Tag: historical fiction

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Chapters 1 and 2 of THE WITCH OF WAPPING: A GHOST STORY by Alan M. Clark and Rebecca J. Allred

Chapter 1—The House

Wapping, London

1840

The soon-to-be occupant of the house arrives before nightfall. Through his laudanum distorted vision, he sees shadows that stretch and bend at unlikely angles in the dimming sunlight. The one he casts seems to reach eastward toward the benighted horizon, as if that one part of him might yet escape. He lingers at the edge of the footway, giving his shadow every opportunity to succeed where he, himself, has failed. One of the two women flanking him prompts him to move forward almost immediately. His silent, darkling companion gives up on escape and dutifully follows. Unperturbed, the man turns and faces what he believes will be his final destination.

The house stands two stories high and is noticeably crooked. An old neighborhood, many of the homes, especially those with overhanging upper floors, are bent or sagging. Wooden bracing between some of the houses helps keep them upright. Neighboring structures on two sides lean toward the house as if to discourage it from moving in a northwesterly direction. Dim, flickering light beckons from each of the house’s three south-facing windows, one on the first floor and two above, all of them curtained to discourage curious neighbors or other, wandering eyes. The man directs his impassive gaze to the second story windows. Their curtains are as dull and gray as the eyes he’s fixed upon them.

What is meant to be a place of respite and wellness is destined to become a prison and grave. And worse. The man’s first inkling of what is to come occurs as his charges pull him toward the stairs running down from the right-hand side of the structure to the servants’ entrance.

Gait unsteady, he descends the stairs, supported by the women to his left. Below ground level, he faces one entrance to the area and two small windows. The other woman has struck a match and lit a lamp. She turns a key in the lock and opens the door.

Before entering, as though checking to see if he has truly arrived at this moment, the man reaches up to his face, running one hand through his lion’s-mane of hair, while the other tugs at his uneven beard. Both are thick and dark and wild.

Wild like him.

Wild like a rabid cur—so his nurse will say of him. She is but the first of what will seem an endless parade of women charged with feeding, bathing, and otherwise keeping the occupant of the house sedated and confined to a room on the second floor.

Wild like the rumors about the house ignited by those who pass close enough to hear the occupant’s pained cries. Like a recurring fever, that gossip will burn quietly through Wapping for decades.

The laudanum has blunted his desire to turn and flee and taken all the fight out of him.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and enters the house.

~ ~ ~

The room on the second floor is uniquely crafted, though its contents are largely unremarkable. A bed, comfortable but not elegant, is positioned beside the north wall. A candle and a bible rest atop a small bedstead equipped with a single drawer. Inside the drawer are several fragments of charred wood and a dozen leaves of paper. Inside the Bible are a dozen more leaves of paper upon which the occupant has drawn the figures of a dozen undressed men, each in a different, provocative position.

An east-facing window peers down onto the street. The window is barred, and each of the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor are covered with a thick layer of quilted canvas padding. Even the door is insulated, except for a narrow slot at the bottom through which food and drink are passed thrice daily, and a smooth metal plate that occupies the space where a door knob and latch keyhole ought to be.

The occupant spends his time accomplishing little to nothing. Today, he worries at his teeth, which seem to him pointlessly square.

Later he sits before the door to his padded cell, lips moving imperceptibly as he utters for himself:

“I am Sir Geoffrey Webb. I am not mad.

“I am Geoffrey Webb. I am not mad, and this body is mine.

“I am Mr. Webb. I am not mad. You shall have no further say.

“I am Geoffrey. I am not mad, and I will not allow you to bite her.…”

Chapter 2—Rollo

Wapping, London

1897

Samuel Sutton—Sam, as we called him—saved my life when he were just eight years old. At the time, he had no cause to help me, as I were doing my wicked best to give him a nobbling.

A small kid, Sam suffered the worst of our neighborhood in Wapping. We all picked on him. He were the son of Margaret Sutton, a woman of the neighborhood that many shunned and some thought to be in league with the devil.

I don’t remember how it started, but me and my mates, Zeb and Gillan, had Sam cornered in a dead end alley off Brewhouse Lane—brick and mortar and no way out. I would show everyone what a bludger I could be. I’d’ve been ten, a snotter guttersnipe with rampsman dreams.

“Give him a proper do-down, Rollo,” Gillan shouted, and I struck Sam a blow to the bonebox.

“I don’t want to fight,” he said, staggering back and coming up against the bricks.

That were laughable—we all had to fight.

I gave Sam’s smeller a blow what made it bleed.

