Lovers Knot: An M/M Romance
Donald Hardy
Stop and think about what “lovers knot” means to you. Does it mean a symbol of deep and lasting love, hearts entwined, and all that? Now think about your interpretation of “deep and lasting love”. Does it give you warm fuzzies or does it scare the hell out of you.? That little exercise will prepare you for Donald Hardy’s Lovers Knot.
Fittingly set in a rather Gothic setting, the fog bank cloaked seascapes of Cornwall in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the novel is two stories. One is the return of Jonathan Williams to the Cornish estate of a cousin, now left to him in that cousin’s will. It is 1906. The journey brings Williams back in time as well as distance, the other half of the story being his 1892 visit when he was eighteen and just lost his mother. The events of that summer in Cornwall have haunted him for his entire life and, further, crippled him for love as an adult.
While the young Williams grieves both for his mother’s death and being able to trust his philandering father, he wanders about Trevaglan Farm and meets Nat Bosawen, one of the farmhands, and soon is in love. Nat is a charming scoundrel whom Williams’ cousin warns has a violent streak. Nat and Williams become lovers quickly, breaking the rules not only against same sex relationships but also crossing of the class barrier. The lovers knot comes in the form of little straw talismans Nat leaves for Williams but also in the close and even obsessive attachment he forms with and the blood oath he forces on Williams.
In 1906 Williams is confronted with all the troubling memories from that summer, startled immediately when a young boy who is Nat’s double comes to meet him where he and his long time flat mate, Langsford, arrive in Penzance. He thinks he sees a ghost, and the ensuing events seem to simply affirm this assessment, no matter his dismissing them as coincidence and superstition. In fact, the reader is left throughout this story wondering about the interpretation. There are what appear to be unquestioningly paranormal events, but at least some of them turn out to be planted by quite living beings.
The roster of characters boils down to, for 1892, Williams, his older cousin, Nat Boscawen, and Rose, a maid, and her future husband James Hale other farm employees. In 1906 you get the same roster but with the subtraction of Nat, whom you learn fairly early in the novel died while Williams was still there, and the addition of Rose’s son Alec, the look-alike of Nat, Langsford, Williams’ flat mate who both loves Williams and is loved by him, though neither has ever dared to reveal their love. Langsford seems to be the target of the ghostly dirty tricks, suggesting a jealous lover, and as you get to know him, you become aware that Nat is just such a one. The conflicts within virtually every character make both the 1892 and 1906 stories nothing less than a powder keg, with the aptly-named “Lucifers” (matches) primed to ignite destruction. An additional character in both time periods is the witchy Mistress Bannel who sees into the souls of the people she cares for and is instrumental in how Williams copes with the trauma of both visits. Though she is the archetypal outsider, she manages to bridge all worlds. Her deaf mute son is a striking character, rather messianic, and I will admit his disability was more than a little troubling for me*.
This brace of stories is exceedingly complex. Hardy had not only to create the elaborate development of characters and plots but also figure out how to tell them in an interwoven style that effectively lets the reader in on the complexities. He manages it in such a way that they learn only as much as they should to pull it all together.
Hardy also took a step that many authors who deal with gay characters have to agonize over. I know because I did too. He risked criticism for a predatory gay male character and a rape of one man by another. There is a taboo in the genre against what might be acceptable in any other form of romance. I applaud Hardy for doing what was right for the story, which should always be the responsibility of an author. That the man who was raped has the courage to call it what it is is a moment in the book when I admired the character and the author who birthed him the most.
Hardy h as accomplished a sensitive and intelligent story that blends the paranormal with just plain scary reality with characters you will find utterly credible.
I thank Hardy and his publisher for making the novel enabled for text to speech on Kindle so I could read it.
* See my article, A Plea To Authors of horror and Mysteries..
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