new home in the new year.

Touching the Past

I was going through some photos I took when I was in Burgos in October 2005 and was thrilled to find this gem:

It's a document granting Covarrubias to a noble monastery. It's signed by Count García Fernández, supreme leader of Castile and a character in SNKL. His wife Ava also signs. She isn't a character in SNKL, but a strong possibility for a sequel. The document dates from 972, ever so close to the year SNKL opens.

This wonderful piece of faded, wrinkled, and water damaged vellum was on display in the cathedral, under glass, and you can see the reflection from the window in the picture. At the time, I was impressed with the undulated Visigothic majuscule writing and the sheer age of the document. Could I have known that seven years later, having finished the dissertation I was researching, I would complete the biggest, most complex piece of writing of my entire life about the very time period when this document was made and one of the very people who signed it?

Now that I've written SNKL, I find myself wishing I could tell my 2005 self to take even more pictures and look even more closely at these extraordinary objects I haven't had the chance to get so close to since then. In that way, 2005 seems farther away from me than even the year 972.

In other news, the artist completed scanning all the pictures for the SNKL trailer, so keep an eye out for that. It's going to be great!

Medieval Spanish Names II

In the last post, I lamented the lack of imagination medieval Spaniards displayed when it came to naming their male children. Some of that current also arises in female names. I think Toda and Mayor (sounds something like "my oar") are related to earlier Roman or Celtic naming habits, because Toda could refer to the girl being an only child and Mayor indicates she's the eldest.

Otherwise, the historical record is full of names that have survived into the present day, like Teresa, María, and Juana. Much more exciting to find are the ones that haven't had much impact on the present day, such as

Tigridia

Fronilde

Argelo

Eylo

Goda

Gontroda

Flammula ("little flame," quickly morphed into "Lambra," the villainess of SNKL)

and my all time favorite, Urraca 

There was a Queen Urraca of Castile for a while who deserves several novels, and another Urraca has a role in one of the historicals I'm researching now. Best of all, "urraca" is the modern Spanish name for the magpie, a bird I have always found mysteriously breathtaking.

In the course of that research, I found out something disturbing about one of of my main female characters: I'd been calling her the wrong name the entire time! Gonzalo Gustioz's wife Sancha, so called in the histories and poems, went on the record in charters and donations with the name Prollina.

I was disappointed because the next book I want to write has a main character also named Sancha, and if I could have used a different name for the SNKL Sancha, it would be less confusing all around.

But then I got thinking why the poets changed the name. Sancha means "holy" or "saintly," which is perfect for this long-suffering mother of seven warrior sons. And Prollina, no offense, isn't very pretty. Storyteller's prerogative strikes again!

Medieval Spanish Names I

A dismayed young Gonzalo is comforted by his mother, Sancha, in the upcoming trailer.

I recently had the first 50 pages of SNKL critiqued by someone who'd never seen it before and has no history with me. It didn't occur to me that I might get comments similar to ones I got very early on and on which I've been working and fixing and obsessing over ever since. It didn't happen much (which indicates I have indeed fixed previous problems, thank God!), but an amusing observation came through that touched on one of my earliest fears: "The father and son are named the same thing? Are we going to be able to tell them apart? You really should give them different names."

Two of the most important protagonists of SNKL are Gonzalo Gustioz and his son, Gonzalo González. Those are the names they either had in history or were chosen for them by the wise and gentle medieval jongleurs and historians. Faced with this identity crisis, I agonized over what to do. I was afraid the text would get confusing and off-putting.

In the end, I left the names as I found them and used convenient cues to make certain the reader knew which Gonzalo I was writing about: the father gets the title "Don," even though the son is also a knight, and the son often gets the descriptor "young" before his name. I also kept the nickname Gonzalico strictly for the son. It turned out that the father and son don't spend much time in the same scenes, so once I'd established point of view (because they're so strong, they pretty much call the shots in their respective chapters), I could drop the shorthand clues. For example, in Chapter VII, everyone knows I'm talking about Gonzalo the son, because the father is off on a journey he started in the last chapter.

I could always tell the difference between them, which seems to mean readers can, too. I never got a single complaint about the issue before this one.

It points out a challenge in writing historical fiction about medieval Spain: the lack of distinctive names. I think one reason the old texts always refer to the villain by the full name, Ruy Blásquez, is not only to establish psychic distance, but also because the listeners in the first audience would have appreciated knowing which Ruy the singer meant among all the Ruys in all the histories and among their acquaintances. Spanish parents in the tenth century displayed a lack of creativity in naming their children, giving rise to the use of patronymics, place names, and, one presumes, nicknames that haven't survived very often in the historical record. And more than one pulled-out hair among historical fiction authors. And possibly more than one opportunity for the same authors to take their own creative license.

