Tag: writing

Rogation Day Part Four

On By chrisnickson2In UncategorizedLeave a comment

After missing last week, I’m back with the fourth episode of the Elizabethan serial. Need to catch up or refresh your memory? Just scroll down for the earlier parts…

            ‘I was busy,’ he replied as if it was nothing at all and glanced at the body. ‘Why would anyone murder Tenche?’

            ‘If we knew that, we’d know who did it,’ I replied sharply. He’d missed the beating of the bounds, vanished without trace for a few hours when I needed him as part of the Waits and the watch.

            ‘What about his wife?’ He peered down at the wounds, frowning. I told him the little we knew.

‘Alderman Skyes is with her now.’ That made him raise his eyebrows.

‘Putting his case for a quick marriage?’

‘None of my business. If you want to help, see if you can discover where Tenche went last night.’

He gave me a doubtful look, opened his mouth as if to speak, then nodded and left. What could I make of that? I’d think about it later, when I had time. For now I had to inform people about the murder, then be out there hunting for the killer.

4

At home, the little house on Marsh Lane, on the other side of the beck from the town, I penned letters, one to the county sheriff, the second to Walsingham’s man in the West Riding, detailing what little I knew about Tenche’s murder, the possible reasons behind it, and those who might be suspects. I’d never written a good hand, but it was legible. After I read each one through, I sanded and folded them and applied the official seal of the watch before locking my door and walking back into Leeds and leaving the letters with Harmon Javeson at his shop on Vicar Lane.

            It was a place of oddments and curiosities that nobody was likely to buy. A horse harness where the leather was cracked. An empty old wooden scabbard with an inscription that had faded beyond reading. More, much more. Everything covered in a patina of dust, cobwebs hanging in the corners of the ceiling, so ancient the spiders had dried to husks.

            But Harmon didn’t need to sell anything. He was Lord Cecil’s man, the government’s eyes and ears around here, paid to pass on information, to keep aware of all that was happening. He was older than me, with lank, grey hair and wisps of a white beard, looking like someone in need of a hearty meal.

            I passed over the letters. He’d arrange the delivery and pass on any reply.

            ‘Bad business, yon. Word’s all over.’ He shook his head. ‘Walter Tenche.’

            ‘Any ideas?’ I asked, but he shrugged in reply. He’d always been a miser with his thoughts, keeping them to himself until he could play them to advantage.

            As I turned away, hand on the doorknob, he said: ‘The upright man’s looking for you.’

            ‘Is he now? I’m easy enough to find.’

            Everyone called him the Upright Man. There were probably some who didn’t know his real name. Bartlett Wilson. Sly as the devil, cunning. He ran much of the crime in Leeds, with the young cutpurses and whores all giving him some of their takings, on pain of beatings or worse. If they were caught, they knew to take their punishments and not mention his names. A sentence of hanging over on Gallows Hill meant Wilson would tend to their families if they kept their mouths shut. For a while, at least, then his care would ebb to nothing.

            He was the bane of my life; I’d never mange to catch him in crime; out of fear, nobody peached. He had money, a home, such as the hovel was. I couldn’t charge him as a vagabond. Very careful about showing his hand. We kept a distance from each other.

            Why would he want to see me?

The fifth part will arrive in a week or two – if you want it. Meanwhile, both the Cathy Marsden WWII novels, No Precious Truth and The Faces Of The Dead are currently £1.99 on Kindle – the first is just 99p (free with Kindle Unlimited). That’s two books for around the price of a coffee. You’re not likely to find a better bargain this week. I truly hope you’ll but them – because they’re good. I sweated blood and tears over those books!

Rogation Day Part 3

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This really is turning into a serial, and I’ll be as interested as you to discover where it’s going. Elizabethan Leeds has its charms – but it seems to be a deadly place, filled with secrets for Gil Craven and the watch to uncover.

Id you missed the first two parts, don’t worry. Part one is here, and the second part here. Now relax and enjoy the story.

            So many things I needed to do: start the hunt for Tenche’s killer, find Richard, write to Walsingham’s man in the West Riding. But the widow might be known something.

