Spotlight on Helen Steadman, author of Widdershins

 

The new audiobook of Widdershins is narrated brilliantly by talented actor, Christine Mackie, from Downton Abbey, Coronation Street, Wire in the Blood, and so on. 

The first part of a two-part series, Widdershins is inspired by the Newcastle witch trials, where sixteen people were hanged. Despite being the largest mass execution of witches on a single day in England, these trials are not widely known. In August 1650, fifteen women and one man were hanged as witches after a Scottish witchfinder found them guilty of consorting with the devil. This notorious man was hired by the Puritan authorities in response to a petition from the Newcastle townsfolk who wanted to be rid of their witches.

Widdershins is told through the eyes of Jane Chandler, a young woman accused of witchcraft, and John Sharpe, the witchfinder who condemns her to death. Jane Chandler is an apprentice healer. From childhood, she and her mother have used herbs to cure the sick. But Jane soon learns that her sheltered life in a small village is not safe from the troubles of the wider world. From his father’s beatings to his uncle’s raging sermons, John Sharpe is beset by bad fortune. Fighting through personal tragedy, he finds his purpose: to become a witchfinder and save innocents from the scourge of witchcraft.

Praise for Widdershins:

The Historical Novel Society said of Widdershins: “Impeccably written, full of herbal lore and the clash of ignorance and prejudice against common sense, as well as the abounding beauty of nature, it made for a great read. There are plenty of books, both fact, and fiction, available about the witch-trial era, but not only did I not know about such trials in Newcastle, I have not read a novel that so painstakingly and vividly evokes both the fear and joy of living at that time.”

Trigger Warnings:

Domestic abuse, rape, torture, execution, child abuse, animal abuse, miscarriage, death in childbirth.

 

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Helen Steadman

Fun Facts

(Stuff you may or may not already know!)

 

Thanks very much, Mary Ann for interviewing me on your blog. While thinking up five fun things for you, I’m enjoying a lovely morning coffee while looking out of my window at the hills and forests of Durham and Northumberland, which is where Widdershins is mostly set.

Fun fact #1: I once trained in tree medicine

When I decided that the witches in my book would be wise women who used herbs to heal, I thought it would be a good idea to learn more about herbal remedies. Luckily, I live only fifteen miles away from Dilston Physic Garden, which is renowned for its herbal training courses and research. I signed up for a couple of courses and spent time learning to identify trees and plants correctly (very important), and I then went on to harvest berries, bark, and leaves, which I turned into various remedies. I was very impressed with tree medicine and you’ll see many instances of it in Widdershins and in its sequel, Sunwise.

 

I also set up my own mini physic garden, which I call my magic tea garden. This contains a dozen or so herbs, which I grew so I could learn about plant cycles and growing, harvesting, drying, and preparing herbs. They also make a lovely cup of tea. (Please be very careful before using any plants as many are poisonous and even the safe ones can be risky if you’re pregnant, on medication, or have an illness or condition. In addition, some safe plants resemble toxic ones, so please get advice from a professional before harvesting berries, flowers, leaves, bark, and seeds.)

Fun Fact #2: I’ve forged a sword

Spurred on by my experience of learning about herbal medicine, when I came to write my third book, The Running Wolf, which is about a German swordmaker who wound up in an English prison, I decided to train in blacksmithing. I started off by making a pendant, a fire steel, and a rat-tailed poker. I made the poker using a power hammer, which was especially exciting.

 

Then, I went on to hand forge my own sword. This was extremely difficult work, and even though I had a lot of help, I’ve never been so physically exhausted in my life. I’ve also never been so hot in my life. Hats off to anyone who forges metal whether for work or pleasure (or both). If you look closely at the photo of me holding my sword, you’ll notice my sooty fingernails and the various grazes on my hands. If you think I look rather clean in this photo, this is because I’d finished the sooty forge work and had spent the day filing the bronze handle.

 

Fun Fact #3: I can say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

This is the name of the longest place name in Europe (and the second-longest in the world, by all accounts). It’s a small village on the Welsh island, Anglesey (Ynys Môn, in Welsh). My maternal grandfather was from a nearby village on Anglesey. During a childhood visit, and after much pleading, he taught me how to say it and I proudly got on the bus one day and asked the driver for a ticket to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. He gave me a long-suffering look and replied, ‘Llanfair PG would’ve done, love.’ Although my grandfather’s first language was Welsh, I only know a few words, and most of them aren’t suitable for sharing here…

Fun Fact #4: I’m terrified of flying

This isn’t really that much fun now I come to think of it. I enjoy the experience of flying, but I’m always very anxious about what might possibly go wrong. I’ve tried hard not to pass on this fear to my children, but I expect the sight of my white knuckles gripping the armrest for dear life might be a bit of a giveaway. I was very pleased with myself when I flew solo to Germany to research one of the locations for my third book. I wasn’t too bad going out, but I was quite anxious coming back. It must have shown on my face because I was taken to one side at the airport and searched in front of everyone, which included having to take off my boots. I’ve always wanted to go to New York City, and I’m determined to pluck up the courage to do it, once Covid-19 is less of a threat. Although I might have to ask the airline whether they do a ‘sedate and crate’ option.

