#but returning to a former mistress was just not something henry...did

[fideidefenswhore]

Yet, even Chapuys, who gives us this information, says earlier in the same letter that ‘there had been… talk of a new marriage for this king… which rumour agrees well with my own news from the court of France, where, according to letters [I have] received, courtiers maintain that this king has actually applied for the hand of Francis’ daughter’. Chapuys himself therefore does not connect up the rumours of a ‘new marriage’ with Jane Seymour. In early April, Jane was still little more than a lady whom the king was pursuing. At best, in accordance with the conventions of courtly love, she was the lady whom ‘he serves’ – a telling phrase. At worst, she was a passing fancy, whom Henry may have hoped to make his mistress. Chapuys certainly didn’t think much of Henry’s choice. He described Jane the day before Anne’s execution as ‘no great beauty’ and ‘not a woman of great wit’; he implied that she was unlikely to be a virgin, and reported that people said she was inclined ‘to be proud and haughty’. Yet, by this point, the world had changed, and with it, Henry’s intentions towards Jane. It is highly improbable that before Anne was considered guilty of adultery, Henry had seriously begun to plan to make Jane his wife.

1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII, Suzannah Lipscomb

"I hear that, even before the arrest of the Concubine, the King, speaking with Mistress Jane Semel of their future marriage [...]"

[dreamcatcherfication]

Like a Dream That You Can’t Quite Place

So this was a fic requested by @burntuakrisp at one point, and even though it took some time to get around to, here it is! This is a mash up of Satisfied from Hamilton, but Anna singing about Kat. Now I didn’t want to do a direct song-to-story format, so I tried something a little different. This is more of a “inspired by” type, so you’ll catch references to Satisfied, but it’s not actually sung at any point. There’s a part of this that might be a little controversial so let’s hope I don’t get cancelled for it. Sorry for any spelling or grammatical errors, turns out it’s because I’m a ten year old boy who finds sex jokes funny.

Writing Masterpost

And note: Just because this takes place in the past does not mean I am writing about the actual wives of Henry VIII. These are still the musical characters but set in the past.

If you want to send a request or a prompt, my inbox is always open! I publish a story at 8:00 AM PST everyday, so I’m always in need of new ideas. Now featuring random asks:

Prompts | More Prompts | The Trifecta of Prompts | Random Asks

Trigger Warnings: Vague mentions of sexual abuse, mentions of beheading, Henry VIII

In truth, Anna had not wanted to come to the wedding, nor had she found it appropriate that she had been invited. Who would think it would be anything less than awkward for the former wife of the king to come witness his marriage to the new queen. However, it wasn’t jealousy that made the situation awkward, but rather the groom who now stood between two extremely close women. Or in Katherine’s case, girl. 

Anna had not attended the actual ceremony, but she was amongst the dancers in the banquet hall who surrounded the king and his new queen as they feasted. It was strange seeing her dear friend Katherine now wearing a crown of jewels and sitting next to a man three times her size, but Anna could say nothing. She approached the queen and kneeled down. “Your Majesty,” she greeted courtly.

Glancing around uncomfortably, Katherine gently put a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “You do not have to kneel Anna, you were a queen just as I am.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Anna continued to remain formal. If they were in private, Anna would find it absurd to use the royal terms with her former lady in waiting, but she wouldn’t dare cross that line with Henry sitting right next to Katherine. “I’ve come to congratulate you on your marriage.”

Henry clutched his large stomach and forced a smile towards Anna. “How sweet of you, dear sister. Have you brought gifts?”

Nodding, Anna unclasped the locket that she had hanging around her neck. “An antique locket from the House of Cleves. I’m sure her majesty will enjoy it greatly.”

Gasping as she was handed the locket, Katherine admired its beauty. “It’s stunning Anna, thank you so much. Will you help me put it on?”

Realizing he was being forced out of the conversation, Henry cut in. “I can do that, my darling.” He leaned over and grabbed the locket, holding it up to Katherine’s neck. The girl frowned when he fumbled with the clasp, his fat fingers unable to hook it properly. Katherine uncomfortably shifted in the long amount of time it took before Henry finally got the locket in place. “Perfect. It looks radiant on someone as beautiful as you,” he flirted with Katherine, who seemed far too nervous for someone who was married to the man.

Anna started to back away, knowing that Henry had already dismissed her by turning his attention back to Katherine. The girl shot one last longing glance in Anna’s direction before she was forced to return her attention to her husband.

Meanwhile, Anna found herself exiting the hall to go for a walk about the grounds. She could not stand staying in that stifled hall, surrounded by the people who had once ridiculed her. She missed the comfort of Katherine as her lady in waiting, the soft moments they would spend together away from all the horrors of the real world. It was hard for her to see everything they had built together fall apart because of the king. As she traversed the palace grounds, Anna couldn’t help but feel herself start to rewind time, falling into a memory she so clearly remembered.

The sky was bright and the breeze blew through Anna’s hair, the sound of birds chirping almost picture perfect. Of course Anna wasn’t alone (her ladies in waiting were a few feet behind her) but Anna could almost feel free when roaming outside. “Milady,” one of the girls called.

“Yes?”

