This story has been in my mind, in one form or another, for quite some time. I finished an early version of it before I wrote Chocolat, and came back to it five years later, having realized that I still liked the characters and the story, and that I wanted to see it completed. It precedes (and complements) Chocolat in a number of ways. Firstly, my central character, Juliette, has many things in common with Vianne Rocher (most especially in terms of her relationship with her mother and her young daughter). She might easily be an ancestor of Vianne (LeMerle, too, fits in with Reynaud’s ancestry), as she too is a traveller, a witch of sorts, and has a number of unorthodox ideas on spirituality.

I also see it as a kind of prelude to Coastliners, in that it is set in much the same part of the world, and provides some information on the origins of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer (you will notice that she changed to Sainte-Marine a couple of centuries later, when she reappeared on Le Devin).

As for the setting of Holy Fools, you will find the island of Noirmoutier on most maps, though it was called Noirs Moustiers (the Monastery of the Black Friars) in 1610, and its shape has altered somewhat since then. You still won’t find Le Devin on any map, but if you go to the westernmost point of the island of Noirmoutier (it’s called La Pointe du Devin) and look out to sea, who knows? You may get lucky…

The idea for this book came to me from a French history text, in which I found a passing reference to the stringent reform of an abbey in Port-Royal by a newly-appointed Mother Superior of only eleven years of age. It will be obvious that I have borrowed from this, but for the sake of my plot I have taken a number of liberties with the details. This is quite deliberate. My story is altogether fictional, and should not be seen as a historical representation of specific events.

It is set in France, at the beginning of the 17th century, a time of political and social upheaval following the murder of the king, Henri IV. It is the story of Juliette, a onetime acrobat and rope-dancer, now retired and living under an assumed identity as a nun (of all things), with her daughter, Fleur, in a tiny island convent off the Brittany coast.

Juliette – or Soeur Auguste, as she is now known – has had a troubled and eventful life. Raised by gypsies, persecuted by the Church, separated from her adopted family, driven to begging and prostitution to make ends meet, she manages to find a kind of stability as a performer in a dance troupe led by Guy LeMerle, known as The Blackbird; an actor, playwright and petty criminal with whom the young Juliette becomes infatuated.

After some years on the road and some popular success, the troupe is scattered, following a disastrous brush with the law. Juliette, now pregnant and thoroughly disillusioned with the itinerant life, finds refuge in the abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, under the protection of the kindly Abbess. However, the death of the Abbess, a few months after the murder of the king in Paris, plunges the convent into disarray. The old regime is at an end; a new Abbess has been appointed (for political reasons), a young woman of noble birth who intends to introduce reform on a grand scale. Juliette’s dismay is compounded when the new Abbess reveals herself to be a child of only eleven years of age, raised in Paris and quite unable to appreciate the needs and feelings of a group of country nuns. Worse still, she has brought her confessor with her, and Juliette recognizes him at once.

Now masquerading as a priest, Guy LeMerle, Juliette’s old associate, clearly intends mischief. Unable to unmask him without betraying herself and putting her daughter in jeopardy, Juliette is drawn unwillingly into his plans. But as LeMerle leads the nuns gradually into confusion, hysteria and finally, chaos, Juliette realizes that he has more than simple extortion in mind. And as the story builds up to a confrontation from which only one of them can escape with their life, Juliette is cruelly torn between her loyalty to her convent friends, her instinct as a mother and her enduring love for a man who has betrayed her once before, and who will not hesitate to do so again…