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 criminal, the brothers acted.

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

E.M. Swift-Hook

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

It wanted five days to the start of the new month and Ginny spent most of them trying to find all the things Stan and his pals had laboriously hidden in the wrong places.
She had got back from the shop to find them already in their van and about to go.
“Don’t worry about that cuppa,” Dan/Ian/Stan told her, as though he was doing her a big favour by letting her off making it. “Me and the lads’ll get going right away.” 
So she had tipped them and they were gone before she’d walked back into the house.
She had been careful to mark each box with its destination room, but they still seemed to have decided for themselves where each should go.
The room she planned to make into her study-office-come-reading nook, which had a wonderful view over the back garden, was so full of boxes she couldn’t even get through the door, whilst her bedroom had nothing in it except her bed – not even the bedding, which was presumably somewhere in the study under the boxes of her books. Fortunately, she had a sleeping bag in the boot of her car which meant she didn’t need to excavate frantically that evening, but she did ponder whether she might have been deliberately misled by Stan the removal man when he suggested she went to the shop.
The next day she was sorting the kitchen, unpacking things into drawers and cupboards whilst singing to the radio about how the sun always shone on television, when a shadow fell across the threshold of the kitchen door, left open to let in the fresh air.
Like most dwellings, the cottage had a front door which opened – via a short path and a fringe of grass – onto the road and was where visitors were expected to present themselves. The kitchen door was in the side of the house, accessed by a path with a high hedge that led to the back garden and was blocked by a gate at the front. So the sudden appearance of the shadow was startling and unexpected.
She spun around heart pounding and found herself looking into the eyes of the man she had bumped into on the way to the shop. Only now he was fully clothed. Jeans and a short-sleeved black Armani shirt, with a white dog-collar.
“Hello there,” he shouted. “I’m your vicar, Doug Turner. I did knock but the music… ”
Blushing furiously, Ginny grabbed at the DAB and turned it off.
“Sorry,” she mumbled and then managed to get out something about making tea and would he like one.
He accepted with a dazzling smile and for a few moments she was able to consume herself in finding and rinsing two mugs and dropping a regular tea bag in each.
Could you even give a mug of tea to a vicar? Didn’t it need to be bone-china cups and saucers and a teapot of Darjeeling not a ‘Happy Price’ teabag from the local shop?
By the time she was done he had leaned his muscular frame against the wall and he graciously accepted the proffered mug.
“What, no cucumber sandwiches?”
Ginny gaped at him blankly.
“I-I’m sorry?”
He shook his head and grinned at her and she noticed his teeth seemed a little large at the front.
“An old joke. One we vicars often get.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve not met many. In fact, I can’t think of any. I don’t think I’ve lived somewhere that had a vicar before.”
For some reason he found that hilarious and Ginny watched the tea in his mug slop dangerously close to the rim as he laughed.
“Everywhere in the country has a vicar,” he said when the laughter subsided and as if that explained why he had been so amused. “You’ll’ve had a vicar before but never knew it.”
Ginny tried to take control of the conversation again.
“Do you call on all your…” She fell at the first hurdle. What did vicars call their community? Flock? That sounded archaic. “…on all new people?”
Vicar Doug took a slup of tea and pulled a face. Ginny wasn’t sure whether that was a response to her tea making or her question.
“I try to get to meet new parishioners when I can, but I did want to apologise for running into you the other day. I thought you were a tourist.”
He made it sound as if running into tourists was perfectly acceptable behaviour. And perhaps it was in a place like this where tourists were no doubt seen as an annoying fact of life.
“Oh. I see. Well, I’m not.” She realised belatedly she hadn’t introduced herself and stuck out the hand not clutching her mug. “Ginny Cropper. Pleased to meet you.”
His hand stopped half-way as if he was having second thoughts about the shake.
“Not the Ginny Cropper?”
Her heart sank. She found herself resorting to an old line.
“Depends what you mean by that. I’m certainly a Ginny Cropper.”
“I meant, are you the woman behind the Virginia Creeper lifestyle brand?”
His hand completed the journey to hers but barely touched her fingers before withdrawing, the intensity of his gaze upon her.
You couldn’t lie to a vicar, could you?
Could you?
Ginny dropped his gaze and turned to look out of the small kitchen window, through it she could see the wheelie bin and a cat sitting on the recycling box. There was nothing to offer her an escape or inspiration.
“I was,” she admitted. “But I’ve retired – sort of.” 
There was a long silence behind her and in the end she had to turn around.
Vicar Doug was gone.
His unfinished mug of tea sat on the floor where he had been. 
As startled by his departure as his arrival, Ginny picked up the mug and emptied it into the sink, washing it out without really thinking. It was, she realised, her British Wildlife Society mug, which had a picture of an endangered species of native bats on the side.
Sighing, she decided she was going to find it more trying than she had realised to get used to life in Little Botheringham.

Part 6 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

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