The lady in waiting made sure there was a wide berth between her and her queen. “The king has requested your presence, he has a new lady in waiting he wishes for you to meet. I believe he has taken rather a,” the girl spoke disdainfully, “liking to this one.”

Sighing, Anna turned away from her freedom and followed her ladies back into the palace where her husband awaited. As much as she disliked her husband, she knew there were far worse men to be wed to. Henry spoke so lowly of her, yet he let her do as she pleased throughout the palace. If he was requesting her presence, then clearly he meant business.

Henry was standing outside of Anna’s bedchambers, his hand on the shoulder of a young girl. The girl was a teenager, and her gaze was thoroughly frightened (although she was doing her best to appear calm). “My wife,” Henry said, his tone a mix between disgust and politeness. “It seems we have received a new lady for you, a one Miss Katherine Howard.”

Katherine was one of the most beautiful girls Anna had ever seen. Sure, she considered herself to be quite beautiful no matter what Henry said, but this girl was a rose, plucked directly from the Garden of Eden. For once, Anna felt something deep in her heart start to stir. “Miss Howard, how kind of you to join us. You must be special if the king has brought you here himself.”

“Oh no,” Katherine spoke and curtseyed. “I am of no importance, but his Grace is most kindly.” Anna had to hide a scoff at that comment. Henry was far from kindly, but he loved hearing praise, something Katherine seemed to understand very well.

Growing bored of the women’s interactions, Henry’s voice drowned out any other conversation. “Well I must return to my duties, and you ladies to your needlework, I assume. It was lovely to meet you Katherine,” Henry gave her a full toothed smile that made all the ladies nervous. He spared a glance to his wife and muttered, “And you do as you will.”

There was a clear tension among the ladies as they realized what was going on. Henry was very clearly showing his wife that he had interests in Katherine, knowing that neither of the girls could do a thing about it. “Hello, my queen,” Katherine cut into the silence, doing her best to retain any semblance of proper court. When the girl looked up and gave Anna that smile, oh the queen could almost forget her name. 

Anna dismissed the other ladies and went inside her chambers with Katherine. “Tell me, where is your family from?”

“Unimportant,” Katherine replied, her face flinching. “I am your humble servant, my background does not matter.”

Watching the way she fidgeted, Anna elected not to push further. She knew Katherine probably came from a bad family she did not want Anna to know about (and by acting the way she did, Katherine had unintentionally given that away). Everything about Katherine was so immediately endearing, and Anna knew from the start they were meant to have some sort of connection. Not the kind Henry was trying to form, but the kind that would last. 

And that was why Anna tried so hard to stomp it out.

B l i n k i n g back into the present, Anna realized she had come across a small grove of trees and plants in the palace grounds. She vividly remembered the times she would bring Kat out into the grove to practice dancing with her. The two of them rejoiced in the private time they spent in each other’s company. Of all Anna’s servants, she had grown comfortable with Kat, enough that they would forgo appearances when free of any probing eyes.

Now, alone in the grove with only the dark of the night, Anna felt as if the memories were ghosts of a past life. She was no longer the queen, and Katherine was no longer her servant. They were different people than the two who had hidden within the grove.

Humming a low tune, Anna walked in circles around the trees, twirling as she passed rocks and cobblestone. She had her arms up as she so often had in the past, leading Kat through courtly dances. “I feel we would still be together if not for the three truths I’ve realized,” Anna spoke to the empty grove. It was easier for her to tell Kat her feelings when the girl was nowhere near enough to hear her.

“The three fundamental truths,” Anna whispered, mostly to herself. There was a stumble in her dancing before Anna resumed with more vigor than when she started. “One. Henry is the king. No matter how much you or I disagree with him, he can have what he wants. And if he wants you, there’s nothing I can do but try and make it easier for you.” Anna had no choice but to obey the king, but that did not quell her desire to defy him and keep Katherine safe with her.

Continuing to hum her tune, Anna came up next to a gnarled tree. Resting her back against the tree, she mimed pulling her partner closer to her. “Two. Your family is of low status. You’ve never disclosed your upbringing to me, but I can tell by the way you act. If Henry had any idea how close we had grown, he would not allow it. Servants and royalty do not mix, unless it is the king and his mistress. The only way he will allow us to be around each other publically is if you are his wife and I am his sister.” 

The image of Katherine standing next to the King wormed its way into Anna’s mind. She wanted to tear the image in half, never to be seen again. But the picture was reality. Anna had no power to rewrite reality. “Three. You’ve always been vague about it, but you confided in me about what had happened in your childhood. What those men had done to you.” A choking sound made its way through Anna’s throat as she realized what she was trying to say. “To tell you that I feel that same connection with you that they did… I cannot do that to you in good conscience. So I will suffer in silence, knowing that I can never be satisfied of this hunger deep within me.” 

Her dancing halted as Anna stared at her empty hands. “I hope you will be happy with your groom.”

Inevitably, Anna knew there would be a catch. She tried not to grow close to Katherine, knowing that Henry was pursuing her. Anna and Katherine were being pitted against each other for the title of queen, and Anna would not allow herself to come between Katherine and the most powerful man in England. She didn’t want Henry to marry Katherine, but she also didn’t want to be exiled by the king for fighting back, ultimately resulting in Katherine and Henry’s marriage anyway.

