Copperfield Review Quarterly Summer 2021

Copperfield Review Quarterly A Journal for Readers and Writers of Historical Fiction HOW DO YOU HANDLE RESISTANCE? An Interview with Steven Pressfield WELCOME, DEAR READERS From our executive editor

POET SPOTLIGHT: ANN TAYLOR One of our favorite living poets

WHAT IS HISTORICAL FICTION? There are different ways to tell a story

THE HISTORY QUILL Historical fiction writers should know about it

HISTORICAL FICTION Iván Brave Peter Bridges William Delancey Georgina Jeffery Minglu Jiang Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi Michael May Paul C. Rosenblatt Cecily Van Cleave

HISTORICAL POETRY Cassandra Armstrong Mark B. Hamilton Denise O’Hagan Ann Taylor

Summer 2021 The Inaugural Edition

Staff

Summer 2021

Founder and Executive Editor Meredith Allard Deputy Editor Susan Arenstein Senior Editor Paula Day

Contributors Cassandra Armstrong Iván Brave Peter Bridges Brendan Carr William Delancey Mark B. Hamilton Georgina Jeffery Minglu Jiang Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi Michael May Denise O'Hagan Paul C. Rosenblatt Ann Taylor Cecily Van Cleave EDITORIAL OFFICE 2654 W. Horizon Ridge Pkwy Suite B5-364 Henderson, NV 89052 For advertising, contact: copperfieldreview@gmail.com For submission guidelines: www.copperfieldreviewquarterly.com ISSN: 1533-3736 Cover Photo Credit: Mona Eendra Contents Photo Credit: Thom Milkovic www.copperfieldreviewquarterly.com www.copperfieldreview.com.

The Copperfield Review © 2000-2021. All rights reserved.

Copperfield Review Quarterly A Journal for Readers and Writers of Historical Fiction

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CONTENTS 8 WHAT IS HISTORICAL FICTION, ANYWAY?

59 4 You Should Know About The An Interview with Steven Pressfield History Quill

by Brendan Carr

Jessica Wilde shares how 2toWelcome, overcome writer's block.

Allard Story on p. 20

Dear Readers by Meredith

HISTORICAL FICTION 10 Grozny / Грозный (Ivan Murders Ivan) by Iván Brave 15 Blue Men and Last Lion by Peter Bridges 18 The Spanish Summer by William Delancey 24 Denizens of the Deep Dark by Georgina Jeffery 27 Pride of Carthage by Minglu Jiang 34 Goya’s Muse by Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi 40 Last Day by Michael May 44 First Cat in New Amsterdam by Paul C. Rosenblatt 46 The Turncoat by Cecily Van Cleave HISTORICAL POETRY

50 Poet Spotlight Ann Taylor

53 A Day in the Life of Henry VIII by Cassandra Armstrong 54 Captain Clark is Very Sick by Mark B. Hamilton 56 The Longest Journey by Denise O’Hagan 58 Inside the Trojan Horse by Ann Taylor

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Welcome, Dear Readers As I write these words, more than 20 years have passed since I came up with the crazy idea of putting together a magazine that focused solely on historical fiction. The concept for The Copperfield Review came by accident, as most good things tend to happen to me. I was writing my first historical novel and thought I would try to get the word out by publishing a few pieces as short stories in literary journals. Much to my surprise, I couldn’t find one literary journal that published historical fiction.

Around this time I was teaching creative writing classes at Learning Tree University in Southern California. As I read the LTU catalog I noticed a class about how to create an ezine, a fairly new concept in 2000. The class sounded interesting so I signed up. Before the six-week course was over, I knew I wanted to create an online journal of historical fiction. I even had a name—The Copperfield Review, yes, named for Dickens' novel. I commissioned a website, I created the logo, a drawing of Dickens' hand holding a quill, and I set about finding writers to contribute. I also landed interviews with two of my favorite historical novelists, John Jakes and Jean M. Auel.

"Who is even going to read this?" I asked myself as I pieced the journal together.

But Copperfield, which I refer to as the Little Journal That Could, had become important to me. I sensed that there were readers and writers who loved historical fiction as much as I do.

I believed that there was a place in the literary world for The Copperfield Review, so I pressed on despite that nay-saying voice making noise in my head.

I love that we’re featuring an interview with the beloved historical novelist Steven Pressfield in our inaugural edition of Copperfield Review Quarterly. Pressfield is also known for his books The War of Art and Turning Pro. Both books are essential reading for writers. In his books, and in his interview in CRQ with Brendan Carr, Pressfield talks about the concept of Resistance, a creative block that every artist has to deal with in one form or another. Whenever you feel as if you’re giving into fear-based decision-making, whenever you stop yourself from trying or creating something new, you’re struggling against Resistance. Man, have I struggled with Resistance over the years.

In my initial conception of The Copperfield Review, I thought I would use the e-zine format until I could find a way to make bound copies. I had a lot of plans for Copperfield, and even as the journal gained in popularity (within a year we were receiving far more submissions than we could ever publish) I held back on growing it too much. I had excuses galore, some of which were legitimate, and some of which were pure Resistance.

The years passed and The Copperfield Review continued to grow in popularity. The truth is, we have a strong reputation because of the writers we’ve been lucky enough to publish. Crazytalented authors and poets have sent their work our way, for which I’ll always be grateful.

Even the works that we don’t publish are special in their own ways, and it’s a privilege to read them.

Fast forward to 2019. I wanted to do some fun things in 2020 for Copperfield’s 20th anniversary. And then.

I don’t need to explain what the pandemic did to all of our lives. We’re still coming to terms with what it meant and what it still means. Some of us were sick, some had friends and family who were sick, others lost jobs, and too many lost loved ones. Even though I'm writing about the pandemic in the past tense, COVID-19 is still very much here and more waves are rising every day. We have some soul searching to do as we make sense of this volatile disruption of what we knew to be true.

While some artists were prolific in 2020, I know others, who, like me, spent weeks staring at the wall. It took a good few months of living through the pandemic, especially when we were in the strictest lockdowns, for me to find my creativity again. I also did a lot of thinking about my life and where I was putting my attention. What did I really want? I asked myself that question countless times throughout 2020 and into early 2021. Really, what did I want?

The answer came back that first, I wanted to devote more time to my own writing. While I have had a wonderful career as a writer, I know there is more I can do. Perhaps I hadn’t been giving my writing the attention it deserved.

Photo Credit: Henry Be

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Second, I decided that 2021 would be the year that The Copperfield Review became the digital and print journal I always meant it to be. Yes, it would be a lot of work, and yes, I still felt Resistance, but I also had a sense that, you know what? It’s time.

Fortunately, I gained enough resilience over the years that I can now mostly fend off Resistance. I haven’t eradicated it completely (no one can), but now I can lower the volume of the noise and be productive anyway. And in the 20 years since I began Copperfield, technology has evolved and it’s easier now to create digital and print versions of journals and magazines.

I’m a big believer that everything happens in its own time. Even though this is what I wanted for Copperfield 20 years ago, it feels right that it’s happening now. Now I’m coming to the experience of creating a magazine with two decades of running a literary journal under my belt. Now I have a better sense of what I’m doing. I still have a lot to learn, and I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing, my editing, and myself, but I’m excited about this new venture in a way I wouldn’t have been even a year ago. Instead of shying away from challenges, I’m learning to look them in the face, see them for what they are, and try new things anyway. I hope you’ve had similar discoveries that are pushing you in new, wonderful directions.

Now that the inaugural edition of Copperfield Review Quarterly is ready for its close-up, I’m spending some time this summer hanging out by the swimming pool, reading some good books, and writing the next draft of my latest historical novel. And then it’s back to work getting the next edition of CRQ ready for its October release.

I hope you enjoy this first edition of CRQ. We have the interview with Steven Pressfield that I mentioned, and we have a feature and a new poem from one of my favorite living poets, Ann Taylor, who has been a long-time contributor and friend of Copperfield. We also have a wonderful selection of short historical fiction and poetry for you. Whether you’re reading a digital or bound version of CRQ, I welcome you to this new incarnation of The Copperfield Review.

What have you learned as a result of the pandemic? Has Resistance been a factor for you? Let me know your thoughts at copperfieldreview@gmail.com. We can all learn from each other.

I wish everyone some fun in the sun this summer. I’ll see you in October for CRQ’s Autumn 2021 edition.

Meredith Meredith Allard Executive Editor, Copperfield Review Quarterly

Available now at https://copperfieldreviewcourses.teachable.com/p/an-introduction-to-writing-historical-fiction

AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN PRESSFIELD

By Brendan Carr

Steven Pressfield is the author of Gates of Fire, a historical novel that has sold more than a million copies. Pressfield is also known for his much-loved books for creatives, The War of Art and Turning Pro. You can learn more at StevenPressfield.com.

In this interview, Brendan Carr and Steven Pressfield discuss Pressfield's newest novel, A Man at Arms, along with Pressfield's writing process and what it means to overcome Resistance, that little voice that tells us to resist our creativity.

Brendan Carr: Telamon of Arcadia is a mercenary in your newest book, A Man at Arms. What are you saying about warriors by making your archetypal warrior into a mercenary?

Steven Pressfield: What I was hoping to do as far as characterizing Telamon was to present him as a guy who exhausted the warrior archetype. He fought under flags that he believed in, fought for commanders he believed in, and had that come to naught. He committed crimes and he committed honorable acts. But he was still a warrior, he was not going to leave that aspect of it and that brought him to become a soldier for hire, a man at arms. He was in it for the fight alone, like a samurai when they no longer fought for a particular noble house but were just freelance guys who were cast out on the road. In other words, it’s a dark place for him to be. I’m not holding that up as an ideal. In my mind, it’s the stage that a warrior or a hero is in when he’s trying to find his way and hasn’t found it yet, a kind of a lost place. That was why I made him a mercenary.

B.C.: You’ve been wanting to write a book about Telamon for a while. What is it that draws you to him?

Pressfield's latest historical novel

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S.P.: That’s a great question! I feel like he’s a bit of an alter ego for me as a writer. The way he views himself as a soldier, he’s in it for the fight alone. He’s not in it for the money although he’s a mercenary. We don’t know what he does with his money, but he doesn’t have anything except the clothes on his back. It’s not like he’s getting rich; the money is really just an excuse for him. It’s a way to keep a distance between himself and his commander’s ambition. He says, “I’m just doing it for the money,” but he’s in it for the fight alone. I’m kind of in writing for the work alone. So, I think that’s one of the reasons why he appeals to me.

He also has a kind of a dark view of life and I do too.

B.C.: And lost characters are often depicted alongside a redemptive character. How did you develop the character of the young girl, Ruth, in your story?

S.P.: I very much did that on purpose with the idea of juxtaposing archetypal characters on my mind. I knew for years that I wanted to do a book that was only about Telamon because I was curious about where he would go after appearing in two other books of mine. He was in The Virtues of War and Tides of War and I was fascinated by his odyssey, but I couldn’t find a story for years.

I would take a shot at an outline asking, “What if I set him in Britain in the year 22 or something?” When I finally thought of this character of the young girl, it made a great dynamic of different archetypes. An innocent girl, that’s sort of the virgin archetype, and then this warrior archetype together created a lot of interesting tension and chances for growth on both sides as they interact with each other.

B.C.: What draws you to Carl Jung’s archetypes? And how can writers use them?

S.P.: Let’s talk about the archetypes for a second. The archetypes of the collective unconscious are these super personalities that we’re born with and that are Types, capital T, like the Wise Man, the Warrior, the Virgin, the Divine Child, like Jesus or Krishna.

There are many archetypes and I believe that we don’t realize it but we’re being powered by them.

Speaking of the Warrior archetype, when a young man and I think a young woman, too, hits the age of 12, 13, 14 they can feel that sort of thing. They’re not aware of it, but a young guy wants to try out for the

football team, wants to drive fast, wants to hang out with his homies. We think we’re choosing that but we’re not, we’re being driven by archetypes.

Back to writing, a really interesting way to power a scene is to have a clash of archetypes. I’ve been watching Game of Thrones and last night one of the scenes showed the young girl Arya Stark serving as a cupbearer to her worst enemy, Lord Tywin Lannister. The scene between the two of them is a great scene because of the two archetypes.

A better thing might be Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. A young Warrior archetype and the Sage archetype, and there’s a lot of great energy when you do that in a scene. If you look at practically any great movie or book, the characters are almost always archetypes. Think about the major characters of The Godfather and their enemies, the five families, they’re all archetypes. That gives the story its power.

I’m also a big believer in just reading great stuff and watching great movies if you look at them through the lens of the archetypes to educate yourself.

For example, with To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is sort of the archetype of the Knight, the upright and honorable man. The other characters are archetypes too. Try to educate yourself that way. Of course, you want to create nuanced real characters, but I do think that what gives characters power is that sort of archetypal energy.

B.C.: After writing several non-fiction books, you’re returning to the craft of writing historical fiction.

How do you make history feel so real in your books?

S.P.: It’s the imagination. It’s trying to imagine yourself back in that world, whatever world it may be. Arthur Golden, a Jewish male writer, wrote this wonderful book Memoirs of a Geisha. It was a bestseller. Basically, he beamed himself in imagination back into the mind of a Japanese geisha female courtesan in the 1930s and when you read it you completely believe everything.

So, I think he did a lot of research, he found out all the details of what the true world was like, but then he just used his imagination. In a way, that’s a quality of any storyteller. So, I think he did a lot of research, he found out all the details of what the true world was

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STEVEN PRESSFIELD CONTINUED

like, but then he just used his imagination. In a way, that’s a quality of any storyteller. When we were kids, if we got caught by our mom stealing something or caught by the principal, we would stand in front of the principal and just lie like a son of a bitch, right?

So, it’s that quality of imagination, which is a lot of the fun of it. I wish I could get in a time machine and go back to ancient Athens and see what it was like to walk out in the morning and talk to people, but I can’t. So, I do it in my imagination and try to write with that.

B.C.: How do you choose what projects to pursue?

S.P.: I’m a believer in the Muse. I believe that it inspires from some other dimension of reality and I never really know what the next project is going to be. I tune into the cosmic radio station and receive my assignment. I’m always looking for something that’s going to make me stretch a little bit, something I haven’t done before. I certainly don’t want to repeat myself, but usually when an idea comes, it’s a surprise.

That’s why I’ve been bouncing back and forth between things that are about the creative process like The War of Art and novels like A Man at Arms. I never know what’s coming next, but I know when I look back over the progression it all makes sense in some crazy way. Look at the whole through-line in Bruce Springsteen’s albums and there’s definitely an evolution. It’s the same theme he’s obviously obsessed with. He’s evolving and treating them in deeper and more nuanced ways.

B.C.: When you are writing, what does that process look like?

S.P.: I have two ways of approaching it. One is a very blue-collar way, I have a saying, “Put your ass where your heart wants to be,” which means you sit at the keyboard and just show up every day.

The other half is that I’m definitely a believer in the Muse and that you get inspiration and that when you’re working well you don’t even know what you’re doing. You go into another state of mind and you’re channeling stuff. What I’m trying to do as a writer when I’m actually sitting down at the keys is to get out of my own way, get my ego out of it completely, and even get my identity out of it.

I’m in a state of imagination and in a very real sense, I think you start to see the story that you’re telling and you’re guided by your own instincts. From my experience in the Marine Corps, I have a sense of what men are like in the field, what the humor is like and how everything goes wrong. It’s kind of a mysterious thing, getting into a state where you partly surrender your own control over to what’s going to come out on the page, but at the same time you’re bouncing between your right brain and left brain. You’re trying to control it a little and if the scene starts going in the wrong direction you try to rein it back a little bit and remember where you want it to go. I know it’s kind of a vague answer.

B.C.: Interpreting the Muse is obviously a big part of your process. How do you discern what’s coming to you?

S.P.: I always keep a file I call “new ideas.” Let’s say I’m working on A Man at Arms, I’m constantly looking out in my head for what’s next. I’ll have a bunch of candidates in my “new ideas” file, maybe a movie that I want to do, or a small book I want to try, or a video series, or a collaboration. I’ll put all those things down and check in with them from time to time and ask myself, “Does this make sense? Could I do two years of my life on this particular project?” At times I’ve found that at first an idea leaves me cold, but sometimes it takes quite a while for things to sink in.

Actually, the next project that I’m going to do is an autobiographical project. But here’s the interesting thing, my girlfriend Diana urged me to do this and I’ve been resisting it for months.

But little by little I recognized that as my own Resistance with a capital R, meaning that it’s a good idea and I’m afraid of it. I’m putting up this selfsabotage in my mind. It took me six months, but I finally bought into the idea and I am going to do it.

This might be a bomb. I might spend two or three years and it might just totally lay there, but I’m at the stage where I’m willing to take that chance. t’s a challenge and I want to give it a shot. I ask myself, “Do I really want to work on this thing for another day?” I recognize my own Resistance there because I’ve seen it enough in my 50 years in this racket. So, I say to myself, “Okay, let me push through it."

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STEVEN PRESSFIELD CONTINUED

Another big thing for me is dreams. I’m a big believer in paying attention to your dreams because it’s coming from your unconscious. It’s coming from that deep source that knows you better than you know yourself. Paying attention to your dreams is an amazing practice that people don’t necessarily pick up very often. I’m a child of the 60s, and certainly a number of different friends have sat me down and given me the talk about paying attention to your dreams. I’ve tried it enough in my own life and it’s worked a bunch of times. Dreams have steadied me on a course, but when I was doubtful a dream would tell me to keep going too. It’s worked for me.

B.C.: What advice do you have for writers contemplating big projects, such as a work of historical fiction?

S.P.: In my book The War of Art I talk about this concept of Resistance with a capital R. Resistance in my definition is that negative voice we hear in our heads that tells us we shouldn’t do this project. As I plan my next book, I’m getting this voice in my head saying, “This is a dumb idea. Nobody’s gonna care about this. It’s been done a million times. You’re going to look like an idiot.” That’s the voice of Resistance and one of the laws of Resistance that I have found over the years is that the more Resistance we feel to a project the more important that project is to the evolution of our soul.

