Tardy

Oh it has been a while, hasn't it. A hot minute, in fact, given temperatures have risen to near 40 Celsius at least four times since I last wrote here. As I am a delicate flower, half Goth, half medication that forces me to stay out of the sun, those were intolerable days. The only way to cope is to get up to the allotment early (5am early) and be back in the house by 6.30am at the latest, whence I would essentially vampire myself by closing all the curtains and blinds and sleeping during the hottest part of the day.

Enough! Enough weather chat for this post (sorry, but I am British and weather chat is What We Do). What else have I been doing, besides work? Well, my work in progress was on the receiving end of a massive edit and, in places, solid rewrite which took aaages. I generally write for an hour a day and then fit in extra time at weekends and evenings when football takes over the tv. Of course, once the good weather kicked in, my poor WiP was also competing for attention with the allotment. But I am nothing if not devoted to this book: I love my characters, I love the world I have built, I love the narrative arch and the journey - literal and metaphorical - of the principal character. I have laughed out loud, felt goosebumps, genuinely scared myself with a couple of creepy scenes (and wondered about the state of my mind if that's the sort of thing that comes out of it...) and cried at necessary character deaths.

She is complete, resplendent in all her research, love and faults: All Our Secrets Here Contained. Finished and completed and resting for the time being. At the weekend, I'm taking a short story writing course as a kind of palate cleanser, so I can spend a couple of months trying something new before returning to the world I made and starting book two. Will book one ever be published? That may be a question that never gets answered but why stop creating and living in something I love? Maybe ask me again when I am a complete recluse with a towering pile of copies of the Mabinogion threatening to crush me...

As a thank you for continuing to read and visit this site, an extract from All Our Secrets Here Contained below. One from the London section of the book, which was an absolute joy to write. I hope it is as much to read too.

All Our Secrets Here Contained

To the unknowing eye, the tavern looks much like any other building in this run down, poverty-thin, street. Listing heavily on a street corner as though drunk on the centuries of spilled ale that has soaked into its walls and floors, its eyes are hooded by shutters, the upper storey leaning out to peer down on them. The front door, dropping flaking paint onto the foetid street, looks tightly shut, bloated with damp and age. Automatically, Eder leads them away toward the back to where the yard contains stables, the buildings sagging against themselves, as if holding each other up.

“We can’t stay here!” he eyes a sodden heap of straw, letting out a hiss of breath as a rat, fat as a landlord, crawls out from underneath it and stares at them with impunity.

A man emerges from one of the stables, curry comb in hand and an air of malevolent proprietorship. “This ain’t no place for yous,” he announces, eyes glinting angrily. “I’ll thank yous to leave, noaw.”

Eder looks down at him, her own eyes are warm. “Well, well, Grimalkin. I know it’s been a while but you really don’t remember me?”

The man Grimalkin glares back up. “There ain’t no Grimalkin ‘ere, lady. If lady yous are. I suggest yous turn yous filthy…”

Eder bends and whispers a word that Walt cannot catch into the man’s ear. At once, the furious expression vanishes and Walt jumps when he hears something like a purr come from the man’s throat.

“Werll, why didn’t yous say so? Fancy that. Little,” Eder raises her hand and the man stops. Starts again. “Little Eder. Ain’t seen yous ma around here for a good while.”

Eder shrugs. “Are there rooms inside? I need to stay for a couple of days.”

“Coupla days? First time I’ve seen yous in decades and yous already plannin’ to leave?” Eder looks embarrassed.

“If I promise to come back…”

The man shrugs. “Yous can promise, but only if yous wants to make a liar of yousself.”

“I’m sorry. You know I don’t like London, the place gets to me. Not enough air.”

“Enoaugh for us!”

“I thought…I wondered if she would be here.”

“Nah. Like I said. Ain’t seen her for a long while. Not the same without her, but she said she had thinks to do.”

“Things to do?” Walt ventures. He is fascinated by the man, the long white whiskers curling away from the top lip, the curious tip to the ears peeking up from under a cap worn shiny with use. His interjection is rewarded with a long, unblinking stare.