When it came down to it, Anna was helpless to stop Henry.

But if Anna had known Kat’s fate, she would have allowed herself to be exiled a thousand times over, she would’ve put her own head on a chopping block if it gave her the chance to prevent Kat’s death. Henry had known how close the two girls were, so he ordered that none of her servants tell her of the girl’s imprisonment. It was no act of mercy on his part, but rather for efficiency. If Anna knew what he planned to do to Kat, she would have fought tooth and nail to save the girl.

When she received news about Katherine after six months of silence, it was the news of her death. The pain it brought upon Anna was like no sickness she had ever known. Without being conscious of it, Anna made the vow never to be remarried. She would not betray Kat’s memory by moving on and pushing the love she felt for her best friend to the side. She could never feel the love she felt for Kat with another man. For weeks she refused to interact with her servants beyond what was absolutely necessary. She could not forgive them for keeping Katherine’s imprisonment from her.

But the most painful part were her fantasies. The nights where she could still see Katherine’s eyes, the innocent, most beautiful gaze preserved. In the candlelight, Anna could still remember the way Kat had looked at her when they first met. Anna felt her stomach tighten, knowing those eyes would never rest on her again. She had thought that by allowing Kat’s marriage to Henry, she would still be able to see those angel eyes. But Henry had taken that away from her as well.

Standing in the empty ballroom at Richmond only reminded Anna of the time she had with Kat. When the girl was married to Henry, it had been hard to keep their friendship alive, but they had managed as best they could. Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Anna turned around

and came face to face with Katherine in her regal dress. The girl still had the same youthful glint in her eyes, despite now having the status of a queen. The ballroom was alive with dancers and music, the air bright and festive. “It’s been so long Anna.”

Swallowing thickly, Anna nodded. “It has Kat.” Letting her eyes drop, Anna noticed the locket around Katherine’s neck. “You still have it?”

Looking down to confirm what Anna was staring at, Kat smiled. “Yes, I never take it off. You would have to chop my head off like Boleyn to get me to part with it.”

The sick feeling in Anna’s stomach grew exponentially, but she hid it behind a polite smile. “Well then, would you like to dance with me, Your Majesty?” Holding out a hand, Anna watched her darling gracefully take it.

“I would love to.” As it had always been, Anna led the dance. There was nothing special about it, just the swaying to the melodies produced by the lute. The way their hands fit together felt so right, but Anna knew it wouldn’t last. She knew Kat would have to leave. That’s why she danced with her for far longer than was traditionally acceptable in the court.

It was the best moment of her life, the soft, silent comfort of Kat in her arms. It was the most relaxed that Anna had ever seen the queen. Kat needed the comfort of a friend, and that was what Anna would give her. Nothing else. There were far too many reasons why Anna was trapped in her position. But from where she currently stood, her position was not so bad.

The dance was stopped when Anna yawned and stumbled on her feet. “You should get some sleep, it’s very late,” Kat spoke softly, pulling herself away from Anna.

“Wait, don’t leave,” Anna pleaded, reaching out.

The queen frowned but then giggled at the desperate face Anna was making. “Why?”

“I’m afraid I might never see you again,” Anna confessed, remembering the news of Katherine’s death. She was frightened that if Kat left the room, she would never return.

Putting a hand on Anna’s arm, Katherine smiled. “You’re insatiable, just like the king. But I’ll always be here with you. As long as you remember me, I’ll never leave you.” Kat balanced on her tip toes and gave Anna a kiss on the cheek before scurrying out of the room.

“Wait!” Anna called, reaching a hand out, but Katherine was already gone.

The ballroom was once again silent and dark, not a single soul but Anna within. Dropping to her knees, Anna stared up at the ceiling and prayed that Kat had been granted mercy. “She was right,” the woman choked out. “Henry will never be satisfied.”

“I will never be satisfied.”

[melodiouswhite]

Oh No, Emotions! Ch. 04

4. First evening in the new home

Edwina still had trouble to believe that all of this was really happening.

In less than a day she had got a new home, new things, new everything, even people she could turn to. Pensively she looked at the newly full wardrobe.

The shopping tour had been interesting.

Edwina had found out, that Lady Summers had first met the three men in their school days, that she was a conversational therapist (“one of the best worldwide, may I add!”) and that she used to travel around the world a lot, but her health was preventing her from doing it now. She was also German, which explained the muttering in foreign languages and her faint accent.

However, there were topics that the blonde absolutely refused to talk about.

When Edwina asked her about her own family, she became oddly cagey and told the younger woman to never bring it up again. Same, when the she inquired about the older's health, the servants and especially about the other lodgers.

“Ask them yourself”, the Lady had just answered, “They'll tell you once they trust you enough.”

They had come home with almost a dozen stuffed bags (which explained, why the Lady had taken two of her servants with her) and Edwina had needed a while to store everything. She had never owned so much clothing (or so many things at all) in her entire life.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you need it.”

“Are you pitying me?!”

“Don't confuse sympathy with pity.”

The countess's finishing tone had ended the argument.

They had arrived back at the villa simultaneously with a flustered Dr. Jekyll, who had remembered, that he was on a holiday. Before Edwina had been able to say something, he had fled to his own room and locked himself inside.

