Lindsay Townsend's Blog, page 5
October 19, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Magic of Summer
October is a time of coming winter, of the fall of the leaf. In this excerpt in celebration of Halloween I touch upon magic plants of summer.
This is taken from my novel "A Summer Bewitchment", the sequel to "The Snow Bride."
Excerpt
Outside in the warm, still evening they walked arm in arm, both carrying panniers, and Elfrida shared what she knew of the stranger with Magnus. He in turn told her what he had learned of Rowena from the priest. It was, she thought, strangely companionable, but she wished they were speaking of less dark, mysterious matters.
“Valerian is a magic plant,” she explained, skirting carefully around a flowering elder bush. “It has many uses. One is as a lure. To seduce.”
“And the hare’s foot?” Magnus nodded to the elder bush as he stalked by, a grudging acknowledgement. “The rosemary I know from you is a guardian against evil spirits, so is that good?”
“Because he protects himself from demons and the like does not mean he is not evil himself.”
“Well spoken! The stranger’s mention of a Holy Mother?”
“The hare protects him from all danger. It is a creature of magic. The mother he reveres may be the Virgin, but he worships her in older ways.”
Magnus raised his black brows in silent inquiry.
“The wreath he leaves in thanks and sacrifice, of valerian and elder blossom, marigold, wild thyme and daisy, is made of flowers pleasing to the older gods. I have seen such posies left at ancient standing stones and statues, at rock carvings of the horned god.”
Her striding companion crossed himself. “Rowena is very pretty, so Father Jerome tells me.”
Elfrida nodded, unsurprised. “And docile, too?”
“Indeed. The priest claims they had no notion she might be in any way unhappy at being mewed up in a nunnery.” He scowled, his fingers tightening on his pannier.
“I have heard she is a kind, easy child, but I do not like it, either,” Elfrida admitted. “Would you be more sanguine if she was ill-favored?”
“Not a bit!” He glowered at her. “Do not think to test me, elfling, not this evening, at least. Even without your plan to go star-clad, I like these matters less and less. Do you know what family the Lady Astrid and Rowena are part of? The Gifford clan! Mighty and proud and wealthy.”
“So why do they ask us for help? Why wait five days to ask?”
“Indeed! The ride from Warren Bruer is less than a day, but with haste they could have raced here in hours.”
“So why not come sooner and then we can begin a search? Laggardly, then,” Elfrida observed. “Contradictory.”
“Snail slow, and I agree, contrary. And for the rest”—Magnus puffed out his cheeks—“to them I am a middling landowner and you, I am sorry to say, are utterly beneath notice, in their eyes. They should have far stronger allies than us to draw on.”
“Unless they fear those allies.”
“Do they seem frightened to you?”
Elfrida pointed to a vigorous thicket of hazel coppice and considered as they closed on the straight and slender hazel poles. “The lady is irked, certainly, but I sense no dread from her, only displeasure.”
“At the interruption onto her well-ordered life.”
Trailing a hand across the bright green leaves of the nearest hazel, Elfrida felt a raw sadness, a sense of unrequited loss. “Rowena seems an agreeable child, yet for all that unmissed. Were any of these girls missed?”
Blurb for "A Summer Bewitchment."
When a shadowy piper kidnaps seven beautiful girls, can a wounded knight and his witch save them? Will Sir Magnus and Elfrida find them in time, and at what cost to themselves?
Magnus, the battered crusader knight, and his witch-wife, Elfrida, are happily married but in secret turmoil. Elfrida dreads that her difference in rank with Magnus will undermine his love for her. Wounded and scarred, Magnus fears he will not be able to give Elfrida children.
Their fears are sharpened when high-born Lady Astrid appears at their manor and demands their help to find seven missing girls. The lady clearly regards peasant-born Elfrida as beneath her notice, but why has such a woman sought out Magnus, a country knight? Who does she really want to recover so badly?
In a scorching summer, Magnus and Elfrida search for the missing girls. Can they recover them in time? And will their own marriage be the same?
Genre: Fantasy, Historical
Length: 53,272 words
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“I am the troll king of this land and you owe me a forfeit.”
Elfrida glanced behind the shadowed figure who barred her way. He was alone, but then so was she.
October 18, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Medieval Romances Inspired by the Magic of Fairy Stories, with Excerpts
Beauty and the Beast
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“I am the troll king of this land and you owe me a forfeit.”
Elfrida glanced behind the shadowed figure who barred her way. He was alone, but then so was she.
Free to read with KindleUnlimited
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Excerpt http://bit.ly/2uEj8Z5
“I am to marry again,” she whispered, through frozen lips.
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Sleeping Beauty
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“Win him within the month, become his mistress…or I will adopt Matthew as my own.”
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Enjoy!
October 12, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. A magical place in Ancient Roman Bath
The ancient world believe in magic. In my novel "Flavia's Secret", set in ancient Roman Bath, the heroine Flavia takes the hero Marcus to a place that was rumoured to have belonged to a sorcerer. Here is an excerpt of what they found.
Leaving the carter in one of the side alleys close to the Great Bath, Flavia darted ahead through the ever-increasing crowds and took Marcus off in the direction of the small hot spring sacred to the healing god Aesculapius, a part of the city he had rarely been in. She sped past the tall, oval, roofless walls of the small healing spring, her bright hair visible to Marcus even among the throngs of visitors and worshippers who gathered to make offerings and offer prayers to Aesculapius. Coming to a cross-roads, she glanced back to check that he was still following and walked quickly down a narrow, unpaved side street.
‘Not far,’ she said as he caught up. She slowed as they reached the high boundary wall of a private house. The back boundary wall, Marcus registered, as Flavia looked up and down the street.
She stepped close to him and muttered, ‘When no one is close we climb over the wall. The house is deserted,’ she added.
Marcus stifled amazement and questions and waited for Flavia’s tense, ‘Go!’ before launching himself at the high wall.
There were jutting stones and easy hand-holds in the weathered stone and Flavia climbed as swiftly as he did, nimbly reaching the flat top of the wall and rolling over the other side. He did the same, dropping afterwards into the garden of the deserted house.
Flavia came beside him. ‘Will you wait here? Just for a moment. I don’t think there will be any of my people here at this time, not so early in the morning when there are many tasks to be done, but even so I need to make sure we are alone.’ She gave him a considering look. ‘You would alarm them.’
‘I will wait.’ Folding his arms, Marcus leaned back against the boundary wall.
It was hard for him to watch her leave, darting between the bushes and trees of the overgrown garden, but he knew that he must. She had to know that she could trust him.
Her footsteps were soon lost in the clamour of the unseen streets around them and in the fallen leaves and bare earth paths of this strange, deserted place.
The garden was wildly overgrown, full of straggling rose bushes with wizened red hips and unclipped rosemary and lavender bushes. The little of the house he could see through the bushes and the spreading branches of an oak tree growing in the centre of the garden looked very old. He could just make out some sagging timber walls with peeling paint and a broken-tiled roof.
‘What is this place?’ he asked when Flavia returned, skirting round a rosemary almost as tall as she was.
‘It is supposed to be haunted by the last owner, who was rumoured to be a sorcerer,’ she answered calmly. ‘I think that is why it is still deserted. That, or the man’s family cannot agree what to do with it. A slave showed me how to come here many years ago, soon after I had lost my parents and before Lady Valeria bought me. I think he was sorry for me. He said it was a place of safety and peace for slaves, that if the owner did haunt the house and grounds, he gave no trouble to slaves. The slave told me that we could be ourselves here and no one would see.’
She tilted up her chin, the rising sun lighting her red lips and rose complexion, making her look prettier than ever. Marcus forced himself to attend to what she was saying.
‘The slave made me promise never to tell anyone else about this place—except for one person, who must also swear the same.’
‘And that’s me?’ Marcus asked, astonished and amazed afresh, honored and touched by her confidence.
She smiled at him: an old smile, a secretive smile that he had sometimes seen on his mother’s face. ‘It is safe to go on: no one else is here,’ she said. ‘I will show you round.’
* * * *
Walking quickly, to show that she did not regret her decision to share this place with him, Flavia returned along the twisting beaten-earth path between the rampant rosemary and lavender bushes. One more twist of the path and they reached the heart of the garden and its startling secret—a private outdoor pool, its shimmering waters steaming in the sun.
‘By Mithras, what a place.’ Looking around, Marcus halted beside her, dropping onto his knees to test the waters of the deep, lead-lined pool. ‘It’s hot!’ he exclaimed, shaking moisture from his hand.
Flavia pointed to a large lead pipe leading away from the pool in the direction of the deserted house before it was lost in the luxuriant undergrowth.
‘We think the owner fixed a conduit somewhere off the spring waters of the Aesculapius spring and directed some of the thermal water here,’ she explained. ‘The pool drains somewhere, too, but we do not know where.’
Marcus sat back on his heels. ‘We?’
‘Those of us who come here, when we can.’
‘Your own private bathing place.’ Marcus jumped to his feet again and walked around the marbled perimeter of the pool. ‘I am surprised nobody has tried to make money with it.’
‘We are careful who we tell,’ Flavia said, squashing disappointment at Marcus’ mercenary approach, but he was staring across the sun-gilded water at the leaf-strewn timber portico leading to the deserted house.
‘I am not surprised at that,’ he said quietly. ‘It is beautiful.’
He watched a small breeze tumble a bronze oak leaf along a small marble walkway leading from the semi-derelict portico to the edge of the pool. ‘Mysterious, quite eerie, but also...comforting. As if you are in an entirely different world.’ He turned about, pointing to the sparkling spiders’ webs on the lavender bushes, rimed with heavy dew. ‘Somewhere forgotten by the rest of the city. A place where magical things become possible.’
‘You understand,’ Flavia whispered, breathing out in relief.
