'Medieval Murder -Ten Handy Ways to Poison Your Spouse' by Karen Maitland

Throughout the Middle Ages people were terrified of being poisoned and with good reason. Writing in 1470, Peter of Abano, identified 70 different substances that were deadly poisons, and this did not include the venomous animals or their body parts. Wealthy men employed tasters who would try every dish before their master ate it, even pressing their masters’ napkins to their lips before they were used, in case the cloth had been soaked in poison. With so many interesting lethal substances to choose from, who can blame them for being nervous. Here are ten poisons that they most feared -

Monkshood growing wild in Devon. Photographer: Tom Jolliffe

1. Monkshood or Aconite (Aconitum napellus) – This plant was originally called Odin’s helm or Tyr’s helm after the northern gods. It was also known as wolf’s bane. It was dedicated to Hecate, the moon goddess of the witches and together with deadly nightshade was one of the ingredients in the flying ointment, a powerful hallucinogen. It was such a lethal poison that growing it in Roman times was punishable by death. The juice was frequently used in warfare to poison the wells and the sources of drinking water of the enemy. It was favored by the lower classes as a means of dispatching troublesome spouses, or other family members. But the nobility preferred hemlock.



Hemlock

2. Hemlock (Conium maculatum) – known as devil’s blossom, bad man’s oatmeal, scabby hands or kex, it is in fact a member of the carrot family. It causes extreme dizziness, numbness then death. In Greek and Roman times one of the methods of execution was to force the condemned to drink hemlock and this is how Socrates died in prison. It is so much associated with witchcraft and the devil that the plant symbolizes death by poisoning.

3. Cantharides also known as Spanish Fly – is made from an emerald green blister beetle, Lytta vesicatoria. It was an early and powerful Viagra for both men and women, and often used to spike drinks, causing the victim to become highly sexual aroused. But too much could be fatal. The Marquis de Sade was tried for accidently killing prostitutes at an orgy, by feeding them aniseed-flavored Spanish fly pastels.

The favorite poison of the Medicis was Aqua toffana, a mixture of arsenic and Spanish fly and as little as four drops in water or wine could prove fatal. Aqua toffana had the convenience of being both undetectable in food and taking several hours to kill, giving the poisoner ample time to escape.

If death from Spanish fly was suspected, the victim’s organs were ground up in oil and smeared on the shaved skin of a rabbit. If the victim had died from Spanish Fly poisoning, the rabbit’s skin would blister.



Deadly Nightshade

 4. Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) which Chaucer called dwale, was a well-known sleeping draught. It is believed to have been the poison added to the water-wells during the Parthian Wars which killed Marcus Antonius’ troops. According to folklore, in the 11th century the Scots who had signed a truce with Sueno the Dane, were able to take advantage of the truce to add the juice of Deadly Nightshade to the Danish army’s provisions. It didn’t kill the Danes, but made them so drowsy that the Scots were able to attack and slaughter them. Most modern historians now argue that this battle never took place, but it lingers on in legend.

 5. The Composition of Death – This was a poison recipe found in a medieval book of spells, known as Grand Grimoire. Those who wanted to prepare it were told to use a new, glazed pot and add – red copper, nitric acid, verdigris, arsenic, oak bark, rose water and black soot. It took a long time to prepare as you had to boil the mixture for about an hour after each new ingredient was added.

 6. Fly agaric (amanita muscaria) – a fungi with a red top studded with white spots that looks like the classic pixie toadstool. It first produces a sensation of being drunk, then delirium, with death usually occurring in twenty-four hours. Deadly fungi were popular poisons in the Middle Ages because they were so easy to obtain without anyone knowing, and simple to slice up and add to stews and soups. Fly agaric, steeped in milk was used to kill flies, so it was often found in homes and kitchens. It was only one of twenty-five poisonous fungi and the symptoms generally produced by consuming any of these deadly mushrooms or toadstools included stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhoea, delirium and convulsions. In the Middle Ages, these symptoms could easily be mistaken for fevers such as dysentery or from eating bad meat, so many poisoners must have escaped justice if they used this poison.

Fly Agaric. Photographer - H.Krisp

 7. Pig’s Blood and Salvia – Normally fresh pig’s blood was harmless and used to make blood puddings, but the medieval Italian poisoners, who were experts in the art, had perfected a poison made by allowing a pig carcass to decompose then mixing its blood and saliva with arsenic to create an exquisite poison combining both the mineral poison and those toxins produced from putrefaction.