“He has an inferiority complex”, the Lady had explained, “When someone is aggressive towards him, he automatically assumes that he did something wrong and that it's his fault.”

“Oh”, the former convict had mumbled awkwardly.

Now it was almost 6pm and dinner would be soon.

Edwina had never had a regular meal in her entire life, except for her time in prison.

She had just eaten whenever there had been an opportunity and enough money in her pocket. Which hadn't been every day. That much was obvious by her appearance alone. Maybe she was so small and slight because of her malnourishment. Someone had once called her an anorexic emo. She had beaten that person to a pulp in a fit of anger.

Finally, she got bored of sitting in her room and decided to walk around. But when she opened the door, she nearly bumped into the Indian butler. He quickly apologised and informed her, that it was time for dinner.

However, when she wanted to go downstairs, she saw a desperate Mr. Utterson stand in front of Dr. Jekyll's door, knocking and trying to get him out of his room.

“Henry, please come to dinner. You can't stay in there forever!”

“I don't feel like eating”, a hushed voice answered.

“Sweetheart, come out, I beg you!”

The lawyer looked and sounded as if he was about to cry.

Edwina stepped up to him.

“What's going on? Is it my fault, that he's locking himself in?”

“I don't think that it's your fault, but I don't know!”, the lawyer cried in exasperation and threw his hands up. “He won't tell me what the problem is! That hasn't happened in years!”

“So he's been like that before?”

“Yes.”

Okay, now she was concerned for real.

“Can I try?”, she asked.

Mr. Utterson raised an eyebrow. “No offence, Miss Hyde, but you're as tactful as a steam roller.”

“I know, I know! Just let me try!”

He hesitated. But then he nodded reluctantly and stepped to the side.

She knocked thrice on the door.

“Doctor Jekyll? It's me, the newbie.”

“… Oh, Miss Hyde. Can I help you somehow?”

“You can come out”, she said bluntly, “Doesn't matter if you're hungry or not. Your husband is worrying his head off out here.”

“ … I can't.”

She frowned. A sense of foreboding arose in her.

“Doctor”, she asked as carefully as possible, “What exactly are you doing in there?”

Mr. Utterson looked at her in horror. “Miss Hyde”, he whispered, “You aren't saying that …?”

She shushed him and listened.

But Dr. Jekyll wasn't answering.

“Alright”, she called, “If I guess it right, will you tell me?”

“… Fine.”

“Are you hurting yourself?”

Mr. Utterson's face became paler than her own (and she was very pale). His eyes filled with tears and for some reason she really hated that.

The doctor's voice was barely audible, but he said: “… How did you guess?”

She sighed and explained: “Female intuition and experience with self-loathing. Doctor Jekyll, I'm sorry for being such a bitch earlier. I didn't intend to be so mean, I just … I never interacted with polite people in my entire life. Criminals and homeless people are all I have ever known. And if I came off as homophobic, I'm sorry too. I don't care about someone's sexual or romantic orientation or gender identity. I know that I hurt your feelings, but believe me, I didn't realise it in that moment. Don't tell me that it isn't my fault, I know better than to buy that. But you can't just lock yourself in like that. Whatever you're doing, stop it and open the door. Your husband is crying.”

“Miss Hyde, please leave me be.” It was barely a whimper.

“No. Don't think I don't know what you're going through right now. Trust me, I know what's best right now. And what's best is that you come out and be with the people who care about you.”

There was no answer.

Edwina fumbled in the pocket of her hoodie. There she found the security needle she had nicked from the kitchen earlier.

“Doctor, I don't want to do this, but just a fair warning: If you don't come out willingly, I will open the door by force. Remember, I'm a criminal, I can crack that lock with ease. So how about we all act like adults? Just do it for your husband, okay?”

Oh, she hated pleading and bargaining. Usually a cold glare or a threatening undertone to her voice got her what she wanted (she didn't know why, but people were afraid of her, a small, slight girl). But she couldn't resort to either right now.

The blond man's unwillingness to cooperate was starting to agitate her, however.

“Alright, I really don't want to do this, but you leave me no other choice”, she warned and pulled out the security needle.

“Miss Hyde!”, Mr. Utterson protested.

Right in that moment, the door opened and Dr. Jekyll stood before them, teary-eyed and looking just so done with everything.

Before he could close the door again, Mr. Utterson pulled him into the hallway and into a tight hug. The brunette noticed that the blond's sleeves were rolled up and there were scratching marks on his upper arms.

“How about we take care of those, before we go down to dinner?”, she suggested drily.

They spent ten full minutes patching up the bleeding skin.

Then she shooed them down into the kitchen, because she was hungry.

She was surprised to see that they were dining alone.

“Where is the mistress of the house?”, she wanted to know.

Mr. Utterson explained in return that Lady Summers usually ate alone in her study.

“Oh.”

The young woman was a bit disappointed, but didn't voice it.

The butler served them leek soup with lots of other vegetables and mince.

Edwina hated leek soup, but when she hesitantly tried it, she found it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. The food at homeless shelters and poor kitchens was mediocre at best and prison food was flat out disgusting. But this … this was heavenly.

It also helped that Dr. Jekyll was slowly brightening up. That was good, a smile suited him so much better.

Both men watched in amazement at how quickly she finished her food.

“What's up?”, she inquired.

