Lady Graves, Day 24 - NaNoWriMo 2018 - freewritemadness

in #freewrite5 years ago

" I will get to Lindenstein," she said. "So help me God, I will.”

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Lady Graves is my NaNoWriMo novel in progress.

Chapter One begins here: Lady Graves - ch. 1 - NaNoWriMo 2018 - freewritemadness: Day One

When November ends

I will be going back into previous chapters, filling in the details that make historical fiction "historical." Some writers are so good at weaving in vocabulary terms, like "fichu," a scarf women wore with those plunging necklines for modesty or warmth, while at night, they let it all spill out, which always amazes me in movies. These are not women in brothels, but women at concert halls and balls, upper class ladies, bosoms bursting from low-cut gowns. Ok....

Socially, culturally, so many things we take for granted just did not exist. I'm always shocked whenever I read more on Victorian society, the Regency era (1800-1820, more or less, the age of Napoleon Bonaparte), and all the social rules and economic limitations. And don't even get me started on the lack of indoor plumbing, the state of medicine. People died routinely of simple injuries that would be quick fixes in today's hospitals and clinics. I could go on, but you know your history better than I do, I'm sure. I forget more than I ever retain.

So, here is yesterday's addition (878words) to Chapter 14, sstarting with the existing text:

For Lady Graves, it was easy to take interest in horses and greenhouses. The hard part was staying in character as a boy with no interest in sewing, felting and knitting, much less any dresses and social engagements the Lanza sisters might care to discuss. Just to hear their laughter was heartwarming--never mind that it followed sidelong glances at the strange boy who was now wearing their brothers’ cast-offs.

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New Stuff in Ch. 14

Stangler tried to politely decline an invitation to evening dinner--it would soon be dark, after all-- but Graves nudged him and gave him her best attempt at puppy-dog eyes. How long had it been since she’d enjoyed the conversation and companionship of anyone but her doctor? It felt like forever.

The Lanza family lived together in the traditional “ganzes Haus” system, everyone sharing one large building. With so many children surviving to adulthood, the work of craftsmen and servants was supplied by three generations living under one roof, and a fourth generation crawling and toddling about, learning the ways of their world. Vineyards, fields of hops and barley, pastures and summer gardens, kitchens, a milk barn, wine barrels, vats of beer, and various triumphs of German engineering set this farm apart from the peasant class.

Daughters lived under the authority of their fathers until they married and came under a husband’s rule. To enter a satisfactory marriage, the woman required a substantial dowry. Without a family’s wealth, poor women had to work and save their wages in order to marry well. Under British law all that a woman owned became her husband’s property, but here, laws, women had property rights over their dowries and inheritances.

Stangler loved to inform her of such things, and she loved to listen, though it was more fun to pretend she found his lectures annoying.

“It seems to me,” she had argued on their way to the Lanza farm, “that even you enlightened scholars from the university continue to regard the role of woman to be no more than that of wife and mother. In England, brought up as I was in the so-called educated class, I was allowed to study music and literature, but not with the goal of becoming anyone of importance. It seems a women must be sufficiently educated to become an intelligent and agreeable conversationalist for the sake of her husband. Lower-class women, like our cook Hannah and my maid Vee, are expected to earn wages, especially if they have husbands. Without a dowry, they spend their lives working to make money.”

It hit her, then, how that could be a source of bitterness and resentment. If Evelyn and Vee had the same father but different mothers, why didn’t both daughters enjoy equal privileges? One was “legitimate” and one was a “bastard.” She had never before thought of a girl as one of those.

Seeing the Lanza daughters, grandma, mothers, aunts, sisters, all in one place with their husbands and offspring, all with clearly defined roles, Lady Evelyn felt a stirring of sympathy for those who were born to a station in life less privileged than her own.

It did not excuse a maid from murdering her half-sister and usurping her role as bride in an arranged marriage to a man she had not yet met face to face.

So many thoughts lurked in the background of her mind as she played the role of Herr Doktor’s young male apprentice, she struggled valiantly to keep up the pretense of being an orphan, another one of Stangler’s rescues. In truth, that is exactly what she was: like Emil, who was found with one eye dangling from his head, she was found nearly dead and entirely at his mercy and his skill to bring her back to the land of the living. She and Emil; she and how many others were alive because of Herr Doktor Niklaus Stangler?

How many French soldiers were alive because of him, and how was it that he should be seized and hauled off to prison several years after those battles on charges of supporting Napoleon Bonapart when in fact he was just a good man who could not bear to see any living thing suffer if he was able to help?

