Two Women and Some Books
Where the beer flows, there go I
In the pub snug bar I lie
Drinking beer until the cry:
‘Last orders, please’ when I sigh.
Until summer merrily.
Verily, merrily
Shall I go then
Into the beer garden, to drink with friends!
From 'Dying on the Tide' one of the bonus short stories included in 'The First Dai and Julia Omnibus'
It was a two-hour drive to Virconium, given a speedy vehicle and a reliable driver. Having both, they arrived without incident. The city was gearing up for next month’s Saturnalia with bright lights and sparkly tinsel in every shop window to lure in gift-buyers. Julia felt an odd pang of nostalgia as she caught sight of a display of sigillaria in one. There were candles moulded or carved into fantastic and beautiful wax sculptures, beside a shelf of grotesque and amusing ones. She wondered how it would be to spend her first Saturnalia away from Rome.
The navi system took them straight to the dance studio, where Julia followed Dai and Bryn as they made their way to the reception desk in a cool quiet portico. The elaborately coiffed young man behind the white and gold edifice recoiled visibly.
“Members only,” he snapped.
Bryn stepped forward.
“The Submagistratus wants a word with Bont.”
The receptionist opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no sound emerged.
“Sometime this week, sonny”
“Not possible. Ulysses is busy right now.”
“Well un-busy him.”
“I don’t think I can…”
Bryn smiled and leaned over the desk, cracking his knuckles. The receptionist swallowed audibly, then he thumbed a button.
“Ulysses Bont to reception. Immediately please.”
Bryn rewarded him with a wolfish grin.“Now you’re being sensible. Got somewhere we can talk uninterrupted?”
They were soon ensconced in a pleasant room, which Julia was delighted to find came complete with beverages and cake. It wasn’t long before they were joined by a lean man wearing a sardonic expression.
“You wanted me, dominus?” he said a waspish bite to his tone.
Dai looked him up and down slowly.
“I think wanted is an exaggeration.”
Bont coloured, but Julia could see he wasn’t brave enough to argue with a man whose blue eyes were as bleak as a winter morning. Bont shut his mouth and cast down his gaze.
“Better. Now. Talk to me about Tales from the Mabinogion.”
“What?” Bont looked up in surprise. “The dance troupe?”
“Yes.”
“We were contracted for a three-month school tour. Then disbanded.”
He met Dai’s stare defiantly for a moment, then looked at Julia. She schooled her expression to stone. Something in her face seemed to get to him, though and he sighed. “Okay, it was more than a bit odd. We were paid well over the going rate and our paymasters were a bit creepy. Too interested in kids. Always girls and always the petite ones. Not that I ever saw them actually do anything, I’d have reported them if they had.” he broke off for a moment as if thinking about what had happened. “You have to understand, they really weren’t the sort of people you question. But…”
“But indeed. Do you have any names?”
“There were two of them, a couple of men, called themselves Smith. Can I ask what you think they have done?”
“Eleven of those girls have gone missing.”
“Oh no. Please, no.” Bont looked truly sick. “Look. I don’t know much that could help you, I really wish I did. That’s – just horrible.” He broke off shaking his head as if trying to deny it. Then he looked up directly at Dai. “Except that there’s this female dancer, I never liked her. Her name is Katya Czesny, she was right in with the Smiths. And she is still working In Viriconium.”
“Where?”
“A nightspot. The Scarlet Letter. She’s cage dancing now. Calls herself Lubricia.”
Julia spoke for the first time.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
The Dai and Julia Mysteries are written by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook
Underneath the lamplight
Just outside the gate
The teenage girl from next door
Is snogging with her date
I know as they cuddle tenderly
That any minute there will be
A sharp slap in the lamplight
As Dad drags her indoors
Jane Jago’s naughty story is being presented by Tall Tale TV
He showed me a lot of very white, very even teeth.
“You American?” I asked.
“I am, but how did you know? I don’t think I have an accent.”