            ‘I’ll come with you,’ I decided. Sykes stared at me for a moment, his distaste showing, before he nodded.

            ‘If you must, Craven.’

3

‘Madam,’ Sykes said as he entered the hall of the house on Briggate. He swept off his cap and bowed; I did the same.

            Mary Tenche knew. She’d been crying, eyes rimmed with red, a good lawn handkerchief clutched in one fist. She was dressed for home, hair covered with a starched white coif, a plain gown and kirtle, slippers on her feet. She was a small woman, in her late thirties, with dark hair and smoky eyes, the mistress of a handsome home. A fire burned in the hearth, the chimney drawing well. A pair of painted hangings added colour to the walls. Glazed windows overlooked the plot behind the building, a view over a stone building where the merchant warehoused his cloth, the small counting house behind, then the garden. The man might have been cloth searcher for his year, but he’d made a pretty penny before all that.

            ‘My condolences, madam,’ I said and she dipped her head in acknowledgement. I’d heard the rumours, that it hadn’t been a loving marriage. Doubtless Sykes knew the same thing; he wouldn’t have been here otherwise, with an eye on his chances.

Three children alive, the elder boy apprenticed to a merchant in Antwerp, learning the other end of the business. The second was starting to learn the trade with John Faulkner, down at his dye works on the river. Jane, the girl, was ten, already betrothed to Henry Atkinson, a merchant’s son, aged just twelve. A few years yet before the ceremony.

‘Was your husband at home last night?’ I asked. Sykes glared at me. He wanted her to himself, a chance to press his suit and its advantages while she was at her weakest.

‘No,’ she answered. Her voice was low and husky. ‘He said he had to meet someone.’ She raised her gaze to stare at me. ‘When I woke this morning, he wasn’t here.’

‘Did you mention it to anyone?’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t the first time.’

‘Who was he meeting, madam?’

‘He didn’t tell me. He never discussed his business at home.’

Talk was that Tenche had a lover; it would be easy enough to discover her name. The servants likely knew it. They saw more than their betters imagined. I’d inquire of them in a few minutes, away from Skyes.

‘I’m sorry to have to ask questions at this time, madam,’ I said. ‘Was he having any problems with his work?’

‘Nothing he mentioned.’

One final thing. ‘Did he know Richard Harding?’

‘Who?’

It was the answer I’d expected.

‘No matter, madam. Thank you.’

            Skyes gave a grim, satisfied smile as I bowed and left.

The servants had gathered in the buttery, the oldest part of the house where they kept the ale and wine. A fine place for gossip, although the chatter dropped to nothing as soon as they saw me.

            ‘Mistresses-’ I began, but Elizabeth Carr, the maid, cut me off.

            ‘Here about the master, Gil Craven?’ She was an older woman with a harsh tongue she curbed around the Tenches. A gown that had probably once belonged to Mrs Tenche, worn now, the colours faded, covered with an apron that cover her from neck to feet.

            ‘I am.’

            ‘Murder. That’s what people are saying.’

            ‘It’s true enough,’ I admitted.

            ‘Terrible.’ She shook her head, although curiosity gleamed in her eye. ‘How did it happen?’

            I countered with a question of my own.

            ‘He went out last night. Mrs Tenche says he didn’t return. Do you know where he was?’

            The cook, Hannah Oliver, gave Sarah, the younger maid, a quick warning look before she could speak.

            ‘You know,’ I said. ‘Tell me, I’ll find out sooner or later.’ I pressed my lips together. ‘I’m looking for his murderer.’

            ‘Catherine Warden,’ Sarah spoke the name in a rush before the others could stop her.

            A widow. A woman of middling wealth, left enough money not to need to pinch her pennies. She’d shown no inclination to marry, content with the freedom her status brought. Tenche had been her lover. He’d kept it quiet from the town. But of course his servants knew.

            ‘How long?’ I asked. But they looked away. Sarah’s cheeks were a broad, blushing red. I’d get little more from them out of loyalty to their mistress. No matter. I had a thread I could twitch. ‘God’s blessings on you,’ I said as I left.

