Snips of March

Like Jenny, I decided that I would jump the gun and post my snippets of story--I'll link up with Katie once she officially starts the event...

Well, it seems that February was a very original month for me--I wrote gobs of Gypsy Song and began three plot-bunnies: Madeleine, The Traveler, and Rockingham Shambles. You will get a little taste of all four books today, so prepare yourselves. :)

Fitz-Hughes stepped onto his mahogany chair, glass aloft. Sir Roger Guillbert filled the glass with dark wine, then bowed and stepped backward. Fitz-Hughes held the chalice higher. “Thou wilt have riches, my people. Thou wilt have land. Thou wilt have women, if thou likest them.”

Laughter replaced the beating and the men shouted. “Hear, hear!”

“Thou wilt have a new life and new glory and the people of Scarlettania will know that the blood of Gildnoir is redder, richer, deeper than their blood!”

Wild shouts and hurrahs, howls and hooting beat against the night air and Fitz-Hughes remained silhouetted by torchlight, handsome and cruel as the devil himself. 

-The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

Adelaide’s heart skipped several beats at the sound of the voice and its words seemed to cling to the air of the glade. “Oh don’t you…” she seemed to stand, suspended in time with hours to ponder the meaning of those insidious tones. But a moment later from the blue shadows of the forest, the long, light figure of a man sauntered out. He ambled toward them, bow slung across his back and sure sunlight sifting through the golden glory of his hair. His eyes were blue as the feathers on a jay’s back and held that same cock-sure air of the saucy bird

-The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

The world was tall today. Sometimes the sky seemed to lean downward and the earth to rise up and Charlotte felt that she might be caught between the two and smashed flat twixt the lowering clouds and rising hills; but today the world was tall.

-The Scarley-Gypsy Song

 

Diccon felt a strange sense of urgency—why he felt he rode against the sun and the turning of the world he did not know—it was as if there was an appointment to keep and some invisible hand urged him onward.

 -The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

Even now as he kicked off his boots and wriggled down into the warm skins, he dreaded that horridly cheerful Cockcrow—the morning reveille. Why anyone in their proper mind would stand out in that dreadful first-light, when the sun wasn’t even awake, and rummage everyone else out of bed with an overly enthusiastic tune was beyond him. “It’s like…it’s like a brass band playing at the gallows before an execution,” he’d told Bertram.

Bertram had said ‘no it wasn’t—it was quite different than that.’ But to anyone who liked sleep, it was one and the same.

 -The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

Lad had raised his eyes to the distant hills as he spoke of his beloved Lady. He turned to Bertram again. “But tha’ has an Author in thy world, son of Macefield. He’s a good Author. His pen never runs dry and His words are allus true. He never makes mistakes or leaves off in the midst of a terrible trial. Tha’art a fool not to treasure that—not to bless thy buttons it is so and tha’ hasn’t an erring, fallible pen scribbling thy destiny for you.”

-The Scarlet-Gypsy Song

I wandered in the park for some time after my interview with Aunt Kate, and wished for the thousandth time that a journalist made more money with the Post. It was just enough—without debts—to keep a fellow alive and just too little—without debts—to make him presentable.

-The Traveler

It was dark inside—that familiar dusty-dark that settles upon any place containing reams upon reams of paper and a generous allotment of ink-stained wood. Sharkey sat at the one desk, his hair awry and his paper-cuffs covered in notes from his latest assignment. He was scribbling feverishly and I felt young pangs of jealousy—he’d just got done covering an immense court-case containing scandal and diamonds; just the sort of thing the public would drool over.

-The Traveler

Soon the bitter, pungent smell of the coffee filled the little office and the pot percolated with that satisfying purr that is warming in itself. I began to feel my debts shrink in the warm embrace of that smell, and they had almost squished themselves into a manageable size when the door of the office burst open and the rest of the boys tumbled in.

-The Traveler

Our voices had escalated, I suppose, for I heard a shuffling from the other room, the sound of a chair scooting across the floor, and a moment later Mr. Clutterbuck stood in the doorframe. He was immensely fat—fatter than Beetle, even. So this was my first glimpse of his face—it was not much of a face. The features were all too small. His mouth was a slit and his eyes were smaller, darker slits, and his nose was a blob so that what you could see of him from behind his newspaper was rather all that mattered. It gave me a queer feeling to see Mr. Clutterbuck like this—faceless, as it seemed.

-The Traveler

There was never a question of whether my Lord and my Lady were suited to one another—whether, in another time and another life they might have been happier with a partner a bit more…lively—nay! Would a sensible man ask two wax figures in a museum whether they might be happier living in a zoo?

And thus it is that I repeat: My Lord and lady Sybilrude were happy. “Happy, in what manner?” you might ask, and I, being acquainted with the family from the moment they entered the door of Rockingham Shambles, might answer you with an equally unanswerable reply: “In the manner they are accustomed.”

-Rockingham Shambles

 

“My Lady, what is Rockingham Shambles?”

“Why you dense thing—Rockingham Shambles is our house.”

“I—I know, m’lady, but…”

“Then why did you ask?”

“But, begging your pardon m’lady, how did it come to be called Rockingham Shambles?”

Lord Sybilrude looked up from his employment in doing nothing, and squinted. “It was Rockingham-at-Ambleside at one point.”

I coughed. “Yes, m’Lord. But how—”

Lady Sybilrude stifled a yawn. “Oh la, Knobbs—you are a dense domestic.”

“Yes, m’lady. I was only wondering—”

“Well don’t.”

“Yes, m’lady.” And that was all I could get out of her. If you have more success than I, you must send me a cable immediately—I really would like to know.

-Rockingham Shambles

“My word, Maddie, how pretty you look this morning.”

So she was in her petting mood today. Lady Susannah reached for my hand and pulled me forward, touching my cheek with one of her slender, white fingers. It was not that the affection and kind words were unwelcome—God knows how I longed for kindness! Only that they fit Lady Susannah worse than that trifling pet-name fit me. I was Madeleine—she was a vain, self-seeking woman and not even my youth could mask her faults under a kinder description.

-Madeleine

 

I raised my eyes to the panes of the tall windows and gazed out onto a broad expanse of lawn; made mysterious and mystic by a silver mesh of the frail mist.  The elms in the lane reached their bare branches toward the drive, the sky, the woods behind them as if beseeching help from any source and my soul went out to them—poor, tortured trees. Their roots rambled, unsettled in the grass as if they had half a thought of uprooting themselves and wandering to a happier place, but they could no more leave Whiteroe than I could. And so I felt a kinship with them and I mentally calculated how long it would be before Lady Susannah’s nap.

-Madeleine