He smiled. ‘It is more than likely that the old owner saw an easy chance to grab some free hot water, but what he has made here, what time has made...I am not surprised he was thought to be a sorcerer.’
Marcus held out both hands to her. ‘Thank you for sharing this, and be assured—your secret with be safe in my keeping.’
Flavia walked to the edge of the secret pool and joined him in studying the waters.
‘It has hardly changed,’ she murmured. As if from far off, she caught a faint whiff of incense wafting from the altars close to the spring shrine to Aesculapius. Listening, she could hear nothing of the city outside the high boundary walls, only her own breathing and the creak of the bare-branched oak tree. A raven was perched in its branches, preening itself. She and Marcus were standing away from the shade of the empty house, in a clear patch of warm flagstones where the bushes had not yet encroached. The sun was warm on her skin and Marcus’ hand around hers warmer still.
Flavia's Secret
Dare Celtic Flavia trust her new Roman Master Marcus?
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#Romance #HistoricalRomance #AncientWorld #Roman Britain #RomanceNovel #RomanBath #Chapter One http://www.lindsaytownsend.co.uk/2019/01/flavias-secret-romance-novel-99cents.html
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October 8, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Encounter with a medieval demon
In this excerpt, Yolande, my medieval exorcist, and her companion Geraint the juggler both strive against a dangerous, seductive demon.
Yolande recalled the impossible charisma the incubus had cast over Geraint. He had been perfect. Not daring to close her eyes in case she fell asleep and dreamed what the incubus wanted her to dream, she concentrated on the rank, real scent of the winter cabbages and the hard, dry soil beneath her bottom and legs. The earth God made for us, real and imperfect because we are real and imperfect. Our free choices make us so.
“He escaped you,” she said through tight lips.
“Surprised me, yes, but he was not so much of a challenge, not in his appearance, at least.”
Surface and appearance mattered to demons. Yolande’s left leg twitched as her booted foot went numb. She clung to the discomfort to keep her fixed, to remember she did not float on a great, cushion-strewn bed, surrounded by sweet wax candles and caressed by a loving Geraint. She was sitting in Halme village in a garden plot, beside frost-withered cabbage.
“Human females are earthier than their menfolk, much easier to seduce in the ways of the flesh, but harder to win in the realms of ideas.”
“You like flesh too,” Yolande pointed out.
“Very much, sweet one. Those fresh, pretty things and their randy dreams, and ripe, well-used wives fancying other carnal delights…quite delicious. I want to lose myself in them every night until the day of judgment.”
Pig. Geraint’s face drifted before her as her mind annoyingly dredged up the mud of their last quarrel. She chewed her lip, fighting the urge to argue with both Geraint and the demon. The demon incubus for sure, since he has admitted how much he enjoys women’s flesh and dreams.
“William liked ideas,” the incubus droned on. “Our dear Father William loved the idea of secret knowledge and for a time he loved the idea of sex. He wanted to know what it was like. I helped him find out. He liked it very much for a time and then he got bored with the same female.”
Hilda had been seduced and discarded by her own priest to satisfy his fleeting curiosity. The pain of such casual cruelty twisted in Yolande’s chest and a raging anger launched her to her feet. She leapt out of the garden patch, screaming at the heavens, “He murdered her! By what he did, he murdered her!”
“And the babe within her, sweet one. Two for one, just for good measure.”
This time, grief almost knocked her off her feet but anger kept her up and moving.
“Remember where you left your bow?” the incubus tongued in her ear, sticky as rancid honey. “Why not pick it up and seek out the priest?”
“I will,” she vowed, running. “I will.”
* * * * *
Geraint followed Father William to the priest’s cottage. The man entered and crashed about inside, smashing pots and overturning the trestle, spoiling all that he and Yolande had done.
Time passed, he grew colder waiting and watching, and still Father William lumbered about indoors. How many places has the fellow left to search? What is he seeking?
“Bertha!” the priest yelled suddenly and the rooks in the stand of rowans took flight in a burst of flapping wings. “Bertha, you slattern, where are you hiding?”
“Anywhere away from you, I should think.” Yolande strode to the cottage and hammered on the door.
“Just ignore me.” Geraint wondered if she had even noticed him, but then she turned and he saw the bow in her clenched fist.
“Come out, you!” she shouted, jerking round again to kick the door with her boot. “Destroyer!” One kick and the door shook. “Rapist!” And again, a hefty kick. “Murderer!”
A piece of wood flew out from the groaning timbers, but Yolande merely swatted it aside. More than that, she had not seen him. In her fury she could see nothing but the closed door, and with that knowledge a worm of fear slithered along Geraint’s spine. In all their time together he had never seen her in such a steaming rage.
“Come out, coward. I am a woman like Hilda, a woman like the blessed Virgin. Open the door!”
“And get an arrow in your groin.” Stealing closer, Geraint picked his way carefully through the stand of rowans. He did not want to be shot by mistake.
“Yolande,” he called, before she kicked and hammered afresh. “Yolande, is he worth this?”
She spun about, her mouth agape, her eyes glittering. Rage and more was in her.
“Geraint, he killed her just as if he had dashed her brains out with a stone.”
“I know, cariad, but if he dies by your arrow now, cui bono?” His question, the Latin, was a tug to her learning and training, a reminder of who and what she was and one, he prayed, that would give her pause. “What will it do to your soul?” he went on softly.
She snorted. “Who benefits? The folk here would get a better priest, at least.”
“But would they?” Geraint stepped out completely from the final, closest rowan, and stood utterly still for a moment, letting Yolande see him. “So many priests have died in the pestilence. Father William in there, with his single error—”
Her bow arm tightened. “One mistake? One?”
He did not flinch as Yolande brought her arm up and her bow quivered at him, its string humming as if alive. He knew she was not quite herself. Somehow that incubus has sneaked through her defenses.
His throat was as dry as a desert, but the performer in him was excited, his mind quick and clear. One wrong step, one poor answer and we all go down, but I have not fallen yet.
“An error of fatal curiosity, leading to sin,” he replied quietly. “But can we judge him? Are we the Almighty, to judge?”
“Always so glib.” Yolande frowned and he crossed his fingers tightly behind his back, sweating a little in case she guessed his lie. The priest could go to the devil for him, but if she killed Father William now, the act would haunt her forever.
One false step… The back of his neck prickled, but he was sure, very sure—almost sure—of what he was doing. Here goes.
“I challenge you to show otherwise,” he answered.
Yolande, high and blood-buzzing in her anger, answered without thinking, “Yes, yes, I take your challenge.”
“Good lass.”. Swaying his hips like a streetwalker, he strolled up to her.
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ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi, vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
October 6, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Being a witch does not mean one is invulnerable
Elfrida, the heroine in my "Snow Bride" is a powerful witch, skilled in healing, finding and more.
She is not invulnerable however, including illness. (Chicken pox, which I had in my 20s and remember vividly.)
Here are two excerpts showing her fretful, irritable and anxious, with Magnus, the warrior who has found her in the woodlands. The first excerpt is from Magnus' point of view.
The Snow Bride
She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?
Book One of The Knight and the Witch
England, winter, 1131
Elfrida, spirited, caring and beautiful, is also alone. She is the witch of the woods and no man dares to ask for her hand in marriage until a beast comes stalking brides and steals away her sister. Desperate, the lovely Elfrida offers herself as a sacrifice, as bridal bait, and she is seized by a man with fearful scars. Is he the beast?
In the depths of a frozen midwinter, in the heart of the woodland, Sir Magnus, battle-hardened knight of the Crusades, searches ceaselessly for three missing brides, pitting his wits and weapons against a nameless stalker of the snowy forest. Disfigured and hideously scarred, Magnus has finished with love, he thinks, until he rescues a fourth 'bride', the beautiful, red-haired Elfrida, whose innocent touch ignites in him a fierce passion that satisfies his deepest yearnings and darkest desires.
Excerpt
Magnus was worried. The fire he had made should have brought his people. It was an old signal, well-known between them. His men should have reached the village by now—that had been the arrangement. They were bringing traps and provisions in covered wagons, and hunting dogs and horses. He had been impatient to start his pursuit of the Forest Grendel and so rode ahead, returning with the messenger until that final stretch when the man turned off to his home. He had ridden on alone, finding the wayside shrine.
But from then, all had gone awry. Instead of the monster, he had found an ailing witch, and the snowstorm had lost him more tracks and time.
Magnus shook his head, turning indulgent eyes to the small, still figure on the rough pallet. At least the little witch had slept through the night and day, snug and safe, and he had been able to make her a litter from woven branches. He would give his fire signal a little longer and then return Elfrida to her village. There he might find someone who could translate between them.
Perhaps she did have power, for even as he looked at her, she sat up, the hood of her cloak falling away, and stared at him in return. She said something, then repeated it, and he drew in a great gulp of cold air in sheer astonishment, then laughed.
“I know what you said!” He wanted to kiss her, spots and all.
He burst into a clumsy canter, dragging his peg leg a little and almost tumbling onto her bed. She caught him by the shoulders and tried to steady him but collapsed under his weight.
They finished in an untidy heap on the pallet, with Elfrida hissing by his ear, “Why have you done such a foolish thing as to burn all our fuel?”
He rolled off her, knocked snow off his front and beard, and said in return, “How did you know I would know the old speech, the old English?”
“I dream true, and I dreamed this.” She was blushing, though not, he realized quickly, from shyness.
“Why burn so wildly?” she burst out, clearly furious. “You have wasted it! All that good wood gone to ash!”
“My men know my sign and will come now the storm has gone.” He had not expected thanks or soft words, but he was not about to be scolded by this red-haired nag.
“That is your plan, Sir Magnus? To burn half the forest to alert your troops?”
