WHO? WHERE? WHAT? WHY? HOW?
The Contraband Killings: A Dan Foster Mystery
by Lucienne Boyce
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| Welcome to my Blog! Wander through wonderful worlds real and fictional, meet interesting people, visit exciting places and find a few good books to enjoy along the way! |
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| About the Books |
The Contraband Killings is the fourth full-length Dan Foster Mystery. The first in the series (Bloodie Bones) was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016.
Genre
Historical fiction/Historical mystery
Anglesey, 1799.
Principal Officer Dan Foster of the Bow Street Runners is sent to collect smuggler Watcyn Jones from Beaumaris Gaol on Anglesey, and bring him back to London for trial at the Old Bailey. As if having to travel to the wilds of North Wales isn’t bad enough, Dan is saddled with an inexperienced constable as his interpreter and assistant. At least it’s a routine assignment and shouldn’t take more than a few days.
But when the prison escort is ambushed and Watcyn Jones escapes, a straightforward transfer turns into a desperate manhunt. And as Jones’s enemies start to die, the chase becomes more urgent than ever. Dan’s search for the killer brings him up against a ruthless smuggling gang – and his chances of getting off the island alive begin to look far from promising.
The Contraband Killings is a BRAG Medallion Honoree.
The Contraband Killings: A Dan Foster Mystery
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| St Seiriol’s Well, Anglesey |
The latest Dan Foster Mystery, The Contraband Killings, is set on Anglesey, North Wales. During the hunt for an escaped convict, Dan and his assistant and translator, Goronwy Evans, visit St Seiriol’s Well at Penmon. The well is associated with a monastery dating to the time of the sixth-century saint, St Seiriol. It can still be seen today, though the building over it is of later construction than the monastery. As late as 1850 people were still visiting the well at night to drink the water as a cure for sickness.
Although Dan is sceptical about the claim for the healing properties of the spring, the well does have an atmosphere of magic about it, even if it is only the peace and beauty of the spot and the clear, shining water of the ancient spring. Wells have been associated with healing for centuries, and while many are now linked with Christian saints, their use as places of healing often date back much further.
The Wales Dan and Goronwy visit is full of magical wells, and they were definitely on the tourist itinerary. In his 1816 Cambria Depicta: A Tour Through North Wales, Welsh artist Edward Pugh describes a visit to “a spring-water bath, dedicated to St Dyfnog” at Llanrhyadr. Like St Seiriol’s Well, St Dyfnog’s Well was a place of healing. Pugh “lament[s] the general neglect and decay” the well, with its “thoroughly efficacious” waters, had suffered. It ought, he thought, to be restored and made free for “the afflicted”.
Pugh also visited St Asaph’s Well, where the water flows so fast it is powerful enough to turn a mill wheel. On Anglesey, he went to “St Elianus’s” (St Eilian’s) Well near Amlwch, which is close to the sea.
In 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Joseph Hucks, who had both studied at Cambridge University, went on a walking tour of North Wales. They visited St Winifred’s Well at Holywell. The spring had bubbled up on the spot where Winifred was beheaded for refusing to have sex with a man called Cradock. St Bueno replaced her head, brought her back to life, and struck Cradock dead. Huck recorded that the well was known for “curing the blind, the lame, and the palsied”. He and Coleridge saw “trophies of old crutches, wheel-barrows, spades, etc that decorate this venerable building; the grateful testimonies of those various cures which its miraculous waters have performed”.
Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who toured Wales in the 1770s, called the story of St Winifred “a preposterous fable” invented by monks to attract pilgrims and their money. Like Hucks and Coleridge, he reported seeing “hand-barrows, crutches etc which have been left by grateful patients” hanging from the ceiling and walls of the cloisters over the well.
Wyndham also fulminated about the lack of “delicacy” of mixed bathing. It seems he didn’t find it all bad, for he records “being entertained with the sight of a fine rustic Venus, rising from the transparent waves, whose wet and close-clinging drapery shewed her firm and athletic limbs, to such advantage”. He dismissed the healing properties of the well as Papist superstition, and noted that it had had a period of revival in “the bigoted reign of Queen Mary”.
Wells could also be places of a darker kind of magic, as Edward Pugh noted at at Llanelian. Here, a ceremony took place which involved draining the well and then wishing for “diseases upon their neighbour’s cattle”. This well, Pugh observed sniffily, is “a relic of Roman-catholic superstition”. While Pugh was there, a young woman arrived with an armful of branches and started to decorate the well with them. As he was Welsh, he was able to speak to her and question her about the coming rites (“the farce”), but she wasn’t keen to answer him and hurried away.
