People always put us down
Just because we’re st-still around
The things we did don’t get extolled
Hope I die when I’m v-very old

They want us to just f-f-fade away
Young folk blame us every day
We tried to make this world a b-better place
But we’re told we’re a disgrace

My generation, my generation’s still here today.

Why don’t you all f-f-face the truth?
We did our best with all the proof
Where we fucked up, so would’ve you
Now stop the blame game, you know it’s true.

We tried to make the world a b-better place
But now we’re told we’re a d-disgrace
The things we did don’t get extolled
Hope I die when I’m very old…

E.M. Swift-Hook

The door slammed shut behind him and the solid sound of bolts shooting home followed, reinforcing the sense of finality. The room was a depressing dull grey from ceiling to floor. It was square with two beds, bunks, running the full length of one sidewall and essential facilities in the far corner. Zero privacy from either his cellmate or, through the door hatch, from the custodius. Above the door a vent the size of his fist was vibrating with an annoying humming-whine as it reluctantly circulated fresh air.
“Llewellyn? What did they drag you in here for? Sticking your nose too deep in someone else’s business?”
The voice was vaguely familiar, though Dai was slow to place it as the shaven head of the man sprawled on the lower bunk was not. His puzzlement must have shown because the man swung his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up.
“I don’t suppose you remember me. It was some months ago and I’m sure you’ve been a busy Submagistratus since then.”
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t…”
The other man laughed, which turned into a cough part way before he was able to speak again. “Gods! Politeness. Not heard a word of that since they locked me in here.” He pushed himself to his feet and straightened the green tunic, before offering a formal greeting. “Tertius Cloelius Rufus. It is an honour to share my captivity with you. A pleasure. You may recall we met in Viriconium before these unfortunate events.”
Dai found himself shaking the outheld hand as if they were at a social event or meeting, as his memory searched desperately for the name and face. When it came, he snatched his hand away and stepped back involuntarily.
“You were the cunnus of a medicus involved with a group holding vicious sex parties that led to the death of young streetgirls.”
“No need to use titles here,” the older man said brightly and then smiled at his own joke. “You can call me Rufus. It’ll make a change from seven-eight-one-one-two-six. It’s those little things you get to miss the most in this place. By the way, I hope you’re not hungry, you missed the evening meal. Nothing til tomorrow now.”
Dai felt a curl of cold revulsion in his guts.
“You disgust me.“
“Really?” Cloelius sounded unconcerned. “At least I’m not a traitor like you. That tends to evoke more outrage in our society at every level than any sexual adventures a man might embark on.”
“The difference is,” Dai snarled, unable to keep the contempt from his voice. “I am not guilty of the faked-up charges against me, but I know for a fact you are guilty as charged. I caught you red-handed, literally. And the blood of a good Vigiles was shed that night too.”
Cloelius sighed and sat back on his bunk. “Appearances can be very deceptive Llewellyn, and like it or not your guilt or innocence will be decided in a court of law not by whatever you might choose to say or believe.” He lay back as if reclining on a lectus. “You might discover that I am in fact the innocent one and you turn out to be guilty. Now that would be an interesting outcome, don’t you think?”
The chilling realisation that the corrupt medicus spoke the truth staggered Dai. The words leeched all strength from his muscles and he sank down to sit with his back against the cold grey wall.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded, when the moment of weakness had passed.
“What a strange question. It’s not as if I can just stroll along to the atrium or visit the baths, is it?”
Dai lifted a hand in protest. “You know what I mean. You must have been here for months. Yours was an open and shut case. I signed off all the evidence myself back in Martius. It only needed a hearing before an independent Magistratus to…”
“Sentence me to death?” Cloelius gave a rasping laugh. “You show yourself the true Briton, Llewellyn. There are people I’ve met who have been held here for the last ten years.”
Dia bridled at that.
“But it’s against the law. No Citizen can be deprived of his or her freedom. They are tried and if found guilty, sentenced either to death or whatever fine is due.”
“Ah, British logic,” Cloelius said, his tone shifting to that of a teacher explaining simple facts to a schoolboy. “Those I speak of are Citizens who stand accused of capital offenses and are awaiting their day in court. They all have powerful friends in Rome using every legal wrangle there is to keep them from coming to trial. Some of the crimes have to be prosecuted within a certain time limit, so if they can delay that day long enough they can walk free. Others are commuted by prolonged negotiation from death to a fine. Everyday is a barter day. But you worked here in Londinium as a Vigiles so you really should know that.”
It was true that he had heard the rumours so it was not really a surprise. But his day-to-day clientele at that time had been almost exclusively non-Citizen criminals.
“You have powerful friends?”
Cloelius hunched one shoulder in an exaggerated shrug. “Perhaps I do. Or powerful enough to keep me from trial so far. Don’t you? I am assuming you must do to have secured both Citizenship and a plum administrative appointment.” He leaned forward as if offering a confidence. “At the very least they might be able to have your Citizenship rescinded which would give you the chance of commuting your sentence to hard labour instead of the arena.”
That was something that had not occurred to Dai as a possibility before. It was true that committing any serious crime could lead to an application for the revocation of an awarded Citizenship – something given could be taken away. An option not open to those born with Citizenship status. But the kind of hard labour criminals were condemned to was brutalising.
“I don’t see that would be much better,” he said, hearing the bitterness in his own tone. “Just a slower way to die.”
“Perhaps. But at least, my British friend, you have options. Who knows? We may even grow old together in this cell.”