“A wiser plan than yours, madam, setting yourself as bait. Or had your village left you hanging there, perhaps to nag the beast to death?”
Her face turned as scarlet as the fire. “So says any witless fool! ’Tis too easy a charge men make against women, any woman who thinks and acts for herself. And no man orders me!”
Magnus swallowed the snort of laughter filling up his throat. He doubted she saw any amusement in their finally being able to speak to each other only to quarrel. Had she been a man or a lad, he would have knocked her into the snow, then offered a drink of mead, but such rough fellowship was beyond him here.
“And how would you have fought off any knave, or worse, that found you?” he asked patiently. “You did not succeed with me.”
“There are better ways to vanquish a male than brute force. I knew what I was about!”
“Truly? You were biding your time? And the pox makes you alluring?”
“Says master gargoyle! My spots will pass!”
“Or did you plan to scatter a few herbs, perhaps?”
He thought he heard her clash her teeth together. “I did not plan my sickness, and I do not share my secrets! Had you not snatched me away, had you not interfered, I would know where the monster lives. I would have found my sister! I would be with her!” Her voice hitched, and a look of pain and dread crossed her face. “We would be together. Whatever happens, I would be with her.”
“This was Christina?”
“Is Christina, not was, never was! I know she lives!”
Magnus merely nodded, his temper cooling rapidly as he marked how her color had changed and her body shook. A desperate trap to recover a much-loved sister excused everything, to his way of thinking.
She called you a gargoyle! This piqued his vanity and pride.
But she does not think you the monster, Magnus reminded himself in a dazzled, shocked wonder, embracing that knowledge like a lover.
Published August 15th by Prairie Rose Publications
FREE to read with Kindle Umlinted.
To buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VSHHX4N
Here's a second excerpt, from Elfrida's viewpoint.
EXCERPT:
“How are the spots? Itching yet?”
Elfrida gave a faint shudder. “Do not remind me.” Since stirring, she had been aware of her whole body tickling and burning. Mark’s idea of rolling in the snow might not be so bad.
“Walter told me that the village of Great Yarr has a bathhouse. Bathing in oatmeal will help you.”
She did not say that the village could afford to spare no foodstuffs and would not be distracted. She had tried to rush off in pursuit of the monster before and gained nothing, so now she would gather her strength and learn before she moved. “What did you call the beast? ForestGrendel? Is it known he lives in the forest?”
Magnus shook his head. “It is not known, but I do not think so now, or at least not outdoors. I have hunted wolf’s heads who have been outlawed and fled into woodland, and they always have camps and dens and food caches within the forest. I have found none of those hereabouts.”
“My dowsing caught no sign of any lair of his,” Elfrida agreed.
Magnus leaned forward, bracing himself with his injured arm. Elfrida forced herself not to stare at his stump, but to listen to him.
“Do you sense anything?” he asked softly.
“The night you came, I felt something approach.” She frowned, trying to put into words feelings and impressions that were as elusive as smoke. “A great purpose,” she said. “A need and urgent desire.”
Now Magnus was frowning. “Have you a charm or magic that will help?”
“Do you think I have not tried magic, charms, and incantations? My craft is not like a sword fight, where the blades are always true. If God does not will it—”
“I have been in enough fights where swords break.”
“Are your men good trackers?”
“They would not be with me, else.” If Magnus was startled by her determination to talk only of the beast, he gave no sign. “Tell me of your sister and her habits. Did she keep to the same paths and same tasks each day?”
“Yes and yes, but what else did Walter say? The old men have told me nothing!”
“No, they do not want the womenfolk to know anything, even you, I fear.” His kind eyes gleamed, as if he enjoyed her discomfiture. He had a small golden cross in his right eye, she noticed, shining amidst the warm brown.
A sparkle for the lasses, eh, Magnus?
To her further discomfiture, she realized he had asked her something. “Say again, please?”
“Would you like some food to go with your mead? There are the remains of mutton, dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey.” His brown eyes gleamed. “My men found it in the clearing where I found you. The mutton has been a bit chewed, but the rest is palatable, I think.”
“It is drugged!” Elfrida burst out. “I put”—she could not think of the old word and used her own language instead—“I put a sleeping draft in the wedding cakes and all.” She seized his arm, not caring that it was the one with the missing hand. “Do not eat it!”
“Sleeping draft?” He used her own words.
She yawned and feigned sleep, startled when he started to laugh.
“A wedding feast to send the groom to sleep! I like it!” He chuckled again and opened his left hand, where, to Elfrida’s horror, there was one of her own small wedding cakes.
Published August 15th by Prairie Rose Publications
FREE to read with Kindle Umlinted.
To buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VSHHX4N
October 5, 2020
October - The Halloween Month. Revenants and more
In my "Dark Maiden" we learn what revenants are, plus the dangers of being a black, female exorcist in a time of suspicion and plague.
Excerpt.
“Revenants are spirits who will not rest,” Geraint said before the reeve’s wife had another objection. “They are departed souls who will not leave, because they wish to have revenge, or justice.”
“Or they cling to a place they loved in life, or to their beloved,” added Yolande quietly.
In an echo of the large-breasted goodwife, the reeve’s wife folded her arms across her middle. “Is this not a matter for our priest?”
“But Godith, Father William is so old, and consider what he says concerning the rest,” Michael pleaded.
“That all trouble is the girls’ own sins.” Godith crossed herself, while Yolande sighed and stared into the fire.
“One of those priests,” she remarked softly in Welsh.
“Now we know why he did not summon you, or come out of his house or church to welcome you,” Geraint answered in the same tongue. “A black female exorcist will be a great evil to him.”
“And Father William has often taken to his bed this past ten days.” Michael shrugged his drooping shoulders in a gesture of hopelessness.
“No priest here, and at the darkest time of the year, when spirits and the dead gather,” Yolande said in Welsh. Geraint wished he could tip the priest out of this village and drag in another. The Archbishop of York should be able to help her and would do very well.
“What are you saying? Are you talking about me?” demanded Godith’s youngest daughter.
“No, my lovely.” Geraint snapped his fingers. The girl drew a new blue ribbon from her hair and exclaimed with delight.
Yolande cast him a look. “Still up to your old tricks?”
“You will not wear the ribbons I bought for you, so why should I not give them to these girls?” The three lasses, chattering like magpies, tugged more new ribbons from their hair.
“How do you do it?” Yolande inquired as the tension in the hut vanished like a burst soap bubble.
“You have the secrets of your trade and I have mine.” He wanted to give her more, of course—bright ribbons, bright tunics to suit her sultry looks—but so far she had smiled at him very prettily for his ribbons but not worn them. And as for tunics…she had told him, quietly, that an envious spirit or demon would be tempted to tear such clothes off her and he could not argue with that. She was the exorcist.
Their eyes met, she still in drab sage-and-mud-colored clothes, he in his tattered motley. What would it be like to kiss her again, really kiss her? He need only lean forward to find out…
His fragile dream was shattered by the reeve, who pushed himself up from the family’s low sleeping platform and said to Yolande, “I have something to show you in the lean-to.”
Geraint gave the rest of his bowl of porry to the twins and leapt to his feet. “I will come too.”
If Michael Steward was about to confess anything, he wanted to hear it. And he was not about to let Yolande out of his protection, whatever her skills.
She may be the exorcist but by the pricking at the base of my neck I would say there is danger here, a practical, knife blade kind of risk. My kind of danger.
* * * * *
She knew she and Geraint had been betrayed, even before Michael Steward broke into a ragtag run outside the lean-to, galloping and gasping into the night. She knew even before the torches bloomed into fire and a stink of anxious, stale bodies crowded into her nostrils. She knew by instinct as Geraint knew. She could feel the tension in his body as he stepped straight behind her, shielding her as so often in these past few months.
Yolande had her bow, her sacred bow of Saint Sebastian, but no room to draw it. And she could do better by far than make these fearful people her unrelenting enemies.
The instant before the torches were lit in the dying garden plot of the reeve’s house, she had made her plan and acted on it.
She raised her fist and called out, “I have a mandrake here and the seven herbs of Christ. If you do me or mine harm, the herbs will change into spears. The mandrake will turn into a man and you will die.”
She paused, allowing her pity for the villagers’ fear to drain away. “You will die badly, believe me.”
“Believe her,” hissed Geraint out of the gloom, keeping out of range of the flickering torchlight. “I have seen the mandrake-man and it is terrible.”
“That proves you are a witch!” shouted a woman, and one of the torches swayed as she lost her footing on the damp ground.
“No witch may touch the seven herbs of Christ and live,” said Yolande calmly. Glimpsing a flash of white as another villager moved an arm, she stooped, plucked a pebble from the earth and threw it all in a single movement. The woman howled and dropped her dagger, where it lay gleaming.
“You are black as Satan!” called another woman, and others in the circle echoed her cry.
“Or Saint Maurice or the Magi,” Yolande replied.
Godith came to the door. “How do we know you came in answer to the reeve’s call?”
“I came, Godith, because that is my Christian duty. You need my help here.”
“But you are black,” mumbled Godith. Encouraged by shouts of agreement, she joined the crowd.
Mother of God, I grow weary of this complaint. For so many, I am either a luck-charm or an evil. And Geraint is blacker-hued than me, at least in the summer. “I have touched relics of the saints that are darker.” She grinned, knowing her teeth and eyes would show very white and bright against the torches. “Come, shall we say the creed together?”
“But Godith is right. How do we know you are not sent by them?” protested a third voice, high as a shrilling bat.
“By Christ, they are all women here,” muttered Geraint, and Yolande caught the strain in his voice. He would fight any man but females he revered.
“Fear not, honeyman,” she whispered. “Not one is possessed, and I can deal with the rest.”
To Godith and her cohorts she made the sign of the cross and recited the first line of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. In English she said, “No demon can do that, believe me.”
