Official Release Day is Here!

As The Crollalanzas finally drop anchor on your shores, crack open some bubbly of your choice, curl up in your favourite chair, shut out the gloom and enjoy an exclusive excerpt here. Thanks for reading! Jayne.

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“What do you do here in the corner, Woozy? Come, come, put away those doodledinks, pinch your sallow cheeks to make a merry blush, don your best frock and make some effort to rearrange your features so that they are as little unbecoming as can be managed. The Disreputable Old Rogue has summoned the sisters Crollalanza to dine with us this eve and he will brook no refusal.”


Those doodledinks. That was how he referred to her writing— her great work inside me. For a long time, she had assumed he did not know how to read. She had certainly never seen him write anything. Until he carved “Poxy Gnobb’d” with his knife into the forehead of a fist-felled drunkard, who once tried to molest her outside the playhouse. No matter how she had argued on the spelling of knob, he would have it his way.


Disreputable Old Rogue is what he called his own grandsire, which, considering the source, told her exactly how wicked the ancient fellow must once have been.


And Woozy, of course, is what he had taken to calling her. It amused him all the more because she once made the grievous error of telling him not to do so.

It started out as Signorina Truzia, which changed at various times to Struzia, Swoozia or Swoozy, and finally to Woozy. Which stuck. He had not much more space to shorten it, had he? Oozy would be the final straw and even he— a man she had witnessed being struck about the head with a plank to no apparent effect— seemed aware of that.


As he hovered over her table, she blotted her ink and swiftly closed my pages from his despicable and unworthy gaze. She had caught him prying into her thoughts before and would not make the same mistake of leaving me unguarded again, now that she knew he could, in fact, read. It was a skill he had concealed from her at first, no doubt for his own dark motives.


Stepping back and extending an overly-exaggerated bow, probably under the influence of mulled wine already, he announced, “While the boat to ferry you down the Thames awaits, my fair ladies of the House of Crollalanza, the snow may not, so let us make haste.”


For Truzia an evening at Threavewode House always promised some entertainment and plentiful material for her writings. She rather liked the elderly, eccentric Marquess of Abbingford and his house, which possessed a splendid library and several intriguing ghosts.

The old man always laughed when he listened to her stories and was keen to hear her opinion on all manner of subjects— a most unique trait in any man or woman of her acquaintance. Although he seldom agreed with her opinions, they amused him and, as he was prone to say, precious little did make him laugh these days. Of course, had she any true power to make her opinions count in this world, he would not have found them so risible, but she was a female and not a particularly decorative one. Thus, she had as much chance of bringing about change as she had of growing a codpiece. No threat to anybody, she could be laughed at without consequence. The old man, in fact, made quite a pet of her, as he would of a little dog or a monkey in cap and bells.


“If you amuse my grandfather, as you so often do, and put him in a better temper,” said Master Denham, rubbing his gloved hands together, “the Disreputable Old Rogue will likely invite the three of you to stay as his guests for the entire yuletide season. I can return later and bring more clothes and such, when required.”


Since this invitation meant saving their own coal, candles and food, it was not likely to be spurned by Viola who, rather than contemplate the larger tragedies of her life, had lately thrown herself into a ledger of meticulously kept accounts. As for Cesca, the prospect of handsome, lively young men for company— there were plenty of them at Threavewode for the season’s festivities— meant that she already set about tying the ribbons of her cloak before he had got five words out. She might be a pious, angel-heeding woman, but that did not prevent her cheeks blushing for a muscular and daring set of calves. She was becoming, in fact, quite a flirt. Now that her eyebrows had grown back.


While their escort looked the other way, Truzia slipped her “doddledinks” into the inner pocket of her cloak.


Viola tapped her on the shoulder. “Behave yourself this evening and hold your tongue.”


“I am twenty years of age, sister. I wonder why you think me so in need of constant warning still.”


“If you wonder at that, then the sight of ten toes on your feet must startle anew with every sunrise.”


Truzia wrinkled her nose and turned away, meaning to extinguish the candle on her writing table. But a sly draft snuffed the flame, beating her to it. Ice-cold, ghostly fingers suddenly gripped her heart and squeezed until it could no longer beat without struggle. Under her ribs, the trusty bellows of life slowed until the blood pumping through her body reduced from a bubbling, spring-fed stream, to a half-frozen trickle.


She glanced over her shoulder at Rory Denham, but he chatted to her sister, feigning innocence of the deadly part he was to play in Truzia’s fate.


It was likely that he contrived this plan for them to spend the Yuletide at Threavewode House. He must have suggested it to his grandsire in a sly moment, and let the old man think he came up with the idea himself. It was the sort of thing she had seen him do before. Cesca would, no doubt, say that Master Denham had concern for their health and comfort— he had made comment on the draftiness of their lodgings in winter. But Cesca always sought the good in folk, even to the point of being deliberately blind about the bad.


Truzia, on the other hand, never had any doubt that he was influenced by darker forces. He was a man who never appeared to contemplate any of life’s mysterious, whereas she over-brimmed with questions. It frustrated her that he had an answer for everything, even if it was entirely made up on the spur of a moment and nothing short of a monstrous fib.


As he’d said to her, he was too busy living and surviving in the world to ponder its shape or what made it turn. In any case, he exclaimed with brazen insouciance, Rory Denham made the world turn for him.


“Do you never worry that the circumference of your head will grow too wide for your body and tip you, arse over snout?” she’d said to him once.


“Indeed not,” he’d replied proudly, chest puffed out, booted feet spread apart and knuckles at rest on his hips. “This splendid, finely attuned form you see before you is not yet done expanding. The powerful fibers within continue to develop mightily with every physical exertion.”