From Dying to be Innocent the 9th Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, which is FREE until 8 June.

You can also listen to this extract being read on YouTube.

There’s a pheasant in the road
And he’s taking his sweet time
Holding up the traffic
As he walks the dotted line
He has no care for hurrying
No chores to fill his day
And so he walks with measured pace
As he has right of way
Some drivers wait with patience
Some drivers swear and hoot
And a farmer in a Land Rover
Looks quite prepared to shoot
But still the pheasant walks the line
And still he makes us wait
Until he thinks it might be fun
To dive beneath a gate
The traffic speeds up, thankful to be
Back in travel mode
But right around the corner
There’s a pheasant in the road

One of the poems by Jane Jago from In Verse which is FREE to download until 8 June.

This might be better titled ‘how to get away with being an old bat’ or ‘things you can say in your ninth decade without being arrested’.

There are absolutely no circumstances under which I am prepared to divulge my precise age but I’ll give you a clue. When I was a girl a ‘glory hole’ was a cupboard into which one crammed everything that didn’t belong anywhere else, and there were twenty shillings in a pound, and people with orange skin would be either ridiculed or hospitalised.

But I digress. Today is not for reminiscence. No. This week’s lesson concerns the things you can get away with under the umbrella of being old and a bit odd.

You can:

• Make constant reference to your age as if it were an achievement. As in…
  “I’m eighty-five, you know.” (Those of us who are only too aware that your state of decrepitude is actually down to seventy-one years and a lot of spliffs will, of course, adhere to the crumbly code and not contradict you.)
• Go to the supermarket in your slippers and a large red hat.
• Spend your pension on fags, alcohol and Belgian chocolate.
• Eat the whole of a big bar of milk chocolate/bag of doughnuts/family pack of cheese and onion crisps/whatever. When asked why you are so gluttonous you merely have to say you are old and there may not be a tomorrow.
• Flirt with twenty-year-old builders.
• Ignore all ‘authority figures’. Never be unpleasant though. Vague, slightly tearful and full of reminiscences of the war works for me. 
• Call your doctor ‘kiddo’ and refuse all forms of advice.

If a person with a clipboard approaches you in a public place it is perfectly in order to do one of the following:

• Develop strategic deafness 
• Shout for help and claim to have been sexually propositioned 
• Answer all their questions as randomly as possible
• Grasp them firmly by the wrist and drag them to a cafe with outdoor tables where you can keep them talking for at least an hour and wrangle them into buying coffee and cake.

And finally. It’s at last okay to air your opinions. You can say the prime minister/president/crown prince/chairman of the board/whoever is a nasty, ignorant, grabby little bar steward. That the latest fashionable television ‘presenter’ is incomprehensible and about as funny as herpes. That quinoa is just middle class rice. And so on. Be the person who says what everyone else is too polite to mention… 

Brian was not much of a one for natural beauty. His view on rainbows, spoken often and at volume whenever they were mentioned, crushed their loveliness down to prismatic splitting of the visible light spectrum. He held that flowers were simply the reproductive organs of plants and offended many a hostess asking if she would display her own genitalia with such abandon.

After receiving the rainbow lecture, his seven year old niece sent him an email addressed to ‘Uncle Brain’.

He wrote back waspishly: Learn to spell!

