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The second category of Jae's Lesbian Book Bingo 2018 challenge is Historical Fiction. Check here for the thread with suggestions of books for this category, and for a chance to win prizes if you comment.

As I announced previously, since I don't read enough books to have a chance at filling my bingo card, I thought I'd play along by writing short fiction pieces for each square, using a historic setting and tying them all up loosely in a single overall story. But what do I do for a historical fiction category given that I'm trying to do the whole thing in a historic setting? Obviously the solution is to include something that is historical fiction for the characters in my setting! We're still following the same two characters currently, but I've switched viewpoints. (There will be more characters later, but they'll all connect up in the end.) At this point, I've sort of narrowed down the setting of the current ficlets to the Nine Years' War some time in the early 1690s. I'm dodging making too-specific references to what military action my heroines might be taken part it since I haven't pinned down a more specific date (or exactly which regiment they're with). If you're interested in more details of passing women in the military in the Low Countries and Germany in this general era, there's no better source than The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe by Dekker and van de Pol.

My book Daughter of Mystery will be one of the featured book suggestions for the fantasy category, but my work fits in a lot of different categories on the bingo card. For those who might be visiting here for the fiction and brainstorming for ideas for their bingo squares, here's a brief rundown of what categories the Alpennia books and my self-published novelette fit into.

• "The Mazarinette and the Musketter" (self-published novelette, see links below for information on all books) - LGBTQIA+ characters (bi women, trans man), historical fiction, you might possibly fit it into "women in uniform" since a Musketeer uniform is a key plot point.
• Daughter of Mystery (Alpennia #1) - friends to lovers, butch/femme (sort of), fantasy, historical fiction
• The Mystic Marriage (Alpennia #2) - LGBTQIA+ (one main character is demisexual), friends to lovers, age difference, fantasy, I think you could even use "workplace romance" since the romance develops in an alchemy lab, historical fiction
• Mother of Souls (Alpennia #3) - friends to lovers, fantasy, historical fiction, LGBTQIA+ (since both women are bi), but I'd rather people didn't use it for the "women of color" square because I'd prefer people to chose own-voices books for that in preference to mine

And now, on with the fiction!

All the Stage is a World (Lesbian Book Bingo: Historical Fiction)

The only thing more miserable than standing sentry through the wet miserable night on the edge of the army camp would have been sitting inside the walls of the town we were besieging. No, even worse for everyone would come when the siege broke into open battle but I mostly avoided thinking about that before time and tried to forget it afterward. The dark was thick with the smoke of campfires and the orange glow of them was scattered across the fields like a hellish reflection of the stars above.

Lena—no, I needed to think of her only as Pieter, and I’d only called her Lena for a few days anyway. Not long enough that the name should seek to betray us like that. Pieter shuffled a few steps to keep her legs warm. Another hour at least before we’d be relieved.

A trickle of wet fell into the collar of my uniform coat and I adjusted the wide brim of my hat to send the rain somewhere less uncomfortable. “Are you cold, Pieter?” I asked.

She snorted. “Of course I’m cold, Martijn! Times like this I wish I hadn’t traded skirts for breeches.”

Skirts for breeches, a job serving beer at De Leeuw in Zendoorn for the army life, but I knew she didn’t regret the gamble. I saw it in her eyes ever time we marched past towns and rivers she’d never seen before. No matter how sore our feet were or how quickly sleep seized us when we made camp, that look of wonder and surprise never dimmed.

I moved closer and huddled against her for a little more warmth but she stepped away with a shake of her head.

“You never know who might be watching.”

She was right. As bad as it would be for anyone to guess that we were women, it would be worse if they decided we were too-affectionate men. Sharing a bedroll for warmth was one thing, but embracing while on watch was another. The pleasant tumble we’d had back in Zendoorn rarely had a chance to be repeated.

“I’ll tell you a story to pass the time,” I offered. Even the stories I’d grown tired of were new to her. “What would you like?”

“Tell me about…” She thought in the darkness for a while. “Tell me a story about people like us. Tell me that we aren’t alone. You said you’d had sweethearts before…”

I didn’t want to tell her about Mayken, not all the private memories. But… “I know a story about people like us. I saw it on a stage when I was in London. A grand story set in olden times with pagan gods and two girls just like us. Would you like that one?”

