“It is entirely in your own hands archbishop,” the slender red-haired woman in the huge gilded chair spoke coldly and deliberately, “but you and your confederates have ensured that the majority of the populace believes in one virgin birth so I fail to see your problem.”
The ancient, and cadaverously thin, prelate stared at her for a long moment while the muscles in his jaw worked. He obviously wanted to say something but in the end he lacked the courage and subsided into fulminating silence.
“And you Master Cecil. Do you have nothing to say?”
The richly clad figure of Her Majesty’s spymaster in chief bowed floridly.
“This, your Majesty, is either a master stroke or the biggest mistake a reigning monarch ever made. With the greatest respect, we will not know which it is for many months yet.”
“Agreed, there is an element of risk but I would know whether you are with us in our great endeavour.”
Cecil dropped his world-weary pose and bowed his head.
“To death and beyond, Majesty. To death and beyond.”
“You can serve us best by remaining alive,” the Queen spoke with some asperity although her narrow dark eyes warmed a little as they rested on Cecil’s beaky face.
The third man came forward and bent the knee before his sovereign.
“Parliament will uphold whatever your majesty chooses to do.”
“My lord Essex was ever the gentleman,” the Queen laughed although it was a mirthless sound. “The lords temporal range themselves alongside us, as does Master Cecil’s organisation, which just leaves the lords spiritual to declare.”
Essex looked at the cleric with something akin to loathing.
“You are either with us, my lord archbishop, or you are against us. We have no time for you to mull over your decision.”
The stubborn old man in the cope and mitre stared at his queen.
“Do you even begin to know what you are asking?”
She regarded him for a long moment.
“We are perfectly well aware. But what would you have us do? Marry England to some foreign prince? Elevate one of our noble families above the others?”
The archbishop looked at her marble pale features with dawning respect.
“No, Majesty, I would have you do neither of those.”
“Then give me an alternative.”
The old man bowed his head.
“There is none. I stand corrected. The church ranges itself beside you.”
“Good.You may all leave us now.”
The three men bowed themselves out of the room and as soon as they had closed the door behind them the figure in the huge chair allowed her shoulders to sag just a little. A large sandy-haired man, dressed plainly in leather and homespun, stepped out from behind the rich hangings and came to kneel at her feet. She smiled down at him.
“It appears,” she said carefully, “that our plan has the support it needs. Now it is for you to do your part.”
He lifted one small foot in his large, calloused hand and brought it to his lips.

In due time Gloriana, the virgin queen, gave birth to a strapping red-haired son. She called him Henry after her great father, and he ruled wisely and well as did his own son and the son of his son, and the son of the son of his son….

© jane jago

They had lived in the shadow of the castle all their lives.

In more ways than one.

Lord Rancard was their protector and their employer and the brothers never forgot it. There had been the day their mother lay close to death and Lord Rancard had sent his own physician. And the day Glebit wed Gelis, Lord Rancard sent them a purse of silver.

So when the army of peasants arrived declaring the town free and Lord Rancard a traitor, the brothers acted.

No one would have suspected the nightsoil team that left the town that day included noble blood.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

To write is a struggle they opine
And if that’s how they do it, that’s fine
But that’s not my way
As I write every day
When under the auspice of wine.

Jane Jago

… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

askhole (noun) – mouth

beliveable (adjective) – of a fixer-up house, the state it will attain in about five years

brois (noun) – compulsive liar

canservative (adjective) – self-serving (see brois)

carrit (noun) – measure of orangeness 

delsion (noun) – unsatisfactory explanation 

drafth (adverb) – to drag out unnecessarily as in his accusation was both drafth and probably baseless

freght (noun) – someone else’s luggage found where you expected your own to be

hadnsome (adjective) – a man who may have been good looking in his youth, who is now rather jaded and ragged at the edges

lotal (adjective) – humourless and with a leaning towards religious obsession (Example: The Lotal Singing Nuns of Saint Crumplesham)