“You don’t, it’s the dentistry. In my business you tend to look at teeth carefully.”
It took a moment for the implications of that to sink in, but when they did I was rewarded with his pleasingly masculine laughter. “And that”, he remarked with a broad grin, “is the first line of your book…”
We soon settled into a rhythm. George arrived promptly at eight-thirty every morning. He cooked my breakfast and we worked until three when he bowed his head, clicked his heels and left.
Inside a month, we had volume one of my memoirs nailed. It was racy, funny, human, and silly, and not a bit how anybody envisaged a whore’s memoirs. It was also an instant bestseller.
Want to know more? Listen in at Tall Tale TV
The sirens split the air, as the lights rent the sky asunder. People ran and dodged. Women screamed and children cried. One man stood watching the unforgiving bombs fall and the tears ran down his soot-streaked cheeks. His home was one of the blackened skeletons and his wife and his children were among the thousands who died in the fires that crisped the city.
He raised his hands and did the one thing he had sworn never to do in this life. He spoke a single word of power and the earth shook beneath his feet, before a chasm opened in the river and the waters boiled around it. A flaming hand was raised into the murky sky and it grasped the flying bombers one by one, dashing them to the ground to where they lay as charred and broken as the city they were menacing.
When the last bomber was dispatched to hellgates the chasm closed. But not before the head and shoulders of the river master reared up and the creature stared at the wizard with cold antipathy.
“There is,” it grated, “a price to be paid”.
The wizard nodded his head, just once.
“Paid willingly,” he whispered, before clutching his throat and dropping to the ground as dead as his wife and children.
.... or 'How To Speak Typo' by Jane Jago
Decison (noun) the tenth son
Eggieoie (noun) a person from Cornwall
Eso (noun) a pungent herb of the family pusillanimous that tastes and smells like very old mothballs
Flaiail (verb) to simultaneously pick one’s nose and play the mandolin
Mustal (adjective) of alpacas and llamas – those few hours before a female comes into season when all the males trail round behind her dribbling
Ploker (noun) one who constantly grasps his genitalia whilst in conversation with the opposite sex
Puch (verb) ride a very old moped slowly and with a wobbly trajectory
Soudned (adverb) of sleeping. Being so fast asleep that one can only be awoken with the aid of the Dagenham Girl Pipers
Thethe (noun) small purple-furred marsupial that subsists entirely on cups of tea and ginger biscuits
Udnerstade (verb) to sit under a lactating cow with one’s mouth open
Vumbole (noun) the sticky mess left after hawking up a swallowed fly
Weord (noun) of novelists seeking a synonym that doesn’t exist
Wirry (verb) to chew on something with one’s back teeth in the manner of a masticating sheep
Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.
She let the slave girl brush out her hair so it lay like a shimmering black veil down her back and blinked as the over-strong perfumed oils caught in her nostrils. The king was ageing and his sense of smell fading. Alas, little else of his senses did so.
She took the walk from her cloistered seraglio to his bedchamber with the same heavy sense of foreboding that she carried with her every night. She did not need the sly, pitying looks from the other women – each waiting her turn for the same honour. But as long as she still lived, they were safe.
She reached the doors of the bedchamber and the two armoured men who guarded them stepped aside and pushed them open so she could go in – alone. The sound of the huge doors as they closed behind her was soft compared to the thumping of her heart. She must please her lord and master.
As always she began with a dance. Her accompaniment, the tiny finger cymbals she wore. She moved her body in the swaying motions of the dance and wove her way to finish standing beside the canopied bed, it’s cloth of gold coverlet cast casually aside.
By day the king at least looked regal, clad in fine robes and with a jewelled crown lightly set on his greying hair. But naked he looked simply ugly and she shuddered at the thought of his hands touching her. He hated women as much as he desired them.
Now he looked at her with hungry, expectant eyes and she made herself climb onto the bed to lie beside him, fighting the revulsion and fear, forcing a smile on to her face. Tonight would be worse than usual because she had not managed to prepare herself fully.