“Oh yes!”

I tried to remember everything I could about the play, all confused with shepherds and gods and comic rustics. In the end, the play had left me shaking and filled with questions.

“Once upon a time, there was a band of shepherds who had angered the god Neptune, I don’t remember why. But Neptune demanded that every ten years they must sacrifice the most beautiful and most virtuous maiden in the land. You might think that fathers would be proud to have beautiful and virtuous daughters. Neptune wasn’t the only god in the story. The virgin goddess Diana roamed the woods near where the shepherds lived, and she loved chaste girls. Or you might think that the shepherds would encourage their daughters to be a little less virtuous, if it meant they would live. And the goddess Venus was happy to encourage them in that. But men are strange creatures, so they protected their daughters’ virtue carefully and the mourned what came of it.

“There was a girl named Gallathea who was so pretty and so pure that her father was certain that she would be chosen as the sacrifice, so he took her away to the woods and commanded her to dress in men’s clothing and hide herself away until after the choice was made. Gallathea was embarrassed to wear breeches and a doublet—just like you were at first, Pieter. I still remember how you blushed looking down to see your legs showing! But she did what her father commanded and went to hide in the woods.

“And there was another beautiful virgin named Phillida.  Her father was also certain that she would be chosen to be the sacrifice. So he took her aside and said she must disguise herself as a man and hide away in the woods until Neptune had received his due. Phillida thought it was an immodest thing to do, but she obeyed her father and she, too, put on breeches and a doublet and went to hide herself.”

“Well that was a silly thing!” Pieter said. “Wouldn’t anyone notice they were gone? Wouldn’t they remember two such pretty girls and ask what happened to them?”

“Hush,” I scolded. “It’s a play. People do silly things in plays. Now let me continue. So Gallathea and Phillida chanced to meet each other in the wood, and of course each one thought that the other one was a boy. A very pretty boy.” I smiled at Pieter in that way I knew would make her blush, though I couldn’t see it in the dark. “And they fell in love.”

I couldn’t see her, but I heard her sigh—a quiet little sigh that I remembered from times when I’d touched her just so.

“Both Gallathea and Phillida, they each thought they were in love with a boy, you see? And while they’re hinting at being in love with each other, Diana’s virgin huntresses meet up with Cupid and mock him and he decides to make them all fall madly in love. Some of them fall in love with shepherds and some with Gallathea and Phillida, thinking they were men, but Gallathea and Phillida fall in love without Cupid’s help. But when they each see that the other spurns the love of Diana’s ladies, they begin to suspect that the other might be a woman in disguise.”

Pieter gave another disgusted snort. “I know you said people do silly things in plays, but why would they think that? There are lots of reasons to spurn a woman who’s chasing after you.”

“Ah,” I said, “but they both are thinking a lot about being in disguise, so maybe it just seemed more likely to them. Let me finish. Do you want a story or not?” It had worked to distract us from the cold, but now I wanted to tell Pieter how it ended.

“So Gallathea is worried that if Phillida is really a girl like her, then her love won’t be returned. But if Phillida is a boy like she seems, then falling in love puts her chastity at risk. And Phillida is thinking the same thing. And at the same time, the shepherds pick a different girl to be the sacrifice, but Neptune won’t take her because she isn’t pretty enough. And he gets mad at the shepherds for cheating him, and he’s mad at Diana for making girls all worried about being virgins and then Diana and Venus have a fight about whether it’s better to be in love or to be a virgin.”

“They don’t sound like gods, they sound like people arguing over the price of cabbages in the market.”

We both giggled at that, because it was true.

“Anyway, the fathers confess what they had done when Gallathea and Phillida come back and then the two know they’ve both fallen in love with a girl, and they’re unhappy because they think it means they can’t be together but they swear to all the gods that their love is true and they’ll never love anyone else.”

Pieter gave a little sigh again, but this time it was the kind of sigh you give when you see people being happy. I felt a bit of worry twisting up my belly, because I think Pieter thought we were in love like the girls in the play. And I…I wasn’t sure. I liked her well enough, but I wasn’t sure about being in love. Not like Gallathea and Phillida were in love.

