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[Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 271 – The Salt Price by B. Pladek - transcript

(Originally aired 2023/10/28 - listen here)

We have a delightful story for you in this episode. The timing is a bit irregular—we should have had the fiction episode last month, but…well, things happen. History is a complex web. The events that seem prominent in the history books are accompanied by all manner of struggles and movements, their details shaping the larger events in small, inexorable ways. Who can tell what moves someone to act? A burdensome tax? A sense of loyalty to a place or a person?  In the early 18th century, in France, the trade in sea salt was one small piece on the game board. But it’s the one we consider today.

The author, B. Pladek is associate professor of literature at Marquette University. His debut novel, Dry Land, about a forester in WWI who gains the mysterious power to grow plants, was published by University of Wisconsin Press just last month. You can find him on twitter @bpladek or on his website, bpladek.net. In the early eighteenth century his ancestors on his mom's side were exiled from France for (inept) salt-smuggling.

Our narrator today is Jasmine Arch, who has narrated several stories for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project’s fiction series. In addition to her linguistic skills, I always feel that Jasmine does an excellent job with somewhat otherworldly stories.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

---

The Salt Price

By B. Pladek

 

Once in the days of the ancién regime, when the salt tax still starved the people, and armed taxmen beat each copse for smugglers up and down the Loire, a woman contracted a faery to run salt.

The lowlands of Guérande were salt country then. Each morning as the sun brushed the mist from the yellow reeds, the paludiers walked the dykes between the drying pools, plugging the sluices that fed seawater through the canals. Later, when the sun had burnt the water to brackish sludge, they raked green bay salt from the pools’ bottoms. At night the women skimmed flakes of fleur de sel from the waves.

Corentine had raked the faery in at dusk. Or perhaps she had simply appeared atop Corentine’s heap of green bay salt. Whichever it was, as Corentine watched the faery had risen, a tall woman, green and glossy as a beetle. They gazed at one another, wondering, until Corentine said,

“A faery. What are you doing in our king-forsaken Guérande?”

The faery’s voice had a whirr to it, like wings. “I am here to contract my magic to a human. Do you require magic?”

Corentine glanced over her shoulder, then opened the satchel at her side, revealing a half-minot of fleur de sel. In a low voice she said, “Perhaps. I must give this to a fisherman in La Baule tonight, for passage up the Loire. Can you conceal it?”

The faery’s dark eyes did not blink. But she took the satchel. Raising it, she shook the salt into the air, and as its flakes fell they shingled together until she held a soft white cloak. This she gave to Corentine.

Corentine drew the salt cloak through her fingers. “It’s like ermine,” she whispered, “as if I were a lady again.” She had been, once, before the Regent had claimed her estates and reduced her to raking salt. Donning the cloak, she asked, “But what will you wear? A marquise cannot walk unaccompanied.”

The faery looked startled. But in an instant she fashioned herself a second cloak from the green bay salt. Its drape hugged her hard shoulders, framing the knot of muscle where wings met nape. She did not look dangerous, but neither did she look quite safe.

For a moment Corentine stared at her, the color rising in her cheeks. Then she stammered, “Lovely. But you’ll need to raise a glamor when we reach town. Can you do that?”

Watching Corentine flush, the faery’s eyes had a question in them. But she only nodded.

That night in La Baule, the gabelous—the Regent’s taxmen, all Parisians—were drinking. On the clay streets bordering the quays they searched for contraband salt. They harassed the paludiers returning from the marshes, groped the breasts and bustles of the women, and drove rapiers into farmers’ bales of flax. Any smugglers they uncovered were shackled and bound for La Rochelle. There they would face trial and be sent to the galleys, or the gallows, or the Gaspé in Nouvelle France. The smugglers continued anyway. They had to, to eat.

But to the marquise who drifted by in a cloak of ermine, her guard beside her, the taxmen merely bowed. Nor did they notice when the marquise and her companion returned, cloakless, from the seafront. The local Bretons noticed, but said nothing. They knew that Corentine, once Lady Corentine de Cornouaille, was in league with the Marquis de Pontcallec, at work up the Loire raising funds for a coup against the Regency.

At home in La Croisic, Corentine and the faery greeted her grey-haired husband. “We strolled straight through La Baule, Sebastién, and the gabelous saw nothing. With this faery’s help we’ll have enough for the Marquis by Christmas. We must make a contract with her.”

Sebastién balked. “Don’t you know the stories? Faeries can’t be trusted.”

Corentine knew the stories: help from Faerie never came free. But she looked at the faery, her face limned by the kitchen firelight, and thought she would rather risk her debt than the Regent’s.

Touching the faery’s shoulder, she asked, “What are your terms?”

But the faery only looked at her, her hair a dark knife on her cheeks.

“I’ll have no part of this foolishness,” said Sebastién. “Braid your own noose, woman.” He grumbled off to the loft. It was the usual end to their arguments, having married late, and cordially, and not for love.

The faery watched Sebastién depart, then turned to Corentine, who tried to raise a smile.

“What should I call you?” she asked. “All evening you haven’t said your name.”

The faery’s wings shifted uneasily beneath their carapace. “Faeries of my—history—have lost their names.”

“Lost? How—” But the faery’s face flinched, and Corentine stopped. “Would you choose one, then, for me to call you? We have plenty: Lisenn, Trifin, Naig…”

“Trifin I like.” The faery cocked her head at Corentine. “You are fighting your Crown?”

“Our Regent. He taxes us to starvation, claims our estates, turns our old nobility into paupers.” Corentine’s voice soured with anger. “With the funds I raise, we’ll depose him.”

“And for this, you would pay my price?”

“I would do anything to rid our coast of a tyrant.”

In the faery’s dark eyes, something kindled. She looked at Corentine, as if for the first time. “Then I accept.”

---

A Breton saying runs, everything bad asks to be salted. On Guérande’s poor soil life was thin, and its people used salt to render it palatable.

In those days smuggling ran strong as the tides that drove their daily bulk up and down the Loire. On its waters salt flowed from Guérande to Paris in the north, Lyon in the south. As the border between the tax zones, the river hid caches, rendezvous, and punts of sympathetic fishermen. Its wet banks bristled with gabelous—more every year, since the Regent had determined to put the arrogant Bretons in their place.

The Bretons, for their part, refused to abandon their pride, even if that meant sacrificing a portion of their diminished income. Each month the paludiers saved a minot of salt for smugglers like Corentine and Sebastién, who disguised it to pass up the river to Nantes and the Marquis.

At first, Trifin merely aided these plans. When Corentine sewed a false rump beneath her skirts, Trifin charmed it so that any groping gabelous might feel its salt as flesh. When Corentine lined barrels of cod with excess bay salt, Trifin drew a magic barrier to preserve its taste.

With more sous coming in each month, Corentine sewed Trifin a cloak. “A real one this time,” she explained to Trifin, who despite the rumors of faery avarice had seemed unmoved by coin. “Try it,” she urged, smoothing the drape against Trifin’s shoulders. “It’s yours.”

Trifin stared at her. “You were a lady. Ladies do not give their servants presents.”

“I’m a smuggler, not a lady,” Corentine retorted. “And you’re not a servant. You’re my business partner. Aren’t I paying you—well, something? Come, try it on.”

Trifin ran the heavy fabric through her fingers. Corentine had left wide slits in its bodice for her wings. She slipped it on. In the small mirror over the mantel, she caught her reflection, and Corentine’s face behind her. Their eyes met, and Corentine looked quickly away.

“It suits you,” said Corentine, reddening. “More than a dress would, I thought. Was I right?”

Trifin turned, watching the fabric swirl behind her. With a sudden movement she reached to her side, as if to draw a sword, though her hands came up empty. Then she looked at Corentine, and flushed. “You were,” she said.

