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A letter to the new year

Dear 2017

No point in beating about the bush. Your predecessor’s performance left a good deal to be desired. In fairness, I need to acknowledge that I didn’t follow the fundamental rule of performance management. I didn’t make my expectations clear, so 2016 had no idea what would get it booted out the door with a sigh of relief.

So, 2017, let’s start our brand new relationship with a few basic suggestions from me.

First, while I know the body is not as young as it used to be, I’d like it to keep working for a while longer. If I agree to be careful how I prune trees and lift loads, can you agree that this year won’t include strained and inflamed muscles, tendons, and ligaments. And a new allergy? Really? What was 2016 thinking?

While we’re discussing health, I’d much prefer my personal romantic hero to stay healthy and active, too. You know what I’m talking about, 2017. I saw you have a chat with 2016 when you passed one another in the doorway.

PRH and I ended 2016 with our 45th wedding anniversary (on the 27th of December). It seems hardly possible that I will love him more at the end of this year than I do now, but I have 45 years of experience to tell me that’s the deal.

2016 gave me a new grandchild, and she is an absolute darling. I’ve no complaints there. Keep in mind, 2017, that I need to close this year with all thirteen grandchildren healthy and happy. Thank you for your consideration.

The other gift from 2016 was Clarity 2016, the conference I attended for my day job. I enjoy my day job, but I was worn to a frazzle by the time my Christmas holiday started. I’m making your performance in this area easier, 2017, because I’ve dropped one day of work a fortnight, beginning my transition to retirement.

No. Retirement is not the right word, is it? Because then there’s my fiction writing. In 2016, the output was sparse: several short stories and novellas and one novel, Revealed in Mist. This year, I want to publish A Raging Madness (which is nearly finished, so that’ll happen), and also two more novels. Ambitious, I know. And that’s not including Never Kiss a Toad, which at around 1500 words per week, should be completed by the time you end.

Dear 2017, help me keep to my minimum 1000 words per day, and I’ll meet the goal easily, and finish the year with Concealed in Shadow and The Realm of Silence published. Plus more short stories and novellas. I’m planning to put a short story in every newsletter from now on, so that’s six, and I’ll undoubtedly give away some more made-to-order stories.

Okay, 2017, I think that’s it.

Good luck. I’ll do my bit. I hope you’ll do yours.

Kindest regards

 

Jude Knight

 

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Lawlessness and bounty hunting in the late-Georgian

The Bow Street Magistrates Court

(This is a repeat of an article I wrote for Caroline Warfield’s blog in June.)

Crime was a personal affair

Before 1829, our modern idea of a police force, and of one law for all, simply didn’t exist. In the pre 19th Century world, crime was a private matter, an offence against the victim. Doing something about it was up to the victim, though if the crime was a felony, the victim could expect help from constables and magistrates.

The offence might be settled between the disputants, or it might go to court to be judged by a magistrate or a jury. If the offence was against the Crown, the King was the offended party, and therefore one of the disputants, a convention we remember in the way we talk about a case as being Jones v Rex (King) or Brown v Regina (Queen). It was still a private affair, a personal interaction.

In our modern world, crime is seen as something that disturbs the public peace and disrupts the smooth running of society. Our police and the courts are charged with restoring social harmony. It is a very different model.

No one wanted a standing police force

The system worked very well in rural England in times of peace, provided you had a fair and reasonable local magistrate. People didn’t move around much. The local magistrate probably knew everyone, and could tell who needed a swift kick to the rear, who should be shipped off to the army and the navy, and who was unregenerate and nothing but trouble. And if he was in doubt, he had plenty of local people to talk to.

The idea of a central police force did not appeal to very many people. The middle and working classes saw such a force as a potential instrument of oppression. Royalty strongly disliked the idea of a standing army. And the gentry felt central control of policing would threaten their individual liberties and their place in local government.

Enter the bounty hunter

Eventually, as we know, the collapse of the traditional village social structure and the increasing mobility of the population made a police force inevitable, and three influential people made it palatable. Henry Fielding founded the Bow Street Runners. Patrick Colquhoun created a philosophy of policing that quieted people’s fears, and Sir Robert Peel established the first modern police force.

