Two Women and Some Books
Rejected
Need not equal dejected
Sometimes we are not selected
Misdirected
Our fables once perfected
Our lives and times reflected
May still be deselected
Injected
With anger and infected
With lust to be respected
Directed
To tell the unexpected
Undirected
Uninflected
Still rejected!
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:
If a person with a clipboard approaches you in a public place it is perfectly in order to do one of the following:
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…
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…
When you write do not fear to offend
Do not look for a comfortable blend
You should find people’s fears
Grab their hate by the ears
And stamp on their prejudiced friends.
When she was twelve years old, Atet was married to her half brother, Seti. Being painted and powdered and oiled and perfumed and dressed in fine white linen with a headdress so heavy she was sure her neck would break were merely the precursors to a wedding ceremony that lasted most of a day.
By the time the last priest had waved the last ceremonial artefact in front of her nose she was dangerously tired and on the verge of tears. It was only pride that kept her spine straight while they removed her ceremonial robe and dressed her in a gown so fine that every contour of her body could be seen through its delicate folds. She did rebel at the prospect of walking through the palace corridors so wantonly displayed, insisting on an azure feathered wrap to protect her modesty. When the acolytes sent to escort her to her husband’s bedchamber would have argued, she turned on them with all the hauteur of her great father and they fell into order beneath her icy glance.
At the great beaten brass doors she dismissed her entourage with a flick of her fingers and entered alone, finding her bridegroom cowering in the corner like the child he still was under his seventeen-year-old body. As she was about to go over and speak to him, a small doorway opened to admit a shaven-headed gentleman carrying a businesslike leather scourge and smiling sourly.
Atet raised her brows and he leered at her.
“I am the royal tutor. His majesty is to be scourged,” he spoke in a voice of contempt, “and after him it will be your turn to learn the feel of the lash.”
The young bride reached her own personal breaking point. She turned with deliberately regal dignity and opened one wing of the door, beckoning two of the royal guard to enter. She pointed a finger at the whip bearer.
“Remove this offal from my sight. Take it and strike off its hands before you cut its throat.”
“You can’t do that to me,” the tutor screamed.
Atet saw no need to reply as the grinning guards dragged him off to meet his fate.
Seti came to her side with fear in his eyes.
“He will only beat me harder next time.”
“My brother, be tranquil. He will beat nobody ever again.”
“How not?”
“Did you not hear me order his death?”
“Yes. But he is my tutor. My great father protects him.”
Atet felt a rush of sympathy for this simple infant, hidden inside the body of a man.
“Our great father is dead. You rule now. And with me by your side nobody will hurt you again.”
And so began the reign of the great king Seti, and his sister-wife Atet. They ruled wisely and well, with only a trusted few privy to the knowledge that Seti was what he was and that the intellect and the will belonged to his young wife.
They had only one real problem. Heirs. It was a marriage in name only and unlikely to ever be anything else. Seti had a slave girl who saw to his simple and infrequent needs, while Atet remained as pure as she had been on the day of their marriage. She was aware of the danger of appearing barren, and equally sure that she had no wish to give birth to a child with her husband’s limitations, even if it had been possible to persuade him into fulfilling his marital duties.
So matters stood when Atet’s most trusted adviser was called to his place at the feet of the gods and she found herself looking for a replacement. She found one such in the person of the Hyksos in charge of her personal guard. He was a man in his forties, with a fat jolly wife and a quiverful of unruly children. He was also handsome, intelligent, and completely loyal. Atet began asking his opinions and relying on his advice, and in time it came to her that this man of all others was the one she would choose to sire her own babies.
She sent for him and he came to her rooms where she sat in a gilded chair and regarded him through sombre eyes. “How far, my Hyksos, are you prepared to go in order to protect me?”
He didn’t answer, merely going down on one knee and pressing his forehead against her feet.
“Will you,” she asked in a very small voice, “protect me from the charge that I am barren woman, unfit to be queen?”
He looked up into her solemn little face before lifting her in his arms and beginning to do things of which she had no knowledge, but which gave her pleasure beyond her dreams.