“What happened next?” Pieter asked all in a rush.

“Venus tells everyone that love will triumph and that she’ll turn one of them into a boy so they can get married.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence after that. I couldn’t tell what Pieter was thinking, just that she was disappointed in how the story ended.

“Martijn.”

“Yes?”

“Martijn…would you want to turn into a boy if it meant you could marry the girl you loved?”

I’d thought about it. I’d thought about it when I'd seen the play. I'd thought about it when I’d been with Mayken. We’d talked about getting married and me leaving the army to settle down with her. And I just…I wasn’t sure. In the army I was Martijn and Martijn was a soldier and a man. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be Martijn for my whole life. Not even if it meant I could marry Mayken. That was why she’d stayed behind and I marched away.

I shook myself to push the memory away. “There aren’t really pagan gods, you know. They can’t do that. Only God can make miracles and God isn’t going to make that kind of miracle so it doesn’t matter. It’s just a story.”

I don’t know what I would have said after that, but I saw a lantern bobbing in the dark and two voices called out the sign. We answered with the countersign and the watch had changed.

Back in our tent, it took an hour of holding each other close to warm up enough to sleep. I lay there wondering what happened to Gallathea and Phillida after the end of the play.

(copyright 2018 Heather Rose Jones, all rights reserved)

[Continue to the next installment]

* * *

*Historic note: John Lyly’s play Gallathea was first performed in 1588. I haven’t yet pinned down the precise date of these sketches yet, but my current approximation is during the Nine Years’ War of the Grand Alliance, in the 1690s. It’s extremely unlikely that Lyly’s play was still being performed at that date, though some plays of the era did have long runs through multiple revisions and adaptations. But I’ve taken the liberty of having my character see a performance.

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 36 (previously 18b) - Interview with Kathleen Knowles - Transcript

(Originally aired 2018/01/13 - listen here)

Heather Rose Jones: Welcome to the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. Today, we’re having an interview with author Kathleen Knowles. I knew her as Kathy, back a long time ago when we worked at the same biotech company together. Welcome, Kathy.

Kathleen Knowles: Hello!

H: So, I have to start out by saying I am tickled to death at bumping into you again in the context of writing lesbian fiction, because, wow, it’s been like… you said 25 years?

K: Yes, I think so. In the early 90s when we worked at Xoma Corporation.

H: Yah, right before the axe fell and we all got laid off, right?

K: I think I left before that, but yes.

H: Ah. Yes. So, and here we are again!

K: Right, and we met at the Golden Crown Literary Society, last year? Is that right? Or was it in New Orleans?

H: Ah, well, that wasn’t last year. That was two years ago, but I went and heard you at a reading in San Francisco. You and a couple of other Bold Strokes Books authors were reading and, here’s the embarrassing thing, I think at that point it hadn’t clicked in my mind that I already knew you. I figured it out later.

K: Right.

H: So, how did you get interested in writing historical fiction? Why don’t you talk about that a little bit?

K: Well, I’ve read historical fiction. I realized the other day when I was thinking about it for this interview that when I was a teenager, I read a lot of things and some of the things I read were actually romance fiction that were historically based. And I can’t remember too many of the authors names, but I remember thinking that I liked the part of it that had to do with history and with history detail. I always loved reading historical stuff when I was a student and when I came out, I started doing a lot of reading in LGBT history and I’m very interested and have a read a great deal about different periods of time and different people. So, when I decided I wanted to write, and I will say I got started in fanfiction, but the idea that I had was almost automatically going to be historical romance and set in San Francisco, because I like San Francisco history a lot.

H: So, you mentioned you did a lot of reading in LGBT history. Any particularly favorite periods?

K: I don’t have any particular favorite periods, I have favorite authors. Lillian Faderman’s writings on lesbian history and Martin Duberman’s books, I really enjoy. I like biographies. I’ve read a lot of different biographies of people like Vita Sackville-West and Radclyffe Hall and other people. A lot of different people. Those are the kinds of things I like to read.

H: And for your own fiction, I noticed that you’ve got a set of three books, now I’m not sure they’re a set, but you’ve got three books set in San Francisco right around the turn of the 20th century. Two of them have the same pair of characters, is the third one actually connected?