But before all of that, thief takers hunted across county lines to capture villains and bring them back to face justice.

Thief takers worked for a reward. Later, and on the other side of the Atlantic, they would be known as bounty hunters. The government, or perhaps a private individual, would post a reward, and off they’d go.

And they had an extremely disreputable reputation:

…the more corrupt thief-takers went further: they blackmailed criminals with threats of prosecution if they failed to pay protection money. Some even became “thief-makers” by encouraging gullible men to commit crimes, and then apprehending and prosecuting them in order to collect the reward. Such practices illustrate the point that not all “crimes” prosecuted at the Old Bailey had actually taken place; some prosecutions were malicious. [Old Bailey Online]

In the early 18th Century, Jonathan Wild, who styled himself ‘Thief taker General of England and Ireland’ was tried and convicted for receiving stolen goods after a decade of dominating the London criminal underworld.

No wonder my hero of Revealed in Mist, David Wakefield, wanted to be called an enquiry agent!

Revealed in Mist

Prue’s job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?

Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the lover who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

See my book page for more about the book, buy links, and the first two chapters.

Meet David

From within the protective camouflage of the gaggle of companions, Prudence Virtue watched her sometime partner and one-night-only lover drift around the banquet hall. No-one else saw him. Like the shadow he named himself, he skirted the edges of the pools of candle light, but even when his self-appointed duties moved him close to a group of guests, they overlooked him. None of the privileged, not even the host and hostess, noticed one extra footman.

He was very good. He had the walk, the submissive bend of the head, the lowered eyes. Even Prue—herself hiding as just one more brown-clad, unimpressive companion among a dozen others, waiting patiently in an alcove for the commands of an employer—did not detect him for her first half hour in the room.

But Prue’s body was wiser than her mind, and left her restless in his presence until her eyes caught so many times on a single footman among dozens she began to take notice. And she saw Shadow, for the first time since that disastrous morning five months before.

On the slim chance Shadow was not here for the same meeting as her, Prue stayed out of sight in the back of the alcove as the time for her to make her move approached. He had left the room several times in the hour she had been watching. With luck… Yes. There he went again. Now, if several of the dowagers would call at once… Done. Moving to where any of three or four ladies might be giving her instructions, she hurried away as if running an errand.

The key, the man she knew as Tolliver had taught her, was to fit into people’s preconceived ideas of the universe; to appear to be someone doing something they had an explanation for. The key was to blend into the background of the story they were telling themselves. ‘Don’t notice me. I’m just a companion running an errand,’ her behaviour said. And five minutes after she left, not one of them would remember what she looked like or where she went.

Revealed in Mist was released on 13 December.

 

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Backstory on WIP Wednesday

One of the tricky tasks an author has to manage is to tell those crucial bits of history a reader needs to sympathise with the hero or heroine, or despise the villain. But what to do? Hint and let the reader guess? Have the character explain themselves to another? Do a flashback in memory? Jump between present and past entirely?

All can work, or can be disastrous.

This week, on WIP Wednesday, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that carry your backstory. Mine is from A Raging Madness. Ella is telling Alex about her first marriage, which he had observed as a fellow officer.

He had seen the signs and ignored them, told himself that he had no right to interfere between husband and wife, told himself that she had made her bed and could lie in it. Arrogant, conceited pup. Twenty-one years old and full of his own pain. He hated that long-ago version of himself nearly as much as he hated Melville. Long ago? He had been believing lies against her as recently as two months ago.
“I often thought of sending him into the thick of battle, like David did to Uriah the Hittite. I should have done it.”
Ella, her eyes soft, reached up and kissed his chin. “Was I your Bathsheba then? I am flattered.”
“Always, Ella. My guilt made me cruel to you. I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
Her eyes rounded and she shook her head. “No, Alex. You were always kind and polite. Distant. Disapproving sometimes. But I knew I could rely on you. I do not think I could have survived after Dadda died if not for you.” Her eyes filled with tears, and he bit back the self-recriminations. He did not deserve her praise, but nor was he selfish enough to deny the comfort her memories gave her in order to seek his own absolution.

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Tea with Min

“The duchess is a charming, gracious lady, Min,” Viscount Avery assured his wife, when he dropped her to the front entrance of Haverford House. He immediately undercut his own assumption of confidence. “I can stay if you wish. Do you want me to stay?”

