Some half an hour later they emerged, with the decanus ruefully rubbing his stubble obviously caught somewhere between annoyance and amusement.
“Right you lot,” he bellowed, “Domina Julia is here to witness band practice.”
Half of the Praetorians collected instruments and ‘tuned up’. When he judged them ready, Gallus pulled a baton out of his boot and counted them in. Julia winced as soon as they started playing. They were abysmal. Even those  who managed to start together soon lost each other in the maelstrom of bum notes and desperation. 
Julia lasted less than five minutes. She waved a hand for silence and slowly, slowly the dreadful cacophony stopped.
“Oh merda,” she muttered, “I expected bad but this is in a whole new dimension.” Catching sight of Edbert leaning against the door jamb she quirked an imperious finger. “There’s a brown leather folder on the desk in the librarium, would you be so kind as to fetch it for me?”
The blond giant snapped a salute.
Gallus looked truly apologetic.
“We’ve not had too much time for practicing, what with the work your man has kept us doing.”
She gave him her nicest smile.
“Not your fault, decanus. Let’s just see what we can salvage shall we?” She gave the band a scathing look. “Okay. We’ve seen what you can’t do. Let’s try and ascertain what you can…”
There was quite a lot of foot shuffling and she laughed, not unkindly.
“Right. Will anybody who can actually read music move over here please.” Three men stepped forward and she smiled at them. “Now.  Do we have any singers?”
Nobody moved, but Gallus grunted.
“Marcus, Aurelius, Crestor, and Alexios, front and centre please!” Gallus put his hand up by his mouth as if hiding his words from the men and said in a stage whisper: “They used to be a barber’s shop quartet.”
Four men came forwards expressions apprehensive and more than a bit embarrassed. Julia couldn’t help laughing internally at the look on their faces, but she said nothing to them.
“Finally, is there anybody who plays an instrument outside of the band?”
The same men who had admitted to the ability to read music, reluctantly lifted their hands. Julia looked a question.
“Penny whistle, domina.”
“Pipes of Bacchus, domina.”
“Standing harp, domina.”
Julia beamed at them. Edbert had been hanging back, but now he came forward with the folder Julia had requested. She thanked him with a smile. 
“Okay, have a look at this.”
She handed out sheets and the men looked in some trepidation. After a few minutes study they looked a lot happier. 
“It’s pretty and it’s simple,” Gallus said, “what is it?”
Julia showed him her teeth.
“It’s one of the Celtic folk airs you lot are supposed to be here learning. This folder is full of them. Most written by my husband’s ancestor who was a famous bard.”
After handing over the sheet music, Edbert had disappeared. He returned now with a large standing harp held tenderly in his big hands. He put it down in front of the confessed harpist.
“Domina Julia’s own harp. Treat it with care.” 
The youngster looked petrified, and Julia took pity on him.
“I can’t play the thing.”
Then he touched the strings tenderly and a waterfall of gentle notes leapt from his fingertips. He bent his head, suddenly oblivious to everything but the music. Julia smiled, and began to sing a simple little tune. He picked it up quickly and was soon playing along with her. The other two ‘unauthorised’ players, having collected their own instruments, joined in. 
For a while, the singers just looked bashful, then one fine tenor voice joined in. He stumbled over pronunciation but soon lost his fear, and then his friends joined in, pitching their harmonies around his lead. Julia smiled as the whole piece lifted and swelled, musicians and singers together. It was actually bloody good.
Even the non-musical Praetorians clapped enthusiastically when the song ran down and Gallus gave a satisfied nod.
“We need to practice. A lot. But…”

From The First Dai and Julia Omnibus by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Sunday came, and the traditional barbecue, spitting hot fat at anyone stupid enough to come close. Mother bigger was about halfway down a bottle of very expensive gin when she stood up and threw her arms wide.
“This is the life. Fresh air. A barbecue under the stars.”
“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, Mum.”
She withered younger son with a glance.
Big Bigger grinned.
“Why don’t we try camping?”
“Camping?”
“Camping is so not cool.”
“No? Cornwall. Sand and surf.”
The teenagers perked up and Mother beamed.
“See to it,” she said grandly before falling into an intoxicated slumber.