So, big Resistance equals big idea. In other words, if you’re feeling a lot of Resistance to something, that’s a good sign.

The analogy I make is to think of a dream that we have for a project as a tree in the middle of a meadow on a sunny day. As soon as that tree goes up the tree is going to cast a shadow. That shadow is Resistance, but there would be no shadow if there wasn’t a tree first. So, Resistance always comes second. When we’re feeling big Resistance it’s because there’s a big dream. In the project I’m working on I’m using that to encourage myself, because I say, “Oh, if I’m feeling that much Resistance this project must be important to me.”

There’s really no substitute in this case for willpower and whatever it takes for each of us to find his or her way to work through something like that. Some of us hit it head-on, some use kind of a jiu-jitsu method, but somehow, we’ve got to find a way to get through that Resistance and keep working.

So, if you’re feeling big Resistance, that’s a good sign.

If you’re very much afraid of something, that’s a good sign. *** Brendan Carr is a podcast host, writer, and military veteran. He holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University. To see more interviews, check out http://youtube.com/BrendanCarrOfficial.

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WHAT IS HISTORICAL FICTION, ANYWAY?

By Meredith Allard What is historical fiction? On the surface, it seems like an easy question to answer. According to masterclass.com, "Historical novels capture the details of the time period as accurately as possible for authenticity, including social norms, manners, customs, and traditions. Many novels in this genre tell fictional stories that involve actual historical figures or historical events."

While the definition from Master Class gives us the nuts and bolts of what we mean when we discuss historical fiction, the truth is there is no one answer to the question "What is historical fiction?"

Everyone who loves to read or write historical fiction has their own thoughts and opinions about how they define the genre, which is a very good thing for those of us who love to read and write historical fiction.

There are a few basic guidelines when considering whether or not stories fall into the historical fiction genre.

The story should take place in a clearly defined historical era. Part of the joy of reading historical fiction is learning about the details such as events, places, and dress that could have only come from that era.

Through fictional snapshots, we can connect to a time that we couldn't experience any other way. We can be time travelers with one foot in the present and another in the past while we learn about people’s day-to-day lives.

As far as I'm concerned, historical fiction is the best of all worlds. Maybe you think historical fiction is the best of all worlds too.

For CRQ's inaugural edition we asked readers and contributors for their answers to the question, "What is historical fiction?" We received some great responses.

Here's what they said.

Jennifer Smythe: Historical fiction means learning about our place in today's world while seeing how things have changed over time.

Lynda Gosselin: Historical fiction is emotion. I can learn about facts in history books but I can only learn about how people felt through fiction.

Billie P.: Historical fiction is engrossing fiction. I can learn and visit another world at the same time.

Ann Taylor: The first necessity, I think, for historical fiction or poetry is genuine curiosity about the historical record, some interest in what has been said and in what else may be said, and a desire to say it in an engaging and thoughtful way. All good literature is an expression of some kind of hope, the desire to say something worthwhile and to be read. As Seamus Heaney said in his The Cure at Troy, “History says / Don’t hope on this side of the grave / But then, once in a lifetime / The longedfor tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme.” Hope and history can rhyme too in successful historical literature.

Martha Wilcox: Historical fiction is pure escape for me.

When I've had a hard day or I need to kick back I reach for a historical novel.

Tom B.: Historical fiction is life as it was and as it is. I think the reason I like historical fiction is because I like to learn new things.

Rachel Smith: Historical fiction can give voice to those who were marginalized at the time– the people whose stories didn’t make it into the history books. Not only that, but it can expose patterns and parallels between then and now, illuminating the ways in which the past has shaped the present and reminding us of the price of not learning from our mistakes.

Jane Wilder: Historical fiction is hard to define for me because it's so many different things. Mainly, historical fiction is a great story wrapped up in fascinating facts about the past.

Mary Ressenor: Since I read and write historical fiction exclusively, I would say that I define historical fiction as my life's blood. It satisfies my curiosity about how people survived in difficult circumstances and retained their humanity. We still need that lesson today.

Nick Link: Historical fiction is a dip into life in the past.

Historical fiction means different things to different people. There's something for everyone in this beloved genre, which is why readers and writers are drawn to historical fiction again and again.

How do you answer the question, "What is historical fiction?" Why are you drawn to read or write in this beloved genre?

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HISTORICAL FICTION IVÁN BRAVE PETER BRIDGES WILLIAM DELANCEY GEORGINA JEFFERY MINGLU JIANG ROBIN ELIZABETH KOBAYASHI MICHAEL MAY PAUL C. ROSENBLATT CECILY VAN CLEAVE

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Grozny / Грозный (Ivan Murders Ivan)

By Iván Brave Repeatedly, my students ask me for the meaning of a word. When I give them the answer out-right, they often nod their heads, but proceed to forget the definition. Instead, what I prefer to do and what helps them remember, is to provide the context of a word through a story. This way they can understand, beyond a dry translation, the essence of a word, especially one bathed in history and emotion.

For example, you encounter a strange sound and ask, “What does грозный mean?” I reply, “A bloody collection of incomprehensible letters; a terrible epithet; a form of formidable; at once the absence and the providence of God.” Yet you are unsatisfied, you repeat the question. ййй The last Rurik Tsar of Russia sat at his desk in his winter estate of Aleksandrovsk. He had been staring out his ice-dusted window, gazing at a frozen expanse of land, far from any warm, western civilization.

Meanwhile, on his desk lay a royal missive, dated November 1581, from the King of Polonia, splattered with blood. Next to it was a letter opener, shimmering in moonlight, yet also bloody. And next to them both stood an upright icon of Christ.

The hoary-haired Ivan Грозный let his hand empty the last drops of crimson, palm facing up. Ignoring the pain, he distracted himself with fruitless ruminations. Life repeats, or it ends, the Tsar thought. Whereas divine cycles repeat endlessly. He looked out the icy window again. Christ, the Tsar pondered, contemplating his desk’s icon. What were the child’s last words to his father? “Eli Eli lama sabachthani...

Why, Father? Why hast thou forsaken me?”

The wind was howling outside, as the Tsar motioned back to the blood-speckled letter. To siege that damned city of Pskov, or to concede to the King’s terms for peace? The Tsar had to decide.

The second choice seemed best: assimilate Polonia into Moscovia diplomatically, end the war. All the Tsar would need to do is assume a second throne, contend with those westerners who would harass his frontier.

Russia needs a buffer, room to breathe. Nevertheless, Polonia is rich, to annex the state would bring great treasures. A step closer to the countries in rebirth, the old world facing the new. Why reject this magnificent offer, why?

Only a fool would fail to see the opportunity here. Or the victim of reprehensible evil. ййй A knock on the door. A turn of the knob. And the eldest son, the Tsarevich, entered.

“Father.”

The son, Ivan Иванович, closed the door behind him, but not all the way.

A winter wardrobe. A quivering upper lip. The saber strapped to the Tsarevich’s hip, his hand upon the handle. These were the things the Tsar failed to notice, as he cut through his son’s gaze, to stare at the crisscrossed black hairs between his moonlit eyes and furrowed brow.

The son knew this would be his father’s reaction, reticence. There was a lot more the son knew, a lot more he held secret inside his heart. The only way to speak to his father, this monster, was to ignore everything else, even this Russian world they ruled. For twenty-seven years, Ivan the Son lived by Ivan the Father’s side, imitating his every move. His entire existence served one purpose—and tonight he would find out exactly what, but not why. Without him the Rurik line would end.

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"Father,” the son repeated. “We must speak.” He took two steps in and gripped tighter his saber, which shimmered in the silver light of the moon flung through the snow and the ice of the window. “Did you hear?” he asked, the heart in his chest thudding. “…Yelena lost the baby.”

Earlier that year, Ivan Иванович found himself in the third of his loveless marriages organized by his father, paired with Yelena Sheremeteva. In October she became pregnant. While everyone celebrated the blessing of the Rurik line, Ivan Иванович grit his teeth. A secret about this pregnancy corked any excitement. So the truth festered inside the Tsarevich, even as he traversed half of Moscovia, one thousand miles, to meet the Tsar in his winter estate of Aleksandrovsk. The expanse he had traveled on horse, with soldiers and by caravan, paled in comparison however to those two steps he had just taken, and the few left from where he stood to his father’s neck. Each pounding of his heart picked away at the oily scab within which repressed the honest question aching to puss open.

“Does the news disappoint the grandfather? Or is our Tsar pleased?”

Not even a week ago, Yelena had sustained direct strikes to the womb. The brutal beating came from none other than the Tsar. It was claimed that she had been dressed too immodestly by religious standards. For Ivan Иванович this was just another tragedy in a heap of tragedies. Bad enough Ivan Junior couldn’t marry the love of his life, but instead had his wives selected for him, none which had borne him children, that now his third wife had finally conceived a blessing, but the Tsar struck it out. Why murder his own grandson? Was it the loss of power, the jealousy for his son growing in strength, or was it something deeper, darker? Something only capable by the most fearful ruler the world has ever known.

The young Ivan stomped his foot. “Answer me!”

But the father remained seated, remained silent, remained.

“She won’t tell me,” the son mumbled, gnawing his back teeth, stepping towards his father. “Not even now, with the baby gone. She won’t admit what you did to her.”

The father pierced his son with his eyes. If the Tsar had stared at a candle this intensely, his stare would have put out its flame. Ivan Иванович knew that to avoid the gaze, or to look directly into either of those vast taigas for eyes, as opposed to between them, meant to fall into his father’s trap.

“Now you know,” the father finally said, “what it feels like to lose a son.”

Ivan Иванович halted. One foot rested on the rug that covered the floor between him and his father. The wound of those words made the son brim with tears. The Tsar grinned to see this. But frowned as he heard his son grumble: “We both know that the baby wasn’t mine.”

“What’s that, boy?” the father roared. “Speak up!”

“Let me ask you a question,” the son said, pounding his chest with one hand, while with the other gripping his saber. “True, you lost my older brother Dmitri before I was born . . .”

The father blinked.

“True, the boyars robbed you of your childhood.”

“Now wait a minute.”

The son spoke louder: “But it wasn’t a grandson you killed when you laid your scepter on Yelena. You murdered your own son!”

Ivan the Father, transfixed by the smoldering ache in his stomach, turned his attention to the Christ icon on his desk. Then, slowly, he reached for the gold of the handle of the letter opener, cold, be-speckled in blood, but no longer glimmering.

“You still have a lot to learn about Tsardom,” the father said, “and about the bedroom.” The old man pushed from his chair’s arms, bracing himself to stand up. But the son’s words kept him seated.

“The church will recognize my divorce,” the Tsarevich said. “Soon I will remarry.” The son spoke to his father, ignoring the cut on his father’s hand. “I’ve also arranged with the southern generals to lead an army into Pskov,” he said, looking at his father’s forehead now, still avoiding his eyes. “I’m taking Polonia by force.”

The father, recognizing himself in his son, grinned. “You have no idea, do you? The Pole King send me a letter conceding—”

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18 “You’ve broken my heart, father, and you’ve broken this nation. God wills me to make right your wrongs.”

The word God lingered in the room, as the flames from the many candles were extinguished by the whistling draft let in by a swung-open window. Ivan Грозный witnessed his chance for peace fade away, like he did the only woman he ever loved, the mother of his sons, Anastasia Romanovna.

“You remind me of her,” the father whispered, recalling the jealousy he had felt when the mother refused to wean the boy.

With jerking suddenness, the Tsar sprung out of his chair, so fast he banged the desk with his hip, and knocked the icon face down over the letter. Age and aches shot through him, pain, while the chilly grip of the letter opener fit his hand, and the rug’s length separating him and his son. Smoke from the candles rose. ййй Then there came another knock at the door.

It was Boris Godunov, bearing the latest developments at the Baltic border. “Your majesty!” he shouted, swinging open the door, too rushed for formalities. Immediately, he sensed the gnawing tension in the room, but couldn’t piece any of it together: the lightless candles, the armed prince, and the blood-crusted hand of his Tsar. Rather, Godunov felt his throat, his nose, his ears, all burn as beads of sweat formed around his mustache. He had sprinted from the fortress’s gate.

“Your majesty, why is your hand bleeding?”

Neither the Tsar nor the Tsarevich broke their lion-concentration from one another, not even to address Godunov.

“If it isn’t Boris Godunov,” the Tsar spoke. “My beloved brother-in-law.”

After that, the room got so quiet that Godunov could hear the sweat fall off his mustache.

“Wh-what is going on?”

No one moved.

“A simple conversation,” the father said, dropping his weapon on the table. “That’s over.”

Just then a clock inside the study struck its many chimes. It was midnight, and the son lunged at his father’s throat as a leopard attacks a bear, fangs darting for the jugular.

Instantly, the father’s face slammed over the top of his desk. But no sooner did the son grapple his father’s creaky, weathered, yet seasoned body downward, did the old man swing an arm around his son’s neck in counterattack. The scuffle drew both men over the center of the rug. Red folds and thick tassels, along the rug’s patterned perimeter, circled them as they wrestled for life and death.

With the steadiness one develops in dealing with royalty, Boris approached the two colossal men. Before he did, he locked the door behind him—for what, he could never explain.

“Let me lead an army into Pskov!” the son shouted at his father, choking him with his massive arms. “Or I’ll tell the church, I’ll tell the boyars, I’ll tell the people what you did to my wife!”

“I did you a favor”—the father managed to say, turning root red, hearing his brittle thigh bones splinter —“you ungrateful . . .”

Godunov, hands on his cheeks, pacing around the Tsar and the Tsarevich, failed to stop them before he heard the first crack of bone. Only then did the warrior separate the two apart by tackling his Tsarevich, and leaving the broken Tsar writhe alone on the rug. Godunov was latching his powerful hands to the Tsarevich, employing his entire body weight to drive the youth back into the corner, step by step by step.

“Damn you!” Godunov shouted. “What’s this madness, Ivan Иванович? Why?” Godunov spat as he spoke.

“Honor the Father, it says in the book. Let your heart speak!” He struggled, because the youth was thrusting back with all his might, but fortunately for Godunov, who weighed almost twice as much as the Tsarevich, he kept pushing. “No violence!”

“Violence is the only thing that animal understands,” Ivan Иванович retorted. “He’s forsaken us all!”

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Boris Godunov sent the youth far enough back to notice something else, something strange and vacant in the youth’s eyes. Was it blind rage? Or the boy’s very fate?

Distracted, Godunov failed to notice the Tsar heave himself off the ground. The father glowed with anger, the son noticed, who glowed fire red too, yet could not break free from Godunov’s strangle.

That’s when the Tsar popped his scepter into the air and with both hands gripped its lower end. Drunk with wrath, he flung the iron’s round top down on Godunov’s back.

Like a lightning bolt, which sent his brother-in-law on his knee, losing his hold over the Tsarevich. As a result, the son broke free, planted a leg behind Godunov’s heel, and with a shove sent him tumbling backwards, ironically, just as Godunov had taught the youth to do years ago.

Boris stuttered a curse as he hit the floor, his eyes rolling to follow the Tsarevich’s second lunge upon his father.

But this time the father was not caught off guard, having brought the scepter high above his head for another bolt of lightning. Welded to the top of the round scepter was the symbol of their nation, a twoheaded eagle. In one fell swoop this eagle met the forehead of the man who could have sat on its throne.

Both heads shattered. And in an instant the Rurik bloodline came to a dead end.

The rest of the scepter hit the ground, as did the son, Ivan Иванович.

Moonlight continued to enter the study, illuminating the old Ivan kneeled before the young one.

Meanwhile, the son contorted into a grotesque fetal position, twitch by twitch. Blood gushing forth. The old man looking down at his boy, who had been reduced to nothing but an animal in need of another bash to finish him off. But the father, not out of cruelty, only out of disbelief, held back the necessary second blow. He shoveled his palms under his son’s body and lifted him up to his chest. He hadn’t held his son like this since before the wars, before the massacres, before the tartar invasions, or the secret police. The son spasmed in his father’s arms, letting out cool breath after cool breath.

“My son!” the father cried. “My son! For the love of God, speak!”

The son, after twenty-seven years of avoiding them, gazed into his father’s eyes, mildly surprised he could ever fear this wrinkled, frayed, and bearded old man. At once, only through the clarity of certain death, did he see Ivan his father for who he was: both the leader of the Russian people, and the man who had held him at birth. The incarnation of Satan, and the flesh of God. A snowflake floating over the river in Novgorod, itself overflowed with the tens of thousands of the women and children his father had thrown in there. Visions flashing, the Tsarevich opened his mouth to speak but could only release drools and wheezes. He no longer twitched.

The father cried to the ceiling, shook his head. “My God, my God!” He shook the body. “Spare my son!”

For a moment the Tsar preferred his son’s spasms to this now lifeless body in his arms.

Meanwhile, Godunov, who had watched the scene with horror, felt just as paralyzed. Not even the banging on the bolted door, by the night guards, could distract him from the two human beings wrapped in one another’s blood—for it was the same blood for both men, father and son—the same madness too.

The father bellowed with his entire being, while his son, struggled with divine force to say what he had come to say at this frozen winter estate.

The simple question that had rotted inside of him. And was ready to come out.

With a black sleeve, the father wiped the drivel from his son’s lips, cleaned off the tears which could have been either man’s, yet had pooled over the cheeks of the younger one.

The son nodded. The father nodded back.

“Speak my son, yes, anything. You can ask me. God is with us here.”

The son swallowed a bit of goo from his mouth, and uttered his last word: “Почему, папа? Почему?”

The father could not answer the question, before the boy’s spirit crossed into purgatory, his body yet nestled in his father’s chest. It wouldn’t be until four nights later, on the night of a full moon, that the son passed away.

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The father saw his reflection in those comatose eyes. No matter how hard he held onto his dying son, shook him, pleaded, the Tsar felt nothing but that same raw feeling of being a scared child at the mercy of the boyars, fear and trembling. Not even the cut in his hand, which was open.

Boris Godunov stood up, grabbed the Tsar’s scepter with one hand, and with the other squeezed his lord’s shoulder. He asked the old man to stand up with him, to call for physicians. But there existed no salvation for those three men. They were damned. The son, because he had been killed on accident. Godunov, because he was made to rule as regent after this incident, with devastating results. And of course the Tsar, because in one week he had murdered two sons.