 8. Toads – In the Middle Ages it was widely held but erroneous belief that the fluid excreted through the skin of a toad was poisonous. Indeed a rumour which circulated after his death suggested that King John had been murdered by a member of the Knights Templar or a friar who had squeezed a toad inside the king’s goblet. The fluid dried, creating an invisible coating inside the goblet, before the King unwitting added the wine to produce a lethal combination. In fact, King John probably died of dysentery, but such was the belief in poison conspiracies in those days, that the toad story was much more widely believed.

European Toad Bufo bufo. Photographer - Thomas Brown

 European toads do excrete two poisonous substances through the skin which have a numbing and mild hallucinogenic effect, though they are nowhere near as toxic as toads and frogs of South America.

 9. Bacterial poisoning – Although virus and bacteria were not understood in past centuries, they did recognise that decaying corpses gave off a ‘poison’ which could be lethal to the living, so throughout the centuries since ancient times, armies have frequently poisoned their enemy’s water supplies by dumping rotting corpses of animals or people into wells or rivers upstream of where the camped army was taking its drinking water. Caltrops, spiked metal balls designed to pierce the feet of horses and men, were often dipped in the fluids of rotting animal carcasses or festering wounds to poison the blood of any who stepped on them.


A ancient caltrop. Photographer: Gunnar Creutz

 10. Arsenic - No poisoner’s tool kit would be complete without arsenic. Although the symptoms of slow arsenic poisoning were not recognised until the 1700s, yellow arsenic trisulphide called orpiment was known as a medicine as early as 5th Century BCE and the alchemists believed it to be a key ingredient of the Philosopher’s Stone. Nero may have used yellow arsenic to murder his stepbrother, Britannicus, so as he could become Emperor of Rome. But it was in 8th Century that the Arabic alchemist, Jábir ibn Háyyan, became the first in Europe to produce white arsenic (arsenic trioxide) by roasting orpiment and inadvertently produced the poisoner’s dream, the first reliable and lethal poison that was odourless, tasteless and colourless and would work in powder, solution or gaseous form.

If all this talk of poisons is making you nervous, in my next blog I will let you into the secret of the favourite medieval antidotes.

The Lost Library of John Dee by Mary Hoffman

I must declare an interest. I based a character in my Stravaganza series on John Dee. William Dethridge is an Elizabethan alchemist, mathematician and calendarist, who started the whole business of "stravagation" in time and space through an alchemical accident with a copper dish.

By 1594, the date of this portrait of John Dee (artist unknown), William Dethridge had made his last stravagation, to avoid execution in Elizabeth's England and was a permanent resident in Talia, my version of Italy in another dimension, in the sixteenth century.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to discover there was an exhibition about John Dee in London, perhaps surprisingly at the Royal College of Physicians. I hotfooted it there on its first day and was immediately impressed by how beautifully curated it was.

Unlike the Celts exhibition, which I wrote about on 1st February and which I saw on the same day, it was not marred by woozy sub-Enya massage room music. The signage and labels are a model of clarity and they have managed to make a modestly-sized display of real interest.

Kate Birkwood has pieced together the life of John Dee (1527 -1609) through the annotations of his books - a feat all the more remarkable since his library was ransacked and dispersed in 1583, when he left England for the continent and stayed away five years.

At  over 3,000 books and 1,000 manuscripts it was a library worth ransacking, unusually large for the period as a private collection. About a hundred of the volumes stolen from his house in Mortlake are now in the hands of the RCP, complete with their marginalia.

Dee's copy of Quintilian Institutiorum Oratoriarum 1540

Arnaldus de Villanova Opera 1527

Many of the pilfered books ended up in the possession of one Nicholas Saunder (1563 - 1649), but it isn't certain that he was the thief. Whether or not he was, he certainly knew the books had belonged to Dee, since he tried to obliterate the older man's signature and other marks. Saunder's collection passed to Henry Pierrepoint, Marquis of Dorchester (1606 - 1680), who was another bibliophile. Upon Dorchester's death his family presented them to the RCP.

Cicero Omnia Opera vol 2

Trinity College, Cambridge and the British Library each hold a copy of John Dee's library catalogue, made before 1583. Dee had been a student at St. John's, Cambridge and became a founding Fellow of Trinity in 1546, under Henry Vlll. Some of these books, including the Cicero above, date from his student days, when, "I was so vehemently bent to studie that ... I did inviolably keepe this order: only to sleepe four houres every night."