“Where has your food gone so quickly?”, Mr. Utterson marvelled.

The brunette raised an eyebrow, but grinned lopsidedly. “I inhaled it”, she joked and the gentlemen chuckled.

“Glad to see you enjoyed it”, Dr. Jekyll stated.

She stared at him. “Enjoyed it? Enjoyed it??? This is the most fucking delicious thing I have ever eaten! And I don't even like leek soup! Who cooked this, a five stars cook?”

Mr. Utterson shook his head. “No, it was Sameer, the butler. Luise has a cook, but she insists that once a week another member of the house staff takes their turn with cooking. This way we have more diversity in our diet.”

Her eyes became even bigger. “This food is home-cooked?”

The older men looked at her in surprise.

“Of course it's home-cooked”, Dr. Jekyll replied, “Why would it not be? We could even tell you each ingredient in this soup!”

Suddenly his eyes widened as well.

“Miss Hyde …”, he began gingerly, “Have you never eaten real food before?”

“Nope”, she declared cheerfully. “Never even had a regular meal until I landed myself in prison one year and a half ago. And prison food is rubbish. But well, it was better than nothing and I have a strong stomach.”

She said it as lightly as she could, even though she had never liked that topic. But that didn't stop her two table companions from staring at her in horror.

She scowled: “Don't give me that look. And don't pity me. I've been a street rat for half of my life and I'm still kicking, so no need to fuss about it. It's in the past now.”

Awkward silence ensued.

I need to change the subject, Edwina thought.

So she told the two men of how Lady Summer's guiding tour around the house and the subsequent shopping tour had gone (Dr. Jekyll looked a bit sheepish, when she mentioned the chaos in the archive and Lady Summers' reaction to it).

Entertaining people wasn't her strong suit, but she managed to lighten the mood at least a little and for her that was a great achievement.

When the men had finished their food, Miss Hyde took the dishes and glasses and loaded the dishwasher (she had to ask them how that thing worked). Then they went back upstairs.

Before the two husbands returned to their shared room, Henry addressed their new fellow lodger.

“Miss Hyde.”

She turned to face him. “Hm?”

“Thank you for your consideration earlier”, he told her with a grateful smile.

She blinked in surprise. Then she grinned for a second and blushed a little bit.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever”, she grumbled, “Just don't get all touchy-feely on me.”

Henry laughed: “Don't worry, I respect your personal space.”

“Good. Hey, you gonna use the bathroom any time soon?”, she wanted to know.

He thought for a moment. “Not for at least another hour”, he estimated. “Why?”

She beamed. “Neat! 'Cause I'm now going to claim the bathtub and take the first long bath in my life! See ya, Doc!”

Then she walked off like nobody's business.

For a minute the blond gaped after her incredulously. Then he chuckled and shook his head.

She may have no manners, but there is something about her …

Gabriel joined him and wrapped an arm around him from behind.

“What do you think of her, love?”, he asked him.

Henry smiled and leaned into him.

“She is incredibly impolite, but I think that her heart is in the right place. Perhaps she's actually a kind young woman, once she learns some manners and gets used to us.”

“She definitely knows her way around”, Gabriel agreed. “And she’s a quick thinker. But most people like her are. That's how they get by. Although I'm surprised at how expertly she handled the situation earlier.”

The blond sighed. “Speaking of which … I'm sorry for scaring you like that.”

“Shhhh”, the black-haired man cooed, “I know what I was dealing with when I married you. It's fine now. But please don't do that again, honey. You know I can't stand to see you hurt.”

Henry turned his head to kiss his husband.

“I love you so much. What would I be without you?”

Gabriel grinned: “A complete mess, that's what.”

They chuckled and finally went back into their room.

Life certainly would never get boring with Edwina Aloise Hyde.

[spellsword177]

Ranking Lord Peter Whimsey Novels

Below is a note I did on Facebook a few years ago with some slight edits for Throwback Thursday.  I still largely agree with my rankings.

This year I read through the Lord Peter Whimsey mystery series by Dorothy L. Sayers, a contemporary to Agatha Christie and a writer described as the Mistress of Mystery.  The primary differences between the two authors I have found is Sayers outperforming Christie in terms of writing style and characterization and Christie surpassing Sayers in crafting intricate plots and difficult mysteries.  I have enjoyed this series, and thought I might once again put forth my rankings.  Remember, this is only my opinion and should you read these books for yourself you might find you have a different order. 11. Unnatural Death (1927) - Dr. Carr is overheard in a restaurant discussing the death of a wealthy, elderly cancer patient three years ago who was terminally ill.  He had suspected foul play, but was unable to prove it and was subsequently run out of town.  How did she die, who was responsible, and why are other people suddenly, mysteriously dropping dead?  While the solution was likely cutting edge at the time and very interesting, I unfortunately had this one just about completely solved midway through and was waiting for the characters to catch up.

10. Have His Carcase (1932) - Mystery Novelist Harriet Vane discovers the corpse of a man on a rock along the beach whose throat has been cut to the bone during her walking trip through the South West coast of England.  Help is summoned, but not before the body is washed away due to high tide.  Who was the man, why was he later discovered with three hundred sovereigns on his person, and what does it all have to do with Russian Czars?  The overall mystery in this one was fairly interesting, and the use of a cipher with coded letters added an interesting twist.  This book just didn’t connect with me as well as her other works.

