And we begin yet again ...

As the landing gear is engaged, bringing the formal editing of one novel to an end, the engines roar heralding the revision process of another. No time for rest in my world. My 15th century Irish friends demand to embark upon a new adventure ...
  Rows of expensive tapestries sheathed Maynooth’s hall stealing much of the grey-blue stone. Images of epic battles, golden fields before harvest, an Italian winter's countryside, French terraced gardens, unicorns feasting on engorged bluebells, and to the end of the hall a recently hung piece depicting what appeared to be angels caught in thundering clouds. If his wife insisted on expanding their collection, Ireland’s looms would weep with exhaustion. Thomas Fitzgerald, the 7th Earl of Kildare, sat at the dais tapping fingers distractedly upon the wooden table.  He looked to that last piece again. Angels or slaves?  A closer inspection would be required, a task best left to an occasion when his home held less distraction. The trestles and benches below spared no room. His guests ate and chatted, gorged and purged, scoffed and ranted and little else. With their brocades and laces, the women granted a picture no less an event in thread than his walls. And to the men, Thomas gave over the discriminating attention usually afforded a game of chess. Men of power, men of affluence and men wanting both. He wondered for a long moment which of the flesh and blood game pieces were sincere in their joy at this occasion and which were simply parasitic, and his analytical mind finally settled on three sorts. Knights, Pawns and Bishops. Knights for their loyalty, Pawns their expendability, and Bishops their cunning. Thomas favoured not the Bishops and their facades of righteousness, their trinkets of gold and tongues as sharp as a Flemish blade. Pretenders all of them. Not surprisingly Thomas’ fingers no longer tapped, they thumped.
 www.wix.com/ksphotograph/kingst2