K: The third one is connected. They’re more or less a set. For the third one I made the characters from the first two books, Beth and Kerry, I made them secondary characters and focused on a new set of main characters. So, that’s kind of the style that Bold Strokes Books likes to use if you’re writing like a series of some sort. So, you could consider them a set of three.

H: So, we have Awake unto Me, and then A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and that’s the first two with the same main couple.

K: Yes.

H: And then Two Souls, which is the third book. Do they come in that order?

K: Yes, that’s in order.

H: Because then Two Souls deals with the San Francisco earthquake.

K: Right.

H: I noticed that that’s a bit of a favorite fictional touchstone for people. You aren’t the only person who set a lesbian story around the time of the quake. What drew you to that particular era, or is that a really silly question?

K: Well, first of all, I started out, and I’m not sure why I picked the turn of the century in particular, it sort of just evolved that I wanted a… I started with a war-time setting, which happened to be the Spanish American War. And when I thought about that and thought if what if I ever wrote anymore books and continued this story, that it would naturally go to the San Francisco earthquake. I don’t know what it is about earthquakes, you know, you live in the Bay Area too, but earthquakes are something people talk a lot about, and it’s very much identified with San Francisco. The 1906 earthquake, lucky for me, has a huge amount of things written about it. Plenty of sources for different kinds of details, whatever basic part of it you want to focus on, you can find something out about it. And I thought it would be an interesting thing to have my characters go through. All of them, basically six characters in the book, and they all have various ways of dealing with the earthquake. It’s a disaster, it makes people react in different ways. So, that’s what I was interested in.

H: It’s always a fun thing to throw at characters to make them react in extreme situations like that.

K: Oh, I think so, yes.

H: So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what goes on in the books? A little plot synopsis.

K: Ok. In the first book, Awake unto Me, is when the two characters, Beth and Kerry, meet and they meet with a person that they have in common. And they… one’s basically an orphan and had been adopted. She was orphaned when she was a young teenager and she was adopted by someone. And grew up, up to that point that she was adopted, in the Barbary Coast, which is a pretty hard-core bad part of town. That’s Kerry. And Beth grew up in a very middle-class family but had a history of abuse by, I think it was the family minister. So, they sort of meet by chance because the guy that, the doctor who adopted Kerry, Beth ends up in nursing school and he’s one of her professors. That’s how they meet. So, the first book describes their courtship, how they met, and how they fall in love. And there’s a separation in it, where Beth is sent off to war in the Philippines as a nurse and she’s gone for quite a period of time. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but basically they get together and they become lovers. In the second book, which a lot of people don’t like to read what happens after the happily ever after is what they like to have in their heads, and they’re done. They’re basically, I’ve heard people say, “Well, I’m just done.”

H: “I don’t want to know if it doesn’t work out.” Yanno?

K: Yeah, it all worked out, everything’s great. But I tend to think that sometimes things are a little more interesting later on when you’re trying to keep a relationship together and there’s all kinds of pressures on relationships and I presume that wouldn’t be any different even if it was 1900. It wouldn’t make any difference, there would still be issues and problems and people would have to work through in order to keep their relationship going. So that what the second one, The Spark of Heavenly Fire, is about. It’s about how they get through a really rough period in their lives and manage not to break-up. Finally, Two Souls… Beth and Kerry are there, they basically live with Beth’s former professor who, and she’s now become a doctor instead of a nurse and her mentor and his romantic partner, I have unmarried… I make a big deal about the fact there’s an unmarried couple, so another doctor. And they live in a big house, I basically picture up on Fillmore Street, the upper part of Fillmore street. And another doctor who is living with them for a time, moved out from New York. Her name’s Norah, and Norah actually… Kerry’s the one that introduces Norah to the woman who becomes her love interest, because her, Abigail, Abby, is not a doctor. The only main character… well, she’s a doctor, and Kerry is a cook. But Abigail is a Naturalist and she’s based on a real person, that I was quite impressed when I heard a story of. That’s what happens is, basically the earthquake is what happens, and that’s what they all have to deal with in various ways. Of course, all the people who are doctors are working on issues. Basically, they’re helping refugees in Golden Gate Park, they’re taking care of medical issues for refugees. And Abigail is a member of the California Academy of Sciences, has other issues to deal with. Kerry was a cook at the Palace Hotel, which burns down, and she’s injured during the course of the earthquake and so she’s dealing with an injury and having lost her job. So, that’s the plot of the third book in the series. So, most of the focus is on Abigail and Norah, because it’s their love story and it’s about them falling in love and becoming partners. That’s it.

