Peter Tonkin, can you first tell us about your latest Poley novel?
Shadow of Poison follows Queen’s Intelligencer Robert Poley from the aftermath of his unmasking of the Babington Plot in 1586, through the next eight years as he works to counter other, secret schemes to use Spanish, Portuguese, Irish and Jewish couriers, spies and assassins to murder Elizabeth and her most senior advisers before it comes to a climax as the Earl of Essex accuses the apparently innocent Roderigo Lopez, the Queen’s valued personal physician, of plotting to use his wide-spread contacts and clinical knowledge to poison Her Majesty for a payment of 50,000 crowns promised by Philip II of Spain.
Why did you choose Robert Poley as your central character?
I first came across the enigmatic Robert Poley in Charles Nichol’s seminal The Reckoning where he is introduced as probably the most powerful of the three intelligence men involved in the death of Christopher Marlowe on the evening of 30 May 1593 in Eleanor Bull’s house at Deptford. He is a secondary character in my Master of Defence series of Tudor Murder Mysteries, but I felt he deserved to be presented as a central character in his own right. I therefore planned a series of six novels centering around his involvement in various famous episodes in Tudor and Stuart history.
Poley appears as an intelligencer working first for Walsingham and then for Robert Cecil. When he is not performing the acts that History has recorded, he usually replaces other men or groups of men for whom the record is clear.So far, he has become (fictionally) involved in the Essex Uprising (Shadow of the Axe) again fictionally in the attempts to kidnap or kill King James before he could assume the throne immediately after Elizabeth’s death – which led to Walter Raleigh’s first term of imprisonment (Shadow of the Tower) and, again fancifully, in the unmasking of the Gunpowder Plot (Shadow of Treason). In Shadow of Poison, historical fact and fiction come closer together, certainly at the opening.
Poley really was employed in the household of Sir Philip Sidney and his wife Frances (nee Walsingham). He was closely involved in the Babington Plot and the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots (the subject of the book currently in preparation); he was held in the Tower and was accused of poisoning Richard Creagh the Archbishop of Armagh, and Catholic Primate of All Ireland, a fellow prisoner, near Christmas 1586. Thereafter he follows fictionally in the footsteps of other historical characters and shares their actual adventures with them.
Do you try to stay close to the historical record?
I do. My research, primary (see below) and secondary, is as close to the actual historical narrative as I can come. I have chosen to deal with events that were in themselves intriguing and exciting – and therefore have already been the subject of much detailed scrutiny. (The final planned novel comes full-circle back to The Reckoning, for example – one of the most notorious incidents of Tudor history – and will examine in historical detail the death of Marlowe, its causes and aftermath – through Poley’s eyes as witness and perhaps prime mover). The choice of subject matter means also that very little invention is needed to present the reader with an exciting narrative. The story I am currently working on, for instance, will open in Paris at midnight on 23 August 1572 as a corpse – the first of many – is thrown out of a bedroom window and falls to the ground immediately in the path of the 19 year-old Philip Sidney, thus announcing the start of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.*
The story will then take Poley from the embattled home of of Francis Walsingham in Faubourg St Germain through the Ambassador and Spymaster’s increasingly intense secret war against plot after plot to bring the slaughter of Protestants to England as well, all centred on the Romantic but lethal person of the Queen of Scots, Dowager Queen of France, daughter-in-law of Catherine de Medici and niece to the powerful Duke of Guise. Until Walsingham and the nervous Privy Council find (or manufacture) in Babington’s downfall a reason to be rid of her at last. Poley really was at the centre of the final outcome – though there is sufficient doubt about his detailed actions and motivations to allow a little fiction in.
*Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Huguenots was murdered in his bed and his corpse thrown out of the window into the street below beginning a slaughter that resulted in the deaths of up to 30,000 French Protestants.
Do you try to keep the minor characters true to life?
Almost all of the minor characters are historical figures (like ‘Johnson’ in Shadow of Treason, for instance, who is Guy Fawkes in disguise) and I do my very best to make them look as they actually looked (thank you National Portrait Gallery, Wikipedia etc…) and behave as history records. I try to make Poley’s relations with them credible – which is why he so often follows in the footsteps of real people. In Shadow of Poison, for instance, he follows the Portuguese spy and courier Manuel d’Andrada who left posterity a description of his travels through Europe to the Spanish court at the Escorial. Poley’s nameless wife was real – though she and their daughter appear to have died young – as is Joan Yeomans, his mistress who lived with her husband on Hog Lane where Poley rents a room. The major fictional character is the love of Poley’s life Lady Jane Percy, Cecil’s spy amongst Her Majesty’s Ladies in Waiting and Poley’s contact for information about secret court matters.
Is there a particular format and technique that you often use?