For four days, until Ivan’s spirit passed from his body, the Tsar could not but shake his head and repeat a single word, the only thing left inside of him, the only thing coming out of that gravesite in his chest, in a whisper no less, more regular than the old man’s heartbeat: “Грозный… Грозный… Грозный…” ййй Do you see now what that word means? To translate грозный into any language is to misunderstand the word. The English doesn’t capture the history; but to a Russian, hearing the word feels like drowning in blood. Murder? Filicide? Atrocity? These do not even come close to defining the events of the evening of November 16th 1581. Nothing and no one can fill the shoes of the man who murders his own son, and whispers: грозный. *** Iván Brave lives and works in his hometown of Houston, Texas. Although he is the author of two selfpublished novels, both available on Amazon, "Grozny" is his fiction debut in a literary magazine. As one professor from his MFA program quipped: "So let me get this straight, the story is 'Ivan Murders Ivan written by Ivan'? Fabulous! You have to publish this." Half a decade later, here we are. Discover more at www.ivanbrave.com.

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Blue Men and Last Lion

By Peter Bridges "The Ciminian forest was, in those days, more frightful and impassable than the German forests were recently found to be…." (Livy, History of Rome, IX.36) Marcus Fabius, a Roman citizen, to his brother, the consul Quintus Fabius.

As you requested, I am providing this account of my journey through the great trackless Ciminian Forest, from the town of Sutrium northward for many dangerous days to Camerinum in Umbria, whose citizens have since my visit become our allies against the Etruscans.

I found Sutrium to be a pleasant and peaceful place of farmers who seldom made the two-day journey south to the City, except to take oil and wine to market. Over the centuries they had slowly cut back the forest and planted crops and vineyards on the cleared land. Less than a mile north of the town, however, the plowed fields and vineyards ended. After a night in Sutrium’s small and pleasant inn, at dawn on a sunny morning in June my servant Sergius and I began our journey, walking from the open fields into a steep declivity. Soon we came out into the forest on a narrow trail that became increasingly faint and then ended.

Sergius, like me, was born in Rome but spent his childhood years at Caere. I spoke just a little Etruscan; he was fluent in the language and he knew that people’s ways better than I did. Indeed one of his grandfathers, whom he called his apa nacna, was Etruscan. And if we were to encounter any other humans in the forest, they would probably be Etruscans.

We each carried a bill and a short sword. I also had two spears, and Sergius a bow and arrows. We carried packs holding a week’s rations: loaves of fresh bread, dried pork and vegetables, cheese, and a waterskin each. We had cloaks for inclement weather and to cover us when we slept—shepherds’ cloaks; I did not want to look like a Roman patrician, let alone one of the Fabii.

I had wondered whether this forest might be a place of thick undergrowth that we must cut our way through tediously with the billhooks. It was not so, but the exposed roots of great beeches made our way tedious and slow. The last trace of a trail soon gave out. There were many clumps of blue anemones in bloom, between huge beeches such as I had never seen before. There were blackberry thickets but not enough to bar our way.

With the sun on our left we continued to head north. Some people might have found this forest fearsome, but I found it noble. Still, I wondered what dangers it might hold for us. There were old tales of Romans who had entered this forest, not alone and well-armed, and had never returned. Whether or not the tales were true, no one had ever tried to traverse the forest in recent decades.

We had wondered whether we should mark a trail to help us on our return. If we did so, it might be of use to Etruscans as well as Romans—and although it is easy to cut marks into the smooth bark of a mediumsized beech, these trees were different. I have seen great beeches in the hills and mountains of Latium, but these were true giants, many with convoluted, complex trunks ten feet across that were no good for carving inscriptions. So we went on without leaving marks.

Below the long beech limbs, the blue anemones poked through old fallen leaves that lay ankle-thick on the forest floor. The sun shone through in patches. We saw several small deer. A pair of wolves stopped and stared at us and slowly loped off. I had a feeling that something else was looking at us, too. We saw where the ground had been rooted up by boars, but we saw no boars. Nor did I want to encounter any of those voracious animals.

When we had been walking for five hours we stopped to eat, leaning against a fallen beech trunk. I sat quiet, looking about me more carefully than I had done while walking. Ahead I saw the greatest tree yet.

Things like rags were hanging from its lowest limbs. I walked to it. The things hanging were long strips of bark—bark that was colored blue. Someone had been decorating the tree.

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Puzzled, and a little worried, Sergius and I continued walking. An hour later we saw them ahead of us: five small humans barring our way, four men and a boy. As we walked toward them I saw that they were almost a foot shorter than either of us. Their skin was curiously pale; I had never seen people so pale, almost blue.

The men had black beards. Their only garments were loincloths stained blue, and I realized that their bodies were stained, too. Each of them had an animal-hide cape slung over one shoulder. Each fellow also had a bag slung from a cord—and each had a spear in one hand and a bow in the other. They stared at us in what seemed a very unfriendly way.

“Sergius,” I said, “Let us sit down and make them think we are peaceful.”

We sat, and put our weapons down in front of us. They said nothing. I raised my hand in a sign of peace, opened my pack and pulled out a still-fresh loaf, and broke it in two. I broke off two small pieces, ate one piece and gave one to Sergius, and offered the rest of the two half-loaves to them.

After a long minute the eldest of them took the bread, smelled it, and ate a piece. He liked it, thank heaven, and distributed pieces to his fellows. But what now?

I said a few words in Latin and saw no sign of comprehension, so I turned to Sergius to say something simple in Etruscan. He spoke and gestured, and they seemed to understand a little.

“What have you told them?”

“That we come in peace, and want to cross their forest just this one time, in order to reach our brothers who live beyond.”

“Do you think they understood you?”

Before Sergius could answer, one of the younger men fitted an arrow to his bow and was aiming at me.

The elder said something sharp to him, and he put down his bow.

Now the elder seems to indicate that we could go on our way, saying something, however, that Sergius said he could not understand.

“Sergius, ask them if they are a numerous people. Shall we meet others like him?”

The elder laughed, a grim laugh. He held out his two fists and opened them, closed them, opened them again. There were just twenty of them?

Now the man squatted and cleared away a patch of earth two feet across, and with a stick he began to draw.

He was a good artist. What he drew was two great well-muscled creatures, one with a mane. Lions. He pointed to a necklace he was wearing, and I saw that it was strung with four huge teeth, the canines of a lion.

“Ask him if they kill lions.”

The elder pulled a small leather pouch from his bag, and pointed to his arrows. They must have some lethal poison. We had no pouches, and he clearly did not want to share the compound with us.

“Sergius,” I said, “It is time to go on.” I pulled another loaf from my pack and offered it to the elder. He took it. We stood and I waved. What next? They moved to the side and we started walking.

After two hundred paces we stopped and looked back. They had not moved; they were looking steadily at us. But they had not attacked us.

We went on for several hours through the forest, seeing several deer, a hare, but no wolves and no bears.

But what of lions? I had read in Herodotus that there were many lions in northern Greece; they had attacked the camels in the pack train of Xerxes’ invading army. I had seen no reports of any lions in Italy. I wondered whether the little men had killed the last of them.

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No, in fact. In mid-afternoon we came to a broad sunny glade. Sergius stopped me and pointed. On the far side of the glade a lion was couched, looking at us. It was a male, with a heavy, light-colored mane. His tail was flicking. He rose and started slowly toward us, aware that we were aware of him. He was huge. Did he have a companion? I saw none. Perhaps the little people had killed her.

Sergius,” I said. “If he attacks, use your bow and arrows and I will use spears. Aim at his head, and I will go for his heart.”

The two of us stood side by side. The great beast came running at us. Sergius shot an arrow into his mouth, into the back of his throat. The lion rose up toward me and I thrust my steel-headed spear into his heart.

He fell forward toward me and I cut into his throat with my short sword. And the lion was dead, and we were alive. Sergius was unhurt, but the beast had cuffed me on the right shoulder as he fell. I was bleeding and my flesh was torn, but no bones were broken.

I staggered back to look at the lion, the first I had ever seen in the flesh. No sculpture of a lion that I had ever seen conveyed the power and cruel beauty of this creature. I felt weak. I sat down and looked for a long time at what might be the last lion of Italy.

If we had changed our course and started walking west, I think we might within a day or two have come out of the forest into Etruscan country; but we still had food, my wounded shoulder slowly began to heal, and I was under orders to look for possible allies against the Etruscans. So it was that in a long week’s walk toward the northeast we finally came out of the great forest into Umbria, to Camerinum. I talked with their senate in your name and in the end they agreed to help Rome. I know they played a good part in your recent victory against the Etruscans.

If you require it, I can lead a Roman troop into the great forest, but there may be hazards, although I suspect no one will ever see again any of the little people—or any lion in Italy. In any case, it will surely be long before pastures and fields replace the great Ciminian Forest. *** Peter Bridges received degrees from Dartmouth and Columbia, served as an Army private in Europe, and then spent three decades as a career Foreign Service officer on four continents, ending as the American ambassador to Somalia. His memoir Safirka: An American Envoy and his biographies of two once-famous Americans, John Moncure Daniel and Donn Piatt, were published by Kent State University Press. In 2013, he self-published a volume of a hundred Sonnets from the Elk Mountains, and in 2018 a second memoir, Woods Waters Peaks: A Diplomat Outdoors. His shorter work has appeared in The Copperfield Review, American Diplomacy, Eclectica, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

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The Spanish Summer

By William Delancey Central Spain.

Summer, 1937.

Francisco put his back to a tree and lowered himself to the ground. The tree was young and growing and he was careful not to move too far to either side, lest he be seen around the thin trunk. He opened his mouth and took deep breaths. The air was hot and dry and dusty. There hadn’t been rain for two weeks.

Francisco smiled and looked down at the rifle clutched tight to his chest with both hands. For his short height, skinny frame, and weak muscles, the rifle was perfect. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the lightweight of it, the bark and the smooth wood. Near the end of the barrel, as it curved to the right, there was a small nub where he’d snapped off a twig and rubbed out the imperfection with a stone.

Francisco steadied his breathing and stood up. As he did his shirt caught on the tree and untucked from his pants. He looked around at the woods and clearing nearby, silently counted to ten, then ran from cover.

His bare feet moved easily over the ground he’d run countless times before. He stepped over fallen branches and roots, turned when the underbrush was too thick, ducked when the branches were too low.

Everything went by in a blur. The wind blew against Francisco’s face and cooled his sweat.

From far behind him, deeper in the woods, there was a scream.

Francisco smiled and kept running.

The ground began to slope down and the trees thinned out. Ahead on the right a large one had fallen across an opening near the edge of the woods. Francisco ran for it and climbed over to the back side. He dropped to his knees and lifted his head to look back in the direction he’d come.

Francisco saw nothing, but heard movement in distance. He looked through the trees further up the hill.

There, moving fast and tracing the same path down he’d just taken, he saw Ramon with his own stick-rifle in his hands. Ramon moved with long strides and graceful steps. His eyes were steady on the tree where Francisco hid.

Francisco waited until Ramon was closer, forced the smile off his face, and raised his rifle. He laid it across the fallen tree and aimed it at Ramon’s chest then took a deep breath. His finger pulled an invisible trigger as he opened his mouth and clicked his tongue fast and screamed. The sound echoed through the hills and trees.

Ramon stopped and dropped to his knees. He looked down at his chest and fell to the side. ***** Late July, under a burning afternoon sun. Madrid had been under siege for nearly a year. When the city looked poised to be taken by the Nationalist forces the previous November, the government fled to Valencia, leaving their offices exactly as they were. Papers piled on desks, fans running, lights on. Keys and hats hanging on hooks. Half a million refugees moved into the city and the Republican army prepared to defend it to the last. Groups of guerilla fighters went to ground in the hills outside the city.

There were still areas near by which were untouched by war, even close to the frontline. Small homesteads dotted the countryside. Fences divided the land. Trees grew in clusters. Tall grass that filled the fields and flanked the roads blew in the wind. The roads were simple and narrow, made only of hard-packed dirt.

They rose up out of the landscape and sat higher than the fields around them. Two vehicles could not pass on them. When they came upon each other one would have to hug the shoulder and slow down, moving as far over the edge as they dared. There was never shade on the road. The shade was in the woods on top of the hills.

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***** Francisco climbed over the tree and walked towards his friend. When he was close he kicked Ramon’s stick-rifle from his hand and stood over him. Ramon smiled with his eyes closed. Beams of sunlight came down through the trees above and lit his face and stomach. He brought a hand up to his heart.

“Perfect shot.”

“Did you see me?”

“Only when you ran. You should have stayed hidden.”

Francisco stepped away.

“Why didn’t you shoot me?”

“I thought I was too far away.”

“You didn’t see me hide?”

Ramon shook his head and sat up. He reached over and picked up his stick-rifle and inspected it for damage.

“No. That tree is a perfect place. Did you just find it?”

“Yes.” “It’s good. Do you have the water?”

“No. I left it. Come on.”

Francisco reached out a hand and helped Ramon to his feet. They walked side by side around the fallen tree and through the rest of the woods to the edge then turned towards the fields to the east. They stayed in the shade just beyond the last row of trees. To the left the hills that ran away from them were covered in tall grass. The wind that came to the boys off the hills was warm. It pushed at the top of the grass and made waves in every direction. It shook the branches of the trees. At the tops of the trees, where the branches grew close to each other, the leaves rustled. Birds sang and flew from one tree to the next.

Ramon held his hand out at his side and brushed it along the tops of the grass.

The boys looked like brothers. Ramon was taller and broader in the chest, Francisco hadn’t yet grown into his arms and legs, but they shared the same black hair and large ears, brown eyes and thick eyebrows.

When they smiled, their eyes squinted up at the corners. Growing up everyone called them brothers, even their mothers. They spent everyday together. Most nights too. They talked about what to do when they were older and planned on marrying the Moreno sisters that lived in their town. Whenever Francisco had to leave to go to Barcelona to see his father’s family he would feign illness and try to stay behind with his grandmother. While gone he was sulky, despondent. At home, Ramon was the same.

Francisco let his eyes wander back to the woods and took in the colors. He looked back to Ramon.

“Have you seen your father?”

“No.” He paused.

“My mother thinks he’s dead.”

“She said that?”

“I don’t think she meant me to hear it.”

“What did she say?”

“That wherever he is, he must be dead from the fighting or he would have come back already.”

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“She doesn’t know that. He could still be fighting.”

“We haven’t heard from him.”

“He sent you a letter for your birthday.”

“That was in May. He hasn’t sent anything since.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“It means he’s probably dead.”

The boys stepped into the woods and sat at the bottom of a large oak. Both set their stick-rifles down, barrel pointed up, and leaned them against the tree. Francisco reached down between two of the roots that grew out of the ground and picked up the jar of water he’d left earlier. He took a long drink and handed it to Ramon. They drank and passed the jar back and forth a few times before Ramon put the lid on and set it back in its place. He lifted two small branches that were on the ground beside his leg and covered the jar.

Francisco wiped the water from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What is your mother going to do?”

“I don’t know. I --” The sound of a gunshot stopped the words in Ramon’s mouth and froze both of the boys in place. They waited and listened. Francisco turned his head and looked back into the woods. Ramon looked out over the fields.

Three more shots came in quick succession.

The boys snapped to the sound they now knew came from the west and, without a word to each other, grabbed their stick-rifles and stood up. They ran back along the trees the way they’d come and at the far end turned right into the tall grass. Both held their weapons to their chests as they bound through the grass that reached up and brushed their elbows. As they climbed the nearest hill and heard voices on the opposite side they slowed their run. At the top of the hill they crouched down below the grass and pushed it aside to look down in front of them.

A dirt road cut across the fields at the bottom of the hill. Like all the others, it sat above the ground around it and was flanked on either side by a ditch. In the middle stood soldiers in brown uniforms with rifles in their hands. Thirty or more. They were shoulder to shoulder with their weapons aimed down at men kneeling in front of them. For each soldier with a rifle, there was a man on his knees. The men on their knees wore mismatched uniforms in every shade of blue that were worn and ripped and filthy. Their hands were bound by rope behind their backs. At the far end of the line four of the men in blue were already face down on the road with blood in the dirt around them.

Francisco and Ramon crept closer. They got down on their stomachs and crawled part way down the hill.

When they stopped they strained to hear anything. They heard shouts and the sounds of voices but the words were lost on the wind.

A single officer, who held only a pistol, spoke up and quieted his men. He walked slowly around the dead bodies and down the line. Dust from the road was kicked up by his boots. Twice he stopped and brushed at the front of his uniform with his free hand. At the end of the line he crouched down to one of the kneeling men and pointed his pistol in the man’s face. The man stared straight back at the officer. After a minute they both stood up and walked down the road. Half a hundred yards away they stopped and the officer pointed to a house in the distance. He then turned to the man beside him and placed his pistol to his head.

The man with his hands bound behind his back didn’t flinch or move a step. The officer shot him in the head and watched as his body collapsed to the ground.

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On the hill, the boy’s watched and didn’t speak a word.

The officer began to walk back down the road and as he did raised his pistol into the air and dropped it as quickly. The soldiers down the line fired. The shots echoed and the kneeling men fell as one to the side of the road. Some fell forward and rolled off into the ditch. The soldiers stepped forward and fired again.

When all of the men on the ground were dead, two of the soldiers slung their rifles over their shoulders and went to the man the officer had killed. They each grabbed an arm and dragged the body off the road.

The officer stood and spoke with his men and none of them looked at the dead bodies near their feet.

Ramon shifted on his elbow and looked to his friend.

Francisco kept his eyes on the road and spoke in a whisper.

“Why did they do that?”

Ramon turned back to the road.

“They are fascists.”

“Who?” “The dead ones.”

“No, the fascists are the ones that do the killing like that.”

“What’s the difference?”

“My mother said they helped her to bring in the harvest last year.”

“Who?” “The fascists.”

“She let them?”

“She couldn’t do it alone.”

“We could have helped her. Anyone could have.”

“There isn’t anyone else. They’re all gone.”

“She shouldn’t have let them.”