The injustice of it pained her. Stangler said so little about it, but during her tour of the farm, Fritz Lanza had delivered bits and pieces that she managed to string together into a narrative in her mind: this man who saved her life was incapable of watching anyone die, friend or foe, because it was in his nature to heal. To save. And he was punished for it. She had no idea just how severe the consequences had been for him, but the sadness in his eyes and the occasional glances of concern that Fritz tossed behind the man’s back gave her an inkling. Niklaus Stangler was an unsung hero, a sad, lonely man living in obscurity, nursing terrible wounds that may have scarred over but would never go away for good. His little dog Emil could bring a smile to his face, even move him to laughter, and she had provoked smiles and twinkling, teasing glances from him.

Now she sat here plotting a journey to the next inn, the one where another woman calling herself Lady Evelyn had been seen, telling tales of a runaway maid and a thieving coachman. The other Evelyn suggested the maid had absconded of her own free will while the other woman insisted she had been abducted--by Reginald! Good Reginald, the young man with the silky light brown hair and grey eyes, so gentle with the horses, so much like his father, Archibald, who had been born at Everleigh, as was his father before him and his son after him. Reginald, gone!

The anger rose in her to the point of madness; she had to unclench her fists and focus on the conversations and lively banter of the Lanza family and their entertaining guest, Herr Doktor.

Darkness fell a wee bit later with every passing day, but April nights still came early. The sun went to bed before the apple strudel and rhubarb pie were consumed, long before talk of Napoleon Bonaparte was settled or the subject of naturalists and explorers in America would ever be exhausted. Stangler regaled them with stories of the America’s “redskins,” ....

And here is a bit more of Helga:

End of Chapter 18
The fire crackled, shadows danced, Siegfried sneaked out from his hiding place and tucked himself at Evelyn’s feet, Emil grunted and ran in his sleep, and those voices continued into the night, lulling her like the raindrops on the window panes, and she dreamed of a great bear blocking her at the gates of Lindenstein.


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CHAPTER NINETEEN

(or 20; I keep shifting things!))

No bear was necessary to bar her way

to Lindenstein, nor the rain, the womanly monthlies, the opposition of an exiled baroness accused of witchcraft, or the fugitive doctor’s misgivings. There was the simple fact that Lady Evelyn had been stripped of all her clothing, her money, her servants, and every last vestige of any freedom and independence she once possessed. Nothing in her privileged upbringing had prepared her for this calamity, this destitution. She was at the mercy of her savior and his benefactor. She was not at liberty to walk out the door and hail a carriage to the next village, much less to the palace of Prince Hal.

She had options, or one that loomed above all others. How simple, how easy: just leave behind everything she had known of her life and start a new one far, far away on a lonely frontier where wild nomadic Indian warriors scalped people and celebrated the art of war over music, literature, culture, or the science.

“I fear I have painted an unjust picture of the New World for you,” Stangler said over the ritual of afternoon tea. “Your short-term memory loss is not helping my cause. Do you remember what I’ve told you of Germantown?”

She sipped her tea, thinking. “William Penn founded Pennsylvania as an English colony where anyone, from any country, any social class, any faith, could settle and live free from religious persecution.”

The baroness snorted her tea, laughing. “You made an acolyte of the young lady. Now you can establish the Church of Klaus and round up a ship of fools to follow you to the New World. Your English Joan of Arc will lead them!”

“Genug, Helga.” He gave her his most sinister stare, and she laughed all the harder.

Who was this saucy baroness, taking the liberty of teasing Herr Doktor and cutting too deep? Lady Evelyn enjoyed teasing him but he had started it, calling her a lion boy, so she felt entitled. She frowned at Helga, then caught Stangler’s eye and hoped the look she gave him was filled with apology, sympathy, and alliance.

“You did speak of Germantown. I remember.” Evelyn gripped her teacup in both hands, inhaling the supposedly calming chamomile with lavender. “When thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families from Krefeld arrived in Pennsylvania, they discovered slavery on a scale that makes our peasant system look fair and just. Five years after they founded Germantown, they filed a protest against African-American slavery in the English colonies. All that was before the Revolutionary war in 1776 and the War of 1812, and yet ships full of captives from Africa still deliver more slaves to your highly vaunted New World.”

Helga nearly spilled all her tea. Emil voiced a little woof, tail wagging, eyes darting from face to face, as if he could understand some inside joke.

“Krefeld,” Evelyn added for good measure. “The city of velvet and silk. If I still had my own money, I would go there and wallow in all the textiles, thinking how those New World natives have leather and precious little else. While we Europeans discovered that sand can be heated and turned into glass, they were still drinking water from bladders. Literally, animal bladders, because these primitives hadn’t bothered to invent the canteen or the teacup or the wine glass. They still hadn’t discovered wine or beer before we--”

Stangler stopped her with a finger to her lips. “I would think you’d been imbibing such spirits now, the way you carry on. Are you suffering from cottage fever, or is something else agitating you?”