Something today's students might find familiar, for other reasons. And who hasn't doodled in the margins of a text book?

He had two famous patrons: William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who some think was the Mr W. H., dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who certainly was Elizabeth the First's favourite. It was Dudley who introduced Dee to the queen and he took the astrologer's advice about the most auspicious date for her coronation - 15 January 1559.

John Dee performing an experiment in front of Elizabeth l

This is a painting by the 19th century artist Henry Gillard Glindoni. It has been X-rayed to reveal that Dee is standing within a circle of skulls! It's not known whether this is based on some now lost information about the queen's visit to Dee's house in Mortlake or was a product of Glindoni's imagination. But the later decision to removed the circle of skulls and other alchemical objects must have been an attempt to tone down the "black magic" aspects of Dee's reputation.

They were what got him into trouble with an earlier queen, Mary Tudor. He was arrested for witchcraft in May 1555, accused of casting the horoscopes of the queen and others of her family but was never convicted. He had in fact entered the Tudor court four years earlier, as a young man, and we know he received a pension from Edward Vl. Remarkable really that he survived through four monarchs, technically five, since he lived till 1609, six years after James l of England and Vl of Scotland took the throne. But by then John Dee's own star had waned and he played no part in the Jacobean court.

As well as the books and marginalia, there are some lovely objects in this exhibition:

John Dee's crystal Science Museum, London

Magical disc, Trustees of the British Museum

But to return to the books, I learned something completely new about John Dee - he was the first person to suggest that there might be a national library! In fact he petitioned Queen Mary in 1556 to start one but, perhaps because of his earlier arrest, she did not grant his request.

Scholar, courtier, magician, as the exhibition labels him, and a supporter of libraries. No wonder I was always interested in him.

For anyone who can't get down to London before 29th July this year, I recommend Benjamin Woolley's book The Queen's Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr Dee (HarperCollins 2001).

Cagliostro - by Imogen Robertson

Perhaps it is a little wrong-headed of me to pick a fraudster and fake like Cagliostro as my hero, but there is something about the way he blasted a trail through 18th century Europe that makes me want to applaud. I would under no circumstances however lend him any money. I’m sure someone would though. His eventual disgrace did not make everyone loose faith in him and even today he has fans who claim he was an enlightened being at the very least, and possibly didn’t die at all but still moves among us, granted eternal life by his alchemical expertise.

Cagliostro was born in obscurity in 1743 and ended his life the prisoner of the Inquisition having been the favourite of Royalty across Europe, a healer of the poor and a key player in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace that helped bring down the French Royal Family. He trained as a healer in his early years, but abandoned the robes of a novice monk and soon began to use his obvious skills as a con-man and apparent communicator with the spirit world. He convinced a man from his town to invest some gold in his attempts to discover mystical treasure which was buried nearby and guarded by dangerous spirits. The investor received a beating from the ‘spirits’ and Cagliostro left town with his money. It was a con he used at other times. He married and began a peripatetic life often living off the generous presents of his wife’s ‘friends’. His encounter with Freemasonry in London lead to his creation of the Rite of Egyptian Freemasonry for which he founded lodges across Europe. It was a heady mix of science and mysticism open to both men and women and it went down a storm. He was the darling of the bored aristocrats everywhere he went. The Cardinal de Rohan showed off a huge diamond which he claimed Cagliostro had grown for him, and he stunned the Court of Poland with his clairvoyance and premonitions. Not everyone was convinced. Catherine the Great gave him a dusty reception in St Petersburg and Goethe thought him a fraud, though many scholars find traces of him in Faust as they do Sarastro Mozart’s Magic Flute. Cagliostro founded hospitals where he treated the poor for free and their entrance halls were piled high with the crutches no longer needed by his grateful patients. He showed off his ability as a forger to Casanova and in the end was betrayed to the Inquisition by his wife after her attempt to kill him by soaping the stone steps outside their house failed. You can find out the full story of his fascinating life in The Last Alchemist by Iain McCalman.

So why is this terrible man a hero of mine? Because he was a brilliant story-teller and creator of stories, he understood how to use ancient symbols and myths to weave a world that made people feel they were part of a magic universe and by a sheer effort of will and imagination he transformed himself from a nobody born in poverty to the most talked about man in Europe. That seems pretty heroic to me.    

