Writers Tricks of the Trade SPRING 2017 ISSUE 2, VOLUME 7 | Page 21

The Five Senses of Historical Fiction (Cont’d)
to heat water and bring it to the tub for filling), they did bathe from buckets, from
rivers and streams, and in the public bath houses, men and women together. No,
they did not suffer from the same Victorian attitudes about their bodies, but
cleanliness and good smells were important. Good smells were associated with
holiness and so all tried to achieve some level of acceptable smells.
2) H EARING . After you adjusted to the smoky streets, what might you hear?
Certainly you would hear the lowing of animals: horses, cows, sheep, goats, dogs,
cats, chickens, geese. You’d hear the calls of the merchants to buy their wares. For
in London, unlike the provincial towns and villages, there was a constant source of
commerce. You didn’t have to wait for market day to get the goods and services
you sought. This was London! The second largest city in Europe, second only to
Paris.
You’d be inundated with the constant sound of bells from all the many parish
churches. The bells would break up your day by telling you the hour (this was the
call to prayer for the monks and nuns in residence in the monasteries about town,
the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office.)
Which brings up another issue. You could certainly hear the people talking and
laughing together, but though they are speaking English, they are speaking a form
of the language called Middle English, a lilting cross between modern English,
German, and French with some Gaelic thrown in for good measure. It wouldn’t be
easy to understand what they were saying, especially with the more archaic
expressions no longer in use.
3) S IGHT . You would see a bustling metropolis, where the buildings were
crammed against one another, where sometimes there were no right angles, and
walls were twisted and bent toward one another across the lanes. Two or three
story structures, all vying for space. Some had outside stairwells leading up to the
higher stories, and some had instead rickety ladders. Some even had makeshift
bridges spanning the avenue, though many of these were illegally built. Most
citizens were still too poor to have glass in windows. Some windows had oiled skins
stretched across them allowing in the light, but most others simply closed with
wooden shutters.
The people themselves were dressed in colorful woolens, russets, greens, blues,
and yellows. Vegetable and mineral dyes were used for coloring yarns and cloth.
Shoes were leather and some had wooden shoes to wear either on stockinged feet
or as slip-ons over their shoes to keep them above the mud. And the more
fashionable wore their shoes long and pointy. So long, in fact, that the toes had to
be tied to one’s calf just below the knee. Hoods, veils, and stylish hats covered
heads, while cloaks covered shoulders when the weather was unkind.
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
S PRING 2017
P AGE 13