“And believe me, my heart, when I say you should convert these women quickly,” said Geraint beside her. “Before we are burned to a cinder or torn limb from limb would be best.” He switched to Welsh. “You have never used mandrake in your life.”
“You are not the only one who can make a feint,” she replied in the same tongue.
“Take care you do not do so with me, cariad, is all I ask.”
She chuckled, keeping her laugh fat and easy while she scanned the big eyes and fluttering fingers that hovered round the crackling torches.
#DiverseRomance #Romance DARK MAIDEN http://amzn.to/2qEuKcL
ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
October 4, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Witch-craft in everyday life
In the Middle Ages, many people in witch-craft and the power of charms, spells, prayers, chants, amulets and more.
Today for my excerpt I draw on my latest novel, "The Master Cook and the Maiden." The hero, Swein, is a great-grandson of Magnus and Elfrida, the warrior and witch from "The Snow Bride." He has inherited some of both Elfrida's and Magnus' skills, plus Elfrida's hand-written notes.
Here are some of Swein's thoughts on the matter:
My blood-kin think me mad, to share the bounty of a full year’s work with those I have adopted, but why should I not? He had enough for his needs and he loved to give. To see the joyful faces of good souls like Katherine and Martin was its own reward.
After all, I got this bit of land and the old warren tower—sadly without rabbits!—as a gift from a lord who liked my feasts and loving cups, especially as a Christmas cup and special bread-cake helped him and his wife produce a healthy heir. He was as glad and generous then as an old lord in a mead hall, like Magnus and my Viking forebears. These and other, more portable gifts mean I can be generous, too, so why should I not spread the pleasure?
For the rest of it, his skill with healing, in particular the re-kindling of a stale marriage, was down to the herb magic his great grandmother had practiced and passed along the family.
Elfrida knew what she was about as a hedge-witch and so do I.
It was his secret, a trait of kin like the left-handedness in Davie’s family, and one Swein zealously guarded. None of his older brothers, even quick-moving Gideon, had it. They inherited lands or horses, so did not need it.
Swein built up the brush, kindling and logs of the fire pit. He had never been bitter over the good fortune of his elders, not when he was his own master and made his own luck. Clicking his tongue in satisfaction, he popped a bag of oats into the cart and the flat stone he could use as a griddle to make oat-cakes.
“What is that?” Alfwen burst in a blast of colour from out of the fog. She pointed to the blackened flat stone.
Another excerpt, where Swein plans to use magic to help in hunting a deer. Alfwen, the heroine, is partly convent-raised and is a little uneasy with magic.
“The magic will be worked by the new moon, three nights from now.” I will go out into the forest, to find the bones of red deer, and eat nothing until I do so. I will use the leather-worker punch to drill crosses and arrows on the bone and bury the bone in the woodland under a sacred holly tree, with prayers. Energised, Swein moved to return to the garden, where he was helping Davie extract a stubborn tree root, when a new voice made him pause.
“Is that Christian?” Alfwen ventured. She coloured and stopped the grindstone as the old archers stared.
“Says the woman who faked her own drowning, said Mary, entering the tower with a basket of hens eggs. Her blue eyes hard as chips of ice.
“I have never denied that,” Alfwen responded.
“You come here, live with us for weeks, eat our food and then dare to judge?”
How long had Mary been festering with this? Swein drew in breath to respond but Alfwen was faster.
“One question only, Mary, and as for staying here I have helped grind the flour for our bread, the bread you eat, I have scrubbed and washed the tunics of the men, including your mate, and weeded the beans and peas with you. How am I a threat? Do you see the church’s agents prowling about?”
“Enough.” Swein swiftly stepped between them before Alfwen or Mary or Davie brought in names, such as the Abbot of Saint Albans, and made the argument personal. “We do not fall out among ourselves.”
The Master Cook and the Maiden - Blurb
Lindsay Townsend
Vengeance or love? Will Alfwen have to choose between them? And what part will the Master Cook Swein play in her life?
Thrust into a convent against her will by her selfish brother Walter, Alfwen hears nothing more from him until Walter’s dog Teazel appears at Saint Hilda’s, carrying the dark message, “Avenge me.”
Walter is dead, possibly murdered. He demands vengeance from Alfwen. What will she do?
Swein is a Master Cook, generous and proudly independent, the youngest of a loving family and heir to a powerful crusader and a witch. When he rescues a strange girl from the river, even Swein cannot foresee the dangers and adventures he and Alfwen will need to overcome.
Facing down outlaws, bullies, potential poisoners, a corrupt priest and brutal knights, Swein fights with Alfwen to recover her lands and title as Lady de Harne and find justice for Walter. Can they rescue each other from a deadly conspiracy? And will their marriage in name become a marriage in fact?
#ROMANCENOVELS#MEDIEVALTHE SNOW BRIDE(THE KNIGHT&THE WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0UK https://amzn.to/2H1tYzY#EXCERPT https://bit.ly/2yV95Cb
THE MASTER COOK AND THE MAIDEN
Vengeance…or love? Will Alfwen have to choose between them? And what part will the handsome Master Cook, Swein, play in her life?
UK
Romance MedievalRomance RomanceNovel
The Rose and the Sword Novel Series
October 1, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Ghosts, Ghost-finders, and fighting a demon.
Halloween and Samhain, a time when the barriers between this world and that of the spirits are said to be thinner.
In my romance novel, "Dark Maiden" I explore the medieval beliefs to ghosts, spirits, demons and more via my female heroine Yolande, is an exorcist.
#DiverseRomance #Romance DARK MAIDEN http://amzn.to/2qEuKcL
Paperback at Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-maiden-lindsay-townsend/1115141813;jsessionid=52516BF66BF1AA5ABB015DCEEB2557A2.prodny_store01-atgap14?ean=9781546554400
ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
APPEARED IN
HNR Issue 82 (November 2017)
ON PAGE 14 OF THE ONLINE WEBSITE REVIEWS HERE:
REVIEWED BY
When we first meet the Black Maiden Yolande in 1350, she is crouching behind a tub armed with bow and arrow, pretending to bathe in place of a novice who had been beleaguered by an apparition. A formidable exorcist, she apprehends a lecher mislabeled as an evil spirit. Who but Geraint, an easy-going Welshman juggler, could be a better romantic match for Yolande on her quest of tracking down and ridding evil spirits in plague-stricken England? In between facing demons, displaced souls, and an incubus, Geraint lustily woos the Black Maiden. The courtship is complicated by an abbot’s instructions that Yolande preserve her maidenhead, a barrier to a demon trying to possess her, for a time of seven, until she fulfills her duty. Not sure if the time is in days, weeks, or years, Geraint is nonetheless determined to win Yolande’s hand as they roam town from town, each of which holds dark secrets of people who live there.
Lindsay Townsend has created a masterfully written romance intermixed with the horrors of the plague and the superstitions that arise out of its chaos. The voice is heavily sprinkled with humor, making this a thoroughly entertaining story. I was hooked from the first page and could not put the book down. The dialogue is witty, the characters are well-developed, and the stories of the people whom the couple meet are heartfelt. The rituals of exorcising demons and helping displaced souls find their spiritual home base is well-researched and fascinating. Most of all, the love scenes are sensual but tastefully written.
Dark Maiden is a must-read for readers who love historical romance with unique characters and a dash of paranormal elements. Highly recommended.
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MON
EXCERPT 1 AND BLURB
Dark Maiden
Historical Paranormal Romance
Lindsay Townsend
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
Beautiful Yolande comes from an exotic line of exorcists—a talent she considers a gift—and a curse. In fourteenth century England, a female exorcist who is also black is an oddity. She is sought after and trusted to quiet the restless dead and to send revenants to their final rest.
Geraint the Welshman captures Yolande’s heart with his ready smile and easy ways, and the passionate fire of his spirit. An entertainer, he juggles and tumbles his way through life—but there is a serious side to him that runs deep. He offers Yolande an added strength in her work and opens his heart to her with a love such as she’s never known.
But Yolande is not free to offer Geraint her love completely—not until her “time of seven” has passed.
Can the powerful attraction between them withstand the powers of evil who mean to separate them forever? Yolande’s conscience and conviction force her to face this evil head-on—but can Geraint save his Dark Maiden…
Part One: Dark Maiden
Chapter One
England, the North, summer 1350.
She could smell the spirits of the restless dead. It was not the sickly sweet rot of the fleshy body, nor the whiff of lavender and violets of the saints. Demons, being fallen angels, did not stink of sulfur, but the angry dead were ripe with it.
Yolande crouched behind the bathtub with her bow, hunting by waiting. She heard the murmur of distant prayers in the summer twilight as the nuns and novices performed another sacred office. With her right shoulder snug against the tub, she flexed her legs and toes within her man’s leggings and boots, grateful she was not yet numb. She did not think her task would take too long.
The novice Mary-Joanna should have been bathing tonight, to ease her aching joints. She was a comely young woman, but powerfully afflicted by pain. Yolande, a head taller and blessed with vigorous health, pitied the girl. She did not know if Mary-Joanna had a true vocation, but she agreed with the abbess that the novice should not be beleaguered by an evil imp when she was semi naked within this tiny bathhouse.
Evil imp was how the abbess described the apparition. After listening to the older woman’s account of its habits, Yolande had her own suspicions. She had agreed willingly to pretend to bathe in Mary-Joanna’s place.
The bow and its arrows had been blessed by the abbess and dipped in holy water, to cover all possibilities.
She breathed in slowly, sensing her own balance, feeling the sacred herbs she always wore about her throat brush dryly against her skin. She saw no movement but her ears , thank the saints, were good and she heard a slight shuffling outside.