My mates cheered.

Wiping his nose and seeing the blood come away on his hand, his face twisted into a mask so vicious, if I hadn’t seen it happen, I shouldn’t have recognized him. Then the bricky little squeaker flung himself at me and landed a blow to my gut, one what shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. But I’d been aching there for a few days. I fell to the wet stones, holding myself against the pain. I also held my cries to keep from embarrassing myself more than I already had done.

Gillan and Zeb, the cowards, had backed off, as if Sam, small as he were, had bested me and they’d suddenly grown afraid of him.

Sam’s face lost its scowl. He looked me over with a thoughtful, troubled gaze, knelt beside me, and asked in a weary voice, “Where does it hurt?”

I tried to shrug him off and get up. A stabbing pain, what got worse as I moved, forced me to become still.

While I lay on the paving stones, he slowly pushed his stiffened fingers into the right side of my gut—uncomfortable without hurting much.

Then he pulled his fingers away quickly. That brought the pain to a sharp point, and I hashed my last meal all over us.

“Appendicitis,” Sam said, wiping hash from his face. He looked to Zeb and Gillan. “Help me carry him to Mum’s surgery.”

They hauled me to Margaret Sutton’s house in Globe Street, where she most often earned helping women end their quickening. I don’t remember much about what happened until I awoke on a cot in an odd room with a stitched up hole in my gut. The drugs she’d given me before the surgery left me somewhat addled.

Margaret Sutton sat in a chair beside my cot. “I’m quite the seamstress,” she said as I inspected the wound.

I’d been patched and sewn up enough in my life to know by the look of it that she had done a good job. “Thank you.”

I grew uneasy with her watching me without speaking. To escape her scrutiny, I looked around.

The walls were quilted canvas, with drawings of doors and the parts of doors on the cloth. Some of the quilt stuffing hung from tears in the canvas. The true door, missing the knob on the inside, stood slightly ajar.

“Whilst you likely will not feel up to it for a while,” she said, “I must ask you not to wander through the house. I am ministering to others here and I don’t want you to startle them.”

“What do I owe?” I asked.

“I will have to think about that,” she said, “since I know you have no steady way to earn.”

“Why are the walls like that?”

“Not that it’s yours to know, but long ago, a member of my husband’s family was kept here, an uncle named Geoffrey Webb. The man was quite mad.”

A vaguely familiar name, even if I couldn’t place it.

“Given the chance,” she added, “he might have hurt himself or others.”

Then Margaret dropped her serious tone and spoke to me almost as if to a friend. From what I knew of her, I’d say she had no friends. Her son spent more time on the street than at home. Sam did that even though he had to go up against guys like me and my mates who gave him nothing but grief. In that moment I pitied Margaret.

“Geoffrey had been knighted,” she said.

“Oh, a war hero?”

“No, nothing like that,” she said with a scoffing chuckle. “He was knighted for his charitable work. Otherwise, when he started causing trouble, he’d have been locked away in an asylum to rot.”

“What trouble?”

“Indiscretions with young men and later some violence as well. I don’t know of what sort. I think that was merely an excuse to put away a man who had become a family embarrassment. Instead of an asylum, the family put him here and kept him here for many years. In that time, he did the drawings on the walls. The padding helped keep him from hurting himself.”

“Where is he now?”

“I believe he died in 1853. The house stood empty until I opened my surgery here in 1883.”

Margaret stood to leave and said in her normal, too-serious voice, “Behave yourself and maybe I’ll show you how they kept him from hurting his minders.”

Something about her manner in that moment put a fear in me. Her slight smile had no charity or humor, as she turned away and left the room, pushing the door almost shut.

I knew I had forgot to be frightened of her. Or maybe the drugs she used on me had finally worn off and I could think again.

Everyone knew the rumors of Sam’s mum being a witch. They had been around since before I came along. I imagined her returning with straps to lash me to the bed or a surgeon’s knife to cut off my arms. I hadn’t been so afraid since I were a small child.

And the name Geoffrey Webb stuck in my head, as if by speaking his name, Margaret had awakened the mysterious knight, himself, and he meant to pass on to me whatever madness he’d once suffered. I found myself repeating his name silently over and over. Days passed before I shook the habit.

As I healed up, Margaret checked on me now and then, often very chatty, as though she were lonely. What could she get from a conversation with the likes of me? I kept thinking she wanted something from me she didn’t have the words to ask for.

The remainder of my stay, I worried what she might bring through that knobless door. Turned out, I had unfounded fears.