9. The Nine Tailors (1934) - On New Year’s Eve in Fenchurch St. Paul, Lord Peter Wimsey fills in for Will Thoday to assist in a nine-hour peal of bells while stranded in the town.  On Easter, a man’s mysterious and mutilated body is found near the surface while opening a grave of Lady Thorpe, who had died on New Year’s Day, so her recently deceased husband, Sir Henry Thorpe could be buried next to her.  Was he man calling himself “Driver” who had arrived in town after the New Year only to later vanish, why was there an undelivered letter from France addressed to a Paul Taylor, and how is Arthur Cobbleigh, a British soldier listed as MIA since 1918, related to the case?  This book, along with Gaudy Night, has been frequently listed as the best of Sayers mystery novels.  While it had the better mystery of the two, the characters were not as relatable.

8. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) - General Fentiman is found dead in an armchair at the Bellona Club on Armistice Day.  Rigor mortis is already starting to let up beginning, unusually, with his left knee, suggesting he has been dead for some time.  Who was Mr. Oliver who claimed to have to have had the General as his guest overnight, how did Fentiman arrive at the club as no one saw him before the discovery, and what does it all have to do with Lady Dormer, Fentiman’s sister, who had died the previous day?  I appreciated the dynamics between the characters and the examination of George Fantiman’s struggle with PTSD.

7. Strong Poison (1931) - The jury and the community at large is divided over whether mystery author Harriet Vane poisoned her former lover and fellow writer, Phillip Boyes, with arsenic.  Did she purchase multiple poisons under assumed names only for plot research as she claimed, could he have been poisoned earlier in night dining with his cousin, Norman Urquhart, when no one else was affected, and was the motive really over Boyes’s sudden change of heart over marriage?  The twists and turns in this one were thrilling to unravel.

6. Clouds of Witness (1926) - Peter Wimsey’s brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, has been arrested and charged with the murder of his sister Mary’s fiancé, Captain Denis Cathcart.  The two had been spotted earlier that evening arguing over allegations Cathcart had been caught cheating at cards in Paris, and later Gerald was discovered by Mary kneeling over Cathcart’s body just outside the Wimseys’ shooting lodge.  The man was killed by a bullet from Denver’s revolver, and Gerald’s only alibi is having gone for a late-night stroll only to have found Cathcart’s body.  Peter Wimsey is on the case to find the real solution and find out why so many people, including his siblings, are lying.  I loved the solution to this novel and found it to be very original.

5. Gaudy Night (1935) - Harriet Vane has returned to her alma mater, Shrewsbury College, Oxford, to attend the Gaudy dinner falling in love with academic life all over again.  Later in the years, the dean writes her asking for help, hoping to avoid scandal in finding out who at the college is behind the many acts of vandalism and threats against women in education.  As stated earlier, this book, along with The Nine Tailors, has been frequently listed as the best of Sayers mystery novels.  While there are no murders to be solved, this one had the better story of the two and I adored the subject matter.  My only criticism are the book could have been shortened by about a third.

4. Busman’s Honeymoon (1937) - Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane have recently married and are on honeymoon at Talboys, a farmhouse he purchased through correspondence at her request.  They arrive to find the house locked, the former owner, Noakes, nowhere to be found, and the community surprised the learn there are new owners.  The next morning, Noakes is found in the cellar having been dead for a week from head injuries.  Who was the last person to see Noakes alive, was Noakes blackmailing the killer, and how was Noakes really killed? I really enjoyed this book, but felt the additional chapters covering Wimsey’s guilt over the culprit’s impending execution to be interesting, but unnecessary.  Its inclusion can be attributed to Sayers’s insistence of making mystery books more like dramatic novels

3. Murder Must Advertise (1933) - Death Bredon, Peter Wimsey in disguise using his middle names, is discretely trying to solve the sudden death of Copywriter Victor Dean who fell down a spiral staircase at Pym’s Publicity, Ltd. not long after hinting something scandalous in a letter to the management. Was it really an accident as everyone believes, how are Dian de Momerie and cocaine smuggling involved, and who at Pym’s is hiding a dark secret?  Although, Sayers was not satisfied with this novel, it was easily one of my favorites.

2. Five Red Herrings (1931) - Sandy Campbell, a talented painter and notoriously quarrelsome drunkard, is found dead from a fractured skull in a stream with a half-finished painting on the bank above.  While the painting is an excellent forgery, it is impossible for Campbell to have worked on it.  This leaves only six people who could have possibly murdered the man and set up the scene to look like an accident. What was missing from the scene of the crime that was so important, when did Campbell really die, and which one of them did it? The only part of this book I hated was trying to decipher what some of the characters were saying as Sayers insisted on writing the dialog phonetically to match Scottish accents.

1. Whose Body? (1923) - A body of a mysterious man wearing only pince-nez was discovered in a bathtub in the apartment of Mr. Thipps.  How did the corpse get in the bathtub, is the case connected to the disappearance of Reuben Levy, a famous financier, who vanished from his own bedroom the night before, and what is the significance of a recent flurry of trading in Peruvian oil shares?  The solution to this one was fairly easy to uncover, and deliciously macabre.  It’s been said this novel is the one most like mystery books written by other authors of the genre; perhaps, that is partially why I enjoyed it the most of all the books in the Wimsey series.