Yolande braced herself, chanting the great prayer of Saint Patrick, known as Saint Patrick’s breastplate, within her mind. As if in answer to her prayer, the door to the narrow lean-to yawned open.
A figure loomed across the threshold, faceless, soundless and black, even as the abbess had said. It slithered inside and closed the door again.
The spirit torments our novices, manifesting to them within the bathhouse, seeking to steal their immortal souls, the abbess had said.
“Sneak a peek, more likely.” Yolande’s heart was as steady as a slow drum inside her chest. “No spirit stops to shut a door.” She set and released an arrow all in one, smooth, practiced movement.
The arrow flew, hissing across the bathhouse tiles. The “spirit” howled as its cloak was pinned to the door, and tugged desperately at the caught cloth with a spindly human hand.
Dropping her bow, Yolande sprinted and lunged, knocking the man hard against the solid wood, jamming her elbow across his scrawny throat.
“You… bitch…black…bitch,” the fellow wheezed as she pulled off his hood.
“But no restless dead,” Yolande countered. She stripped him of his eating dagger then yanked him round while he was still shocked and tied his hands behind his back with his own hood.
“Could not see you…” The man was still grumbling. “You are so black.”
“Not as black as my father, nor as white as my mother,” Yolande replied. “You should be considering how you can plead with the sisters, instead of wondering about me.”
She put her hand firmly on his shoulder to “guide” him to the abbess. From his faint stench of fear— urine, sweat and manure, she knew he was utterly human. Her skills as an exorcist had not been needed, not against this gawping lecher, who liked to watch the pretty novices as they bathed.
Would that all my trials were so easy. At least there is no more here than this, Mother be thanked. It is not my final contest, not yet.
****
The convent was small and poor but the abbess invited Yolande to stay for the night. She accepted gratefully, asking only if she might pray in church before the shrine of the Virgin Mary.
“All penitents are welcome, daughter,” said the abbess, her wrinkled face pinched with curiosity. She took in Yolande’s outlandish attire with rapid, considering glances. “Let me guide you.”
Resigned, Yolande nodded thanks, matched her long, loose stride to her companion’s trip-trotting gait and waited for the first question.
Sure enough, as they entered the dimmed church of the convent the abbess asked, “You are not a religious? You belong to no order?”
“No, Mother.”
Beside her, the shorter woman pursed her lips. “You are still of the world?”
“I am.”
The abbess crossed herself. “So how are you an exorcist, if you have no vocation?”
Yolande had been asked this often and each time she gave the same answer. “I have a duty, Mother, as my father did before me.”
“But how?”
“In these times, when so many religious are falling to the pestilence, God calls others.” Wishing to say no more, especially concerning her parents, she asked simply, “May I pray, Mother?”
The abbess did not refuse her request. Instead, as if Yolande herself had developed the pestilence, she waddled hastily away, her habit flying.
Yolande chuckled softly and turned to the painted statue of the Virgin, ready to begin her vigil.
* * * * *
Geraint the Welshman unwrapped the wooden crucifix and set it on the trestle between him and the lanky-haired pardoner. Around them, men continued to haggle over deals and drinking games, their faces shrouded by the sooty torches and smoky fire. A pardoner in an alehouse at any hour, especially this early in the morning, should have been worthy of remark, but these days no one said or saw anything. With plague stalking every town and village street in England, men stayed home with their families or made themselves drunk, falling-down-blind drunk, in the alehouses.
Few wanted to watch or pay for his juggling these days, so when this pardoner had sidled across, clutching a rough cloth bag and wheedling for a moment of his time, Geraint had let the fellow buy him a cup of wine.
“You trust me to deliver this?” He tapped the crucifix. “I could take it for firewood.”
“Not if you know what is wise for you, my son.”
Geraint stiffened slightly but told himself that the pardoner could not know his past. Yes, he had been a novice in a monastery and yes, at age ten he had punched the novice-master and been expelled, but had he the time again he would do the same. Old crook-nose, as he was now, would be less eager to fondle the boys under his charge.
“Your threat does not impress, brother,” he replied.
“Forgive me. I am the messenger only. But if this is not delivered to Yolande, she will have your skin.”
Geraint drained his cup, chewing on the lees, and made to leave.
“Listen.” The pardoner was so earnest that his face had gone as red as his script. “She is at the convent of the Holy Sisters of Fealty beyond the old Roman fort, ridding them of an evil imp, or so I have been told. You could walk there in less than two hours and win her gratitude.”
Geraint picked up the crucifix. It was plain and heavy and he had a sense that it was very old. “Why not go yourself? Or is there sickness at the convent?”
“Not at all, not at all.” The older man had the grace to look embarrassed. “Let me say only that Yolande is less tolerant of men such as myself.”
“You tried to trick her once,” Geraint translated. “Has she a husband, father or brother that you are so terrified?”
“None, none, but she needs none. She expels devils. She carries the bow of Saint Sebastian.”
Geraint was intrigued. He was wandering nowhere in particular so he could visit the convent. The nuns would feed him too. “Is there a message?”
The pardoner inclined his head toward the cross. “That is the message, I was told. Not for the likes of me to question, I was told.”
“And how shall I know her?”
“Very tall for a woman, slim, pretty if you admire dark girls, and with her bow usually slung across her back. She wears me n’s clothes.”
“Aping men? The church has not moved against her for that? Or the sheriff?”
“Not in these times, with so many dying of the pestilence and the whole world preparing for the last days. Let any judgment of her be the final one, before God, I say.” “The pardoner shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “Will you take it?”
Geraint glanced at his long fingers wrapped around the feet of the wooden Christ and ignored the warning prickle at the back of his neck. “Seems I already have.”
* * * * *
The following morning, passing the bread and cheese that the sisters had generously given her to a beggar outside the convent walls, Yolande sensed someone watching. She turned, forced to take a rapid backward step as a stranger trod on her shadow. She had not heard his approach.
“Mistress Yolande?”
“You have the advantage, mister. You know my name.” She smiled to take any sting from her words. “May I know yours?”
Greetings and courtesy were important to her. Each gave clues as to character and wishes. She had once known a demon, beautifully polite, who would have ripped the flesh from her bones had she not bound him by his own rules of manners.
The stranger bowed, a good sign. He muttered something in a language she did not know, which was not good. She moved a little closer, ready to boot him in the balls if he did anything unsavory.
“Geraint Welshman, at your service.” He crouched then looked straight at her. “I am just taking something from my pack, if it please you.”
She grinned at him to prove she was unafraid, her body heavy and languid as she itched to go onto the balls of her feet, ready to scrap. A quick stab to those astonishing black-blue eyes, a swipe at his knee and Geraint the Welshman would be groveling in the hard-packed mud.
Which would be a shame for such a glorious face. He bent his head, showing his trust of her, to rummage in his pack. He was a good-looking brute, not too muscled but as lean and wiry as herself. There was a soft jangle of bells within his patched shoulder-pack, revealing him as a wandering entertainer, a less deadly mirror of herself. They were even about the same height.
I entertain the restless dead before I send them on. What must it be like to work for living laughter?
Hard, she guessed, noting his less-than-clean black hair, the scars on his knuckles, his drab motley, missing bits of ribbons and coins. He was darker that she was, tanned by many suns, and with excellent teeth.
Strong, rangy and in no hurry to stick to one place, but a honeyman all the same. She felt a flicker of interest, a few youthful, girlish hopes. She was ten-and-eight these days, young for an exorcist but ripe for marriage. Her father, a remarkable man, had managed both. She missed him, but her time would surely come—maybe with this Welshman.
“The pardoner said you would understand the message with this.” Geraint interrupted her reverie as he laid a crucifix down on the rutted road, on top of his pack to keep it from the dirt.
Yolande stared at it, all hopes forgotten in an instant. She sensed the earth shifting beneath her feet as the blood pounded within her temples, making her convinced the top of her skull might shatter. “Oh, great Maria, already?” she said, unaware she had spoken aloud, crossing herself, making the sign of the cross above the crouching Geraint. The great bow across her shoulders creaked as if in warning.
So soon! I must prepare with care. If this sign is right, there can be no mistakes. Pray that I am ready. It is so soon, so soon…
****
He saw her face change, becoming as still as a mask. Then she blinked. “I do understand it. My thanks to you, master Geraint. How may I aid you in return? Are you thirsty or hungry?”
“Ale is always welcome,” he answered quickly, “but for now the pleasure of your company on the road will be more than payment.”
She raised her pretty eyebrows at that. The rest of her was pretty too , if such a plain word could be used for such exotic looks. By “dark” he had expected black hair, which Yolande had—long, shimmering waves of the stuff, very clean but caught in a simple clasp at the back of her slender neck as if she had no time for any fuss. Her eyes were either brown or black—he could not be sure—but they were clear and steady as if she looked straight to the heart of things.
To the heart of me, for sure. Geraint liked women, loved their smell and feel and their cockeyed way of looking at the world. For all her man’s clothing, Yolande was very much a woman, and a love worthy of Solomon. Her skin was a beautiful shade of bronze, smooth as polished wood, and her eyelashes were double-lashed. She had a narrow face and elegant bones but there was a strength in her, character and soul together. He could imagine her besting devils.
For the rest…the performer in him knew at once that she should be in bright colors, reds and yellows and blues, not the drab serge of a thatcher. If she was in his company for long—and he intended she would be—he would tempt her into a brighter manner of dress.
For she has the glory of the evening in her. She wins me already and does not know it.
“I do not chatter,” she said, unaware of his inner tumult. “I have a way to go.”
Better still. He admired how she did not admit where she was headed. “For today then?” He lifted his hands, palms up. “To the nearest house of honest folk, who will let you sleep by their hearth and me in their hayloft?”
“You wish to squire me to safety?”
