• Winner of the 2003 Award of
Excellence sponsored by the Colorado Romance Writers
• Winner of the 2002 Beacon Award,
judged by Florida booksellers, sponsored by the First Coast Romance
Writers (Florida)
This book was my first USA-Today bestseller and my second Waldenbooks
bestseller. Along with Princess, it is one of my darkest books,
and in reader mail, is probably one of my books most frequently
cited as an all-time favorite. ~ GF
As I write this, People magazine has just proclaimed Pierce Brosnan
the Sexiest Man Alive, so on a 007 note, I’d like to share
a bit of what I learned while researching Lord of Fire, my January
release from Ballantine Books, in which the hero, Lord Lucien Knight,
is a gentleman spy in the Napoleonic wars. Think Pierce Brosnan
in a cravat and tailcoat!
Spy was a very dirty word in Regency England, for spying went against
everything that the ideal of the chivalrous English gentleman stood
for. Spying on the enemy was considered a way of fighting dirty.
It was deemed cowardly to present oneself as one thing (the spy’s
cover), gaining people’s trust under false pretenses, all
the while sending information back to the other side. The manly
ideal of English chivalry favored a straightforward approach, looking
the enemy in the eye like the infantry did down the barrels of their
bayoneted muskets. But, luckily, there were always adventurous souls
willing to flirt with dangerand even dishonorto serve their country,
for the plain fact was that to beat Napoleon, the army and the government
needed the intelligence that only spies could provide.
There were two kinds of spies active during the Napoleonic wars.
Serving in the Peninsula under Wellington were the intelligence
officers, army men whose job it was to sneak behind enemy lines
and report back to Wellington on the foes numbers, strength, and
position. The traits these men needed were courage, intelligence,
a good working knowledge of the native tongue, and a certain adeptness
at drawing, so they could quickly sketch maps of what they found.
It might seem strange that the intelligence officers always wore
their highly conspicuous scarlet uniforms while making their forays
behind enemy lines. But if they were caught, they were treated as
prisoners of war precisely because of the uniform. Their activities
were deemed honorable because they made no secret of the fact that
they were attempting to collect information. If, on the other hand,
they were to be caught in plainclothes or in disguise, they would
be termed spies and would be instantly hanged.
The other kind of spies operated at a much higher level, out of
the Foreign Office under the direction of the Foreign Secretary,
who, from 1809 to 1812, was none other than Wellington’s elder
brother, Richard, the Marquis of Wellesley! Lord Wellesley drove
the other Cabinet ministers nuts with his secrecy over the activities
of his agents. He kept in close touch with his men in the field
and was highly protective of them.
These operatives were usually high-born, well-educated men, frequently
younger sons of the nobility, appointed to ambassadorial roles throughout
the courts of Europe. The traits they needed were again boldness,
intelligence, lingual skill, perceptiveness, along with a certain
amount of social panache. They were there to charm their way into
the good grace of key foreign figures, watching allies as well as
enemies for not all the allies could be trusted at all times. They
were Whitehalls eyes and ears, sent to learn whatever they could
about who meant to do what when. They specialized in activities
such as intercepting (i.e. stealing) communiques, cryptography (designing
and cracking codes), forging and planting false documents, as well
as selecting and managing discreet informers, such as the servants
of people whom they were watching. Indeed, this was such an integral
part of their job that they were given expense accounts for bribe
money. England spent so much money for intelligence during the Napoleonic
Wars that the bribe money became known as “the cavalry of
St. George” for the picture of England’s patron saint
stamped on the gold coin.
One spectacular triumph of a British secret agent, Colin Mackenzie,
bears repeating. It appears in the book Secret Service: British
Agents in France 1702-1815 by Elizabeth Sparrow (The Boydell Press,
1999). Mackenzie had a Parisian bookseller in his pay, who one day
reported that someone from Napoleon’s palace had come into
the shop buying books on the topography of Lithuania, an account
of the campaigns of Charles XII in Poland and Russia, geographical
books on various Russian provinces, maps and atlases of Livonia,
Riga, and the Baltic provinces of Russia. Mackenzie sent this odd
bit of information back to Lord Wellesley, who deduced that Napoleon
was planning to invade Russia! The Emperor did just that the following
year in his disastrous Russian campaign.
The other facet of espionage that relates to Lord of Fire is the
relationship between spying and secret societies, particularly those
that dabble in the occult. In Lord of Fire, Lucien runs a secret
society of his own in order to monitor foreign agents operating
on British soil, only to discover a plot against the city of London
itself. If you enjoy intrigue and diabolically clever heroes, I
hope you’ll look for it. Lord of Fire will be followed up
next month by Lord of Ice, which tells the story of Lord Damien
Knight, Lucien’s identical twin, a decorated war hero who
disparages Lucien’s “dishonorable” profession.
~ GF
This book gave me my first and hopefully last bout of writer’s
block.
In hindsight, it’s easy to see the main reason for this: It
was a very complicated plot and Lucien was an extremely complex
man to unravel. It’s hard to write a book about a character
who’s about ten times smarter than you! Lucien put me off
writing spies indefinitely, LOL. When you write about a spy, you
have to give him essentially two separate lives—the life and
personality he adopts as his “cover” and his real life
and personality. That means double the research, for one thing.
Moreover, Lucien is a seething cauldron of inner conflict.
He adores his twin brother, Damien, for example, (hero of Lord of
Ice) but he’s also not quite resolved his sibling rivalry
with him. He’s been in the background all his life, but now
the great Damien is breaking down before his eyes, a victim of post-traumatic
war stress. Unlike Damien the famous war-hero, Lucien sacrifices
any possibility of intimacy in his life by accepting the job of
an undercover operative.
Damien won’t get close to any woman, while Lucien can’t.
While Damien gets all the glory, Lucien can’t even tell people
about his role in protecting the homeland. He so desperately wants
to be known, but he’s afraid the moment he is known, he will
be rejected.
In the book, he keeps using charm to throw out deception after deception
to keep the heroine at arm’s length but yet he still wants
to keep her attention; not very fair, is it? Alice didn’t
think so, either. This was a character unwilling to reveal himself
to either his heroine or his author.
For five months I tried to nail him down, rewriting the first hundred-fifty
pages over and over and over again. At this point, with a few years
gone by, I don’t remember what brought about the breakthrough.
I think I just gave up and walked away from the story, and in a
state of utter defeat, it started coming clear to me. It’s
always darkest before the dawn, right? Then I was back on my feet
and running to the computer, writing furiously. I could almost hear
him laughing at me, the blackguard.
Once, I finally had him, though, the writing went quickly. I’ve
had a large number of readers tell me this one’s their favorite
of my books so far, and that makes all the angst worth it. But I’m
still too traumatized to write any spy stories for a while yet!
~ GF
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