Glossary of terms for Bess

Glossary of terms:

Berfrois           A stand for spectators, originally for tourneys, a level above the ground

Bonded           those who have made a mental bond, may refer to a pair, one human one dragon, or to either of the pair.  Written with a capital to refer to those Bonded to dragons, but in lower case if bonded to a drakeling

By my troth    today we should say ‘upon my word!’ or ‘My goodness!’ if used in surprise, or the phrase may be used to express a serious promise eg ‘by my troth, mistress, I shall protect you with my life.’

Certes              Certainly

Common

Wyrms            Topaz dragons, a mistaken name

Coney             the name used at the time for a full-grown rabbit; rabbit was used only for the young, as pig was used for what today we call piglet, hog being the full grown animal.

Coruscation    a flock of drakelings; coined recently.

Dominie          schoolmaster

Dortoir            we’d call it a dormitory nowadays

Drakelings       tiny dragon-like creatures possibly made as pets by dragons in the past.

Draxery           the study and art of dragon care

Draxier            one who has Bonded with a dragon, an honorific even as ‘Doctor’ is

Farthingale      a wide, hooped skirt .

Fie!                  An expression of disapproval, may indicate surprise but in a negative way

Galligaskins    loose breeches caught under the knee, suitable for working in.

Good lack!      An expression of surprise

Gramercy!       An expression of surprised gratitude

Grow a rose    euphemism for relieving the bladder

Humanism       a belief that the actions of human beings are important individually and collectively, emphasising critical and rational thinking above acceptance of superstition or dogma. Humanists follow this belief.

Jakes               the toilet. Commonly outside, with a seat over a cess pit, dug out by a ‘gong farmer’ twice a year.  Often communal. 

Lackaday!       Also well-a-day, an expression of sorrow or misfortune.

Legr                a lair, or cave for a dragon to live.  When capitalised, it is a collection of legrs in a cliff

Leman             lover

Lorewyrms      Amethyst dragons, known for their knowledge.  The only dragons which would re-Bond

Marry!             An expression of surprise.

Nurture-

Wyrms            Topaz wyrms, mostly female, one of the two colours known to breed

Speedwyrms   Beryl dragons, notable for their speed

Spellwyrms     Diamond dragons, black in colour as diamonds of the time were not cut with the brilliant cut later discovered

Warwyrms      Ruby dragons, known for their aggression. Mostly male, one of the two colours known to breed.

Cast list year 1 for Bess

I think I got everyone.  

Cast list

Main Protagonists

Elisabeth ‘Bess’

Marlowe                      Orphaned daughter of dead playwright Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe.

Bess is the ward of Master William Shakespeare, playwright and actor, and his wife Anne, née Hathaway.

Richard ‘Diccon’

De Bercy                     Second son of Lord de Bercy,  a Yorkist family.

Tangwystl Goch           Welsh girl, poverty stricken but claiming descent from Uther Pendragon [father of the Legendary King Arthur]

The faculty

Master Piet Van Huys The Great Master, Principal of the School of Wyrm Lore and Draxery, Flemish, Bonded rider of Lorewyrm, Amethyst Skyshadow.

Savin Kettlewell           Teacher of Alchemy, married to Mistress Amie Kettlewell. Bonded rider of Diamond dragon Deepglim. Does not suffer fools gladly.

Dr. Roger Bray            Teacher of Astronomy and Astrology. Has hidden depths.

Elizabeth Carey           Teacher of the Magical Art, Bonded rider of Diamond dragon,, Glitterwing. Head of Diamond House. Decisive and caring.

Amie Kettlewell           Teacher of Apothecary and Herbal arts, wife of Master Savin Kettlewell.  Bonded rider of Topaz Goldgleam. Head of Topaz House. Kindly.

Richard Dowell            Teacher of History and Politics. Eyepatch, served against the Armada.  Bonded rider of Topaz Goldglimmer. A great believer in the maxim that he who would have peace, prepares for war.

Ralph Sackwild            Teacher of Logic and Rhetoric.  Does not like children.  Abrasive.

