Good Morning

 This blog was meant to advertise and update a series of history books published by Fluttering Wings Press. It rested unused because a history blog proved more effective. Our intent was to republish hard to find original material. We abandoned that because most of that material was digitalized by others. 

Now, however, we have published the first in a series of Middle Grade/Young Adult novels. It fills a need felt by conservative Christian families who are uncomfortable with or reject totally the paranormal - Witches, shape-shifters, fairies, and similar. Falcon's Crown: Kidnapped is just adventure. Set in a medieval-like society, it tells the story of an orphaned, impoverished noble girl. She's of the Old Race, despised for that. She's also a 'sharp cookie.'

What follows is the introduction and first chapter. Comments welcome:

 

Queen’s Manor House, Tabitha’s 98^th Year.

 

        In my old age – I was born when mother was thirty-three, and she was now ninety-eight – my family is a large one.        

        My sons and daughters and their children and my brothers and sisters’ children and grandchildren filled the manor house. Abigail Simone, one of my daughters, was absent, not surprisingly because she was big pregnant and her counselors were unwilling to let the Queen of the Iberians and Navarese cross stormy seas.

        We were fed and pampered by the few servants mother kept. Newsy chatter gave way to contentment. The youngest children played and, while occasionally noisy, no one shushed them. Annie, seven years old and my son’s youngest, was as petite as her great grandmother and had the eyes and the red-blond hair of mother’s youth. Mother would never own to it, but Annie is her favorite. And it was she who prompted the whole affair.

        Nestling next to mother, looking up with pleading eyes, she asked for a story. “Gramma, tell us a story,” she said.

        “What kind of story? Do you want the one about the giant and the egg? Or about the boy lost on the ghostly mountain ... or ...”

        “Gramma, tell me the story of how you were kidnapped and about the bad men and about coming here and about crossing the sea and helping great grandpa fight. And tell me about great grandpa. I never saw him.”

        “Haven’t I told you all that before?”

        “No. Parts and bits. I want to know the whole thing.”

        Few of us knew mother’s whole story, and we all wanted to hear it.

        So, to an attentive family, she began ...

Chapter One: The Pig.

        Hands on my knees, and coughing up phlegm, I spit. Not at all a lady-like thing to do, but though Baroness of Fens and Forest, I was not at all a lady. Not at eleven years. Not as the daughter of a noble exiled to this place.

        It was the pig, of course. A half-grown, mischief-maker, it squeezed out of its pen, squealing challenges as it fled. Chasing it left me mud and goo splattered. It sheltered in a growth of brambles where I couldn’t follow. But I could and did call down every divine curse I knew.

        I was self-absorbed and did not hear the thump of horses’ hooves on soggy pine needles. But I felt the rider’s roughly-gloved hand grab me under my right arm and lift me onto his horse’s back. I struggled. He thwarted me by wrapping his arm across my chest. “Put me down this instant!”  I said, speaking as regally as I knew how. “I’m the Princess Tabitha Falcon, rightful heir to House Falcon!” I questioned his birth’s legitimacy.

        “Who put hot spice in your porridge?”  He laughed.

        His companion laughed too. “Robert, you could let the wench go,” he said “We could say we couldn’t find her.”

        I felt my captor shake his head.

        I had a huge store of Old Race curses and imprecations learned from the Fens dwellers. I used a few of them, calling down every imaginable divine curse.

        The Robert fellow covered my mouth with his gloved hand. I bit down as hard as I could. For my trouble I got a mouthful of stinking, soiled leather. “Bite all you wish,” he said. “I can’t feel it. You can chew on my finger until the end of days, and it won’t hurt me.”

        I bit again until my teeth hurt.

        “You be a good girl, and I’ll move my hand. Will you?”

        I nodded. But when he loosened his grip, I added, “For now.”

        When words are fruitless and you can’t escape you should watch and listen. That’s what I did.

        I could not see Robert’s companion, and because Robert held me firmly, I couldn’t see him either. But there were things to notice. The bridle leather was new, well worked, studded with silver. So he was either a bandit or a knight of some sort. His horse was broad of forehead and small of muzzle. A chestnut brown, eastern-lands horse. Expensive. The companion hummed a Northlands lullaby that my mother used to sing, but his voice lacked a Northlands accent, and he sang off key.

