Most people assume big characters arrive fully formed — a brooding monk, a reluctant healer, a man carrying a forbidden Greek medical parchment through the burning streets of 10th-century Italy.

If only it were that tidy.

Aurelius didn’t begin as anything grand. He began as a footnote. Actually, half a footnote — a passing remark in To Catch a King that I nearly deleted.

In the Borders trilogy, the minor character Guy of Durham stumbles across a strange Greek medical manuscript preserved at Durham Cathedral. I added it purely for texture: a whisper of deep time, something to make the medieval world feel lived in, and to give Guy a spark of a future as a priest and healer.

That’s all it did. A seasoning. One of those “this feels right, leave it in” details that writers scatter like handfuls of herbs.

But it wouldn’t let go.

I kept thinking:

• Why was this manuscript important?
• Who carried it north?
• Who risked their life for it?
• And what was inside it that the Church might have frowned upon?

Those questions stuck in my mind like a stone in a boot. And, as you know, once a writer limps, something is about to happen.

The Spark: A Monk in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

That stray detail made me realise there was another story hiding behind it — and probably not a comfortable one. Medieval manuscripts don’t survive by luck. They are saved by someone or someone hides them. Someone believes in them.

So I imagined the sort of man who might have done that:

• A Benedictine monk
• A healer first, a fighter never
• A man who values knowledge over dogma
• And one who carries guilt like a second cloak

Then came the setting: Otto II’s disastrous campaign in southern Italy in 982. A city in chaos. A mosque was looted and burned. And a young monk who tries to protect what he can… and steals what he can’t bear to see destroyed.

Those stolen parchments — copies of far older Greek medical writings — became the seed of everything.

Aurelius Arrives (Whether or Not I Wanted Him To)

Once he appeared, that was it. Aurelius refused to leave.

What started as a two-sentence explanation suddenly grew into a man with:

• A conscience that keeps him awake
• A fierce, almost painful compassion
• A terror of being branded a heretic
• An uneasy relationship with power
• A habit of recording his world in painfully honest prose

At that point, I realised I wasn’t filling a gap in the Borders series anymore. I was writing his story.

From the Borders to Rome: A Door I Didn’t Expect to Open

Aurelius dragged me far from Northumberland and the Anglo-Scottish Borders and dropped me in Rome, 980 AD — a city decayed, corrupt, politically fractured, and spiritually exhausted.

And it was the perfect crucible for him.

I started sketching scenes:

• Aurelius at the sack of Taranto
• Aurelius amputating a prince’s ruined arm
• Aurelius reluctantly becoming an investigator for the Praefectus of Rome
• Aurelius discovering corruption a city would rather keep buried
• Aurelius being marked as a man to be silenced
• Aurelius navigating Roman noble houses
• Aurelius restoring a broken fountain that symbolises everything Rome has lost
• Aurelius learning, painfully, what love is and what it truly demands

Before long, the Arbor Vitae Chronicles existed. A scrap of parchment had become a trilogy.

The Strange Alchemy of Writing

Writers pretend we’re in control, but the truth is simpler and far less dignified: sometimes a world tells you what it wants, long after you think you’ve built it.

Aurelius is proof.

That obscure manuscript in To Catch a King is nothing more than a flourish — something for antiquarians and pedants to nod over.

But stories don’t begin with grand plans. They begin with tiny irritants that refuse to go away.

A parchment becomes a monk.
A monk becomes a chronicler.
A chronicle becomes a universe.

All because a minor character in an early draft picked up an old book and asked, “Where did this come from?”

What Comes Next

The first book in the Arbor Vitae Chronicles is titled First Journal of Aurelius. It will be published in early 2026 It will closely be followed by ‘To Catch a King’ the first book in the Kings Trilogy.

If you enjoyed this glimpse behind the curtain and would like to read more — or simply want to tell me you liked it — you can email me at
Fenwick@FenwickMcKie.com.

I will be publishing early excerpts from Aurelius’ Journal in respect of his life before the novel. I hope you enjoy them.

If you’d like updates, early chapters, or a discounted pre-order link when it goes live, you can join my contact list. Perhaps you may like to be a Beta Reader.

Thank you for reading —, and for letting Aurelius step into your world, too.