Minerva Avery looked around the grand entrance hall, the full height of the house, with majestic flights of stairs rising on either side and curving to meet at spacious landings, only to part again to swerve to the next level. The hall was designed to intimidate and impress, and it worked.

But she was Lady Avery, wife to Lord Randal Avery, and was here by invitation. “Her Grace asked to see me, Candle. I will be perfectly fine.”

She stood on tiptoe to kiss her tall husband, who bent to meet her part way, and turned his face so that her peck on the cheek became a loving salute to the lips. Had this august space seen other aristocrats show affection in public? Probably not, but in this she was proud to be true to her tradesman heritage. People of her class loved their spouses.

She shot a defiant glance sideways to the butler who waited to conduct her to the duchess, and surprised an indulgent smile before he wiped it from his face. “This way, my lady,” he said.

“I’ll just take the horses on a circuit around the park and will be waiting when you are finished,” Candle promised.

Min followed the butler up the first flight of stairs and along a sumptuously carpeted hall wide enough for three of her invalid chairs to race side by side, without bumping the elegant furniture and beautifully carved statues that lined both sides.

They passed room after room, until at last they came to a small sitting room, richly furnished but somehow warmly welcoming. Her Grace the Duchess of Haverford rose from a sofa by the fire.

“Lady Randal Avery,” the butler announced, and Min sank into the deep curtsey that her friend Anne, Lady Chirbury, had been schooling her in all week.

“Lady Avery, how very kind of you to call.” The duchess smiled, and took her seat again, patting the cushions beside her. “Come. Sit with me and tell me how you take your tea.”

They spoke commonplaces while Her Grace made and poured the tea, Min following the duchess’s conversational lead.

“Now,” Her Grace said, once they were both served. “you must be wondering why I asked you to visit, and I shall not keep you in suspense, Minerva. May I call you Minerva?”

Min nodded, her tongue suddenly frozen at the thought of such familiarity from so grand a lady.

“Minerva, I shall get straight to the point. I am the patroness of a hospital for servicemen, and I am in need of a large number of invalid chairs. My nephew Chirbury tells me that the one you provided for his cousin, Major Redepenning, was the best he has ever seen. Are you still in that business, my dear? For I should dearly appreciate your help.”

Min is the heroine of Candle’s Christmas Chair, a holiday novella that was my first published book. You can read all about it on my book page, at the link. I first met Min and her viscount in Farewell to Kindness (which is Rede’s, the Earl of Chirbury’s, story). Min provided the invalid chair that Rede’s cousin, Alex Redepenning, has collapse under him during a vigorous chair based rendition of a line dance. I wondered how a carriage-maker’s daughter with a business making invalid chairs came to marry a viscount, and next thing I knew, a tall skinny viscount with bright red hair turned up at her carriage-maker’s shop to order a chair as a Christmas present for his mother.

The first two chapters are linked to the book page, so please go and enjoy.

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Christmas presents in Georgian England

No presents, and no tree to put them under. Not on a Regency Christmas Day

Authors of Regency stories face an interesting challenge when writing a Christmas novel. Our modern readers are so accustomed to the association between gifts and Christmas Day that historical accuracy can be jarring for them.

Not that people didn’t give presents during the long Christmas season before the Victorians picked up a few German customs and marketed them through newspaper columns on the habits of royalty, Dickens stories, and popular magazines. People in the northern hemisphere have always given presents at some point during that season when winter seems as if it is going to last forever, but at last the night of the winter solstice passes and the days slowly begin to grow longer.

The day varied. Solstice night itself, the first day (or week) of the new year. People gave their children food treats hoarded against the feast, and gifts of dolls and carved animals, often home made. Wealthier people very likely gave richer gifts, as happens today. And kings and other leaders undoubtedly gave gifts to their followers, who would judge their personal standing with the boss by the size of the present.

Christian missionaries didn’t invent gift giving and feasting in the darkest part of the year. But they did Christianise it, ascribing the feast to the birth of Christ. And boy, was it a feast. In medieval times, people partied for 12 days (after fasting all December).

