Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

At the Turn of the Road

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This piece was written in 2015 from the prompt to write a short story inspired by the above painting (“LaGrange vs. LaGrange” by Mort Kunstler).

* * *

“They’re coming!”

A small boy ran barefoot up the steps to where the women were clustered, their wide skirts sweeping to the edges of the veranda. Priscilla’s throat went dry, and her fingers pressed tightly around the barrel of the rifle she held. She looked around with a sense of unreality at the others beside her. There was Sara Crosby who had never had occasion to touch a gun in her life before—Priscilla only hoped she would remember to hold it the right way up—there was Mrs. Eythe, who knew how to load and fire a rifle as well as either of her sons, now somewhere up north with General Lee. The firearms they held were a motley collection, mostly old flintlocks and fowling-pieces, but Catherine Moore had a nearly-new Enfield that had belonged to her husband.

The sound of trotting horses was heard round the bend now, and a puff of dust drifted ahead of it as a herald. The women filed down from the veranda, catching their skirts up from the dust by habit, and grouped themselves at the spot where the road narrowed to pass the house. In a moment the cavalry came in sight: dark-blue coats filmed with dust, faces carved hard with weariness and fighting, brown and bay horses snorting and sweating. Just behind the captain a sergeant and some men drove two prisoners in Confederate gray on foot—their hands tied, stumbling stiffly as if their feet were dead.

The captain reined in his horse and lifted a gauntleted hand, and the strung-out troop gradually jingled and rattled to a halt, piling up against itself in closer ranks. He lowered his hand and stared for a moment at the women with rifles, stared as if he thought his eyes were deceiving him—or as if he hoped they did. Priscilla’s eyes ran along the front rank of horsemen, across a seemingly innumerable amount of glinting sabers and holstered sidearms. The metal of her rifle-barrel was warm now from her fingers clutching it—her stomach roiled and there was a sour taste in her mouth. None of the women moved—their leveled rifles made a ragged fringe barely extending beyond their hooped skirts. Behind them, the leaves rustled gently in the stately old trees over the village green…where Catherine Moore’s husband had been hanged by a Union cavalry patrol two weeks before.

There was a determined calm among them, through Priscilla knew that more hearts beside her own must have been beating swiftly. They were old and young, many of them relations in some way, all of them neighbors. There were some who never spoke to each other more than they could help, but they were entirely in agreement on what was to be done today. They were united to prevent the repetition of a tragedy, this time at the expense of a frail white-haired little woman who sat by an open window in a small house on the far side of the green, unaware of what was taking place.

It was Catherine Moore who spoke, her voice firm and cool and bold. “Captain, we would that you turn over those two prisoners to us.”

The captain touched his wide-brimmed hat, bending slightly in stiff courtesy, but he did not remove it. “Madam, that I do not have the authority to do.”

“Neither do you have the authority to hang them. These men are not spies nor criminals, nor are they even deserters from their own army. They are entitled to be treated as prisoners of war.”

Priscilla’s hands trembled for the first time as she allowed herself to look toward the prisoners. She saw Jeff Prentiss, lean and ragged, his fair hair rough and grayed with dust, looking too dulled by exhaustion to know what was going on—his eyes blankly scanned the group of women; he stared straight at her for a second and Priscilla thought he did not recognize her.

The captain raised his voice slightly. “Ladies, I will ask you to remove from the road.”

There was not a flicker, not a word, not a hesitation among them. The motley rifles did not waver.

A sort of charged amusement ran through the ranks of cavalrymen, a murmur that spread back down the lines. A smart-looking lieutenant in blue said something about the monstrous regiment of women that it was just as well the captain did not hear. The second prisoner, a gaunt bearded man who was a stranger to the women, seemed to be almost enjoying the situation.

At last the captain sighed harshly. He lifted his hand palm upwards in resignation. “Madam, as a gentleman I have no other recourse. I will not turn these men over to you. But I will give you my word of honor that they will be safely delivered as prisoners of war.”

Catherine Moore’s gaze remained steadily fixed on him for a moment, as if she were trying to read something in his face. Then she raised the Enfield slightly, so it no longer aimed at the deep blue of the captain’s coat, but at the fairer blue of the sky. She said, “And may the curse of a just Heaven and a bereaved mother be upon you if you should break it.”

Priscilla saw one…two…several more heads in the front ranks of horsemen turn to look speculatively at their commander. He was not the only gentleman in the troop…and their silent scrutiny would bind him to his word if ever he should be tempted to break it. The captain gave an order, and the column of cavalry began with a jingling and rattling to turn itself about. Priscilla pressed forward suddenly, bumping the stock of her rifle against her neighbor’s elbow, trying to get a glimpse of Jeff Prentiss before the blue ranks closed about him. One more glimpse, for it was the last she would see of him for a long time…

A horse moved in front of him, and the cavalry was on its way—picking up its regular trot again. On the other side of the village green the breeze would bring the sound of the hoofbeats to old Mrs. Prentiss’s open window, and she would wonder what the sound was from.

As the last of the troopers disappeared round the bend the women broke ranks, their tongues loosed at last, skirts swishing as they crowded warmly round Catherine Moore. But Catherine stood like a stone, looking after the retreating soldiers, her husband’s Enfield in her hands.

Priscilla drew a deep shaky breath. She let her rifle slide through rather weak hands and rested the stock gently on the ground.