[pocket-anon]

CSJJ Day 27: More Than Enough

Happy Saturday, everyone! Here's my submission for this year's CS January Joy, inspired by Emma and Killian's exchange aboard the Jolly in 7x02 and the realization that even after their wedding, this particular happy ending was still years in the making. Apologies for the angst, but I did do my best to deliver the "Joy" in January Joy in the end (despite being terribly rusty).

Special thanks to @katie-dub (congratulations on your newest little blessing, my friend!) and @lenfaz for spearheading this year's @csjanuaryjoy. This piece would probably not exist without your efforts. XOXO

Find it on AO3 and FFN.

Summary:  It's been five years since they were married. Five years of trying. Five years of disappointment. Emma's starting to believe she's never going to get her second chance. But her pirate husband has a way of saying what she needs to hear. And life still has a way of surprising them both. (Captain Swan one-shot post 7x02. CS Baby. Angst & Fluff. Canon Compliant. Rated T.)

Previously, on Once Upon a Time:

“This isn’t an ending, Emma.  There’s more to come.”

“But we don’t know for sure.  What if I don’t get a second chance?”

“It’s going to be okay.”

 *                             *                             *

 A blanket of freshly fallen snow paints everything beyond the porch white, but the overcast January sky ensures it’s a dull kind of white.  Cold.  Bleak. Barren.  Emma gives a plaintive sigh as she nurses her morning coffee and sits curled up on the end of the built-in seat that borders the bay window, her legs pulled up under her on the dark green cushion and her spine settled into a large throw pillow which is propped up between her and the side of the low, adjoining bookcase.  She stares blankly out the window through the slightly withdrawn curtain, the scene a gauzy blur to her unfocused eyes, and clutches her mug with both hands like a lifeline, in desperate need of even the small amount of comfort she draws from the press of the warm ceramic against her skin.

Outside, the occasional passersby catch her attention: Grandma Hubbard with her faithful retriever. A couple of former Vikings out to shovel snow for hire.  Ashley and Sean walking with Alex and bow-legged little Gus while Sean wears their newest baby sister, Ellie, snug against his chest.  The baby’s wiggling limbs are clad in the fluffy pink fabric of her bunting, and the white poof of her hat is just visible over the edge of her carrier. Emma blinks and glances away, a lump forming in her throat.  Maybe she should have huddled in Killian’s chair by the fireplace instead.

What little is left of the coffee is tepid by the time a familiar black car comes up the street and pulls into the vacant spot behind the Bug, and she waits numbly while Killian comes through the front gate and carefully crunches his way up the icy steps, having returned from his early morning jaunt to the harbor to check on the Jolly.

The front door opens, and he puffs a little as he enters, as though trying to expel the frigid air from his lungs.

Emma’s lips part a fraction of an inch, and she tips her head a couple degrees in a poor attempt to aim her voice over her shoulder.  “Hey.”

She doesn’t have to turn around to register the sunny grin in his voice.  “’Morning, love.”  

She listens to him abandon his shoes to the drip tray and unzip his thick coat before stowing it in the armoire beside the door.  Then there's the creak of a floorboard and a quiet rustle as he moves toward her in sock feet, and his cold hand lands on her shoulder.  She turns her head reflexively so he can plant a quick kiss on her mouth.

Killian pauses as soon as he sees her weak attempt at a smile, a wrinkle slicing across his brow. “What’s wrong?”  She doesn’t have to answer before his concerned eyes light with understanding. He licks his lips. “Another negative test?”  His words are soft.

Open book.  Emma glances away and nods numbly.  Her lashes flutter shut, and the heat of tears begins to burn her nose and mouth with almost no warning.  It’s as though the anguish that’s been building, simmering, in the depths of her soul for months – for years – is suddenly determined to breach the surface again, and she begins to shudder and sniffle while strong fingers gently pry her cup from her grasp and her favorite pair of arms slips behind her back and beneath her knees in order to scoop her off the window seat.  She clutches blindly at him, indifferent to the chill that lingers on his skin and clothes, the shiver that runs through her instead a response to the sad rumble in his chest.

“I know, Swan,” Killian murmurs in her ear, his voice strained more from emotion than from physical effort as he hauls her over to the sitting area by the fireplace.  “I know.”

She begins to sob when he settles them on the sofa, no longer concerned with trying to maintain any appearance of strength or any of the stoicism she’s learned to layer over her heart as time has marched on.  It’s been nearly five years since she and Killian were married, nearly five years since they decided to try to start a family of their own.  

Five years of disappointment.  

Five years of “maybe next month.”  

Five years of “not yet.”

Five years of failure.

And she’s tired.  Tired of wishing and wanting and waiting and digging deep to find just a little more hope. Tired of silently pleading and bargaining with Zeus and whatever other powers that be to bless them with a child. Tired of smiling politely and trying to be happy for every glowing mother-to-be and every new baby in this town while secretly wishing they weren’t around every damn corner.  Tired of pretending it doesn’t bother her.  Tired of feeling it somehow must be her fault, like her body must be broken.

