My research became wider and more wild
Search for Milady? Where? Which way?
Sitting up in Blanes, Catalunya in Spain, I planned my research trip to France. I had four summer months between teaching positions. I wanted to help others find their way. My intention to volunteer at a refugee camp in Dunkirk, teaching English with an organisation that provided accommodation, was frustrated. The camp was overcrowded, tensions caused arguments, cooking stoves were overturned and much of the camp burned down. The refugees and English students disbanded before I even left Spain. What do you do when your best laid plans go awry?
My confusion was not only physical. Milady. So confusing. Not only her character and history, but also how much I would need to write about her life. As well as jotting down flights of fancy around Milady’s childhood, I typed out every scene, every sentence, from The Three Musketeers that featured that lady. I wanted to know Dumas and his rhythms, his inner chuckle and his drive. This would be my primary source.
I researched seventeenth-century France and England up to and including the death of George Villiers, the then Duke of Buckingham, the King of England’s favourite, in 1628. The presentations I found on YouTube seem to accept that James the First and Sixth was gay, even though he produced a dutiful lineage of several children. In Peter Ackroyd’s book, Rebellion, there’s a quote from the Queen’s chaplain saying, ‘The King himself was a very chaste man’. Really?
Milady’s English story hangs on Buckingham’s eye for the ladies. There’s a sad letter from his wife expressing her undying love for him even though she knew full well he was dallying with others - preferring blondes. Milady herself is supposed to be based on one of his known paramours, Lucy Hay. And, yes, if you know the book, there really was a scandal over a diamond brooch.
In Dumas’s world, Buckingham could not be gay. If he was interested in men, why would he have a room devoted to Anne of Austria? Apparently Buckingham was so infatuated with the woman he sent her the very dagger with which he was killed. I read that he tried to keep King Charles I and his wife, Henrietta, separate. It was not until after Buckingham’s death that the royal couple became friends and had six children. Perhaps this divide and conquer rule was behind his apparent devotion to the Queen of France. If he was trying to break up French Royalty and wreak havoc in Court by pretending to be Anne of Austria’s lover, that made him even more rascally and evil. Although, apparently, he really did fall for her and was invited into her private rooms the first time they met. What a charmer!
Yes, George and James’s homosexuality strayed from Dumas’s original, but, I must report, Sexy Lexy was not totally consistent either. Dumas’s contradictory statements included Lord de Winter (Milady’s brother in law) as both older and younger than his dead brother. And that Athos, her erstwhile husband, thought that Milady’s priest friend, who married them, quit the town the day before he hung Milady and also, the day after the marriage. Which way to go?
Meanwhile, back in my world, where refugee camps burned, the news cycle swirled with its own global corporate warming. The forces swirling around the earth were building up pressure points and storms that we couldn’t quite see yet surely there would be extreme events to come.
Perhaps this sort of political intrigue captured both Milady and Rochefort, although arms deals were not quite on the same scale four hundred years ago. Indeed, it was incomprehensible that there was just a tiny fraction of the number of people alive on the planet. Imagine the wildlife! Flocks of birds! Butterflies! Bears!
I could not comprehend the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the Reformation. Europe was trying to throw off the Austrian Habsburg Empire and, after Charles V abdicated, there was confusion and war. Spain controlled the Netherlands. Both France and England did not like being told what to do by Spain but neither wanted to join forces to fight.
In England, after Elizabeth, James I brought unity of a kind, inventing the beginnings of the Union Jack and, most extraordinary, bringing together the known religions to Hampton Court to commission a new translation of the Bible for all Christians. The man was a peacemaker! Beati Pacifici - blessed be the peacemakers - was his personal motto.
Before James, if a country’s rulers declared they were Catholic, Protestants had to run away or die. If a land became Protestant the persevering Catholics hid in tiny cupboards or were burned. Even today, every Guy Fawkes Night in Lewes, a pleasant village in the South of England, seventeen crosses are burnt to commemorate the Protestants burned in the market place during Bloody Mary’s reign. I found it hard to understand how loving Christians could burn each other alive because they thought they would go to hell if they believed the wrong thing. Although, given some of today’s extreme Christians, maybe it’s not so difficult.
My research became wider and more wild. Who was Sir Francis Bacon? Ben Jonson? Luther? Calvin? Who needed spies and why? I suspected Rochefort recruited Milady because of her beauty but came to rely on her intelligence. They spied for the French government, the King and Cardinal. They were on the side of the law. They were the ones following Joan d’Arc. They were on the side of La France.
The Musketeers and Captain Treville were on the dark side, helping Buckingham and the Queen. Both sides may not have used correct, accepted diplomatic systems, but Buckingham was clearly for England. After the debacle of trying to woo Spain and their promised fat dowry for the Infanta, he must have been calculating at every turn how much wealth he could get out of the coffers of France. James I was fond of wealth. How much did Buckingham want? Actually, what did Buckingham want? Where were the boundaries in my story? I could see no clear road.
I discovered WorkAway where people (hosts) who want some kind of task done advertise for labour from travellers, who receive accommodation and food in return for four or five hours of work a day. I began to search for people who wanted help in the North of France and as far south as La Rochelle where the Musketeers went to fight the Huguenots. Luckily, I had several positive responses and began to plan my trip.
Anne’s first address in France was Brueil. Then an orphanage in Templemars. I thought young Anne, the nun, might be grateful to God for looking after her as a child. Perhaps this gratitude was why she wanted to devote herself to the church. Or was her religious life an escape? Was life in the nunnery dreadful in some way? What made her leave the convent? Did she receive a message from God?
That’s what I wanted! Direction.
I needed to receive an omen - a portent - or some thing from Above.
What should I look for?
What could the sign be?
We are always searching for satisfaction Milady.
You always do a stylish picture, for a writer.