Ashes (Ch1)

My speculations as to Roland's future, post-canon. And a trifle of actual plot. (The deleted passage from "The Remorse of Others" rewrite did get used!)

---

Ashes

“Where Roland’s sword had failed utterly, de Brencourt, despite everything, had brought them all off to safety as well as could be managed”: AU in which the rescue plans succeeded. Two years later, Roland has an unexpected encounter, and an inspiration.

Chapter 1 — Reunion

London, in this year of grace 1802 — with its foreign rooflines, its parks and garden squares, and the crowds of all nations that seemed to fill its teeming streets — was a trifle overwhelming to a young man who had never before set foot beyond his native shores. But England, weary of war, had at long last reconciled herself to the existence of the upstart French Republic under Napoleon Bonaparte, whose conscript armies had defeated half the crowned heads of Europe, and for the first time in ten years it had become possible for travellers to cross the Channel in both directions in perfect safety... and while the English, cut off for so long from the Continent, flocked abroad, no few of Roland de Céligny’s compatriots had likewise seized the opportunity. One could take ship openly for Dover without having recourse to the aid of smugglers or spies, and with one’s wife dressed in all the latest fashions —styles that were already, as Marthe observed with her usual high spirits, clearly inspiring imitation among the ladies of London society— even if, as in Roland’s case, one happened to be a young gentleman with a sufficiently intemperate Royalist past to make it inadvisable, as a rule, to attract the attention of the authorities.

( Read more... )