The curious had gone from the house of pleas. The curate and churchwardens had left to finish beating the parish bounds. The members of the Waits had stayed, sipping small beer, wondering what to do and looking to me for guidance as I came through the door.

            Thomas Dawson’s face was still pale; the first body he’d really seen. Rolly raised his eyebrows, a man who’d experienced more than most of us, one who’d served time in the navy under John Hawkins, a crewman on the commander’s second slaving voyage from Africa to the New World. He’d come home to Leeds with money in his pocket, never speaking about his experience, spending fast and wide and drinking like a man whose desire was to forget.

            ‘Tom, I want you to stand guard here. I imagine the undertaker will arrive this afternoon. The widow will inform him.’

            A reluctant nod as he sat on a bench, turning away from the corpse.

            ‘What about me?’ Rolly asked.

            ‘Talk to the people in the cloth warehouses,’ I told him after a moment. ‘See if they know whether Tenche had any business problems. Come and find me later.’

            ‘Right.’ Before he could stand, the door opened wide and Richard Harding strode in, a tall, sallow man, hair drawing back on his scalp and a frightened look on his face/

            ‘Where the devil have you been?’ I asked.

Thefourth part will arrive in a week or two – if you want it. Meanwhile, both the Cathy Marsden WWII novels, No Precious Truth and The Faces Of The Dead are currently £1.99 on Kindle – the first is just 99p (free with Kindle Unlimited). That’s two books for around the price of a coffee. You’re not likely to find a better bargain this week. I truly hope you’ll but them – because they’re good. I sweated blood and tears over those books!

Rogation Day Part 2

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A number of you seemed to like the first part of Rogation Day, which I posted last week (if you missed it, catch up here). Here’s the second installment, and it appears to be turning into a serial. That’s both good and bad. I nered to keep it going and make sure there’s enough to keep you interested. But I’m also getting caught up in the tell of it and what might happen. No, honestly, I don’t know; I’m truly making it up as I go. But Elizabethan Leeds is a new era for me, so we’ll discover it together, shall we?

Meanwhile, on with Part 2…

            ‘Where should we take him, Gil?’ I was the inspector of the night watch; the decision and the investigation was mine.

            I thought for a moment. ‘The house of pleas,’ I said. Plenty of room to gather the witnesses and hear testimony and have a proper view of the corpse. ‘Everyone there and wait.’

            They made their way in twos and threes, reluctant to be a part of this. But this was murder, plain to everyone with eyes in their face.

            My mind was galloping. Men ended up in brawls, wounded in pain. That usually came after drinking. Straightforward crimes. This was going to be much harder.

     I strode out ahead of the others, back into Leeds along Mabgate, banging on Richard’s door once again before going in. I knew I’d find nothing, but I had to check.

            Tenche dead, Richard missing. I didn’t know of any connection between them, but there had to be something; I’d never believed in coincidence.

2

The body was laid out along the table and stripped, just a sheet for modesty. I’d sent for the coroner, Mr Bateson, to come and examine it, offer his judgement, and given a boy a farthing to gather the aldermen. I could hear voices outside as a crowd gathered, drawn by the horror of the news.

            ‘He was stabbed.’ Bateson’s words filled the expectant silence in the room. He was the apothecary, the only man in Leeds with any knowledge of medicine. ‘There, under his ribs.’ The man pointed it out for everyone to see before turning to me. ‘My fee?’

            God’s love. A lost life in front of him and all he could consider was a few pennies.

            ‘Send your bill,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be paid.’

            As soon as he’d gone, I raised my voice. ‘Any doubt this was murder?’ Nobody dissented.

            We needed to find the killer, and the reason. Tenche’s Catholicism, or his position as cloth searcher? Where was Richard? With each passing moment, my doubts grew.

Richard had never been in a fight, as peaceable a man as they came. A fine musician and a good carpenter; he’d completed his apprenticeship, never an argument with his master, and solid in his work. Our wives died within a year of each other, his Bertha in her childbed after a stillborn baby, my Lizzie taken by the sleeping sickness. Neither of us had remarried. We’d never discussed it, but I suspect our reasons were the same: we couldn’t face heartbreak again. Both of us were find alone, meeting two or three evenings a week to practice with the Waits or play for dances. A few drinks afterwards.

