Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in an alternative modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

As they left their vehicle Julia stopped suddenly.
“You have to understand how I see it, Dai. My thinking is that this is something that could kill more people if we don’t act fast – Britons and Romans both.” Her expression was a taut mix of appeal and demand. “We know that three bodies turned up in the arena and no one saw anything and there was nothing on the external security. The internal surveillance was offline both times and no one seems to know how or why that could come about. The one person who might have had some idea is now dead. To me that says there is something happening here.” She gestured to the Augusta Arena. “That means it would have been a complete waste of time searching that apartment.”
“But what if there is something there that -”
“Then the forensic people will find it. They will be over the place with a pixel by pixel search.”
“But we didn’t even log the murder, that is basic procedure. If my Prefect – “
“I will get Decimus to pull rank and silence her if she gives you any grief. I am sorry if that offends your integrity, but it is the best I can do.”
Dai stared at her, wondering why she couldn’t see how that was so wrong.
“It’s not about that – it’s not even about my integrity. It’s about the fact that all this – this magic, can happen for a Roman. But if it was only those poor bastards from the Game who had been killed, regular Britons, there would be no magic, and odds are it’d be filed as unsolved when my resource allocation and timesheet expired on it.”
She frowned for a moment then seemed to look at him as if she had just seen something there she had missed before.
“Dai, I didn’t make the rules and I don’t like them any more than you do. If you think I’m only in this to find out who killed some Senator’s spoiled brat, then you are missing the point. If I can use my ‘magic’ for your Britons too, then I’m going to do so. It’s called justice and that happens to be something I care about a lot.”
She did not wait to see his reaction and despite her shorter stride he didn’t catch up with her again until they went up the steps to the dramatic portico that fronted the building. Dai scanned the area for the security, both static and mobile, he had seen on the plans.
“I want to talk to their security guy again,” he said as the door slid open and a cool breeze washed over them from the perfectly conditioned air inside. Julia glanced up at him.
“Your report said he had no idea how it had happened,” she said. “And your own IT people reported it had been an internal virus. What more is there to ask? You changed your mind and think he might have done something?”
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it. But I think he might know who did – just not that he knows it. Or at least not yet.”
Julia’s face resolved from a frown into a smile.
“I would like to say that makes sense, but it doesn’t. So maybe we should talk to him after all.”
Torkel Njord was typical of his people. He was big boned, blond and bearded. He also had an attitude problem that Dai had found to be typical of his people too. It was easy enough to understand. The Gens Germanicus had been the last part of the continent to be drawn into the Roman Empire. The original resistance from the early Germanic tribes had coalesced in the far north where they succeeded in maintaining their ferocious independence until a little over a hundred years ago when, the rest of the world comfortably subdued, the then Emperor Aurelius Galerius Valerius Pravus had reneged on a centuries-old treaty and invaded. The northern lands had been created a new diocese, broken up into provinces and placed under the Prefecture of Gaul.
Which was no doubt why Torkel, who had been very willing to co-operate with Dai and Bryn, took one look at Julia and clammed up.
“The domina is welcome to look at my records. She will find they are all in order,” he said when she asked.
“The records are not of so much interest as your thoughts,” Julia told him and was rewarded by a glacial stare.
“I am sure my thoughts could never be anything of value to the most noble domina.”
“You might be surprised, I find most people very interesting and valuable.”
“If the domina says so.”

Part VIII will be here next week. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

The gnomes were fascinated. What could the biggers be up to now? The builders arrived early one morning, they scrabbled and scrooged and poured liquid rock into a hole in the lawn. They set poles in the stuff and built an open-sided house in which they put a water pond. It was high and tall, and it made steam and bubbles.
There’s always one idiot around, and Harvey Gnome was it. He jumped into the foaming wetness, promptly sinking. When they dragged him out all his paint had come off and he stood naked and screaming in the moonlight.