Alchemy by Imogen Robertson

Research for a historical novel can take you to some interesting places, no doubt about that, and it also gives you a chance to explore in depth those interesting shreds of knowledge that hang about in the back of your mind and contextualise them. Before writing Circle of Shadows I knew that Newton wrote more on alchemy than on gravitation, and that the skills learned, and discoveries made in pursuit of the philosopher’s stone laid the practical foundation for what became the science of chemistry, but that was about the limit of what I knew. Writing my novel gave me a chance to delve a little deeper into alchemy and see to what extent the symbols and ideas of this ancient proto-science / philosophy are with us still. 

The pursuit of alchemy was always a spiritual as well as a practical search. It arose out of both a search for the secret knowledge of the ancients, and an attempt to understand and explain the world through a complex symbolic system of harmony and transformation. That leads to a lot of very beautiful pictures, many of which can be seen here. I love the dualism of alchemy driven on one side by physicality, by intellectual material curiosity, and on the other side by a tradition of mysticism and contemplation, the idea of converting the base stuff of our human nature into spiritual gold. Then of course the use of alchemy by any number of charlatans over the centuries brings the base and the golden together rather poetically. The Bruegul picture below shows you something of the two-headed (two-faced) element of Alchemy. You can see the scholar at his books on one side, and the man toiling at his fires on the other, not to mention the general chaos that the obsession has caused in the household.

The key text of alchemy, The Emerald Tablet, was supposedly written by Hermes Trimegistus (a combination of the gods Hermes and Thoth) and found its way into Spain in the 12th century in a translation from the Arabic as part of the Secretum Secretorum.  You can read Newton’s translation here, but to give you a flavour: ‘that which is below is like that which is above’, or as a snappier translation has it. ‘As above, so below’, and ‘The sun is its father and the moon is its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse…’ It’s really rather lovely, though admittedly not much of a practical guide, but it shows how alchemy was always closely linked to astronomy (as above, so below), and to the properties of minerals, salts and plants (the earth its nurse) so studying alchemy is an interesting way to explore the renaissance mind in general. 

The tablet was only one of many texts from the period and throughout the renaissance that claimed to offer up to the worthy reader the secrets of alchemy. The Corpus Hermeticum began appearing in early printed editions in the mid sixteenth century was a collection of these writings, dialogues mostly full of hints and suggestions. Plenty of the renaissance grimoires, books of magic, show you what spirits to summon to help you in your alchemical work too. Check out The Book of Abramelin for all your other worldly servant needs. Abramelin also gives you instructions on how to make a dead man live for seven years, handy as he says if the heir to an important throne is a minor, and there are hints in the Corpus Hermeticum which I found very useful (in an imaginative sense) about fixing a spirit in statues and so allowing them to move. These are the books that inspire and seduce my 18th century alchemist and their ability to continue to fascinate is remarkable. This image is from another key text, by the way, Splendor Solis of 1582

What I wasn’t expecting though when I began reading up about renaissance magic and alchemy was that I’d develop an even deeper respect for J. K. Rowling. I’ve loved the Harry Potter books since they came out, but it’s only after drinking in these volumes of the esoteric that I’ve found just how many of the names, stories and legends in her novels are firmly based in traditions of magic going back a thousand years. She obviously does her research, and that confirms my own feeling that the better the research, as long as it is worn lightly, the better the book. Her knowledge of alchemy certainly created a great deal of gold, in fact, thinking about it she may be the leading alchemist of our age. 

From the Sketchbook: The Colour of Danger

By Teresa Flavin

This month’s sketch is the preliminary drawing for a pen and ink illustration in my young adult novel, The Crimson Shard, set in an 18^th century forgery sweatshop run by a rich and mysterious overseer. An impoverished painter instructs the young forgers on how to cut quill pens from goose feathers and makes them draw animal skulls in ink for practice. When their skills are proficient enough, they begin to forge master drawings and paintings. Obsession, greed and danger are never far from the secret workshop.

Writing about forgers obliged me to find out how forgers ply their trade and this in turn led to research on how Renaissance artists worked. This dark path led straight into the history of paint pigments and their fascinating connections with alchemy.

As a young artist, I gave very little thought to where my materials came from, except perhaps for charcoal sticks, which seemed to come direct from roasting in some fire-pit. It wasn’t until I learned that the pastels I used were possibly poisoning me that I began paying attention. Pastels are powdered paint pigments bound with gum arabic or gum tragacanth into sticks, and their dust can contain toxic substances such as cadmium. With great regret, I gave up pastels and learned how to use other far less dangerous paints.

