Excerpt Thursday: Anna C. Bowling

This week on Excerpt Thursday we're featuring one of our contributors, Anna C. Bowling, and a glimpse at her short story NEVER TOO LATE.

Ameila Sinclair has lived all her life with the decorum expected of a 19th century banker's wife. She remained faithful to a husband who never loved her, raised three children, and turned away the love of a lifetime. Now widowed at the dawn of a new century and facing her second fifty years, she decides she can no longer deny the love that has burned within her for decades. Can she throw away the only life she has ever known in order to find the only life she has ever wanted?

***

December 01, 1899

What shall I write to begin the second half of my life? I begin this diary as I have begun every one I have ever kept. My name is Amelia Bennington Sinclair. I am fifty-one years old today, and my son has given me this diary. "To write your life's story, Mama," he says.

Were there only one story of a life, that would be an easy task. Today, however, when I think of what I would like to record for the ages, I can think only of the way I felt when I was with Tommy.

I didn't love Tommy because it was the right thing to do. I just loved him.

Was it right? I'm not sure.

It all happened in one of those pockets of time and space that are cut off from everything else. When looked at on their own, for what they are, in and of themselves, then they do make a kind of sense. It's when someone--somebody else--tries to fit times like that into the rest of life that it becomes complicated. One moment he was only a man, a colleague of my husband's, come to dinner to talk of business, but a lame horse and bad weather kept him long after, and within a week, he had become my life.

Now, from the safe haven of years, I can say aloud, as I write the words for the very first time, what I never could during those most champion of days I loved him.

I loved Thomas Van Wyck.

I loved his eyes of Caribbean blue, his weathered hands and the weight of his step. I loved the tilt of his head as he listened to me ramble about the most inane of subjects, merely because they interested me. I loved to breathe the air he exhaled and touch the doorknob that still held the heat of his fingers. I loved him and I was not ashamed of it. I loved him. I loved Tommy.

His name emerges from my lips in a hushed whisper, soft and smudged like an Impressionist painting. Like Monet's people at market, washed by the rain, he is captured on the canvas of my heart, one good, bright and shining spot in the dull morass of duty.

To this day, I can never stand in the last light of sunset without feeling his presence. It is an ache I seek out when I can, the way a child's tongue probes at a loose or aching tooth. If only Tommy were as easy to dislodge.

Nobody knows, because we made a pact never to speak of it, he and I, that we sat once under the rose arbor and planned--not vaguely, but intricately--how to make our escape. Tommy never cared much for banking, you see, and I had by then already had my fill of being the society matron. We shared a yearning to escape and fly away like a great, tall ship of old over the Atlantic, to some exotic port of call. Bermuda, maybe, or all the way to Africa, where we would live on a lush plantation with native servants and dress in loose cotton robes. No bustles or celluloid collars awaited us in our new lives. Those cumbersome symbols of everything that was wrong with the world, those we could leave behind when we reached Italy. Italy was as good a place as any to begin again.

An uncle had fled there in his misspent youth, Tommy told me, after a great scandal with his employer's fiancée. We would find a haven in Italy, he was certain, until we decided where we wanted to settle. Bermuda, or Africa if we wanted, or we could stay forever in the villa that overlooked the sea.

I curse myself every day for not going. Understand that I would never, not for another twenty or thirty years of life, exchange my children, Jonathan and Margaret and Sylvia, for sand in my toes and bananas at lunch. They've grown into fine, respectable people, but still...

At times like this, when every hothouse flower with half a heartbeat to its name bursts forth into a riotous symphony of color, I remember the inkstained fingers that held a buttercup to my chin. It's when I remember bright blue eyes I always imagined a child of ours would share. This is when thoughts of Tommy insinuate themselves into the daily scheme of things and take my mind dancing through the clouds like the tail of a kite.

I remember the kite. I do, I do. It was a horrible thing, really. Ugly thing, put together from ledger sheets and tailed with strips of cloth from an old petticoat of mine. The string burned my hands as the kite flew up, so Tommy took it from me. We ran like children, breathless and laughing. It was a right moment there if ever there was one.