To be continued with women's names...

Picture It!

Gonzalo and Álvar have a difference of opinion.

It's every author's problem: how to get attention and potential readers for the book you've labored over so lovingly for so long?

I came up with a lot of ideas under the philosophy of "Dream Big." None of them were practical, at least not with my current resources. (My life changes drastically in that regard every six months or so.) However, an idea's impracticality doesn't mean I forget about it, so I held onto the idea of an unusual book trailer for a month or two. Then, through the vicissitudes of life, I virtually met graphic novelist Ayal Pinkus, and made creative use of this new talent in my life by asking if he'd like to illustrate the first third of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara.

He said he would!

We've been having a great time ever since, bouncing ideas off each other and off the walls, trading historical pictures back and forth, and generally being creative. The process has helped me think about the novel in new ways, which I hope will benefit both my search for representation and my readers. So hang in there! It's coming, and it's going to be great!

For the color scheme, we settled on primary shades, but using tints they might have had available for clothing dye in the year 974. The result, I think, shows the expensive colors everyone wanted to display with just a slight historical patina. And it really intensifies the drama.

Setting the scene: Burgos, 974. A wooden castle has just been destroyed by competing knights during the festivities at the wedding of Ruy Blásquez and Doña Lambra.

So, even if no one ever watches this trailer (but you will, won't you?), at least I can say I made my best effort.

Characters: Gonzalo González

I'd like to introduce the most important member of the title characters via an excerpt. From Chapter II, this is the first time we see the title characters, and Gonzalo in particular. The scene takes place on the banks of the Arlanzón River in Burgos, Spain, in the year 974. A proud mother introduces her sons to her soon-to-be sister-in-law and her servants. I'll put all clippings from the novel on the new Excerpts page.

Eduardo Verastegui.
This is how handsome (and Spanish) Gonzalo should look.

Sancha’s face lit up again. “My sons are outside with my husband, waiting to meet you.” She grasped Doña Lambra’s limp hand and pulled her outside.

Justa, Gotina, and all the other servants followed the count and Álvar Sánchez outside to find a concentration of masculinity so intense, Justa could feel it wash over her like the waves of the Cantabrian Sea. Nine men, each with a gleaming sword in his belt, and seven with dark brown hair that shone bronze in the sunlight, laughed and talked amongst themselves, producing a resonant rumble in the women’s ears.

Count García said playfully, “Hey, Gonzalo, come and meet your future relative, and bring those sons of yours. Ah, there they are! I would never have known, since they’re so quiet.”

[All six of Gonzalo's elder brothers briefly meet with Lambra, and then we come to the youngest.]

“That will do, Gustio,” cut in Doña Sancha. She took Doña Lambra’s hand and patted it warmly. “And this is my youngest, Gonzalo. We call him Gonzalico.”

The knight in question grimaced at his mother, but just as quickly flashed a smile at Doña Lambra and Justa. He looked to have completed about fifteen years, just like Doña Lambra. Even in similar clothing and with the same nearly black hair and athletic build as his brothers, he was unique. Passersby, whether men or women, let their gazes linger on him. Behind his eyes danced a playful spirit, but it was impossible to tell whether it was angel or demon. Justa observed that the air around Gonzalo seemed to move faster, to bounce off his skin and radiate outward in jagged waves. Her heart skipped. Perhaps this nephew could be an exciting friend for her lady.

Doña Lambra held out her hand for a kiss and was absorbed into his energy. She seemed to pull away as quickly as she could.

The other brothers gathered around, eager to tell Doña Lambra about their little brother.

“Gonzalo’s learning about law. I often consult him when cases come before me,” said Diego, the eldest.

“He’s good at everything he tries,” said Gustio.

Suero added, “He’s even a decent hunter when I lend him my goshawk.”

“Your goshawk?” young Gonzalo shrilled. “You’re just lucky I let you hold him sometimes.”

“Now, boys,” Doña Sancha said over their boisterous teasing. “Let’s act like the nobles we are.”

Justa looked at Doña Sancha and tried to imagine all those well-formed men coming out of her somehow. 

Characters: Blanca Flor

There are several characters in SNKL who began as a throwaway phrase in the source material. Yusuf came about because Mudarra needed a guide through Christian Spain, and Justa blossomed out of Doña Lambra having "a single maid" at one point in the story. They both took on their own amazing (in my opinion, because they seemed to develop independent of my original intent) story arcs.

Blanca Flor, however, is all mine. I took her name from other medieval epics and her personality from the question: What would Doña Lambra and Ruy Blásquez's daughter have been like? The epic states that they had no issue, but what if the case was more that after the terrible things their parents did, no one wanted to be associated with them, especially by blood ties? If I do write a sequel to SNKL, it will be based largely on that tension.