---

In La Baule, the marquise and her guard became a frequent sight. They strolled the streets arm-in-arm, Corentine proud and round-shouldered, Trifin vigilant beneath her glamor.

But one day as they entered the town square, Trifin jerked as if fettered. A hasty gallows had been erected on the mud. Around it, the people of La Baule clustered grim-faced. Upon it, three of the local brigands swung. A shrill gabelous was proclaiming in Parisian:

“Remember, salt fraud betrays the Crown!”

Behind him on the ground, two chained women stood with puffed faces. They were newly widowed, and bound as king’s virgins for Nouvelle France.

“There is no quarter for traitors,” the gabelous finished. “Respect the gabelle, my good Bretons, and keep faith with your king.”

“Regent,” the crowd hissed.

Trifin was trembling so violently she nearly dropped her glamor. Frightened, Corentine took her elbow and drew her away. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Trifin did not hear, but wrapped her hands about her neck. Her fingers rubbed her nape, where the joints of her wings met beneath her glamor. “No quarter for traitors,” she said. “No—bargains? Exchanges? Is that how it is, here?”

Corentine unlaced her fingers, and held them. “Not for Bretons, no. But it’s either smuggle or starve.” She looked down, and her voice softened. “I’m sorry for drawing you into it. I thought you knew what happened to traitors. Is Faerie so different?”

Trifin looked away, and did not answer. Beneath her glamor a muscle jumped in her jaw.

Corentine swallowed. They stood there for a moment, hands linked, Trifin’s shudder running up Corentine’s arms.

“Well, no matter,” Corentine said at last. She threaded her arm in Trifin’s. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

---

As spring stretched into summer and sun drank the pools down to their salt beds, Corentine’s plans grew bolder. Trifin exchanged the down of Corentine’s grey goose for fleur de sel, and Corentine carried him to market. Corentine rode behind Trifin astride a sparkling green-grey mare to Bourgneuf, her arms tight on Trifin’s waist. Together they poled a punt up the canal to Guérande-ville, past stationed gabelous who wondered at their cages of flaking white doves.

Between salt runs, Corentine stitched Trifin clothes, for the delight that lit her face at each gift: an embroidered waistcoat, long jacket, fine lace jabot. At dusk they sat together in the front room, planning, while Sebastién dozed in the kitchen. Sometimes Trifin took the broomhandle and performed graceful maneuvers as Corentine clapped, dreaming of how she might look with a sabre. Sometimes—often—they danced.

After one such evening, Trifin collapsed panting in a chair, and Corentine sank to the floor beside, to rest her head on Trifin’s knee.

Gazing down at her, Trifin’s face clouded. She said softly, “Remember, we are business partners. My work comes at a price.”

Corentine flinched against her knee. “Of course. I would never cheat you, Tri. I know the magic won’t let you tell me what the price is. But you can be sure I’ll pay you what’s required, when the time comes.”

Trifin looked away. “I know,” she said.

---

Among the paludiers of Guérande it became known that Corentine employed a faery, for they were proud of their onetime marquise and the trouble she caused the Regent. As the summer wore on, she began to receive as much contraband as the brigands, whose ranks had been thinned by the spring arrests. Her neighbors left pots of salt on her doorstep, with requests to disguise it as canola hay or fly it magically to Nantes. At length the kitchen was so piled with saltkegs that Sebastién had to wiggle over them to reach his grousing corner.

“How much longer do you think you can hide this?” he asked Corentine. “That faery is too great a risk.”

Corentine snapped, “She’s helped us run more salt than we could have in a year. A bit more and the Marquis will have enough to recruit a militia. And we’ve got some good runs planned. Right, Trifin?”

At the table Trifin put a hand to her neck, the jabot Corentine had embroidered. She did not look up as she nodded.

One week later, a covered barge drifted saillessly up the Loire. Beneath its flapping cover, huge blocks of green and white marble sweated in the heat. Corentine and Trifin lounged together in the prow. Trifin, half asleep below the gunwale, had let her glamor slip.

On the banks, poplar stands alternated with reedy slips on which bored gabelous played cards. The August day was hot, the taxmen drowsy. Corentine prayed they would remain so.

But as they floated by a listless pier of gabelous, a young man at its edge leapt up pointing. “How is that barge moving?” he cried. “It has no sails!”

Trifin threw up her glamor a second too late. “A faery!” the taxman screeched. His groggy fellows stood. “Rifles! Rifles!”

“Get down!” cried Corentine. But Trifin had risen, lifting her arms. Like dark shears her carapaced wings snicked free. Before them, a wound opened in the summer’s day from which a night cold rushed, glinting darkness.

On the pier, flintlocks snapped.

Corentine hurled herself on Trifin—“Tri, down!”—only to watch the prow and its faery tip into the cold wound. The whole barge slid through as if down a dark throat. Behind it, summer closed like a mouth.

Her body still shielding Trifin, Corentine looked up. The barge was gliding down a river dark and polished as obsidian. Trees of black glass tinkled overhead. Below her, she could feel Trifin trembling.

When the faery stood, Corentine gasped. A metal collar bound her throat, chained to clamps that locked her wings shut. “Now you see my history,” Trifin said.

“Tri,” Corentine began, but the faery pressed a hand to her mouth.

“Don’t call me anything. I can’t have a name here. Quickly, we have little time. If we find a tributary back to your world before the Queen’s guards catch us, we can reappear on the Loire five miles upstream of those gabelous.”

“But those chains—”

Trifin’s eyes were hard. “Humans aren’t the only creatures with corrupt monarchs.”

While Corentine was still gaping, Trifin reached below the barge’s tarp and handed her a pole. “My magic does not work here. We have to steer.” 

They guided the barge downstream in silence. Little night-beetles ticked in the ebony reeds. No moon shone, but silver creases of starlight marked the boat’s wake in the inky water. In the prow Trifin poled painfully.

Watching her elbows brush her wing’s chains, Corentine began, “To free yourself, what do you need—”

“The tributary,” said Trifin.

She pointed to where an arm of dark water looped off the main course. Light spilled down it like carelessly thrown straw. Puffing, Corentine and Trifin steered the barge over. The channel was short, and its reedy cul de sac framed a wobbly square of sun, a window into summer just large enough for the barge.

Before it was a guard. 

“You have brought your human here, captain traitor?” he asked. On buzzing wings he hovered just over the water, his beetle’s horn nodding with amusement. “Do you hope to win her trust so? A strange choice.” He grinned. “Most humans do not recall Faerie fondly.”

“Let us pass, lieutenant,” Trifin growled. “I’m a Queen’s convict, bound by her laws.”

The guard laughed, then spat at Trifin’s feet. “I always did think the Queen let you rebels off too lightly. Bargains with traitors—fah! And just because she found it amusing.” He paused, and his pale eyes flickered over Corentine. “Though you have found yourself a pretty human. You always did do well for yourself, captain…”

Trifin’s shoulders stiffened. She glanced back, and raising her pole like a staff, stepped between Corentine and the guard.

He raised his eyebrows. “Or perhaps our Queen is wise. Your freedom will hurt you more than I thought. Imagine her face when—”

Trifin snarled and sprung forward, sweeping her pole up to hook the guard’s horn. With a great hollow crack she wrenched his head aside, hauling him out of the air. As he fell howling, his fingers locked on Trifin’s chains, dragging her after him. Together they crashed into the reeds. The dark water gagged the cry from Trifin’s mouth.