“I can spell,” she told him. “It is you who’s missing the magic.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Raising a hand for the others to wait, the woman and her bearded companion kneed their horses gently forwards into the moonlight. The woman spoke, her voice light and contemptuous. ‘If it isn’t my old friend the Archdruid. One wonders what business is so fraught with peril that the chosen of the goddess needs the protection of a pair of Paladin knights.’
The bony old man didn’t choose to reply, but the Paladins bowed.
The younger one put up his visor and replied, his voice a pale copy of the ironic tones of the dark-haired woman. ‘One might also wonder what brings a lady warrior with an armed escort to the sacred grove on this of all nights. It is my hope that it means no evil to the Archdruid, as we have a contract to protect him.’
His companion put up his own visor and turned to look at the lady, his eyes burning red in the bloodless face of a golem. He bowed again, then turned to his companion. ‘Don’t be any stupider than you can help, my friend. This is not a lady to be spoken to with disrespect.’
‘Silence golem. Who is in charge of this detail?’
‘That depends on your perspective. According to your uncle, you are. But according to the Council, who rather outrank one knight, even if he is treasurer, I am. This was thought to be an easy job, and I’m supposed to make sure you do it properly, and return home safe.’
While he had been speaking the golem moved his horse closer to the Archdruid, and, moving with the superhuman speed of his kind, he reached over and bashed the bony old man over the head with one mailed fist. The Archdruid slumped over his horse’s neck, quite unconscious.
‘What are you doing?’ his companion almost screamed.
‘Saving the old fool’s life. He was building a forbidden spell and if I hadn’t stopped him, the elf over there in the darkness would have shot him dead.’
‘What elf? What spell? Who are these people?’
The golem looked at his companion with barely concealed irritation in his scarlet eyes. ‘What do you know of the Chaos Lords?’
The young knight closed his eyes, concentrated hard, then repeated as if learned by rote: ‘That they are set over the worlds in order to ensure that the fates of humankind pass according to certain rules, and that they come among us when dark forces seek to interfere with the course of history.’ He opened his eyes and looked at his companion in puzzlement. ‘But what does that have to do with meeting a woman in the sacred grove at Samhain?’
The golem groaned. ‘Use your eyes, fool. The woman you have just insulted is the High Lady of Chaos herself. She could obliterate you with a word. Beside her is her consort. In the shadows are their sons, called in this world Strength and Fortitude. Alongside them is an Elf Lord, with an arrow aimed at your stupid heart. And if you think your armour will protect you, then you are a bigger fool than even I thought. Your family may have paid for all sorts of charms of protection for your armour, but nothing is proof against an elf arrow.’
The young knight swallowed audibly, and when he spoke his voice had risen a couple of octaves, making him sound even younger. ‘Oh. I didn’t know that. What are we supposed to do now?’
The golem groaned again. Then it raised its sword high into the sky and muttered a few words. At once an irritable voice could be heard echoing around the clearing ‘Yes. What? This had better be urgent. It’s supper time.’
‘Golem D10/1 reporting. Have just encountered Chaos Lords in Sacred Grove. Orders?’
‘Cooperate with Chaos Lords, of course. Who is with you?’
‘Newly knighted Sir Amyas.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes my lord.’
‘Ah yes, I remember now. Well do your best D10/1, and try to keep the treasurer’s nephew alive if you possibly can.’ The voice disappeared as abruptly as it had started.

Jane Jago

The collected ‘wisdom’ of seven decades on this planet condensed into poetic form. Certainly not philosophy to live your life by…

When things profound 
Go round and round
Inside your fertile mind
And small ideas
Grow large and queer
There’s something you might find
A glass of booze
A little snooze
Will clear your worried head
Or someone thick
With a monster dick
You can entice to bed
The moral of this verse complex
Is everything’s better with booze. Or sex

©️jj

“Louwina, I – I can’t live without you,” Woul stuttered, his eyes holding an acre of desolation and his sharp fangs glinting in the moonlight as his six-pack flexed in his distress.
She backed away from the head of the shifter clan, eyes wide in disbelief. Why was he being so mean to her? She knew at sixteen she was nothing special with her stick like body and bulgy breasts. Her hair was never exactly fashionable as it set her distressingly even featured face in a halo of golden curls.
She backed into the tall, muscular figure of Girald, the new boy in town who all the popular girls yearned to date.
“No, Louwina, your secret heritage calls to me. We are meant for each other,” he said, looking down lovingly into her eyes, sprinkles of fairydust falling like dandruff from his hair.
“My – what?”
“Well, you know how your parents both vanished mysteriously on the day of the eclipse and how your granny has that weird book engraved with the words ‘My Family’s Book of Ultra-Secret Witchcraft’?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. She never lets me read it.”
The gorgeous hunks looked at her with longing and desire, adoration clear on both faces.
“You are the Chosen One and my chosen one,” Woul murmured, smirking.
“You are my chosen one too,” Girald echoed, his eyes sparkling in the starlight.
Louwina stood stunned by the revelation.
She was the Chosen One?
So that explained why everyone at school hated her and why her life had been so miserable so far. And now she had to choose between these two, equally gorgeous, half-naked eighteen year olds, who made her feel all warm and tingly in places she had never thought much about before.
But which one?
Louwina rolled her eyes.
How was she meant to choose between a Vampire Weresheep and a Fae Weregiraffe?