In these books, each major section begins with a piece written in the present tense before the story continues in standard past-tense omniscient narrative (albeit principally from Poley’s point of view). The object of this is to thrust the reader immediately into the middle of a situation that will form a vital element of later events. Shadow of Poison, for instance, which has three main sections, opens with the poisoning of the first Earl of Essex in Dublin Castle during the night of 22 September 1576. The second opens with the second Earl’s ruinous participation in the Counter-armada which failed in all its objectives and cost Drake and Norris their reputations as military leaders. The third begins with Essex’s attempt to scale the walls of Rouen with ladders too short for the task and the resulting slaughter of the men under his command – one of the greatest failures of his military career, which did a great deal of damage to his standing at Court.
Do the novels in the series fit seamlessly together?
In most respects, yes they do, for they are dictated by Tudor and Stuart history as we currently understand it. But sadly not entirely. They were written (in no particular historical order) to be read as ‘stand alone’ tales. Consequently, although historically accurate, Poley’s relationships with various minor characters (several, for instance, in the household of the Earl of Essex) is not consistent and a character like Essex’s secretary Henry Cuffe (for example) with whom he is familiar in one story, becomes a stranger at the start of a later one. Though the final outcome for Cuffe, along with his headstrong employer, is as the record dictates.
Do you visit your locations – for research purposes?
I do. Primary research for my Roman novels has taken me not only repeatedly to Rome but to Massalia (Marseilles) and Egypt. Sadly, the Trojan Murders series was produced without any exploration of Greece or Turkey for they were written during lockdown. Research for Shadow of Poison began in Castle Rushen, Castletown, Isle of Man where I first learned of the fatal poisoning of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, Earl of Derby and the last King (or Lord) of Mann (before the title was taken by the royal rulers of England. King Charles has been proclaimed the current Lord of Mann); to Dublin, Paris, Spain (a return visit to the Escorial planned for next year) as well as all over London and the relevant palaces, especially (of course) the Tower. The secondary research for Shadow of Poison rests principally on Dominic Green’s The Double Life of Dr Lopez. Primary research for the current project has already included visits to Edinburgh (which also covered other novels in the series), the Borders and especially the little museum at Mary Queen of Scots’ house in Jedburgh.
How do you see your audience?
As people interested in history with high expectations in matters of historical accuracy, vividness and written style. Many have specialist knowledge of the period in question and respond well to convincing presentations or portrayals; less so to ‘faction’ and unconvincing fantasy. They are patient with careful research well presented, even at some length but not endlessly so – they like (as do all readers I suppose) to be propelled through the narrative by a combination of action, character, relationship, revelation of unexpected elements of events and situations they thought they knew, and that sense of being transported into that ‘other country’ which is The Past.
Do you think you should add notes at the end to make the reader clear about how close to the record the characters and events have come?
This is a tricky one and, frankly, it arises from a comment made in a recent review of one of the earlier Queen’s Intelligencer novels. I take the point. Many readers like to have an explanation at the end of a narrative as to where historical fact ends and fiction begins. They have every right to demand this and it is, perhaps derelict of me not to supply it. I shall make a point of doing so at the end of my current project (working title Shadow of a Queen). It was too late, however, to add anything to the end of Shadow of Poison. Certainly a presentation of The Facts as I Understand Them might be useful, for my understanding of events might vary from others’ At the end of Shadow of Treason, for instance, readers might have found it interesting to know that I had given Fawkes something of a conscience arising from modern studies of the cataclysmic results had his gunpowder actually exploded as planned – killing and maiming hundreds if not thousands of onlookers in Westminster there to see the King and his Lords progress into the Parliament building. Or that I believe Robert Catesby and his associates were trapped into their fatal shoot-out not because of their plans to blow up King James but because they had robbed Warwick Castle of horses and armaments in their (at that time unsuspected) attempt to raise the Midlands to rebellion despite Fawkes’s capture, consequent failure and grim refusal for some time to name any of his associates. Which explains why, when he finally ‘broke’ they had to dig up Catesby’s corpse and bring it to London for formal execution.
What is your next project?
Shadow of a Queen will focus on Robert Poley’s actual involvement in the Babington Plot. It will fictionalise (in the absence of any record) his early association with Walsingham; how, as a Catholic, he became such an important element of a fiercely Protestant spy network (though he was by no means the only one to do so) and yet how he was willing to use his Catholicism to gain entry into the dangerous circles that formed and re-formed around Mary Queen of Scots. How he, Giordano Bruno and a number of other unexpected historical figures helped Walsingham deal with Ridolfi, Throckmorton and Parry. How Thomas Babington, an impressionable teen-aged page-boy in the household of the Earl of Shrewsbury when the Earl was Mary’s indulgent goaler at Tutbury Castle, became besotted with the beautiful queen, although her youthful looks and slim figure were being lost to sweetmeats and lack of exercise. The book will examine Poley’s pivotal role in the plot (as Walsingham’s double agent) and end (unsurprisingly) with as accurate a reconstruction of events at Fotheringhay 8 February 1587, by which time Mary had become very little like any of the actresses who have portrayed her final exit on the small screen or the large – and died in a manner that no-one has yet managed to present accurately on film (probably because it was just too shocking).
Peter Tonkin is the author the Queen’s Intelligencer novels.
Peter Tonkin Peter Tonkin