©️jj 2021

There were around thirty men in all, talking in loud boisterous voices, their breath misting in the cold air, laughing together at crude jokes, whilst passing wine-skins from hand to hand. They had gathered in front of the central pavilion, where a clearing gave some measure of status and privacy to the impressive tent of their employer the caravansi – the owner of the caravan, its wagons, its slaves and much of its cargo. When Caer finally rode into the clearing, his check of the camp completed, one of the Zoukai called out:
“Here, Captain.”
Catching the wineskin, Caer let the warm liquid cut the dust of the day from his throat, swilling out his mouth and spitting, only then swallowing a single mouthful before replacing the stopper and passing it on. Then he nudged his pony forwards and moved amongst his men, sending four more out to join the scouts and a handful of others to support the pickets who were already guarding the outskirts of the camp. He wanted to be extra careful today. Then he moved on, talking briefly to each of the others as he passed: a word of praise here, a question there, advice and the occasional sharp reprimand, all delivered with an easy authority.
A sudden stillness, as sharp on the senses as any loud sound, made Caer turn towards the pavilion, already knowing what to expect. The flap was being held up by a slave girl and a woman had just stepped out of the shady, incensed interior. It was her appearance that had silenced the horsemen and Caer understood why. Alexa the Fair they called her on the roads and the title was well deserved. Caer had lived twenty-five years and had never seen a woman he thought more beautiful. Her mere presence was enough to draw every male eye and deprive a man of his next breath.
She was tall, very tall for a woman and slender with it – long necked, long limbed and lithe, almost boyish with narrow hips and small breasts that barely lifted the sheer satiny substance of the emerald robe she wore. Beneath the magnificence of her dark auburn hair, her face with its clear skin and high cheek bones lent her an ageless beauty. Her violet-blue eyes swept imperiously over the Zoukai and when they came to rest on Caer, he felt the impact as if she had reached out and physically touched his skin.
“I will speak with you now, Captain,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but her tone commanding. Without waiting for either reply or acknowledgement, she turned and went back into the pavilion leaving behind a subtle breath of incense.

From The Fated Sky the first part of Transgressor Trilogy, and the first book in Fortunes Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If you’re old get a new high back chair
And stair lifts to get up your stair
You shouldn’t be seen
Clad bright neon green
Glued to railings to protest that you care!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Guardians at the Wall by Tim Walker introduces us to a group of archaeology students in northern England scraping at the soil near Hadrian’s Wall, the barrier that once divided Roman Britannia from wild Caledonian tribes.
Twenty-year-old Noah makes an intriguing find, but hasn’t anticipated becoming the object of desire in a developing love triangle in the isolated academic community at Vindolanda. He is living his best life, but must learn to prioritise in a race against time to solve an astounding ancient riddle, and an artefact theft, as he comes to realise his future career prospects depend on it.
In the same place, 1,800 years earlier, Commander of the Watch, Centurion Gaius Atticianus, hungover and unaware of the bloody conflicts that will soon challenge him, is rattled by the hoot of an owl, a bad omen…

