Novel set in the first half of the 20th Century HUNGARY
Talking Location With … Terri Lewis: FRANCE
10th July 2025
#TalkingLocationWith … Terri Lewis, author of Behold The Bird in Flight
Looking for Danger in a Castle
“Terri Lewis’s enchanting Behold the Bird in Flight might sound like a fairy tale at first– a medieval queen in her castle, cruel king, lost love—but this tale of Isabelle d’Angoulene is one firmly rooted in history, shining a light on her life as well as the role of women at large.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life
My husband and I were planning two weeks in France, one week in Paris, of course. For the second week, I used my best French accent to suggest “Chinon” in the Loire valley because it was an easy drive to many castles which we both loved. I’ll admit to an ulterior motive for the suggestion: I was deep into writing my debut novel about a young French girl who accidentally became Queen of England and I’d never been inside a 13th century castle.
Google maps had spoiled me, allowing me to drive highways and lanes, but now I needed interiors. Not the gilded, restored Renaissance ones I’d visited in the past, but something gritty, rough-hewn and powerful. I was looking for a space to set a frightening moment in Isabelle’s life and had chosen Chinon because the castle was a favorite with her husband, King John of Magna Carta fame. In pictures it radiated dominance, a perfect place for Isabelle to struggle through a week that led to a life-changing decision.
I’d searched online for information and found strange maps suggesting there was a ravine dividing the castle/fortress. Unusual, but if Isabelle could cross on a bridge to a more remote section, that would provide exactly the escape and privacy I needed for my plot. I needed to look.
After our Paris week, we drove into the countryside, stopping at Chartres, an ancient gothic cathedral built during Isabelle’s life. In a period when very few castles had glass windows, Chartres has walls of stained glass from the early 13th century. Isabelle was never inside Chartres but in her era the church shaped daily life for high or low born alike; her life would have been permeated by religion. I knew her home town, Angoulême, had a huge church, so when I walked into Chartres’ nave, I could channel her awe, her feeling of being small before God.
Leaving Chartres, we drove past small towns and fields blooming brilliant yellow, and finally along the river Vienne, which protected the fortress. In our small hotel, I told the proprietor I studied French and wanted to use it. She kindly agreed so every morning at breakfast we chatted and she never flinched at my mangled grammar. It pleased me to try Isabelle’s first language; her second would have been Latin. Girls were seldom taught to read and write but she was an only child of a count and had been given a good education.
Chinon is a palimpsest of history. Isabelle’s father-in-law, Henry II, loved it, increasing its fortifications to safely store the English treasury, and he died in the fortress, a death that ushered in King Richard the Lionheart who was followed by John, his brother and Isabelle’s husband. In the village, narrow streets lined with tilted buildings looked and felt old. The houses with crisscrossed beams had been built after Isabelle died, but the village footprint seems ancient. I noticed a plaque claiming that Jeanne d’Arc dismounted here. In 1429, two hundred years after Isabelle, she came to Chinon to offer her services in battle to the Dauphin. The rest is history.
We climbed to the fortress, crossed under a tower that would have held a portcullis or movable gate, and emerged into the bailey or courtyard. Buffeted by a wild wind, it was easy to imagine horses galloping up the ramp, shouting messengers dismounting, and young pages ducking out of the way. In buildings built to house royalty—certainly rough-and-ready by our standards—we walked through rooms where low doors required my husband to duck. We peered through the arrow loops, windows built specifically to accommodate the long bows of defense. We also saw a privy: a stone seat with a hole. Then, at the end of the bailey, a narrow bridge crossed a deep ravine. My plot was going to work!
The castle has changed in form over the centuries—it was altered by a conquering French king and has been partially restored—but the view would remain. I stood by the rampart, looking across the jumbled village roofs out to the river. Once Isabelle, a real woman, stood here, seeing in essence what I now saw. She was beautiful, blond, educated, and smart, but because the medieval historical record sparsely mentions women, we hardly know a thing about her. I vowed to bring her to life.
TERRI LEWIS
Before she fell in love with medieval history and wrote her debut, TERRI LEWIS had a career as a ballet dancer in German opera houses, got a BA in history, and an MA in theater. The winner of the 2025 Miami University Press Novella Prize, she has published in literary magazines, was accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and workshops with Rebecca Makkai and Laura van den Berg. Her debut novel, Behold the Bird in Flight, A Novel of an Abducted Queen is out now.
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