            Not a violent bone in his body. What had happened to him?

I noticed Alderman Sykes stood at the back of the hall, looking quizzically down at the floorboards, hat in his hand, the plumes fluttering as they caught the small breeze from the open window. He was well-dressed as ever, a black doublet, sleeves artfully slashed to display the blood red material beneath. Black hose and buckled shoes, a small white ruff around his neck. The starched pleats neatly ironed.

   I pulled off my cap as I approached him, bowing my head for a moment.

            ‘Good morrow to you, master.’

            ‘Hardly that with Tenche dead,’ he said.

            ‘It’s murder.’

            ‘I see.’         

‘We’ll need to tell his wife,’ I said.

            ‘I imagine she already knows,’ he replied. ‘Don’t you think the whole town will have heard by now, Gil Craven?’

            ‘Mrs Tenche might have information to guide us, sir.’

            ‘Possibly,’ he agreed after a few seconds’ consideration. ‘She’ll need to arrange the burial.’

            ‘You knew him well, didn’t you?’

            ‘I knew him,’ he said cautiously. ‘I wouldn’t say well.’

            In a town like Leeds, every face was familiar. With a little over three thousand souls, each day you saw the same folk day after day. Friendships, though, were different. I’d often seen Sykes and Tenche in the alehouses, heads together as they talked.

            ‘Do you think it had to do with his position?’ Sykes asked.

            ‘I don’t know, sir. That’s why I need to ask questions.’

            He nodded. Walter Tenche had been serving his year as cloth searcher. It was a position of honour among the merchants, voted by the others for his honesty and integrity. He examined the cloth offered for sale on Leeds Bridge on market days, every Tuesday and Saturday, making sure the quality of the worsted and northern dozens was high enough to be sold as Leeds cloth. We didn’t have guilds like York, so our merchants could sell more cheaply. The cloth searcher could refuse pieces and ensure the reputation of everything offered here was high. A dispute over that could well be a reason for murder.

            Sykes was a merchant. He’d been born to it. His father had made money in the wool trade and Charles Sykes has seen business expand. He’d built a stone loom house behind his home on Briggate, three apprentices working for him. A wealthy man with a heavy purse dangling from his belt, next to the sharp dagger in its sheath.

            He was very aware of his status in the town, but a good man for all that. Did he know about Tenche’s hidden Catholicism? Unless it was important, that was something I hoped to keep quiet; no need for it to taint him in death.

            ‘I’ll go and see his widow,’ Sykes said. I could see the calculation behind his eyes. He had three children, the oldest ten; his wife had died last year. Mrs Tenche had two young children of her own. Very soon she would need the protection and money of a husband.

The third part will arrive in a week or two – if you want it. Meanwhile, both the Cathy Marsden WWII novels, No Precious Truth and The Faces Of The Dead are currently £1.99 on Kindle – the first is just 99p (free with Kindle Unlimited). That’s two books for around the price of a coffee. You’re not likely to find a better bargain this week. I truly hope you’ll but them – because they’re good. I sweated blood and tears over those books!

Happy Birthday To Leeds

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Last week Leeds turned 400.

After a fashion, that’s true. I hope you raised a glass and cut some cake to wish it happy birthday.

Really, though, the place is a lot older than that. It might well be the Loidis mentioned by the Venerable Bede in his eighth century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and was beyond doubt the Leodis where the Normans built a stockade and planted a garrison of troops (where Mill Hill now stands)

It’s the town where Maurice Peynel, the lord of the manor, created our best-known street, Briggate, in 1208 as a way to raise money.

It’s all of those things. But it’s 400 years since Leeds was granted its first charter by Charles I in 1626.

What did that mean? Governance. Until then, Leeds had been a small market town, like many others across the country. The charter transformed it into a self-governing borough with a council run an alderman, burgesses and councillors.

