Northumberland for Christmas!

Why not visit the Northumberland Border country this Christmas? FAIR BORDER BRIDE is up for sale on Amazon Kindle at $3. Here's a link to the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyui1kfCd_8

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling, page-turning historical romance, 22 Nov 2011

By N. Steven-fountain "Lorna Mack"
Jen Black has crafted a compelling love story set in a time and place of which little is known but about which I was left both informed and wanting more. The historical detail takes you back to 1543 from the very first page. Vivid characters spring to life and you are there with them among the market stalls. You can smell the aromas, feel the fabrics, hear the voices and sense the undercurrents and attractions emerging between the protagonists. A tender, believable love story develops and on the final page you are left feeling slightly bereft as when any terrific story ends.

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful bride in a turbulent country..., 31 Oct 2011

By Lindsay Townsend (Yorkshire, UK)
From its fast-paced, compelling opening, 'Fair Border Bride' is an exciting historical romance set in the border lands of northern England in 1543. The romance of Alina and Harry is full of incident and tenderness and is a well-told story, with moments of humour, sensitivity and passion. They are sympathetic, rounded people and believable in their dilemmas and conflicts. The other characters in the novel are also very well-drawn, and the whole is filled with fascinating historical detail about a part of England that is rarely explored in Tudor historical fiction. If you want to lose yourself in vivid adventure and romance, I have no hesitation in recommending this novel by Jen Black.

Blurb: Harry is working for his father, the Deputy Lord Warden of the West March, and adopts the alias Harry Scott. Unhappily, Alina’s father is at feud with the entire family Scott,and flings Harry into the dungeon at Aydon Castle and threatens him with the Leap next day. Alina creeps out of her bed to visit Harry at midnight when the castle is quiet.

Short Excerpt:

“Tell me,” he said, before he forgot all practical things in the delight of her presence. “Your father threatens me with something called the Leap. What is it?”

“She dipped her head, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. “It’s the ravine, Harry.” She pointed towards the dark bulk of the hall. “On the other side is a ravine. It is deep, with the Ay burn at the bottom. Father…he makes prisoners jump from the precipice outside the hall.”

“Ah.” He raised her knuckles to his mouth, and kissed them to dispel the shadowy presence of Death looming in the darkness behind him. He remembered looking into the ravine the night he rode up here. His tongue probed the cleft between her fingers. She gasped. Harry’s blood sang through his body, and he kissed her knuckles again. “How deep, do you think?”

“Twenty times the height of a man, they say.” She shivered and frowned as she watched him nuzzle her fingers. “There are rocks and trees…”

“And no one survives?”

Her face crumpled. “Oh, Harry, sometimes they do, but they are broken, twisted creatures—”

A deep voice sounded from above, and Alina flung up her head. “Matho, please!”

Matho must have agreed, for she turned back to Harry. Her hand had warmed in his and when he kissed it once more, her other hand snaked through the bars and stroked his face, crept to the back of his neck.

“Ah, Alina,” he murmured. “Would that we had no iron bars between us.”

His flesh hardened. If this was his last night on earth, he wanted some pleasure to beguile his thoughts. He reached both hands through the grill and drew her close against the iron bars and in truth she was not reluctant, even when his hand roamed beneath her cloak, caught a ribbon and her nightgown gaped from neck to waist. His palm found the firm weight and curve of her breast and nestled around it.”

Jen Black

http://jenblackauthor.blogspot.com

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fair-Border-Bride-ebook/dp/B005VPXA42#_

The importance of a son

posted by Jen Black 5th July

The problem of childlessness attracts a lot of attention today, but it cannot match the strain such a matter put on a sixteenth-century Queen. Her one function in life was to bear sons. If she did not, she was a failure. Anne Boleyn reached Henry’s side by education, personality and courage, but then had to accept that everything hung on the production of a son. Her step-daughter Mary, who understandably resented Anne, no doubt laughed at her problem; but she too would fall foul of the same problem in years to come.

One son – one would think it surely could not be too difficult with a man like Henry. As time went by and the sons did not arrive, as they had failed for Katherine, Anne, like Katherine before her, shouldered the blame. Yet large families were not the commonplace we might think in the sixteenth century. Women spent what must have seemed like lifetimes being pregnant, but that did not always translate into large families. And especially it did not mean that a son and heir was a given. Many families of the time produced only daughters, or no children at all, and titles skipped to nephews.

Did Henry have sexual problems? In 38 years he slept, over a period of time, with eight women, including both wives and known mistresses. Only four of the eight conceived. Only four pregnancies produced healthy children, one for each of the four women – Katherine, Anne, Elizabeth Blount and Jane Seymour. Other pregnancies ended in stillbirth, miscarriage or death in the first few days of life.

It certainly raises the possibility that Henry was the root cause of his lack of heirs. It seems clear venereal disease was not to blame, as is sometimes suggested. His medical history and treatments are most unlike those of Francis of France, who definitely had the pox. There are no payments in the household accounts for the particular medications in use at that time for such a complaint. The so called syphilitic leg ulcer was more likely caused by osteomyelitis as a result of an injury in the tilt yard, and which never healed satisfactorily and caused him massive pain when abscesses formed deep in the bone. A seventeen-hands horse in half armour falling on you is apt to leave an impression!) Medical knowledge of the time could not deal successfully with such an injury. He never rode to the joust again, and increasing immobility coupled with a huge appetite led to an ominous weight gain. Pain led to shifting moods plus outbursts of irritation and temper.

When Anne Boleyn miscarried in July 1534, it probably brought back all Henry’s doubts about himself and Katherine. Today we know that anxiety about virility can lead to loss of potency, and he must surely have suspected, deep down, that he was the problem. A wife who produces no sign of pregnancy is one thing, but a wife who becomes pregnant but produces weak and sickly children is another thing again. Henry would know, as would his courtiers, of families where in-breeding produced deformities. They would also know of infertile stallions and bulls. From there it was a small step to the obvious conclusion.

It was more than a year before Anne was pregnant again.

At George Boleyn’s trial, he was asked if his sister, Anne, had told him that the King was unable to attain or sustain an erection. They say that the question was written, and the fact that George answered verbally ensured that he was executed.

Anna of Cleves may not have been Henry’s type, as we say these days, but his reluctance to bed her suggests his at least partial impotence. More conclusive is the fact that Mary Boleyn and Katherine Parr became pregnant the moment they married and bedded other men, and perhaps what sealed Katherine Howard’s fate was the thought that if she had been dallying, and became pregnant, then it might not be Henry’s son who inherited the crown of England. Henry couldn’t take that risk. Nor could he risk her saying it wasn't his...