Corentine fell to her knees. “Tri!” she screamed. She drove her pole at the guard’s shelled neck. At the third blow his fingers jerked, and Trifin surfaced choking. Her bound hands scrabbled for the pole. Levering it beneath the faery’s body, Corentine flung her out and onto the barge. Trifin grabbed the pole and swept it down to deal a fourth blow to the guard’s submerged face.

She kicked Corentine the second pole. “Push!”

Snatching it, Corentine plunged it deep in the marsh below the stern. She hove. At the prow Trifin flipped her pole into the water and hove, too. The barge wallowed towards the sunlight. Below, the guard’s clawed hands scrabbled at the hull. Resurfacing for an instant, he spat at Trifin, “Enjoy your chains, beetle! Humans never forgive—”

With rage Trifin cracked her pole against his nose. He gurgled under.

Beside her, Corentine gave a final push. The barge lurched clacking past the reeds and fell through, into summer. Behind it, night closed like a mouth.

On the Loire, noon laid a white haze on the water.

Trifin dropped her pole and collapsed, blank-faced, in the prow. Her dark wings trembled, still free in this world.

Kneeling, Corentine wrapped the faery in her arms. She held her for a long time, but Trifin did not stop shaking. Finally Corentine pulled back and cupped her chin in one hand. “You saved us,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

Trifin did not reply.

Corentine brushed the hair from her bowed face and tried to meet her eyes. “What did he mean, ‘traitor?”

“The Faerie Queen.” Trifin’s voice was dull. “She is like your Regent, a tyrant. I was her captain, until I—we—rebelled. We lost. I will always wear chains there, until I pay her price.”

“So you can buy back your freedom? Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Faerie is not like your world.” Trifin jerked away from Corentine’s touch. Her voice shook. “Our coin is trickery. Our laws are magic. Our contracts are binding.”

“And you can’t tell me anything more.”

This time Trifin made no answer. Instead she lifted Corentine’s hands, and, after pressing them hard for a moment, replaced them on the deck. Corentine could not make her meet her eyes. Leaning forward, she folded Trifin again in her arms.

They clung together for a long time, shivering, though the August sun was hot.

---

If Corentine’s schemes now grew more desperate, they also grew more careful. All the paludiers of Guérande sought her for their traffic: she had promises to keep. She grew haunted and silent. Trifin, too, drifted between rooms like a green ghost, and would answer no questions, about Faerie or otherwise.

As autumn fell and the saltkegs mounted in the kitchen, Corentine turned her thoughts to Paris. One last run there could secure the funds they needed; it lay in the Grande Gabelle, where the tax was heaviest and the profit greatest, and which could be reached by sea around Normandy. Corentine looked at the barrels of fleur de sel, white as wings. “Sails,” she murmured.

Three weeks later, as the first apples were falling, a chasse-marée slipped from the port at La Baule. Instead of fresh herring, its hold was stuffed with salt cod. Its sails were brilliant white. On its deck Corentine stood, and Trifin in her glamor, and Sebastién, coaxed from his kitchen corner to serve as mock merchant. Two hired sailors fussed with the rigging.

“I can’t believe I’ve consented to this madness, and I still don’t trust that faery,” Sebastién said, watching Trifin steady the salt-sails.

Corentine stepped beside her and took her hand. “I do.”

Trifin winced. To the question in Corentine’s eyes she said nothing.

Over the next week they followed the carbotage routes up the coast, sails flapping in the autumn gusts. Corentine sang Breton harvest songs in the prow. The hired sailors joined her, proud to assist the woman who had so roundly conned the Regent. Sebastién grumbled.

Though the chasse-marée was small, Trifin avoided them all. Nor did she break her silence, even for Corentine.

When at last they put into Le Havre at the Seine’s mouth, two gabelous boarded to shake down the cod. Wrenching open each barrel, they waggled a sample fish over a small scale to ensure it had not been packed in extra salt. Over their heads, the white sails flaked.

“Your cargo is legal,” one at last told Sebastién. “But I can’t understand why you sailed from La Baule just for salt cod. This is a swift little chasse-marée, and your fish will keep. Why such speed?”

Sebastién frowned at Corentine. “My reasons are my own.” 

Behind them, Trifin stood. Her eyes were hollow.

“Not one woman, but two?” added the gabelous, noticing her. “This is strange business, my friend. Let’s have another look at your hold.”

Trifin raised her arms.

Above, the sails stilled. Wind knocked them together like old plaster. Where they touched, a dry shuffle like rubbing chalk drifted down the air.

Corentine looked up, and her heart seized.

Trifin dropped her arms.

The sails burst. Like glaciers their shrouds split, calving white bergs that the wind punched to dust and then let fall in gouts, hundreds of minots of sparkling fleur de sel, an avalanche, drowning the deck in warm snow.

When Corentine had choked her way from beneath the drifts, she saw Trifin standing, arms limp, watching her.

“I’m so sorry,” Trifin whispered as the gabelous clapped Corentine in irons. Her voice broke. “It was the price.”

A dagger at her back, Corentine let herself be led ashore beside Sebastién and the stunned sailors.

Behind her Trifin held out her wrists to be manacled, as if the chains belonged there, as if she deserved nothing else.

---

In the prison at Le Havre, Sebastién raged. “She’s a faery! What did you expect?”

“Be quiet!” Corentine barked from across the dirt-floored aisle.

“I asked you to dismiss her and you never listened. But did I forbid you? No. I gave you your freedom, and you let a faery’s beauty fool you into—”

“Be quiet!” Corentine yelled again. Her voice cracked with tears.

“Now we’ll all hang for your foolishness,” Sebastién finished bitterly. “For choosing that faery over our lives, and your own good sense.”

“Please,” Corentine repeated, her voice wilting, “be quiet.”

One cell over, Trifin crouched, her face pressed to her knees. Corentine could not look at her.

In those days the prisons overflowed with salt-runners, so to make room they were brought quickly to trial. Not a week had passed when Corentine, Trifin, Sebastién, and their hired sailors stood before a weary provost who had already seen ten cases that morning and would see another ten before day’s end. Behind the dock, armed gabelous guarded the bay where Le Havre’s townsfolk crowded to cheer the smugglers.

“The crime is salt fraud,” said the provost over their noise, “in the form of false sails sewn from fleur de sel.” His voice remained level through this statement. He was an old provost, and had seen stranger. “What have you to say in your defense?”

Though he addressed Sebastién, it was Corentine who stepped forward.

Sebastién hissed, “What are you doing?”

In her eyes where pride had once floated, something harder and darker had crystallized. “Paying the price,” Corentine said. She turned to the provost.

“Honored prévôt,” she began, “I confess: for the purpose of fraud, I had my—my maid spin sails of sea salt, and did so without my husband’s consent. He did not know the true purpose of our trip to Le Havre.” Sebastién’s eyebrows rose, though he said nothing. Behind the dock, the crowd whispered. “Nor did the sailors whom I hired. All thought we had come to deliver salt cod. You should let them go free, for my maid deceived them.” Corentine risked a look at Trifin, who stood below her in the stand, head hanging. Her voice sharpened. “She deceived me as well.”

“How so?” asked the provost.

Corentine opened her mouth several times, then closed it. Flakes of salt trickled down her scalp. Across her mind darkness passed, and the memory of firm shoulders under chained wings; and those same shoulders, elegant in a linen cloak; or warm beneath her hands, dancing; or in her arms, trembling at the shout, no quarter for traitors.

The provost waved his hand. “Never mind. We’ll return to it later.” He straightened to address the room, one eye on the crowd jeering him from behind the dock. “This woman has confessed to salt fraud and exonerated her spouse and hired sailors. I believe her that they are guiltless. Bailli, remove them.”

The bailiff, his kerchief yellow with sweat, hustled Sebastién and the sailors out of the room. The crowd gave a few soft cheers. Sebastién struggled to glance back, though not too hard.