“What else was she supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

“My mother --” Ramon raised his hand.

“Wait. Do you hear that?”

He pushed himself up off the ground and parted the grass to his right.

“Look there.”

Francisco got to his haunches and looked over the top of the grass. From the road to the east came a small convoy of trucks. A cloud of dust billowed out behind them. The soldiers standing in the road moved aside and waited as the trucks came to a stop in front of them before walking up to the open windows.

“How do you think they ended up here? The front line isn’t anywhere near us.”

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“Maybe it’s getting closer.”

The soldiers passed canteens between them and smoked cigarettes. The doors and tailgates of the trucks were all open and a few of the men had taken to laying in the road beneath the trucks to escape the sun.

The officer spoke to the first driver in the line.

Ramon felt the sun as it burned his skin. He looked down at the beads of sweat on his arm.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

The boys stood halfway and kept bent at the waist as they went over the hill and back the way they came.

When they were at the bottom and started up towards the woods, out of sight of the soldiers in the road, they stood up. The climb up with the sun on their necks tired them. When they reached the shade of the trees they passed the water jar again and sat down.

Francisco stretched his legs out in front of him and rested his stick-rifle across them. He ran his hands over it and watched as the path they’d made through the tall grass disappeared. The wind pushed the bent grass back in place and made it look as if they’d never been there.

“If the fighting keeps getting closer, we’ll have to move.”

“And go where?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll leave the country.”

“My uncle lives in France. We could go there.”

Ramon sat with his head back against the tree.

A smile came across his face and he stood up.

“I run this time.”

Without another word, he took off into the trees.

Francisco counted to twenty-five as he looked out over the fields and listened to Ramon’s footsteps crunch the underbrush. When he reached twenty-five the woods were quiet again. He turned and with his weapon in his hands, followed.

Ten yards into the woods Francisco stopped and looked up. The tops of the trees began to shake and the sound of engines filled the air. He could pick out the sounds of three different planes before there were too many to count. Through the thin spots in the canopy above he could see the planes but their markings were obscured. Leaves and dead branches started to fall from the trees and the birds took flight as Francisco held his hand over his head and ran to the edge of the woods. He went out of the trees and looked to the sky. Two formations of bombers flew low above the trees. Beside them were fighters marked with large black X’s painted on their tails.

Francisco watched as the bombers continued their straight line and the fighters broke off to the right.

They blanked far out over the fields and turned to run low between the hills. They took turns coming in and opening fire on the convoy parked in the road. The sound of their engines and their guns as they fired was all Francisco could hear. He walked out into the grass but stopped when an explosion shook the ground beneath his feet. Ahead, smoke and flames and dust rose into the air. The fighters moved around for another run. The bombers continued on, slowly shrinking away towards the horizon.

Francisco watched the planes bank then turned and ran back into the woods. He held his rifle close to his chest. The branches and rocks on the ground cut at his skin and dug into his heels. As he ran his eyes looked through the trees. To his left, around one of the larger trees, he saw Ramon leave his hiding place and go for the opposite end of the woods.

Francisco gave chase.

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Once out of the woods Ramon ran into the tall grass and started up another hill. He ran with his arms swinging at his sides, his stick-rifle hanging loose in one hand. Once he looked back over his shoulder and slipped as Francisco gained on him.

Francisco caught Ramon at the top of the hill and ran his shoulder into his back. Ramon let out a groan as he fell to his knees. The stick-rifle he’d been holding so loosely in one hand he let go and it bounced out of sight into the grass.

“I surrender.”

Ramon leaned back on his knees and held his hands above his head.

“I surrender.”

Francisco stepped around to face his friend and leveled his rifle.

Ramon looked up and nodded.

“Do what you must.”

Francisco touched the tip of his rifle to Ramon’s forehead.

Ramon closed his eyes.

As he looked down at the stick between his hands, held to the head of his brother, Francisco took a deep breath. He felt the sweat on his forehead and down the middle of his back. Far off, he could still hear the planes and see the smoke rising from behind the hills. The sun was lower in the sky and the long shadows of the trees reached out across the grass.

Francisco caught his breath.

Then clicked his tongue once.

Ramon fell backwards and let his arms fall dead at his side. A small smile crept over his face.

Francisco stood over him and held his rifle tight in his hands.

Above them, the planes were gone and the sun was setting. *** William Delancey is a writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife, Maggie.

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Denizens of the Deep Dark

By Georgina Jeffrey Knockers Deep below the earth, a coblyn picks her way through the wet dark of a Welsh mine. Ahead, men work, faces black with sweat and coal dust. She smiles, a secret, companionable smile, and scurries on, a threefoot shadow barely on the edge of vision.

She stops. Crooked shoulders stoop to fish a crust of discarded pastry from the dirt. Beady eyes gleam with delight at the find. The crumbs dust her waistcoat as she rounds a bend, hops lightly out of the lamplight of an oncoming hurrier, and listens to the rumble of the tub as he hauls it down the shaft.

Another step and there's a shift in the noises around her. The slick sound of sliding earth from - where?

Her ears twitch. Above, around, men still further down the tunnel. Mud slipping, beams creaking. The crust still fresh on her tongue.

She steals along the tunnel, finds a wooden upright and hammers on it urgently with her fist.

A man looks up.

“You hear that?”

Another cocks his head.

“Knockers!”

“You think...?”

“Heed it! They knock for dead men!”

Together they send up a muted cry. “Danger! Collapse! Everybody out!”

She listens. Chaos, frantic movements, five bodies moving with the taught panic of balancing on a knife's edge of sound; a single breath could disturb the air too soon.

Rumbling, like thunder within the earth.

“Move!”

The last man crashes clear while the coblyn hammers her warning on the walls and a great gushing cloud of soil and dust chokes the air.

The earth settles.

Calm returns.

The coblyn smiles in the dark. She fishes another crust of half-eaten pastry from her pocket and awaits the return of men. ***** Cutty Soams Cutty Soams, they call him. He who cuts the ropes, when unlucky men descend the shaft. Be wise to the tricks of the mine, or Ole' Cutty Soams'll have your hide at the bottom of it.

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In the Winding House, the Driver looks on while the Boy stokes the furnace. It's warm in here, while winter keeps the ground outside hard and bitter. From the window he has a view of the smoke-blackened hillside – barren now, where the trees have been harvested over generations to fuel the fires. He idly thinks of pork scratchings for dinner and better-tasting tobacco.

A bell dings above his head. Two chimes: men ready to ascend.

He puffs his pipe, puts the great engine in motion. A rush of steam sets tons of steel moving as effortlessly as water. The cable winds, pulling men up from darkness towards the winter light. The haul will last two minutes but feel like a lifetime. He should have checked the cable that morning, but his hungover eyes and freezing fingers declined a thorough inspection.

He should have checked the cable but will blame the Boy instead.

The shriek of tearing metal echoes across the hillside like a banshee's scream. Or perhaps it is the screams of six men, spiralling up from the mine shaft into the sky.

It is followed by silence in the Winding House.

And in the dark silence under the earth, Cutty Soams smirks for the mechanical folly of men. ***** Bluecaps Mary Thomas, 7, trapper, writes the inspector. One of many children who mind the doors in the mine. She was known to sing during her shift and could be heard down adjoining tunnels. She had a brother (11, hurrier) who died in a gas explosion last year. Her father Stephen works the coal seam; he is considered impatient and cruel among his colleagues.

Mary was last seen on the morning of her disappearance. She went down, as usual, with one candle to last twelve hours underground, and a piece of bread given by her mother.

It is not known what happened then.

It was thought she may have been run over by one of the carts, or crushed behind a door, as is not uncommon among trappers. A body was not recovered, though her half-burnt candle was later found in the same spot where she sat. It was carefully placed, upright on the ground, not dropped as if in hurry or panic. There are whispers among the older colliers. Legends of mining spirits; tales to excite an inebriated audience at the local alehouse. I heard one such exchange while looking for Mary's father: The storyteller reports seeing abandoned carts pushed down empty tunnels. Others chime in with their own stories of being led astray by flickering lights. The lights are called bluecaps, ghosts of burning flame.

Quickly the assembly concludes that little Mary was led off into the dark by a malevolent bluecap spirit.

Why else would there be no sign of struggle?

A young man pipes up, a hurrier who oft passed Mary's door. He hears her singing while at work, he says.

It echoes through the tunnels still.

The inspector pauses, pen hovering, a small drop of ink threatening to drip onto the page. I confronted Stephen Thomas that same evening. He was drunk, insensible, and easily provoked. I narrowly escaped a brawl, and Stephen was held down by the other colliers til he was arrested.

He will be tried next month for the murder of Mary Thomas. His confession revealed the location of her body. She will be given a proper church burial next week.

I believe the ensuing outcry for Mary's murder only highlights the intolerable working conditions of other children who have also died within this mine, to no such moral protestation. What follows is a comprehensive list of child occupations underground, and cause-of-death for the same over the past five years. Beginning with trappers...

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He stops again, refers to his notes, and his shoulders sink with the weight of what he will be transcribing.

He glances to the window, where it seemed a flickering blue light passed briefly by. For the faintest moment, as he puts pen back to paper, he thinks he can hear the sound of a child singing in the darkness. *** Georgina Jeffery is a speculative fiction writer in Shropshire, England. Her stories often blend elements of fantasy, humour, and horror, and tend to reflect her penchant for regional folklore. She has previously worked in a Victorian candle factory (in a living history museum - sadly no time travel involved) and attributes this as the reason for her fascination with industrial mythology. She is currently writing the next installment in The Jack Hansard Series (humorous urban fantasy following the misadventures of an occult merchant) and publishes other short fiction on her website. Find out more at georginajeffery.com

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Pride of Carthage

By Minglu Jiang It’s over.

Sophonisba pulls the brush through her hair for the forty-third time. But why should it bother her? It was inevitable.

She throws down the brush. She wishes she could sob, or scream, or moan. Anything. She should cry for the loss of her homeland. She should cry for her father’s death. She should cry for his dead comrades. For Syphax, who is not dead but might as well be.

Sophonisba collapses onto the floor, her back to the bed they share. Her hands flit instinctively to her belly, where the ghost of Syphax’s baby lives. Then to her finger, to Massinissa’s ring where Syphax’s should be. She hums a lullaby, one her dead mother sung to her and her brothers, one she would have sung to her baby.

She gazes into the empty air, breathing in the dust. She gulps the air in, delays her exhales, praying the dust will choke her.

It does not choke her. ***** In the evening, Massinissa stumbles in, a great grin on his face. “Sophonisba,” he breathes, leaning into his chair. She turns her head lethargically. Her eyes are tired and her lungs are tired and her body is tired despite doing nothing but breathing and gazing. “You are victorious.”

Massinissa lifts her under the arms onto his bed, crushing her body into his. They are both sticky with perspiration. Her hair sticks to her face and his face and it itches and she hopes it itches him. The pungent smell of wine pricks her nose, and she breathes through her mouth.

He kisses her forehead, his lips a damp log. Bile rises in her throat, and she forces it down, tossing her head back and offering her throat to him.

“Aren’t you happy, my love?”

Sophonisba bites her cheek. Blood trickles onto her tongue, pungent and cutting.

“You’re barely nineteen years old, and you are to be the queen of Numidia.”

A calloused finger skids down her cheek. He laughs softly, a laugh of euphoria. Drunkenness? “The most beautiful queen the Massylii and Masaesyli will ever have.”

She was only ever meant to be the queen of the Masaesyli as Syphax’s wife.

“I love you.”

“You say that every day, my king,” she rasps. If he truly loves her, why did he defect to Rome? If he truly loves her, he should have renounced his alliance with Scipio.

He laughs again. Definitely drunk. Sophonisba leans into his body. Maybe in his stupor he will crush her...

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***** Sophonisba understood war before she even touched reading or etiquette or society. Her father was a general and he was fighting against the Romans. He was winning, and she should be proud to be the daughter of such a man.

Then she grew into a teenager, and her father began losing. She met Syphax, the king of the Masaesyli. He had a delicious way of speaking and his hands were soft when they stroked her hair and he made conversation with her for hours on end. In exchange for her hand, Syphax fought for Carthage. He brought her with him on campaign in the homeland, told her everything he planned to do. He promised her he would win. Promised her that her father would emerge victorious, that her homeland would be saved, that she, the queen of the Masaesyli, would rule as queen of a Numidia united under him.

She loved him. She loved him even as he grew frustrated, as he grew desperate and raved during the nights about defection.

It was this love that brought him to his senses. He fought after the Romans burned his army at Utica, he fought after her father swung on a noose. Syphax—oh Syphax—fought one last battle and they were captured.

Syphax said they would die.

Sophonisba steeled herself, ready to die for Carthage and for her husband. Syphax was put in chains, Sophonisba thrown into the arms of another king, another throne.

What would Syphax think now? While Syphax is a prized prisoner awaiting the humiliation of a Roman triumph, Sophonisba awaits the crown of Numidia. ***** “I want to see Syphax.”

Massinissa frowns. “Syphax?”

“Let me see him, Massinissa. Before he dies. Please.”

Massinissa bristles. “You’re my wife, not his.”

Sophonisba bites back a wince. “I love you.” She squeezes her eyes shut, as if hiding his face will make it easier. She kisses him and resists the urge to wipe her mouth. “My king, you have a sentimental queen. She wishes to say goodbye to her father’s friend.” Desire thunders in her chest. No, not desire. Desperation. To only see Syphax again, tell him she didn’t ask to be Massinissa’s wife. “You would fulfill the plea of your adoring queen, would you not?”

Massinissa squeezes her hand. Needles puncture her skin. His eyes fall to their feet. “Scipio would not allow you.”

Sophonisba curls her toes. Breaking away from Massinissa would be so easy. Hitting him, too. You’re a king. Why should you bow to a Roman governor? Massinissa drags his head up, and she finds his coal eyes, their hard gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Massinissa sighs.

I’m sorry. It means nothing. They are just words. Useless words. Yet he says them as if they fix everything, as if they restore Syphax to her, as if they revive her father from the dead.

“You’re a king,” she spits, fire on her tongue. “A king. Scipio should bow to you, not you to him! Why can’t your wife see your prisoner if she wishes to?”

He grabs her shoulder and steadies her. She didn’t realize she was trembling. “This is not Numidia. I am as Laelius is: a trusted subordinate and friend.”

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“Laelius! That lowly—” “Stop shouting. You’re going to send a dozen legionaries running.”

“I wasn’t shouting!”

Massinissa shakes his head. “Yes, you were.” He exhales. “You still are.” She steps back. He reaches for her again. “Sophonisba, please listen. Scipio—” She tears her eyes from his disgusting face. “I don’t want to hear about Scipio and how you—” “Sophonisba. Look at me.”

She whips her head around, her loose hair slapping her cheeks. She glares into his black eyes. How lovely it would feel to dig her fingernails into his pupils and warm her hands in a waterfall of his ruby-red blood.

“Say what you need to say, my king.”

“You are Hasdrubal Gisco’s daughter, and Scipio is suspicious of you, perhaps rightfully so. If you appear anything less than perfectly benign, he’ll drag you to Rome and display you in his triumph.”

A Roman triumph. To be paraded in chains in front of a screaming city and then die in a Roman prison.

Sophonisba shudders at the thought.

Massinissa’s lips drag along her cheekbone. “As your husband, I will do anything to protect you from that fate.”

“You should have fought for my father. He died because of you.”

“If I fought for your father, we’d both be destined for Scipio’s triumph.” ***** Another hot, sticky day. Tears form beds in her eyes at the thought of Syphax in the tent with her. He would try to help her. Not like Massinissa, who puts her father’s death aside as if it is nothing.

Sophonisba slides the dress off her body and sticks her head out the tent flap. Darkness is beginning to fall on the camp. Strange. Massinissa usually isn’t gone this long.

Good. She hopes he’ll stay all night with that Roman filth he calls his friends. She twists the blanket, carves the border between her side of the bed and his.

She shuts her eyes. Tries to sleep. Nothing happens.

Sophonisba paces the lengths of the tent. Drowsiness pounds at her head. When she lies down, she tosses without finding the ignorance of sleep.

“Sophonisba, daughter.”

She jumps to her feet.

It’s him. Sitting on the bed.

“Father,” she exclaims, then covers her mouth. “Father!”

“Sophonisba, daughter,” he repeats. “How I’ve missed you. Come, darling. Are you suffering?”

She can’t help smiling. Her father’s ghost, come from the dead to save her. “Yes, Father. I’m suffering.”

His eyebrows knit together. “Darling, but you look well.”

“Father—”

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“You married Massinissa.”

Sophonisba smiles. She won’t have to explain to him. “Yes, Father—” “But Syphax still lives.”

“Massinissa—” Father stands. “You abandoned me, Sophonisba.”

Sophonisba rushes forward. “You don’t understand—” Father holds up a hand. “No, Sophonisba.”

“Massinissa stole me from Syphax!”

Father’s eyes are distant, yet cruel. “You dishonor me, daughter. If you were a good girl, you would take his dagger and stab yourself.”

Sophonisba’s lip wobbles. Pressure pushes at the back of her eyes. Father is supposed to save her. Not berate her.

From his hands he produces a silvery object. “Take it, Sophonisba.” He runs an equally silvery finger along his breastbone. “Stab hard and quick and it’ll be painless.”

Her hand shakes as she reaches towards the dagger. She clings onto Syphax’s body, sobbing into his shoulder as he urges the horse on. The heat of the fire bears down on her; the flames light the sky bright as day. Syphax’s mouth is wide open, and his abdomen vibrates against her breasts, yet she hears nothing.

Hooves pound and feet pound, rattling the earth. Screaming men as they perish in the fire and screaming men as the Roman cavalry cuts them down.

“It won’t be,” she whispers.

“Would you rather bear the dishonor? It is only a minute or two for salvation.” His eyes are gray now.

Fading away. His entire body is fading away.

The blade glitters in the moonlight. “Take it, Sophonisba.” She reaches for it. His hand is cold when she grazes it. She shudders. Her fingers close around the pommel, as solid as the air. He nods, a smile tugging at his lips. She points the blade towards her heart. “Good girl,” her father says. “Hard and quick.”

