This week, we're welcoming author Jean Gill, whose latest title is Bladesong, book two of The Troubadours series. Join us on Sunday, when the author will offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog visitor. Here's the blurb:
Bladesong is available from Amazon and in all ebook formats from Smashwords. Also available in print from Lulu.
1151 –
the Holy Land during a fragile peace
Estela, the troubadour, following the destiny of her
beautiful voice, and Dragonetz, her passionate knight; divided by the times
they love in.
Dragonetz is imprisoned in Damascus, his military
prowess as valuable and dangerous to the balance of power as the priceless
Torah he has to deliver to Jerusalem.
Can Estela get him out alive, despite Nur-ad-Din, the
Muslim Atabeg; Melisende, the Queen of Jerusalem; and an avenger from the past?
Will she still want to, when she knows what they’ve
done to him?
On the run from abuse, Estela wakes in a ditch with
only her lute, her amazing voice, and a dagger hidden in her petticoats. Her
talent finds a patron in Alienor of Aquitaine and more than a music tutor in
the Queen's finest troubadour and Commander of the Guard, Dragonetz los Pros.
Weary of war, Dragonetz uses Jewish money and Moorish expertise to build that
most modern of inventions, a papermill, arousing the wrath of the Church. Their
enemies gather, ready to light the political and religious powder-keg of
medieval Narbonne.
**An Excerpt from Bladesong**
Chapter Two
While her lover Dragonetz is on a mission in the Holy
Land, Estela is a troubadour at the court of Dia, accompanied by her men-at-arms
Raoulf and Gilles, and by a huge white dog …
It
took both Raoulf and Gilles to drag Nici away from Estela and lock him in
another room so the midwife could get anywhere near her, and it was just as
well they were wearing gauntlets, boots and leather jerkins. Estela could still
hear Nici’s furious scratching at the door and outraged yelps at being shut
away from his mistress when she clearly needed him.
She
had known when she woke in a pool of liquid that it was time to send for the
midwife and, after a scurry of servants, Bèatriz’ women had ushered her to a
chamber well away from the daily bustle of castle life. The purpose of the room
was clear enough. Apart from the blazing fire, which barely took the chill off
the air, there was a bed, a birthing stool, chamber-pot, wash-stand and ewer.
In her
own home, the mattress would have been stuffed with our lady’s bedstraw and the
fire strewn with juniper branches but Estela didn’t know what herbs were used
here, if any. The only light came from the fire and the pitch torches on the
wall, as if the business of birthing should be in darkness, like the act that
produced it.
Estela’s
gloom deepened into panic as her body spasmed. She had a rough idea of what
would happen, thanks to visits with her mother, a healer, and thanks to a
Moorish physician, who’d held science above prudery and discussed medicine with
her. If only her mother or Malik could have been with her now, instead of women
whose names she could barely remember. She hadn’t felt so alone since she’d
woken in a ditch after running away from home.
And
then Nici appeared as if by magic, bounding to her side, anxious brown eyes and
insistent tongue, her only friend now as then, licking the salt of her tears as
she indulged in self-pity. In between the waves that racked her, Estela trailed
her hands in the coarse white fur but when the midwife arrived, Nici made it
clear that no-one was going to touch his mistress when she was so clearly
vulnerable and incapable of making any decision. It was unquestionably his job
to take charge.
Usually
an easy-going lump of a dog, who was as happy milling around with any of the
hunting packs as he was dozing hopefully under a trestle table at meal-time,
Nici was unrecognizable. Hackles raised, eyes bright as pebbles in water, he
fixed the midwife with an inimical glare.
The
midwife made it equally clear that she was leaving unless someone removed the
growling monster from the room. Helpless with contractions, Estela’s
half-hearted attempts to reassure Nici seemed merely to convince him that she
was not herself.
At
which point, Raoulf and Gilles braved women’s territory and took matters into
their own gauntlets, ignoring the scandalised squeaks of the attendant women as
much as the furious complaints of the huge dog, whose muffled barking from his
solitary confinement accompanied Estela’s involuntary shouts of pain.