Fun Fact #5: I have two dogs, with only three ears between them

This one doesn’t sound like much fun either, but it has a happy ending. When I went to the dog’s home to pick up Elsie, I went into the kennels where all the dogs live, one per cage. Before I reached Elsie’s cage, I spotted Eddie, who was jumping up and down in his cage, with his front paws in the air, desperate for a new home. His little ears were bald and he looked so pitiful. The dog’s home told me he’d been born on the streets and that he and his mother had been brought to the home. He’d been adopted twice, but then rejected each time and returned to the dog’s home. So, I took him home too.

 

With a bit of TLC, his bald ears healed and turned into the delightful, silky ginger ears you see today. Elsie only has one ear and I worried that she’d been involved in some awful dogfighting or something but the vet said it was most likely she’d been born that way as she was missing the inner cartilage, too. Despite having only one ear, Elsie has excellent balance and she can hear the snack tin opening from the far end of the garden, no matter how carefully I remove the lid. And she always seems to attract a few extra pats from people we meet on dog walks.

                    

Dr. Helen Steadman

Dr. Helen Steadman is a historical novelist. Her first novel, Widdershins, and its sequel, Sunwise were inspired by the Newcastle witch trials. Her third novel, The Running Wolf was inspired by a group of Lutheran swordmakers who defected from Germany to England in 1687.

Despite the Newcastle witch trials being the largest mass execution of witches on a single day in England, they are not widely known about. Helen is particularly interested in revealing hidden histories and she is a thorough researcher who goes to great lengths in pursuit of historical accuracy. To get under the skin of the cunning women in Widdershins and Sunwise, Helen trained in herbalism and learned how to identify, grow and harvest plants and then made herbal medicines from bark, seeds, flowers, and berries.

The Running Wolf is the story of a group of master swordmakers who left Solingen, Germany, and moved to Shotley Bridge, England in 1687. As well as carrying out in-depth archive research and visiting forges in Solingen to bring her story to life, Helen also undertook blacksmith training, which culminated in making her own sword. During her archive research, Helen uncovered a lot of new material and she published her findings in the Northern History journal.

Helen is now working on her fourth novel.

 Social Media Links

 Website   Twitter   Facebook   Instagram   Amazon Author Page   Goodreads    YouTube

 

Christine Mackie 

Audiobook Narrator 

Christine Mackie has worked extensively in TV over the last thirty years in well-known TV series such as Downton Abbey, Wire in the Blood, Coronation Street, French & Saunders and The Grand. Theatre work includes numerous productions in new writing as well as classics, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedy of Errors, Richard III, An Inspector Calls, and the Railway Children. In a recent all-women version of Whisky Galore, Christine played three men, three women, and a Red Setter dog!

 Social Media Links

 IMDB site

 

A brief history of medieval magic

History Extra

Want to get rid of an unwanted husband? Coat yourself in honey, roll naked in grain and cook him up some deadly bread with flour milled from this mixture. Want to increase the amount of supplies in your barn? Leave out child-sized shoes and bows-and-arrows for the satyrs and goblins to play with. If you’re lucky, they might steal some of your neighbour’s goods for you in return. These unusual charms and medical tips, which featured in medieval books, sound suspiciously like magic.
But alongside these weird and wonderful spells and superstitions, medieval history paints a picture of a people actually more enlightened than their Renaissance successors. So what was medieval magic really like?

 

Season of the witch

The now all-too-familiar figure of the ‘witch’ – that frightening old hag with warts on her nose and curses at her fingertips – didn’t appear until the 15th century. Despite being dubbed ‘The Renaissance’ and ‘The Age of Discovery’, the centuries that followed [the Renaissance lasted from the 14th to the 17th century] were witness not only to ruthless witch-hunts, but also to a new belief in the reality of magic.
In the Middle Ages, the practice of magic was not yet imagined to be essentially ‘female’. In fact, according to court records from the first half of the 14th century, the majority of those tried for maleficium (meaning sorcery, or dark magic) were men. That was because the most troubling form of magic – necromancy – required not only skill, learning and preparation, but above all education, which was less readily available to women. Necromancy involved conjuring the dead and making them perform feats of transportation or illusion, or asking them to reveal the secrets of the universe. Because many books describing necromancy were Latin translations, anyone wanting to practise the craft would need a good working knowledge of Latin.
It wasn’t until the publication of Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum (or, Hammer of Witches) in 1487 that the specific connection between women and satanic magic became widespread. Kramer warned that “women’s spiritual weakness” and “natural proclivity for evil” made them particularly susceptible to the temptations of the devil. He believed that “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust”, and that women’s “uncontrolled” sexuality made them the likely culprits of any sinister occurrence.

