Joanna here, talking about one of the minor constants in my books.
I love me some animals. All kinds, from wild tigers to tame kitty cats. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Also parrots and penguins. The feistier they are, the better I like them. I try to put a pet as a character in each of my books because they are arguably an improvement over humans.
Spymaster’s Lady introduces us to Tiny, the huge black dog that guards the house. Annique calls him that "monster dog that stalks the halls, slavering and famished, seeking human flesh." She considers Tiny, not so much a dog, as "a wolf and possibly also part elephant." Annique is not one of the world's dog fanciers. But then, she spent her innocent girlhood sneaking into houses and stealing secrets. This gives one an ambivalent relationship with guard dogs.
Doyle found Tiny wandering by the London docks. "We think it's part wolfhound." Perhaps Tiny is the result of a mésalliance between an Irish wolfhound and a Newfoundland. They're both ancient breeds, becoming fairly widespread by the early Nineteenth Century. A cross between the two could plausibly have shown up in a cosmopolitan seaport like London. It would be one formidable dog.
A description of the Irish Wolfhound in 1790 calls them “the largest and most beautiful of the dog kind” and says “their aspect is mild, their disposition peaceful, their strength greater than that of the mastiff or bulldog.” That's Tiny.
In My Lord and Spymaster we meet Kedger the ferret, Jess' pet. He's a survivor, that ferret. A world traveller. A ship’s ferret. A canny small fellow who's seen everything, from the slums of London to the souks of the Middle East, and taken it all in stride. The word Kedger, by the way, is Cockney underworld slang for beggar.
Jess carries Kedger around with her in a pocket sewed in her cloak. Sometimes he rides along on her shoulder, keeping an eye out, warning her of danger. When we meet him, he's in her office.
Kedger slipped down to her desk and sniffed at the letters. He grabbed a quill, launched off, and plopped to the floor with a little grunt. He didn't make a sound on the rug, but she heard the skittering as soon as he hit the bare boards. He took the quill under the bookcase to devour it.
Forbidden Rose introduces us to the pack donkeys Dulce and Decorum. They're an eccentric pair. Hawker has been given the task of wrangling these two. Doyle, the hero of Forbidden Rose, thinks:
Dulce snaked out to bite Hawker. Missed him by a hair. The boy was getting downright nimble, wasn’t he?
The donkeys were what he’d call a pointed lesson in how to deal with a problem you couldn’t out talk and couldn’t stab in the jugular. Sometimes it was a real pleasure to educate the lad.
Later, Doyle and my heroine Maggie discuss the animals.
“I will go slightly upstream,” she said, “to avoid the donkeys. I am as fond of donkeys as anyone, but—I will be utterly candid—they attempt to bite me. It is the heat, I believe, that makes them irritable.”
“They always do that. Remarkably even temperament in those animals.”
I admire those donkeys. They got attitude.
Black Hawk introduces us to the new House Dog at Meeks Street in 1818, a successor to Tiny. This is Muffin, “a dog the size of a small pony, his rough, gray, untidy coat glazed with drops of water”
We don’t know much about Muffin’s past. He’s probably another stray Doyle took in. He sounds like an Irish Wolfhound, doesn't he? Although I suppose he could be a mastiff.
Muffin came over, looking worried, and nosed in under an elbow to stick his big square head up to the pillow to sniff over Justine’s hair, memorizing her. He approved of the Justine smell. Didn’t like the blood and antiseptic of the bandage.
A few more whuffles up and down the bedcovers and he was satisfied. He clicked across the room to assist Doyle who was hunkered down to lay coal on the fire, piece by piece, acting like his hands didn’t feel flame.
When he was through and stood up, Muffin took his place and thumped down in front of the fire, taking one end of the hearth to the other. The coal scuttle rattled. He stretched his chin on his paws and curled the great plumed tail to his side.
These Meeks Street guard dogs retire to Doyle’s house when they get old. We meet Muffin again some months later in Beauty Like the Night. The heroine Cami thinks:
She’d turned down Anna and Anson’s offer of the dog Muffin to accompany her to work. That was not altogether childish fancy. Muffin was retired from years at Meeks Street. Ten stone of fighting dog, gray-muzzled and a little stiff, but with six-inch fangs, was protection not to be despised.
That was why she left him in the front hall, guarding her home.
In Rogue Spy the Baldoni "favored a breed of ugly, brown-and-white dogs with a calm, deliberate temperament and a well-toothed underbite." Our hero has a small encounter with a trio of Baldoni dogs while he’s breaking into the house. Fortunately, he'd sneaked them sausages at dinner.
On the rug in the hall, in a line, three dogs sat and looked up at him.
He squatted down, murmured, "Signora," and offered the rightmost bitch his fingers to sniff. "Buonasera, mia dolce." He pulled the soft ears. Scratched the high-domed head. He went down the line, doing the same for Caterina, Lucrezia, and Bianca, giving a few words to each. Curved lower fangs gleamed in the light of the little candle at the end of the hall. He didn't let himself imagine what that trio would do to housebreakers.
When he got up and walked away, not looking back, the three padded off in the opposite direction, patrolling, doing their job.
That’s the animal contingent, playing an important part in my stories. Romance would be a poorer place without them.
Do you have a favorite story animal from a Romance or other book?