Masquerade:
This was a huge bit of fun and I am very grateful to Mercedes for including me in her clever idea on writers’ personas.
http://abrokenlaptop.com/2010/08/20/be-mysterious-writers-in-masks-features-prue-batten/
This was a huge bit of fun and I am very grateful to Mercedes for including me in her clever idea on writers’ personas.
http://abrokenlaptop.com/2010/08/20/be-mysterious-writers-in-masks-features-prue-batten/
He remembers. He knows and remembers everything. I hurried against the tide of food servitors through the kitchens and outside. I could not stay. My freedom was at stake and I had fought for it savagely and would not give in. I found the door I knew gave onto the tower that housed the stairwell and opened it to slip through, hurrying up to the little chamber. In minutes I had packed my small possessions, my mother’s comb, a bracelet . . . a piece of jewelry that reminded me of the best days of my life, and a tiny book of hours, almost miniature, that had been my mother’s. I wrapped them in the old kirtle and chemise together with the cloths and spare chemise. Guy’s coin I secreted down my front, tied on my waist under my clothes and I flung a cloak over the lot.
I’ve been injured and out of action for four weeks now. And in that time I should have almost finished The Shifu Cloth. In fact I have 30,000 words to go and another six weeks of rehab. Finishing is a possibility if I dedicate myself. But the silence from London over Glass Flowers/Paperweights is hardly conducive to me finishing a further novel. I believe there is a summer holiday-break in the UK and London business has almost shut up shop, and it is a soothing thought.
‘Go into the kitchens and calm the cook.’ His voice barked at me.
‘Good day to you too, Sir Guy.’ I muttered without even looking at him.
He grabbed my wrist as I pushed past. ‘If you’d been here, the house would have been calm and the kitchen under control.’
I lapsed into quiet on the stone bench in the Infirmary Garden after my telling, with still more yet to go. Mother Beatrice played with her rosary beads, the clicking a quiet counterpoint to the birds that filled the almond and fig trees. ‘Reverend Mother, it was a short time but makes a long story and one I am not sure I can . . .’
Montrachet’s skies certainly did not weep for me when we left. The blue that blinded one stretched as far as the eye could see and the white rock of southern Aquitaine intensified the glare. I did not weep either, but my handmaid, Marais, sniffed until I told her to desist.
For those who want to re-read Guy’s story, there is now a blog page for you to refer to. See top bar. With many thanks to friend and techno-savvy Rebecca of http://resabi.wordpress.com
To begin with, my name isn’t Prudence. I am called Ysabel. And I do not have brown hair. I am by nature blonde. I am from the family Moncrieff. My father was Baron Geoffrey of Moncrieff and my mother was Alaïs de Montrachet from Aquitaine. A cousin twice removed from Eleanor, the mighty queen, and who was the mother of our king, Richard the Lionheart.
Gisborne
By Prue Batten
© 2010
This is notification of the official copyright for my re-telling of the legend of Guy of Gisborne.
I have also taken out a specific Creative Commons license allowing no use or changes to the story of Gisborne without my express agreement.
‘Vasey and Gisborne arrived in Nottingham together, with papers from Prince John purportedly in the name of King Richard.
'Vasey and Gisborne arrived together . . .'