        We turned up the main forest road. This suggested three destinations. One path would lead us to the King’s Highway. Another to the Fens, the island villages connected by wooden causeways. The third to Clifford Castle, a ruin in the deep forest, a habitation of outlaws and bandits. I figured my captors for bandits.

        “There is nothing with which to pay my ransom,” I whispered. Robert made me repeat it.

        “Is that what you think?”

        I nodded. He laughed. I did not relish a life as a kitchen slave or as some New Race noble’s pet.

       

        We turned onto the King’s Road. This was confusing, but I was weary from pig-chasing, and a long horseback ride always makes me sleepy. I drifted into that limp, mindless pre-sleep state that comes just before true oblivion. It’s hard to say how long I slept – somewhere from the second hour past noon until just before the sun faded, waking to Robert’s strong arms lifting me from his horse.

        My legs were wobbly. I rubbed sleep from my eyes. “Where are we?” I asked.

        “We’re at God’s Pinnacle,” Robert said.

        I’d been there before, two years prior when the King called all the nobility, even the Old Nobility, to court. That included my mother and father and me. It was an unpleasant journey. Old Nobility suffered insult, three centuries of it made new during that convention. We left as soon as obedience to the crown would allow, and within the year my father was dead, killed by knights wearing the King’s livery. And nearly a year later my older brother fled to Frankland only to drown at sea, and mother went in her grave shortly after, her head staved in. Though we believed she was killed at the King’s order, Old Aunt, my guardian, never learned who did it.

        “We camp here,” he added.

        His companion had the flashing black eyes and dark hair of the New Race. He made a fire. My stomach rumbled. “The lass’s belly complains,” he said.

        “Mine too,” Robert said. A search of his saddlebags produced dried, smoked meat and oranges. I love oranges. He tossed one to me. I caught it one handed. He raised his right eyebrow.

        We ate in silence. I thought of escape. Let them sleep, I thought. I’ll run. I can use the night. But when the fire had been built up for warmth and saddles and blankets were made into a rough bed, Robert bound my feet with a cord and tied my right hand to his left.

        I wasn’t sleepy. I’d slept myself ‘out.’ So I lay between them, tied up as if I were the pig I’d chased. It was demeaning, but if they meant to keep me until they could sell me to a slave trader, this was the way to do it. I stared at the twinkling stars, the moon, the shadows made by our diminishing fire, and listened to their ungodly snoring.

        I yanked on the cord that tied my wrist to Robert’s. He snorted and continued to snore. I yanked again, as hard as I could. His snores abated. There was a moment of silence, then, “What do you want?”

        “I need to pee.”

        “Pee where you are. You can’t possibly smell worse than you do now.”

        “I’m not peeing myself! ... Besides, if I do, it will leak onto your blanket and onto you.”

        “Alright, alright,” he said.

        He scooped me up and plopped me down a good five feet from where we lay.

        “You don’t know much about girls,” I said. “Untie my feet, and I need some privacy.”

        He grumbled but loosed my ankles, leading me to the rock that towered over us. “Back there,” he said.

        Back there I went. I did have to pee – urgently. But just as urgently I worked at the knotted cord. It was stubborn. If it were a stubborn man, I’d have kicked him in his vitals. But it was a rope and not a man.

        “It doesn’t take that long.” He spoke through a yawn. A second later, he yanked on the cord.

        I gave up. When we returned to our sleeping area, he pointed at the ground ordering me to sit. I obeyed. He rebound my feet loosely enough to take baby steps, but not loose enough to run.

 

        He heard noises – the creak of saddle leather, a horse’s snort, whispers. About time. How deaf can one man be? I heard them a good minute before he did. Shoving me back, he put his finger to his lips and pointed to the Pinnacle. “There,” he whispered. “Stand there.” I did so. The only people afoot this time of night are bandits, poachers or raiders. If that’s who we heard, I was safer with my kidnappers than otherwise.

        Robert roused his companion; they drew swords and daggers and waited. There wasn’t much of a wait. A young woman dressed in the padded shirt and breaches favored by bandits and raiders stepped into the fire light.

        “Gentle knights,” she said. “We don’t want your life, just your gold.”