Personally, when I think of a female between 14 and 25 years old, I don't see a fully grown woman, but in the tenth century, people did in general. We're coming full circle with the way teenagers dress and make themselves up these days, but that's another story. So I took inspiration for Blanca Flor's look from her mother, seen in this post, and in this gorgeous artist's fantasy:

Then I made a sketch with words to evoke when I described her for the first time. Hard to see pencil in the scan, but here it is:

I was going for the beauty of the mother, but full of kindness.

Here's how the description ended up, from the point of view of Mudarra:

He ducked behind the tree trunk, from where he observed a being who radiated so much brightness he hardly dared to keep watching her, and yet he couldn’t look away. As he stared, he distinguished two long braids the color of gold thread that pulled the hood from her head and whipped from side to side and front to back as the girl-woman changed her gait to suit her mood. Her mantle flew away from her body with each step like the wings of a giant bird taking flight. At her neck, an underdress of a fine, almost transparent fabric protected her fair skin from the blue wool of her tunic. The skirt, covered in embroidered whorls, danced stiffly atop soft leather boots. Mudarra thought he would visit a cobbler and have similar boots made for himself in a strangely practical thought that ran somewhere below the rapturous feelings the female caused in him. She distractedly passed the empty bucket from one soft-looking mitten to the other as she made her meandering way toward the riverbank. He had never laid eyes on anything like her.

Characters: Mudarra

Mudarra is the somewhat unlikely hero of the second half of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara. The reader spends a lot of time in his point of view, so my first priority was to make sure we could see the world through his eyes, sympathize with him, and generally root for him. Then I had to present him from the outside, when another point of view character meets him for the first time. He should have dark hair and light eyes and a scruffy beard, much like the picture above, although probably even a bit younger.

This guy should credibly play his father in the movie version. (Oh, yes, the role of Don Gonzalo is coming for you, Mr. Clooney!)

I could have looked online for inspiring pictures like these, but at the time, I thought it would be more creative to draw a picture myself. I've never been a particularly visual writer, so I thought that might jump-start those muscles. Sometimes the creativity only really gets flowing in one area when you take a break and try to create in another medium. I never took drawing lessons, but here's my description guide for Mudarra.

Would this make an impression on you?

Here's how the description ended up:

... how could it be anyone else, with the same cowlick in the front of his dark, almost black hair that pointed in every direction before curling almost tamely under his ears? His eyes were shaded under the same wild brows, and his long, straight nose, exactly like his father’s. His square chin supported the same half-grown stubble of a child on the verge of becoming a man. His mouth was pursed in seriousness, but Sancha recognized instantly its shape, always ready to burst into a smile or laughter. ...

Where had he been all this time? He’d been doing well. As he knelt before them, his long cloak opened to reveal that it was lined entirely in a fur as fine as silk and much warmer than the hole-ridden lynx pelt. The tunic he wore underneath, made of a soft-looking, fuzzy fabric, seemed to create its own heat with its bright red color and golden embroidery. The hand he held out to her and her husband had golden rings embedded with shimmering carbuncles on each finger. Even his boots were studded with beads that sparkled as much as rubies. The only detail that seemed out of place for a well-landed lord somewhere in Andalusia or in the borderlands was the length of rough string that secured a small pouch around his neck.

Characters: Doña Lambra and Doña Sancha

​I used these illustrations of ninth-century noble ladies as the inspiration for what Doña Lambra and Doña Sancha, the two main female characters, are wearing the first time they meet each other in Burgos before the wedding. 

​

I colored the edges of Lambra's chain mail girdle and sleeves to appear as if they were pieces of jade in a brass setting. Her dress should probably be a richer color, as it's her best dress, inherited from her mother. I think the most inspiring element of this sketch is the haughty look in the tilt of her head and pursing of her lips.​

​

I imagined Sancha's underdress or chainse to be made of a delicate, expensive fabric, and the tunic or bliaud to be richly colored, but with a more Hispanic type of embroidery. The mantle seems mainly practical to me, but perhaps it was once dyed a very dark color that has faded to grey with washing. I imagine her shorter than Lambra, even though she's much older, and the pleasant expression in the sketch is appropriate to the character I describe in the novel.​



These come from Tom Tierney's Medieval Fashions Coloring Book. Sometimes, writing gets to be too much and you just have to color.

Cultural note: The title doña is the female equivalent of don, which is used in the same manner as English "sir." It may be used with the first name or the complete name, but not with the last name only. Derived from Latin dominus and domina, they translate more or less to "Lord" and "Lady."