“’Tis a pity then that your brain does not get similar exercise. Will it not grow stiff and shrivel away from lack of exertion, Denham?”


“You just said my head is too large.”


“But not your brain. That is not much more than an inflexible filbert rattling around inside a thick shell. The rest of your head is filled with the combustible vapors of bombast and arrogance.”


“So many big words for a little person.” He reached to pat her head and she ducked away, infuriated. He grinned. “I have never pondered my brain and its workings. Never had cause to fret.”


“I declare myself riddled,” she drawled, “with astonishment.”


“My other parts are generally of greater import to the ladies, Woozy. And none of those lack for exertion. Or stiffness when ‘tis required.”


She was still formulating a response to that, when he added,


“I am, as you see before you, a magnificent specimen of manhood. There are females who would shower me with gifts and coin just for the pleasure of my intimate company in the late hours.”


“You give off enough hot wind, I suppose, to be of use on bitter, winter nights, and one should always have something at which to laugh, lest melancholia take too fast and cruel a hold.”


“My point, Woozy, is that no female ever wanted me for my brain or concerned themselves about its good exercise. Until you came along.”


“Who says I want you for anything?”


“You would not make a study of me so often, or engage me in lusty debate and this ribald discourse, if you did not find me quite so fascinating a subject. The fact that I am this handsome is, for you—” He sighed wearily, one hand to his chest. “—A mere gratuity, when your appetite is for the meat of my brain.”


“You are insufferably vain. And ‘tis you who made the discourse ribald. Not me.”


“’Tis not vanity. Tis merely truth. You winkle it out of me and, despite my reputation as a filthy seducer and general rapscallion about town, I find myself quite unable to deceive in your presence, especially when you frown up at me like one of Beelzebub’s imps. If only you found yourself likewise elf-locked, then you would be forced to admit that you are beguiled by me, your hard, rancid little heart quite besotted.” He leaned closer. “Its flesh nibbled upon like that of a wizened, windfallen apple.”


“Here’s truth, Denham, since you are so fond of it— you are the most tiresome and unappealing clod-pate I ever encountered. I can only conclude that your constant presence is a punishment for some misdeed of my youth.”


“How so?”


“You poke your nose into my business with a disturbing frequency, that says more about your determination to prevent my pleasure than it does about any concern for my safety. You deliberately engage me in these futile quarrels for a fool’s entertainment of your own. I wonder why you bother, since we have nothing in common and that will never change. We agree upon not a single matter.”


“But if I concurred with you, then we would both be in error.”


Once again, she was left with her mouth hanging open, while he— the man destined to put her in a grave— laughed and went on his merry way.

♣

“You are too quick to take offence,” her sister Cesca once admonished, “too eager to find fault in a man. You expect to find perfection in an imperfect race. But you are young. That will all change.” This was said with a lingering smile and another shake of the head. “You fight for the sake of it. Between Master Denham and yourself it is almost a dance of courtship.”


Truzia cursed as she picked up her pen and another blot of ink marred the page. “You are an insufferable romantic, Francesca Crollalanza. Kindly allow me to hate where I please, whatever my age. I do not tell you where to love.”


Her sister found everybody agreeable in some way, even if it was merely to praise their skill in plucking at her nerves. She gave even the most loathsome bubble-head a chance to amuse her. On the other hand, Truzia suspected anybody who approached her in a friendly way to have ulterior motives. She did not know where her distrust of the world had begun, but felt as if it had ever been there, even in her crib. She would fight anyone that looked at her sideways, including a straw-stuffed doll, which had the ill luck to lose one of its button eyes early in their acquaintance, leaving it with a permanent squint and, in the baby Truzia’s opinion, a very mocking and disrespectful countenance. For this it was cast consistently to the floor, several times into a chamber pot and once out of the window, where it had to be retrieved from the jaws of a neighbor’s dog. Not that the wicked doll ever learned its lesson or showed true penitence.


“Truzia came out of the womb too early and kicking,” her sister Viola had been known to remark. “Offended by God’s good light, she instantly screwed up her face into the unsightly creature you see before you. I said we should have buried her in a pot under a lemon tree, until she was fully formed and fit to be seen, but was I listened to? No. I was ignored. It is very hard to be only three years of age and female, for nobody listens, nobody cares. My concerns were summarily dismissed and now we all suffer.”


Thus, saved from being hastily buried by her toddling sisters in a pot of earth under a fruit tree, Truzia had been left to grow in harsh sunlight, transforming from a grumpy, squinting, mewling babe to a quick-tempered, uninviting, difficult woman.


In the eyes of her sisters she would always be that savage, biting baby, recklessly over-confident and unsteady on her feet, bumping into walls and falling over, desperately in need of supervision. It was not their fault; they did not know how else to see her. As the youngest of three motherless girls, she was now their obligation, their great burden and vexation, until she could be somebody else’s.

Meanwhile, she wrote in me—her diary— each day, recording everything that happened to her, from the dreariest of practical details, to memories of the mother they had lost and musings about the world around her. The mind, she had decided, was such a strange, unmanageable, unreliable thing, and she did not want to risk forgetting all that she’d seen and done and learned. With pictures of the future becoming ever clearer, she feared that memories of the past might be destroyed to make room for them. Already, the picture of their mother had begun to fade about the edges, curling like paper in the fire— a warning not to let any more of it slip away into the past. Her writing, therefore, had become a loyal companion, a confidante, a comfort.


I was a pleasure she shared with nobody.


Until you came along…

♣

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(Images: Agnolo Bronzino's Portrait of a girl with a book c. 1545 and Portrait of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess by Sofonisba Anguissola, 1555)