Was the power of the wells fading by the eighteenth century? In 1797 the Revd Richard Warner of Bath visited St Oswald’s Well in Oswestry. The Christian King Oswald was killed in battle by the pagan King Penda. A bird carried Oswald’s arm from the battlefield and the well sprang up where he dropped it. But, wrote Warner, the well that had operated “in the times of the papacy” had now lost its miraculous qualities.
Wells were places of healing, of “Papist” superstition, and even of dark magic. They attracted the sick seeking healing, tourists, and artists. In The Contraband Killings, the woman at St Seiriol urges Dan Foster, “You should drink the water. It will mend your hurts, even the ones that cannot be seen.” Left alone at the well for a few moments: “On an impulse, Dan went back inside. He crouched beside the spring, cupped his hand in the cool stream, and drank”.
Lucienne Boyce
2024
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| Read An Excerpt |
The Healing Wells of Wales
Most of the stone-flagged floor of the tiny chamber was taken up by a rectangular aperture above a clear stream of water which ran almost soundlessly over mossy rocks and shining pebbles. Coins glinted in the barely discernible ripples. The water was surrounded by stone benches. Above these, the candles burned in shallow niches; others had long since gone out and wax accumulated over the years streaked the walls. There were small bunches of flowers on the shelves, some faded and dried, others fresh, along with a strange assortment of objects: buttons, brooches, strips of lace, a pewter mug, a wooden doll with jointed limbs, ribbons, an apron, a baby’s bonnet and other small tokens.
Footsteps approached along the path. Dan recognised the mistress’s brisk voice.
“She says it’s St Seiriol’s Well,” Evans said in answer to Dan’s questioning glance. “This was the saint’s hermitage. Those are offerings people bring.”
Dan looked at the small, sad gifts. How many, he wondered, had been left in gratitude for sickness cured, how many only in hope?
“She’s here in case you want to drink the water,” Evans added. “You have to pay her.”
About the Author
I write historical fiction, non fiction and biography. My historical novels to date are To The Fair Land (an eighteenth-century thriller); and the Dan Foster Mystery Series which follows the adventures of a Bow Street Runner in the 1790s. I’ve also written a history of the local suffragette movement, The Bristol Suffragettes, as well as contributed to other books on suffrage history.
I’m currently writing a biography of suffrage campaigner and pacifist, Millicent Price (née Browne), and completing a collaborative project with Antonia Raeburn (who died in 2021) based on Antonia’s interviews with former suffragettes in the 1960s and 1970s. I am also working on a murder mystery set in the early 1900s.
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Good Reads:
1. What was the first novel you read that made you think: ‘Wow, I want to write like this!’
I find this impossible to answer! The reading of my childhood inspired me to want to write from a very young age – to tell stories like the ones I read – from Teddy Robinson (Joan G Robinson) and Adventures of The Little Wooden Horse (Ursula Moray Williams), through to Eleanor Farjeon’s stories and poems, Black Beauty (Anna Sewell), The Little Grey Men (BB), The Book of Lyonne (Burgess Drake illustrated by Mervyn Peake, whose books and art I grew up to love), The Hobbit…
2. What book (fiction or nonfiction) is a treasure that you’d pass on to a grandchild
(if you had one)
My most treasured book is a set of William Morris’s The Earthly Paradise, which have inserted inside them letters written by Morris himself.
2. If you found a genie in a magic lamp what would your three wishes be?
Peace. An end to inequality. A world based on caring not competition. (It would have to be one powerful genie.)
3. If you could have a holiday anywhere in the world (for free!) where would you go?
Canada. I’ve always wanted to do one of those train journeys through the Rockies!
4. Your favourite time period – and why
I am fascinated by the eighteenth century, but not because I have some romantic idea I want to live there. Nor am I particularly interested in kings and queens and aristocrats and assembly rooms and frocks and tinkling tea cups. Life wasn’t like that for the majority of people. What does interest me is that the eighteenth century was a period of terrific contrasts – wealth and poverty; an age of scientific exploration existing side by side with superstition; an age of philanthropy alongside the most tremendous cruelty and exploitation – and there’s drama in contrasts. The way it shapes characters, how they interact, what they’re up against…it provides endlessly fascinating and exciting stories peopled by some amazing characters – it’s about telling a gripping story with characters you can love or hate.
5. Name one thing you regret that you didn’t do
Write a fantasy novel. However I haven’t given up yet – and in fact I’m planning one now!
6. Name one thing you’re pleased that you did do
After the publishing deal I’d got for my first novel, To The Fair Land, fell through, I independently published it. It was one of the best things I ever did and because of it I have met some amazing people in the indie community, made some wonderful friends, learned such a lot, and continue to learn.
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Dan Foster is a terrific character and I look forward to reading his latest adventure.
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