The day rises chapped and torrid. The army marches out to meet Hannibal. She sprawls on the floor of the tent, half-naked, praying that Scipio will lose. When Hannibal wins, he will recognize her and Syphax, and he’ll save them and kill Scipio and Laelius and Massinissa. Visions of kisses with Syphax dance on her eyelids. How he will hold her again. How she will go home and not worry about its loss.

Late into the afternoon and the army has not returned. Then the evening, and the army stomps in, exhaustedly cheering. Sophonisba’s heart falls. They’ve won.

But mixed in the cheers are the screams. The wounded stumble in, shrieking when they fall. Some mangled bodies are carried on the backs of their comrades, and Sophonisba can’t comprehend how they still live to yell serrated yells of agony.

If she must endure that pain for even a few moments...

Sophonisba drops the dagger. It falls soundlessly to the floor.

“You betray me, you coward,” her father hisses. His body ripples a thin sheet of silver. “You are no daughter of mine.”

“Father, there has to be some other—” His arms disappear.

“Father!”

“You betray me.” The legs are gone.

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“Father, please stay! Please!”

“I did not raise you to dishonor me.” His abdomen disintegrates. Only a scorning face remains.

“Father!” Sophonisba crumples to her knees. Realizes her face is wet. “Father!”

“You are no daughter of mine.” The head disappears. It’s as if he were never there. Sophonisba runs her hand along the rug. Feeling for the dagger. Nothing but the foot of the bed. Massinissa’s tunic. She screams. He didn’t even leave the dignity he wanted her to have. “Sophonisba!”

She leaps to her feet. “Father!”

Massinissa’s arms are spread. Holding the tent flap open. “Are you alright? I heard you talking—you were screaming—” “Father—he was—” Massinissa rubs his temple. “What was it? I didn’t see anything.”

Hands wrapping around his throat and the cracking of those bones so clearly defined under his dustcolored skin. “Go away!”

“Must you shout everything? Go to sleep, Sophonisba.” He throws aside the blanket.

“Take off your clothes if it’s too hot. I’ll guard the tent outside if you like.” Massinissa will be gone.

She tugs the tunic over her head. “Get out.” ***** Massinissa sets down the basket of bread and a bottle of wine. “So much food?”

“I came late last night.”

“I know.” His tunic is rumpled around his waist. Once, she’d seen the part of his body under there. Creamy skin the color of dirt. So unlike his calloused hands and sun-stained face. The pommel of the dagger is cool in her palm. The creaking as the blade slices through skin and muscle. Gushing blood red as the setting sun. Pink intestines spilling out of a gaping black hole.

“I dined with Scipio and Laelius. You didn’t eat. You’re always assumed to be with me.” He shifts in the chair. “So I brought you more today.”

She runs through the events of the past day. Waking. Washing in the water dragged in from the river. The interpreter came and said Scipio needed to speak with Massinissa. She scratched out a letter to Syphax.

Tossed it into a nearby cooking fire. It is blurry, as if from a dream. Only her father’s words are clear. You betray me, you coward. You are no daughter of mine. She searches. Did she eat? She cannot find it.

“Oh.” Massinissa gestures to the food. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

Sophonisba reaches for a piece of bread. You betray me. She bites into it. You are no daughter of mine.

Chews. It’s tasteless. What would Syphax think? His wife, dining with his enemy? She drinks half the bottle of wine. Waiting for the bitter burn. It doesn’t come. She finishes and gazes at Massinissa, willing him to say something. Break the silence, fill the space her thoughts race in.

His eyes droop, their gaze directed away from her.

“Massinissa?”

He lifts his eyes. Empty eyes. “Yes, my love?”

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“You’re quiet.” She squints at him. “Aren’t you going to talk? What’s wrong with you?”

Massinissa cradles his head in his hands. “Do you want to know why I was away so long, Sophonisba?” His rough fingers scratch his forehead. “Scipio demanded that I give you to him for his triumph.”

“Oh.” He lifts his head. His wavy hair droops. “Sophonisba, I told him that you are my wife, that you are the queen of Numidia as surely as I am the king of Numidia. I assured him you are harmless, but...”

“You could leave with me now,” Sophonisba says monotonously. She sees the triumph. Walking at Syphax’s side at the head of a herd of prisoners. The shame of being a general’s daughter then a queen then a prisoner on display. The dishonor for a daughter of the Gisco family to appear in a Roman triumph.

“Take me to Numidia. You—your army can defeat Scipio’s.” That’s what she should feel. Humiliation beyond comprehension. She imagines herself in that position. Dragging herself through the streets. The Romans jeer and laugh from the sides. That’s Hasdrubal Gisco’s daughter, who married both Numidian kings. It is nothing.

“If I take you with me, I won’t be a king.”

“As your husband, I will do anything to protect you from such humiliation.” Massinissa stands. Kicks the chair down. It clatters to the ground. He sucks in a shaky breath. “I—I—I have a gift for you.”

From his heap of belongings he pulls out a flask no larger than his small finger. The glass is lustrous— barely touched. He brings it to her. Sets it on the table. A girl sits on the blue. Smooth bronze skin. Curly hair black as blood. A face that captivated kings.

Sophonisba’s finger skims the glass.

“It’ll be quick and painless.” Massinissa twists the end of her hair. “But of course, if you would rather—” “No.” She snatches up the flask. Its weight is comforting.

I did not raise you to dishonor me.

“Before.” Massinissa molds his hand around her cheek. Prods her head towards him. His eyes shine, a bulb grows at the corner of his left eye.

Come, darling. Are you suffering?

“I love you, Sophonisba.” He tips her chin with two fingers. Leans forward to kiss her. “But you love your crown more,” she spits. Nudges him away with her knee. Massinissa flinches.

Sophonisba smiles. Oh, this is joy. She uncorks the flask. Tosses the cork onto Massinissa’s bed.

Syphax. Will he cry when he learns of her death? Perhaps. But he’ll be proud of her. Should be proud of her. For choosing the honorable path. For being courageous.

The lip of the flask touches her lip.

Massinissa jerks her hand away from her mouth. Wrenches her into a kiss. His tongue pushes at the opening between her lips. She denies him entry. Hand on his chest. Shoves him away.

Sophonisba tilts her head back and pours. The liquid is sweeter than the sweetest honey. She licks her lips for any remnants of the poison. Massinissa’s cheeks are wet with a tear.

Sophonisba laughs. Laughs as the flask falls from her hand. As she tumbles off the chair. As her body loses feeling. As it all dissolves away.

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*** Minglu Jiang is a high school student, history geek, and writer from Detroit, MI. Her short fiction has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards at both the regional and national levels. She hopes that her readers will find her chosen setting for "Pride of Carthage," Second Punic War-era Africa, as fascinating as she does.

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Goya's Muse

By Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi Bordeaux, France, Summer 1825 We had become desperate, unable to pay the bill at our third-rate boarding house, a place located next to a noisy brothel where lived eight prostitutes. We pawned Kitt’s rifle gun. We pawned his watch and his pocket compass. And when that money was gone, we pawned anything we could, including my portmanteau and spyglass. The loss of the pocket spyglass, which had once belonged to my father during the Peninsular War, nearly broke my heart.

I was one evening pacing in the dark, worried that I must part ways with my gold wedding ring, when Kitt burst into our dingy apartment. Placing a rushlight in a holder, he called out, “Sofia, where are you?” He had bought us bread and cheap wine to celebrate. In a state of high spirits, he swept me off my feet, and he twirled me three times round.

“What is it? Oh! What happened?”

“On my walk, I came upon a Spanish school for children. I spoke to one of its founders, a distinguished elderly man. Do you know who he was?”

“I can’t even guess.”

“Leandro Fernández de Moratín.”

I shrugged.

“Many years ago, in Madrid, Don Leandro wrote a play where a young woman is deceived into marrying a man in his seventies. He believes in free choice in marriage, and he congratulated you for not marrying old Don Fausto and for eloping with me instead. Upon hearing our ages, he mentioned that at twenty, he, too, loved a girl who was just fifteen.”

“What happened to her?”

“She married a much older man.”

Don Leandro, being in delicate health, desperately needed an amanuensis—a literary assistant to whom he could dictate a work of translation. After testing Kitt’s knowledge of Spanish and French, he became pleased with this affable and bright young man from Glasgow, although one thing bothered him about the way Kitt spoke.

“Do you think I speak with a noticeable Scottish accent?”

“My dear Kitt,” and I kissed him, “you are the pride of Glasgow.”

The next evening, we made our way to rue de la Petite-Taupe, a street filled with cloaked prostitutes—the little moles, so called because they burrowed themselves in the darkness of doorways. We joined Don Leandro at a chocolate-house where, in a low-ceilinged back room, Spanish exiles had gathered. Many were intellectuals or politicians; others were brave soldiers. One of them lamented that French water didn’t taste nearly as good as the excellent water in Madrid. Another ridiculed French theater. They admitted that they, being enlightened liberals, liked the French better than the French liked them.

Tonight, they were curious about me, the British-Portuguese girl who refused to marry an ancient nobleman.

“How did you escape from your home?” one of them asked me.

So, I explained, “I climbed down a rope that I had tied to the balcony. Then, disguised as a penitent, I rode on a wagon to Zaragoza.”

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Someone else asked, “What did you do in Zaragoza?”

So, I told them, “I went to see the Adoration of the Name of God. A friar, with whom I traveled for part of the way, said that if I looked closely at the fresco, I could see him, the angel who swings a thurible, and he was right.”

This remark about Goya’s fresco stirred up a round of murmurs.

“Was it not dangerous for a fifteen-year-old girl to travel alone?” Don Leandro asked.

I nodded. “One time, at an inn, a drunken Frenchman with a potato-nose offered me money if I were a good penitent and made him beg for mercy. I told him, ‘You stay away from me, Frenchy, or I’ll give you my knife!’ He slurred out, ‘You’re muy hombre—very manly.’ Insulted, I gave him a great wallop.”

The men roared with laughter.

Don Leandro requested that I repeat the story about the Frenchman for his old friend, Deaf Don Paco, who had recently survived a serious bout of illness. In the corner of the room, this sordo—the deaf man— sat alone and forgotten at a small table. Thick-set, with a flat snub nose, he resembled an aged bull, one who could still be forceful despite his infirmity.

The old man’s eyes were dull and weary, his thinning tufts of hair a wiry grey. He wore a white silk neckcloth, brown jacket, brown pantaloons and boots. He tapped his fingers on the table, half-irritable, half-restless, as though he found his deafness or his friends or, perhaps both, very tiresome.

Don Leandro introduced us, communicating energetically with hand signals. This irked the proud old man, who complained, “Do you enjoy speaking with your hands to show everyone I am a deaf man?” He hated being deaf. He hated it when others weren’t discreet about it.

Given that, I spoke simply and clearly, with the hope he could understand me. As my story progressed, though, I became more animated. My performance had made the lonely old man howl with laughter, such that the points of his peaked eyebrows smoothed round. He had understood most of it. Don Leandro nodded his approval, and he bustled off, taking my husband with him to discuss their business.

The old man motioned for me to sit. He pointed to a short stack of paper on the table.

“Place five dots anywhere you like,” and he handed me his pencil.

It must have been some kind of game. Quickly I dotted each corner, and then the center. Once I surrendered his drawing paper to him, he dashed at it, like a madman, and in a matter of seconds, he connected the dots into a butterfly arranged on the back of a woman’s head. She was a striking woman, whose long dark curls added to her mystery. He must’ve drawn her face hundreds of times.

“Don Paco?”

He laughed for whatever reason.

I held up five fingers. “Por favor, place five dots anywhere you like.”

On a sheet of paper, he drew five dots in a row, some being higher than others. He pushed the paper towards me. Taking his pencil, I drew a caterpillar, with the head of a handsome young man (my Kitt, of course) to complement the butterfly-lady. The old man stroked his chin thoughtfully. Snatching the pencil from me, he made corrections to my drawing, aided by his magnifying glass.

“My caterpillar was strange-looking, with humps like a camel.”

He shrugged, not understanding me. Using his pencil, I wrote down what I had said.

“There are no rules in art,” he declared. “I am seventy-nine and still learning, even though I can’t see and my hands are unsteady. All I’ve got left is will.”

He proudly signed his sketch, “Sólo Goya”, or Only Goya. I nearly cried out at the discovery of it, that he was the painter Francisco de Goya. Oh, stupid, stupid girl. Paco is a nickname for Francisco.

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In my mind, a painter like Goya ranked as a superhuman, a being not of this world, and thus, not one to waste time with mere mortals. He gave me the butterfly-lady, which I was honored to accept. Shaking his pencil, he motioned to the caterpillar, and so, my boldness having returned, I signed the drawing, “Sólo Sofia”. He broke out into a broad grin. Of a sudden, he whipped out his magnifying glass to examine me.

“Your features are curiously beautiful. Are you a painter’s model?”

“Me? Oh, no.”

“You must be my model.”

“Truly, Don Francisco?”

“I insist upon it. Do you not want to sit for me?”

“Oh yes!” but then I recalled the “us” in me. “If my husband agrees to it—” “Who?” “Mi esposo.” I proudly showed him my gold wedding ring.

He dismissed that impediment. “I shall paint at night. Come to number 24, Cours de Tourny, tomorrow, when it’s dark. Leocadia will be expecting you.” ***** Kitt wouldn’t agree to let me work at night as a painter’s model though we sorely needed the money. He thought it highly suspicious, ridiculous even, that a painter could do any work in such poor lighting. Did I not know that Goya must have had many lovers? Night is the color of amour for a libidinous painter.

“Oh, please, please say yes, Kitt.”

“I would be out of my senses to say yes.”

“It’s one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me—to pose for a great painter.”

He saw it differently. “You have charmed him. As your husband and protector, I cannot agree to it.”

Annoyed at him and his manly attitude, I stamped my foot. Unfortunately, his toes got in the way, and he cried out in agony.

Pushing me aside, he remarked, “Your foot-stamping is the least charming thing about you.”

We had gone to bed angry after that. It must’ve been one in the morning when Kitt nestled up against my back and he whispered that he trusted me, that he shouldn’t have doubted our love. He admitted to being jealous of Goya, and he was sorry for it. In my gloomy mood, I pretended not to hear him.

Stroking my hair, he asked, “Are you awake?”

He knew I was. Grumpily, I turned around but, in the darkness, I couldn’t see his face inches from my own.

I reached out with my hand, only to meet his hand. He entwined his warm fingers with mine. His slow sigh of surrender followed, for I had won him over to my side.

“I shall escort you there.”

“Thank you, querido mío.”

He would, undoubtedly, wait in the dark for me, alone and miserable for hours, his mind and heart uneasy. As it turned out, he didn’t have to do anything of the sort. Leocadia Zorilla, the companion of Goya, invited him into their apartment at Bérard’s hotel, where her ten-year-old daughter Rosario

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peppered him with questions about Scotland. By the end of the evening, the girl had formed a childish fondness for this young Glaswegian. A blossoming painter herself, she declared him a manly muse.

I flattered myself that I had inspired Goya. It’s true that he preferred to paint at night when the colors by candlelight were much warmer and lovelier. To this end, he wore a bizarre hat with lit candles stuck into metal tubes that ringed the brim. He also wore spectacles, sometimes three pairs, and he relied on a magnifying glass, given his poor eyesight. Armed with a palette knife and a rag, he painted rapidly, without making a drawing first. Did he not like lines drawn on the canvas?

That and a thousand other questions for him crowded in my brain. How could I possibly ask anything when he was irascible and explosive and constantly moving about? It occurred to me that Goya’s deafness made him terribly frustrated because he was a tough-minded old man dependent on those who could hear, which both embarrassed and vexed him. Everyone around him spoke an alien language—one composed of sound and inflection that he couldn’t comprehend. And so, with emotions unchecked, he became doubly fierce and truculent, nearly gone mad at times with his deafness.

Still, this brusque old man could be gentle. I had observed the tenderness and affection with which he spoke to Rosario, his Ladybird as he called her, whenever she peeked inside the room to watch us. Could she be his natural daughter? She had his eyes and she shared his love for art. I was pondering this, when I happened to notice a disturbing sketch affixed to the wall. It had been rendered with a soft black crayon.

In it, a madman, with a hideous evil eye, sits alone, trapped in murky darkness.

Goya grunted. “I call that one loco furioso. I saw him in the madhouse, here in Bordeaux.”

I blurted out, “I am no stranger to madness.”

He gave me a questioning look.

“My imagination crossed into the land of insanity,” I told him slowly. “According to my husband, who found me lost in the desert, I believed myself a goose flying from place to place, and catching insects on the wing.”

He repeated my words, amazed that he had understood everything.

I continued on, “Once you’ve gone mad, it’s almost impossible to leave that world.”

“Why?” “In the grip of madness, you discover that things needn’t make any sense there. You don’t have to explain yourself; you’re not responsible for anything. You can even hide and stay lost there if you want, which is what I did, to avoid painful truths.”

“How, then, did you regain your reason?”

“The mystical stream la Gloriosa cured me.”

He snapped at me, “What nonsense and superstition!”

“Upon my honor, the stream was magical. It melted my wings and—” “You must never abandon reason. The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

“Monsters—” “Ya, ya, ya, I’m not afraid of witches, hobgoblins, apparitions or boastful giants, nor indeed of any kind of beings except human beings. The worst monster is man.” Dark shadows, like a flash of violent nightmares, crossed his face.

“Monstrous human beings, like King Ferdinand, monstering others,” I muttered.

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He went on, most emphatically, “Imagination abandoned by reason produces these impossible monsters.

But imagination united with reason is the mother of the arts and the source of marvels.”

This made perfect sense to me. Believing in it, I became excited, impatient even, to write those words down in my notebook. This knowledge I would impart to Kitt and, together, we would be the heroes of reason and imagination, slaying those impossible monsters in the world. ***** Goya held a viewing of the completed painting for his stunned friends, who had expected another work of gloom and despondency. He was rightly proud of it. Don Leandro thought it most singular—a kind of blurred reality of various shades of blue, a color rarely used by Goya—and unlike anything else in the art world. He said of the painting, “It is supremely confident and calm, tinged with a soft morning light that plays with our fancy.”