H: And as you say, living there in San Francisco as you do, there are enormous historical resources for the era and for exactly what went on and what peoples’ lives were like. I’m wondering about resources for developing the relationships of these women. What were some of your challenges or your favorites parts about setting up their relationships in a historic context?

K: I think for anybody who writes historical fiction, romance fiction or other kinds of fiction, is understanding that people have the same emotions, I believe, they have experienced the same sort of emotions that we do in the present day. But they’re not always going to be expressed and, particularly, sexuality was really repressed around the turn of the century. It just simply wasn’t something that people talk about, but I just remembered, one of the reasons why I did pick the turn of the century to start with, Heather, is because at that point there actually did exist, at least in technical literature and in the minds and views of psychiatrists and other doctors, there was a concept of gay identity. They had named it, they had given it names, they knew what lesbians were and they knew what gay men were. So, those concepts existed, and I used the fact that a lot of my characters were doctors, particularly the one from New York, to point out the fact that people actually knew they existed, they had a name for it, it wasn’t a mystery of any kind. So, they could, to a certain extent, discuss it. Although, the part that’s difficult for people falling in love is there’s…. they don’t know it, none of the characters, at least at first, they don’t understand what it is that they’re going through, and they don’t have a name for it and they don’t call it anything until they found out later. I’m speaking Kerry and Beth. They find out later, from their friend, the doctor from New York, Esther, what it’s called. You know, she says this is something that happens to certain people and it’s not like it’s a terrible thing. Of course, I had to give them some supportive secondary characters, I didn’t want it to revolve around peoples’ horrible reactions to it. So, I figure San Francisco was a place, is a place, it certainly was a place from the very start that absorbed a lot of different people form a lot of different places, so I think of San Francisco as a place where nothing can surprise anybody.

H: Yeah, and I always like to look at it that, you know, it’s not erasing the fact that many peoples’ lives in the past were awful, but we as authors get to choose which stories we want to tell. And there were happy stories that can be told.

K: Yes.

H: So, where do you want to go in the future in your historic writing? What projects do you have in mind to work on?

K: That’s a great question. My co-worker, I guess, other writer, another writer I admire very much, who writes for Bold Strokes books, Justine Saracen is here pen name, has always told me, she said, “WWI! That’s the place you’ve gotta go!” She writes a lot about WWII, some really excellent books, but she says, “WWI is where you want to go! That’s the period of time that nobodies paid very much attention to! You oughtta do that!”

H: I was going to say, I will argue that pre-twentieth Century is what nobodies doing, but yah, within the 20th century, I’ll take that.

K: Ok, that’s funny. I think the WWI period is really interesting, but I think what I might be more interested in, even though it’s the same general time-frame, is the beginning of the US suffragist movement. Insofar as I know, California was one of the states that women got the vote a bit before the entire country, but I’m not sure of the exact year of that. It’s something I ran across. So, I’m thinking I want to write a story about a Suffragist and another woman from some sort of background I haven’t figured out yet, write a romance novel with that background. Women getting the right to vote. And the other one I want to do is actually WWII in San Francisco, or post WWII San Francisco when all the soldiers and the sailors, who were essentially dismissed from the service if they were found out to be gay, they basically stayed in San Francisco and Los Angeles and started gay communities. That’s where it all started is right after WWII. So, I think I’d like to write a story about that period of San Francisco’s history. One more, because I’ve been interested in and slightly obsessed with for a long time – the Paris of the 1920s, pre-1920s, post WWI in the 1920s. So much has been written about it, a lot has been written about that period of time in terms of the actual history of it, the facts surrounding it. You know, Natalie Barney’s salon and Gertrude Stein’s salon and the publishing that women did in Paris during that period. But I think I’d like to fictionalize someone, possibly the reporter Janet Flanner, the New Yorker reporter who wrote the letter from Paris. She arrived in Paris with a lover in toe, but I think I might just get rid of that and have it be somebody, meet someone in Paris.

