The rancour between ordinary people and the Church intensified to such a point that serf-led rebellions became a regular occurrence and constant threat. Starving farmers took up arms against their creditors and landowners, and were summarily hanged. The anger increased. More starvation, more revolts, more hangings. And all the time the Holy Roman Empire was coming apart at the seams as the Ottomans grew their reach. The fear of these brown-skinned invaders was transformed into rabid hatred by pamphlets that painted them as demons walking the earth, gruesome words replicated with ease by the printing press, which originated in Strasbourg.

It was amidst this disorientating time that Frau Troffea took up her dance. Life for a working-class woman was especially fraught, being that they were chattel and held no legal power in church, state, society or at home. Perhaps she felt assailed by the doom spoken around her, and lost her mind. Perhaps she ate poor-quality bread made with rye tainted by ergot, a fungus that causes nerve contractions and the sensation of fire in the limbs. Perhaps she could not afford bread, and searched the Black Forest for mushrooms to sate her hunger, and fell into the grip of a hallucinogen.

All of these have been offered as explanations, but it is John Waller in his exceptional book A Time to Dance, A Time to Die (2009) who creates the most compelling case for this being no simple madness, nor poisoning, but a mass religious trance instigated by the unique pressures and beliefs of the time. It is difficult for contemporary readers to understand the absolute role of religion in medieval life, how fully it informed everything from medicine to punishment, tax to sex. The Dance Tree owes an enormous debt to John Waller’s research, although I have taken great liberties in my work of fiction. Anyone wanting to read more about the dancing plague of 1518 must seek out his book.

As with any story, I have learnt so much by writing The Dance Tree. It’s easy to draw lines from then to now in attitudes to the LGBT+ community, to immigrants, to class. We have come so far, and not nearly far enough. The power structures we operate under are no longer titled ‘God’ but they are still very much in existence. The world-at-large remains too often a hostile place for people who live, look, or love a different way. In The Dance Tree, I wanted to offer my characters a place to be safe and themselves. I am only sorry that the outside world found its way in.

Finally and on a personal note, having experienced our contemporary pandemic through the lens of recurrent pregnancy loss, I wanted to depict that experience in my novel. I haven’t yet found enough stories that explore this particular pain and love, though it affects one in one hundred people, and miscarriages occur in one in three pregnancies.

Lisbet is my attempt to offer a mirror to anyone else struggling to see themselves, and a window to those who might need the insight. I hope you don’t begrudge her her ending.