The others teased little Rosario, declaring that she had painted this because, in their minds, no one but the young and innocent could dream of a better world. The winsome girl shook her head and told them, “I would rather paint a Scotsman who has freckles.” Kitt grinned, and I sensed his relief that the portrait had been completed. Then there was Leocadia. “Who will buy such a strange painting?” she grumbled, but she often acted surly towards Goya, for theirs was not a harmonious relationship.

The portrait measured fifty-two inches by forty-six. In it, I wear a blue-silk morning gown with short full sleeves. I am reclining in a chair, its fabric a delicate blend of whitish-blue and ochre. On the small table next to me sits a cup of chocolate. My honey-brown hair is worn half up and half down—the down part cascading to my hips. From under my skirts peep lilac-kid shoes, very dainty-like, with one foot pointed straight, the other not so inclined. My hands, which rest at my heart, clasp a posy of hyacinths of unchanging blue, a symbol of constancy. An expressive countenance reveals my secrets—profound happiness and hope, love and admiration.

Goya explained, “It’s a girl who married her true love.”

His friends recalled that he once made an etching and aquatint of a miserable girl whose father forced her to marry a dwarfish old man twice her age.

“I deplore such a sacrifice in the name of money,” Goya declared. “This time I’ve painted the complete opposite of an ill-matched marriage.”

Don Leandro spoke with his hands. “Paco, I never thought you would create another work of art as sanguine as this. The bright and light colors, the beauty and simplicity—only you could have painted it.”

“I don’t repeat myself when it comes to my art,” Goya reminded him. And then, he looked at me. “Only Sofia, who had the courage to survive and who married for love, could inspire me to paint something hopeful. Only together could we have done it. I hear her voice.”

The portrait, on display at the Exchange—a grand marketplace near the quay—sold within three days.

Goya didn’t know exactly to whom, but the enthusiastic purchaser, an Englishwoman, paid the equivalent of fifty guineas, a remarkable sum for a Spanish painter not known well in England. Tears filled my eyes that the painting was gone.

Goya must have felt sorry for me. He made me keep the second-hand morning gown and kid shoes that he had borrowed from a brothel. The brothel-keeper owed him a favor. On the last day we spoke, this otherwise frugal man paid me an extremely generous forty-eight francs for my work as a model, given the huge success of the sale. Kitt and I rejoiced because we were closer to saving enough for fare on the Sarah, a cutter that journeyed from Bordeaux to Plymouth every fortnight.

“Treat yourselves to a French dinner, one with a bottle of claret and a succulent poularde made with twenty herbs for your health,” he urged us. He thought us both too lean. It bothered him. And then he dismissed us with a wave of his hand.

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Goya already had plans for a new project, something to do with lithography, and his mind was wholly absorbed with it, completely driven. The only things he sketched nowadays were bulls and bullfights. The bulls of Bordeaux he called them. Soon, he would move to a white-stone house with a small garden on the rue de la Croix Blanche, a poor area where the city met the countryside. I saw how it was. Sofia, the painter’s model, had been cast off. She, who had pretended to be the Tenth Muse, was muse no longer, and she cried softly at her loss. *** Robin Elizabeth Kobayashi, a Japanese-American writer, lives in Los Angeles County. With her degree in law, she has focused on her legal publishing career for many years, writing and editing treatises. But her first loves are history and fiction. Her historical novel, I, Sofia-Elisabete: Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Books of 2018. Her historical novella, Twelfth-Night Cake & the Rosings Ghost, was a finalist in the 2018 Wishing Shelf Book Awards in the UK. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Regency Fiction Writers, and the Magical Realism Writers.

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Last Day in Ireland

By Michael May May 3, 1830 Sligo, Ireland Da threw back the blanket that draped over the wool cord stretching from wall to wall, separating his and Mam’s little sleeping room from the main cabin. Ours was a twenty-one-foot by thirteen-foot cabin, large enough for the small separate sleeping quarters for Da and Mam. All us kids slept on the floor along the wall opposite the cabin door. For warmth, we slept in our clothes and covered ourselves with wool blankets made by Mam. My older brothers used a bit of straw to pillow their heads, while I was still small enough to use my straw for a bed.

Da and Mam’s room had the only window in the cabin, and the morning light burst into the dark main room when Da threw back the wool blanket room divider and announced the beginning of the day. Unlike the older boys, there was no grumbling from me; I was just five years old, well one day away, and still of an age that I found the morning ritual of going outside to pee to be an exciting adventure with my older brothers. It was not common for any of the cottiers on the Lansdowne Estate to have an outhouse, and we were as common as our neighbors. When needed, the family members would simply find a nearby bush or other area to relieve themselves.

Being too young to work, I spent most of my days impeding Mam and her chores. At Da’s command to get up and pee, I sprang from my little straw pile and ran for the door, yelling as I went, “I’ll wake Uncle Paddy!”

Da built our cabin on ground he didn’t own; like other Irish-Catholics he owned nothing but his pride, being obliged to pay rent to the Protestant landlord for our little quarter acre of Ireland. He built the walls from loose stone, coated with a mixture of clay and mortar; the roof from branches of trees laid across the rafters and covered with sods of turf and then with thatches of straw. There was no ceiling, and the dirt floor was below the level of the ground so that puddles sometimes formed from the almost daily rain in northwest Ireland.

We had what many considered a luxury: a hearth. However, Da built our cabin directly on the earth without a foundation. Over the years the chimney had tipped, ceasing to fulfill its purpose of funneling smoke up through the roof. We could not have a fire unless we left the front door open to let the smoke billow out. And what would be the point of that?

Da had meant to fix the chimney, but working for rent money got in the way. We were leaving Ireland in the morning and he would just leave it for the next renter to repair or for the neighbors to scavenge.

“Good ‘cess to ‘em," as Da would say.

Some shelters on the Lansdowne Estate were large single-room cabins, like ours. Most people, however, lived in mud huts, while some folks had nothing but a hollow space in an earthen embankment; a wooden shield covered the opening to stand guard against the Irish rain. Fortunately, Da’s pay during the four years he served in the Sligo Militia raised our housing to that of near royalty as compared to most of our neighbors.

“Aye,” Da would always say, ‘twas me plan from the start when I first joined the militia. Divil a bit o’ the truth is, ‘twas the only reason I spent those long years apart from me family an’ Eily; me own sweet darling, colleen dhas machree.” Well, something like that.

Our sparsely furnished cabin included a table, a few chairs, and Mam’s storage chest, which stored all but nothing.

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Mam prepared our food outside. Like most Catholic families of Sligo and Ireland beyond, we ate potatoes for breakfast, dinner, and supper. There were no other vegetables, fruit, grain, or meat of any kind, except perhaps a bit extra at Christmas and Easter if it was a good year and we skimped some on our meals for a few days before and after. Sometimes Mam prepared a potato with some butter or skimmed milk, but mostly ‘salt was her only kitchen.’

“Och, how many ways to cook a potato?”

The all-potato-all-the-time diet may be monotonous, but at least it was filling. Our family of six, Da and Mam and the four of us boys still at home, consumed about fifty pounds of potatoes each day. Luckily the two oldest, Thomas and James, along with Da, ate their ten pounds while working the fields on the large estates. That left just Mam, Michael, and me to eat from our own supply most days.

Aye, but it was a fine morning, and I ran as fast as my little legs would carry me to Uncle Paddy’s doorway.

Since his discharge from the Sligo Militia after the Peninsular War, Uncle Paddy all but lived with us in a mud hut next to our cabin. He had never fully healed from his war injury, but he could get around pretty well on his wooden leg, but slowly. Luckily, Da avoided serious injury during the war; I don’t know how we would have fared if both were lame. Mam would have been in the poor house, and that’s not a good place to be. I probably would not have been born.

I pushed aside the blanket that served as a door and yelled inside, “Uncle Paddy, it’s pee time! Hurry!”

Da and my brothers had waited for us to pee some fifty yards from our cabin. James’ bladder was near bursting and he danced around yelling for us to move faster. The six of us let loose at once: Uncle Paddy, Da, Thomas, James, Michael, and me.

“Hey look, Da!” I yelled out, pointing to the arc of my stream, “mine’s going further than James!”

The verbal battle was engaged, with accusations of standing farther forward than my brothers and other instances of cheating. Aye, ‘twas a fine morning.

After the ritual morning pee, Da planned the day ahead; our last full day in Ireland. James, being the first in the family to learn to read at the hedge school for Catholic boys, would accompany him and Uncle Paddy into Sligo Town to make the final arrangements with the government. After some expert pleading, Da consented to me going along. Tomorrow was my birthday, after all.

Meanwhile, Thomas and our oldest brother Patrick would secure a campsite near the docks. The William Pitt would be at anchor later that day, and we need a spot before the crowds gathered. Michael would help Mam pack up and carry the few possessions we were taking on our journey. Later, we would all meet at the campsite, including our sister Bridget and her family. It would be our last supper together. Bridget and Patrick had families of their own and would stay behind in Ireland; maybe someday they would join us in Canada.

We moved along quickly about the day’s work. James fetched the cart and harnessed the pig. Uncle Paddy and I would ride into Sligo Town in the cart, as it is quite a walk for a small boy and man with a wooden leg. He climbed aboard well enough on his own, shooing James away when he tried to help boost him into the cart. Da lifted me into the cart and set me on Uncle Paddy’s lap.

The pig seemed to know its way to Sligo Town with little prompt from the willow switch that James carried to remind the poor cruther to stay on the road. He was a fine pig, too, and Da planned to trade him to the butcher for enough meat to fill our bellies at the evening feast, along with a bit of cash to fill his pockets for the journey to Canada.

The rutty road that meanders past the hovels and cabins of the Lansdowne Estate connects with the main road to Sligo Town, just about one mile from our cabin. Sligo Road follows the banks of the River Garvogue, which flows the length of the three miles from Lough Gill to Sligo Bay. The River Garvogue divides Sligo Town into two unequal parishes: Calry, on the north side of the river, is the smaller parish connected by two bridges to the greater portion of the town on the south side, St. John’s parish. Da would conduct his business at the town hall in St. John’s.

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All the Pensioners who would board the William Pitt tomorrow were to report to the town hall where they would sign over their pensions for land in Canada. In exchange, they would receive their boarding documents and other official papers necessary to emigrate.

His Majesty’s Government had worried about the loyalty of the local population in Canada since the end of the war between Britain and the United States in 1814. The government decided that a land swap for military pensions would reduce the country’s obligation for cash payments to veterans and provide an influx of colonists loyal to the Crown. Da and Uncle Paddy could exchange their life of poverty in Ireland and their meager pensions for one hundred acres each of raw land in Upper Canada; they took the deal.

We made our way through the irregularly formed streets of Sligo Town with few taking notice of Paddy and me folded into the pig cart where potatoes or supplies should be. The Hungry Season was still two months away, so there were few women begging in the streets; just widows and the regular invalids who begged year-round. Sligo Town, filled with mostly Protestant shopkeepers, middlemen for English landowners, and fishermen, is a prosperous village compared to the rank poverty of the cottiers who live in the countryside. Most of the two thousand houses were neat and respectable, with some of superior size and appearance. Public pumps provided water, and the town boasted lighted and paved streets.

Men of all classes crowded the main hall just inside the entrance to the town building, filling it with the chattering noise of their excited voices and drowning out the dull, unrecognizable undertone of private conversations. From a casual glance, it would appear as one large mob stuffed into a room too small, as if there were a contentious new proposal before the Town Council. However, the room maintained the divisions of men just as they were in the outside world. Rather than being jumbled and mixed like a tossed salad, they gathered in small clumps of the like-ranked, knotted together just as if they were still in the military.

The smaller groups comprised well-dressed former officers, standing tall and erect in separate clusters of Irish- Protestants and Englishmen. Their eyes watched each other, ears attuned to the subtleties of class rank as they sought to discern or inflict a social pecking order.

There was a larger group of English former non-commissioned officers. These men were casual in their attire and conversation, with the occasional belly laugh rising above the noise of the room.

Da and Uncle Paddy would join the largest throng of men who were boisterous, dressed in rags, and unwashed. These were Irish Catholics who had served as privates in His Majesty’s army and militias over the years just to earn enough for food and rent. One would think that if His Majesty was hoping to fill Canada with loyal subjects, he would have chosen a different lot.

After getting their documents in order, Da barely had time to get the pig to the butcher, the poor cruther, and then off to the docks at Sligo Bay. James took the place of the pig pulling Uncle Paddy and me in the cart. Da pretended to snap the willow at him a few times, as James had done while driving the pig earlier that morning. We all laughed despite the lateness of the day and the drag on our spirits from the drudgery of the hours spent waiting in line.

Our supper was a feast too good for King George. The food was grand and the gathering of our entire family even more so. A certain amount of melancholy hung over the festivities, as everyone knew this was our last night together as a family. But the beer and whiskey flowed for the adults, while us children joined in the laughter and sang around the campfire; a scene repeated around the other campfires all along the shore of Sligo Bay. There were tales of Ireland old and new, politics and family, but little talk of tomorrow and goodbye. Bridget made the first and only mention of separation and that perhaps all should stay together in Ireland.

“Things will be changing now that Daniel O’Connell is going to Parliament,” she whispered, the campfire shining on the near tears in her eyes. “You could stay here in Sligo and farm your own land soon.” The sound of her voice carried more hope than confidence.

Protestants had overthrown the Catholic majority in the Irish Parliament in 1613 and had ruled since without an Irish-Catholic voice. O’Connell had won a seat in the House of Commons in 1828. However, as a Catholic, O’Connell could not swear the Oath of Supremacy. King Henry VIII had originally imposed the

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oath requiring public officials to swear allegiance to the Crown as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Later, his daughter, Queen Mary, repealed it. However, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth, reinstated the requirement.

The government lifted The Oath of Supremacy in 1829 under threat of Irish rebellion, but not retroactively. O’Connell won reelection in July 1829 and had recently taken his seat in Parliament.

“Aye, dear Bridget, Daniel O’Connell be the great man. But I don’t have two hundred years for him to work his miracles,” Da said.

Sensing a sad mood overtaking the festivities, Da thought it time for a one of his stories. He spun a tall tale about O’Connell that had spread around since his election the year before. Da had his own version of the story, of course.

“Divil a bit o’ the truth is, I had dealings with Daniel O’Connell just afore I joined the militia back in 1810.”

Da broke the silence in a loud voice, followed by a wink, a nod, and a sly smile.

There was an audible groan of disbelief from the family, but eagerness still to hear another of his stories where truth and blarney meet to form a reality of their own. Of course, everyone already knew the actors; there would be a pig, the poor cruther, and a Protestant landlord would make an evil appearance. The characters rarely changed; just his stories. The adults in the family loved the familiar cast, us children looked around to discern the truth of it all, if any.

The next morning we would get on the boat to Canada and say goodbye to Sligo forever. But, aye, the last day in Ireland was splendid. *** Michael May is a dedicated, unpaid servant for his dog, Daizy; a one-hundred-pound lap dog. He lives in her home in Buckeye, Arizona. When not preparing meals, opening doors, and performing other essential tasks for Daizy, he spends his time writing. His primary interests are historical fiction, family sagas, and waking up.

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First Cat in New Amsterdam

By Paul C. Rosenblatt In the year 1629, a cat with no name became one of eighty bootkatten (boat cats) that the Dutch West India Company used to control mice on its ships anchored in Amsterdam harbor. Mice had been causing enormous damage to goods being brought to and shipped out from Amsterdam. Mice would also eat and befoul so much of a ship’s supply of food that those on board on a long voyage could be in danger of going hungry. So whenever a Dutch West India Company ship arrived at Amsterdam, a bootkat would be put on board by a man the company hired to be its Amsterdam kattenmeester (cat master).

This particular cat was a young male, mostly black but with a white blaze on his chest, running up his neck and the right side of his face, including the area around his right eye. He was barely more than a kitten and a beginner in the harbor cat service, and this was his first work assignment. The ship he was put on board was the Betrouwbaar (Reliable), a recently built medium size cargo ship with three masts, the main mast being 80 feet tall. The ship had just anchored in Amsterdam harbor after a journey from the Caribbean and New Amsterdam.

During the five weeks Betrouwbaar was unloaded, recaulked, repaired, refitted, restocked, and loaded for a trip back to New Amsterdam, a tiny town on an island the Indians called “Manathans,” the young cat became an expert mouse hunter. He had to be, because he was only given water while aboard the ship. He was on his own about eating, and so he fed himself on mice and the few harbor birds that made the mistake of landing on the ship within striking distance of the cat.

When it was time for Betrouwbaar to set sail, the kattenmeester was supposed to remove the cat from the ship and bring it to another ship that had just come in. But the day the transfer was supposed to occur, the kattenmeester was terribly hungover after a night of celebrating the birth of his first son, and so he did not do his job. The skipper of Betrouwbaar assumed he had, and he didn’t see the cat, because the cat was in its favorite napping place behind a sail locker. So the ship set sail with the cat aboard. The harbor cat service and the kattenmeester would count the loss of the cat as theft, but of course the cat was only an involuntary stowaway as the result of a drunken celebration by humans.

A few hours after setting sail on a cold, sunny January day with a good easterly wind, which was quite an auspicious wind for a ship sailing west, the Betrouwbaar was out of sight of land and far out to sea. At this point a sailor notified the skipper that he had seen the black cat that had been their mouse catcher. The skipper was furious. He was a stickler for everyone doing his job, and the kattenmeester hadn’t done his.

Besides, for the skipper the cat was another mouth to feed, a mouth of a creature that wasn’t a paying passenger or a hardworking sailor, and so it was worthless to have aboard. But the sailor reminded the skipper that black cats brought good luck to ships, and they had started out with an easterly wind. The cat had already brought them luck. So the skipper reluctantly said, “We will see. If he doesn’t work out, he goes overboard.” But the cat proved his worth every day in dead mice. And the cat was not a drain on the ship’s food resources, because he only ate mice, birds, and occasional table scraps given to him by sailors or passengers.