“For the pleasure of—”
“For the pleasure of my company. Yes, Geraint the Welshman, you said that already.” But she was smiling as she spoke and he knew she would agree.
“Shall I carry this?” He motioned to the cross. “You have your bow and bag already, and it will be no trouble.”
After a moment she strode out like a youth, leaving him to catch up. Geraint admired her graceful gait and did not hurry. He wanted their day to last.
By then I may have won another day in her company.
* * * * *
At the end of their day together, Yolande slept with him in the hayloft of a new, nervous reeve in a village called Lower Something-Or-Other. Geraint had missed the name and was not interested in the shabby, defeated place anyway. He had offered to juggle and been told “no,” offered to chop wood and been shown a blunt axe.
Yolande, graceful and self-contained as a cat, apparently oblivious to the villagers’ stares and whispers, had paid for her lodging with gold coin. She had rebuilt the hearth fire too, with permission from the goodwife, and made flat cakes on the hearth—cakes that melted in Geraint’s mouth and exploded with spices on his tongue.
“I had the spices from a cook on London Bridge as a thank you,” she told him when he asked how she had made them. She did not say what she had done for the cook and he knew better than to ask, at least in the hearing of others.
She had surprised him by sleeping in the loft with him, but the reeve had been growing bolder through the evening, taking every chance he could to touch her. Geraint would have punched the fellow or cracked his greasy fingers, but Yolande was content to put herself above such petty gropings. He marveled at her patience.
She slept, her breathing light and soft, and he was glad to hear her slumbering in the stale, sparse hay, only the stretch of a hand away from him. He had not slept and had eased the ladder up into the loft with them. He did not quite trust the reeve, although the fellow was snoring loudly enough to put a sleeping bear to shame.
It was July and in the summer night he could see Yolande, her great bow—which he meant to ask her about, oh yes—laid beside her within easy reach. She lay curled on her side, her hair wound about her long throat, her limbs twitching as she dreamed.
What do you dream of, my lady?
“So many dead, so many restless dead.”
The hair on his scalp rose as if trying to escape. Yolande was sitting up beside him, rigid as a pole. She was sleeping still, though her eyes were open.
Her voice was full of pain. “How can I help them all? This sickness is a plague and we are in the last days.”
Geraint cracked his knuckles together. He did not believe that, not for a moment. While in the monastery, he had heard of a time when men learned that a thousand years had passed since Christ had died . People had thought the world would end then, but it had not.
“Rest, it is nighttime,” he said quietly. He did not want her sleepwalking like a little child, for she would be a danger to herself. “Rest, Yolande.”
She sighed and lay down again. “This place is soaked in the evil of men. Geraint senses it too. I can tell from his scent. And he does not like to touch the crucifix. He could be an exorcist, with training.”
This was news to him but he kept silent. He was startled that she had noticed his reluctance to handle the ancient cross, but could not understand how that was a point in his favor.
“We must leave early. Get away before the others wake. I must gather herbs, sacred herbs. Saint John’s wort and rosemary, lavender and hyssop. “
He agreed with that, grinning as he savored the we. He cleared his throat, cutting off her sleepy list. “Sleep now, Yolande. I will help you with the green stuff.”
“What has possessed them?”
He did not know who the they were and did not care. “We shall find out. Sleep, Yolande.”
“I would rest in honeyman’s arms, but it would not work. Men want more, want all and I cannot. I cannot give all.” She sank into the hay, leaving him more wakeful than ever.
What a nickname! Even the little you give me , lady, stirs me. “Honey-Man,” he said aloud, and smiled.
****
EXCERPT 2
Geraint picked up the crucifix. It was plain and heavy and he had a sense that it was very old. “Why not go yourself? Or is there sickness at the convent?”
“Not at all, not at all.” The older man had the grace to look embarrassed. “Let me say only that Yolande is less tolerant of men such as myself.”
“You tried to trick her once,” Geraint translated. “Has she a husband, father or brother that you are so terrified?”
“None, none, but she needs none. She expels devils. She carries the bow of Saint Sebastian.”
Geraint was intrigued. He was wandering nowhere in particular so he could visit the convent. The nuns would feed him too. “Is there a message?”
The pardoner inclined his head toward the cross. “That is the message, I was told. Not for the likes of me to question, I was told.”
“And how shall I know her?”
“Very tall for a woman, slim, pretty if you admire dark girls, and with her bow usually slung across her back. She wears men’s clothes.”
“Aping men? The church has not moved against her for that? Or the sheriff?”
“Not in these times, with so many dying of the pestilence and the whole world preparing for the last days. Let any judgment of her be the final one, before God, I say.” The pardoner shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “Will you take it?”
Geraint glanced at his long fingers wrapped around the feet of the wooden Christ and ignored the warning prickle at the back of his neck. “Seems I already have.”
* * * * *
The following morning, passing the bread and cheese that the sisters had generously given her to a beggar outside the convent walls, Yolande sensed someone watching. She turned, forced to take a rapid backward step as a stranger trod on her shadow. She had not heard his approach.
“Mistress Yolande?”
“You have the advantage, mister. You know my name.” She smiled to take any sting from her words. “May I know yours?”
Greetings and courtesy were important to her. Each gave clues as to character and wishes. She had once known a demon, beautifully polite, who would have ripped the flesh from her bones had she not bound him by his own rules of manners.
The stranger bowed, a good sign. He muttered something in a language she did not know, which was not good. She moved a little closer, ready to boot him in the balls if he did anything unsavory.
“Geraint Welshman, at your service.” He crouched then looked straight at her. “I am just taking something from my pack, if it please you.”
She grinned at him to prove she was unafraid, her body heavy and languid as she itched to go onto the balls of her feet, ready to scrap. A quick stab to those astonishing black-blue eyes, a swipe at his knee and Geraint the Welshman would be groveling in the hard-packed mud.
Which would be a shame for such a glorious face. He bent his head, showing his trust of her, to rummage in his pack. He was a good-looking brute, not too muscled but as lean and wiry as herself. There was a soft jangle of bells within his patched shoulder-pack, revealing him as a wandering entertainer, a less deadly mirror of herself. They were even about the same height.
#DiverseRomance #Romance DARK MAIDEN http://amzn.to/2qEuKcL
Paperback at Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-maiden-lindsay-townsend/1115141813;jsessionid=52516BF66BF1AA5ABB015DCEEB2557A2.prodny_store01-atgap14?ean=9781546554400
ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
Ghosts Excerpt: Where Yolande seeks to bring one of the unquiet dead to their final rest.
She dug in the churchyard where Martin’s widow showed her Martin’s grave. As Yolande’s spade struck the side of the coffin, the winter sun finally peeped over the horizon.
Thank the Mother for that mercy.
Martin’s corpse did not reek of sulfur but was not so wholesome she wished to linger. It was tempting to hurry but she forced herself to do everything correctly and give this restless ghost due reverence. Aware of a knot of villagers scuttling from the church and gathering behind her aching back—one reason why she had wanted Geraint facing them and not digging with her—she prayed aloud for Martin and laid the parchment on top of his coffin with as much care as she could manage.
The small of her back ached like toothache, and the calves of her braced legs were stiff with tension as she leaned over the open grave, straddling the coffin itself.
This was a lustful ghost. Never more am I most relieved that I am still a maid and not open to his unwanted attentions.
Dimly she sensed the crowd watching her every act and was glad when they repeated the “Amen” after her. She made the sign of the cross over the body, laid a crucifix at the foot of the coffin, plunging it as deep as she could into the hard winter earth, and sprinkled all with holy water.
She waited, head bowed. No voice came, nothing from the revenant.
“It is done,” she said in Latin.
She might have swayed or, horror of horrors, tumbled into the newly opened grave itself, but Geraint’s sinewy arm held her upright and safe. She turned slowly to the villagers and forced her dry mouth to speak.
“It would be a kindness, a most Christian, neighborly act, to cover him again. He will rest until Judgment Day in peace.” She held out the spade. “Who will aid Martin and his widow?”
The reeve, a decent sort, rose from a crouch and took it.
#DiverseRomance #Romance DARK MAIDEN http://amzn.to/2qEuKcL
Paperback at Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-maiden-lindsay-townsend/1115141813;jsessionid=52516BF66BF1AA5ABB015DCEEB2557A2.prodny_store01-atgap14?ean=9781546554400
ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
Demon Excerpt
“A demon is here,” she said quietly. “It tries to use our desires against us. It has lost those two poor souls.”
“Were they sacrifices?”
“I do not know and it does not matter now, not in the greater scheme of things.” She spoke quickly as though girding herself for the next fight. “I am glad there was no vampire.”
“Vampire?”
She sighed. “I would have needed to bury them with a boulder jammed between their jaws, to pin them to the earth.”
Quickly, apparently ashamed of her admission, she turned to the inscription again. “What were those spheres you threw?”
“Three apples from the orchard.”
“Ha! I suppose they were blessed, being abbey apples.” As she searched for something in her tunic, she motioned for him to keep chattering.
“And thrown by a juggler, do not forget,” he quipped. He did not want to cut a caper inside the tower so he added in Welsh, “Peace and blessings to all those who are within this place,” just as he might when entering a house.
Forget your blessings, rasped a new thought. We spit on your blessings, you disgusting little Briton.
“I know you now,” Yolande called in Latin. She had heard the challenge too and sensed the presence of the approaching demons, more ominous than a building thunderstorm. “Proud as the Romans of old and as cruel. You should go back whence you came, Julian the accursed and others of your kind. Your sacrifice has failed.”
The pressure in her brain was such she felt as if her eyes stood out on stalks, but she drove her order home. “I have buried those two, woman and man, and they are beyond your vile touch. Get back to hell!”
We are not yours to command. None of yours, darkie, woman-whore—
The voices cut off with a shriek as she pinned the cross and a packet of her most sacred and magical herbs into the very middle of the inscription, driving it home and fixing it fast with an arrow point.