One day, she brought in a German game, Stern-Halma, with marbles on a board. While we played, she talked about Sam. The way she spoke of him, I didn’t think she cared for him much, which left me unable to account for her next words: “Should you persuade him to come home, I’d consider your account square.”

I might have been indebted to Margaret Sutton, but I owed Sam my life. If he’d decided to run away from home, I wouldn’t get in his way. “He would not deem that any of my business,” I told her.

Margaret Sutton looked at me, vexed. “Errands, then,” she said, and stood. “Yes, my very own loblolly boy.”

I didn’t question her, though I knew that to be a type of ship’s boy, one attached to the surgeon. She helped me to stand and showed me the door.

The debt to his mum aside, I would not forget Sam’s kindness in the midst of my cruelty. Thereafter, I did my best to repay him with friendship.

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Choosing Carolina Cioara as Narrator for FALLEN GIANTS OF THE POINTS

Carolina Cioara

Carolina grew up in a lazy town in Newbridge, Ireland. She has loved reading, writing and books for as long as she can remember. As a toddler, she loved reciting poems. At the age of two, Carolina and her mammy made a habit of visiting the local sweet shop, where the lady at the counter would write poems on scraps of paper and give them to Carolina to learn, and if she did, she’d get sweets. Carolina’s love for learning (and getting sweets), led her to develop her narrating skills from a young age.

After obtaining her Bachelor’ degree in English Literature, she decided to take a Masterclass with Dan O’Day and David H. Lawrence XVII. Carolina is now narrating books that require an Irish accent, and she is also writing her second fantasy novel. Carolina teaches English to foreign students to help pay the bills.

Cover for the audio book of FALLEN GIANTS OF THE POINTS, by Alan M. Clark, read by Carolina Cioara

First of all, I chose Carolina Cioara as narrator because she caught the emotion behind the words I’d put on the page, her vocal inflections capable of expressing them appropriately when they were subtle, overt, or extreme. She reads at a nice pace for listening, and she is easy to work with.

I chose her also for reasons having to do with characters in the novel. Fallen Giants of the Points opens with an “Introductory Note from the Authors.” The “authors” in this case are the two fictional main characters, Alta Mae and Cedric Brewer. The note conveys that the story that follows is an autobiographical account, written by the characters in adulthood of their experiences as children.

Many of those who immigrated to the city in that time, no matter where they came from, ended up on the streets, destitute, jobless, and homeless. Those able to find jobs, in many cases, found themselves over-worked and abused by their employers and landlords. Desperation among these unfortunate human beings frequently led to criminal behavior, and drug and alcohol abuse. Disease more easily claimed the lives of those suffering such hardship.

Children in these situations often fled to the streets to get away from abusive home life or found themselves orphaned and homeless upon the death of their parents. The numbers of orphans increased well beyond the city’s capacity to manage. Some of the children were rounded up and sold into the service of those needing child labor. Others survived as best they could, avoiding the “coppers” and those who would capitalize on their labor.

During much of the first decade of their lives, Alta Mae and Cedric Brewer are homeless orphans on the streets of Manhattan during the 1840s. They spend much of that time free, if hungry and suffering from exposure to cruel weather, especially in winter. They do not possess memories of  their parents.

At the time, New York City had immigrants mostly from northern Europe and what’s now known as the UK. The big waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe had not occurred yet, so the accents of those learning to speak the main language of the city, English, would have been most heavily influence by the English, Scottish, and Irish who immigrated to the city or were engaged in maritime trade there. Most of the slang of the time, including the thieves cant of the streets, comes from England. Additional significant influence on the language would have come from escaped black slaves fleeing from the South to the North. During the Irish Potato Famine (1845 to 1852), innumerable Irish came to New York City to escape hardship—more like out of the frying pan, into the fire. Many made the passage as indentured servants, then fled their masters upon arrival and hid among the countless homeless on the city’s streets, especially in the neighborhoods around Five Points, in lower Manhattan, areas so dangerous and crime-ridden, the police would not patrol them. This was the neighborhood in which Alta Mae and Cedric spend their early childhood.

Thinking about the voices of Alta Mae and Cedric Brewer, I decided that they most likely would have a light Irish accent. I also wanted that voice to sound young since, in most of the tale they tell, the characters are between the ages of five and eleven years.

Listening to Carolina Cioara read the sample I provided for auditions, I could clearly hear the characters speaking. She also proved herself quite capable of delivering the slang in the novel, mostly thieves cant, quite naturally.