Resumed the provost, “Now, as to what to do with you and your—”

“Maid, prévôt.”

“Your maid.” He leveled his eyes at her. “I am not uninformed, Lady Corentine de Cornouaille. Of your activities, and those of your upstart Breton Marquis. Nor am I uninformed as to their origin.” He glanced at Trifin. “Word has reached me that your—activities—escalated after the arrival of a peasant woman who is not what she seems. Whether a noble in disguise or something stranger I do not know, but it is clear she is the leader in these ventures.” He looked back to Corentine. “You say she deceived even you. You had estates once, Lady Cornouaille. Our Regent is merciful, and rewards loyalty. Reveal this traitor and her plots, and you will walk free on your own land again.”

A murmur rippled the gathered crowd. Corentine stared at the provost. “But what will happen to her?”

“You know the penalties for treachery.”

Behind the dock, the murmurs ebbed. Into the falling silence rang a small chill sound. Corentine turned to look again at Trifin. Her manacled hands covered her face, and she was shaking. The iron gave small cries as the cuffs hit.

As the silence lengthened, Trifin grew aware of its spread around her. She raised her head. Salt lines streaked her cheeks.

“Well, Lady Cornouaille?” asked the provost irritably. “Will you buy your freedom today, or won’t you?”

Trifin met Corentine’s eyes. She nodded, once, as if giving permission. Then she looked down.

Through the darkness of Corentine’s mind flared a small, bright image like a flame—her cheek on a knee, and a promise.

She drew a deep breath.

“Honored prévôt, I don’t doubt our Regent’s mercy,” Corentine began. The crowd hissed. “But surely the Parisian families working my land now would advance their claims against mine. And as our Regent is also a just leader”—more hisses—“he must acknowledge those claims. Further, honored prévôt, you’ve seen fit to part me from my husband. My maid and I are two healthy women of childbearing age. I say it would be a pity to hang us when Nouvelle France needs wives. Surely our merciful Regent would agree?”

The provost frowned. “You plead transportation, for the both of you?”

“Yes, prévôt.”

“So you refuse to condemn your maid, and forgive her deceptions?” His eyes were sharp.

Corentine met them. “I do, prévôt.”

The provost leaned back in his chair. “Mercy is a virtue, in states and in persons,” he said in a tight voice. He addressed neither Corentine nor Trifin, but the whispering crowd. “If a smuggler can be merciful, so too can our Regent.” Sitting up, he straightened his papers and dipped his pen. “Lady Corentine and her, ah, maid: I sentence you to a life’s exile. You go as king’s virgins, to find husbands and yield children for the glory of Nouvelle France. Vive le roi.”

Vive le vrai roi, the crowd replied.

From a dark elsewhere, there came the sigh of falling chains.

---

One month later, seventy years before the ancién regime would end in blood, the Marquis de Pontcallec’s conspiracy to overthrow the Regency failed, and he too ended in blood on a scaffold at Nantes. Those conspirators who did not swing beside him were exiled, alongside their salt smugglers, to Nouvelle France. They shipped at La Rochelle aboard an airless frigate in October. Despite quays bristling with grenadiers, crowds cheered the smugglers from the shore as the ship sailed.

Belowdecks the mood was more somber. In Ville-Marie where they were bound, the smugglers could choose either military service or indenture. Passage took two months; lice crawled already beneath them in the straw.

Corentine and the faery, whose name was not Trifin, sat on a keg of salt-pork near the bow. Together they gazed out a porthole towards the grey waves.

Behind them, in the dark shadow of our world that is Faerie, the faery’s wings stretched.

“You know you don’t have to come with me,” Corentine said. “Ville-Marie is cold, and the work will be hard. I understand if you want to return to Faerie. You’re free now.”

“Because you forgave me even though I betrayed you,” the faery said softly. “That was what the magic demanded, but you did it yourself.” She touched Corentine’s sleeve, the prisoner’s rough hemp. “I’m in your debt.”  

Corentine took her hands. “You don’t owe me anything.”

 The faery smiled. “Then take this as a gift—one failed rebel to another.” She cupped Corentine’s chin in her hands. And drawing her gently forward, she kissed her.

Corentine flushed; then laughed; then bent her forehead against the faery’s. “Well, then.”

Above the hold, muffled thumps on the deck signaled sails being loosed. The ship bucked as the wind caught the canvas.

Far away in Nouvelle France, snow was already falling. But behind in Guérande, the last dry summer wind was raking across the salt pools, blowing white fleur de sel like lace from the waves.

---

Show Notes

This quarter’s fiction episode presents “The Salt Price” by B. Pladek, narrated by Jasmine Arch.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to B. Pladek Online

• Website: bpladek.net
• Twitter: @bpladek

Maybe I'm just not in the right headspace for this article. Maybe it simply isn't operating on my wavelength. But I found it incoherent and boring (and of only tenuous connection to either "literature" or "gay and lesbian"). Sorry about that.

I'll wrap up this book with another post that simply lists the chapters that I didn't cover due to falling entirely within the 20th century. Then on to something more interesting!

This weekend I rose at an ungodly hour of the morning to attend a 2-day online conference of research into Anne Lister and her world. Recordings of sessions (this year and past years) are available through the main conference web page. In the sidebar, under each year’s conference, select the “resources” tab to find them. I plan to check out some of the previous sessions when I have time—in particular, a session from last year on vocabulary that Lister used around sex, and other sexual vocabulary of the time. For those who might be interested, there will be an in-person Lister conference in April 2024 in Halifax (UK). I expect that there will also be future online Anne Lister Research Summits.

The following brief summaries of the talks are my own impressions. Any errors—either of understanding or of interpretation—are entirely my own and should not reflect on the speakers.

Bridging the Listerian Gap (Stephen Turton, Sarah Wingrove, Diane Halford, JY Jiang, and Livia Labate)

Panel discussion between 5 people approaching Lister research from different angles, handling different types of data, with different backgrounds and purposes. Emphasis on the benefits of this sort of collaborative community, e.g., the work of the many non-academic transcribers and “code-breakers” working on converting the diaries into accessible text, who support the work of academics using those transcripts. Treating essential functions such as transcription as equal partners and entitled to citation and credit.

How to create bridges between the “amateur” and academic participants? Issues around access to the data and results of research. Academics don’t always have control over making their work easily available, while non-academics don’t usually have institutional access to non-fee material.

Information flow goes in all directions: not the traditional “academics share their work with the public” but also non-academic researchers (who may be deeply engrossed in specific details and aspects) calling out topics with promise for a closer look.

Anne Lister’s Music (Lisa Timbs)

TImbs had an interest in Regency-era music, did in-costume performances of Austen-era music on period instruments. At Shibden Hall, she came across two notebooks of music in Anne Lister’s collection and began a project to explore and interpret the contents. She plans to make recordings at Shibden Hall (using her own square piano dating to the era). The music notebooks are personal collections of individual pieces of sheet music collected by Lister, then assembled by a book-binder.

Musical performance was expected to be part of a woman’s accomplishments, as music was a popular social entertainment (aside from public music performances, as for church).

The sheet music is printed, but includes pencil notations, e.g., for fingering, as well as some pressed flowers and foliage between the pages.

(A video is included of Timbs performing one of the pieces from the collection.)

The collections were made in 1806-1807(?) shortly after the time Anne was involved with Eliza Raine at the Manor School when both were 13 years old. After the two were separated, they communicated by letter, including the exchange of sheet music. Many of the pieces in the collection are songs with themes of love, longing, and separation, as well as songs about travel. An example is shown of a song from the opera Richard Coeur de Leon, written for the character of Antonio (a “breeches role”) in which Anne has hand-written an alternate ending to the love song. (A recording of the song is presented.)