“What I said, lad. What I said,” he turns back to Eder. “Yous need a place for this long streak of a lad too?”

Walt blushes red to the tips of his own ears. Eder points a finger at the little man.

“Grimalkin, be nice.”

“Does yous?”

“Yes, we do. Two places, two horses. Rates the same?”

This provokes a sour laugh. “Yous kidding me? Rates have gorn up since yous were last here, girl. The City of London extracts a price for our existence and we’s must pay it or take us leave. I sometimes thinks the world of mens get stupider by the day. Come another hundred years and theys’ll think we’s nothing more than conjurers and fake fortune tellers.”

“That might make us safer?”

He sniffs and pulls at his braces with a rough hand. Walt notices the fingernails are long and sharp.

“Nothing makes us safe, girl. Not when mens are involved. Go on inside. Lacey is a good girls, shes’ll see you set up for the night. Yous lad here can give mes a hand with the ‘osses. Now then, yous. Lessee how much our Eder has told yous.”

Under Eder's palm , the wooden door to the tavern feels coated in snail slime, damp and spongy to the touch and she has to resist the urge to snatch her hand away. Instead, she pushes against it, clicking her tongue at the effort, until it finally gives way, opening out into the warm room inside.

Inside the glow of candles and firelight strikes gleaming glasses and metal tankards. The room smells pleasantly of bread, smoke from the fire and several cherry pipes, fresh beer. The hum of chatter falls as she enters, then rises as the people inside recognise what she is and turn back to their own business. Eder nods at the black girl behind the polished wooden bar.

“Lacey? Grimalkin said you were here.”

Lacey nods, gives a smile of welcome so pure it would make evil weep, if it weren’t for the blackened teeth it revealed.

“You forgot your teeth,” Eder says. The girl frowns.

“Damn. There’s always something. Last week it was a wart. Grimalkin didn’t let anyone tell me till nighttime; they’d been laughing at me all day. There,” she bares her teeth. “That better?”

Eder peers at the double row of gleaming white teeth, neat and small in the tidy mouth. “Perfect.”

Lacey nods. “You want rooms, I take it?”

“Please. Two, at least one with a bath.”

“Numbers 9a and 9b. There’s a connecting door but it’s lockable. It’s at the top but next to the hidden stairs in case of a raid.”

“Have there been many raids?”

Lacey sniffs, she’s scratching letters onto the pages of a ledger. “The new mayor of this mad city likes not what we are, nor what we do, and as for who we serve…He’s upped our rates thinking that might drive us out, and when it doesn’t, the money makes his conscience quieten down. Every now and then he likes to send the Grey Men in on a raid. He thinks there’s no warning, but there isn’t anything happening in this city that Grimalkin don’t know about. We clear anyone troublesome out, look innocent when they arrive, clear up after they’ve gone.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

Lacey shrugs. “These men and their religions! This one thinks all women are devilish and witches in particular. His poor wife!”

“He’s married?”

“Some poor tiny slip of a thing that looks barely out of girlhood and already two babies. Eyes like bruises. Won’t open her mouth without checking with him first. Pretty enough to get him elected, subdued enough not to cause him any trouble. There’s one that could do with the help of Mother Diftass but catch her this side of the river? Not a chance.”

Eder looks over to the centre of the room where an elderly woman, round and red faced, is laughing immoderately within a circle of others, the smoke from her pipe curling away, almost perfectly matching the grey of the curls on her head.

“Mother Diftass,” she wonders at the age of the woman. “She was looking like that when I first came here.”

“She reckons no mens and no kids are the secret to a long and happy life,” Lacey laughs. “Can’t say I’ve many examples of where she’s wrong.”

The shout from across the room could take the top off a beer bottle. “Eder! As I still live and fahkin’ breathe! Ain’t seen you since you was this high to the tabletop! Come over ‘ere, girl. Lesse wot you’ve grown into!”