‘Jasmine
oil,’ she begged the midwife, whose face looked like a child’s dough sculpture,
lumpy and white, with raisin eyes. Eyes that narrowed, weighing her up. In the
birthing chamber, the only queen was the midwife, whatever the rank of the
mother-to-be.
‘Jasmine
oil,’ the midwife repeated flatly.
Estela
couldn’t keep the desperation out of her voice as she felt the beginning of
another wave. No longer a baby kicking; more like a herd of horses pounding her
into the dust. ‘Inhaling oil of jasmine helps with the pain...’ she tailed off,
biting her lip bloody and doubling over, half-falling onto the bed.
‘Well
we don’t hold with such fancy things here and babies get born just the same.
You’ll manage,’ stated the midwife, moving Estela to the birthing chair to see
how wide open she’d become.
Estela
felt the screams rising as if they belonged to someone else, except that Nici
joined in, so they must be hers. She knew Raoulf and Gilles were just outside
the door, hers in a way that none of these women were, and she was overwhelmed
by longing to call them in, to grab onto a hand of each, to anchor her body in
this world to the rock of their loyalty. To have them with her when she brought
Dragonetz’ baby into the world.
She almost called them but enough thought
remained to know she mustn’t. This dour woman was her baby’s herald, able to
doom - or bless - him or her with a word. Let it be said that men had been at
the birth and the baby would be cursed, hag-ridden, switched, any of a thousand
insinuations that would make themselves into truth. Men would cross themselves
and avoid touching such an ill-fated child, and if he sickened from so much as
gum-fever, it would be the devil’s work and no-one would lift a hand to make
him better.
Estela
knew the way people’s minds worked. When visiting cottages with her mother,
with salves and potions, she’d listened to the rhymes and prayers that her
mother advocated applying with the medicaments, knowing that the patients’
minds played a part in the healing. So Estela gripped the chair arms instead of
her friends’. She would bring this baby into the world, whatever it cost her.
Hours,
days or years later, adrift and dazed in the distinction between more pain and
less pain, exhausted beyond obeying the midwife’s impossible instructions,
Estela nevertheless realised that the purse-mouthed enemy was about to stick
some kind of irons into her most tender parts, irons more suited to turn a pig
on a spit than a baby in its mother.
Bursting
her lungs, Estela screamed and pushed one last time, Nici no longer barking but
howling with her, a wolf-call of solidarity. The irons were dropped on the
stone flags as the midwife caught the baby and, astonishingly, smiled up at
Estela.
Want to read more?
Book one, Song at Dawn, won the Global Ebooks Award for Best Historical Fiction
'Believable, page-turning and memorable' - S.P.Review
Jean Gill is a Welsh writer and photographer living in
the south of France with a big white dog, a Nikon D700 and a man. For many
years, she taught English in Wales and was the first woman to be a secondary
headteacher in Carmarthenshire. She is mother or stepmother to five children.
Publications are varied, including prize-winning
poetry and novels, military history, translated books on dog training, and a
cookery book on goat cheese. With Scottish parents, an English birthplace and
French residence, she can usually support the winning team on most sporting
occasions.
Follow jean on twitter @writerjeangill
Join the Troubadours on Facebook
Have fun with the Troubadours on TV Tropes
Jean says:
I love hearing from readers so feel free to mail me at
jean.gill@wanadoo.fr with comments or questions. You'll find a mix of my work,
along with fun trivia about books, at www.jeangill.com My photo portfolio is at
www.istockphoto.com/jeangill and I blog at www.jeangill.blogspot.com I
sometimes accept guest bloggers so get in touch.
GIVEAWAY to readers of Unusual Historicals blog; a signed copy
of Bladesong by Jean Gill by random
draw. If you can find the time to post a review, whether on Smashwords, Amazon,
Goodreads, your blog, wherever, Jean will be very grateful.