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

a slong (noun) – Gaelic drinking song with obscene gestures

Anywa (proper noun) – less known sister of Pocahontas who kicked a certain young British officer in the balls when he tried it on with her

beeter (noun) – person who hits vegetables

blof (noun) – pre blog status when trying to construct witticisms

chater (noun) – to converse about one’s unfaithful spouse

earleir (noun) – aristocratic listening device

inc ase (noun) – tattoo on butt cheek

nagel (noun) – celestial being much given to homilies and finger wagging

naybe (noun) – the act of not being

poliete (noun) – parrot food

questoon (noun) odd-shaped vegetable of dubious origin

scharacteromeone (noun) – garden gnome with attitude (bad)

shhabby (adjective) – of cats having slightly moth-eaten looking fur

teh – (noun) strange brown beverage made with ground leaves and hot water

thnakees (noun) – very low slung scrotum

udnerstand (noun) – wobbly milking stool

winteractith – (noun) pagan festival including naked snow fights and much raucous singing

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

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

“It must be a terrible place to live,” Oliver observed as the documentary went on, “I mean, having a social score based on who you’re friends with and what you buy, determining whether you can get a train ticket.”

Krista nodded agreement and finished leaving a bad rating for the delivery driver. He’d been five minutes late. Some pathetic excuse about traffic. “Just glad we live in the free West.” Her fit-watch vibrated and she sighed. “I’ll have to leave you to it. If I don’t get enough steps done today they’ll cancel my health insurance – or quadruple the price.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Dear RWW,

San Francisco, that city by the bay. How the romance of it catches one by the throat, and how its skyline calls to one’s heart. One sits in a tiny bistro where a barista of exquisite coolness looks down her aristocratic nostrils at the assembled company and one sips hazelnut latte and masticates delicate macaroons…

It is one, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, author extraordinaire, handsome, debonair, world traveller and man of means.

One arrived in this fine city without a clue of what one was walking into, and now one is thanking the gods who favour the beautiful for their intervention in the homely shape of a gentleman from New York City. Said gentleman awaited one when one alighted at San Francisco International airport. Almost no sooner had one’s delicate tootsies touched American soil than this oddly misshapen gentleman shuffled over and introduced himself. He was, it appears, the attorney of one’s late grandfather and his mission in San Francisco was to guard the interests of yours truly at the hands of Messrs Schuster, Schuster, Abramowitz, Flugelhorn, and Metheringham. He was, he opined in a thick New Jersey accent, pretty sure one had been brought across the Atlantic to be royally stitched up.

One assumes the little man was right. Because he accompanied one like a dark shadow. He read documents, cross-examined one’s pater, abused the stringy tart roundly, and actually threatened to punch one of the Mister Schusters before writing a document which my parent reluctantly signed. It all went a little over one’s head.

However, the outcome seems to have been advantageous to one. Although one had, and still has, very little understanding of either the process or the precise outcome. It sufficeth one to know that one’s income would seem to be guaranteed and that one’s slithering alligator of a father no longer has the means to interfere with the moneys left in trust by one’s grandfather.

Ergo, one sits under the eye of a sneering barista and contemplates the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oh to be wealthy
In a San Francisco bar
Beautifully rich

A bientot.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

He said. If you argue I’ll leave you here
And I’ve got the map and the car
I looked in his eyes and I sat down
He left but he can’t go far
He crashed through the undergrowth in his boots
Angry as he could be
I looked at the ground and tried not to laugh
I’ve got the bloody car key

©️jane jago 2024

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends.