It is a matter of record that Queen Atet bore her husband eleven healthy, intelligent, happy children, and that the land waxed fertile as the queen’s fecundity was proven time and time again.
“The moon is in the seventh house…” Natasha lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper. “You need people around you, sensitive, loving people.”
She made three syllables of ‘loving’.
Her client shifted impatiently.
“Yes but will I get married this year?”
Natasha hated direct questions like that.
“The tides of fate do not ebb and flow in human time,” she said quickly and moved on.
“Jupiter is aligning with Mars in your sign of Capricorn. That will give you great energy. Abundant energy.”
Her client left soon after and decided to enter the marathon rather than propose to his girlfriend.
The door opened with such force that it bounced back off the wall, and Hywel stomped in. His face was puce and he was waving a sheet of paper. Seemingly unable to speak he threw the paper on the table in front of Julia.
She read it and could feel the blood draining from her own face. It was an official complaint that the family of one Hywel Llewellyn, non-citizen, had been observed to be visiting a sub aquila residence without due authorisation.
The Villa Papaverus was not their own house, it was the residence that went with Dai’s job as Submagistratus and was owned by Rome. As such it was designated sub aquila which meant only Roman citizens and those non-citizens employed to work there were legally permitted inside.
“Oh merda,” she said softly. “I never even thought of that. Dai hates having that wretched eagle above our door.”
She passed the paper to Caudinus who read it swiftly then sighed.
“I am so sorry, I should have seen that coming. As I didn’t, I shall have to investigate.”
Hywel made a noise like a cat that has just had its fur stroked backwards,
“Sorry? Sorry that me and my entire family are being criminalised by your filthy Roman rules?”
Caudinus looked at him severely. “Hush man. Be glad I didn’t officially hear you say that. As I said, I do have to investigate. So will you just be quiet and let me think. Or is shouting and blustering at a pregnant woman something you think a good idea?”
Hywel subsided slightly.
“If this goes through the fine will take most of my livelihood for the last quarter.”
“Oh it’s worse than that,” Caudinus said his expression grim. “The fine would be the lightest of penalties. If it were deemed to have been done in deliberate defiance of Roman authority it could be counted as treason. And this complaint names you, your wife Enya and your step-mother, Olwen.”
Julia felt sick. Dai’s mother, sister-in-law and brother were being placed in real peril through someone’s spite.
“Treason?” Hywel echoed, his tone hollow and slumped into a chair, the fire and fury suddenly deserting him. Treason always carried the death sentence – a humiliating and agonising death in the arena.
Caudinus swept the printed emails into a pile and got to his feet.
“Yes, treason. But if I have anything to do with it, it won’t come to that and I will make sure you are issued with passes under my authority so there is not a problem ongoing.”
“Isn’t there something you can do to dismiss this?” Julia asked, “It is your legal jurisdiction after all.”
Caudinus pulled a face. “It will depend on the nature of the complaint and who the complainant is. It could go over my head to provincial level and those damnable bureaucrats in Augusta Treverorum.” He touched Julia lightly on the shoulder. “You mustn’t worry about this, you hear me?” His tone was stern. She mustered a smile more for his benefit than because she felt reassured. “And you come with me Llewellyn, I need to get some details from you, if you can guard your tongue enough to manage a trip to Viriconium with me?”
Hywel struggled to his feet looking shamefaced and anxious.
“Uh – yes. I’m sorry, dominus. I know it’s not your fault. I’m sorry, Julia too – it’s just that…”
Julia held out her arms and Hywel walked into them to receive a quick hug.
“It’s alright,” she said, letting him go, “but for Enya and Olwen’s sake and the children, you have to keep a lid on your anger over this.”
Hywel nodded and Julia felt a little more hopeful when Caudinus dropped her a wink over his head. A short time later she saw Caudinus’ hovercar gliding along the driveway.
Pushing her own fears to one side, Julia took the time to walk her two wolfhounds, Canis and Lupo, in the orchard, finding their cheerful company helped lift her mood. Then she returned to the house and with the two dogs sleeping by hearth, she opened her laptop and started composing an email to Hook-Beak explaining why she couldn’t leave Britannia at this time and probing for more information about his new married status. She was just thinking about how she could best raise the issue of Hywel’s case to see if, as Praetor, Hook-Beak could short-circuit the legal process in someway, when the sound of heavy footsteps made her look up in time to see the door burst open for the second time that morning.