“Where did we get to?” he asked, his voice low with anticipation.
She drew a quick breath.
“My Lord I – ”
“No excuses – you know what I want.” This time there was a bite of anger and the dark brooding look the courtiers knew so well to fear.
She swallowed and made herself begin.
“Well, the djinn was about to kill the fisherman when…”
With half her mind she told the tale, the other half rapidly inventing another for when this one was finished, her life depending on it. But how long she could keep inventing these cliffhanger stories to please a madman, Scheherazade did not know.
From The Midsummer Wife by Jacqueline Church Simonds
“It never occurred to me until this moment that there were any other families…Cousin,” he said with his lips curled up at the corners.
Ava laughed. No one told me he has a sense of humor! Maybe this will turn out all right, after all. “We’re related so far back, you probably have more genetic history in common with your chef than me.”
“May I ask the sire your branch comes from?”
“Not the sire,” she said. “I’m descended from Anya’s daughter, Arianrhod.”
He looked somewhat nonplused. “And the House of Arianrhod is commanded to do…what?”
“Fulfill Mother Anya’s vision for her line―to see the descendant of King Arthur return, served by the descendant of Merlin’s wisdom.”
He swallowed hard.
Ava had read that outside of the Sacred Grotto, no one in the families was permitted to speak those words aloud. “Almost fifteen hundred years ago, Anya, a priestess and healer of the Rus, fell in love with both Merlin and King Arthur, and eventually had sons by both. You, Duke Drunemeton, are the descendant of Merlin. The Earl of Steadbye, whom I hope to meet soon, is the descendant of King Arthur.”
He gasped. “How do you—?”
Ava rushed on, “Duke Drunemeton, these are The Days Foretold. As was written in the books you guard, this in the hour ‘when the King and Merlin shall come again and, with the Oathstone, heal the Land and its People.’ And as you are well aware, the ‘Once and Future King,’ as the author T. H. White called him, is in waiting nearby. All we need do now is locate the Oathstone. Then we can help Britain heal and regain its place in the world.”
The duke stood up slowly and walked like a mechanical toy around the desk. He stood over her, radiating both fear and outrage. “How? You can’t possibly…” He was struggling to steady himself.
Have I gone too far, too fast?
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Ava Cerdwen—Arianrhod’s heir.”
Ava decided a strategic retreat was in order. She stood up and drew her purse strap over her shoulder—the universal gesture that the interview was over. “I can see you need time to consider what I’ve said. My driver will stop back here tonight in case you want to reach me. I won’t be far. We’ll speak again when you’ve had time to let this sink in. I know it’s a shock, keeping a secret for so very, very long, then discovering others know, too.”
She rested her fingers gently on his arm, which was swathed in an expensive camel hair jacket. There was a momentary spark, as if she had just run across the thick Aubusson carpet in slippers before she put her hand there. It was unexpected, but also another hopeful sign.
He paled, and she could feel him tremble.
“Don’t let fear overwhelm you. We must act as we’ve been trained to do since birth—and soon.” She turned and walked out of the office.
Ava could feel his raw emotions behind her. He was paralyzed with fear and confusion.
Not good.
Not good at all.
She went out of the house, emotions zinging between terror and…well, not triumph. But ever so slightly hopeful she had succeeded in starting the critical dialogue.
She was amused all over again at the car her “chauffeur” chose―a black 1930s Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. Who rides around in such a thing?
Well, me, I guess.
The duke appeared in the rainy forecourt. His eyes were a bit wild. “Ava!” he shouted. The duke seemed to realize he was attracting attention from the pair of sodden gardeners nearby. Stepping closer to the Rolls, he whispered, “How do I know I can trust you?”
Smiling confidently at him, she slid into the car. It started up immediately. She said to his mind:
Because we are family.