From Noah’s Story 

I turned at the sound of Mike’s approach, his gumboots bouncing on the wooden boards preserving the moorland grass around the outer edge of the dig. Beyond him, white woolly blobs ripped at the tough turf with teeth and jaws suited to the harsh environment.
“Once you’ve photographed it, make an entry in the day log,” he said, before leaving me to check on the four volunteers who were sieving soil for hidden fragments of pots or small coins in a long wooden box outside the marquee.
It was the site of a settlement of wood and mud-daubed huts and their adjacent animal pens built by the Brigante people, next to what had once been the stone walls of the Roman fortress at Vindolanda. The Romans would have referred to the cluster of buildings as a ‘vicus’. Every fort had one. The fortress site had been excavated almost continuously since the 1930s, and had yielded a wealth of finds that revealed a detailed picture of how successive Roman garrisons had lived their lives – including written records and correspondence that had miraculously survived for almost two thousand years entombed in layers of peat and soft clay. Now a number of archaeology undergraduates had come together to excavate and map the vicus that had once serviced the needs of the Roman occupiers.
I returned to my trench and resumed scraping the earth beside the street. After ten minutes, I stopped abruptly as my trowel blade made contact with a solid object. “Another stone,” I muttered. I dug around it, slowly scraping the dark, loamy soil and patches of sticky clay, then I burrowed gently with my fingers to get underneath the object. It was no ordinary stone. I picked up my paint brush and swept away the clinging soil to reveal a carved face on a smooth, rounded stone, its form and facial features exposed to the sun and air for the first time in almost two millennia. And my eyes were the first to behold it. Time froze. The excavation didn’t exist, just my breathless awe at the face that had last been touched by the hands of someone from the Roman era. I embraced our private moment and then my excitement erupted.
“Mike! I’ve found something!” I yelled in the direction of my crouching supervisor.
Mike stood up and strode purposefully towards me, springing on the boards like a March lamb, calling, “I’m coming!” He knelt down and stared at the stone face peering out of the soil. “Yes, you’ve found something alright, young Noah. Brush away the surface and then photograph in situ before easing it out.”
One careful centimetre at a time, I freed the object, and I held it in my calloused hands, gently brushing away the top layer of clinging soil. I raised the carving and saw grooved swirls and inscriptions that would be revealed when it was clean, and the delicate features of the statuette. It was carved from light grey marble, had a flat base, and stood about ten inches tall. I estimated the weight to be about two pounds – a bag of sugar.
The other students and volunteers had stopped what they were doing and now gathered around, making cooing noises or remarking ‘nice’ and ‘lovely’. I brushed some more, exposing details of the impassive face and shrouded body that suggested it was a female form, its hands cradling the mound of its belly. After admiring her for a few seconds, I handed her over to Mike, grinning like a bridegroom.
“Hmmm, it looks like a deity of the Brigante tribe, perhaps a goddess of fertility or one to ward off evil spirits. Could be carved from a lump of marble found in the quarry pits that produced the blocks used to build the fortress walls. There’s a vein of quartz running through it that perhaps influenced its selection. I’ll take it to Professor Wilde to get her opinion. Well done, lad. Now everyone, back to work. Noah’s shown us that there are riches still to be discovered!”
I beamed with pride as if I’d uncovered the tomb of a pharaoh, and as Mike continued the process of recording and tucked up my beautiful goddess nice and safe, my eyes followed his every move, and I nodded as he talked me through it.

A Bite of… Tim Walker

Is writing as an escape from the sorrows of existence, an exercise in futility, or an excuse to tell lies and get paid for it? Or is there another option…

Since failing to return answers that resonated with examiners during my unexemplary school days, I came to realise that my mind is not programmed the same way as other ‘normal’ students. Although a career in academia was out, I found I could still inflict my bizarre thoughts, weird interests and out-of-step views on our covetous, consumerist society by writing and self-publishing fiction. The fact hardly anyone reads my odd, disjointed sentences and I struggle to break-even is not in the least bit concerning, as the pleasure is in the ecstasy of invention. In my own small way, I’m contributing to the book mountain that will fuel the fires of the encroaching fascist state.

If you knew nobody would ever read a word you wrote, would you continue writing?

Yes. I am exorcising my many ghosts.

Do you think your political beliefs inform your writing in any way?

I can’t help myself here. I’m a confirmed liberal and find the politics of greed and nastiness deplorable and, well, downright nasty. This inevitably finds its way into my world-creation or interpretation. But what is liberal about the Roman Empire, built on military conquest? Well, once native tribes were pacified, the Romans were at pains to assimilate them into their way of doing things and show them the benefits of their cultural, artistic and agricultural advancements. They also named many of their towns after the name of the local tribe, and incorporated native deities into their polytheistic belief system. Once you were on side, a better life was offered, although captives of war were worked as slaves. I’m interested in how the Romans ordered their province of Britannia, and wonder what elements were retained, or adapted, by subsequent administrations. It was, ultimately, a pyramid society with the emperor at the top, with citizenship a prized class (above subjects) and opportunity for advancement for outstanding individuals; but there was also cronyism and the vested interests of a ruling elite. What’s changed?