 

        I stepped forward. “Marta? Is that you, Marta?”

        “Lady Tabitha? Yes, I’m Marta. ... Why are you with these ne’er-do-wells?”

        “They kidnapped me,” I said.

        “We’ll remedy that ...”

        “Excuse me, Marta or whoever you are. We did not kidnap Princess Tabitha. She has an appointment with the Queen. We’re helping her keep it.”

        I interrupted Robert’s nonsense with, “Marta, they’re royal knights. They wear the king’s symbol.”

        A bit of silence followed. “We outnumber them ... significantly.” Marta addressed me, not the ruffians who’d kidnapped me. The rustlings of many feet and bodies hidden by the dark suggested that battle impended. Robert and his companion tensed, ready for the onrush that must surely come.

       As much as I wished for rescue, I croaked out, “If you rush them I may be killed. Probably will be. Let it go, Marta. I’ll find another way.”

        She nodded and slipped into the dark. We can’t call the normal night sounds silence. But they were all I heard. My shoulder muscles relaxed and I exhaled. I found my sleeping spot and sat. Then reclined. I slept but my kidnappers did not.

 

        Robert shook me awake. Yawning widely, he whispered, “We go now.”

        “You should have slept,” I said, stretching. “Marta always keeps her word.”

        “You trust bandits?”

            “I trust Marta Longsword. You should know of her, or rather of her father.”

        His face showed that he did not. But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t volunteer the information.

        He woke his drowsing companion, calling him Fitzroi. That’s a patronymic, a last name. It gave him a blood connection to a king; he or an ancestor was the bastard son of one of the invader kings. This was information. The more one knows the better armed one is.

        Robert unbound my ankles, lifting me onto his horse. I considered riding off, but it was a momentary thought. I was still tethered to his wrist, and he would yank me off the horse. “We walk,” he said. Fitzroi nodded.

        They didn’t walk, not even a pace forward. To our east a mounted troop, well-armed men and women, lined the hillock’s crest. Marta was at their head and next to her was a standard bearer. A breeze let us see the Falcon Crest. It was the Falcon Kings’ war banner.

        I was too focused on the ragtag warriors to see what Robert did next, but I felt his hands tug at me, pulling me off his horse. “There!” He pointed to the pinnacle. His attention was on the twenty bandit-warriors, so I ignored him.

        Marta trotted forward, a Fens pony in tow. They’re sturdy creatures who can keep a steady pace long after the large horses knights favored are winded. She rode right up to Robert, forcing him back a half step. “This is for Princess Tabitha.”  

        She meant the pony, of course. He took the rope, nodding rather than saying his thanks. I was delighted. I scampered forward and swung myself onto the pony’s back. It snorted and nodded its head.

        “I’m riding with you,” Marta said, obviously expecting no argument.

        “And they?” Robert meant the troop of roughly-clad riders.

        “They’ll keep their distance for now,” she said.

 

        So we rode on, Marta at my side, and my kidnappers beside us. When we were out of the Pinnacle’s shadow, another troop of riders was evident. For now they were our escort. Welcome from my perspective. Very unwelcome from my kidnappers’ point of view. 

        The distance between our party and the ragged warriors who paralleled us narrowed as we neared the royal castle. Gray, imposing, the older portion was square-towered. It was built by my ancestors, the Falcon Kings. The newer portion and the outer wall had round towers. It was a construct of the invader kings.

        Our escort stopped a mile or so from the main gate, but Marta rode on with us. When we were within bow shot, she stopped. “You will see me again,” she said. “If harm comes to Tabitha, I will repay it; insult for insult, wound for wound, scar for scar.”

        “I said it before. Baroness Tabitha has an appointment with the Queen. Our sole intent is to see she keeps it. On my life, she is better off here than in the hovel she lives in.”

        “I don’t want to be here,” I said. “Our manor house is old but I’d rather be there than here. You killed my mother and father. I do not want to be near anyone here. I will escape.” Tough words from an eleven-year-old urchin with a noble title and pretensions to royalty. But I spoke them earnestly.

        “I have killed no one,” Robert said, his voice quiet, gentle. “Well ... none of yours.”

        “Your king did.”

        He shook his head, sadness in his eyes. He nodded to Marta. She turned her horse, and we rode on.