Once I was sure he’d gone I allowed myself to wilt against the hard wall of Ben’s chest.
“Sheesh that was weird.”
“It was. Who the heck was that?”
“I dunno. But I do know he’s a person to be reckoned with. The hardest of the hard at a guess. But he knelt down in the sodden grass in the orchard and I guess he really did pray.”
Ben looked down at me and I could feel him thinking, he kissed the top of my head.
“Are you thinking about the colour orange?” He asked.
“I am. Though I’d like confirmation if we could get it. I just don’t see how.”
He fiddled with his phone and showed me the screen. Cormac’s ice-eyed face looked at me.
“How’d you get that?”
“I didn’t. Ellen stuck her phone out of the back corridor and took a burst of shots.”
“Sheesh. She’s got bottle, though I’m not sure she ought to have done that.”
“Me neither. I told her off, but she laughed at me. Said he was too busy drowning in your eyes to notice a phone at floor level.”
“Drowning in my eyes? What the actual fuck?”
“It’s a truth. You have the clearest, calmest eyes, and they feel like cool river water when you look into them.”
I could feel myself frowning and he rubbed his thumb across my forehead.
“Never mind, love.”
I gave him a brisk hug. “Okay. I’m just going to file that one under Joss Bennett mythology and not pick at it. Meanwhile will you please send that image to Mark. And tell him I don’t want to know who our visitor was.”
“I can do that. If you will go home for an hour and have a sandwich and a bit of respite.”
“I can do that.” I saluted him and skipped off before he could exact vengeance.
It was still absolutely pissing down, although the electrical storm had passed over. I slid my arms into the sleeves of my yellow jacket and rammed the matching sou’wester firmly onto my head.
“C’mon dogs. Let’s go see what Roz and Allie are up to.”
We ran across the garden and more or less erupted into the kitchen/family room that was one of the delights of my heart. Sian and the twins sat at one end of the big, oak table. Sian was reading aloud and I recognised ‘The Secret Garden’, which sweet old-fashioned fantasy seemed ideal for such a dramatic day. The girls were absolutely entranced sitting as quiet as mice as the story drew them into Misselthwaite Manor and its secrets.
I signalled for Sian to carry on reading and hung my wet stuff in the boot room. Stan and Ollie made the staffies shove over so they too could lay beside the fire, while I made myself a sandwich. I sat at the other end of the table and ate my late lunch with a good appetite. Sian finished a chapter and gently closed the book.
“More tomorrow,” she said.
The twins nodded and Roz came over to lean on my leg.
“The bad man won’t be coming back. Grandmother said you satisfied his curiosity and gave ease to his troubled soul.”
“I never knew I’d done that. All I did was tell him the truth and let him see where you two found Cherry.”
Allie came to my other side. “Mis Finoula telled me one time that you are a person who does the right thing for its own sake. And that you don’t do things for praise or profit.”
“Well. She’s maybe partly right. But I do run the pub for profit.”
“We know that. Daddy Beckett explained us about how everyone relies on the pub making the money to pay their bills.”
Allie yawned enormously. “If we wasn’t nearly seven years old we could maybe take a nap.”
Sian chuckled. “How old is your Uncle Neil?”
“Eleven-ty fifteen,” Roz chortled.
“So he is. And he still has afternoon naps.”
“He does?”
“Yes. So there’s absolutely no reason why you pair shouldn’t have a rest. I’ll tuck you in.”
She ushered them bed-wards and I enjoyed a rare moment of nothing at all to do.
When Sian returned I was sitting having a bit of a think. She grinned at me.
“There’s a rarity. Joss relaxing.”
“I think the latest ‘bad man’ wiped me out a bit.”
She looked quizzical.
“He was even more beautifully tailored than Mark, and he had the coldest most reptilian eyes it has ever been my misfortune to look into. But. He dressed himself in that ratty old parka from the dog bed by the back door and a pair of wholly repulsive wellies and followed me into the orchard. When I showed him the tree he knelt in the mud and actually prayed. It was all too surreal.”
Sian smiled wisely. “Them boots belong to Jack Ellis and he wears them when he’s clearing out the slurry pits. Left them here last night because Brenda wouldn’t get in the Land Rover with them.”
“How did you?”
“Mum called me, because she needed to laugh.” Then she stood sword straight in front of me with her hands behind her back. “I’m afraid I overstepped.”
“How’s that, love?”
“The dog leads.”
I laughed. “No. It was a bit surprising, but nothing to be bothered about.”
“Thanks Joss. Thing is it was their idea.”
I thought about that for ten seconds then laughed.
“Why am I not surprised? Tell me all.”
She relaxed. “They wanted to go outside and see the storm. I said fine, but you have to promise me you will stay on the flagstones and under the roof. But they couldn’t promise so I said no outside then. They went into one of their huddles and disappeared. They came back with Bud and Lew’s leads. They each hitched a lead onto the other’s jeans then handed the leads to me. ‘Now we can’t be bad,’ they said. I went along with it, only now I’m thinking perhaps I shouldn’t have.”
I stood up and hugged her. “I’d a done precisely the same. One thing being these two’s mother has taught me is that the unconventional is often the only way to deal with them.”
Her smile was as bright as the sky was dark.
My phone made a peculiar noise before telling me Ben wanted a word. I poked the screen.
“What is your pleasure my beloved. But before you reply you should perhaps take note that Sian is standing beside me.”
He blew me a raspberry. “Look. There’s nothing over here that needs your attention. Morgan has the office, with help from Ellen. Stella’s on duty for afternoon tea and expecting to be bored. And there’s a full brigade on for tonight.”
“That’s all sense. Does it make me redundant?”
He chuckled. “Yup. Unless you feel like making supper for the family. About half nine maybe?”
“Family?”
“Me, You, the monsters, Stella, Neil, Ellen, Sian, Morgan and Simeon.”
“I could do that. But maybe not the twins. Nine thirty’s a bit late for them to eat.”
“That’s true. Will you explain to them?”
“I will. See what’s what. They are having an afternoon nap so maybe they can stay up.”
“It’d be nice.”
He ended the call and I looked at Sian. “If I give you a basket will you go over to the kitchen and steal some stuff?”
“If you give me a list as well.”
“I will.”
She scurried off and I got started. When she returned, staggering theatrically, I relieved her of her load and she scrubbed up. We worked together in amiable accord until everything was as prepared as it could be. I slid a huge chicken and red wine casserole into the oven while Sian finished loading the dishwasher. She set it going and grinned at me.
“I always like cooking here with you.”
“And I with you.”
We moved over to where the wood burner simmered away gently and sat chatting quietly as the wind and rain howled around the sturdy walls.