Ambrose Crooke         Teacher of Latin.  Bonds with Ruby June 1600. Enthusiastic.

John Coxe                   Teacher of the Arts of War, Bonded to Ruby dragon Firestorm. Head of Ruby House. Not academic but very knowledgeable.

Faculty electives

Josse Attwood             Teaches Mathematics, Bonds with Topaz dragon,  June 1600

Mayhew Parnell           Teaches Physical Sciences, Bonds with Amethyst dragon Dawnhaze, June 1600 and becomes Head of Amethyst House

Othello Parkes             Teaches Languages, specifically French and Italian.

Colin Glasse                Teaches Engineering, Bonds with Ruby dragon June 1600

Adnet Tomkin             Teaches Geography, Bonded with Beryl dragon Blueflash, Head of Beryl House. Something of a dandy.

Lady Anne de la Pole  Teaches Music. Private to the point of secrecy.

Classmates of Bess and friends

Audrey Woolfstone     Beryl House, wealthy and rather fond of herself.

Aloysius Cobb             Diamond House, pale dark sarcastic boy who resents girls learning, Soldier’s son

Jane Evrard                  Diamond House, fond of books and book learning, artisan’s child

John Seymour              Topaz House, well born, but impoverished

Will Smith                    Topaz House.  Gilota Danforth is hiding out from an unwelcome marriage and is dressed as a boy.

Lancelyn Webber        Ruby House, brash and rather loud

Amery Ellis                  Ruby House,  thinks before acting

Hal Pocock                  Ruby House, inclined to be jealous. Despises girls.

Paul Garrard                Ruby House.  A very literal child but also honourable.

Scholars a year more advanced than Bess

Jane Edmonton            Amethyst House.  A humourless girl of limited imagination

Scholars two years more advanced than Bess

Coll Brewster               Amethyst House. Illegitimate son of priest.  Prankster, holds wager book

Roger White                 Amethyst House, son of whitesmith.  Prankster, crony of Coll

Katherine Keene          Diamond House, prone to chilblains.  Roger is sweet on her

Scholars three years more advanced than Bess

Hal Shimpling              Ruby House, Bonded rider of Ruby dragon Swiftfire

Lawrence Stephens      Amethyst House, schoolmaster’s son. Bonds June 1600 with Amethyst dragon Nimbus

2 boys in Ruby House who are muscle for Perkin Aston [year above]

Scholars four years more advanced than Bess

Matthew ‘Matt’ Tyler   Amethyst House, Bonded rider of Amethyst Dragon Hazedancer. Son of a potter, ran away to gain education.

Tom Michaels              Diamond House, Bonds with Diamond dragon June 1600

Sencey Pargetter          Diamond House, beautiful girl Queen of the May, Bonds with Diamond dragon Darkstar June 1600

Perkin Aston                Ruby House, wealthy boy who thinks he can buy everything.  Expelled from school summer 1600

Others

John Wolfe,                 servant to Amethyst House

Mitchel,                       Servant

Edward Stoat               Servant

Mentioned

Real

Queen Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queen of England and the colonies

Sir Walter Raleigh, sea captain, explorer

Sir Francis Walsingham [deceased] the Queen’s spymaster and patron of Kit Marlowe

Sir Thomas Walsingham, his nephew and patron of Master Will Shakespeare

Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary of State and probably spymaster

William Shakespeare, playwright and actor

John Shakespeare, Will’s father, sometime wool merchant, glover, rogue

Anne Shakespeare, née Hathaway, Will’s wife

Judith and Hamnet Shakespeare, twins, younger children of Will and Anne; Hamnet died aged  11

Fictional

Don Garcia de Halcon y Veneme, Spanish ambassador to Queen Elizabeth  and necromancer

Doña Violante, his wife

Elixabete, a young Basque girl kept as a maid and hostage

some pics and some starters

these are the other pics and some starters posted on Heather's writing support page.  In case it inspires anyone!