The collection includes both formal “classical” music, but also popular music of the day, including folk songs, dances, ballads. No flute music, despite Anne’s later adoption of the instrument. The flute was considered “indecent” if played by a woman (similarly the violin and oboe). In 1808 Anne was teaching (probably the piano) to a Miss Alexander, and Timbs suggests that this may have been part of a program of seduction. The collection includes several piano duets.

Anne Lister’s Horoscopes (Cancelled due to presenter illness, but the time-slot became open discussion and I was able to find an excuse to plug the LHMP.)

Copyright: It’s Complicated (Ruth Cummins)

Basics of UK copyright law, especially as it applies to archives.

The Lister-Barlows: An early Rainbow Family (Jann Kraus)

Discusses the interpersonal dynamics of the period when Anne Lister was involved with Mrs. Barlow (accompanied by her daughter Jane Barlow) in Paris in 1824 and in later interactions. Begins with a discussion of the origins and use of the term “rainbow family” for an extra-legal association of people including at least one “queer” adult and an unrelated child. The speaker introduces the lovely German concept “etwas unselbstverständlich machen”, “to purposefully remove the notion that something is self-evident.” Can we problematize the assumption that concepts didn’t exist if there was no accepted language for them? (The example is: intersex people existed even in eras when there was no language for describing them.) Thus, can we better examine this interpersonal context by calling it (anachronistically) a “queer family” than by avoiding that label? The diaries regularly comment on Lister’s somewhat parental interactions with Jane, but as well Jane’s resentment and jealousy of Lister’s relationship with her mother. Barlow and Lister took some precautions about how intimate they are in front of Jane, but were somewhat open in front of her (as might be similar to a m/f relationship). Lister and Barlow openly discuss issues around gender performance, both in private and public. Their relationship lasted about 4 years, off and on, and continued in correspondence after they no longer met in person. Lister’s decision to break it off primarily due to distaste for some aspects of Barlow’s personality (and perhaps from Barlow’s side, discomfort with Lister’s ongoing relationship with Marianne), but it was a family-like relationship that needed to be overtly rejected, not one that could simply be tacitly dropped. Investigating this nexus speaks to larger questions of addressing queer history. In examining Lister’s relationship “failures” we see the larger and complicated context of what she was seeking and what she was able to create. Conclusions: to investigate “queer families” we need to embrace the concepts of “family” that were in place in the era we’re studying, which could include a broader scope than the “nuclear family”. If family goes beyond romance, marriage, and parenthood for non-queer people, it can go beyond that for queer people as well.

Decoding Anne Lister (Chris Roulston and Caroline Gonda)

This is a discussion about the essay collection Decoding Anne Lister: From the Archives to ‘Gentleman Jack’ (ed. Chris Roulston & Caroline Gonda, Cambridge University Press, 2023; ISBN 9781009280723), which ranges from academic work to popular culture reception. Topics include what inspired them to propose the collection and some of the logistics of finding it a home. There isn’t really a concrete through-line in this discussion, so I’m not going to try to summarize. (Note: Mentioned within the discussion – Chris Roulston is Emma Donoghue’s partner, which ties together some threads involving Donoghue’s recent novel Learned by Heart, about Eliza Raine, and Donoghue’s inclusion within the collection as interviewer of Sally Wainwright.)

“You Could Make Anything of Me”: Anne Lister’s Queer Metaphor (Cee Collins)

This is taken from the presenter’s undergraduate dissertation. It looks at how Lister uses metaphor to communicate and describe those around her in a way that both conceals and reveals thoughts about queerness. When one of the Parisian friends asks her “etes-vous Achilles?” (are you Achilles) we can see a coded way of exploring questions of gender presentation and desire, embedded in learned familiarity with history and literature that could be used as a code as secret as Lister’s “crypt hand.” The “queer metaphor” envisioned here is a two-way connection: not simply using a source domain to talk about a target domain (technical terms are from my own background in metaphor theory, not the speaker’s terms), but also to reflect things known about the target domain back onto the source domain. One of the speaker’s themes is how the use of classical themes metaphorically works to turn Lister’s contemporaries into (fictional?) characters, equated with the classical figures used to describe/refer to them.

“Unvarnished interesting tale”: Storytelling with historical resources (panel)

A wide-ranging conversation about the process of turning historical data into creative storytelling (primarily creative non-fiction, as the discussion focuses on history podcasts, museum exhibitions, etc.). As with other panel discussions, hard to summarize a through-line.

Learned by Heart: Emma Donoghue on interweaving Eliza Raine’s history with fiction (interview)

(Not able to take notes on this one. Very much all over the place Q&A discussion. Check out the novel!)

Cryptic Cycles: Anne Lister's 'Cousin' and 19th Century Menstrual Practices (Anna Clark, Leila Straub, and Elissa Stein)

Lister uses the euphemism “cousin” for her menstrual cycle, as in “my cousin has come to visit” and also used two dots (aligned horizontally) to indicate the start of her period in her diary. For Ann Walker, she refers to Walker’s period as “monsieur” or uses two vertical dots (i.e., a colon) to indicate the start. What did Lister know about the anatomy of menstruation? We know that she had and read a copy of Aristotle’s Masterpiece, a popular marriage manual of the time, which promulgated various folk theories. The diary entries clearly show her awareness of periodicity (mentioning regularity or coming early or late), as well as considering that a “good flow” is healthy. Lister sometimes notes her period “came gently” which seems to indicate a light flow. They have tracked the frequency of both women’s periods during the period they were together (when data is available for both). Lister’s cycles were exceedingly regular, while Walker’s often had gaps, which are also noted in comments. Discussion of menstrual products include references to stockings, to papers (that were burned afterward), to washing or preparing cloths. She sometimes noted not wearing anything for the first day or so. (The panelists are discussing various garments that might be used to absorb. Lister mentions stockings and napkins but it isn’t clear that the other things they’re talking about are from the diary or speculative.) But for the most part Listed noted the existence of her periods and her preparations but felt little need to describe specifics. Periods were discussed in the context of sex, and genital sex seems to have been avoided during menstruation, but there are exceptions. When Lister was with Mrs Barlow, she notes being uncomfortable about Barlow calling attention to Lister’s periods, in the context of taking note of Lister’s femaleness. (Note: There are other similar comments indicating Lister had some gender dysphoria when a partner wanted to participate actively in giving Lister sexual pleasure. So this may be part of a larger pattern of being uncomfortable with being “womanized.”)

Searching for Ann 2023 (Diane Halford and Leila Straub)

A discussion of new information about Ann Walker and the process of researching the details of her life. Begins with a note from a young Ann Walker to Anne Lister (contained in the Lister archives) that also correlates with an entry in Lister’s diaries about some chemises that Walker sent her. The note was kept because Lister then used it as scratch paper for taking notes on her reading. With regard to the note, Lister records in her diary “I wonder if she likes me.” At the opposite end of their relationship, a letter between two of the Sutherland family noting that George Sutherland is traveling to Moscow and Teflis (Tblisi) to meet Walker after Lister’s death and escort her home. Anne Walker’s letter to the Sutherlands with news of Lister’s death arrives 7 days after the death. (I’m not going to detail all the items being discussed. Basically it covers data about the documentary evidence from Walker.)

Unpacking Gentleman Jack Season 2 (informal discussion about the tv show)

Anne Lister in the Garden (Dr Suzanne Moss and Lynn Shouls)

Starts with a high-level history of science in the 18th century and women’s participation in botany. Then a survey of famous gardens that Lister is known to have visited and a description of either projects she implemented at Shibden or plans she had that were never realized.

