Review by Jane Cable and a word from the author…
In her acknowledgements Clare Marchant describes The Queen’s Spy as ‘the difficult second novel’ – or words to that effect. Well she didn’t make it easy for herself, with an Elizabethan main character who is deaf and dumb and a modern day protagonist who is far from instantly likeable.
One of the triumphs of this book is how well the author pulls off both characters. We experience the Elizabethan world through Tom’s eyes, nose, hands… but not his ears. And despite this, it is a rich world indeed, brought vividly to life through the wonderful descriptive language. Despite the danger, intrigue and prejudice it was a world I wanted to return to again and again, which certainly kept me turning the pages.
Like all good dual timeline stories the links between present and past mirror each other well; both protagonists are outsiders, both gifted artistically and with herbs. There are other linking factors too, but to reveal them might spoil the story and I would hate to do that, because it is a book I would definitely recommend you read.
So fascinated was I by Tom’s story that I just had to ask Clare about him:
Over the course of my two books the character who has been my favourite is Tom. I always plan my work in great detail so I don’t have any shocks, and yet Tom arrived one day in the still room at Saffron Hall and took me completely by surprise. I’ve loved him from the first moment he appeared. At first he had no way of communicating but slowly he came out of his shell and as he did so, became more confident.
So, it was a no-brainer that Tom would be the main protagonist in my second book, The Queen’s Spy. He’s able to use his disability in a positive way spying for Elizabeth 1st but I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy writing a book where I had to tell his story through the other senses he had; sight, smell and taste. However I think it’s interesting to experience Tudor London as he would have done. With the heightened senses he has it meant the smells (quite often unpleasant!) would have been that much more pungent. And his intensified senses of smell and taste helps him as an apothecary, able to differentiate between and identify many varieties of herbs. I enjoyed him introducing vanilla to the court (in reality it was Hugh Morgan who was Queen Elizabeth’s apothecary) but it was a long time before horticulturalists knew the plants have to be pollenated by hand in the UK.
The fact he has this disability has always left Tom feeling it’s a weakness, a disadvantage, but it takes Francis Walsingham to recognise that Tom’s lip reading can be used as a skill and as the story develops, Tom’s self-confidence grows. For the first time in his life he feels properly valued and this just makes me love him move!
Publisher’s blurb:
1584: Elizabeth I rules England. But a dangerous plot is brewing in court, and Mary Queen of Scots will stop at nothing to take her cousin’s throne.
There’s only one thing standing in her way: Tom, the queen’s trusted apothecary, who makes the perfect silent spy…
2021: Travelling the globe in her campervan, Mathilde has never belonged anywhere. So when she receives news of an inheritance, she is shocked to discover she has a family in England.
Just like Mathilde, the medieval hall she inherits conceals secrets, and she quickly makes a haunting discovery. Can she unravel the truth about what happened there all those years ago? And will she finally find a place to call home?