Greatest Hits: Aimee Semple McPherson

By Delia DeLeest

Back before Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker brought their scandals to the religious world, there was Aimee Semple McPherson.

After spending years as an itinerant Pentecostal minister in the early 1920s, Aimee pulled into Los Angeles with her mother and two small children in tow. Her husband, Harold McPherson, had filed for a separation in 1918 and was granted a divorce in 1921 on the grounds of abandonment. She was a woman called on a mission and she couldn't let something like a reluctant husband slow her down.

Within five years, her ministry had grown from going from town to town in her "Gospel Car"--a 1912 Packard decorated with religious sayings painted on the sides--to a multi-million dollar business. Starting off by giving sermons wherever she could find crowds, including boxing rings before and after matches, she raised enough money to fund the Angelus Temple for her church, The International Institute of Four Square Evangelism. The temple cost $1.5 million and included a $75,000 radio studio, seats for over 5,000 people, a nursery, a lonely hearts club, and a miracle room for the discarded wheelchairs and crutches of those followers who were healed of their earthly afflictions. Aimee had a good thing going.


In 1926, the world was shocked by the disappearance of Mrs. McPherson. Aimee had gone for a dip in the ocean. The last her secretary had seen of her before heading out on an errand, Aimee had been joyfully frolicking in the waves. When the secretary returned, Aimee Semple McPherson had disappeared. The faithful gathered to pray for her deliverance while others, spurred on either by evangelical zeal or the $25,000 reward for her recovery, diligently searched the area for their missing leader. In the resulting clamor, one man drowned, one died of exposure, and a young girl killed herself, distraught at the loss of her idol.

Finally admitting to the loss, a memorial service was held. Shortly after the service, Aimee's mother received a ransom note, asking for half a million dollars for the release of the evangelist. Believing her daughter to be dead and the note a fraud, she threw it away.

On June 23, 1926, thirty-five days after her disappearance, Aimee Semple McPherson stumbled out of the desert and into a small Mexican town just south of the Arizona border. She'd been held hostage, she claimed, trapped, drugged and tortured in a small desert shack. She'd only escaped after making her way thirteen hours through the desert to civilization. The world rejoiced.

But...(you just knew there was going to be a 'but,' didn't you?) Aimee's story had more loopholes than an afghan made by your far-sighted great-aunt Millie. Though she supposedly made her way thirteen hours across the desert, her shoes weren't worn and had grass stains on the sides. Grass stains in the desert? The shack she described could never be found, and even though she had disappeared while swimming, she returned fully dressed and wearing a watch given to her by her mother, which she'd not had with her when she'd gone to the beach. Aimee's house of cards was beginning to topple, but it wasn't over yet.

Coinciding with Aimee's disappearance was another missing person. Kenneth Ormiston, a married radio operator for the Four Square Church with whom Aimee had developed a close friendship, had also gone missing. After tracing his whereabouts, the District Attorney found that Ormiston, along with a female companion matching Sister Aimee's description, had been visiting various hotels and beach resorts all along the West Coast. Handwriting analysis matched some of the entries in the hotel registers with Mrs. McPherson's own penmanship.

Oops.

An investigation ensued and though the prosecution could find no clear-cut proof that Sister Aimee had committed fraud or obstruction of justice, there was also no proof she'd been kidnapped, either. The DA produced an array of witnesses, hotel chambermaids, bellhops, etc., who could identify the amorous couple, but then he mysteriously moved for an acquittal without any explanation. So, Sister Aimee got off scott free...or did she?

After the scandal, she went back to proselytizing, but things just weren't the same. She was no longer a media darling and people no longer blindly followed her lead. Her subsequent marriage in 1931 to a musician and actor further riled up her congregation, as it was, against one of the tenants of The Four Square church which stated that a person could not remarry while a previous spouse was still alive--Harold McPherson was still around and kicking, though he'd had no part in Aimee's life for years. She and her latest husband were eventually divorced in 1934. Aimee and Harold's son, Rolf, took over the running of the church, though Aimee was still around to give her standby sermon, "Story of my Life".

