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)

Unusual Historicals: The Cantigas de Santa Maria

Today at Unusual Historicals I get to share with you the medieval phenomenon that occupied my every waking moment for three years, all told: the Cantigas de Santa Maria. This unique collection of songs and artwork is the single most influential reason I became a medievalist. I hope you can glimpse why there's so much to love about these thirteenth-century songs. Enjoy!

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.

New Year's Post

2014 has been hectic for me as I moved and look for a job. But I never set Seven Noble Knights entirely aside and will have great blogs again in February.

Today I have a post up at Unusual Historicals that retraces the possible geography of a special day in the life of Alfonso X, el Sabio, in Sevilla. Alfonso X gave the mandate to write the history from which I take the story of the Seven Noble Knights (among many other accomplishments). Sevilla was Alfonso's favorite city after its reconquest, and is mine now, in spite of loyalties spread all over the Iberian Peninsula. I've included lots of pictures and I hope it's a fun and informative experience. Check it out if you like Spain and/or the Middle Ages!

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...

The Epic Poem, the Novel, and History

The Seven Noble Knights of Lara is based on Los siete infantes de Lara or de Salas, an episode of Spanish history tied up in poetry and heroism. It is a story full of violent passions and old-fashioned revenge. It hits such an unusually fevered pitch that some scholars believe the story must have originated in the epic tradition of northern Europe. It might have traveled to Spain through royal marriages during the thirteenth century. In spite of the differences between this epic and other Spanish stories, The Seven Noble Knights of Lara displays a typically Spanish obsession with geography and treats specifically Spanish themes, such as coexistence and wars with the Islamic governors of Andalusia and the supremacy of Castile among the Christian kingdoms. 

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None of the poetry of the original epic — if it ever existed — has survived to the present day. In the thirteenth century, King Alfonso X el Sabio had his scholars compile a history of Spain from the beginning of time to their present day, and they recorded the episode of Los siete infantes de Lara over the course of several chapters taking place during the rule of the second Count of Castile, García Fernández, in the late tenth century. In the twentieth century, scholars noticed that in several places, this supposedly historical text rhymed and presented meter and repetition typical of epic poetry. Some of the stanzas have been reconstructed, but the closest we can get to the entire original story is through the prosified version and later medieval histories.

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Whether the incident represents historical facts has always been up for debate. The possibility that the medieval historians derived it from an epic poem does not argue for or against its truthfulness, as traveling minstrels or jongleurs would have been the main source of news at the time, and they could remember the facts more easily when it followed a familiar format (and rhymed).

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Two fantastical elements in the story argue against the historical nature of the tale, but they can also be interpreted as miracles — confirmations of God's glory in everyday life — which medieval people would have taken as utterly factual and believable.

The first miraculous event concerns a ring which has been split in two, and the pieces separated in distance and time. As in other folk tales, when the two halves meet again, they magically fuse, never again to be sundered. Whether because it was considered a miracle, or they thought magic was more prevalent a few hundred years before, or they just weren't that concerned with details, the medieval historians record this without comment. I knew today's readers wouldn't swallow the magical reunion of the ring's halves without question, so in my novel, I simply had the ring melded back together in a normal forge.

The second fantastical occurrence concerns Don Gonzalo's eyesight. He goes blind with weeping over the years Salas is in ruins, and when his fortunes change, his sight miraculously returns. I'm sure it's more metaphorical than a strict plot point, but I recognized this as an opportunity to give the reader an experience of the medical practices of the day. Physicians were doing successful eye surgery in the Arab world at this time, so in my novel, Don Gonzalo develops sudden cataracts from weeping, staring into the sun, and even a swift kick in the face. Later, I go into the gory details of cataract surgery with an Andalusian doctor. The method is still performed the same way in developing countries today. The scene also serves to emotionally bond some of the characters. 

Author Kim Rendfeld called this passage "riveting." I couldn't be more pleased with the results of my efforts to reconcile the fiction and the historically believable in my little epic. 

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.

Traitors and Turncoats: The Vile and Incomprehensible Ruy Blásquez

Supposedly an illustration of an incident from the cycle
of El Cid, which also comes from historical/epic tradition.

As you know if you follow my author blog, I have a guest post today on the wonderful site Unusual Historicals. It's all about a pair of traitors in medieval Castilian epic, and in passing I discuss the strange symbiosis between Castilian epic and medieval Castilian historical sources. 

I wanted to discuss the baddies of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara here. There are spoilers in the following comments.

The story on which I base  The Seven Noble Knights of Lara contains historical figures, but the existence of Ruy Blásquez and Doña Lambra has not been verified, perhaps because no one, even today, would welcome the possibility of being associated with such vile traitors.

Ruy Blásquez – a. k. a. Ruy Velásquez – doesn’t kill a king or even a count. But when he wipes out seven warrior brothers in an epic battle and sends their father to be beheaded, he eliminates an entire generation of soldiers of Castile, leaving himself with all the power for more than ten years at the turn of the eleventh century.

The crime is all the worse because the warriors are his nephews, the sons of his sister. There are few stronger blood ties at this time in history. An uncle is expected to take on an almost nurturing role, ensuring that his nephews realize their potential, especially on the battlefield, and for this surrogate father to cut the knights down in their prime frankly smacks of taboo. Further compounding the betrayal, Ruy Blásquez uses an army of Moorish soldiers to take down his nephews and sends their father to Córdoba, the capital of the Islamic caliphate. His close association with powerful Muslims taints him in the eyes of his Christian neighbors. His actions betray not only his blood relatives, but also the Christian faith.