Some of the sailors and passengers enjoyed the cat and found him fascinating, easy to play with, and surprisingly easy to hold. So the cat had his first experiences of being petted, talked to, and cuddled by humans, and by the time the ship reached the harbor of New Amsterdam the cat had become quite accustomed to and comfortable with humans. During the voyage he also had a name bestowed on him by the skipper, Jager (Hunter).

After the ship anchored in the harbor of New Amsterdam at the mouth of what the Dutch called “the North River,” the 12 passengers were rowed close to shore, close to the tiny settlement of fewer than 300 people that was New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam had no pier, so the passengers were let off in shallow water close to shore, and had to splash through the cold water to get to land. One of the passengers, a short 18 year old young man with curly dark brown hair and muscular arms, Franz van Ness, had decided to steal the cat. He carried it with him, hidden inside his leather valise, along with his tools, his extra clothing, his dish and spoon, and his blanket. It was he who made Jager the first cat to come from Europe to the island of Manhattan.

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Franz van Ness brought his many different skills to New Amsterdam, carpenter, farm hand, bartender, laborer, and repairer of boats, and he expected to work hard. His first night on land he was invited to sleep in a thatched roof, one-room farmhouse at the eastern edge of the settlement. But when he arrived at the farmhouse carrying his valise and the cat, the man and woman who had invited him to spend the night were upset. The man said with disgust in his voice, “You want to bring an animal into our house?” And the woman said with nervous agitation, “We have enough animal dirt in our house. Why would you want us to let you bring a dirty animal in here?”

But Franz reassured them: “This cat is very clean. It doesn’t like dirt any more than we humans do, and he will even do some house cleaning for you if you have mice.”

The couple looked at each other. The woman looked at her husband, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “All right, I guess. Let’s see how it goes.”

Early the next morning the cat did something that brilliantly established his worth as a house cleaner. As the farmer sat eating his morning porridge, the cat brought three dead mice, one at a time, and laid them at the farmer’s feet. The farmer was delighted that three of the pests that had been constantly eating their food and befouling everything were dead. Within a week the word got around to everyone in the settlement that there was a cat in New Amsterdam and it was an expert mouser. People competed to borrow Jager for a night, and he quickly became a well-known citizen of New Amsterdam, appreciated because of his success at thinning out the population of mice in homes and granaries.

Franz van Ness continued to be the owner of Jager, to the extent that a cat can be owned by any human and to the extent that a cat that spends much of its time in other people’s houses and granaries can be owned by one person. Franz loved Jager, and Jager was attached to Franz. Early on a warm spring evening, when there was still daylight, Franz was at his indoor job, serving beer in one of the two drinking establishments of New Amsterdam. This evening there was little work for Franz to do, because with there still being daylight enough for people to work outside or at home without candlelight, there were only three customers in the tavern. Franz was sitting on a bench, holding Jager. One of the three customers was an elderly man with a weathered face, a patch over his right eye, and an obvious love of beer. He was also skipper of a Dutch ship anchored in the harbor. He watched in great amusement as Franz stroked the chin of Jager, and then he said to Franz, “You are quite the cat man. Too bad you only have one cat.”

Franz replied, “I would love to have another cat like this one, particularly a female cat. Many here in New Amsterdam would love to have a kitten.”

The skipper laughed and said, “I can help. I set sail for Amsterdam tomorrow and will bring you a female cat when I return.”

Franz grinned broadly and said, “Thank you, sir. That would be wonderful, and much appreciated.”

In less than a year the elderly skipper with an eye patch returned to New Amsterdam, bringing a mate for Jager, a female cat named Leeuwin (lioness). She was, like Jager, mostly black with a white blaze, and she was a very good mouser. Jager and Leeuwin soon populated New Amsterdam with their kittens. And the descendants of Jager and Leeuwin continued to be common in Manhattan into the 18th century, identifiable by their fur color and their front paws. Leeuwin had seven toes on each front paw, rather than the usual five, and quite a few of the mostly black cats in Manhattan well into the 18th century also had seven toes on their front feet. Why did the elderly skipper bring a cat with extra toes? As he told Franz, “A cat with extra toes will find it easier to stay firmly on a ship and not go overboard in rough seas.” *** Paul C. Rosenblatt is an emeritus social science professor who has published 14 books and more than 200 journal articles and chapters in edited books, with some of his academic writing based on historical documents such as diaries and love letters. He has published literary pieces recently in Streetlight Magazine, Avatar Review, Writing Disorder, and Shark Reef.

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The Turncoat

By Cecily Van Cleave Still seething, she stalks down the street toward home, Mrs. Thompson’s words running through her head like a runaway horse, careening against her other thoughts: I must have something more for my girls than this little bit of history and ciphering. If only you knew more French, if only your embroidery were a little more intricate slams up against It’s freezing, and even from here I can see that our windows are dirty.

She’s almost to the door—at least she’s polished the doorknob and the brass number six gleams against the wood—when a carriage clatters up to her and stops on the pavement. Emily, with a letter for her.

“Why did he not send it himself?” she wonders aloud, looking down at the folded page in her hand. She turns it over, suspicious that it might be a forgery, but his seal is there. “How curious.”

Emily shrugs a bit, her satin coat shimmering aquamarine in the weak sunlight. Hazel knows Emily’s had it for nearly two years now, and is glad that everyone is wearing old clothes now, with the tariffs and the trouble getting material from France. And of course the American cotton is being held back as well. And so Hazel blends in with everyone else now, with her coat from three springs back and a muff that is shared between all her sisters and prevents any of them from going out at the same time.

“I’m so glad I caught you,” Emily says, “for I must rush off to the shops.”

Hazel is glad too that she won’t have to invite her old schoolmate inside or even open the door to expose the empty sitting room, with a lone painting that Hazel’s mother refuses to give up and bare dirty floors that are the consequence of the carpets having been sold off. With the door open, even someone on the street might have heard from the upstairs schoolroom the ill-tempered squabbling of children whom Hazel has handed over to their sister—just fifteen herself—rather than a governess. She winces inwardly at the thought of Amelia, besieged and beleaguered like an enemy ship sighted on the horizon by their younger siblings. But what else can be done? Unpolished children won’t help their family a bit. And with Mrs. Thompson’s polite but definite refusal of Hazel’s services as her daughters’ governess, there’s no telling how long they’ll be able to go without renting another room.

“Andrew’ll no doubt tell you all about it,” Emily is saying, “but Will’s letter was full of some place called Matson’s Ford. It’s quite dreary to read, and I can’t help wishing he were home by the fire instead of shivering in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Of course, he shan’t be shivering now as it’s warmer—it is odd thinking about the delay, isn’t it? But he’s asking for new boots, poor man, so I’ve got to try and find a pair to send on the next ship.”

“And hope they don’t get stolen on their way,” Hazel says grimly. She’s had treacle and warm socks she sent Andrew taken before they reached him.

“Oh yes, it is most shocking how those dirty pilferers lift whatever they like! I do hope Andrew is well and that we hear of this war’s end soon—it would be so jolly to have him home and a date set for your wedding!” And Emily clatters off to go to Eastgate Street, no doubt envisioning Hazel and Andrew at their wedding breakfast as she goes.

Hazel stops at the house door a moment before turning the knob, thinking of what the hours ahead will hold. Gathering her strength, feeling as though she needs to smooth an imaginary flyaway hair. Inside she’ll have to soothe and straighten tempers as best she is able, keep the fires going in the grates below chimneys that refuse to draw—sweeps are out of the question now—and help the new girl with the supper.

She’s the last they’ve been able to keep and Hazel knows she won’t last long, what with her mother’s incessant complaining as she goes about what little household tasks Hazel can trust her with. She quiets only when a fresh bottle of rum appears on the hutch and she takes it off to the near-empty coal scuttle.

Later they’ll find her asleep, sitting with her back against the wall, raise her up, and guide her stumbling steps toward bed.

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Hazel knows her father looks to her to make these things right, to manage the girl and the washing and lock up the rum and give her mother some mending to do. But he is the one who climbs into Ashgrove Hall’s carriage that’s sent every Monday and isn’t back again until Friday. He doesn’t have to live with the smell of cabbage drifting in from the kitchen into the sitting room, for when he returns there’s money enough for a night or two of mutton. He doesn’t have to confront the Sisyphean task of keeping the children in clothing, of stretching the grocer order just a bit further.

When she thinks of how he must spend his days, eating the Hall’s pheasants and ducks and geese, taking a hot bath every other day, sleeping in a fine bedroom with brocade hangings around the bed—all in exchange for teaching two little boys Latin—it makes her want to take the last few pieces of the fine china from the cellar and throw them against the cobblestones in the yard outside.

It’s nearly time to make luncheon, but she needs a moment with Andrew’s words. To avoid the lodgers’ rooms, she goes through the kitchen and up the back stairs to the old servants’ room that is hers and Amelia’s now. First, she stops at the schoolroom to pull her sister away from teaching, calling into the open doorway, “It’s nearly one, Mia! I’ll be back down in a moment.”

She breaks the seal of the letter as she goes.

Luncheon goes on without her while she paces back and forth twisting her apron in her hands. Liberty is the word that now takes its turn in her mind. Liberty is the most important thing we have, he says. What is life without liberty, and the Crown says I must take it from other men? I cannot, he says.

As a Christian, as a daughter of decency and virtue, she agrees with him. She has thought, ever since this damned war started, about the Englishmen living on a far-off continent who declare their intent to be called under their own name and no one else's. She has thought about their long-suffering wives sitting in dark cabins for the sake of some principle or other, wives who went willingly because life here was not to be borne. She understands all this, and she knows in her heart that all civilized men are equals. She was not the one who decreed that these problems be solved in such a bloody, savage way. No one ever consulted her.

And yet. Liberty is something that she has only heard of. Liberty means walking out the door and never coming back. Liberty means going where one wills and knowing that it's bound to be better than what's behind. She has thought she could will herself to a country house in Runcorn with a full larder, ships passing on the canal, and Andrew across the dinner table. She was wrong.

Liberty. If it has something to do with her, she has not thought of it yet. Duty and love make poor bedfellows, it is true, but they jostle themselves inside of her nonetheless with sharp elbows, ever making their loud squabbling voices known. They shackle her here as strongly as if they were rings of iron locked around her ankles. If liberty has a voice amidst the clamor, it is too soft for her to hear, and the concept of freedom is as foreign to her as a word spoken in another language, heard muffled through a door. And so, she cannot understand this letter she holds crushed against her damp palm, though it is written in her tongue, in his hand.

There’s no sleeping for her that night, which is a shame because the night doesn’t know it’s meant to be spring, so cold she wishes she were sleeping through it. She lies awake and shivers, finally getting up carefully so as not to disturb Amelia and putting on her coat, then climbing back into bed. The hot brick at her feet has long ago gone cold, and there aren’t any coals left to warm it again.

She has never known before that such a little sheet of paper could contain words to bring one’s life tumbling down, as quickly and as easily as a little child pushing over a tower of blocks. Indeed, she did not know that she had any hopes to send crashing down—she had thought them all already on the floor. Her thoughts circle and pace in her mind, looping ever tighter and tighter around the concept of liberty, of freedom. She thinks of the wages Andrew sent, thinks of the next day’s work. After she thinks, well, why not me? Am I not God’s creature too? She falls asleep and dreams of a dark, churning sea.

A week later she’s dressed and ready, Andrew’s money in one hand, the other on the stair-rail, the door to the street straight ahead down the stairs. All she need do is walk down them. She knows this week’s papers have war news, so she’s got to go now. Above and behind her in the schoolroom she hears Emma reciting the names of the kings of England. She wonders what they’ll all say when they know she’s gone.

And then the street door opens and in comes her father with an inky sheet of newspaper in hand, shouting, “Hazel, Hazel!”

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Dazedly, she notices herself noticing the black mark where his hand has touched the doorknob. He looks up and sees her there.

“My God, Hazel—” he begins.

“Yes,” she says, with a tone she hopes sounds calm. “I know.”

“I cannot believe it,” he says, “your Andrew. You must feel this keenly.”

She looks at him then, sees the lines around his eyes, carved deeper every year and made dark now in the dim light.

“Yes,” she says, “but what use is it in grieving? He’s gone now as much as if he’d gotten a bullet through him. I suppose I should be glad we weren’t wed before he went. What more is there to say?”

“His money was meant to be yours, you know,” he says, and moves toward the study door. “I’m sorry for it, but I’ve come to get it out of the house. I won’t have it said that we harbor a traitor’s money. He’s not written you, has he? You’d have to burn the letter. All the letters, I’m afraid.”

Then Amelia comes out from the schoolroom, saying, “Is that Papa’s voice, Hazel? My, don’t you look fine.

You can’t even see the spots we’ve mended in your coat. Were you going out?”

Hazel looks up at her sister, seeing as she does the hem of Mia’s dress, which rises too high and forces her to keep decent with a long petticoat. She sees the hand resting on the rail as her sister turns to peer down at their father. It’s red and chapped from the washing-water.

“What are you doing here, Papa? It’s only Tuesday.” Mia casts a baffled look at Hazel, who doesn’t have words to explain. Half her mind is still halfway to the coach station, somewhere on the way to Liverpool, and she tries to reel it back in.

Their father spares his younger daughter only an absent minded, “I’m not here long, Mia.” He keeps going toward the study, and she doesn’t see the point in letting him find the empty drawer. She comes down the stairs saying, “Don’t bother, Papa. I’ve got the money here.” His surprise is exasperating and amusing all at once. He didn’t even know she knows where the key was hidden for the locked drawer (underneath the mantel of the study fireplace—who does he think tends the fires?).

“Where are you going?” her father asks, following her to the door as she opens it. From above she hears Amelia ask her too. The carriage still waits at the doorstep, and the footman looks at her questioningly as she stands for a moment.

“To get rid of it,” she says, and gives the footman a look that sends him to the carriage door to open it. In she climbs, as if it were her own, and her father gets in after her.

“To the poorhouse,” she says to the driver, and they’re off.

Soon enough she’s handed it all to the poorhouse keeper, who looks shocked at the donation coming from their family, the money emanating from a house that is commonly known not to have it. It’s as if he’s opened the window into his yard and a scarlet parrot flown in through it, then out again.

“One more stop. You can leave me there,” she says as they get back in, her father still looking solemn.

They pull up at the Pied Bull, and he looks at her with a furrowed brow.

“To see if they need another maid,” she says, averting her eyes, blushing in spite of herself. “Mia can watch the house now—we should keep her home a little longer. But you could let the girl go. That’s one bit of expense saved.”

He sighs and hangs his head a bit. At one time she would have felt sympathetic, but she’s too tired now.

She blames him for their need—if he’d kept peace with his own father, if he’d chosen someone besides her mother, perhaps some of the Cumberland fortune would have been his. She has thought longingly, more than once, of the smart gowns and hours of leisure she would have had, of long stays in Bath every winter, of Vienna and Paris in the summer. Instead, he has given her endless laundry and ashes in the grates and the smell of rum hanging heavy in the scullery.

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The footman gets out to open the door for her and stands there waiting. Her father looks at her with pity and sorrow in his eyes, and she says, “We must think of John and Theo now, and what they will be able to do for us. We must get Theo through his schooling. And perhaps his Lordship will give John the house he wrote us. Think of that, living with a garden and a bedroom each. In the meantime, we must get on as we can.”

She gets out, the carriage pulls away, and she’s left there trembling a bit in spite of her words. These are the last minutes she’ll ever be considered a lady, standing here in the inn-yard with the smell of horses and dinner cooking. When she walks out, her name won’t mean anything to any suitor who may care to call.

She imagines she’ll catch a chandler or a lieutenant at best, whenever the war is finally done.

She’s about to go in when she hears, “Hazel!”

She turns, and there’s Emily in her carriage, the feathers in her bonnet swaying as she leans out toward Hazel. “How fortunate to see you here!”

She steps over to the carriage. “Oh?” “I saw the papers,” Emily says, dropping her voice. “I was shocked, of course, and I am sure I don’t know what got into William, sending that letter along. To think of siding with those dreadful rebels over one’s own countrymen, one’s own intended! Men are a mystery, aren’t they? But—I came to find you. I’ve just had a letter from my aunt Victoria, who lives in Warwickshire. A little place called Exton, very out of the way. She was wondering if I knew of any girls who might make her a good companion—her husband’s just died and she wants company.”

“Oh,” says Hazel. As with so much else, she doesn’t want to appear too eager. She doesn’t want to assume, lest she be mistaken.

“Would one of your sisters be interested? She’s looking for someone young, who can be formed a bit, you know. She’ll be able to provide every comfort and pay a generous wage besides. She even mentioned a court presentation in a year or two, and the name of Cumberland would be very acceptable to contemplate such a thing.”

She doesn’t need any time to decide. If she stops to think, she’ll think of leaving Amelia with their mother in that house, she’ll think of her sister’s words when she heard that Andrew had written: Oh, I hope he comes back soon so we all might be comfortable at last!

“I’ll go, if she’ll have me,” she says. She is very willing to be formed—or rather, unformed from what she is now. Made into something else.

“Oh, splendid! Yes, now that I think of it, you are so capable that it is quite right that you should go. She is quite particular about her broth and gruel, and you are sure to be satisfactory in that regard. I shall write directly. Your address is--?”

Hazel gives it, her head whirling with thoughts of brushing up on her whist, of reviving her French. Of seeing London.

Emily smiles, perhaps a bit smug that she has done Hazel a good turn. Hazel doesn’t care.

Emily drives away, and Hazel sets off for home. As she goes, Andrew’s face comes to her, and she brushes it away in her mind like a cobweb. It’s that slight.

She tells herself that it doesn’t matter at all. *** Cecily Van Cleave earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and worked in the natural resource field for ten years, with stints in botany, fisheries, entomology, and agricultural conservation. A lifelong love of reading and writing led her to complete a master’s degree in English literature from Mercy College, where her culminating thesis on Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot was chosen as the 2020 Thesis of the Year. Her short fiction and nonfiction have also been published in community publications. A lifelong Washingtonian, she lives in northeast Washington State with her husband.

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Serendipity is the best word I can think of to describe the day poet Ann Taylor sent a historical poem as a submission to The Copperfield Review.