E.M. Swift-Hook

The meeting finished and Erica found herself frustrated as usual.

“It’s like the blind men and the elephant,” she told Rosie, her cat as she served up a tin of sardines. “They all only see their own problem, not how it fits the whole.”

At the next meeting, she tried to explain this to her colleagues.

“It’s like you’re all holding onto part of an elephant and not realising they are all bits of the same thing.”

There was an odd silence then someone cleared their throat.

“So is this the elephant in the room – or is that another elephant?”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Caer intercepted him as he was crossing the Great Hall, his face wry. Durban treated the new Castellan to a cheerful smile.
“So what is the bad smell in your nostrils?” he asked blithely, although it was not that hard to guess the likely cause.
“That whoreson, slave-begotten, bastard Keshalgis,” Caer snarled. “He has given me rooms beside the midden.”
Durban suppressed the desire to laugh and schooled his reluctant features into something that was almost outrage. He stepped forward and took the other man’s arm in a reassuring way and walked with him towards the stairs that led to his own assigned rooms.
“Caer, my friend,” he said confidingly, “I promise you that you will be moved to fitting quarters before the day’s end and you will have Keshalgis grovelling at your feet.”
Caer looked at him sharply.
“You know something? You have something on him?”
“I know enough about Vavasor Keshalgis to destroy him completely with the Warlord if you wish. Enough that you could sheath your sword in his guts with no come back should you want, but you might find it of more value to have him trained to walk to your heel.” 
Caer was now looking at him speculatively.
“You can do this? You will do this, for me?”
Durban dazzled him with his sunniest smile.
“It is as good as done, my friend. Meanwhile, have your things taken to my rooms. I need to work.”

Durban sought out the Vavasor Keshalgis and found him in the stable yard considering the purchase of a new pony. It was, indeed, a magnificent beast. Even in full coat, the powerful lines of its musculature gave it a shape and grace most ponies could never aspire to. The Castellan’s nephew greeted Durban cheerfully enough and asked his opinion.
“I think it is a worthy mount for a Castellan,” Durban answered him, promptly. There was something in his tone that made Keshalgis look at him sharply.
“And for a Vavasor also,” he insisted.
“A Vavasor may do better to present gifts to their more fit setting and the more fit setting for a pony of this kind would be the stable of a Castellan.”
Keshalgis frowned now.
“My uncle is an old man who does not ride much and when he does it is on the most placid of ponies. Why should I purchase such a fine mount for him?”
“I was not thinking of your uncle,” Durban told him. Keshalgis stepped away from the pony then, his attention now totally upon Durban. But then Keshalgis was an intelligent man.
“What are you trying to say?” he asked almost angrily, but his tone pitched low enough only to reach Durban’s ears.
Durban smiled at him benignly.
“I was just thinking where the wealth to purchase such a fine mount came from,” he said smoothly and the Castellan’s nephew paled. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am all for private enterprise and taking the initiative in such matters, but not everyone is so appreciative. I think, for example, that should the Warlord find your family had withheld part of the purchase price Bazath paid you for the Kashlihk, he might not be so understanding. After all, it was supposed to be part of the indemnity you gave to keep Tabruth, was it not?”
The chill of realisation froze on the other man’s face, Durban let the intelligent mind unfreeze and start thinking again before he spoke further.
“This pony would be an excellent gift for the Castellan of Cressida,” he said cheerfully, “and I was thinking you could offer him your own suite of rooms in the castle as long as he is resident here. It would also be a good idea if you were to ensure that the Honoured One is well attended by you in whatever he might require.”
Keshalgis looked as though he was going to choke.
“You are a bastard, Chola,” he hissed coldly. “You should watch your back. Tabruth is not going to be a safe place for you after this.”
Durban met the venom with his sunniest smile.
“I am sure the streets of Tabruth will be well patrolled by the Warlord’s men,” he said, “if the men of Tabruth can’t keep their own streets safe.”

From Dues of Blood part three of Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook