When a pretty good, apparently well-researched historical novel with a good review in the NYT (which is how I found it) has rookie anachronisms which even half-competent editing or common sense should have caught.
A person imprisoned in the Tower of London, describing his cell, includes “a bucket for a toilet.” A toilet?
In 1600? That’s not what toilet meant. I really don’t expect, don’t even want, turn of the 17th century characters to talk entirely in the vernacular, but I expect their vocabulary to be contemporaneous with their era. No Revolutionary War airports.
So much for all that research. And NYT reviews, at that. I should know better.