Someone else, she wanted to say--this third person intruding into her world of two. If Stangler had mentioned some aunt owning this cottage, she couldn’t remember it. The woman had just burst in and taken over, and he seemed to hold her in high regard despite her atrocious manners.

“I will tell you what agitates me,” she said. “This life you saved, my so-called life, is no longer mine. Last night I didn’t sleep at all. I lay awake thinking I would find my own way to Lindenstein, only to realize I have no way to do that. I have nothing. You dug me out of the ground and I came into a new world like a newborn baby--with nothing. No means, no money, just total dependence on the man who saved my life. My so-called life. I am duly grateful, Herr Doktor, and entirely aufgeregt und frustriert. How many days or weeks have I been here? You tell me I am no longer a hideous lion boy, disfigured by a terrible blow to the face and a laceration to my head. I have recovered much of my memory, but by no means all of it. You say I keep forgetting things you told me only minutes or hours ago. You--”

Helga’s laughter derailed Evelyn’s train of thought. “Lion boy!” she said. “Oh, Klaus, Your bedside manner is fit for soldiers bleeding out on the battlefield, but not for lovely young ladies.”

As if Helga’s manners were any better!

Evelyn focused on the doctor. “What is this cottage fever?”

He gave her a tender smile. “First, I would refute your ridiculous assertion that you have nothing. You have me. You have a beautiful head of hair. You have more blessings, strengths, and assets than I can list here at this table.” He winked at Helga. “Second, your question illustrates my point that you suffer from short-term memory loss, which I’ve seen in many a soldier with head injuries. You are on the mend, making strides. You also are not quite ready yet for another big transition to your next stage in life, whatever that may be. God willing, it shall be with me.” He winked, and fortified himself with a sip of tea. “This fever, as I’ve said, is just a restless and irritable mood that afflicts those unaccustomed to being stuck indoors in confined quarters for too long, with little or no human society. I like to think I am the equivalent of an entire university or the elite of a city, but you may need a change of scenery.”

Well. Apparently Helga’s teasing hadn’t humbled him or disturbed him. He was as outrageous as she.

“I don’t need a change of scenery.” Evelyn caught herself clenching her fists. “I need to let my family in England know that Reginald is dead--and not because he was a thief who got his just deserts. No. He was a good man, like his father. I should break the news to Archibald myself. I will not have Hannah spreading stories that Reginald abducted Vee, or even that Vee hatched the plot and got him to go along with it. He would not! He did not, I swear it! If I could remember anything beyond that night, I would tell the world what Vee and Hannah have done. If your theory is correct, and Vee is posing as me, there is no telling what other atrocities she might commit, and it will be Lady Evelyn’s name that is ruined. You want me to take the easy way out--just go to the New World and leave all this sordid mess behind--but there are other reputations to consider. You tell me I will never find justice, that it is not for me to avenge the murder of Reginald, but if I don’t, who will? Both of you are exiles or fugitives, so I won’t ask you to accompany me on a mission to see what is going on at Lindenstein, but I will get to Lindenstein. So help me God, I will.”

Helga leaned back in her chair, calmly scrutinizing the impasssioned Evelyn. “Speaking of that beautiful head of hair,” she said, “I have some henna stored here. We can turn you into a fiery redhead, ja, and I have a friend who could loan you some dresses. Klaus is right, you know, when he tells you all is well and all shall be well. The rains conspire to keep me from Walpurgisnacht at Quedlenberg, so here I am, just when you needed me. Jawohl! It was high time I tried a new venue. Lindenstein for May Day! Mountain-top witch parties, dancing, and drinking Maibock!”

“Wait. What?” Blinking in confusion, Evelyn caught her breath. “Suddenly, we are going to Lindenstein--for the Maifest?”

“All the omens point to it,” Helga said. “The impending rains have foretold it.”

Emil cocked his head at her, as if doubting what he’d heard, and let out a soft whine.

End of Day 23

word count 878

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I like Helga even more now! As dead set against Lady Evelyn going to Lindenstein and now Helga is going to help her get there. Love it! : ) Just when I think your writing can't get any better, it does. I love all of the additions you made. And this resident cat is happily doing figure eights as your #NovMadFan. : )

Ohh, I'm glad you get it, the about-face that Helga does. She is no stickler for consistency. Thank you THANK YOU for reading and encouraging us!!!!

Hello @carolkean, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!

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