 The mists that play in Farsea Brake
Are cool and clammy to the touch
Beware and do not linger late
Or brave the mists to see too much

Being the daughter of Professor Mayall, said by so many to be mad, could be trying. Imogen Mayall had found it hard at times. She was laughed at by society girls for her learning, and not taken seriously by the scholars of Oxford for her support for her father.
When her father's endeavours paid off, and his steam yacht flew over the skies of Oxford, everything changed ....

New Shenzen was a bustling city, and being in an environment controlled dome on the moon of a gas giant did not alter that. But wherever humanity goes in the stars, two things follow. Rats; and criminals.

Phoebe loved the house where she grew up, especially the lands. As summer turned to autumn, she would rise with the sun, just to enjoy the peace of the beautiful natural landscape, unspoilt by the likes of 'Capability' Brown.
And then, as her eighteenth birthday approached, her father shattered her peace and happiness with careless words at breakfast.

As an unloved niece with no prospects, the best that Miss Elizabeth Sutton could hope for was a genteel position as a governess. She could never hope to aspire to the hand of someone like the handsome young man in the regimentals of the Lilywhite Seventh, who passed daily down the street. But she could manage to be engaged in a task like dusting the windowsills in order to see him.

And on the exercise of picking up two points of view of one scene, here's another:
Captain Felix Philby, of the Seventh Hussars, wondered who the lovely, but pale, girl was, whom he saw every day. She was always gazing out of the window as he walked by, and sometimes jerked away, hurriedly, as though turning to speak to someone.

White horses and black, a poem

I belong to a facebook group where those of us who are founder members post pictures or sentences to help other writers and each other to take inspiration, and just write what is inspired by the imagery for 15 minutes - which can always be expanded later.  This grew from a throwaway line in a discussion of the seaside over Heather, the true founder, riding her horse on the beach.  I had a vision of a black horse on the shore, and the so-called white horses of the breakers, which became an anapestic balladic poem. It is not a happy ever after, so be warned!  

 White Horses and Black

White horses crashing and rolling, white horses that rise on the sea

A single black horse gallops onwards,  it carries my sweetheart to me

Galloping on through the shallows, galloping over the sand

White horses fret at the edge of the shore where the water is met by the land

The waves shatter hard on the shoreline, the waves being horses no more

But my lover will ride on regardless, riding onwards across the dark shore

He will gallop across the dark causeway, racing the tide as it floods

And when he has reached my lone island his kisses will sing in my blood.

He will gallop across the dark causeway, revealed by the ebb of the tide

And will gather me into his arms once again, and will ne’er more be reft from my side

Together upon my lone island we will hear all the sounds of the sea

And the white horses race o’er the causeway which carries my lover to me

Oh my lover! Please hurry, please hurry, the waves are encroaching too fast

And the white horses play on the causeway, and the safe time for riding is past

I look out from my lonely island, and in the dark waves I can see

Amidst the white horses one black horse’s head, swept away by the herd from the sea.

In the morning the shoreline is quiet, an exhausted black horse on the sand,

And the white horses born of the ocean just shake their soft manes at the land

But the man who was recklessly riding is gone now forever below

For defying the horses of Neptune far under the waters that flow

'Toll the Dead Man's Bells' and 'The Armitage Chronicles' published

Toll the Dead Man's Bells, book 12 in the Felicia and Robin series.
Robin and Felicia receive a letter from Fanny Rose, the beauty they met on the ship on which they sailed to England. Fanny wrote an impassioned plea for aid, as she has found a man who she wishes to marry, but there has been trouble. Crispin Parsons, the family tutor, still carries a torch for Fanny, and wishes to help her, even though she has found another man.
As Robin and Felicia are about to leave England to take Pernel and the other children to Italy for the winter, they decide to break their journey in Kent, near Canterbury, to look into Fanny’s unspecified troubles.
What they find is a very unpleasant family indeed, and some nasty things going on. A lot of secrets are revealed, regarding Fanny as well as her betrothed’s family.

