Tag Archives: Nicola Pryce

SUNDAY SCENE: NICOLA PRYCE ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM THE CORNISH CAPTIVE

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I’m delighted to share my favourite scene from The Cornish Captive. Set in a busy harbour on the south coast of Cornwall in 1800, Madelaine Pelligrew, a French aristocrat by birth, is walking on the beach for the first time in fourteen years. Recently released from false imprisonment she had almost given up hope of freedom. As she walks, revelling in the feel of the sand beneath her feet and the wind in her hair, she sees a seagull trapped in the rocks.

The struggling seagull triggers a need in her to free it. Equating the bird’s desperate attempts to free itself with her own plight, she ventures beyond the shingle. At once, her foot sinks into sand, her shoe becomes trapped, and her panic rises. A French frigate captain is also walking on the beach: a prisoner on parole, he has previously helped Madelaine find accommodation and he wades out to assist her.

        ‘The water was deeper than I thought, up to his thighs, but he kept striding out and I held my breath. He reached the seagull and held it up. It lay still in his hands, not the slightest movement and I covered my face, unable to stop my violent sobs. ‘Oh no … no…’

        The need to free it had been so powerful. I could feel myself shaking, a growing sense of agitation. My heart was thumping, pounding with sudden irregularity and I fought to breathe. Everywhere was too vast, the seagulls too loud, the sky too high. He stood smiling across at me, holding up the dead bird. ‘A piece of white drift wood, that’s all. But I must admit it looked very like a seagull struggling against the rock.’

Madelaine is very vulnerable at this stage and Piere de la Croix has already shown her great kindness by leaving a bowl of fruit for her at the inn. Yet she shies away from him, hiding behind her false name.

          ‘Please don’t think me ungrateful. My brother-in-law doesn’t take kindly to your interference. We must never meet like this again.’

         ‘As you wish.’ His voice held sadness, a stiffness in his manner as he pointed me up the beach.

         ‘That includes oranges, Captain de la Croix.’

         He reached for his jacket. ‘Once a ship’s captain, always a ship’s captain – always vigilant for the signs of scurvy. You will get better, Mrs Barnard, and quickly, too. Just eat as many oranges as you can and drink the juice of lemons and limes.’ 

           His hair was ruffled, dark lashes framed his eyes. He held up his hand to shield them against the sun. I did not want to see the kindness in his eyes, nor hear his consideration for my welfare. He was lying. All men were liars. He was a Republican spy: his only intention to trap my brother.

          Above us, soldiers in scarlet jackets watched from the fort. One was holding a telescope to his eye and Pierre smiled. ‘Do they think I’m about to steal a rowing boat?’ His laugh sounded hollow, a sadness in his shrug. ‘I’m allowed this far … yet they don’t like me being so near their fortifications.’

Later, Captain Pierre de la Croix carves a seagull out of the driftwood and it becomes Madelaine’s symbol of escape. The beach, too, features several more times: indeed this scene foreshadows a turning point in the story which is why I have chosen to share it with you.

 

http://nicolapryce.co.uk/

HISTORICAL NOVELIST NICOLA PRYCE ON HOW SHE APPROACHES HER RESEARCH

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My books are set on the south coast of Cornwall, 1793-1800, so it’s wonderfully fitting that Cornwall’s new archive centre has moved to the old Redruth Brewhouse, built in 1792. The former Brewery has been transformed and incorporated within it is Kresen Kernow which houses 1.5 million records, covering 850 years of Cornish history. I believe there are fourteen miles of shelving!

I loved the Records Office in Truro, but this new centre is fabulous. Starting with the user friendly catalogues, the e-mail lists of chosen archives, the spacious research rooms, and the efficient and charming archivists, it adds to the serious problem of deciding when to stop researching and start writing!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Other writers tell me they start with a kernel of an idea, a spark that fires their interest, and they expand it from there. I, however, like to start with the whole picture, gradually narrowing it down to the themes I want to explore.

I began my journey into historical fiction knowing the place I wanted to set my stories in – an area I have loved for thirty years. The date was an easy decision because since my Open University degree I’ve been mildly obsessed with the end of the Eighteenth Century, and as the books were to be set on the coast I had a community of shipbuilders, fishermen, clay speculators, merchants, and landowners around whom I could weave my stories.

Hoping my books might make a series, I decided to keep separate areas of research for each book and not cram everything into the first. It was a matter of holding back. Britain was at war with France and the areas I wanted to research were the high levels of bankruptcy among shipbuilders, raising the Volunteer Militia in the face of the very real threat of invasion, the patent row between the engine builders Boulton and Watt and how it impacted Cornish mining, the influx of French prisoners into the prisons, and building the new Infirmary. So much, and yet there is still so much I haven’t mentioned.

We are spoilt for on-line information. The touch of a key brings facts, dates, names, portraits, maps. We can access academic research papers detailing the lives of shipbuilders, midshipman, physicians tackling tropical fevers and the stories in my head slowly become plausible. But I need to know what I say happens could have happened. Every detail is checked – every inn, every stagecoach, every boatyard, even evidence of a French dressmaker in Truro.

I march round the area. I have a plot that could have happened to people who could have lived in the houses I identify. I have the setting, the time, the characters but missing is the most vital aspect of all – authentic voices of people living at the time.

And that’s where the days previously spent in the Records Office are now spent in the stunning Kresen Kernow. I only feel able to start a new book when real voices jump at me from the pages of primary sources – the threat of invasion, the woeful state of the sea defences, the lists of returns in case of subscription. The writs and legal wrangling that kept the price of tin high. The building of the sea-lock, details of rents charged to the tenants in the new harbour, Charlestown. The shambles at Pendennis Castle. The Naval ships awaiting orders in Falmouth.

The words they use, their tone, their sense of urgency or frustration leap from the pages. I can hear my characters and I can finally start writing.

 

Find out more about Nicola and her novels at: https://nicolapryce.co.uk/