In September of 1944, Rolf went to Aimee's hotel room to pick her up for a scheduled preaching session and he found her dead in her room, an open bottle of pills next to her. Aimee's death was not believed to be a suicide, despite how it looked. The barbiturate that was found in her room was commonly found to cause a hypnotic effect that could easily lead up to accidental overdose.

So now you know the story of Sister Aimee. Isn't it interesting to know that in a decade known for its wild abandonment, even the religious leaders of the 1920's weren't immune to its lure?

Greatest Hits: Great Storm of 1703

By Lisa Marie Wilkinson

"No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it." -- Daniel Defoe

The southern part of Britain was devastated by the most catastrophic storm it had experienced in five hundred years on November 26–27, 1703. Believed to be a revitalized Atlantic hurricane, the storm began as a series of gales earlier in November, and brought with it a prolonged period of unseasonably warm weather and high seas.

A warm front from the hurricane moved from the West Indies, traveled along the coast of Florida, and swept into the Atlantic prior to reaching England. The warm front collided with cold air, creating wind speeds estimated at over 120 miles per hour, and establishing conditions for a tempest that would peak during a six- to eight-hour period beginning at midnight on November 26. Although very little rain was reported, strong winds and a North Sea surge elevated tides by nearly eight feet, causing severe flooding.

There was significant loss of life. On land in England and Wales alone, collapsing roofs and chimneys killed more than one hundred and twenty people, and injured more than two hundred. Eighty more were drowned in marshland cottages surrounding the Severn Estuary.

Those at sea during the storm fared even worse. It is estimated that between eight and fifteen thousand people lost their lives along the coast and in over one hundred reported shipwrecks at sea.


Britain was at war and three fleets were assembled to aid the King of Spain against the French. By dawn, the majority of the vessels were destroyed, and fifteen hundred seamen had lost their lives. Twelve warships with thirteen hundred men were lost while still within sight of land. On the Thames, hundreds of ships were driven into each other in the Pool, the section downstream from London Bridge.


The Eddystone Lighthouse, in the direct path of the storm when the hurricane was at its most powerful, was destroyed. Its designer and builder, Henry Winstanley, was working on the structure at the time, and he was swept away with his creation.

No segment of the population was untouched. It was reported that Queen Anne stood at a window and watched as the trees in St. James's Park were violently uprooted by the force of the wind. She was forced to take refuge in a cellar when falling chimney stacks and a partial roof collapse damaged St. James Palace. The bodies of the bishop of Bath and Wells and his sister were discovered amid the ruins of their palace.

Property losses estimated at £6 million exceeded the £4 million loss suffered as a result of the Great Fire of London in 1666. In and around London alone, two thousand chimney stacks were blown down, and over a hundred church steeples in the capital were damaged. The heavy lead lining on the roof of Westminster Abbey was lifted and tossed some distance from the building.

All over southern England, streets were covered with tiles and slates. Rural village causeways and paved London roads alike were buried in slates and tiles from demolished buildings; even on hard ground they amassed to a depth of as much as eight inches. More than eight hundred houses were blown away or destroyed by the collapse of a central chimney stack. The majority of the houses left standing were partly or completely stripped of roof tiles.

Windmills, common structures at the time, were particularly vulnerable. More than four hundred windmills were destroyed. Many burned to the ground after their cloth sails rotated at such speed that friction led to fire. Millions of trees were uprooted or damaged. In the county of Kent, over a thousand barns and outhouses were destroyed. There were reports of men and animals being lifted into the air by the force of the wind. Tens of thousands of sheep and cattle were lost.

Restoration would prove to be slow and costly. The day following the storm, in one of the first recorded instances of price gouging, the price of tiles jumped from twenty-one shillings per thousand to one hundred and twenty shillings per thousand. English merchants were hard-pressed to keep a ready supply on hand; many had suffered the loss of company ships whose cargo holds had been burgeoning with goods.