Fairytales on the Menu

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As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been having a lot of fun with fairytale retellings lately. It’s a genre I was never even really aware of until Rooglewood Press’s Five Glass Slippers competition gave me the inspiration to write Corral Nocturne. Writing for that contest and reading the winning entries was such fun, I’ve long toyed with the idea of writing more fairytale-based stories at some point. More recently, I’ve been inspired by Suzannah Rowntree’s wonderfully creative takes on both well-known and lesser-known fairytales. So the long and the short of it is, I have a couple more of my own in various stages of pre-production (to borrow a filmmaker’s term). Lost Lake House is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses set in the Roaring ’20s. And The Mountain of the Wolf, an idea that basically came out of nowhere and smacked me between the eyes this month, is a Western tale of outlaws and revenge based on Little Red Riding Hood. I’m planning to work on one or both of these over this autumn.

Along the way, I’ve been considering the question of why fairytale retellings are such fun to read and especially to write. Perhaps the appeal lies in starting with an existing story structure—for writers like myself, anyway, who find crafting a cohesive plot one of our biggest challenges! The few main plot points are laid out for you, almost like a template, leaving you free to play with the more colorful and subjective elements of character and setting to your heart’s content.

Looking for a metaphor, I thought at first of comparing it to a recipe, but then thought better of it: you don’t have quite so much freedom to shuffle the ingredients of a recipe. It’s more like a menu. On a menu you have a list of categories or components—appetizer, soup, meat, vegetable, side dish, dessert—and it’s up to you to fill in the blank on each and come up with as many different combinations you can think of, using a specified number of each of those pieces.

So, to take the most familiar example, the list of components for a Cinderella story looks something like this:

Key components (main dish and entrees, shall we say)

  • 1 heroine in unhappy or restricted circumstances (Cinderella)
  • 1 unkind relative/figure of authority responsible for heroine’s unhappy state (Wicked Stepmother)
  • 1 hero, deemed inaccessible to heroine by his station in life or some other circumstance (The Prince)
  • 1 important event at which hero and heroine are brought together, with a crucial moment or disaster coming at midnight (The Ball)
  • 1 benefactor who makes it possible for heroine to attend said event (Fairy Godmother)
  • 1 lost shoe that proves vital to the heroine’s fortunes (The Glass Slipper)

Minor components, optional (appetizers and desserts, if you will)

  • 2 other relatives/persons in heroine’s life who assist in making her unhappy; also frequently rivals for hero’s attention (Wicked Stepsisters)
  • Parent or parents of hero, preferably in position of authority and/or grandeur (King and possibly Queen)
  • Variable number of small friends or allies of heroine (mice, dogs, horses, etc.)

Putting it that way, you see how innumerable variations can be crafted on this one basic plot! How many difficult situations can we think of for our heroine to be trapped in (we writers are much too good at inflicting trouble on our characters), how many different eccentric or unlikely benefactors can we invent—how many creative uses can we find for a stray shoe? (Has anyone done a version where the shoe gets flung at someone?) Outlining my second and third, I’ve realized that my own particular angle on retellings—unintentional but consistent—is their real-world setting. They’re straight historical fiction, without magical creatures or imaginary kingdoms involved, but still paralleling the characters and plot of the original fairytale. Coming up with those real-world equivalents is a fun challenge.

Do you enjoy fairytale retellings? If so, what do you think makes them fun to read and write?

Talking Shop with the Brownings

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Don’t you love it when a literary reference in a book leads you on to discover something else interesting?

I’ve been enjoying poetry quite a bit recently, so when I happened on a reference to Robert Browning in Angela Thirkell’s Summer Half, I followed my usual method of pursuing a reference: I hopped over to the Kindle Store and found a free volume of his poems—and on a whim, because I like books of letters, I also picked up the first volume of his correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett (later, of course, Barrett Browning). I’m finding it absolutely delightful so far. It’s intriguing to trace the growth of their friendship and become acquainted with their personalities through the letters. Robert writes in long, eager, running-out-of-breath sentences and seems to forget that he set out to say something else several pages ago, and Elizabeth has a most charming sense of humor. But an additional delight is their frequent conversations about writing. They talk of handwriting, critics, inspiration, and life as a writer in general. I’ve been highlighting my favorite passages as I go, and I thought I’d share a few:

From Elizabeth:

The most frequent general criticism I receive, is, I think, upon the style,—’if I would but change my style’! But that is an objection (isn’t it?) to the writer bodily? Buffon says, and every sincere writer must feel, that ‘Le style c’est l’homme’; a fact, however, scarcely calculated to lessen the objection with certain critics.

On another occasion:

What no mere critic sees, but what you, an artist, know, is the difference between the thing desired and the thing attained, between the idea in the writer’s mind and the ειδωλον [translation] cast off in his work. All the effort—the quick’ning of the breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call ‘insistency,’ and which many would call superfluity, and which is superfluous in a sense—you can pardon, because you understand. The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

And again:

One may be laborious as a writer, without copying twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a moment what three times six is, without ‘doing it’ on their fingers; and in the same way one may work one’s verses in one’s head quite as laboriously as on paper—I maintain it. I consider myself a very patient, laborious writer—though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste, I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by the mind, will draw and concentrate the powers of the mind—and Art, you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man—or woman. I cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one—though one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,—and though all are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility—and to entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of facility. You may write twenty lines one day—or even three like Euripides in three days—and a hundred lines in one more day—and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

And then, not forgetting the practical side, some very sensible advice to Robert:

Thinking, dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others.