“Begone!” she screamed in Latin and felt the whole tower shift in response to her command as the strength of Saint Michael and the Magdalene flowed though her.
The world around her went white and then all was silence.
* * * * *
September 28, 2020
October - the Halloween Month. Magic. Ghosts. Demons. Witchcraft
October is the Halloween month! For October, I am sharing details and excerpts from my romance stories that feature magic, witchcraft , ghosts, ghost-finders, and halloween.
#DiverseRomance #Romance DARK MAIDEN http://amzn.to/2qEuKcL
ChapterOne http://bit.ly/2sEydfW
Ghosts, revenants, incubi , vampires and demons haunt medieval England, as Yolande and Geraint must use their love to survive.
To begin my own personal celebration of the month of Halloween, here is an excerpt that features magic and witchcraft.
In the Middles Ages, belief in magic was strong. Many practised magic in the forms of good-luck charms, and in the wearing of certain plants to ward off bad luck. Witches were both feared and revered.
From "The Snow Bride"
She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?
THE SNOW BRIDE (THE KNIGHT AND THE WITCH 1) https://amzn.to/2MZZan0
EXCERPT https://bit.ly/2yV95Cb
REVIEW https://bit.ly/38ynFzh
Excerpt
“Are you a witch?”
Elfrida, sewing on the sleeves to her younger sister’s best dress as they sat together on the bench outside her hut, felt fear coil in her belly like hunger pangs. Keeping her eyes fixed on her needle, she answered steadily, between stitches, “I am my own master, ’tis all, without a husband. Have any in the village been troubling you?”
“Oh no, Elfrida, but I was thinking.”
Elfrida tugged another stitch tight, her needle flashing like a small sword in the bright evening light. “Does your Walter call me so?” she asked carefully.
She glanced up. Christina was blushing very prettily, her light-blue eyes brighter than cornflowers when set against her pale-blue veil, white skin, and primrose hair. Lost in admiration, and quite still for a moment, she heard Christina admit, “We do not talk much. Well, I do not. Walter calls me kitten and we kiss.”
Christina and her betrothed could be found kissing all over the village, so that was no surprise.
“Yet still.” Christina pressed a well-bitten fingernail to her rose-petal lips. “Our dam was a witch.”
“She was a wisewoman, Christina.”
“Our father was a wizard.”
“A healer and dowser,” Elfrida patiently corrected.
“And you are all of that, of those things, I mean.”
Elfrida fastened the final stitch and knelt beside her sister, crouching back on her heels in the snow. Christina was not usually so fretful.
“Walter loves you very much,” she said after a space, “and you have a good dowry.”
A good dowry it was, of cloth she had spun and ale she had brewed, cheeses she had made, and silver pennies she had earned by her healing and dowsing. Since her earliest childhood, Christina had longed to be married, with a hearth and children of her own, and Elfrida had striven to keep her safe and happy. She was the eldest, so it was her duty, and she had promised their parents, on their deathbeds, that she would do so.
“But will the priest marry us?” Christina was biting another fingernail.
“Today is the very eve of your wedding, little one.” Elfrida tugged gently on her sister’s dress. “This is your wedding gown.”
“He has preached against redheads.”
“You are no redhead, and Father John’s sermon was on modesty for women,” Elfrida replied. Her sister was not a redhead, but she was, and redheads were rumored to be witches. “He said that for a girl to be unveiled was to be as brazen as a redhead. He took my healing ointment, too.” She tugged gently a second time on Christina’s dress. “Walter will be here to see you after sunset. Would you have him see you in your gown?”
Her sister ignored her question and pouted. “He will be late. He is coming here only after a meeting with his old men, and you know how they go on!”
“Did he say what the council was about?”
Christina shrugged. “He may have done, but I was not listening then.” She colored prettily. “Will you comb my hair again?”
Elfrida silently rose, kicking the snow from her faded, red gown—one that had belonged to their mother—and eased the wooden combs from Christina’s pale, shimmering hair. As she gently teased and tugged and Christina’s breathing slowed, Elfrida thought of the council.
Excerpt of Elfrida working her witch-craft.
“She is the third!” Walter had cried out, beating his fists against the walls of their empty hut. “The third in her wedding garb, and the most beautiful: one black-haired, one brown, and my Christina!”
He had refused to say more, even when Elfrida had threatened to curse him, but his outburst told her what he and the elders had been hiding from the village women. The brute who had carried off Christina had kidnapped other pretty young girls, also dressed in their wedding gowns. He stole brides.
I will dress myself as a bride and return here with my own wedding feast, with food and drink in abundance. Let him think me a bridal sacrifice, his red-haired bride, left for him by the village. And, by Christ and all his saints, this time I will be ready for him!
It is a blessing I am a healer and have so many potions ready prepared. If I put sleeping draughts in the wine, food, and sweets, surely I can tempt the beast to take some? I can smear tinctures of poppy on my skin and clothes, so any taste will induce sleep.
Sleep, not death, for she had to know where he had taken Christina.
I will coax the truth from the groggy monster, and then the village men can have him.
Part of her knew she was being wild, unreasonable, that she should talk to Walter, tell the villagers, but she did not care. Talk would waste more precious hours, and they might even try to stop her. For her sister she would do anything, risk anything. But she must hurry, she must do something, and she had little time.
It was full dark before Elfrida was finished, midnight on the day after the start of Advent, two days after Christina should have been married. She shivered in the glinting snow, her breath suspended between the frosted, white ground and the black, star-clad sky.
She glanced over the long boulder she had used as an offering table for her wine and food, not allowing herself to think too closely about what she had done. She had lit a small fire and banked it so that it would burn until morning, to stop her freezing and to keep wolves at bay, and now by its tumbling flames she saw her own small, tethered shadow writhing on the forest floor.
She would not dwell on what could go wrong, and she fought down her night terrors over Christina, lest they become real through her thoughts. She lifted up her head and stared above the webbing of treetops to the bright stars beyond, reciting a praise chant to herself. She was a warrior of magic, ready to ensnare and defeat the beast.
“I have loosened my hair as a virgin. I am dressed in a green gown, unworn before today. My shoes are made of the softest fur, my veil and sleeves are edged with gold, and my waist is belted in silver. There is mutton for my feast, and dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey. I am a willing sacrifice. I am the forest bride, waiting for my lord—”
Her voice broke. Advent was meant to be a time of fasting, and she had no lord. None of the menfolk of Yarr would dare to take Elfrida the wisewoman and witch to be his wife. She knew the rumors—men always gossiped more than women—and all were depressing in their petty spitefulness. They called her a scold because she answered back.
“I need no man,” she said aloud, but the hurt remained. Was she not young enough, fertile enough, pretty enough?
Keep to your task, Elfrida reminded herself. You are the forest bride, a willing virgin sacrifice.
She had tied herself between two tall lime trees, sometimes struggling against her loose bonds as if she could not break free. She could, of course, but any approaching monster would not know that, and she wanted to bait the creature to come close—close enough to drink her drugged flask of wine and eat her drugged “wedding” cakes. Let him come near so she could prick him with her knife and tell him, in exquisite detail, how she could bewitch him. He would fear her, oh yes, he would...
She heard a blackbird caroling alarms and knew that something was coming, closing steadily, with the stealth of a hunter. She strained on her false bonds, peering into the semidarkness, aware that the fire would keep wild creatures away. Her back chilled as she sensed an approach from downwind, behind her, and as she listened to a tumble of snow from a nearby birch tree, she heard a second fall of snow from a pine closer by. Whoever, whatever, was creeping up was somehow shaking the trees, using the snowfalls as cover to disguise its own movement.
A cunning brute, then, but she was bold. In one hand she clutched her small dagger, ready. In her other, she had the tiny packet of inflammables that she now hurled into the fire.
“Come, husband!” she challenged, as the fire erupted into white-hot dragon tongues of leaping flame, illuminating half the clearing like a noonday sun. “Come now!”
She thrust her breasts and then her hips forward, aping the actions that wives had sometimes described to her when they visited her to ask for a love philter. She shook her long, red hair and kissed the sooty, icy air. “Come to me!”
She saw it at the very edge of her sight—black, huge, a shadow against the flames, off to her side, and now a real form, swooping around from the tree line to her left to face her directly. She stared across the crackling fire at the shape and bit down on the shriek rising up her throat.
The beast stepped through the fire, and she saw its claw reaching for her. She heard a click, off to her right, but still kept watching the claw, even as the fire was suddenly gutted and dead, all light extinguished.
Darkness, absolute and terrifying, smothered her, and she was lost.
July 20, 2020
Crowning Glories - a blog about my love of hair, plus how I use hair in my writing.
I admit it. I have a 'thing' about hair in my writing.Not in real life. My hair is brown going grey and tough. It goes its own way and if it's cut 'wrong' then it will spike. I have it cut short and leave it alone. We get along fine. But in my romance novels, I love hair.
What colour will the herone's hair be? How long? Wavy? Curly? I always like to imagine my main female character's hair.
Many romance novels have blond or auburn haired heroines. Isabella, my heroine from my novella "Mistress Angel" is a spectacular blonde, with colouring that both attracts and also makes others eager to prey on her. I showed off her hair with a scene drawn from the historical records - in May 1357, the King of France was brought as a prisoner to London and paraded through the city in style. The goldsmiths, eager to be part of the show, positioned twelve beautiful maidens in golden cages above the street for them to toss flowers. I made my Isabella one of the maidens.The gaudy troop of soldiers and knights, already shifting at a slow canter, settled into a meandering amble as the road through Cheapside broadened between the grander houses belonging to the members of the goldsmith's guild.