In drawing the character of my battle-hardened centurion, Gaius Atticianus, I had to show him as a tough, unflinching leader, a man promoted through the ranks on merit, but I also wanted to show his human side – he is fair in his judgements and trusting by nature, something that comes back to haunt him. To distance him from the soldier trope (and show my archaeologist character’s assumptions to be wrong), he is a family man who loves his wife, and avoids the pleasures of the brothel. Gaius is not a liberal, as he is fully committed to the aims of the empire and is committed to his vows of loyalty and duty. However, he is caring and is not a mindless killer, would prefer living in a time of peace, and seeks diplomatic solutions wherever possible. This puts him on a collision course with other officers who seek battle for glory and gain. 

Ex-alligator wrestler Tim Walker lives on a tropical island in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility with his pet hedgehog, Bumfluff, Barry, a grumpy rhinoceros who doesn’t answer to any name, and a swarm of worker nanobots. When he is not chiselling prose on stone tablets his hobbies include bat darting and mud sculpture.
You can find out more about him on his website and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads or sign up for his Newsletter.

The glazier was a buffly handsome young man with no shirt and some tattoos. Female teenage bigger exerted herself sufficiently to make him a cup of tea.
Bertha watched over her spectacles.
“Trouble brewing,” she muttered to herself when the young people wandered off in the direction of the summerhouse.
Mother Bigger emerged from the house ten minutes later. She found a half-finished window and no glazier.
Sprinting down the garden she was in time to interrupt a romantic tryst, leading her daughter away by the ear.
The man who came to finish the work was a leathery sixty.

©️jj 2021

Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

Milla left him muttering to himself nervously and marched up to the drakkonettes.
“You shall not pass,” one said. He hawked and spat then looked a bit surprised as if the action were new and unfamiliar to him. “What the…?”
His companion looked across at him strangely.
“You feeling alright there, dear?”
The first drakkonette blinked a bit then nodded a few times.
“Right as rain my hunny-bunny.” He stiffened his spine and glared down at Milla again. “You shall not pass!”
“I have to. My dog, Ruffkin, he’s inside and I’ve got to rescue him. Isn’t there some way we could come to an agreement? Like…” She tried hard to think of other such agreements she knew of in and around Wrathburn Sands. “Like I bring you ten locks from sandylion manes, or ten landshark tails, or ten vials of dog spit, or…”
The drakkonette pulled a face.
“What would we do with any of those?”
“I – I don’t know,” Milla stuttered. “It’s what some of the people around the village ask Visitors to bring them so I thought…”
“It’s alright, dear,” the other drakkonette said. “We don’t need any of that kind of thing, but I’d love a pot of fruit tea, if you could manage it. Then we might be able to look the other way for a moment.”
“And a couple of flyberry cookies would be good to go with that,” the first one put in. “It’s hard to notice people going through the gate when you’re dunking a cookie.” One of his eyes dropped shut in a wink.
Milla wondered where she might get those then remembered seeing a pile of some kind of cookies in One Eyes’s store and she could brew up a fruit tea on her hearth at home. She opened her mouth to tell them that was fine when a loud yodelling cry came from right behind her.
“Leeeeeroy Jenkins!”
Pew was charging towards them, robes tangling around his legs, staff in one hand with its shimmer extending before him like some kind of magical shield, and a dagger in the other.
It was over so fast Milla barely had time to yelp, she squeezed her eyes shut and heard a loud thump and a groan. When she opened them again, the drakkonettes were standing back in their guarding pose and the noble Firecaster Pewpowerpwnsyou lay in a crumpled heap of shimmering robes at their feet.
“Is he…?”
“He’s a Visitor,” the first drakkonette said contemptuously. “I’ve seen it all the time when we were up at Terraraptor Gorge. Charge in. Blat. Blat. Faceplant. Give them a few moments they go away and then they come back a bit later on and do it all over again.”
The other drakkonette made a maternal clucking sound. “Don’t you worry about him, dear. Just go and fetch us the tea and cookies and he’ll be right as rain when you get back, I promise you.”
Feeling a little uneasy but not really able to see any other course of action open to her, Milla headed back to the village and the provisions shop.
“Flyberry cookies?” One Eye grunted. “I have the very thing. Good you’re not a Visitor though, young’un. If you were I’d have to be asking you to harvest me some flyberries before I could be letting you take these.”
“But there are no flyberry bushes around here.”
“Well no. It means the Visitor has to head out to the Mirage Oasis where they grow and find some there.”
“But that’s on the other side of the Many Miles Mountains. It would take them ages. And that just for some cookies?”
One Eye nodded. “Aye. That’s the thing with Visitors, they do stuff no one in their right mind would bother with normally.” He wrapped the cookies for her and held them out. “Here you go. Good luck on your venture. Hope you find Ruffkin.”