A bite of... Jacqueline Church Simonds
The book that inspired me to read, write, and generally think books are awesomesausage was The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was the first book that made me cry and realize that other people were suffering the same sorts of emotions I was.
The 3 sci-fi books that influenced me: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (my first sci-fi), Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and Dune by Frank Herbert.
The books that most influenced the series I’m writing—Heirs to Camelot: The Once and Future King by T.H. White, The Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart, and Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley Zimmer.
That they are based on Arthurian legend, but head off in a different direction.
The Midsummer Wife (released on Midsummer Day 2018) is the set of conclusions set forth by the lover of King Arthur and Merlin 1460 years before (The Healer of Camelot—the prequel to the series—is due out in August). There are things that interest me like: what do you owe to the relationships you had in a previous life, how do you cope with deep anxiety issues, and does evil always win?
The Solstice Bride (Book 2, which should be out in 2019) deals with overcoming evil, selfishness over self-motivation, and learning to trust yourself*.
Mistress of the Rose Moon (Book 3, which should be out Midsummer Day 2019) deals with the repercussions of reincarnation, evil, duty, the Buddhist idea of Right Action, a quest for the Holy Grail*, and a multiverse war.
*I really need to shout-out to the Sci-Fi Roundtable folks who helped me with issues that confronted me as both Book 2 & 3 tried to thwart me. That collegial group of writers pitched in with thoughts and considered points of view that really got me over the hump!
One part of The Midsummer Wife came sort of true-ish in an unexpected way. I wrote the heir/reincarnated soul of King Arthur as biracial (British-Zimbabwean) about 3 years ago. My early readers said things like, “Well, THAT’S never going to happen. And then, shazam, Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry, so now it all looks quite plausible.
Ava Cerdwen, the MC, has major anxiety-disorder problems. I have had panic attacks since I was maybe 5 or 6. My niece has them so badly she could not finish school. Ava’s meltdown mid-book is way beyond anything I’ve ever had… and set me off with near panic-attacks for weeks after I wrote it.
Jacqueline Church Simonds is an author and publishing consultant. Her first published book was Captain Mary, Buccaneer, a historical adventure novel loosely based on the real pirate women Ann Bonney and Mary Reade.
Simonds has done the usual authorly wanderings in life: she was a lady’s companion, a sound and lights roadie for a small Southern rock band, and managed an antiques shop. She’s sold everything from computers to 1950s pulp magazines to towels and baby clothes. The one constant in her life is a love of words, books and writing. She sold some short stories and poetry early, but didn’t pursue it until later in life.
She has had a life-long love of King Arthur and was always drawn to novels about that great hero. Finally, she sat down and wrote stories from her own point of view.
She lives in Reno, Nevada with her husband and beagle.
THE MIDSUMMER WIFE is available exclusively on Amazon as a Kindle or paperback. and you can follow Jacquelin on her blog, Facebook or Twitter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Anna and Sam visited the register office, filled in the necessary forms, and confirmed their wedding date. Sam headed to work and Anna and Bonnie did some shopping, then went home. It was just about lunchtime when Anna’s phone rang. It was Sam.
“Hello love. What gives?”
“I had a very short list today, so I was going to be home nice and early. However. The bloody car has died on me. The garage will come and tow it in, but I’m stuck. You wouldn’t be an angel and come fetch me would you?”
“Yes, of course I will. Be about half an hour.”
“Thanks love. I’ll be by the main entrance.”
“See you then.”
Anna loaded Bonnie into the car and they set out for Cheltenham. They drew into the hospital car park and joined a line of slow-moving traffic heading for the drop-off and pick -up point beside the main entrance. Bonnie was the first to spot Sam, she woofed gently and pointed with her nose, to where Sam was in conversation with a very thin woman in a sharply tailored suit. He spotted them, raised a hand, made his farewells quickly, and sprinted over to the car. He threw his bag in the boot then jumped into the passenger seat.
“That woman gives me the creeps,” he said.
“Who is she?”