The storm would remain in the collective consciousness of the British people as "The Great Storm" for many years to come.

Greatest Hits: Covent Garden Ladies

By Anita Davison

In Georgian England, for a man about town to enlist the services of a prostitute was an accepted part of life. London in1797 contained a total of 50,000 'Ladies of the Night,' which was around one in ten of the total female population. Covent Garden theatres were built with 'retiring rooms' connected to the boxes in order for the entertainment of clients while they enjoyed an evening out at the theatre. Even the vocabulary used to describe them was colourful.

-- Prostitutes who waited outside theatres for the plays to finish were called 'spells.'
-- Lower class streetwalkers were 'flash mollishers.'
-- Covent Garden Ague was a term for venereal disease.
-- Covent Garden Nun was another name for a prostitute.
-- Covent Garden Abbess was a bawd (madam) most of whom started out as whores themselves.

Between the years of 1757 and 1795, a publication was produced each Christmas entitled Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. This book was handwritten to begin with, but soon went into print and sold a quarter of a million copies during the thirty eight years it was produced. The List, priced at two shillings and sixpence, was a catalogue of around eighty up-market prostitutes. It included biographical details of each lady, together with a description of her appearance, personality and her sexual specialties, together with their charges.


The name "Harris' referred to a Jack Harris, the head waiter at the Shakespeare's Head, a Covent Garden tavern frequented by sea captains and the directors of the East India Company. Harris christened himself the "Pimp General of All England," but in 1757, he was in Newgate prison for debt. He gave an impoverished, heavy drinking Irish poet by the name of Samuel Derrick, permission to use his name for the book.

A 'common whore' could be purchased in London for a shilling, perhaps two or three shillings to enjoy her company in a bedroom in a local tavern or lodging house. The average wage at the time was around a pound a week, and two pounds was a fairly large sum of money. With some of the ladies on Harris's Lists charging a guinea a time, the lists represented the top end of the market.


An account of one young woman from the 1773 edition reads:

Miss M__tague is a well-shaped girl, about twenty-three, good-natured and said to be thoroughly experienced in the whole art and mysterie of Venus's tactics and as soon reduce a perpendicular to less than the curve of a parabola. She is rather generous and you may sometimes find your way in there free of expence.

From the 1780 edition, the entry for a Miss B____rn. of No. l8 Old Compton Street, Soho:

This accomplished nymph has just attained her eighteenth year, and fraught with every perfection, enters a volunteer in the field of Venus. She plays on the pianofort, sings, dances, and is mistress of every Maneuver in the amorous contest that can enhance the coming pleasure; is of the middle stature, fine auburn hair, dark eyes and very inviting countenance, which ever seems to beam delight and love. In bed she is all the heart can wish, or eyes admires every limb is symmetry, every action under cover truly amorous; her price two pounds.

The list also alerted its readers to those women who were best avoided, a Pol Forestor was reported as having "breath worse than a Welch bagpipe" and warned against the "contaminated carcase" of a certain Miss Young from the Turk's Head Bagnio. And warning them off Miss Robinson, at the Jelly Shops, "a slim and genteel made girl--but rather too flat."

A review of one resident of Drury Lane reads, "Very impudent and very ugly; chiefly a dealer with old fellows. It is reported that she uses more birch rods in a week than Westminster school in a twelvemonth."

And another:

Known in this quarter for her immense sized breasts, which she alternately makes use of with the rest of her parts, to indulge those who are particularly fond of a certain amusement. She is what you may call, at all; backwards and forwards, all are equal to her, posteriors not excepted, nay indeed, by her own account she has most pleasure in the latter. Very fit for a foreign Macaroni - entrance at the front door tolerably reasonable, but nothing less than two pound for the back way.