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology.

June
Beneath the moon
As lovers spoon
I’m sunk in gloom
It is my doom
To act the buffoon
In June

©jj 2021

When your father fights on the losing side in a war, the only thing that is certain is uncertainty. Your home will probably be sequestered, your family assets seized, and your person may be open to abuse. Any young woman so beleaguered should be grateful if the man to whom the victorious leader gifts her family lands decides to marry her to further legitimise his claim. 
Mary Ashleigh reminded herself of this fact, while her reluctant feet trod the worn flagstones to where a fussy little priest with a streaming cold waited to marry her to a man she had never met. 
As she reached the altar rail where her bridegroom waited, she risked a glance before dropping her eyes in proper modesty. She got an impression of great height and very wide shoulders, but little more than that. As the priest stumbled his way through the short service Mary made her responses in her customarily placid manner, while the man spoke equally calmly, if in a voice as deep and unknowable as a thunderstorm in a far valley.
It seemed to take no time at all until the parson was proclaiming them man and wife. To her surprise, her new husband tucked her hand under his arm as he walked her from the building. This emboldened her to such an extent that she looked up.
The face that she beheld was square of jaw and sandy of hair and a little forbidding in its very strength, but withal he seemed to her to be a very proper man and to be looking at her with at least the semblance of friendliness. She smiled up at him and he patted the hand that lay in the crook of his arm.
“I am sorry that we could not meet before this day,” he said.
Mary’s surprise must have shown because he laughed, a deep and somehow comforting sound which emboldened her to speak. 
“It was more kindness than I expected when you chose to wed me.”
His voice when he replied was solemn. “You should not feel like that, although I can understand why you might. Do you know someone who has been misused?”
Mary looked at her feet for a moment before responding. “I do, sir. My cousin Catherine. She has a big belly now, but no husband.”
“Who did such a thing?”
“She don’t know sir. They shared her.”
He made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. “And where is the lady now?”
“She is at the manor. Hoping to become your pensioner as she was my father’s.” Greatly daring she turned and faced her husband. “Catherine,” she said in a tiny voice, “is very beautiful.”
“And you are not?”
“No sir. I am a plain little dab of a thing. My father was at great pains to be sure I understood that.”
He looked down into her earnest features and she could have sworn that the expression that crossed his face was pity. Putting his hand under her chin he held her face still while he looked deeply into her eyes.
“Not so plain,” he said consideringly, “not so plain at all. You have skin like the petals of a rose and your eyes are as clear and clean as a moorland stream. I think we will walk well together if you will it so.”
Mary felt the greatest part of her worries slipping away. “I do so will it sir.”
He patted her hand. “Listen, my wife. When we are in company I must always be the cold, hard master of the house. But when we are alone you may look to see the kinder side of me.”
Mary dimpled. “Will it be wise if I am the colourless, obedient wife in company?”
“It will. And my name is William. It would please me to hear you use it.”
“Yes William. It is a fine name, I think.”
“You, I believe are Mary. A favourite name of mine.”
He smiled benignly down at her and actually caressed the hand that lay in the crook of his arm, before straightening and assuming an expression of cold superiority as they neared the open door of the manor house. 
Mary dropped her eyes to the floor and schooled her own features. They entered the flagstoned hallway to find every member of the small household neatly turned out and awaiting their new master. Mary introduced them, and her husband spoke to each in calm clipped tones. He left no doubt of who was master, and Mary had to admire his composure. Last to be introduced was Catherine. Beautiful raven-haired Catherine whose eyes were as green as grass and whose figure was lissom and graceful even with the slight bulge of her pregnant belly. Mary couldn’t help a little frisson of fear as she saw her husband’s eyes turn to the pretty member of the Ashleigh family. 
Catherine swept a magnificent curtesy, almost seeming to invite William’s attention to focus on the creamy slopes of her bosom. As she rose from her curtesy, with a matchless grace as yet undiminished by her pregnancy, she lifted her eyelids and looked him straight in the eye before dropping her long, white eyelids and wetting her lips with the tip of her pointed, pink tongue. 