“She represents a consortium which uses the private wing of the hospital. She’s always after me to do work for them. Maybe I’m not rude enough when I refuse. Anyway the latest thing is a weight loss clinic. And I don’t do bariatric surgery, so at least today was just social.”
Just at that point they drew level with the women who coyly flapped a hand at the vehicle.
“Well fuck me” Anna said. “What’s she up to?”
“I just told you.”
“Maybe. But she’s what Jim would call a face, so it’s unlikely to be so simple.”
“What? You’re not making any sense…”
“No. Probably not. I’ll explain better when we get home.”
“Okeydoke.”
They drove home in silence, and it seemed to Sam that Anna was troubled. Once they were indoors, he put his arms around her.
“What, love?”
“Oh Sam. It’s that woman. She’s trouble.”
“Let’s have a glass of wine and you can tell me all about it.”
“That would be good, but I think I have to phone Jim first.”
“You do what you think is right. I’ll go change my clothes, then open a bottle.”
Anna pulled out her phone and looked at it for a long moment before making her call. Jim answered almost at once.
“What’s up toots?”
“I just saw an old friend.”
“Who?”
“Sid the Snake’s lovely wife.”
“Where?”
“Cheltenham hospital. Sam says she represents the consortium that uses the private wing.”
“Oh. Right. I’ll look into it. Keep your man on tap in case I need somebody to translate doctor.”
Anna ended the call and sat at the table looking at her own hands with a somewhat bitter twist to her mouth. Sam came into the room with a glass in either hand. He gave her one and she took a sip.
“That’s delicious, but it’s not the wine I expected.”
“True. But you looked to me like you needed a restorative. In my experience there’s very little as restorative as a whisky mac.”
“What’s in it?”
“Laphroag and Crabbies ginger wine. And some folks would call it a waste of single malt. But…”
“But indeed. It is exceedingly restorative. And you are right, l did need restoring. That woman who gives you the creeps is a very bad lot. She is married to a hacker known as Sid the Snake and is normally to be found right at the leading edge of whatever he is perpetrating. She’s vicious, unprincipled, and just basically a wrong ‘un. I found myself not liking her talking to you. I’m not a jealous person, so it wasn’t that. No. It’s simple. She’s bad and I don’t want bad near you.”
“Oh Anna. You are soft on me aren’t you?”
“Am.”
“Never mind. I’m soft on you too,” he smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “So. What happens now?”
“With reference to what?”
“You know perfectly well what.’
“Well. Jim is looking into it. Illegally no doubt, but he’s almost as talented a hacker as me so nobody will see him ferreting around. If he finds anything we’ll hear, especially as he doesn’t speak doctor.”
“It’s just as well I speak it fluently then.”
Anna laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. On so many levels.”
As Sam opened his mouth to riposte, her phone rang. She put it on speaker, but motioned Sam to keep silent.
“What gives Jim?”
“Buggered if I know. But whatever it is they have gone to some considerable trouble to hide it. We need your man. I’ll send stuff to your laptop now. Can you call me if he manages to make any sense of any of it?”
“Can do.”
Jim rung off, and Anna finished her drink before looking at Sam.
“You game?”
“Yes. Of course. By my reckoning I have to be, as whatever it is is likely to be to the detriment of sick people. I didn’t become a doctor in order to turn my back on that sort of stuff. So let’s look at whatever Jim has unearthed together.”
“If you are sure. I’ll bring my laptop out here shall I?”
“Yes. I’ll get us some coffee.”
Can you smell the rain?
Lifting the dust from the street
Damping the parched pavements
And bouncing over your feet
Can you hear the rain?
Dancing a tango on the roof
Drops so fat they bounce and split
Tapping like tap-dancing hoofs
Can you feel the rain?
Blessing the thirsty earth
Flowers lift their wan little faces
Drinking their own rebirth
Can you smell the rain?
Thick and soft and sweet
The autumn rain that washed the land
And polished the shining streets