A Mrs. Crosby of 24 George Street, for example, "being particularly attached to the sons of Neptune," (sailors) had married an elderly sea captain. When he died he left her a small annuity. This was enough to keep her off the streets, but not enough to live on--so she worked as a part-time prostitute. Harris's List says, "Mrs. Crosby could be contacted at home during the day or in the theatre at night. She has dark hair flowing in ringlets down her back, languishing grey eyes and a tolerable complexion." She charged one guinea (£1.05).


Of a Mrs. Grafton of Wapping, her "...best customers are sea officers, who she particularly liked, as they do not stay long at home, and always return fraught with love and presents." At 40 years old, the lady "...could give more pleasure than a dozen girls half her age. Her price was 5 shillings (25p). Most naval officers could afford that, as a day's pay for most captains in this period was about 20 shillings (£1.00).

Harris often used nautical terminology when describing the charms of the women. Miss Devonshire of Queen Ann Street had "...fair complexion, cerulean eyes and fine teeth," and "...many a man of war hath been her willing prisoner, and paid a proper ransom…she is so brave, that she is ever ready for an engagement, cares not how soon she comes to close quarters, and loves to fight yard arm and yard arm, and be briskly boarded."

The mood turned against such 'immorality' when a Mr. Aitken was convicted at the Kings Bench for the offence of publishing Harris's List in November 1795, which hereafter went out of print.

A copy of the 1790 edition was sold for £5,170 at auction in March 2008.

THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH Winner!

We have a winner for Stacey Williamson's THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH guest blog. A free copy goes to:

MOZI ESMES MOMMY!

Contact Beth to give her your address. The book must be claimed by next Sunday or another winner will be drawn. Please stop back later to let us know what you thought! Congratulations!

Guest Author: Minnette Meador

This week on unusual historicals, we're featuring Resplendence author Minnette Meador and her roman-set romance, THE CENTURION AND THE QUEEN. Here's the blurb:

Marius has been stationed on the island of 60AD Britannia for sixteen years, since his demotion from the famous Praetorian Guard after his suspected involvement in the assassination of Caligula. When Delia enters his life, she challenges everything he believes, effortlessly strips away years of Roman conditioning, and angers him to the point of betraying his training, and his oaths. He simply cannot resist her.

Delia is sister to an indolent Celtic king, but that role has turned to nothing more than another surrender. All she can do now is help her people survive the gradual conquest by Rome and their suicidal pride as so many throw themselves against the unstoppable Roman machine. The last thing she expected was to find herself craving the touch of an enemy.

***

The trunk lid cracked opened a half hour later, two eyes peered from the minuscule opening. Delia was grateful the hinges did not squeak when she lifted it the rest of the way.

She carefully extracted herself from the cramped space, careful not to make a sound. It took her several minutes to get the feeling back into her legs and arms. She studied the slit she had cut into the leather tent wall with the sharp Roman knife. It was barely discernible.

While Delia huddled, she watched the shadow rise and fall from the high bed. She could barely make out his rugged face, the ruffled mane of salt and pepper hair in what little light spilled from the entrance.

The wait and the cool air had taken the edge off her resolve, but her head was still spiraling with feelings her rationale was having a hard time grappling with. She did not even consider being caught; the madness making her fearless.

The unreasoning fury that dominated every sense was mysterious and frightening. It had become almost an entity in itself, fueled by crushed desires, fear, and exhaustion. The delirium seemed to consume every thought, every feeling, every emotion until it left her empty inside. It had not grown from the confusion that left her sick and disoriented; it was not from the thrill, the longing, the fear—the contempt that this man had touched her. It was not even from the disgust that a Roman had tried to violate her, not once, but twice in as many days. None of those things mattered. Delia rose and crossed in a daze to the bed, lifting the knife to grimace at it, as if the dagger were a friend and yet a stranger. The dichotomy sent her head spinning.

The fury inside her came from knowing that she loved him, had completely surrendered her life to his touch, and would do so again—in a pounding heartbeat. That was what she could not forgive. That was what her enraged mind clung to when she raised the knife, and saw not only Marius' face, but that of her brother, both of them intertwined in the Gods' sick, twisted joke. They were the same...were they not?