Waxing Lister-ical: A Journey into Wax Sealing (Steph Gallaway)

This is a basic introduction to wax seals and the practice of sealing letters (including live demonstrations). I’m going to skip taking notes on this one.

4 miles from Xtiania (Henriette Stensdal)

A detailed review of the 17 days that Lister and Walker visited Norway in 1839. A very creative presentation done as a travelogue with maps, documents, and on-location narration with a soundtrack. (The on-location recordings have some sound issues, but I love the overall concept.) You must check out this recording! Don’t miss how the presenter anonymized passers-by with overlaid images of historic portraits.

Suing Miss Walker: An analysis of Horncastle v Walker (Marlene Oliveira)

Convoluted details of a lawsuit over a land deal.

Lister's Web: Interweaving Personal Connections in Anne Lister's Social Circle (Shantel Smith, Marlene Oliveira, Kat Williams, and Steph Gallaway)

(I’m really interested in this session that looks at the interpersonal connections within Lister’s social circle. One of the valuable things her diaries make clear is that being an early 19th century lesbian was not an “isolated” experience. Her wide social circles included a significant number of women that she had erotic relations with (and who had erotic relations with each other).)  This discussion will only cover a limited subset of Lister’s community. The Belcombe and Norcliffe families had connections dating back before Lister was in the picture, including long-term visits among the young women. And Tib Norcliffe appears to have been the person who introduced Lister to Marianne Belcombe. Lister’s lover Vere Hobart also had familial connections to the Walkers. Even random women that Lister met in Paris are recorded as having distant family connections that link into the larger community she was familiar with. In this connection, the panel discusses how much Lister’s various lovers knew about each other. The Belcombe sisters give evidence of having various levels of awareness of each others’ relationships with Lister. When Lister is staying at Layton Hall with the Norcliffes, there are conversations recorded in Lister’s diary about various erotic relationships among their social circle. Sexual jealousy is a significant aspect of the discussions and commentary (all as reported via Lister), though there’s a sliding scale of concern whether it has to do with attention or sexual involvement. We bring up Lister’s conversations with Frances Pickford, in which there are delicately-negotiated discussions of f/f romantic connections. When Lister is in Paris, Pickford is with a different woman than the partner (Miss Threlfall) she was with in Halifax.

Conclusion

An entertaining and informative conference, blending the work of academics and independent scholars, with a variety of formats. The content very much highlights the work of the many people contributing to the transcription and deciphering of Anne Lister’s diaries and papers.

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 269 - On the Shelf for October 2023 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2023/10/07 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for October 2023.

Publications on the Blog

Looks like I’ve gotten out of my blogging slump, thanks to doing preparation for last month’s gothic podcast. I didn’t manage to get my hands on everything that looked promisingly gothic—and some of what I read wasn’t particularly useful for me—but as my costumer friends say, “Done is Beautiful,” and I got that episode done.

The publications I blogged for it were:

• Paulina Palmer’s promisingly-titled Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions, which focused in part on contemporary lesbian gothic novels, though “contemporary” was as of the 1999 date of publication.
• Christopher Yiannitsaros’s article “’I’m scared to death she’ll kill me: Devoted Ladies, feminine monstrosity, and the (lesbian) Gothic Romance” in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies which I have to confess was not particularly pertinent to my purpose.
• Sarah Parker’s article “’The Darkness is the Closet in Which Your Lover Roosts Her Heart’: Lesbians, Desire and the Gothic Genre” in Journal of International Women’s Studies, which focused on two specific 20th century titles.
• And the gothic chapter in The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, from which I’m now blogging the other chapters.

I’m not exactly on a regular blog schedule, but as you can tell from that list, I’m managing an average of more than an article per week, so let’s try to continue that. My returning energy also drove me to return to the U.C. Berkeley library for the first time since Covid, to renew my alumni library card and pull a dozen or so articles from my priority list.

Another place I got a lead on a paper is the relatively new social media site Bluesky, which I recently got an invitation to. Since I’m still settling in to the rhythms of Mastodon, I’d had some qualms about branching out into yet another venue—particularly one that has the same potential as Twitter to have a greedy and irrational CEO pull the rug out from under everyone. But the chatter suggested that Bluesky was where much of my previous book and research related social media community was reconstructing itself. And I have to say that in terms of sharing information and making chance connections, it’s already proving to be a more Twitter-like experience than Mastodon. That is, of course, part of the point: Mastodon isn’t intended to be like Twitter as a deliberate strategy. But there are aspects I miss that Bluesky is promising to give me again. (For what it’s worth, I haven’t actually deleted my Twitter accounts, but mostly I’m just posting Project promotional tweets for those who still follow me there.)

News of the Field

There’s an interesting online event coming up fast, but those who listen to the podcast promptly have time to look into it. This is a weekend online conference about Anne Lister. The Anne Lister Research Summit has presentations in a variety of formats covering a range from scholarly research to pop culture reception. It’s being held in two all-day sessions on October 14 and 15, in a time-frame that is a reasonable compromise for folks in the western hemisphere. (Here in California, the sessions run from 5:30 AM to mid-afternoon, while in Europe the hours are more from mid-day to evening.) Registration is free but you must register online to attend the Zoom sessions. See the show notes for a link.

Misc Notes

I wasn’t organized enough to have any interviews this month, though I have several leads in progress, including some very interesting non-book projects. And there are no new book purchases to tell you about this month either. Sometimes it’s feast; sometimes it’s famine.

This is your regular reminder that we’ll be running a fiction series again next year, with submissions open in January. By now, I assume you know the drill: tell all your author friends, polish up your own stories, and read the submission guidelines on the website to make sure your work has the best chance. Those who pay attention to the calendar might have noticed that we should have had a fiction episode last week, as September had 5 Saturdays. I had to reschedule due to narrator availability, but that episode will be coming out later this month.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

When preparing the new releases segment for this podcast, I was relieved to find that some of the broken aspects of Amazon’s search feature have gotten a little better. A request to see only books after a certain publication date seems to be working again, as is a request to order the results by publication date. But there are still some funky things going on with keyword searches.

For example, when I asked for books with the keywords “lesbian” and “historic”, Amazon claimed that there were only two titles—but if I added the requirement that the keywords include “romance” then they promised me 400 titles! That…isn’t how adding keywords works? In any event, when I added “romance” to the filter, the result was actually only another dozen titles, not the 400 I’d been promised.

Interestingly, I was getting much better success by using “sapphic” plus “historic”. For quite some time, there have been a few books that turned up under both “sapphic” and “lesbian” and a very few that only show under “sapphic”, while searching on “lesbian” was where the most titles turned up (including a great many in other queer categories that seem to have thrown every queer keyword into the mix, whether it applied to that book or not).

While it’s interesting that authors seem to be adding “sapphic” as a keyword more these days, I’m a bit suspicious of concluding that they’re dropping the use of “lesbian”. Knowing Amazon’s past bad behavior around disappearing queer books, I wonder if searches on the word “lesbian” are being suppressed, or if books with that keyword are being excluded from search functions. This is your regular reminder that Amazon is not an ally of the queer book community. You should always have other ways of promoting your books and finding books to read. And for historical fiction, please keep in mind that the most certain way to let people know about your lesbian and sapphic historical novels is to drop me a note directly.

And with that, what are the new and recent releases that I know about?

Edale Lane has a third volume in the Tales from Norvegr series: War and Solace from Past and Prologue Press. This is a Viking-ish fantasy series involving warrior women.

A battle-hardened shieldmaiden. A pacifist healer. Can the two find love amid the chaos of war? Tyrdis is a stalwart warrior raised to value honor, courage, and military prowess. When a traumatic injury renders the powerful protector helpless, she depends on the lovely, tender-hearted Adelle to restore her from the brink of death. Is it merely gratitude or true love that draws Tyrdis to the healer?