Not everybody praised the idea; many small traders opposed it, as it concentrated power in the council. However, Sir John Savile persuaded the powers in London to grant the charter (he also became the first alderman). The charter covered all 21,000 acres of the parish of St Peter (the Parish Church), allowing it to levy fines, acquire property, make bye-laws and hold courts, things we now take for granted.

However…being Leeds the tale couldn’t be straightforward

Sometime early in the Civil War, which began in 1642, the copy of the charter in Leeds disappeared; it’s never been found. In 1646 a replacement was requested and delivered. You can view the entire charter here. It’s written in legal Latin, but there is a translation.

But that’s not the close of the story…there’s another twist to come.

That copy vanished, too, to be purchased by a bookseller in Kent who promptly lost in behind a bookcase. When he found it again, in 1950, he decided the piece of vellum would make an attractive lampshade. Until he had an expert look at it and discovered exactly what he had.

Leeds Corporation offered him £10 10s (£10.50) for it, but the bookseller donated it to the city – Leeds was granted city status by Queen Victoria in 1893 – and it now sits in West Yorkshire Archives alongside the second charter granted to Leeds by Charles II in 1661, after he ascended to the throne following the Interregnum.

Leeds is celebrating these 400 years, as well it might. The 300 year anniversary was a big affair, with displays in Roundhay Park and more, even a book to serve as a commemoration.

 This year includes all manner of events and I’m proud to be a part of it, giving a talk at 1pm on Wednesday, September 23, at Leeds Central library on Alice Mann. I’ve written about here before – you can read it here. It’s a free event; I hope you can come.

Anyway, a week later, but happy birthday Leeds.

While it’s not the chater, you can read a little slice of Leeds historcial fiction set in 1944 with The Faces Of The Dead, the second cathy Marsden book. It’s just £1.99 on Kindle (cheap in the US, too), as is it predecessor.

Here endeth the Leeds history lesson.

A Guest Meditation On Historical Fiction

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When RJ Verity contacted me, I was gratified to discover someone else writing about the Leeds of 80 years ago. Her take is very different to mine – no crime. Instead, her novel, Poole of Light, revolves around the cinema of the 1930s and 40s, one my father knew well, as manager of the Shaftesbury and the ABC for a few years after WWII.

She proposed a guest blog post, and I readily agreed. She’s written a good book, and her world dovetails well with Cathy Marsden. Maybe she met some of those characters – who can tell?

The Cinema Manager’s Granddaughter

Guest post by RJ Verity, author of Poole of Light

When Chris Nickson and I first made contact, we quickly discovered we were circling some of the same territory – not just the Leeds of the 1930s and 40s, but something more specific. His father had managed cinemas in the city. My grandfather had too: the Pictodrome and the Palace Picture Hall (shown below), both in Armley.

It is, as Chris put it, a small world.

My own connection is not incidental to my novel. It is, in many ways, the reason my novel exists. My grandfather had chauffeured for a large household in Leeds before becoming a cinema manager. My grandmother worked as a housekeeper in the same house. My father was a teenage projectionist and – through ability and the particular luck of timing – won a grammar school place at Roundhay before training as a doctor. One generation to the next, each one a little further from where it had started.

What struck me was how much depended not on privilege or connection, but on small chances seized at the right moment.

That fragility is at the heart of my debut novel, Poole of Light. The book starts in 1913, in a mining town in County Durham. My protagonist, Jem Poole, is ten years old – he has no money and no obvious future except working down the pit. One day he steals a glimpse through a curtain and sees a moving picture for the first time, and that moment of wonder brings him to the heart of the British cinema industry.

Leeds becomes central to his story. It is where he moves to as a boy, builds his life, and where tensions between ambition and identity play out across the decades. I came to Leeds not as a Loiner – I grew up in nearby Wakefield – but as a little girl who visited her grandparents in Roundhay often enough to know its streets. I understood later that those streets had shaped the people who shaped me.

The cinemas mattered. Not just as places of entertainment, but as institutions with a particular role in working-class life. They were warm and inviting during dark winter evenings. They offered glamour to people whose daily lives offered very little. A cinema manager in Armley in the 30s and 40s was not a grand figure – but he was a custodian of something that genuinely mattered to his community.