Although I tell the story from many different points of view in my novel, Ruy Blásquez’s actions are so hard to understand that I dared not take a seat behind his eyes. The source material writers seem to have felt the same taboo. They make an effort to distance the audience from Ruy Blásquez, referring to him as I do here, always with his first and last names, and usually appending “that traitor” or calling him simply “the traitor.” I took a more subtle route: I made him a slippery character, hard to get a handle on in general, so that his incomprehensibility in the betrayal is somewhat believable. The reader is left to conjecture that his wife, Doña Lambra, made him do it.

Doña Lambra, on the other hand, was too much fun not to try to understand. She’s frustrated because she has to marry Ruy Blásquez and covets the nephews’ superior power. She also feels an inconvenient level of sexual tension around her handsome new nephews-in-law, and when they get into an argument and kill her cousin, she snaps. She has to be a little insane to take such a disproportionate revenge, but she also has to be manipulative or influential in order to get Ruy Blásquez to agree, even if he is wishy-washy. It was delightful creating this dangerous beauty the reader loves to hate.

Check back soon for more about how I developed these fascinating characters.

The Epic Poem

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The Seven Noble Knights of Lara is based on two prose texts from the thirteenth century, thought to be adapted from an oral tradition epic poem.

The following is my summary of the events in the primary sources.

Ruy Blásquez, a valiant knight of Castile, marries Lambra, the noble cousin of the Count of Castile and invites all of Spain to attend, including his sister, Sancha, her husband, Gonzalo, and their seven sons, the seven noble knights of Lara. As a part of the celebrations, Ruy Blásquez sets up a lancing contest. Lambra's cousin Álvar Sánchez performs better than any other knight present, and she isn't afraid to let her feelings on this be known. Gonzalo, the youngest of the seven noble knights, decides to outdo him, and does, easily. Young Gonzalo and Álvar exchange angry words until Gonzalo becomes enraged and hits him, killing him instantly.

Doña Lambra tells her new husband to take revenge for the outrage, so he hits his young nephew, and young Gonzalo repays him by throwing his goshawk in Ruy Blásquez's face, breaking his nose. At that point, the Count of Castile steps in to calm the passions and prevent more deaths. The men agree to abide by his arbitration and leave the wedding festivities more or less satisfied.

Doña Lambra is not satisfied. Taking advantage of their husbands leaving on maneuvers, she invites Doña Sancha and her seven sons and their tutor to a hunting party. When the time is right, Lambra has her page soak a cucumber in blood. He obediently throws it at young Gonzalo and it hits him square in the chest. Gonzalo's brothers laugh at such a bizarre occurrence, but Gonzalo takes offense, saying that Lambra was proving she could fatally harm him. The law firmly on his side, he murders the page under Doña Lambra's protective skirts.

The González family leaves Doña Lambra on the estate and when the husbands return to their respective homes, each regroups. Ruy Blásquez proposes that his brother-in-law Don Gonzalo carry a letter to Córdoba, supposedly to collect a rich debt from Almanzor. Ruy Blásquez then takes his seven nephews to Almenar against the protestations of their tutor, who has read the auguries in the flights of birds and forecasts doom. An enormous army of Moorish mercenaries are waiting to ambush them in Almenar. Despite their valiant fighting and the aid of some of Ruy Blásquez’s troops, in the end, all seven brothers and the tutor are beheaded. The heads are sent to Almanzor in Córdoba. Meanwhile, Don Gonzalo, the father of the seven knights, has arrived in Córdoba only to find that the letter he carries is his death warrant. Almanzor does not behead him, but imprisons him in order to set up an investigation of the situation. Don Gonzalo is still in prison when they bring the heads to him for identification. His speech over his sons' remains are the most moving part of the poem.

Almanzor sends his sister to "comfort" Don Gonzalo, and by the time he returns to his home in Salas, the princess is pregnant with his last son. Don Gonzalo gives her half a ring by which to identify himself when he's ready to meet his father.

Twelve years later, Salas is in utter ruin, Don Gonzalo has cried so much that he's gone blind, and even the Count of Castile is having trouble with Ruy Blásquez, who marauds all over the land, taking Castilian castles for his own. In Córdoba, the princess's son, Mudarra is coming of age. He's been trained and shows extraordinary talent in every aspect a knight should. When a visiting potentate questions his legitimacy, he asks his mother who his father was. She tells him the story of the betrayal of the seven noble knights, and how his purpose in life is to find his father and set things right in Castile through bloody revenge.

When Mudarra arrives in Salas, Don Gonzalo realizes he can't recognize him as his son without incriminating himself with his wife, Doña Sancha, so he resists. Doña Sancha sees Mudarra as the opportunity they've been waiting for and demands that he recognize Mudarra. When he finally does, his sight is magically recovered and the broken ring fuses back together, never again to come apart.

Mudarra is adopted by Sancha, baptized as a Christian, and knighted by the Count of Castile in Burgos. Ruy Blásquez arrives to protest, and the count declares a temporary truce during which each party can put together his legal case. Ruy Blásquez instead flees with his soldiers and Mudarra and his father Don Gonzalo follow him. Each time they arrive where Ruy Blásquez was last sighted, he's already long gone. Finally, the enemies face off. After many formalities, Mudarra cuts Ruy Blásquez's arm so severely that he has to surrender. They bring him to his sister, Doña Sancha, who prepares to drink his blood to fulfill the dream she's had, but Don Gonzalo stops her. She decides her brother should be executed in a symbolic manner, so they tie him to a scaffold and throw stones and lances at him, in imitation of the sport the knights were taking part in during the ill-fated wedding.

Doña Lambra begs her cousin the Count of Castile for help, but is refused. Nevertheless, her blood ties with him make Mudarra unable to take an active revenge against her. She lives out her days on the run, with only one maid as a companion. She dies in the sierra, and when travelers pass her resting place, instead of saying a prayer for her soul, they say, "May she be damned!"