Defying cultural norms, Adelle despises violence and those who propagate it, but when her shieldmaiden patient saves the life of her beloved little girl, she must reexamine her values. Could Tyrdis be more than a stiff, efficient killer with an amazing body?

In a kingdom steeped in conflict with their neighbors and internal strife, shocking secrets are revealed, and both women strive to ensure justice prevails. Can they overcome their differences to safeguard their friends, end the war, and fall in love, or will fate prove to be a cruel sovereign?

Coming more from the literary fiction side, we have Cities of Women by Kathleen B. Jones from Keylight Books. Although it isn’t entirely obvious from the cover copy, this dual timeline story has a sapphic romance in the contemporary storyline.

Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor of history, risks her career when she sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminations in the medieval manuscripts of Christine de Pizan was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the richly evoked 15th century backdrop of moral disaster and political intrigue, yet extraordinary creativity, Verity finds little evidence of the artist’s existence, while discovering the missing pieces to make her own life whole.

Pirate stories continue to be all the rage and we have two this month. First up is a historic fantasy, Let the Waters Roar by Geonn Cannon from Supposed Crimes.

Legend tells of a witch who can grant your every desire ... for a price. Your soul, taken upon your death and stored in a stone. Harriet Landau made the deal. Now the stone containing her soul has been discovered. Her widow, Clio Landau, current captain of the Banshee, has the chance to be reunited with the woman she loves. But they aren't the only ones who have discovered the witch's secrets. If Clio can't stop a vicious captain's reign of terror, Harriet's resurrection may be very short-lived... and this time the Banshee's crew may be joining her.

And just to confuse matters, the second pirate-themed book from Carolyn Elizabeth from Bella Books also involves women pirates in a ship named the Banshee: The Heart of the Banshee. It doesn’t look like this series has a series title yet, but the previous book was The Raven and the Banshee.

In an effort to put her vengeful past behind her, Captain Branna Kelly charts a new course with the help of the Banshee’s newest officer, Julia Farrow. Her first mission on the path to redemption is to restore order at a neighboring port. Julia’s new fighting skills are put to the test when they go up against the deadly Ferryman and her cutthroat captain, Isaac Shaw. She more than holds her own, both with and without a blade, and Branna is torn between supporting and protecting her. Even during occasions of relative safety, Branna and Julia discover the greatest peril may not be to their lives, but to their love. When faces from Branna’s past come back to haunt them and Julia seeks moments of peace in another’s company, suspicion and mistrust become a blade to the heart.

After delving into the gothic genre, Marianne Ratcliffe now has a Regency romance for us: A Lady to Treasure from Bellows Press. The plot is a bit reminiscent of classic Victorian-era American-heiress-goes-to-England plots, as in Edith Wharton’s novel The Buccaneers. But this time the twist is that the heiress is looking for a husband with money rather than a title.

Louisa Silverton is the daughter of a wealthy American businessman, brought up to believe a healthy profit is the only route to happiness. With the family company over-leveraged and in need of a capital injection, she travels to England to find a rich husband.

The Honourable Miss Sarah Davenport has no time for romance. The family estate of Kenilborough is mired in debt and only she can save it. Unconventional and outspoken, Sarah is dismayed that somebody as intelligent and attractive as Louisa is willing to sacrifice herself for financial gain.

As Louisa pursues her campaign, Sarah realises her objections to the project run deeper than mere principles. At the same time, Louisa finds herself captivated by Sarah’s independent spirit. Yet to indulge their unexpected passion would surely mean the ruin of both their families. Bound by duty, will they ever be free to follow their hearts?

Mary Shelley lived such a complex and varied life that it’s no wonder that she gets fictionalized regularly. In Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein, by Anne Eekhout from HarperVia, a friendship of her youth is portrayed as a romance.

Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelopes the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this “year without a summer,” eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion John Polidori. Anguished by the recent loss of her child, Mary spends her days in strife. But come nightfall, the friends while away rainy wine-soaked evenings gathered around the fireplace, exchanging stories. One famous evening, Byron issues a challenge to write the best ghost story. Contemplating what to write, Mary recalls another summer, when she was fourteen…

Scotland, 1812. A guest of the Baxter family, Mary arrives in Dundee, befriending young Isabella Baxter. The girls soon spend hours together wandering through fields and forests, concocting tales about mythical Scottish creatures, ghosts and monsters roaming the lowlands. As their bond deepens, Mary and Isabella’s feelings for each other intensify. But someone has been watching them—the charismatic and vaguely sinister Mr. Booth, Isabella's older brother-in-law, who may not be as benevolent as he purports to be…

Western Blue by Suzie Clarke from Bold Strokes Books sounds like a rather violently traumatic Western romance, so we’ll hope for a solidly happy ending for the characters.

In 1868, Caroline Bluebonnet Hutching is forced to leave her Texas home and make a new life in Nevada. But the townsmen are against her, and she can’t get the help she needs. Undaunted, she advertises for female workers, only to find that each woman who answers her ad is as desperate as she is. And she’s entirely unprepared for the one who steals her heart.

When raiders attack Isabel Segura’s horse ranch and slaughter her family, she’s left with nothing—no home, no future, no hope. When she sees Blue’s ad, a new dream sparks to life. Determined to begin again, she sets out on a journey she never could have imagined. Heroism, loyalty, friendship, and love. The odds are against this unlikely group—but never underestimate women who have nothing to lose.

The age of suffragettes, in the years just before World War I, is the setting for a historical mystery by Sarah Bell, Deeds and Words (Louisa & Ada #2).

June 1913 Leeds, England. When a man is shot dead in an alleyway and a suffragette arrested for the crime, Louisa Knight and Ada Chapman are once more pulled into a case that hits too close to home. It’s not long before they're mired in both the investigation and their local branch of the WSPU. Amongst the suffragettes, they'll find dedicated women fighting to secure the vote through whatever means necessary, but also missing money, blackmail threats, and an unexpected familial connection. As questions arise and doubts surface, they not only have to face a difficult investigation, but a reckoning with their part in the suffrage movement.

Lovesick Blossoms by Julia Watts from Three Rooms Press tackles romance within a “beard” marriage of convenience in a ‘50s college town between two queer people. The cover copy took a little untangling in my head because the woman in the fake marriage is named Samuel and the man has a non-gendered nickname. I’m often bewildered by the percentage of fictional lesbians who have traditionally male names.

In 1953 Collinsville, Kentucky, a small college town, colleagues and neighbors of Samuel and Boots are more than willing to accept their married status, even though their official relationship is one of convenience that will never be consummated. Boots, an English professor at Millwood College for Women, has long had clandestine affairs with muscular men, while Samuel dodges questions about her disinterest in motherhood. But when Samuel meets a new professor’s wife, Frances, at a faculty party, she soon falls in love, and learns the difficulty of discretion in a town that doesn’t accept the idea of two women sleeping together.

Other Books of Interest

In the “other books of interest” category, we’ll start with Menewood (The Light of the World #2) by Nicola Griffith from MCD. This title falls in “other interest” because the queer content in the prior book, Hild, was fairly minimal and I don’t know how much there may be in this volume.

Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking's court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable Lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood. But Edwin needs his most trusted advisor. Old alliances are fraying. Younger rivals are snapping at his heels. War is brewing--bitter war, winter war. Not knowing who to trust he becomes volatile and unpredictable. Hild begins to understand the true extent of the chaos ahead, and now she must navigate the turbulence and fight to protect both the kingdom and her own people. Hild will face the losses and devastation of total war, and then she must find a new strength, the implacable determination to forge a radically different path for herself and her people. In the valley, her last redoubt, her community slowly takes root. She trains herself and her unexpected allies in new ways of thinking as she prepares for one last wager: risking all on a single throw for a better future...