I benefitted from the development of safer, permanent pigments, but painters of the past had to deal with unstable and poisonous materials. Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, a 15^th century Florentine artist, listed the attributes and dangers of early colours in The Craftsman’s Handbook, translated by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr. For example: “A colour known as orpiment is yellow. This colour is an artificial one. It is made by alchemy, and is really poisonous.” Cennini recommends artists seek other dangerous pigments from “druggists” rather than making it themselves. The medieval apothecary also served as art supply shop. It is not difficult to imagine containers of pigment, some derived from the scales of cochineal beetles or the glands of snails, sitting next to medicines brought by traders from around the world.

On a recent trip to London I visited L. Cornelissen & Son, artists’ colourmen since 1855. Colourmen appear to have traded in London since 1725, providing specialist art materials to artists and hobbyists. The Cornelissen shop bears a distinct resemblance to an apothecary with its numbered wooden drawers and shelves bearing jars of ground pigments and resins. They even supply “early colours” that were used by the ancient Egyptians (including the dreaded Orpiment, as well as Malachite and Realgar, another pigment that Cennini warned against) and the Romans (Verdigris and Azurite).

I was astounded to see a jar on their shelf labeled “Dragon’s Blood Pieces”. Dragonsblood is a pigment said to be the combined blood of dragons and elephants in mortal combat. It is actually a tree-based resin used as a red varnish, brought from India by early sea traders. Cennini advised that “dragonsblood” was “used occasionally on parchment, for illuminating. But leave it alone, and do not have too much respect for it; for it is not of a constitution to do you much credit.”

However enthralling it was to see Dragon’s Blood Pieces (and Dragon’s Blood Powder) on the shelf, I had eyes for one colour only: Vermilion. Cennini gives explicit advice on purchasing Vermilion from the apothecary and on how to work the pigment up, but his description is almost bland. Vermilion is a dramatic colour, not least because it was so perilous to produce, but because of the symbolic meanings of its two main components, sulphur and mercury. Vermilion resulted from the alchemical “marriage” of the complementary elements of Fire (sulphur) and Water (mercury), which also corresponded to Heaven and Earth. Even though vermilion occurs naturally in cinnabar, the pigment made by alchemical processes had great sacred meaning and was integral to the alchemists’ search for the Philosopher’s Stone.

Vermilion has a very hazardous side. Inhaling mercury fumes or the pigment’s dust could debilitate an artist and even kill him. It was not the only pigment reported to have affected a painter. Michelangelo is believed to have suffered from lead poisoning (on top of his alleged gout) and a recent excavation of Caravaggio’s bones suggests he had lead poisoning when he died.

As I stood in Cornelissen’s shop, dazzled by the jars of powdered colours, I thought of the perils artists had gone through to create beautiful work. How many of them toiled through illnesses or died of complications from poisoning? We marvel at the riches they left us, not realising the price they may have paid.

THE CRIMSON SHARD is published in the UK by Templar Publishing. Teresa thanks L. Cornelissen & Son for allowing her to take photos of their premises.

From the Sketchbook: A Storytelling of Ravens

By Teresa Flavin

Elizabeth Bird, who blogs for the excellent School Library Journal, recently wrote this entertaining post about the growing number of ravens appearing in this year’s young adult books. Since the cover of my first novel, The Blackhope Enigma, features a cackling raven, it qualifies for what Elizabeth tagged a “weirdo trend”.

Now I’m no goth, but this is a weirdo trend I’m pleased to be associated with. I am a corvid fan. I spent hours cutting out big raven silhouettes for Blackhope’s UK book launch last summer and the real star of the show that evening was a pretty menacing stuffed raven. I have even been tempted to get some black feather wings to wear at events, but after reading Caroline Lawrence’s post on Tuesday, I’ll defer that decision!

I don’t know anyone who is neutral about ravens. They seem to be on a par with bats, snakes and spiders. Even an “unkindness”, the collective noun for ravens, is darkly evocative. A comment on Elizabeth’s blog post said that a “storytelling of ravens” is also used; if we add a “murder of crows” to the mix, we get an insight into people’s uneasy attitude towards corvids.