But they didn’t give presents on Christmas Day (or Christmas Eve, either). Instead, Christmas was a time for church going and feasting. The 24 day fast might have disappeared with the dissolution of the monasteries and the foundation of the Church of England, but the food blowout on Christmas Day remained, with all but the very poorest of the poor managing a special meal to mark the day.

The Puritans during the Commonwealth knocked off even that. No Christmas at all. But the Restoration meant all those Christmas customs crept back out of the shadows for people to rejoice in once again.

St Stephen’s Feast Day was the traditional day for giving to servants and tradespeople, and the needy (as good King Wenceslas did). The Feast of Stephen is 26th December. Family members didn’t get presents then, though. They had to wait.

In Scotland, 31st December, or New Year’s Eve, was gift day. English children had a few more days to go; family and friends were given presents on Twelfth Night, the day before the Feast of the Epiphany (6th January).

Different places, different customs. Children in various parts of Northern Europe received their presents from St Nicholas of Myrna on 5th December, the eve of his feast day or on the day itself. St Nicholas was born in France and buried in Italy, and quite why he favoured Dutch and German children with a visit is a mystery lost in history. He visited Central Europe, too, but not until 19th December, his feast day there.

In modern times, all these visits have been moved to 24th December, which makes the poor bishop’s task much harder. However, he has inherited Odin’s magic reindeer to pull his sleigh, so that must help.

Greek children had St Basil, whose feast day is 1st January. He arrived in the night on New Year’s Eve, leaving presents, and the families would exchange the gifts they’d bought or made at or after the New Year’s Day feast.

To make things even more complicated, different countries moved their calendars from Julian to Gregorian at different times.

All of which presents a minefield for a conscientious author.

My Christmas novellas include Candle’s Christmas Chair, Gingerbread Bride, and two novellas in Holly and Hopeful Hearts: A Suitable Husband and The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. Holly and Hopeful Hearts is on special at 99c, but the sale ends soon.

See my books page for more information.

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Unwilling attraction on WIP Wednesday

out of copyright; (c) Museum of London; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

They met, they fell in love, their families were delighted, and they married. It would be a lovely life, but not a particularly exciting story. We authors like to torture our characters with all kinds of barriers along the way, and a favourite trope is the push-pull of unwilling attraction.

You know the sort of thing. Intellectual women with sharp tongues are not my type, but I can’t resist her. He is an unreliable rake, but his kindness is hugely appealing. We readers look forward to finding out how they get past their own preconceptions.

So share an excerpt, if you will, where your characters are feeling this dilemma, and I’ll give you one from the very start of A Raging Madness.

The funeral of the dowager Lady Melville was poorly attended—just the rector, one or two local gentry, her stepson Edwin Braxton accompanied by a man who was surely a lawyer, and a handful of villagers.

Alex Redepenning was glad he had made the effort to come out of his way when he saw the death notice. He and Captain Sir Gervase Melville had not been close, but they had been comrades: had fought together in Egypt, Italy, and the Caribbean.

Melville’s widow was not at the funeral, but Alex was surprised not to see her when he went back to the house. Over the meagre offering set out in the drawing room, he asked Melville’s half brother where she was.

“Poor Eleanor.” Braxton had a way of gnashing his teeth at the end of each phrase, as if he needed to snip the words off before he could stop chewing them.

“She has never been strong, of course, and Mother Melville’s death has quite overset her.” Braxton tapped his head significantly.

Ella? Not strong? She had been her doctor father’s assistant in situations that would drive most men into a screaming decline, and had continued working with his successor after his death. She had followed the army all her life until Melville sent her home—ostensibly for her health, but really so he could chase whores in peace, without her taking loud and potentially uncomfortable exception. Alex smiled as he remembered the effects of stew laced with a potent purge.

Melville swore Ella had been trying to poison him. She assured the commander that if she wanted him poisoned he would be dead, and perhaps the watering of his bowels was the result of a guilty conscience. The commander, conscious that Ella was the closest to a physician the company, found Ella innocent.

Perhaps it had all caught up with her. Perhaps a flaw in the mind was the reason why she tried to trap Alex and succeeded in trapping Melville into marriage, why she had not attended Melville’s deathbed, though Alex had sent a carriage for her.