 

Black sabbath

Hand-in-hand with this increased emphasis on women came a shift in the perception of magic. Evidence suggests that medieval church authorities (whose successors would later spearhead the witch-hunts) didn’t really believe magic was real – although they still condemned anyone who claimed to practise it.
The 10th-century canon, Episcopi, describes women who, seduced by illusions from the devil, believed they could fly on the backs of “certain beasts” in the middle of the night alongside the goddess Diana. The canon dismissed these women as “stupid” and “foolish” for actually believing that they could accomplish such things. They were criticised in the text for being tricked rather than for practising any real, magical mischief.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, however, inquisitors seemed to believe that women really could make magic happen by entering into pacts with the devil. It was thought that at sabbaths – nocturnal meetings with other witches – women renounced their Christian faith, devoured babies, participated in orgies and committed other carnal and unspeakable acts.

Afterwards, the devils worshipped would watch their women for signs, and then do their bidding. For example, if a witch put her broomstick in water and spoke certain words, a devil might cause a storm or flood. Magic of this kind wasn’t always harmful, however. Witches might be able to heal as a result of a pact, or perform other kinds of positive magic. But, because of their fundamental belief that all magic was carried out by demons and devils, inquisitors condemned it just the same.

 

Magic or medicine?

Certain practices – which sound to us very much like magic – would have been classed as science or medicine in the Middle Ages. William of Auvergne, a 13th-century French priest and bishop, certainly condemned most magic as superstition. However, he admitted that some works of “natural magic” should be viewed as a branch of science: as long as practitioners didn’t use this “natural magic” for evil, they weren’t doing anything criminal. Sealskin could quite happily be used as a charm to repel lightning; vulture body parts could be used as a protective amulet; and gardeners could get virgins to plant their olive trees without any anxiety – this was, after all, a scientific way of promoting their growth.
A number of healing practices from the Middle Ages also sound very much like magic to a modern reader: one doctor instructed physicians to place the herb vervain in their patient’s hand. The presence of the herb would, it was thought, cause the patient to speak his or her fate truthfully, offering the physician an accurate prognosis.
Sympathetic magic was another well-known technique – it used imitation to produce effective results. For example, liver of vulture might be prescribed as medicine for a patient suffering from liver complaints. Meanwhile narrative charms – a complex version of sympathetic magic, hinged on the belief that telling a particular story could help channel healing power to the patient – were usually accompanied by a more ‘medical’ application, like a poultice. According to one medical treatise, wool soaked in olive oil from the Mount of Olives could staunch blood when coupled with a spoken story about Longinus, a man who was famously healed of his blindness by the blood of Christ. Religious elements were blended with the magical.

Although some of these methods were considered superstition by the Christian church in the Middle Ages, they were never associated with demonic magic until the dawning of the witch hunts. Even though women tried for witchcraft were accused of much more diabolical doings than using charms or stories to heal, many women became afraid of carrying out such practices, for fear of attracting suspicion of darker deeds.
Medieval history offers us a magical potion of stories and practices infused with charms, herbs and superstition. While some of the examples might seem curious to us, they are evidence of a people trying to make sense of and control their surroundings – just as we do today.
Hetta Howes is writing a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London on the subject of water and religious imagery in medieval devotional texts by and for women. To find out more, click here.
Would you have been accused of witchcraft in the medieval period? Take our quiz to find out!

'Witch Marks' Carved Into 17th-Century Estate

Rossella Lorenzi

 

 

 

English archaeologists have discovered "demon traps" under the floorboards of Knole, one of Britain's most important historic houses. The estate is shown here in the year 1800.
Acquired by the Archbishops of Canterbury in the 15th century, gifted to Henry VIII and remodeled in the 17th century by the Sackville family, the house was the birthplace of poet and gardener Vita Sackville-West and the setting for Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando.

The so called witch marks emerged on beams and joists as archaeologists took up floorboards in the bed chamber prepared for King James I but also around the fireplace, considered a weak spot in the fight against witches and demons.
According to archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), the witch marks "illustrate how fear governed the everyday lives of people living through the tumultuous years of the early 17th century."

The marks date to early 1606 and the reign of King James I, a period when superstition and paranoia gripped England just after the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
At that time, a handful of English Roman Catholic dissenters planned to blow up King James I of England and both Houses of Parliament.
Government propaganda, orchestrated by James I, blamed the Catholic conspirators as being in service to Satan, paving the way to widespread accusations of demonic forces and witches at work.

The researchers believe that craftsmen working for Thomas Sackville, who at that time owned Knole, carved the marks in anticipation of a visit from the King James I, with the intention of protecting him from evil spirits.
James himself had a keen interest in witchcraft and passed a witchcraft law, making it an offense punishable by death.
King Richard III Feasted on Wine and Swans

The carvings included criss-crossed lines, interlocking V-shapes to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary, and scorch marks made by directly burning the timber with a candle.
They were intended to trap demons and witches at work.

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