Review of Sailing to Byzantium by Maureen Thorpe

A version of this review appeared in BC Bookworld in Spring of 2021. There are three in this series and I am now waiting to pounce on Book #3!

Author Maureen Thorpe was born in Yorkshire, trained as a nurse- and worked on two continents-, travelled the world, keeping fit all the while, and now lives in a log house near Invermere, B.C. She presents talks with slide-shows about medieval life and writes with authority about a time-travelling aunt, a respected witch or wise-woman in 15th century Yorkshire, and her 21st century niece, a trained midwife. Plus their two cats.

Time-travel fans of Diana Gabaldon’s mega-selling Outlander series and historical mystery readers devoted to the perils of the Henry VIII-era lawyer Matthew Shardlake, by C.J. Sansom, will likely enjoy Thorpe’s book set in 15th century Yorkshire en route to the great kingdom known as Byzantium, with its grand city of Constantinople now Istanbul. In fact, the first book in a planned trilogy with the same main characters was released in 2018, Tangle of Time and a third, Coventina’s Well set in Roman Britain, will follow the fall 2020 release of Sailing to Byzantium. 

On page one of this book, Annie Thornton from present-day Yorkshire, lands in a stinking garbage heap with her cat on her lap. Her (great-great x many greats) aunt Meg is running toward her, apologizing for the odiferous botched landing. She has summoned Annie to help her solve a terrible crime which has just happened in Jorvik. (The Vikings are in charge so York is called by its Norse name.) Twin girls, platinum blonde seven year olds, have been kidnapped while playing right outside the door of their own home.

Their father is a Viking fisherman still out at sea and their English mother and her own mother were inside the house weaving wool cloth at the time of the abduction. The elderly grandfather was outside with the twins but, in one of many deft examples of Thorpe’s storytelling combined with her medical background, he was caught short with what the modern reader can tell is a troublesome prostate and had bolted for the outdoor toilet. All three adults are wracked with grief and guilt at letting the girls out of their sight at exactly the wrong moment and they dread the arrival of the father, who doted on his little girls but whose problem-solving skills were limited to using weapons like the King’s warrior he once was.

Aunt Meg is fully capable of magic, of shapeshifting and time travelling as well as a having a long working knowledge of using herbs and other healing practices of the Middle Ages. She also knows that Annie has inherited her maternal line of ‘witchy’ abilities as well as having modern-day medical training. More training in these inherited abilities and practical foraging for herbs will follow as antibiotics and antiseptics are not exactly handy in the 1400’s. Annie is quickly dressed in appropriate linen and wool clothing and footwear and her T-shirt, jeans and slippers were left behind to baffle the archaeologists of the future.

A useful glossary of Yorkshire dialect and a map of the route the two women, the father of the abducted girls, and other trustworthy companions took to follow the kidnappers is provided in the book. So is a very interesting list of the main characters which pinpoints which ones were actual historical figures, who were invented by the author and who just might be real, as there are traces of those names and identities in Norse sagas and other documents. It’s fascinating stuff. The bereft family, with the two wise-woman (and their cats, who also have certain magical abilities of course) alongside them, petition the local Viking King Eiric BloodAxe and his two wives for help, one of whom proves highly problematic for the rest of the story.

There is a wealth of authentic detail about the rigours of the sea and river voyage which takes the group of would-be rescuers from York, England to Birka, an island near Sweden, with its busy trading town and active slave market. Then the group carried on to cross the Baltic Sea and to head down major rivers in shallow draft lightweight river boats to get to Kiev and finally across the Black Sea to Byzantium. There an eccentric and very wealthy man is rumoured to have bought the exotic blonde twins for his collection. The description of the running of rapids or portaging around them, the constraints of campfire cooking and cautious dealings or bloody skirmishes with other tribes in the lands they are passing through all make for a gripping page-turner.

We now know from going to museums and reading and watching documentaries how archaeologists can identify which grains flatbreads were made from (barley is a favourite in this era) and how people of different ranks were buried with protective weapons and jewellery and symbolic offerings for the next world. This ‘day in the life’ of sheer survival on the dangerous waterway journey is later enriched when we meet Princess Olga who supports their efforts and mentions her wish to bring Christianity to Russia, which she eventually does in ‘real life’. We also go to the great bazaars of Constantinople and practically touch the fabrics and soft leather shoes and smell the spices and delicious foods there. The action ramps up even more as Annie must work a major feat of magic in front of a crowd of thousands and the rulers… and two hungry lions.

So if you’d love to escape the woes of the present day and enjoy historical mysteries and archeological detective work, you’ll have come to the right place-and time- with Sailing to Byzantium.