otherircumstances (noun) – puzzling twist in a fantasy story usually heralded by the arrival of a mysterious wizard

plitics (noun) – the shenanigans in government that surprise the electorate so much they can’t even say ‘oh’

pointsome (adjective) – handsome, but only in small areas of the body (eg navel, or the baby toe on the left foot)

prinisple (noun) – one of a number of redundant nipples

politcal (adjective) of cake, heavy and tasteless

qween (noun) – very old woman who likes a nip of gin

reep (noun) – the cry of the lesser-spotted blabberbird

somaething (verb) – trying to smoke a damp cigarette

trcik (noun) – a special karate move

uwswall (verb) – the rinsing of one’s mouth at the dentist

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Like a shy creature of the wild, sleep eluded her. Jaelya’s thoughts drifted, against her will, until those time-worn ghosts that hovered about her, led her gently along the paths of unwilling memory to the beginning of everything.
It was, of course, Alize who had been there then.
Her first awareness of life had been of holding Alize’s hand on that day as if she had been flung into the world fully-formed at the age of three. Even now she could still see clearly the high beamed roof, with its painted and vaulted ceiling, arching over the huge black and white slabs of stone which paved the floor. She had stood in the doorway, as if looking into the universe from outside, one hand holding onto a small bundle of clothes and the other gripping Alize’s as hand tightly as if her life depended upon it.
She conjured the scene easily, untarnished by the passage of years. The long table, taller than herself then, the chairs which had seemed made for giants, the fireplace which looked large enough to roast a good-sized ox and the faint, musty, smell of cold ashes and old books. Seated at the table, a heavy bound book open before him and a remote screen set up to one side, sat a boy with a mop of curly hair who had looked up as they entered. To the Jaelya in the memory, he had seemed so grown up himself but he cannot have been much more than five summers her senior.
Feeling confused, she had looked up at the figure of Alize towering beside her and the face that had looked down at her contained blue eyes that seemed to embrace the world and all the stars beyond. Jaelya felt as though she might be swallowed up in their depths, but somehow the thought made her feel safe rather than frightened. Then Alize’s gaze moved from herself to the boy, who got to his feet and was standing quietly behind the table, his square face framed by unruly golden curls.
“Child, this is your sister. Her name is Jaelya and I want you to take care of her.”
The boy had been staring at her with open curiosity as if wondering what manner of creature she might be, but at Alize’s words a miracle happened and his face broke into the most gentle and wonderful smile.
“My sister,” he breathed the words as a triumphal declaration rather than as any kind of question and then the boy had come across to her, his hands held out in welcome, his honey-coloured eyes lit up by the brilliant smile that was for her alone. “Hello, Jae. I am your brother and I’m always going to keep you safe.”
And in that moment Jaelya loved him with a fierce devotion, a devotion which all the years between and all the tests and burdens of those years had done nothing to diminish. So why was it, as she lay now in the dreamless darkness, that the thought of his returning to Harkera filled her heart with nothing but apprehension?

From Transgressor 2: Times of Change a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook

The wooden bedstead had been in the family for more generations than anyone knew. Almost as long as the rambling farmhouse which each generation had rebuilt and extended to suit its needs.

The bedstead had been the place where family members had been conceived, come into this world and eventually left it. The old stained oak headboard bore the marks of usage like proud scars.

But all things change eventually.

The latest generation thought the old bedstead too chunky, dark and unfashionable. So they replaced it with a stylish pine bed from Ikea – and had a bonfire in the garden.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

If you write for yourself you will find
At least one person of a like mind
One who will get the jokes
And the politics pokes
And a reader who might just be kind.