William, however, had already stopped looking and was leading his wife into the parlour. Catherine made as if to follow them but the door was shut firmly in her face. She hissed.  
Inside the sunny room, Mary showed her husband a visage of stark misery before managing to pull herself together. He took her sad face in both hands.
“Why so sorrowful?”
Being unused to the arts of coquetry she answered him with the plain truth.
“I was thinking that now you have seen Catherine you must be regretting your marriage to me. She is an Ashleigh too, and so much more what you deserve.”
William laughed. “If I did not understand your way of thinking, my wife, I would be insulted.”
“Insulted? But she is a beauty, and so clever and bright. I can do naught but keep house and stitch…” 
He put a gentle hand over her lips.
“My dear wife. I have seen the like of your cousin before. She is what they would call a light skirt. But you have no idea what that means do you?”
Mary shook her head.
“It means that your cousin encourages men to take liberties with her person.”
“Oh.” Then Mary thought about what William was saying and many things made sense. “Oh, that is why she is so different with men than with women. Do you think her culpable in her situation?”
“I do not know, my wife. But I would not be surprised.”
There came a tap on the door.
“Enter.” William spoke in a cold severe voice.
The door opened to admit Catherine with her eyes carefully downcast. “Cousin, forgive my interruption, I believe I left my needlework in this room.” 
With that, she put a delicate hand to her forehead and crumpled gracefully into a heap of silken skirts. Somehow as she fell her cap came loose and a wealth of night black hair tumbled about her slender form. William looked down at her and smiled tautly. He bent and picked up the still form, throwing her over one great shoulder as if she was naught but a sack of grain. As he left the room, Catherine opened her eyes and shot Mary a look of barbed hatred mixed with scathing triumph. Mary sat down and awaited developments. She had not long to wait. 
William strode back into the room and shut the door behind him with what was suspiciously close to a slam. He came over to where Mary sat and dropped to his knees beside her chair.
“Mary,” he said with a tread of humour in his deep voice, “your cousin is little better than a wharfside whore.”
Having no idea what he meant, Mary kept her counsel, simply looking into his strong, somewhat harsh, features as calmly as she could. He gave a queer groan and pulled her into his arms, bending his mouth to hers. He kissed her lips, gently at first but then she could feel his mouth growing more urgent against hers. He used his tongue to part her lips and the feel of it invading her mouth sent queer little tingles through her body. He abandoned her mouth, and lifted her into his arms.
“I should wait for this,” he murmured, “but I am not made of stone.” 
  It was some goodly while later and Mary, having very little notion how she got from her parlour to the bedchamber, lay against her husband’s chest idly running her hands through the auburn hair that dusted its surface. She sighed.
“Why the sigh, my wife?”
She dared to lift herself onto her elbows and look down into his face. She thought he looked younger now, and somehow less formidable, but even so she arranged her thoughts carefully before she spoke.
“I am thinking that it was a happy sigh. But I am also worrying that I should not have enjoyed that which passed between us quite so much.”
His laugh was a sound of pure joy and he tumbled her from his chest, rolling to pin her between his hard body and the soft feather mattress. He bent his head and kissed her until she lay boneless in his embrace. Then he smiled. “I am only grateful that you are open to the pleasures of the flesh. It is a gift to us.” 
It was with no little regret that the newlyweds dressed themselves and left the sanctuary of their bed, but there was business to be seen to and neither was of that careless nature that can laugh at tasks undone. 

The Puritan’s Wife is one of the stories in in pulling the rug iii by Jane Jago and part two will be our Weekend Wind Down next Saturday.

It doesn’t take much
Just a moment
A smile to lighten the heart
Just one gentle touch
Is maybe enough
Tell someone you’re taking their part

When life is being
all contrary
A stranger’s words can be so right
Just one litle thing
Said with a grin
May help someone else to feel bright

So next time you’re out
and you notice
That face with a sadly worn frown
Please wish them good day
Those words you say
May help them to feel much less down.

E.M. Swift-Hook