“I had hoped to see her,” Alex said. It was not entirely a lie. He had hoped and feared in equal measure: hoped to find her old before her time and feared the same fierce pull between them he had been resisting since she was a girl too young for him to decently desire.

“I cannot think it wise,” Braxton said, shaking his head. “No, Major Redepenning. I cannot think it wise. What do you say, Rector? Would it not disturb the balance of my poor sister’s mind if she met Major Redepenning? His association with things better forgotten, you know.”

What was better forgotten? War? Or her poor excuse for a husband? Not that it mattered,  any more than it mattered that Braxton used the rank Alex no longer held. It was not Braxton’s fault Alex’s injury had forced him to sell out.

The Rector agreed that Lady Melville should not be disturbed, and Alex was off the hook. “Perhaps you will convey my deepest sympathies and my best wishes to her ladyship,” he said. “I hope you will excuse me if I take my leave. I have a long journey yet to make, and would seek my bed.”

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Tea with Mary

Mary was a daughter of the navy, raised aboard ship by her admiral father and a succession of nurses. She had learned her company manners from the gentlemen’s sons who vied to sit at her father’s table, and had them polished almost to breaking point during her one London Season.

Since then, she’d become wife to her own captain, and in her own world of naval wives, she knew precisely how to behave. She had even — her husband being grandson to an earl — become comfortable with those aristocrats she counted as family, counting among her close friends the wife of the current earl.

But having afternoon tea tête–à–tête with a duchess was outside of her experience. She had met the Duchess of Haverford at various entertainments in London. Her Grace’s sister had been mother to the current earl, so they had even attended some of the same family events. But she would never dare to presume on such a distant acquaintance were the circumstances not — what they were.

Summoned in response to a note asking Her Grace for an audience, she had expected to be seen as a petitioner, with perhaps a secretary on hand to make notes. Instead, she had been shown to a private sitting room, where two chairs waited in a sunny window overlooking a garden, the great lady herself occupying one.

“Mrs Alexander Redepenning, ma’am,” the butler announced, and the duchess rose to greet her.

Mary took the hand offered, and curtseyed. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Your Grace.”

“But of course. You are family, my dear, and I always have time for family.”

“It is in that hope I have come, Your Grace.”

Shrewd hazel eyes examined her, then the duchess seated herself again, saying decidedly, “Then be seated, Mary — I may call you ‘Mary’, may I not? Tell me how you have your tea, and then tell me what I may do to help you with whatever distresses you.”

Mary obeyed, and was very soon sipping tea with lemon from a cup of delicate china.

“Well, Mary?” the duchess prompted.

“It is a long story, ma’am. It concerns Susan, my sister-in-law, her daughter Amelia, and my son James. I am not sure where to begin.”

“At the beginning, my dear,” Her Grace suggested.

Mary Redepenning is the heroine of Gingerbread Bride, a Christmas novella written for the Bluestocking Belles holiday box set in 2015. Gingerbread Bride is free this month as part of a promotion with 149 other novellas and novellas.

This scene, though, takes place some twelve years later, when Mary’s 11 year old son and her 16 year old niece go missing, and her sister-in-law Susan disappears in pursuit. These events won’t happen until The Realm of Silence, which will be book three of The Golden Redepenning series.

The Duchess of Haverford appears in many of my books, first helping her nephew with his love affair in Farewell to Kindness. She also aided and abetted the not-quite-hero, her son, in A Baron for Becky. Most recently, she has been the hostess of the Christmas house party in the Bluestocking Belles box set Holly and Hopeful Hearts, which is also on special for December, at only 99c.

You can read the first two chapters of Gingerbride Bride here.

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The Virgin Wife

I’ve read a couple of stories recently that bought into the myth that non-consummation was grounds for an annulment. Even today, the law is not quite that simple, although many jurisdictions allow non-consummation as grounds for divorce. But back in Georgian and Regency England, the fact that the marriage had not been consummated, if it could be proven, was not grounds for either divorce nor annulment.

First, a definition of terms. Annulment is a legal declaration that a marriage never existed. Divorce is a legal declaration that a marriage is at an end, and the husband and wife no longer have marital obligations one to the other.