Sometimes as editors we have to read, reread, and reread again to determine if a piece is right for us. Not with Ann Taylor's poem. I knew immediately that Taylor wrote the kind of historical poetry I wanted to publish.

Taylor's poems are simply stated yet profound in their observations. Her language is lyrical. Year after year, Ann Taylor's poems have added depth and scope to the historical poetry published

by The Copperfield Review. When it came time to put together our first quarterly edition, I knew that Ann Taylor was the first poet I wanted to feature.

Taylor is a Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, MA where she teaches both literature and writing courses. She has written two books on college writing, academic and free-lance essays, and a collection of personal essays, Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing. Her first poetry book, The River Within, won first prize in the Cathlamet Poetry competition from Ravenna Press in 2011.

A chapbook, Bound Each to Each (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2013. Héloïse and Abélard: the Exquisite Truth (WordTech Communications), published in 2018, is based on the twelfth-century story of their lives, and her most recent collection, Sortings (2020), is available from Dos Madres Press.

Meredith Allard: When did you first come to love poetry? When did you start to write poetry?

Ann Taylor: I’m not sure exactly when I came to love poetry specifically, but I did love nursery rhymes and fairy tales read to me by my mother.

I memorized the story of Rowdy, the curious foal who “Ran up a little hill, down a little hill, up a big hill, down a big hill” so I could recite it along with her. (I keep this book on my desk.) I always enjoyed poems in school all the way through a PhD in English and through my long career teaching college literature courses. After writing personal essays on a variety of subjects, especially on birdwatching, I turned to poetry writing and never turned back.

M.A.: Who are your favorite poets?

What is it about their poetry that inspires you?

A.T.: This is a difficult question for someone who has taught many favorites over many years in the classroom, from the ancient classics to contemporaries. I must give a nod to Chaucer for his vitality and wise humor, to Wordsworth for teaching me to pay attention to what’s before my eyes, to Dickinson for her independence of spirit, to Seamus Heaney for his clear and moving writing about his home, his family, and so many very complicated subjects. All have provided inspiration and guidance for my life and my writing.

M.A.: What is it about historical fiction/historical poetry that you love?

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Photo Credit: Natalia Y

Poet Spotlight: Ann Taylor One of our favorite living poets (and one of our favorite contributors)

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A.T.: Historical writing, especially fiction and poetry, offers re-expression, interpretation of historical characters, explored by the historians. The facts become embodied, the characters come to life and acquire voices, and the emotions are heightened in the polished language of poetry.

M.A.: Why did you start writing historical poetry?

A.T.: I like to write poetry on subjects that demand from me a further examination and expression – personal experience, memory, travel, teaching, and of course, the record of history.

For Copperfield, I have written about Nero’s horse, Symposium cups, a Neolithic couple excavated in Italy, Gallows Hill in Salem, Mass., Pompeii, Anglo-Saxon gold, and Assurbanipal’s library, for example. I become curious about the backstory and fascinated with the challenge of exploring the material of history.

M.A.: Do you have any favorite poets who write historybased poetry? If so, what is it about their work that appeals to you?

A.T.: Of course, The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, and Shakespeare’s poetic history plays are always there, as are individual historical poems by Tennyson, Cavafy, Yeats, Graves, Heaney, Duffy, and so many others. First of all, I love the poetry, the power of the language, and I appreciate the art of transforming historical or semi-historical material into literary expression. I have written a collection of poems based on the story of the twelfth-century narrative of the scholarlovers, Heloise and Abelard, and enjoyed trying to live in their time, to inhabit through words, as well as I could, their personal worlds.

M.A.: What else would you like readers to know?

A.T.: I’ve not been as active on social media or on selfpromotion as I might be, but I am on Facebook and I can be reached at ataylor@salemstate.edu or at the Department of English at Salem State University in Salem, MA 01970.

My most recent poetry collection, Sortings (2020), is available from Dos Madres Press. Heloise and Abelard: The Exquisite Truth, is available from WordTech Communications, Bound Each to Each, a chapbook, from Finishing Line Press, and The River Within, from Ravenna Press, where the collection won first prize in their Cathlamet Poetry Contest. All are also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but may require a specific request for a particular book, rather than just a general name entry.

As I looked over my list of publications for the purpose of answering these questions, I surprised myself with the number of my poems focusing on aspects of history – Trojan walls, Cleopatra, Darwin and his orangutan, World War II’s No Man’s Land, the USS Arizona, the Oseberg Burial Ship.

Grauballe Man, and the Terme Boxer, among others. The tug of history is powerful, always there demanding further attention, always a force for any writer who cannot resist the temptation to travel wherever history leads.

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HISTORICAL POETRY CASSANDRA ARMSTRONG MARK B. HAMILTON DENISE O’HAGAN ANN TAYLOR

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF HENRY VIII

By Casssandra Armstrong The image of God in his ire does speak that a more painful hell than this awaits.

But I am King and this one change I seek: ‘tis my desire and creed which should dictate the right of man to set aside his wife who through devilry and spite does founder to achieve her purpose to create life; whether by ties or death should he sever them from this most sacred and solemn vow, he can be assured of his rightful choice and take such succor as offered him now, be it food or skin above a rich bodice!

Whoever she be, shall she be my queen or be hanged for failure to make a king? *** Cassandra Armstrong is a mother of three living in rural Minnesota. She has been writing poetry and fiction for 20+ years. Her work has appeared in Mothers Always Write and Writers Resist! online literary magazines. When Cassandra is not writing, she enjoys being crafty and reading and has a special interest in Plantagenet and Tudor history.

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CAPTAIN CLARK IS VERY SICK

By Mark B. Hamilton Our Captain has developed the deep pleurisy, becoming sick and bed ridden with the toll, so weak with cough Captain Lewis brought the surgeon’s mate from Stoddard’s artillery.

Encamped at Cahokia, just south of the fort, they will transfer lands to American control.

Captain Lewis, months in town doing business important to the enterprise, had seldom seen the camp until it had been designed and built from woods into huts and palisades, nor been here to observe Clark’s diminishment, nor felt his prolonged struggle so difficult to witness.

Experience directed our efforts to maintain a pace he had set between failure and success— the real strength within our Party, a learned lesson each owed Captain Clark, now mounting his horse with help from York, his growing frailness the reason for planned treatment both tenuous and uncertain.

Attired in leggings for travel, well cleaned, unstained but worn, buckles shined with leathers and boots oiled with black strap, all glistening like the fur of his dog, Captain Lewis leaned forward urging the horses into a quick cantering, all three up to hocks in snow dragging tethers.

At muster, we bundled up against wind and ice at parade the previous evening, the sunset casting shadows from the palisade. We stood at attention and stayed silent as Captain Lewis began reading the Order removing Captain Clark to St. Louis for the care necessary for his recuperation.

Yesterday, Shannon collected medical herbs, which had added to our worrisome concerns for Captain Clark, who had earned our loyalty as working men watchful of health. We labored with fatigue and its possible companion, injury, under his guidance, and hoped for his return.

All were proud of this little fort, this shelter poised like a Colonial hat slightly cocked in a “V” of 10 x 10 huts covered with snow.

Set at the confluence of the Dubois River They stood with slanted roofs four in a row impervious to cannon balls, he had joked.

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The storehouse between had a platform above, a lookout over the Boat for an all-day sentry.

The tall palisade formed a gate to the road due east, cut from woods as the sun moves, for timber and planks and firewood towed by horses rented from those in the country.

Our quarters were snug, but our Captain now ill, who needed treatment for a worsening situation.

Captain Lewis would return in two-days-time once Captain Clark was settled and the mission complete. The Sergeant would command until then, with all of us making best use of the time.

The winter cold stayed wet, and was a burden, but we kept hopeful and kept ourselves in place until dismissed to mess from the evening parade.

We talked of sickness. Some the threat and sudden surprise of death, the thought braising on faces of gazing men, softened by a few gestures made.

Our grumblings often betrayed the uncertain sense of what, or the who of where, and many could just stay the course no matter the why, as unconcerned as distant enlisted men.

We slept in darkened sounds of a muted sky, like fire logs drowsing into smoky hickory. *Adapted from “Wintering at Camp Dubois,” Vol. 2, The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986: 168-77. *** Mark B. Hamilton considers himself an environmental neostructuralist, working in forms to transform content, adapting from both the Eastern and Western traditions. He holds the MFA in Creative Writing with extensive work in American Studies from the University of Montana. He is perhaps the only living person to have traced the entire Lewis and Clark Expedition route, on their approximate timetable, and traveling as they did by paddle and pack mule—a 3-year, 8,000-mile journey. A newly published poetry volume, OYO, The Beautiful River: an environmental narrative in two parts (Shanti Arts, 2020) explores the reciprocity between self, cultural values, and our contemporary environment as experience while rowing a fifteen-foot dory down the 981-miles of the Ohio River. Poems have appeared widely in the US, and also abroad in Abiko Annual, Salzburg Poetry Review, Frogpond, Oxford Poetry, Chrysanthemum, and Stand Magazine. Visit www.MarkBHamilton.WordPress.com.

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

By Denise O'Hagan ‘Europeans who decided to make a new home in New Zealand embarked on the longest journey of migration in human history.’ (TeAra, Encyclopaedia of NZ) On 8 December 1864, the ship Viola, carrying 348 passengers and a large cargo of merchandise, set sail for New Zealand. Among the immigrants on board were John and Bridget O’Hagan, my great-great-grandparents and their sons who, like so many, fled Ireland in the wake of the Famine. Their eight-month-old son Edward was one of the eleven infants who died at sea. The ship docked in Auckland on 4 April 1865.

We have great reason to thank God, who in His Providence has placed us under the care of men Cramped into the tired, tiered bunks in steerage down below deck with the vermin and the seepage and the cargo and other government immigrants not only well skilled in their several duties as master and officers of the … good ship V. pushing and shoving and jostling and squabbling, the filth was palpable, the stench near tangible and privacy was just a word but also most anxious for the comfort and well being of their fellows … there, where tedium vied with fear, waves slapping and slopping the deck and froth dribbling like unmopped spittle she encountered contrary winds, which detained her for ten days in the chops of the Channel, he wondered sometimes whether they’d make it while his wife complained about washing in a teacup, the potatoes and too-salty meat that never ran out experiencing … very unsteady and boisterous weather … crossed … the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope.

‘Hold your tongue, woman,’ he told her.

‘We’re blessed to be here, and don’t you forget it!’

She turned away from him then, and didn’t turn back Gentlemen, allow us to say … that our ardent and united prayers are that you may be spared until the day their infant son coughed his life away in her arms, and he gently prised his small body away from the ship doctor’s brandied breath to successfully pursue your highly onerous and useful profession and believe that we shall ever remember

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‘his rough farmer’s hands shaking, saw to it that he was wrapped in sackcloth like the other little ones before him, the very kind and generous treatment that we have all on occasion received from you. weighted and slipped overboard with their muttered prayers and gritted teeth and barely a splash The passengers … all arrived in good health and there were 8 births, and 12 deaths (11 infants) and one adult ... *** The context of this poem is the greatest failure of the potato crop Ireland ever experienced from 1845–9, known as the Great Famine. It triggered mass starvation and disease, peaking in 1847 (or ‘Black 47’). One million people starved to death, and a million more emigrated, including my great-grandfather and his parents – in their case, to New Zealand.

The poem is composed of selected extracts from transcripts of letters to the Viola’s Captain, Officers, and doctor as well as an extract from the official report of the ship’s arrival (Southern Cross newspaper, 22 and 29 April 1865, and 5 April 1865 respectively, reproduced by courtesy of the National Library of New Zealand). All quoted matter appears in italics and is juxtaposed with adapted portions of my own poem ‘Blessed to be here’ (the original version of which was published in The Beating Heart, Denise O’Hagan, Ginninderra Press 2020). *** Denise O’Hagan was born in Rome and lives in Sydney. She has a background in commercial book publishing and is Poetry Editor for Australia/New Zealand for the Irish literary journal The Blue Nib. Her poetry is published widely and has received numerous awards, most recently the Dalkey Poetry Prize (Ireland), 2020. Her debut poetry collection, The Beating Heart, is published by Ginninderra Press (2020). Visit Denise online at https://denise-ohagan.com.

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INSIDE THE TROJAN HORSE

By Ann Taylor Odysseus’ elite, we thirty, to be delivered full-armed, like Athena, for Athena – we from a horse-womb, more an amphora without the wine, wobbly on wheels, war-gear a burden, equipped to rattle, a stray whisper sure to betray us.

A rough rest too, after a decade of storming, laddering impossible walls, cascading to our blood-drenched tents.

We wait. Between the planks, we fear alert Laocoön’s distrust of our battlegift, but then hear no more from him.

Stench thickens, our spirits sink lower, until Odysseus nods his sword side to side, into a No! glares us into bracing our spines.

Wilier Helen tempts us with our wives’ voices. All hold back, except for Anticias, whose reply must be hand-muffled.

We stiffen when Cassandra names our deceit straight on – we, the horse, the plot, the death – Nonsense! they determine. We exhale.

So we wait, ache for escape, wait for this beast to trundle through the gate, wait to free ourselves from this splintery nightmare. *** Ann Taylor teaches both literature and writing courses. She has written two books on college writing, academic and freelance essays, and a collection of personal essays, Watching Birds: Reflections on the Wing. Her first poetry book, The River Within, won first prize in the 2011 Cathlamet Poetry competition at Ravenna Press. A chapbook, Bound Each to Each (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2013. Héloïse and Abélard: the Exquisite Truth (WordTech Communications), published in 2018, is based on the twelfth-century story of their lives, and her most recent collection, Sortings (2020), is available from Dos Madres Press.

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THE HISTORY QUILL HISTORICAL FICTION WRITERS SHOULD KNOW ALL ABOUT IT If you write historical fiction, you'll want to know about The History Quill, which provides editing and other necessary services specifically for historical fiction authors. Here's Rachel Smith, the executive editor of The History Quill, to share her thoughts about our favorite genre.

Meredith Allard: Why are you fascinated by historical fiction?

Rachel Smith: I’ve been fascinated by history and stories since I was very young, helped along by my dad, who is the most brilliant storyteller. It was almost inevitable that I’d fall in love with historical fiction.

When I was ten, I got a set of My Storybooks (which I’ve recently learned are the UK equivalent of the Dear America books). These were fictional diaries of young characters living through key moments of British history, such as the Great Exhibition, the Titanic, and the Blitz. I devoured these books. I’d always loved learning about history in school, but reading it brought to life in this way, through the eyes of such believable, relatable characters, was a revelation to me.

I think that’s the key reason why I love historical fiction: it’s one thing reading about history in a nonfiction book, but for me, nothing brings the past to life better than being drawn inside a historical character’s mind, sharing in their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, experiencing the sights, sounds, even the smells of the era with them. I love gaining a deeper understanding of the past through observing how characters behave and interact with one another, but more than anything, I love experiencing characters’ inner lives – the bits that would otherwise be kept hidden.

M.A.: Who are your favorite historical novelists and your favorite historical novels and why?

R.S.: As a child I loved Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart mysteries, which I think cemented the Victorian era as my favourite. Those books sparked in me a love of mysteries that has endured to this day. I read in a variety of subgenres and historical

periods, but some of my favourite authors include Carlos Ruiz Zafon (his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series is breathtakingly good), Laura Purcell (I’m drawn to gothic fiction; I’ve loved everything she’s written), and Sarah Perry (I thought The Essex Serpent was excellent (and not just because I’m from Essex), but Perry’s partially historical novel Melmoth will stay with me forever).

I’m a huge fan of historical chillers, like Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger, or Neil Spring’s The Ghost Hunters (about Borley Rectory, ‘the most haunted house in England’), or Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. I’m very drawn to the idea of the past coming back to haunt us. On that theme, I also love dual-timeline novels, such as those by Barbara Erskine, Kate Morton, and Lucinda Riley. Those are great for demonstrating how past deeds can echo through time.

I appreciate historical fiction that focuses first and foremost on telling a good story. It should never just be about showing off the author’s extensive research. The authors I mentioned above know how to weave in their research in a way that serves, rather than stifles, their plot.

They create rich, immersive historical settings, peopled by authentic characters, with themes that resonate in the modern day.

M.A.: What do you find to be the particular joys and challenges of writing historical fiction?

R.S.: I think the biggest challenges are striking the right balance between history and story (choosing which bits of research to incorporate; deciding how far you can bend the truth), using historically authentic language (creating the impression of authenticity without being so accurate as to be incomprehensible to a modern reader), getting the finer details right, and knowing how much research is enough.

I know from first-hand experience that writing historical fiction can feel hugely daunting when you’re just getting started. The fear of making a

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whole host of anachronistic blunders is very real. But immersing yourself in another time can be incredibly rewarding. If you’re drawn to historical fiction, chances are it’s the challenges that initially seem intimidating that will give you the greatest satisfaction once you get stuck in.

The key things to remember are that everyone has to start somewhere, and nobody can get it right all of the time. You just have to give it a go. It’s important to remind yourself that you’re a fiction writer, not a historian. By all means strive for authenticity, but never forget that your aim is to tell a good story.

By writing historical fiction, you’re giving the gift of time travel to yourself and your reader. It’s incredible, really, when you think of it like that.

(We also have a blog post here that explains in detail the top challenges of writing historical fiction and how to overcome them.)

M.A.: What is The History Quill and how can it benefit writers of historical fiction?

R.S.: We provide dedicated support to historical fiction writers at every stage of the writing journey.

This includes specialist historical fiction editing services, coaching programs, beta reader and ARC services, and a wealth of free resources specifically tailored to the genre, such as our comprehensive guide to accuracy and authenticity in historical fiction. Our blog features regular posts on aspects of writing craft and historical research, and we also have a book club aimed at helping historical fiction readers discover books they’ll love and, in doing so, promoting the works of historical fiction authors to an engaged readership.

M.A.: How can historical fiction authors get in touch with you?

R.S.: By visiting thehistoryquill.com, joining our mailing list, or liking our Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter @Rachel_R_Smith. I love it when writers get in touch to tell me what they’re working on!

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