It’s hardly surprising, considering the raven is large, black, feeds on carrion and is therefore linked with the battlefield and the gallows. This bird is so intelligent, it is known to hunt cooperatively with man’s ancient enemy, the wolf, to secure its food. Ravens communicate in a complex set of sounds with a distinctive voice. Humans have long believed they possess the gift of clairvoyance and have even imagined ravens as witches’ familiars. It’s a bad omen to kill a raven.

Before coming to Scotland I was acquainted with the Native American depiction of Raven as a world-creating, shape-shifting trickster god, who can alternate between being deceitful and greedy or wise and heroic. In a Tlingit tale I once illustrated, Raven gives counsel to humans who later suffer consequences when they ignore his advice.

I learned that in European mythology, ravens act as messengers or guides, and sometimes a deity will appear in their guise. The Norse god, Odin, is accompanied by two ravens, Huginn and Muninn (“Thought” and “Memory”), who fly around the world and bring back news. Two wolves also accompany Odin, nicely echoing their connection with ravens in the wild. The Roman historian, Tacitus, linked Odin (and his Anglo-Saxon counterpart, Woden), with the messenger god, Mercury. Woden, Mercury and his Greek equivalent, Hermes, were all psychopomps, guides of souls to the afterlife. Certain animals were also considered to be psychopomps, including ravens. In my charcoal drawing above, the raven is in an imaginary night landscape, perhaps on the lookout for souls!

The Blackhope Enigma has an enigmatic late Renaissance painter-magician at its centre. I named him Fausto Corvo, the Raven, as he is a guide of souls to the living underworlds of his own magical paintings. Ravens act as his lookouts and messengers within the under-paintings, whose imagery is inspired by the Greco-Roman myths that Renaissance artists often depicted. Corvo has been able to create these worlds, in which he has hidden ancient secrets of the universe, because he is an adept at astral magic. This is a “natural” magic that purports to draw down the power of heavenly bodies. Belief in a hidden realm of angelic spirits who influence earthly matters was common in the sixteenth century; magicians who understood these stellar powers and were able to control them would seemingly be able to work wonders. A magician like Corvo, who is also an astounding artist, is a potent force indeed.

Renaissance adepts would be familiar with astrology and alchemy in ancient texts attributed to a supposedly historical figure from Hellenistic Egypt, Hermes Trismegistus (“Hermes the Thrice-Great”). He was actually a combination of Hermes and the Egyptian god, Thoth, also a psychopomp; both gods ruled magic and writing. The Hermetica, as well as other manuscripts and grimoires translated by European scholars of that time, covered not only philosophical matters, but gave instruction on how to work magic. I was particularly fascinated by esoteric spells to animate statues and control images; these would work very well for Fausto Corvo.

Ravens even appear in puzzling alchemical illustrations inspired by Hermetic writings, such as this one made by Michael Maier in 1618. Each phase in the process of creating the Philosopher’s Stone was symbolised by a bird; ravens stood for nigredo, or putrefaction, when all ingredients were cooked into black matter. The sediment at the bottom of the alchemist’s retort was called the “raven’s head” and when it began to turn white, the material was said to be entering albedo (white) or “swan” phase, followed by the “peacock” (many colours) and then rubedo (red), the “phoenix”. Once again, the raven is key to a transformational journey and a rich source of inspiration for stories and images.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Tower of London’s resident ravens. The Tower was once their hunting ground because it had fresh prisoners’ corpses to feed upon. Rather than being chased off, the ravens were allowed to stay. A legend, allegedly harking back to King Charles II, warns that if the Tower’s ravens are lost or fly away, the kingdom will fall. Six ravens and one reserve are kept in the Tower at all times to protect it and the Crown. Apparently they are even enlisted as soldiers of the kingdom and can be dismissed for unsatisfactory behaviour. The flight feathers of one wing are clipped to keep the ravens from absconding, but aside from this, these celebrity ravens seem royally treated. According to the Tower’s Ravenmaster, they are not only fed on fresh fruit and cheese, and the choicest meats from Smithfield Market, but on occasional road-kill and biscuits soaked in meat blood.

Even in royal surroundings, the raven reminds us of a bloody past and the dark side of nature’s cycles. Humans need such talismans to explore our own shadow sides. If we do not grapple with darkness, we cannot undergo our own transformations and discover the light.

To celebrate The Blackhope Enigma’s US publication this week by Candlewick Press, Teresa will be hosting a competition to win a large hand-cut silhouette of the raven on its cover. For more information on this and other prizes, visit her Facebook page. The Blackhope Enigma is published in the UK by Templar Publishing.