Marius had to die. It was the only way to justify what she had done...what she had allowed.

As the rage took over her mind, Delia's felt her face tilt a little to the right and she lifted the long dagger above her head. Whether she meant it to or not, a small moan escaped her lips and she brought the knife down.

***

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: "I was engrossed by The Centurion and the Queen, and didn't put it down."

SIMPLY ROMANCE REVIEW: "Historical novels especially historical Romance tend to fall within fairly set parameters and usually tend to be a bit cliché this story breaks out of those parameters and destroys the clichés with a truly refreshing story of love in ancient Britannia."

NIGHTOWL ROMANCE: "I encourage you to try out Minnette's work and see how enmeshed you will become in her wonderful settings. ...this book pulled me in and I read it in two sittings..."

LONG & SHORT REVIEW's Book of the Week: "It's a fast-mover, one gripping scene after the next, with a powerful love story plaited throughout. In the last part of the book, Delia's people face off with Marius's Romans in a battle that will resonate throughout history. Some books keep you turning pages until the end then leaves you cold on the last page. Not this one. The end was so satisfying that it justified the entire exciting story. Now I want to go out and buy the paperback version. I highly recommend this memorable tale."

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If you'd like to have a shot at winning a free copy of THE CENTURION AND THE QUEEN, leave a question or comment for Minnette! We'll draw a winner next Sunday. Good luck!

Weekly Announcements - 11 July 09

Jennifer Linforth has been saving up her announcements! Her debut novel, MADRIGAL received excellent reviews from Paranormal Romance Reviews, Night Own Romance, Long and Short Romance Reviews, and Coffee Time Romance. How fabulous! Jennifer also received the cover for the sequel, called ABENDLIED, which follows Philippe de Chagny from Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

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Carrie Lofty has completed the book trailer for her January 2010 release, SCOUNDREL'S KISS. Hope you enjoy it!


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Join us Sunday when author Minnette Meador will be here to talk about her novel, THE CENTURION AND THE QUEEN, set in ancient Rome!

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We'll also draw the winner of Beth Williamson's THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH. There's still time to leave a comment for your shot at winning!

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Have a great week, and I hope everyone has safe travels to Nationals! There will be no announcements and no guest author next weekend, but we'll be back on schedule with Meredith Duran on July 26!

In the meantime, if you have an announcement to make for next week, email Carrie. See you next week...

Thursday Excerpt: Jennifer Mueller

Thursdays on Unusual Historicals mean excerpts, and this week we're featuring one of our long-time contributors, Jennifer Mueller. Her latest is THE MOUNTAINTOP.

In ancient Greece men marry for money and land while finding their pleasure elsewhere. When Orestes saves a captured woman from slave traders, just what is she supposed to do when she doesn't feel like sharing?

Especially when she's literally ready to fight him over the matter.

***

Tericles grinned at the irony of the situation as he walked off. Soon Orestes stood face-to-face with the woman. With her this close, he could see her olive skin tanned darker by the sun. Her clear eyes, rimmed by thick black lashes and framed by sharp cheekbones, looked back unashamed. She was indeed beautiful. A veil of diaphanous yellow covered her from head-to-foot. Although interspersed by red glass beads, in no way did they disguise her nakedness. Under that light and filmy garment, Orestes could see she wore nothing. The veil wrapped around her and only her face remained bare.

Tericles grabbed the veil and ripped it from her body. Her eyes glared at the slave trader, but she still looked proud and stood tall as if dressed as a queen, making no attempt to hide herself. Long hair, black as night, flowing down her back was the first thing Orestes noticed.

Walking around her as if surveying the goods, like any buyer, he couldn't help but take in her stunning features. The woman should have been a model for the statues of Athena, goddess of war. Nothing of her figure spoke of idling around a house. She bore scars like his, from fighting. Spartan perhaps, as he reached the far side of her, he caught sight of her arm covered by a winding tattooed vine. The marks of a soldier, but not a Greek one; they used no such markings.