Jane Jago

It was always kinda weird in the aquarium, and nowhere was weirder than the octopus tank. People brought stuff and put it in the water, just to see how Big Orange reacted. Maria stood in the knee-deep mist and watched him sidle over to the strange statue the fat woman in Bermuda shorts had lowered into the water. She could tell – by the way the woman, and the group of people she came with, stared into the cool clear water – that this reaction was even more important than usual. And she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well.
It didn’t. Big Orange reared up and smashed the flimsy thing with one swipe of his massive tentacles. Then he moved away.
The fat woman spoke. “I guess that tells us then don’t it…”
One by one her companions nodded and as they filed out of the aquarium Maria got the feeling some sort of secret pact had been signed. For a moment she shivered, then she forgot the woman as Big Orange came to the glass to stare out at her with his impenetrable eyes.
“Why you smash the thing, big boy?” she asked idly. She almost fell to the ground when she felt his response like a wave of the salty water in his tank.
“Bad thing. Voodoo thing.”
Maria swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, but she was made of stern stuff and knew what to do about voodoo bitches on her patch.
“Okay, big guy, leave it me.”
The octopus regarded her pleadingly before dropping to the bottom of the tank and pulling his weedy nest tight about him. Maria dragged herself away and hurried about Big Orange’s business with her sandals slapping on the damp tiles. First she went to the keepers’ lodge.
“Broken crockery in da big orange man tank. Some crazies been throw a muppet in dere.”
“Dios Maria. You go for get a mambo…”
“I goin’ man.”
But first she had to beard the Director in his den. She tapped briefly on his office door.
“Come.”
She poked her head into the room, meeting the icy blue eyes of Doctor Magnus Thorssen. He was a tall, thin Swede who was noted for his acid tongue and his lack of respect for local traditions. Many of the local girls sighed after his chiselled cheekbones and sea blue eyes. Maria, who would have been ashamed to her bones to run after a broni, wouldn’t even admit to herself how this man made the blood sing in her veins – even if he did have a stick so far up his ass it shoulda come out of the top of his neatly barbered head.
“Trouble in octopus tank. People thrown bad stuff in there. I be going for help.”
Then she shut the door and ran before she could be caught drooling.
Maria went as fast as her sandalled feet would take her to the snug little home of her mother’s sister. She tapped respectfully on the door.
“Who that?”
“Is Maria, tia Benita. There be trouble at the aquarium. Big Orange smells bokor magic.”
“You sure chile?”
“I am.”
“Then I’s coming.”
Benita was not at all what popular imagination thinks of a voodoo mambo as being – she was far from skinny, had all her own hair, and didn’t mumble one bit. She was, in fact, a tall handsome woman of some fifty summers with a round good natured face and a lot of gold teeth. She smiled easily, but right now looked far from pleased. She swept out of her house, followed by a positive river of acolytes carrying gourds and pouches and all manner of arcane goods.
“Maria. You just come along us now.”
As one person the acolytes glared at Maria, who laughed at their jealous malice, but Benita turned a wrathful face on them.
“Anybody wants to be questioning my decisions, now would be a good time to run…”
The sulky ones subsided and the whole group made good speed to the back entrance of the aquarium, where the director awaited them. Maria worried that he was there to bar their entry, but he actually held out his hands in welcome.
“My thanks. I don’t know what has been happening, but I do know that the air in here tastes bad and smells foul. And the pieces of pottery the keepers are pulling out of the cephalopod pool make my hair stand on end.”
Benita pursed her lips in thought. “That don’t be good. You gonna need to close off the area.”
“Done already.”
The scientist and the voodoo woman eyed each other in silence for a moment, but the quiet was far from confrontational. In the end Benita spoke.
“How brave you be, skinny white guy?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But this place is in my care so I will stand up to be counted.”
“That be good enough.” She turned a jaundiced eye on the small crowd that had already formed and addressed her acolytes firmly. “I gonna open da portal. You lot to guard. Nothin’ comes in. But I be sending stuff out. You gets that.”
The young ones nodded.
“Maria. You gets to go in the water with the big guy.”
Maria swallowed, but accepted her aunt’s words.
“Skinny white guy, you is with me.”

Jane Jago

There will be more from Big Orange and the Mambo Woman next Sunday…

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

One of the poems you will find in In Verse, a collection of poems by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.