I highly recommend the experience of listening to the adventure tale, Fallen Giants of the Points, as read by Carolina Cioara.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

The audio book of the novel, FALLEN GIANTS OF THE POINTS, by Alan M. Clark, read by Carolina Cioara, is available from Audible.com and other online retailers such as Amazon.

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A Parliament of Crows: Horror that Happened (™)

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Murder in the service of maintaining wealth and status. That’s not uncommon, but when it is done by seemingly “proper” Victorian women, three sisters who teach social graces in women’s colleges in the old South, the contrast sets us up for a good Southern gothic. Based on crimes committed by the infamous Wardlaw sisters against members of their own family, A Parliament of Crows, explores in fiction the emotions and the thinking behind such crimes. The Novel was released this month under the new IFD Publishing imprint, Horror that Happened (™). I have changed their name to Mortlow and made some other changes to drive the story, yet I’ve tried to follow what history has told us about the Wardlaw sisters’ crimes. The tale unfolds from their respective perspectives, the chapters rotating through the three POVs.

Murders committed over the course of many years left the three Mortlow sisters, Vertiline, Mary, and Carolee, with many secret to keep. Differing in personality, faith, and outlook, they were at odds with one another from the start—more so even than with those they killed. Jealousies, grievances, and mistrust threatened to break their loyalty and shared silence.

With a final crime, the murder of Mary’s daughter, authorities caught up with the sisters. They were indicted for murder and insurance fraud. That’s where the story begins. The backstories of all three are revealed as the court case proceeds.

The mystery here is not whodunnit, but how they found it reasonable to do what they did.

Concerning the title, some have asked if I meant owls, because a gathering of owls is referred to as a parliament. There is also a parliament of crows that is less description of them as a group and more something the group may do when they gather together in large numbers, say in an open field. In such gatherings of perhaps fifty or more crows, occasionally an argument breaks between one or more of the birds. The others seem to watch. When the argument is done, the crows turn on one of the participants, presumably the loser, sometimes maiming, killing, or even cannibalizing the creature. Some people who have viewed this phenomenon have likened it to a trial in which the defendent is convicted and punished. A parliament of crows is the term for that type of gathering. With the way the sisters go after each other and because they habitually wore black mourning clothes, I thought the title appropriate.
A Parliament of Crows, by Alan M. Clark, is the second novel to be included in the new IFD Publishing imprint Horror that Happened (™).

The outrageous is all the more extraordinary when we know it actually occurred. Horror that Happened (™), provides riveting stories in three catagories: True Crime, Based on a True Story, and Lifted from the Past. We hope you will come back to IFD Publishing for your high-quality reading entertainment.

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

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The Flotsam and Jetsam of History

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If you love words as I do, you probably love history. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years writing historical fiction. In performing research for the novels, I’ve leaned about the origins of certain English words and phrases I’ve used in both written and spoken language throughout my life, but didn’t completely understand. Although many expressions that came into existence long ago are still in use and their meanings as idioms are clear to us, the original meanings of the phrases may be lost without a search in history.

Because the gun played such a large role in events over the last few centuries, many idioms are related to firearms of the past. Here are a few that are still widely used, but the context of their origination not widely known.

Lock stock and barrel is an expression we use to mean “all of it.” I used to think it meant the whole store, like a mercantile of some kind. It means the whole rifle or musket. The lock is the firing mechanism, the barrel is, well… self-explanatory, and the stock is the part that helps you hold onto the firearm.

Bite the bullet means expose yourself to possible pain and danger to get a job done. Many people believe it originally meant to bite down on a lead bullet to endure pain, perhaps while having a surgical experience without an anesthetic, but it comes from a time when to prepare a rifle for firing you had to bite the end off a paper-wrapped cartridge before placing its contents in the barrel of your firearm. Doing this while under fire took brave resolve.

Stick to your guns means remain true to principles or goals. The expression has less to do with guns per se and more to do with maintaining a particular post during battle, especially if you’re told to hold a position without retreating. Well, of course you will need that gun, won’t you?

Flash in the pan is an idiom we use to mean a great start but little or no follow up. It’s a great metaphor for a one hit wonder in the music industry who puts out a single very popular tune, yet never does any better afterward and soon falls out of favor. To do justice to this one takes some explaining, so bear with me.