H: Yeah, you can always just use her as a model.

K: Yup. So, those are my three historical periods so far.

H: Uh huh. Any other topics you’d like to talk about before we start closing this up?

K: Well, I write contemporary fiction as well as historical fiction, but most of the time, ultimately, I think I’m writing historical fiction even when I’m writing contemporary fiction and it’s because I like to have a context for peoples’ lives, I mean, my life has a context. It doesn’t really occur in a vacuum and it occurs with a lot of other stuff happening around it. Partly because I live in San Francisco and I’ve lived her for a very long time, and I’ve been out for a very long time. I like to use a something, the book that I just got published this month deals Indiana’s Religious Freedom Act, in 2015. That’s the background of the story. So, I think I’m always, almost always basically writing historical fiction.

H: Uh huh. So, where can your fans and readers find you online if they want to learn more about your books or follow you on social media?

K: I am on Facebook under Kathy Knowles, you can just look me up. And I’m on Amazon, I have an Author’s Page that I need to do some maintenance on, but I can be reached through Bold Strokes Books Publishers on my page in Bold Strokes books. There’re all kinds of ways to get a hold of me. Especially by email or by Facebook. And I tweet once in a while.

H: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure having you on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.

K: Thanks for asking me, Heather, it was really great.

Show Notes

A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.

In this episode we talk about:

• Kathy’s interest in reading about the LGBT history of San Francisco
• Her favorite historians, including Lillian Faderman, Martin Duberman
• What inspired her three connected novels set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, culminating with the Great Earthquake
• Historic eras Kathy would like to tackle in future books, including the US Suffragist movement, post-World War II San Francisco, and the Paris salon culture of the 1920s
• Books mentioned
  • Awake Unto Me by Kathleen Knowles
  • A Spark of Heavenly Fire by Kathleen Knowles
  • Two Souls by Kathleen Knowles

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
• Twitter: @heatherosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Kathleen Knowles Online

• Website: Kathleen Knowles at Bold Strokes Books
• Twitter: @knowleskathy
• Facebook: Kathy Knowles

One of the themes that I find really valuable in this collection of essays is poking at the question of whether and why it is important to find connections between historic modes of sexuality and the modes familiar to modern producers and consumers of historic research and theory. Given how prominent and foundational Lillian Faderman has been in the field of lesbian history, I always feel a bit guilty when I describe my winces at certain of her approaches, though in this essay I think she addresses the underlying premises of those winces fairly directly. One that is stated outright in this article is "can there be lesbian identity in the absence of sexual activity?" Faderman seems to argue for a negative answer both explicitly in this article and implicitly in much of the discussion in Surpassing the Love of Men, and the obvious reason that this position makes me wince is that it erases the concept of asexual lesbians. If one erases them in the historic record, the obvious implication is to erase them in the modern experience as well. I can understand the position that the complex prototypical model for lesbian identity includes erotic desires and activity between women, but any position that requires it as a necessary defining characteristic is a position that erases my own existence.

A second point the Faderman makes in this essay--one that I'm far more on board with--is that it's important not to get too fixated on lesbian identity as publicly transgressive of social norms. To allow for women who are outwardly conforming (or at least not outwardly non-conforming) but whose lives embody emotional and erotic experiences that can only be seen as lesbian. One of themes promoted in the modern lesbian community is that the state of being a woman who loves women is inherently and existentially transgressive, no matter how it is outwardly expressed. When applying this principle to women in history, we shouldn't overlook or dismiss lesbian lives simply because they were not engaged in a public confrontation with heterosexual expectations. This is a theme that has significant effects on lesbian historical fiction. Modern readers are deeply attached to characters who are outwardly transgressive: passing women, outlaws, women in male-coded professions. Our fiction should have room for stories about the more subtle rebellions of simply existence as well.

Lesfic author Jae has set up a fun reading challenge game for 2018: Lesbian Book Bingo. It's your basic genre/trope-based bingo card to encourage people to read a variety of books in 2018 and win a chance for prizes. I was invited to participate by donating some prizes and having one of my books listed in the Suggested Reading Lists. Here's the topic card for those who might want to participate, but follow the link to Jae's site to register and to participate in the topic-specific blogs (more chances at prizes!) and discussions.