I find that writing historical fiction has a circular effect on my life. I know something about my past – stories half-told at family dinners – and am drawn to it. Then I research, I create characters, and somehow those characters reveal something more about my own history. And since releasing Poole of Light last September, I’ve been overwhelmed by the people who have reached out – wanting to talk about their own memories of Leeds, and what it meant to them.

Perhaps that is what historical fiction does best – it gives people permission to remember. Chris and I write about Leeds from different angles, but we are both, in our own way, still holding something of it. When I discovered that cinemas ran in both our families, it felt less like a coincidence and more like a confirmation that the past has a way of finding the people who are looking for it.

Poole of Light is available on Amazon now. You can buy it here. Poole of Honour, the second novel in The Poole Legacy trilogy, publishes on 15 September 2026.

And, while we’re in the 1940s, the second Cathy Marsden book, The Faces Of The Dead, is just £1.99 on Kindle, or free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Why I Write (It Ain’t Pretty)

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I write because I have no choice in the matter. The words are inside and they need to come out, sometimes in a rapid flow, sometimes like squeezing blood from a stone. I write every single day of the year. I don’t want a break from it; in fact, it feels wrong if I don’t write.
As I grow older, this compulsion, this obsession, grows stronger, and I come to define myself more and more as a writer. I’m one of the lucky ones, since a fair bit of what I finish these days gets published in one way or another, even if it’s no more than one of these blog pieces.
Writing is my gift and my curse. It’s also what I’ve dreamed of doing since I was 11 years old. At school we had to write an essay, to tell a story in three paragraphs. It was an exercise, of course, so show us how to use paragraphs for developing a thought. But after I’d finished my piece, it was as if a switch had clicked in me. That’s how it’s done!
Writing might be an art but it’s also a craft. I wrote plenty of unpublished novels, short stories that perhaps saw print somewhere or other but were mostly rejected. And rightly so, even if I was less certain at the time. The craft part has come from years of music journalism, where there isn’t the luxury of time to go through endless revisions, and you learn to pick the right word or phrase the first time. And good editors who pushed and prodded me.
But I’m not an artist. I’m an entertainer, someone who tries to take people out of their lives for a few hours and make them believe in somewhere else, some other time. There is no magic, perhaps, beyond sleight of hand. When a book is finished, people are back in themselves again. They might enjoy what they’ve read, but only a few books have the power to change people’s lives. I’m not sure I’d even want mine to be among them.
I’m just a person who sits down at the computer in the morning and writes down the movie playing in my head. If I’m lucky it’s because the film rarely breaks or fades to scratches and white noise. I’m still the 11-year-old understanding how this can work. And doing it because I have to.

Making That New Character A Woman

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For my new Seattle Emerald City series of books, my main character was a male music journalist – something I did myself in that city. I say was quite advisedly: the company that’s publishing the books (simultaneously as ebooks and audiobooks) suggested making the protagonist female. It wasn’t a demand, by any means, and I understood the practical rationale behind it (one of the women behind the company is American and an award-winning ebook narrator and actress – Lorelei King). But it appealed to me. I’m male, think like a man. Now I’m changing the character’s sex and it’s proving to be a wonderful, deep challenge. It affects every dynamic in the book, every interaction with every character, male and female. More than that, I have to get into her head and learn to think, and more especially feel, as a woman. What writer wouldn’t relish? Seattle in the late 1980s was far more feminist than most parts of the US. Gender politics were rife, as were gay politics, which were interlinked. That has to be part of it, and it’s made me think and become more aware of the sexism inherent in everyday life. It was more so then, and quite casual, but it still exists. It was even there in the music scene, not too bad but still there. There were some female music journalists around, but men remained in the majority and they made up most of the musicians. A woman writer said to me that women feel more. That might not always be exactly true, but in general women are more aware of their feelings, and they’ll discuss them, with partners and friends, so that has to becomes part of the equation of character, too. Add to that the fact that I’m inserting this character into a story that’s already written, although there will be some changes and it becomes even more interesting. Am I enjoying it? Absolutely. Will it succeed? I hope so, but you’ll have to read for yourself to decide. That’s your challenge…