US paperback Here
US kindle Here
UK paperback Here
UK kindle Here

The Armitage Chronicles  a spinoff from the Jane and Caleb series
  By request, “The Armitage Chronicles” is a deeper look at the romances seen in the background in ‘Jane and the Sins of Society’ as well as a visit to Agnes Fanshawe, an old school friend of Jane’s, who is also mentioned in that book. This book is a collection of three novellas, covering their stories. Laura Finds Love Laura Evans struggles to handle the spite of a prettier girl who makes fun of her appearance and pokes fun at Laura’s other friends. Laura feels her looks would never attract someone like Gerard, Marquess of Falkrington, known to be a heart-breaker, and quickly bored by any female. However, Gerard is about to learn that he is more interested in how much personality a girl has, rather than her superficial looks. The Governess’s New Job It is one of the clichés of romance, that the noble lord marries his governess. However, the novels generally have the courtship before marriage, and do not involve a proposal to save the noble lord’s life by being with child as soon as possible to deter his assassination. Her whirlwind wedding to Michael Strode, Duke Braxtrode, is encouraged by his three daughters, but the family still faces danger. Nessie Fanshawe and the Dastardly Doctor Agnes ‘Nessie’ Fanshawe is less of a poor little dab of a woman than she was when first encountered in ‘Jane and the Opera Dancer’, and is chaperoning her connexion, Emma Kemp, in Bath. However, she cannot stand by when she has some worrying suspicions about a doctor of whom she hears, and turns to her distant cousin, ‘Beau’ Popham for advice.
US paperback Here
US Kindle Here
UK paperback Here
UK kindle Here

The man from Somewhen

Some of you know I do book covers and sell the rights and one of the pictures I had created set me thinking.  So this is a piece of flash fiction. This one also arises from the writer's group which holds challenges; this was part of one of the challenges I set

The man from somewhen

Emily woke with a start.  She had fallen asleep over her book again, and the lazy summer’s afternoon had darkened into crepuscular gloom. Her parents would be worried. She jumped up, but something in the woods caught her attention.

It was a spark of light, rapidly growing, until it formed a big glowing disk made of purple and white flames.  Nothing seemed to be catching on fire, however, and Emily stared as a man stepped out of the disk. He was wearing clothes which Emily would describe best as Victorian, including a top hat.  And Emily was pretty sure he had not been behind the spark before it formed.

He looked around, and stared at her.

“What are you doing here?  There should be nobody here,” he said.  He sounded rattled.  “And your clothes ...”

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” retorted Emily. “I’m not the one looking as though he’s going to a costume party.  Are you from the past or something?  I’ve read HG Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’, you know.”

“Hell,” said the man.  “What year is it?”

“2006,” said Emily.  “What year should it be?”

“I was aiming for 1906,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Emily Ward, though I’m not sure I should be telling a complete stranger,” said Emily.

“Emily Ward? You are named after an ancestress?”

“Yes, my great-great-great-grandmother,” said Emily, counting on her fingers to check the number of greats.

Behind him, the glowing disk wobbled, flickered, and disappeared.

“You shouldn’t even exist,” said the man.

“Well, tough shit, mate,” said Emily.  “And you shouldn’t exist now either, but I fancy you are stuck with it; unless you have another time machine or whatever.”

He whirled around.

His language was not Victorian, or Edwardian, or whatever.

“And now, perhaps, as you can’t get at my great-great-great-grandmother you can tell me what you intended to do,” said Emily.

“There was an opportunity on the timeline to make sure she did not meet your great-great-great grandfather,” he said. “And it would have prevented your line being born.  I would not have killed her.”

“You would have killed me,” said Emily. “Why on earth would you want to kill my whole family line?”

“Because one of you invented the first look-back machine, which led to the temporal entropic portal,” he said.  “Which is what I came through.  Have you any idea how much crime can be committed when a criminal can pop back in time, pull a heist, and then nip back into the future, beyond the time of the statute of limitations?”

“How come yours went pear shaped then?” asked Emily.  “To pull a heist like that, you need to get back to your own future.”

“It’s not supposed to operate if there are any other people inside 200m of it,” he explained.  “And you were not expected to be here.  You have a time by which you are supposed to be home.”

“Yes, and I fell asleep,” said Emily.  “I should have been home ages ago.  And by the way, you haven’t told me your name.”

“David Ward, great-great-great grandmother,” he said, mockingly.