Above and below the elbow, fine gold bracelets decorated her arm, mimicking the winding tattoo. They were all she had been left with, and were delicate enough that they would have been destroyed in their removal. Tall and lean, her rope like muscles betrayed her active lifestyle, but the exercise didn't diminish the size of her breasts. No archer then; they would have gotten in the way.

Ilias, Orestes' youngest brother at sixteen-years-old, stopped behind him. "Help her, Orestes." His whisper low so no one else heard him.

"A younger brother, I take it. She would be a fine teacher before he marries and a fine mistress for you," Tericles announced.

"Give her back her clothes. I've seen enough, but if I’m buying her for my brother, can you assure me that she is untested by the likes of you? I would hate to think of my brother getting whatever you have picked up on your travels."

They feigned shock at the accusation. Orestes heard his brother gasp behind him. "I assure you we have not touched her since she came into our possession. Before that we will make no claims since she wasn't under our control. You never know about those Politicians' daughters, anything to cause trouble."

Orestes looked over at the woman as she finished covering herself. "What price are you asking?"

"Only the debt her father sold her for." They announced a sum. Orestes frowned. No shame showed on her face, only hatred. He didn't blame her.

"Which I assume was quite great and then of course, there is your fee for handling the deal."

Tericles and Herakles looked at each other for a moment. Perhaps realizing Orestes wasn't as naïve as they thought. "Are a Politician's debts ever small? She is more than worth the price we ask," Herakles answered, a slight waver to his voice.

"Oh, by the looks of her, she is worth more than the two of you put together. But do tell me, why is such a man selling off his daughter? He may have to pay her dowry, but there is prestige to gain in marrying her to a good family. There are other ways to pay off a debt, especially for the rich."

Orestes saw a slight grin appear on the face of the girl. She obviously enjoyed watching her captors squirm.

"We are selling quality goods, I assure you. You will be the envy of all your neighbors with a Greek slave that was once rich."

"And why would such an important, influential Athenian man tattoo his daughter in the manner of the Phrygians? You are not a Greek Politician's daughter are you?" Orestes asked her directly. The quick movement of her head to look at Orestes showed him she didn't expect to be spoken to.

"Of course not," she answered.

Greatest Hits: Victorian Medievalism

By Sandra Schwab

It's not quite clear exactly whose fault it was. It might have been James MacPherson and his Ossian books, or Thomas Percy and his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, all published in the 1760s (though to be fair, these publications were at first much more popular and influential on the continent). It might have been Horace Walpole and all the other writers of gothic novels. It might have been the antiquarians who started to become interested in medieval life and medieval objects in the late 18th century.

Sir Walter Scott, whose historical novels filled with knights, adventure and romance (Ivanhoe anybody?), certainly has to shoulder a large part of the blame.


Whoever or whatever it was: from the late 18th century onwards the British rediscovered the Middle Ages--with a vengeance! At first it was all quite innocent: one enjoyed a gothic novel or two; an old ballad, perhaps; if you were rich, you might have fancied putting some fake ruins in your gardens, or why not have your country estate remodelled in the neo-gothic style? Add to that portraits of people in (fake) armour and other sort of medieval clothing, and the odd collector of medieval knick-knack.

The two black-and-white drawings are from Punch.

But then somebody got it into his head that these outward trappings were simply not enough. No, on top of these one ought to revive the spirit of the Middle Ages, the great ideals of "the days of old when knights were bold" (or at least what were thought to be the ideals of the knights of old)--in one word: CHIVALRY. As a result of this, the ideal of masculinity radically changed in the course of the 19th century: a man had to be tough, brave, show no sign of cowardice, save / protect women and children, and meet death without flinching.

The Victorian Age saw an immense production of history books, ballads, novels, music and paintings that celebrated this chivalric ideal and thus taught it to whole generations of boys and young men. It proved to be so influential that at the beginning of the 20th century the founder of the boyscout movement, Baden-Powell, claimed that the boyscouts were the modern descendants of the knights of old:

You Patrol Leaders and Scouts are therefore very like the knights and their retainers, especially if you keep your honour ever before you in the first place, and do your best to help other people [...] Your motto is, 'Be Prepared' to do this, and the motto of the knights was a similar one, 'Be Always Ready.'