Now, I don't know how many books I'll be reading that fit the bingo squares -- I barely read two dozen novels in a year as it is, and not all of them have lesbian characters. But just because I'm an overachiever and love a writing challenge, I'll be playing along by writing a short bit of fiction for each of the themes. And just to make it even more challenging, they'll all be part of a very loosely connected overall story, which of course will have a historic setting. I'll do my best not to go too far down the research rabbit holes because I do have other things I should be writing! But here's my first installment, for the "Women in Uniform" theme.

Follow the Drum (Lesbian Book Bingo: Women in Uniform)

Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. The rattle of drums had been the sound of my daydreams since I was a girl, walking to the marketplace with my mother beside the market wagon. From where we sold cabbages and onions at the edge of the cobbled square, I could just see down Heerenstraat to where the soldiers drilled in formation in the yard before the barracks. The bright flash of their coats, blue, green, and red, caught the eye and the sharp staccato of the snares called a promise of adventure waiting just a few steps out of reach.

If it had only been the local regiment marching and training, it wouldn't have stirred my blood, but the chance of where Zendoorn stood among the roads and between the great lords meant there were always troops coming and going. They settled into the barracks for a week or two, made a great show of their colors, drank their fill in the taverns, and then one morning the drums would call them away. I remember seeing one company, with the drummer boys out front beating the march, and the banners flying, and the men in their bright coats stepping in time as one as they set out on the road toward Antwerp and maybe even farther on to France. In that moment, my heart grew wings and beat in my breast to follow.

Mother boxed my ears and said, “Don’t you go mooning after soldiers like your cousin Greta!” Greta got nothing from her soldier love but a swelling belly and a lifetime of following the drum, washing and cooking for the soldiers. It wasn’t the soldiers themselves I yearned for but that promise the drums gave of somewhere to go, something to do, someone to be. Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.

When it was time for me to go out into service and save up some money for a dowry, or maybe to set myself up in trade, I got my fill of soldiers carrying beer for Mevrouw Trijn at De Leeuw. Oh, not my “fill” the same way Greta did! But the shine on the tinsel tarnished a bit seeing them up close, day after day, drinking and gambling their wages away, or spending their last coin on a night with one of the other girls who wasn’t as nice about it as I was. Trijn didn’t mind if the girls made a bit extra that way, but she didn’t require it either. The soldiers were men like any others. They marched in to town and soon they’d march out again. Most of them weren’t going anywhere but a foreign battlefield and weren’t going to be anyone but the farmer’s sons and runaway prentices they’d started as. But at least they’d have their chance, which was more than I’d have.

You got to know them, even as short a time as they were in town. Old Joost reminded me of my uncle with his tales and funny stories. Boastful Corneelijs talked big about what a hero he’d been in battle, but always had a word of encouragement for the new boys frightened at the thought of facing the guns. And then there was Martijn. I liked Martijn as soon as I brought the drinks around because he was quiet, and stopped his friends from trying to get a feel beneath my skirts, and when the others were telling rude jokes to try to get me to blush he only looked sideways at me with a crooked smile as if to say, “Never mind them, they’re just little boys.” Which was funny because he was shorter and scrawnier than the rest of them, without even a bit of hair on his lip yet. He was dark, like maybe his grandfather had been a Moor, and he had the most beautiful eyes. I liked him right off, but it felt sisterly, not like how the other girls talked about their sweethearts.

Martijn and his friends were there late into the evening, but he didn’t join in when they brought out the dice and cards. “Careful with my money,” he said, and I could understand that, though the other soldiers ragged on him horribly about it. Most soldiers spent as if they didn’t have a tomorrow. Well, and lots of them didn’t, so maybe I shouldn’t blame them. But it meant Martijn ended up sitting by himself and in a quiet moment I sat beside him and asked where he was from and who his people were. He didn’t really answer, but we talked about places he’d seen. He’d been as far away as Cologne, and once had even crossed the channel to England. He thought maybe he’d go for a sailor and see the Indies when the fighting was over. Maybe I was foolish, but I told him about how the drums made me feel, and how I’d always envied the soldiers marching away to see the world. He didn’t tease me for it, not even a bit. “But that’s for men,” I said with a sigh. “Not for the likes of me.”