The original meaning comes from a time when pistols, muskets, and rifles had flint lock firing mechanisms. To load a flintlock firearm, gunpowder was poured into the barrel followed by a lead ball, called “shot,” wrapped in a bit of rag to make it fit snugly and hold everything in place. A small pan beside a hole in the side of the barrel was primed with a little gunpowder and then protected from spillage by a hinged iron part called a frizzin (see the illustration above). When the trigger of the flintlock was pulled, the hammer, which held a piece of flint did two things: it struck sparks off the iron frizzin and knocked that hinged part off the pan. With the frizzin out of the way, the sparks could reach the powder in the pan and ignite it. The hot expanding gas of the lit powder was meant to travel down the small hole in the side of the barrel and ignite the powder behind the lead shot. If this last step didn’t occur, there was merely a flash in the pan and the gun didn’t actually fire.

Understanding the metaphor of this idiom creates a mental picture that enhances the meaning of the expression. A flash in the pan is an exciting event, with a hiss, a flash, and billowing smoke, but the results are disappointing if that isn’t followed by the loud crack of the shot flying from the barrel and striking a target. Without the mental picture some of the power of the expression’s metaphor is lost.

The original meanings of many single words are unknown to most of us today. I’m thinking of several having to do with the production of linen. A lining, like what you might have in the inside surface of your coat, means something made from line flax. Line flax is the fibers of the flax plant that don’t break off when run through a device that looks like a small bed of nails called a hackle (aka heckle). The fibers that survive going through a hackle and remain long are spun together to make fine linen thread (note the word “line” in “linen”). So a lining is something made of linen. The lining of my stomach or my water heater is not made of linen, though. When my dog gets upset, wants to look bigger and more threatening, he gets his hackles up, but that doesn’t mean he has metal spikes sticking up out of his back. In the past, the flax fibers that broke off short in a hackle were called tow flax. They weren’t good enough to make fine thread and were spun into a rough cord to make tow sacks, which are much like the burlap sacks of today. Tow fibers are very blonde, but a tow-headed child doesn’t have tow flax for hair even if the tyke is referred to as flaxen-haired. The act of drawing flax fibers through a hackle is known as heckling. The purpose was to worry, to tease (in the old sense, meaning to comb), and straighten the fibers to determine which would stand up to stress and were worth using for linen production. When a stand-up comedian is heckled, that doesn’t mean he’s drawn through a small bed of nails to straighten his fibers and break off his weak parts. Okay, so maybe it does mean he’s being teased, but still, you get my point.

Here’s an expression I like a lot: flotsam and Jetsam. It’s not the most commonly known phrase, but it’s still a fun one using curious words, and I want to use it in the last paragraph of this post. We use it now to mean odds and ends. For example, somebody might say, “The project is finished except for the flotsam and jetsam of small problems I discovered along the way.” Flotsam and jetsam are separate nautical terms, but frequently appear together, both as words and in the context in which the words have meaning. Flotsam is the remnants of a shipwreck that floats on the sea after a vessel has gone down. Jetsam is what is jettisoned from a ship going down to lighten its load and help it stay afloat longer or even save it from going down.

In the time in which the idiom, flash in the pan, came into existence, the context from which it emerged was well-known to most individuals. An expression like that becomes popular perhaps because it’s frequently used in conversation as a metaphor in lieu of lengthier descriptions. If an idiom becomes useful enough that it’s overused and becomes cliché, it will be so universally understood that the significance of its original context can be discarded. It can far outlive the simple context of its birth. The idiom still performs a meaningful function although many who hear it and repeat it may not understand where it came from. Although the expression, flash in the pan is very much alive, having outlived the technology of the flintlock by more than a century, the metaphor it presents can be considered broken since most people today don’t understand how the firing mechanism works. I’ve heard and used many idioms for years in partial ignorance. As I became more interested in history, the original meaning of some idioms came clear. Finding the discovery satisfying, I became much more curious about the origins of words and phrases, and my interest in history intensified.

My latest historical fiction novel is The Prostitute’s Price. It is part of my Jack the Ripper Victims Series. Because the stories take place in Victorian times or earlier among English speaking people, British or American, they employ characters that use the language a little bit differently than we do today. The trick is to provide scenes in which the context makes clear the meaning of what is being said. The characters are involved with simpler, humbler domestic and labor situations and technologies often in early development or infancy.

I like to think of idioms with broken metaphors as flotsam of history. The ship has long since gone under, taking its passengers with it. Phrases remain, floating above the wreckage on the surface like lost luggage, filled with words that once had specific meaning, and, in combination, still have an idiomatic meaning. The specific sense of the words might have been lost, but the phrases still have value. We all claim salvage rights from time to time, but often don’t ask the simple questions: Who owned these expressions and why did they find them valuable? If we seek answers to the questions, we can learn something about those who left them behind and perhaps find out why the phrases float so well even today.

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon