Excerpt… Woman should gather roses ere Time’s ceaseless foot o’ertaketh her, For if too long she make delay, Her chance of love may pass away. A FEW LADIES looked askance but Johanna proved she knew her audience well when the opening verse was greeted with a roar of male approval. Well, and wasn’t it a…
Excerpt– England, summer, 1326 IT WAS A golden summer. Everywhere they travelled in England, people remarked on it. At every village and town, people paused from their work to stand and bask in the sun, as if they were afraid that it would wink out in the next moment. “Forty years of wet misery had…
Excerpt… England, summer, 1326 THE DAWN BROKE on clouds gathering over a steep coast, colored sullen orange to deep red. They were reflected against the oily, steadily increasing swell beneath the Faucon’s hull. “Yes,” the captain said, “let’s get docked now.” She brought the ship in close enough to what looked like an uninterrupted shoal…
Read more The oily, steadily increasing swell beneath the Faucon’s hull.
Excerpt… England, summer, 1326 They crossed the river Seine at Tancarville and followed it down to its mouth, where the town of Harfleur presented a bustling picture of energy and industry. “They’re starting a merchants’ association here,” Tiphaine said, returning to the inn where they had procured rooms for the night. “Perhaps Wu Company should…
Read more A heavenly bean stew flavored with bits of chicken and sausage and a lot of garlic.
Chartres, winter, 1325–1326 The forest had given way to rolling fields of stubbled grain. At noon Shasha said, “What’s that?” and they followed her pointing finger to the massive stone spires rising up from the horizon, as if to knock at the very doors of heaven itself. “That would be the cathedral,” Alaric said. Chartres…
Excerpt… “Look up,” Hari said. “Look up, now.” Obediently they opened their eyes and looked up, and were assaulted by a blaze of colored light shining through windows that on every side reached for the sky, for the heavens, for the stars themselves. Crowned figures royal and religious, common folk wielding axe and saw and…
Excerpt… Lyons and environs, late fall, 1325 North Wind had had a trying few months. He had been force marched over the Alps from Milano to Lyon with no chance to stretch his legs in a race. In Lyon he had been imprisoned on a farm, where, to add insult to injury, when a mare…
Read more His human had gone away and left him for an unconscionable amount of time.
Lombardy, summer, 1324 Alaric spat. “Mongols,” he said, the word itself an epithet. “Never trust them.” Jaufre thought of the Mongol Baron Ogodei, and didn’t disagree. “Yes, well, when the Mongols didn’t come, Robert told us it was over.” His smile was wry. “We didn’t believe him, of course.” “Wilmot did,” Alaric said. “But you…
Lombardy, summer, 1324 THEY SOON DISCOVERED that travel in Europe was nothing like travel in Cathay, or in Persia for that matter. The Road was marked by steles built by the Great Khan. Each of the cities along its many routes had clean, well-maintained caravansaries for travelers and their livestock, or at the very least…
Venice, spring, 1324 Both of them turned to see Donata Polo standing there in her luxurious dark robes with not a fold out of place. She was attended on her right by a serving woman who looked every bit as censorious as her mistress and on her left by the man who had shut the…
Read more “I will say what pleased your father and what did not!”