It was a mistake to get friendly because the next day the word went round that Martijn’s company would be marching out on the morrow. No use in liking someone when you’ll never see them again. Martijn and his friends came back to De Leeuw that night. Most of them wanted what soldiers usually want before they leave: to get drunk and spend some time with a woman. I didn’t care for that sort of sport so I kept myself mostly in the kitchen, but as some of the girls slipped off to the upstairs rooms there was nothing for it but to carry the tankards around.

One of Martijn’s friends called out, “Hey boy! There’s your sweetheart!” and pushed him toward me so I barely kept from spilling beer over the both of us.

“Sorry,” he muttered and his face flushed even darker than before.

“Hey Martijn! We took up a collection to see you taken care of!” The man slapped a small handful of coins on the table as I set the tankards down. “You’ll see our friend treated right, won’t you Lena?”

I was used to turning matters aside with a few joking words, but it was Martijn they kept after. That wasn’t right. A man’s a man even if he doesn’t fall in bed with every woman he sees. Martijn took me aside and stared at the floor like he was ashamed while he asked quietly, “If you were to…well, you wouldn’t have to do anything? Just let them think we…”

I thought about my reputation, which wasn’t so big a thing as it might be. And I thought about the small pile of coins sitting on the table. But mostly I thought about Martijn and how he’d be marching away in the morning and wishing I could do that too. And I took him by the hand and scooped up the coins in my fist and pasted on a grin for his companions as I pulled him off toward the stairs.

When I’d closed and barred the door we both stood there feeling silly. There wasn’t anywhere to sit but on the bed and I didn’t want to do that in case he got the wrong idea.

“I’m sorry,” Martijn said. “They don’t really mean anything by it. It’s only that I have something of a reputation.”

“For being polite to women?” I said sharply. And then because it wasn’t his fault, I asked, “Have you never had a sweetheart?”

He gave me that crooked grin again. “A time or two. It’s…Lena, would you keep my secret if I told you?”

I frowned at him. What sort of secret could he mean?

“It’s only…I was thinking. Because of what you said about watching the soldiers march away to see the world."

“Women don’t do that.”

“Some of us do.”

I stared at Martijn for a long time trying to make sense of what he’d said. While I was staring at him, he shrugged off his blue uniform coat and started unbuttoning the brass buttons on his waistcoat. And just when I was finding my tongue to protest that I hadn’t changed my mind about bedding him, he…she pulled open her shirt to expose the small, round, pale brown bosoms underneath.

“Some of us wanted to see the world badly enough. We wanted to make better wages than we could doing sewing or cooking. It’s not an easy life, but the chance is there to seize if you dare to reach for it.”

Maybe it was what she said about daring to reach for it. Maybe it was not quite trusting my eyes. Maybe it was finally understanding that warmth that crept into the other girls’ voices. I reached out my hand to feel the softness that had lain hidden under the blue uniform. Martijn gave a little gasp and leaned against my palm so that I could feel the bud of her nipple harden.

“I have had a sweetheart a time or two,” she said with that crooked smile. “And they never had anything to complain about.”

By the time we came back down into the common room, only two of Martijn’s companions were still waiting for her. They gave a hoot of laughter and clapped her on the back, telling her it was long past time to get back to the barracks. Martijn came back to whisper in my ear one more time. “That should keep my disguise safe for a while. Having a close companion will keep it safer. Meet me in the lane behind the barracks before dawn. I’ll put your money to good use.”

There were a few long, cold minutes that next morning when I thought I’d been cozened. When I thought Martijn had taken my savings and left me with nothing but a kiss. Then a shadow slipped around the corner carrying a bundle of clothing. Martijn helped me dress in the unfamiliar garments quickly.

“There’ll be time enough to learn marching and all the rest. Having a uniform will be enough for now. Just keep close to me. I told the recruiting officer I’d look out for you and he made me promise to see you learned quickly.”

“I’ll learn quickly enough,” I told her.

And when the drums sounded out their rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, there was one more soldier in a blue coat with brass buttons marching away down the road. A soldier with somewhere to go, something to do, someone to be