Annulments were not quick, they were not painless, and they required one or more of three circumstances. These circumstances were fraud; inability to contract a marriage; and impotence. Even taking the case could make both the husband and the wife social outcasts. If the annulment went through, the woman was reduced to the status of a concubine, and her children became illegitimate. The man had no further obligations to support her or the children.

Fraud could include using a false name with the intention of fooling your intended spouse or their family, or making promises in the marriage settlement you had no ability to carry out. For example, if you settled a non-existent estate on your daughter’s new husband, he could claim this as grounds for annulment. He would not necessarily win — it would be up to the church court to decide the extent to which any of these fraudulent behaviours were intentional, and how much they influenced the decision to marry.

Inability to contract a marriage meant that at the time of the marriage you already had a living spouse, you were related by blood to your intended spouse (closely enough for marriage to be forbidden — there was a list), you were sufficiently insane not to know what you were doing, or you did not have the consent of your guardian if you were under 21.

Proving that the man was impotent or the woman was incapable of sexual intercourse was even more difficult. Even if the man was prepared to admit to such a thing, the judges would not take his word. First came a medical examination. Was there a visible physical abnormality? Did the man show the ability to become aroused? Had the man shared his bed with his wife exclusively for years without the woman losing her virginity? (So no lovers on the side for either of them.)

If he could have an erection with anyone, he was clearly not impotent, and in earlier periods two accomplished courtesans might be hired by the court to test the impotency.  By the 19th century, doctors were used, and one does not wish to enquire too closely into their methodologies.

Rats. There go some useful plot lines. But on the other hand, what fun to work your way around them.

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Secrets on WIP Wednesday

New Zealand television currently has an advert for a car that says ‘when they write the story of your life, will anyone want to read it?’ To which my response as an author is ‘I hope not’. Boring fictional stories are happy life stories.

To keep our fictional stories compelling, we authors look for plot twists and surprises. Where would we be without secrets? If all the characters and all the readers knew everything we know, the plot twists would disappear and the way to the ending would be obvious. No story.

This week, I’m inviting you to give me an excerpt about a secret. Finding it out. Becoming aware of it. Deciding to keep it. Hearing a hint at it. Whatever you wish.

Mine is from The Lost Treasure of Lorne, a made-to-order story I’m currently writing.

Caitlin spent a restless night ignoring the ghosts, which was becoming more and more difficult. She was in the kitchen and had already stoked the fire to toast a slice of bread when the cook arrived from the village, trailed by several kitchen maids.

“A bad night, was it?” Mrs McTavish asked.

Caitlin nodded, threading a slice of bread onto her toasting fork.

Mrs McTavish shook her head. “I can’t say I blame them. Just a week till the young master’s birthday and the end of the three hundred years. Sad, that. I can’t say but that the villagers will be pleased to see the castle free of its haunting, but it seems tough on the poor ghosties. If only there was someone to help young Master John fulfill the prophecy. Have a care, Mrs Moffatt. You’ll have the toast in the fire.”

Caitlin jerked her head back to the toasting fork, and returned it to the proper distance from the flame. “Just a week?” she repeated.

“Why, yes. 1485 it was that the Fourth Marquis of Lorne killed his daughter and her lover, and his father and mother for good measure. On the last day of August, so the old stories say, Lady Normington prayed to God for vengeance, and paid with her blood for the justice she sought.”

So Mrs McTavish was of the school that held the Normington woman was a prophesying saint, rather than a cursing witch. And no wonder the ghosts were growing so agitated. But wait. “Master John is a Normington, Mrs McTavish,” she pointed out.

“Half Lorimer and living in Castle Lorne. That’s been enough to doom someone to be a ghost afore now. He is Lorimer enough to find the treasure. But it is too late. Two, the lady said, and he the last Lorimer of Lorne.

This time, the toast caught alight before she noticed. It was not just what Mrs McTavish had said that distracted her, but the reaction of the ghosts. Crowding into the kitchen, row on row, even standing in the fireplace itself, they were cheering and clapping.

Two Lorimers. She had known that two were required, but — like the cook — she had believed it was too late. The King’s heralds had hunted down all branches of the Lorimer family tree and so had the Duke of Kendal, looking for one surviving twig, and coming up empty. They were wrong.