Unsettled by Patricia Reis from Sibylline Press gets the “other books of interest” nod because despite showing up in a keyword search for “lesbian,” the cover copy is extremely coy about whether there are queer elements. As usual, if you’ve read the book and can give me feedback on that point, I’d love to calibrate how well my book gaydar is doing.

As Van Reinhardt clears out her dead father’s belongings, she comes across hints of an unsettling family history, along with a request penned by her father prior to his death that sends her on a genealogical quest. Examining a 1900 family portrait of her German immigrant ancestors, Van’s curiosity grows about one of the children portrayed there.

In the 1870s, Kate is a German immigrant newly arrived in America with only her brother as family. Life changes for Kate when she and her brother split. When she returns, armed with a secret, nothing is the same, for her or her brother. Together they try to forge a life working for farmers in southwestern Iowa and at Kate’s urging, her brother takes the farmer’s daughter as his wife. And as that family grows, Kate becomes Tante Kate, isolated and separate from the rest of the family—almost a servant—not even appearing in the family portrait. Van revisits the town and the farm of her ancestors to discover calamitous events in probate records, farm auction lists, asylum records and lurid obituaries, hinting at a history far more complex and tumultuous than she had expected. But the mystery remains, until she chances upon a small book, sized for a pocket—Tante Kate’s secret diary—that provides the missing piece.

The queer elements in Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue by Christine Higdon from ECW Press are explicitly noted in the cover copy, but appear to be relatively marginal to the story, which has a male protagonist.

Four working-class Vancouver sisters, still reeling from the impact of World War I and the pandemic that stole their only brother, are scraping by but attempting to make the most of the exciting 1920s. Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is a story of love and longing ― but like all love stories, it’s complicated …

Morag is pregnant; she loves her husband. Georgina can’t bear hers and dreams of getting an education. Harriet-Jean, still at home with her opium-addicted mother, is in love with a woman. Isla’s pregnant too ― and in love with her sister’s husband. Only one other soul knows about Isla’s pregnancy, and it isn’t the father. When Isla resorts to a back-alley abortion and nearly dies, Llewellyn becomes hellbent on revenge, but against whom and to what end? What will it change for Isla and her sisters? For women? And where can revenge lead for a man like Llew, a police detective tangled up in running rum to Prohibition America?

Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue is immersed in the complex political and social realities of the 1920s and, not-so ironically, of the 2020s: love, sex, desire, police corruption, abortion, addiction, and women wanting more.

The last two books in “other books of interest” are marginal in terms of being considered historicals, since they’re both set in the ‘70s.

The first is A Glimpse into Your Soul by Char Dafoe.

1973, Peace River, Alberta, appears to be an idealistic place to live, rich with luscious land and a winding river that flows past the one-horse town where everybody knows everybody. Highschool sweethearts, Emma and Jillian McKinley grew up together in the small town and have loved one another for the past thirty years. Living out on the prairies, surrounded by nature and away from civilization, Emma and Jillian have had the freedom to live their true authentic relationship in peace. When a dark secret from Jillian’s past suddenly returns, threatening her marriage and upsetting the peace, Jillian takes it upon herself to tell her wife what really happened to her all those years ago.

Emma McKinley had always been a woman of action over words. Having lived her whole life in the solitude of her horses and her land, drama and danger never coalesced with her cowgirl lifestyle. When Emma discovers Jillian’s secret, the only thing on the cowgirl's mind is exacting revenge for her wife using the skills she has honed all her life—aim, shoot, leaving no trail behind.

And finally we have Songs of Irie by Asha Ashanti Bromfield from Wednesday Books.

It's 1976 and Jamaica is on fire. The country is on the eve of important elections and the warring political parties have made the divisions between the poor and the wealthy even wider. And Irie and Jilly come from very different backgrounds: Irie is from the heart of Kingston, where fighting in the streets is common. Jilly is from the hills, where mansions nestled within lush gardens remain safe behind gates. But the two bond through a shared love of Reggae music, spending time together at Irie's father's record store, listening to so-called rebel music that opens Jilly's mind to a sound and a way of thinking she's never heard before. As tensions build in the streets, so do tensions between the two girls. A budding romance between them complicates things further as the push and pull between their two lives becomes impossible to bear. For Irie, fighting―with her words and her voice―is her only option. Blood is shed on the streets in front of her every day. She has no choice. But Jilly can always choose to escape. Can their bond survive this impossible divide?

What Am I Reading?

So what have I been consuming in the last month? I finished up Meredith Rose’s sapphic Sherlock Holmes adaptation, A Study in Garnet. This one gets a strong recommendation from me. It’s very well written and tightly plotted. Meredith gets inside the psychology of her characters and explores the dynamics between two damaged personalities. This first volume in the series has a lot of delicious pining but no overt romance yet.

T. Kingfisher is usually an instant buy for me, and her new fairy tale fantasy, Thornhedge, got read in one sitting. The basic story is sleeping beauty, but the take on it is pure Kingfisher with an unexpected and eccentric protagonist and a semi-romantic adventure that ends up exactly where you hope it will go.

I listened to two audiobooks this month. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty is a cross between the 1001 Nights and “let’s get the old team together for one last heist.” A female pirate captain gets blackmailed into taking one last job and discovers that going back to sea is both more seductive and far more dangerous that she wants to deal with in later life. No significant queer content, though one character discovers trans leanings.

The new K.J. Charles, A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel is a loose sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, set in the Regency era among the smugglers of Romney Marsh. It’s a good, basic K.J. Charles male/male romance with complex and unique characters whose back-stories drive them into self-destructive behavior while pursuing a mystery. But since they both come from a place of good-hearted sincerity, they sort it all out in the end.

I hope you enjoyed as many good books this month as I did—hopefully even more than I managed!

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Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

• Getting back to blogging
• The Anne Lister Research Summit, Oct. 14-15, 2023
• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • Palmer, Paulina. 1999. Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions. Cassell, New York. ISBN 0-304-70154-8
  • Yiannitsaros, Chirstopher. 2010. “’I’m scared to death she’ll kill me: Devoted Ladies, feminine monstrosity, and the (lesbian) Gothic Romance” in The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 8: 41-52.
  • Parker, Sarah. 2008. “’The Darkness is the Closet in Which Your Lover Roosts Her Heart’: Lesbians, Desire and the Gothic Genre” in Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 2: 3-16.
  • McCallum, E.L. & Mikko Tuhkanen, eds. 2014. The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature Cambridge University Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-107-03521-8
• Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
  • War and Solace (Tales from Norvegr #3) by Edale Lane
  • Cities of Women by Kathleen B. Jones
  • Let the Waters Roar by Geonn Cannon
  • The Heart of the Banshee (series #2) by Carolyn Elizabeth
  • A Lady to Treasure by Marianne Ratcliffe
  • Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout
  • Western Blue by Suzie Clarke
  • Deeds and Words: A Sapphic Historical Mystery (Louisa & Ada #2) by Sarah Bell
  • Lovesick Blossoms by Julia Watts
• Other Titles of Interest
  • Menewood (The Light of the World #2) by Nicola Griffith
  • Unsettled by Patricia Reis
  • Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue by Christine Higdon
  • A Glimpse into Your Soul by Char Dafoe
  • Songs of Irie by Asha Ashanti Bromfield
• What I’ve been consuming
  • A Study in Garnet by Meredith Rose
  • Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
  • The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
  • A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K.J. Charles
• Call for submissions for the 2024 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)