Dai stood filling the doorway, his expression like a thundercloud fronting a storm. A cold and feral fire burned in his blue eyes that made Julia shiver despite herself.
“You are leaving. Today. Now.” His voice was almost a snarl. “I’ve sent for Elfrida to pack for you. Two of Gallus’ men and Edbert will be your escort. I have made arrangements. You can stay with Didero in Londinium, he has an entire legion of praetorians there to keep you safe.”
Julia opened her mouth and then closed it sharply to prevent the unforgivable, vile, words she so wanted to say from escaping. Instead she got demurely to her feet and walked over to her husband, drawing herself up to her full height of almost five feet.
“Oh you are so right, husband, I am leaving,” she said, keeping her tone sweet. “But not for Londinium. I am going where I choose to go not where you think to send me. And right now I am not at all sure that I will be coming back.”
From Dying for a Vacation one of the Dai and Julia Mysteries by E.M. Swift-Hook and 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…
When your hero he hangs by a thread
And your heroine thinks he is dead
It’s really quite fun
To say ‘end of part one’
And to f**k with your poor reader’s head.
The building was huge. Even the elevator was a comfortably furnished room with ambianced views through false windows clearly streamed from the grounds outside.
Having reached an upper floor, the aide led him through a series of rooms which formed a corridor of adjacent chambers. These contained some kind of art gallery or museum, or most probably both, with real objects sitting on plinths and the ambiance set to reflect something of their original culture and history. It was impossible not to stare at some of the more interesting items on display.
“Var Sarava is a great collector,” the aide said, as Grim found himself standing, mouth slightly agape before a gorgeous mythological creature the size of his own head which had apparently been carved from a single, huge gemstone. He was impressed against his will.
When he was shown into the final room, the normality of it was disorienting after the opulence of the gallery. A very human scale and comfortable social room, with its focus where deep-cushioned chairs were set around a delicately inlaid table. There were two windows on adjacent walls, both framed with looping curtains, and showing very different views of the grounds. One wall had shelving with antique ornaments and beautifully bound old-style books. For a moment, as the aide quietly left and closed the door, Grim didn’t realise that there was anyone else in the room.
She stood perfectly still beside one of the windows. A petite and slender figure with softly blonde hair and a face that looked as if it had been flesh-cast from a mould, the sort of preternatural smoothness the extremely elderly achieved. She wore a blue garment, which could only be described as a robe. Its elegance was in its simplicity, its ornamentation in the way the colour was reflected, highlighting the brilliance of the blue eyes that watched Grim as he noticed her presence.
“Vor Dugsdall. I apologise for compelling you here to endure such a garish display of wealth. This was never my favourite home, but it is the one I am now, sadly, obliged to inhabit.”
Grim wondered how he was supposed to take that. He decided that face value was the best way.
“I could think of worse places to have to live,” he said.
A quirk of emotion danced in the dramatically blue eyes. “I am sure that is so.” She moved one hand and the room’s ambiance resolved itself from comfortable social area to plush business office. The curtains vanished to be replaced by neatly folded blinds, the inlaid table became smooth, the flooring changed from wood parquet to sleek moulded tiles, the shelving became a plain wall where art could screen and the ambiant colours shifted from warm browns and dark reds to cooler blues and black. The small woman walked with a very erect and slightly stiff gait across to Grim.
“Now you must try and convince me that I have made a good decision to involve myself in all this again.”
From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason, a Fortune’s Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.
They had come so far.
Anna carrying baby Nin while Caradoc had their few worldly goods and Gryff followed loyally. But now the way ahead was barred by a river they could see no way to cross.
Caradoc put his arm around Anna’s shoulders.
“We tried, lass. But life’s not a fairytale. Sometimes the bad people win.”
She buried her face in his shoulder to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes.
Gryff’s sharp bark made her look round.
There was a boat hidden in the reeds.
“So it was a fairytale after all,” Anna always told the grandchildren.
Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…
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