After the Storm

 

Good evening my lovelies,

I’ve been resting up, listening to the rain outside as it bashed against the window like an angry ghoul. Though there is something quite lovely about a storm raging outside the house and the rain falling against the glass. It always makes me think back to my childhood, and when it rained, you’d need more than an umbrella.

Anyway, my dear friends, pull up a chair and let me tell you about this evening and how I almost broke my neck, and Lady Cora’s nonchalance at my misfortune.

Storm lit pilgrimage to the high shelves

As I mentioned earlier, it has been raining nonstop all night and all day. The electric breaker on the fuse box, wouldn’t behave, the gremlins were playing their mischievous games.

I couldn’t continue writing, there was only a bar left on the laptop, and I couldn’t charge it, so reluctantly I decided to close it. I took a throw from the back of the sofa and sat by the fire and read, yes by candlelight. But the flickering flame just hugged the shelves and distractedly, I rested my eyes on the top shelves.

As I gazed up at them, I remember thinking, I hadn’t dusted them in a long time, but it wasn’t my housekeeping that aroused my interest on the shelf: it was the books.

I just couldn’t sit still. So, I got the ladder from the cupboard in the hall and placed it in front of the bookcase. Lady Cora yawned loudly as the noise disturbed her sleep, but I was on a mission!

I began to climb the steps, I had to close my eyes, if you’ve ever seen the movie Vertigo, you’ll understand, and I was only on the third step!

Carefully I reached up and took two books, rested them on the top of the ladder and picked up two more. Feeling very happy with myself I began to get back down. Then Bang! I missed the step and ended up rather undignified on the floor. Lady Cora looked at me, probably deciding I deserved it for making a racket and she would be the heir to chez Anna, or Cora.

Having picked myself and my dignity off the floor I picked up the books and brought them over to the armchair and opened the first book.

A slow smile curled on the corners of my mouth, Ellen Glasgow, ‘In this our life’. The book from the Bette Davis classic movie of the same name. Then I picked up the next book, The writings of Anatole France, from 1931. The next two were rather personal, as I will tell you.

The Viking in the firelight.

The book I had picked up, was a lovely blue leather bound, with an intricate golden design. Red edges, and when I opened it, I gasped. A 1903 Copenhagen published, Danish text of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.

I rested the book on my lap and gazed at the flames, dancing in the fire. That’s when I caught sight of him, just to the edge of the fireplace, a slow smile on his face, the Viking in the firelight! Lanny.

The Viking Jarl, from the Tempus Militibus series. I could see him now, picking up the book, thumbing the pages carefully, reading his native Danish, although he was much older than the book, he would still recognise the language. He would smile and think: ‘This is my tongue; this is from my land.’

Of course, that wasn’t the only book that made Lanny smile and remember…

Ink that Remembers us

The next tome that I opened was one of my favourites, and indeed, it was one that Lanny discussed at length in Tempus Militibus, with Father O’Hara. Fydor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The irony, a vampire, a Viking, discussing the sins, and crimes, and the philosophy of redemption with a catholic priest. Yet here they were. Now, though the discussion in Tempus Militibus was edited, the reflection, the conversation was cut, the sentiment remained.

I had forgotten the book, the conversation, it’s been several years since I had written Tempus Militibus. The biggest irony is, that Crime and Punishment had returned, oh, not to me, but to him!

A Scriptorium of Returning Shadows

I picked up the books and walked over to the door and went upstairs to the scriptorium and placed the books carefully, with reverence on the desk. I would place them, with pride of place on the bookshelves and I knew that when I am back in my scriptorium writing, I will gaze upon these beautiful books with wonder and a smile and know what a special place they hold in my heart, and in my own writings.

    

Thank you for joining me tonight my dear friends. Next time you see a dusty old book, take a moment to smell the paper, the ink, the history.

Until we meet again in the Militiverse, keep the candle burning and the music loud…

Anna..xoxo