Authors: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Tags: #Fantasy, #Fantasy Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Horror, #Occult & Supernatural, #Historical Fiction, #Vampires, #Saint-Germain, #Inquisition, #Women Musicians - Crimes Against

States of Grace (37 page)

Author’s Notes

The title of this story refers to the religio-political unrest gripping Europe, and the justification that was rigorously promulgated as part of it, as well as the volatile social conditions to which it contributed: Europe in the mid-sixteenth century was caught up in the Reformation and a host of regional conflicts that would seriously prolong and escalate the Wars of Religion. Luther’s movement, as well as a handful of others, in fact, were becoming more than regional disruptions, attracting significant followings unlike earlier Christian heresies, and had taken on the alarming aspects of being lasting revolutionary movements: In England, the debate between Henry VIII and the Pope reached a point of no return. While parts of modern Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland attempted a posture of limited tolerance to religious reform, the Inquisition in Spain went into high gear to keep the fatal taint of heresy from contaminating the country, and in so doing, created some very real schisms among the Hapsburgs, who controlled both Austro-Hungary and Spain and, by extension through the Spanish Crown, modern Holland and Belgium. The posture of the Austrian branch was fairly religiously tolerant; the Spanish branch was just the opposite. With so much social restructuring, the Hanseatic League was finally losing its commercial grip on the northern European and Scandinavian ports, opening trade to many more commercial ventures, including ones in the New World.

Of equal, but less obvious impact was the expansion of publishing throughout Europe, with centers in Germany (major presses at Heidelberg), Holland (major presses at Antwerp and Amsterdam), and northern Italy (principal presses at Venice); the debates of the day were regularly reinforced and fueled by the proliferation of books and the increasing mutation of religious observances. This was strengthened by the failure of the Ottomites to take Vienna, and their subsequent loss of territory in eastern Europe and a wedge of the Balkans, ending in a centuries-long stalemate the residue of which conflict is still with us today. Publishing had a number of less obvious but equally important consequences: Publishing began to regularize language, defining form and syntax as never before, codifying dialect and regionalisms as offshoots of central language, such as the difference between the Venetian dialect as compared to Italian, and the proliferation of languages in northwestern Europe during the time in question; insofar as possible, the linguistics of the day are used in this book: Venezia, Venezian, and the usual Venezian tendency to drop the last vowel or syllable of a name—Sen, not Seno—and the end of certain nouns—gondolier, Consiglier, and so forth. Period spellings and usages are found in the text when they are consistent: Fiorenze (modern Florence) is an example of this. Publishing increased literacy, especially in cities where reading was more of an asset than it was in the country, and spurred the cause of education; and publishing fed the growing importance of record-keeping by making such records more generally available and concise.

The social ferment touched on issues other than religion: peasants’ revolts were not uncommon in this period, and somewhat less common but as significant were the occasional guild revolts in cities, some of which resulted in strikes and riots as the demand for reorganization of outmoded social conventions and traditions became more pervasive. Many of those traditions dated back five hundred years and more. Due to the religious changes in various parts of western Europe, there was a dramatic upsurge in refugees seeking the safety of coreligionists, which brought about significant demographic changes throughout the century. All of these factors impact this novel in a variety of ways, from tangential to directly confrontational.

Another small-but-monumental social shift in the sixteenth century was the standardization of time: clocks became more reliable, and the perception of time went from cyclical to linear. By the 1580s, pocket watches were a common accessory for members of the merchant and upper classes, and elaborate clocks were more and more the objects of choice for setting off a town’s center. It may not seem like much on the surface, but it changed banking and commerce as well as providing more reliable measurements, which in turn created the intellectual climate that supported empiricism and what became the scientific method.

Thanks are due to D. J. Ahntoe for his information on sixteenth-century commerce and commercial law; to Meredith Deller for her expertise on the evolution of language in Europe; to Edwin Haws for his material on the various Protestant movements in Catholic Christendom; to Barry Nimmo for letting me borrow half a dozen books on specific aspects of this period; and to Ed Traegar for access to his maps of western Europe in the sixteenth century.

Thanks are also due to the Luckes, Gaye, Brian, Megan, Alice, Bill, Patrick, Steve, Randy, with extra to Maureen; to my readers, Ginny Brovard, L. L. Louis, and Susan Kinsolving, who read it for clarity; and to Libba Campbell and Celia Montoya, who read it for errors; to the Lord Ruthven Assembly and the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, especially Elizabeth, Stephanie, Sharon, and Katie; to the Web-promo top gun, Wiley Saichek; to the folks of CQYarbro Yahoo group; to Lindig Harris for the
Yclept Yarbro
newsletter; to Irene Kraas, my agent, and her affiliates for their long support of this series; to Melissa Singer, my editor, and Tom Doherty, the mastermind at Tor; to the booksellers who have championed Saint-Germain; and to you, the readers, who make it all possible.

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO
October, 2004

By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro from Tom Doherty Associates

Ariosto
Better in the Dark
Blood Games
Blood Roses
A Candle for D’Artagnan
Come Twilight
Communion Blood
Crusader’s Torch
Dark of the Sun
Darker Jewels
A Feast in Exile
A Flame in Byzantium
Hotel Transylvania
Mansions of Darkness
Out of the House of Life
The Palace
Path of the Eclipse
States of Grace
Writ in Blood
Roman Dusk

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously

STATES OF GRACE

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eISBN 9781429996709

First eBook Edition : March 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 1942–

States of grace : a novel of Saint-Germain / Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”