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in an alternative modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

Annia Belonia Flavia was not at her place of work and it took a combination of Dai’s bardic charm and Julia’s patrician authority to learn her home address from her subadiuva, a woman who seemed either fiercely protective of her boss or frankly terrified of her. Dai found it hard to be sure which.
Flavia lived in a very posh apartment in one of the new towering insulae built on the edge of the Tamesis. They were loosely modelled on the tenements of Rome in their outer appearance, but the irony was that these were top class luxury all the way. Even the floors of the public areas had the soothing warmth of a built-in hypocaust. They were tiled with mosaics showing the Divine Diocletian defeating the rebellious self-proclaimed Restitutor Britanniae in the failed Carausian Revolt. It was a popular meme in all Britannia, especially here in Londinium where the final hope of British independence had fallen forever with the dying bodies of those last loyal men. The place it supposedly happened, was now marked by a tall pillar,  guarded by stone lions and topped by the Roman hero of the hour, Constantius.
Not that the bastard had even been there, but like all the Romans Dai had ever met, he was probably very good at taking the credit and burying the name of whichever Gallic auxiliary had actually achieved the victory for him.
The lift slid silently upwards and Dai wondered how much it must cost to live in this kind of place. Certainly far more than his humble salary. Not that he would have the option to live here even if the salary he earned ever reached that kind of level. He had seen the stone eagle above the main entrance, its wings outstretched to embrace the chosen few and the letters ‘SPQR’ clutched in its grasping talons. This was a place where only Citizens could live. Regular Britons, such as himself, were confined to the huddled suburbs of Londinium where concrete leviathans provided hutch-sized boxes for people to live in. Those who were licensed to do so, of course, which meant having a job that qualified as ‘essential’.
The door to Flavia’s apartment was open. Not so surprising when it had a foot lying over the threshold – bare, with toenails carefully manicured and painted. The foot was still attached to its owner, who lay with her bare buttocks on the face of the Divine Diocletian that was mosaiced into the floor. Dai could tell it had to be Diocletian by the inevitable wreath and halo which surrounded the image. It was obvious Flavia was quite dead. It was not at all obvious what had caused that. She was completely naked and her hair was in damp curls around her face, which wore a look of surprise.
Dai reached for his identipad so he could officially confirm her identity and log the death, but Julia’s small hand gripped his arm.
“No. We’ll leave that for the forensic team. I want to get back to the arena. If she has been killed to silence her, the sooner we can find out why, what she was being silenced for the better. Whoever did this is starting to panic.”
Dai opened his mouth to object, then closed it again. It was not his call to make. Julia had done such a good job of making him feel like a partner he had almost forgotten she was the one holding the nerve whip. He straightened up and forced a smile.
“Of course, domina. Whatever you say.”
Julia did not even seem to notice, she was speaking rapidly into her wrist phone to report the murder and call in the necessary forensic team. Before she finished she was leaving the apartment, still snapping brusque details as she went.
Dai stood beside her in the lift and felt his stomach plunge lower than the ground floor.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked down to see her small face, so like a child looking up at him.
“You have nothing to apologise for, domina.”
“Clearly I do or you would not be calling me that.” She studied his face for a moment then looked away. “I have to make executive decisions, Dai – and you may think you know this crime better than me, but this is a Roman crime, not a British one. I know the signs.”
Dai had no idea how to answer that, and the rest of their journey back to the Augusta Arena took place in a tense silence.