The knights of old were particularly attentive in respect and courtesy to women. When walking with a lady or child, a Scout should always have her on his left side, so that his right is free to protect her.

(Both quotations are from an abridged version of Scouting for Boys, which was first published in 1908.)

Protect her from what? we might ask. For even in the early 20th century it wasn't all that likely that a dragon would hide behind some bushes in the park, waiting to snatch a tasty little woman. As you can see from this example, the medieval revival and the romanticized version of the Middle Ages offered the opportunity to glorify old genderroles--this became particularly important towards the end of the century when these old genderroles came under increasing attack and women started to demand more rights.

St. George and Princess Sabra
(Whom he has saved from the ghastly dragon)
By Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Greatest Hits: Sappho & Co.

By Lindsay Townsend

Sarmatia in my BRONZE LIGHTNING, which begins in the Mediterranean of 1652 BC, would surely have known of the the Muse. Homer called her 'Daughter of Zeus' in The Odyssey, but the poetry we have left from ancient Greece comes much later and mostly from men: Alcman, Pindar, Theocritus, and the great playwrights of the fifth century BC, Callimachus of Alexandria.

The sources for women's writing in ancient Greece at first appear to be much more scarce. Women do appear in Greek plays: Klytemnestra, Antigone, Lysistrata. In these works they have lively voices but their words have been written by men. Where is the literature written by women? Where do Greek women speak directly to us?

Sadly, little has survived. Manuscripts were copied by men and they selected what to copy. It could be there are more papyri in the Egyptian desert--thousands of them still remain in the ancient rubbish dump still being excavated at Oxyrhynchus after a hundred years--or in some yet undiscovered cache that will give us more authentic women's voices. So far the pickings are thin, but there's real quality there.

Foremost amongst the poets is Sappho, whose life on Lesbos in the early sixth century BC, at the centre of a group of girls worshipping Aprodite and the Muses, gave her material for nine books of poems full of affection, admiration and longing. Only a few poems have survived, but their directness is appealing. 'As pale as summer grass,' she (or her narrator) describes herself, a flame playing under her skin, as she gazes hopelessly at one of her girls chatting with a man. Another fragment:

The moon has set, and the Pleiades.
The night is half gone.
Time passes, and here I lie alone.

Later in the century came Korinna, who lived in Boiotia and wrote in the local dialect. One poem talks of her own voice, 'as clear as a swallow's', which gave delight to the 'white-robed ladies of Tanagra', her home town. The ancient world thought she was a rival of the great Pindar himself.

Some, like the fifth-century poets Praxilla of Sicyon and Telesilla of Argos, have left so little writing intact that we can hardly judge their work. Another, Erinna, lived on Telos, an island near Rhodes, and died before she was twenty, leaving us a reputation based on The Distaff, a tribute to her dead friend Baukis, whose father lit her funeral pyre with the torches intended to light her wedding. Only a few tantalising lines remain out of three hundred.

We have more complete poems by Anyte, who lived in Tegea on the Greek mainland in the third century BC, than by any other Greek woman, even Sappho. Even so, there are just eighteen certainly by her, a poor legacy for a poet very highly regarded in her day and for long afterward. One tells of children playing with a billy-goat, one of the sadness of a small girl, Myro, at having to make graves for her pet cricket and cicada. Here’s another, describing a statue of the goddess Aphrodite:

This is the place of the Cyprian, where she fulfils her pleasure
Looking out for ever from the land over the shining sea,
To make voyaging kindly to sailors. All around the ocean
Trembles, staring at her image of oil-glistening wood.

There's a useful anthology here which only underlines the scarcity of ancient Greek women's writing which survives. Maybe one day the papyrus mounds of Oxyrhynchus will give us more.