Ysabel

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Laura and Sybil, as always, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ysabel was written largely in the countryside near Aix-en-Provence, and so it is proper to first note those who were of great assistance in our time there.

Bethany Atherton offered Villa Sans Souci, pointed us to a ruined tower, and found the garagai one windy day’s climb up Sainte-Victoire. Leslie-Ellen Ray shared a professional’s approach to photographing Aix’s cathedral.

At the University of Aix-Marseille, Gilles Dorival offered suggestions, answered questions, arranged access to the university library, and introduced me to the wonderfully generous Jean-Marc Gassend and Pierre Varène, architects of the Institut de Recherche sur l’Architecture Antique. I am grateful for their courtesy and enthusiasm, for their precise sketches of the cathedral and the history beneath it, and for a wonderful, evocative afternoon among the still-closed-off ruins of the newly excavated Roman theatre in Aix.

Sam Kay was with me on a long note-taking drive around the mountain, came up to Entremont several times, pacing the terrain, and—with Matthew and Laura—joined me at, among other places, the Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Trophime cloisters, Les Alyscamps and the Roman theatre in Arles, and at Glanum. “You have to use this place in the book,” from both boys, became a motivating refrain. Sam also went back up the mountain again weeks after we all did, to further establish details of the route and the cave above the chasm. Matthew took photos everywhere. Sons becoming researchers marks a transition.

I read too many texts on the Celtic, Greek, and Roman presences in Provence to be comprehensive in naming them here. Let me cite Theodore Cook’s Old Provence as memorable, along with S. Baring-Gould’s genuinely charming (and undoubtedly idiosyncratic) A Ramble in Provence. Jean Markale’s extensive work on the Celts was helpful, and so were Miranda Green, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Nora Chadwick (again), and the prolific Barry Cunliffe. Cunliffe’s short book on Pytheas the Greek gave me a number of ideas that found their way into Ysabel. Philip Freeman’s War, Women, and Druids is a tidy, useful collection of primary sources on the intersection of the classical and Celtic worlds. Ecstasies, by Carlo Ginzburg, a historian I have long admired, was fertile ground for concepts and images.

On the oppidum of Entremont, Fernand Benoit’s monograph, Entremont, about the history of the site and the excavations there, was immensely helpful. So, also, was the official website at www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/entremont/en/index2.html (in English and in French).

I hope it is obvious that it does not fall to any of these writers to bear the least responsibility for the uses I have made of history and myth in shaping this fiction.

I am grateful to Deborah Meghnagi (the presiding spirit of www.brightweavings.com) and Rex Kay for careful readings of the completed draft.

Ysabel owes much to all of these people, and so does the author.