“Ici, là!” cried Prince Edward, sweeping a bejeweled gloved arm toward the upper storeys. Beside him, on his taller horse, the French king looked up and softly applauded. Stephen scanned the ridge tiles of the freshly-painted, gilded houses and glanced where the prince was pointing.
There she is. He smiled.
He recognized her instantly by the proud tilt of her head, her sweetly handsome profile and those glowing eyes, more compelling even than the luxuriant gold of her hair or her sumptuous costume.
Goldsmith’s garb and no glover’s girl for sure, he thought, reining in his horse and slowing to admire her the more as she shimmered above him like the evening star. Encased in a narrow cage of gold suspended above the cobbles, he saw that she was one of twelve maidens positioned high above the street, all caged, all lovely, but his gaze returned to her alone. Already the others seemed pale shadows, water ripples, echoes. But she is stunning. Above the roar of blood in his ears he heard the ribald comments of Prince Edward and knew he also approved of her.
By a mighty effort of will Stephen tore his attention away from this bewitching, naughty beauty and returned to scanning roofscapes. Still his eyes kept flitting back as he silently willed her to turn within her cage, to look out, to look back, to see him.
Know me, girl. Wonder at me, as I do at you. He was torn between admiration and a longing to kiss her thoroughly for her deception. Kissing you will be a sweet revenge.
She was tossing flowers, delicate metal posies of gold and silver that streaked the cobbles like flashing dewdrops or sun-flashed rain, pretty trinkets that the populace would certainly scramble for as soon as the nobles had passed. Still staring toward Westminster, although she must surely know by the mutter of the crowd that the foremost Prince of England and King of France rode right beneath her cage, she scattered another handful of golden petals, seemingly oblivious to the gasps of admiration. Silhouetted against the dark, smoke-stained jetty of the house, her slim body made a pleasing, subtle curve.
****
I kept in mind those aspects all the time I wrote of Isabella - and her hair.
Elfrida, the witch in my "The Snow Bride" is a red-head. This shows her supernatural and inner
passion and fire, both of which she uses to lure a dangerous adverary closer.
She would not dwell on what could go wrong, and she fought down her night terrors over Christina, lest they become real through her thoughts. She lifted up her head and stared above the webbing of treetops to the bright stars beyond, reciting a praise chant to herself. She was a warrior of magic, ready to ensnare and defeat the beast.
“I have loosened my hair as a virgin. I am dressed in a green gown, unworn before today. My shoes are made of the softest fur, my veil and sleeves are edged with gold, and my waist is belted in silver. There is mutton for my feast, and dates and ginger, wine and mead and honey. I am a willing sacrifice. I am the forest bride, waiting for my lord—”
Her voice broke. Advent was meant to be a time of fasting, and she had no lord. None of the menfolk of Yarr would dare to take Elfrida the wisewoman and witch to be his wife. She knew the rumors—men always gossiped more than women—and all were depressing in their petty spitefulness. They called her a scold because she answered back.
“I need no man,” she said aloud, but the hurt remained. Was she not young enough, fertile enough, pretty enough?
Keep to your task, Elfrida reminded herself. You are the forest bride, a willing virgin sacrifice.
She had tied herself between two tall lime trees, sometimes struggling against her loose bonds as if she could not break free. She could, of course, but any approaching monster would not know that, and she wanted to bait the creature to come close—close enough to drink her drugged flask of wine and eat her drugged “wedding” cakes. Let him come near so she could prick him with her knife and tell him, in exquisite detail, how she could bewitch him. He would fear her, oh yes, he would...
She heard a blackbird caroling alarms and knew that something was coming, closing steadily, with the stealth of a hunter. She strained on her false bonds, peering into the semidarkness, aware that the fire would keep wild creatures away. Her back chilled as she sensed an approach from downwind, behind her, and as she listened to a tumble of snow from a nearby birch tree, she heard a second fall of snow from a pine closer by. Whoever, whatever, was creeping up was somehow shaking the trees, using the snowfalls as cover to disguise its own movement.
A cunning brute, then, but she was bold. In one hand she clutched her small dagger, ready. In her other, she had the tiny packet of inflammables that she now hurled into the fire.
“Come, husband!” she challenged, as the fire erupted into white-hot dragon tongues of leaping flame, illuminating half the clearing like a noonday sun. “Come now!”
She thrust her breasts and then her hips forward, aping the actions that wives had sometimes described to her when they visited her to ask for a love philter. She shook her long, red hair and kissed the sooty, icy air. “Come to me!”
She saw it at the very edge of her sight—black, huge, a shadow against the flames, off to her side, and now a real form, swooping around from the tree line to her left to face her directly. She stared across the crackling fire at the shape and bit down on the shriek rising up her throat.
The beast stepped through the fire, and she saw its claw reaching for her. She heard a click, off to her right, but still kept watching the claw, even as the fire was suddenly gutted and dead, all light extinguished.
Darkness, absolute and terrifying, smothered her, and she was lost.
Of course, the battered crusader knight Sir Magnus, hero of "The Snow Bride" is entranced by Elfrida and by her hair.
It's a sweet vice but I have to be careful. Sometimes I have have my characters spending too much time 'fiddling' with their own or others' hair - stroking, patting, tweaking, adding flowers. My heroes are usually as hair-fixated as I am and sometimes I need to remove some of their petting.
Why a dark-haired hero? I've never quite understood that romance 'guide'. Randal in my story Unicorn Summer (One of the novellas in One Midsummer Knight) is blond, a sunshine lad. (Again, I use the colouring as my own reminder and key to character, both for Randal and the Unicorn who is also an important part of this story. I've written dark-haired heroes but to me it's not an essential.Ffion shook herself. “I care not for such trifles as looks,” she answered, in her head, “Though he is handsome.” He was sinewy and lean and his rough-cut yellow hair was as lush as summer butter, flowing over his broad shoulders as Unicorn’s mane had spilled down his flanks. Catching glimpses of a green tunic and dark leggings beneath his chain mail, she noted the good quality cloth, of older dyes, she thought, but well maintained. Overall he seemed honest and open, and he had a very shapely mouth.
What do I care about his lips! He is clean-shaven, what of it? Aloud, she added, “Will you come with me, for company?”
It was a grudging invitation but Sir Randal smiled and said, “We shall discover how these feathers work.” He tied his ancient helmet to his belt and offered her his arm.
In my latest novel, "The Master Cook and the Maiden" I have the hero, Swein, wearing a cap for quite a while, teasing the heroine and the reader as to what colour is hair is, a small, sweet mystery.No one will bother looking for me, Alfwen almost confessed, but the night drew close and she did not want to admit she was friendless, powerless. “I can ride in your waggon?” she asked, spotting the same less than a sword’s length from her. I must have been deep in shock to have missed that and a mule arriving.
“I have some old pottage for your dog, too,” came the genial reply.
He swept her onto the back of the waggon, handed her Teazel and warned, “Stay away from the firebox, or the crocks therein. I have hot food going.”
“My thanks,” Alfwen whispered, praying her belly did not rumble at the thought of more dumplings. She met his bright eyes again, briefly wondering what colour his hair might be under his close-fitting cap. “Might I know your name, sir?”
Later, to show their developing closeness, Alfwen washes Swein's hair and she finally discovers its colour, length and texture.
To celebrate brown hair, in "Dark Maiden" my female exorcist Yolande has long, brown hair:
He saw her face change, becoming as still as a mask. Then she blinked. “I do understand it. My thanks to you, master Geraint. How may I aid you in return? Are you thirsty or hungry?”
“Ale is always welcome,” he answered quickly, “but for now the pleasure of your company on the road will be more than payment.”
She raised her pretty eyebrows at that. The rest of her was pretty too , if such a plain word could be used for such exotic looks. By “dark” he had expected black hair, which Yolande had—long, shimmering waves of the stuff, very clean but caught in a simple clasp at the back of her slender neck as if she had no time for any fuss. Her eyes were either brown or black—he could not be sure—but they were clear and steady as if she looked straight to the heart of things.
To the heart of me, for sure. Geraint liked women, loved their smell and feel and their cockeyed way of looking at the world. For all her man’s clothing, Yolande was very much a woman, and a love worthy of Solomon. Her skin was a beautiful shade of bronze, smooth as polished wood, and her eyelashes were double-lashed. She had a narrow face and elegant bones but there was a strength in her, character and soul together. He could imagine her besting devils.
For the rest…the performer in him knew at once that she should be in bright colors, reds and yellows and blues, not the drab serge of a thatcher. If she was in his company for long—and he intended she would be—he would tempt her into a brighter manner of dress.
For she has the glory of the evening in her. She wins me already and does not know it.
“I do not chatter,” she said, unaware of his inner tumult. “I have a way to go.”
Better still. He admired how she did not admit where she was headed. “For today then?” He lifted his hands, palms up. “To the nearest house of honest folk, who will let you sleep by their hearth and me in their hayloft?”
“You wish to squire me to safety?”
“For the pleasure of—”
“For the pleasure of my company. Yes, Geraint the Welshman, you said that already.” But she was smiling as she spoke and he knew she would agree.
“Shall I carry this?” He motioned to the cross. “You have your bow and bag already, and it will be no trouble.”
After a moment she strode out like a youth, leaving him to catch up. Geraint admired her graceful gait and did not hurry. He wanted their day to last.
By then I may have won another day in her company.
I like to use hair to confound stereotypes. One of my heroines, is blonde - but she would never have a "blonde" moment. She is a dangerous, calculating, kindly, devious.
So I have fun with hair. I've had curly haired heroes and heroines, long haired heroes and heroines, shorn heroes. I've had heroines caught by their hair - one is trapped by her long hair while trying to escape.
Next time (maybe) I will have to celebrate the naked scalp. That, for me, would be a challenge.
(Photograph by courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