Part VII will be here next week. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

It was getting towards spring and the gnomes watched with mild interest as the biggers came out of the brick place and started their annual frantic scrabble in the soil.
“Why’d they do that stuff?” Camille was watching a female bigger on her hands and knees in a puddle poking what looked like flower bulbs into holes is the cold sodden earth.
“Do what?”
“Kill flowers. I mean, surely they know Mother is still cold and dormant. And that female is planting them bulbs downside up.”
Bertha looked over her spectacles. “It’s a bigger Camille, they truly don’t know nothing.”

Jane Jago

One for Sorrow – an impossible love story by Jane Jago

Two damaged souls in a steampunk world. Can Marta and Magpie discover the origins of the conspiracy that threatens them? Or will one of them wind up dead.  The story begins here:

It was an unremarkable chop house in an unremarkable street. The gas lamps hissed, the waitstaff hustled, and the ‘companions’ of both sexes cruised the room like hungry alligators. In the darkest corner, two people sat at a table eating pie and mash of the day. The man was handsome, in a narrow-featured sort of a way, and his well-pressed city clothing might have marked him out for a chiv in the ribs had he not been well known in these parts. His companion was less remarkable, if you discounted the scar that marred the smoothness of her face, drawing down the left-hand edge of her eye and twisting her lip into a permanent sneer.
She pushed her chair a little back from the table. “Lovely though it is to see you, Louis the Lip, I’m pretty sure you never asked me here for old home week.”
His smile was humourless and didn’t reach his fish-cold eyes.
“I might have a job for you, Marta.”
“Go to hell, Louis. I ain’t forgot where the last job you talked me into got me.”
He showed her his teeth. “Do this one and you can forget you ever owed me a debt.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“I did. But you never done the job, did you.”
She reached across the table and bunched her fist in the snowy whiteness of his shirt.
“Careful Louis Boy. You know what that train wreck cost me.”
He couldn’t meet the cold anger in her eyes, instead he tried and failed to pull his shirt out of her hand. He gave up and grabbed her wrist exerting all the pressure he could, but she was immobile. He tried another tack.
“Be reasonable Marta. That weren’t none of my fault.”
She let go of his shirt and snarled deep in her throat.
“No. But I bet you enjoyed it. You’re the sort of son-of-a-bitch that’d take pleasure in that kind of carnage.”
He snarled and snatched for the pistol that hung at his side, but his hand never got there. Marta laughed, though it was a sound as cold and smooth as the skin of a winter rattlesnake. Louis looked towards the sound and found himself staring into the twin hexagonal ‘eyes’ of a short-barrelled flintlock.
“Don’t move, asshole. If’n that’s your idea of a fast draw, it’s a wonder you managed to survive this long. You want to be careful or you’ll end up in the ground with a cross at your head and a stone at your feet.”
Louis put his hands on the table and a big red-headed man in the next booth laughed.
“Smart Mouth Louis. Died of a case of the slow.” He mocked.
Louis’s neck went puce with anger, but he knew not to push his luck any further. At the moment the clientele of the chophouse was amused, but if he drew down on Marta after being beaten fair and square he knew he could expect to wind up as full of holes as his cooking cousin’s best colander.

To find out what happens next get your free book here.