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Chapter 2 — Rapprochement

His Lordship the Earl of Carnforth —or rather, the Countess his spouse— had spared no expense to lay on an entertainment on a truly grand scale. Lady Blaymere’s social evenings, by comparison, had been little more than a supper party with cultural pretensions. Following young Roland de Céligny through room after room ablaze with light and costly hangings, where the quivering flame of hundreds of candles was cast back by mirrors and by crystal lustres overhead, and servants in livery moved deftly amidst the throng, Artus de Brencourt could almost have imagined himself transported to some princely court, or back in a dream of the France of his youth.

Only those days had vanished as thoroughly as the youth that had fled —barren and wasted, all of it— or the laughter of the little Queen at Versailles. Quite how empty that dream had become he knew better now than anyone here.( Read more... )

After about six months, I made another attempt at the first chapter for "Ashes" (and it's just as well that I did write down my intended titles for the other two chapters, because after this length of time I couldn't remember them! I was vaguely thinking that I'd decided on "Resurrection" for Ch3, but apparently it was "Revelation", which is definitely better...)

I've largely rewritten the opening section and set it in a new context, and beyond that simply omitted certain bits of backstory from the later scenes; the whole thing now runs about eleven hundred words shorter even with the added material at the beginning. Which is, objectively speaking, less than I had remembered -- it just felt like an awful lot at the time because such a very high proportion of it consisted of crossings-out :-(

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“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

“Anyone would think,” Marthe observed pertly, “that nobody in London had ever seen a Frenchwoman before.” ( Read more... )

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!)

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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... )

Really nippy this morning. I still only have *one* half-ripe chilli that is orange at one end, plus a couple more on the same plant that are slightly tinged; it looks as if we are going to be in the position of the dark-leaf chillies this time last year, which were eventually harvested at the start of November with only three fully-ripe fruit.

( Swan River daisies )

( Basil, parsley, tomatoes )

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I have worked my way through the sticky bit in the de Brencourt story, have finished all the planned material, and should now, so far as I can judge, be on the final paragraph or two. I just need to find the wording to end it.

I don't think it is as good as "The Remorse of Others", but it is what it is. And on rereading I'm a lot happier with the start than with the current section, so perhaps I shall warm to the rest with further detachment...

I have finally reached 'that' scene (struggling all the way), which means I should now be reasonably(?) close to the end. Although it does ironically mean that de Brencourt probably spends much *less* time with Valentine than he does with Gaston -- possibly just as well, in terms of the plausibility of how long her husband is likely to leave them alone together before coming in to rejoin the conversation :-O

( Word counts and chapter lengths )

I acquired three and a half pounds of windfall plums, picked over 2lb of blackberries (and gathered some windfall apples to go with them) and paid £3 for a box with 8lb or so of overripe cherries -- so I have been drowning in fruit! Preserves: bramble jelly (2 1/2 jars), plum chutney (2 half jars), roasted savoury cherries and cherry-stone cordial. I have also made plum soufflé, German plum streusel cake, boiled cherry vareniki, and other desserts, and still have a fridge full of the least squishy plums and cherries, not to mention a summer pudding waiting to be turned out...

Contrary to my belief, the upper trusses of the Roma tomatoes did in fact set some fruit; the first and largest truss is now pretty much ripe and will need to be picked and cooked with.

( Flat tyre and mileage )

( Clock started again )

( Fic progress )

( fanfiction.net spam ) :-(

It turns out that the first few pages of the (second-hand) new notebook are all loose, due to the facing pages on the other side of the stitching having been previously torn out to use as scrap. I thought for a while that the problem was that the entire book had been perfect-bound and the glued spine had become old enough for individual pages to drop out -- this did happen to me once with a pair of nice hardback A4 notebooks that I was using to paste press cuttings into -- but once a few pages had been tugged loose, stitching appeared, and the rest of the binding seems solid enough. Which is a good thing, because it's lovely smooth paper to write on and was probably a fairly expensive product when new. (In fact £4·50, according to the price label still on the front cover!)

I have been copying up the material on the page[s] that fell out; only one used page, as the other two were just loose and can be duly deployed as scrap paper. I am a little surprised that I have apparently only been writing this page for three days, as it feels Much Longer...

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Sometimes I wonder if the universe is trying to tell me something... Having stubbornly embarked upon writing up my AU Yellow Poppy idea despite the total lack of readership for the first one (having finally found an workable conclusion for it, I decided I wanted to write up the material that I had been turning over for so long in my mind after all), I woke up this morning to find a slice of my new manuscript obliterated by a giant ink blot that had soaked all the way through a dozen or so consecutive pages :-O I think my pen, which I had just refilled, must have leaked somehow... although that does not explain how there can possibly be *two* blots in apparently the same location, four pages apart, with a smaller soaked-through section on either side of them and between!

I have just been —successfully I think— reconstructing the blacked-out wording from context and memory; fortunately I had spent most of last night rereading and battling with the wording of the next sentence, so I had at least seen it all fairly recently. I suppose this is the hard-copy equivalent of a 'cat on the keyboard' moment... as opposed to losing the manuscript altogether, which would be more of a 'corrupted hard drive' moment. And in fact quite a lot of the text appearing at that particular location on the page happened to be in sections that had already been crossed out, although that may simply reflect how high the proportion of deletions in my work tends to be nowadays :(

( deleted passage )

An unexpected thought (as a result of discussing the likely future for the characters of "The Remorse of Others" with Danik, who wanted to know how I was getting on with the story): what would have happened to de Brencourt in a "Yellow Poppy" AU where he *succeeded* in rescuing Valentine's husband? He certainly wouldn't have ended up as any sort of 'uncle' to Roland -- and I imagine he would have seen very little of a Valentine gratefully reunited with her Gaston and escaped with him to England. (Which implies, horrible thought as that is, that for all his conscious renunciation he actually does benefit from Gaston's death...)

( Read more... )