Barbara Erskine - Child of the Phoenix

It was frustrating, the more so when I learned that many of the charters of the noble families of Scotland had been taken by Oliver Cromwell and had been lost in a storm in the Forth on their way to England. Amongst these, gone forever, were perhaps the very documents which might have mentioned Ellen of Fife, her origins and her marriage to Donald of Mar.

I should have been dismayed, but by this time the strange alchemy had begun by which a fictional character is born. Based on legend or fact, one person or two, Eleyne, my Eleyne (or Ellen or Helen), was beginning to stir. And yes, she was the daughter of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Joan. And yes, she had four husbands, in a life which spanned nearly a century, and yes, she had nine children, at least. And, yes, in 1253 her dower lands had been redistributed. But seizing on the fact that nowhere did it actually say that she had died at that point, an alternative reason for this drastic action began to present itself and a novel was born.

I kept reminding myself that I am neither genealogist, nor historian, nor biographer. I am a novelist. My Eleyne, though based loosely on fact, was fiction. Probably I would never know the truth about her, so all I could do was listen to the story which she was beginning to whisper in my ear.

Her love affair with Alexander was her idea – it formed no part of my original synopsis. But time and again I found the facts, where they could be checked, fitted exactly the story she was dictating so insistently in my head. Alexander II did indeed have many lady friends – why not Eleyne? He had several bastard children, why could she too not carry his babies? Her heroic role, her triumphs and her failures, all came from her. And as for ghosts and predictions, Michael the Scot and Thomas of Ercildoune are part of Scots history, as are their predictions of Alexander III’s doom. Even the ghost at his wedding is recorded in the chronicles – a story retold with lip-licking gusto by Hector Boece: But flesche and blude, haiffand nocht ellis than,

Also from Eleyne came the prompt that her marriage to Robert was unhappy – nothing in the records says as much. All we have to go on is the difference in their rank, her father’s disapproval of the marriage and umpteen references to the endless litigation in which they were engaged – they were forever fighting their neighbours over boundaries and rents which conveys an impression that at least one of them was quarrelsome (and by now I was too partisan to believe it could have been Ellen/Helen).

There is always, in handling a historical theme, a conflict between the promptings of fiction and the actualities of fact. Reconciling them without compromising historical accuracy too much is part of the joy and the nightmare of writing a novel like this. I hope I have succeeded in making an enjoyable and credible story, but please, no examination theses based on Eleyne’s life!

As portrayed here I now think Eleyne probably did not exist. She is a composite; a family legend of the type which converts dingy oil paintings into Rembrandts and Victorian paste beads into aquamarines. But, if the two Ellen/Helens were indeed the same person she must have been a woman cast in the mould of Eleanor of Aquitaine – tough, fertile, healthy and long-lived! She would have been a formidable lady. Whoever she was she is an ancestor of whom I’m extremely proud.

The spelling of Elyne is taken from the form of the name adopted by my great-aunt when she copied the pedigrees from her grandfather’s version. It survived in the Erskine family, the descendants of Eleyne’s grand-daughter, as Elyne, which is, I suspect, a Victorian etymological amalgam or mis-spelling and as such admirably suits my enigmatic and evasive heroine.

So many people helped me with their support and enthusiasm for this book, but I should like to thank especially the genealogists and archivists who contributed to the unravelling of the tale; I am very grateful for their patience and interest.

I should like to thank Janet Hanlon once more for her advice and also Jane, without whose organizational skills, help and humour present-day life would have disintegrated into a medieval miasma!

My heroine spent much of her life in four great residences. Of Fotheringhay virtually nothing remains. The site which once contained a great castle dreams on the banks of the River Nene, lost in memories of Mary, Queen of Scots, who died there and of Richard III who was born there. Of its far earlier occupants, the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon, nothing but faint echoes remain.

Kildrummy Castle too is a ruin, but an evocative and extensive ruin. I have been there several times since I was a child, but my last quick visit was one of the most enjoyable, entertained as we were with a lively account of the siege by young Scott Kelman, and the added information provided by his father, Tom.

At Falkland Palace we were made welcome by Elly Crichton Stuart and I should like to thank her for her hospitality and for showing us around the palace and for the help and advice which she and Thomas Puttfarken gave to me about the old castle.

Thanks also to Kathryn and Brian Gibson who made us so welcome at Pen-y-Bryn, the evocative and fascinating site of the Palace of Aber, of which tantalizing glimpses remain beneath and around their home.

And finally many thanks to Carole Blake and to Rachel Hore for their unfailing support and encouragement.

A historian by training, Barbara Erskine is the author of ten bestselling novels that demonstrate her interest in both history and the supernatural, plus three collections of short stories. Lady of Hay was her first novel and has now sold over two million copies worldwide. She lives with her family in an ancient manor house near Colchester, and a cottage near Hay-on-Wye.