Part of her wishes they would give up trying just so she wouldn’t have any more expectations.  But she knows, deep down, she can’t give up – she won’t.  Because as much as Killian tries to assure her it’ll be alright either way, she can’t turn her back on the possibility of having a child with him, of building the family they’ve both craved for so long.  And time is a cruel mistress who steals a little more of her youth and a little more of her chance of conceiving with every passing day.  She’s almost forty now, and Henry reached adulthood and left home in search of his own destiny almost three years ago. There’s no time to take a break.  So instead she condemns herself to counting days and peeing on sticks and taking prenatal vitamins that began to feel superfluous a long time ago while she watches the weeks go by with the steady tick of a biological clock as foreboding as any dark prophecy.

Emma cries.  And she cries and cries.  And Killian settles them on the sofa and rocks her while her shoulders shake and she comes undone in her accumulated grief.  She wondered once whether she could really call it grief – this mourning for something she never had in the first place.  But every time she cries like this, she knows that’s what it is.  Grief. Despair.  Heartbreak.  Not as acute or consuming as other kinds of heartbreak, of course – she’ll never forget what it was like to watch the light fade from Killian’s eyes and to feel his dead weight in her arms or what it was like to try to choke out a final goodbye when they closed the lid of his coffin – but this is a kind of heartbreak nonetheless.

She’s not sure how long they sit there with her legs across his lap, her head beneath his collar bone and her fingers wound into the front of his shirt while he keeps his arm around her and wisely withholds any words of encouragement.  She’s heard enough hope speeches from her mother on the matter to make her stomach turn, but Killian knows better, understands how important it is to allow her pain a voice rather than suppressing it with platitudes and promises no one can keep.  He’s known enough of his own pain to understand.  Gods, could she love him any more?

The house is silent save for the sound of her whimpers and stuttering breaths and the occasional loud sniffle, and his shirt is damp with her tears when she finally manages to regain control, her misery retreating back into the numb spot that’s become chronically wedged in the center of her chest.  Emma rubs away the moisture on her cheek with the heel of her hand.  “Sorry.”

He hums.  “Don’t apologize.”

A deep sigh escapes her lips, and she shakes her head against him.  “I just…  I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

He’s still for a moment before he presses his lips to her temple and uses the curve of his hook to nudge her hand over until it rests above his heart.  It’s something she’s taken to doing ever since his return to the living – reaching to feel the beat of life that’s been restored beneath his ribs, reassuring herself that he’s back and not going anywhere.  “Do you remember when we said goodbye in the Underworld?” he asks quietly, his tone thoughtful.  “Did you think then that I’d ever be here with you again?”

She chuffs.  Of course Killian knows what to say.  He always does.  She shakes her head again.

His chest rises and falls beneath her like the soothing buoy of the sea.  “I don’t know what the future holds, Swan, but we both know what it’s like to feel hopeless before the story is really over.”  He swipes a stray blond lock out of the way and hunches forward to rest his forehead against hers.  “Maybe our story includes a child, and maybe it doesn’t.  But I’m not afraid of how it ends so long as I get to play it out with you.”  The corner of his mouth quirks soberly.  “You’re still my happy ending.”

A softer, more pleasant surge of tears threatens to crack her open once again, but Emma bites her lip and wills it down, smoothing her palm back and forth over his chest and giving a little nod.  This.  Her life with him.  As much as she hopes for more, she realizes, this is still more than enough, more than she ever dreamed she’d have once upon a time.  As impossible as it seems, perhaps she’d forgotten that.  “I love you,” she murmurs, closing her eyes and listening to the air fill his lungs.

“And I you, darling.” He straightens a little in order to bury his nose in her hair, hugging her close before letting his shoulders fall with a sigh.  “And I you.”

 *                             *                             *

 She stops counting the days, stops monitoring her cycles and obsessing over the calendar about what days she’s supposedly more likely to conceive.  Coupling with Killian becomes more about them again and less about them trying to achieve something, and as the next few months pass, Emma gradually relearns how to live in the here-and-now, how to stop spending every waking moment with her eyes pinned on the horizon waiting for something else to come – how to just be.  The constant ache that’s increasingly filled her chest for the past several years begins to ebb in increments.  And on the morning at Granny’s when a sudden wave of nausea sends her scrambling toward the rear of the diner for the ladies’ room, she chalks it up to the same stomach virus that kept her brother and half the children in his class out of school the week before.

“Are you alright, Swan?” Killian asks when she returns to the table, his face a mask of worry.

Emma impatiently swipes a stray hair away from her face, feeling grumpy and slightly embarrassed. “Yeah.”  Her answer comes hastily, and she slumps back into her seat in the booth with a little groan.  “This is what I get for babysitting Neal last week.”

The sound he makes in his throat is grim.  “Sorry, love.”  His brow wrinkles with sympathy.  “Shall we have Granny box up your plate for later?”

She eyes what remains of her scrambled eggs, and another churn of her stomach causes her to blanch.  “Um, no.” She swallows hard and pushes the rest of her breakfast away, trying to appear satisfied.  “No, I’m good.”

It’s an irritating next few days as her nausea continues to come and go, subsiding long enough to let her think the virus has abated only to rear its ugly head again the following day. It’s near the end of the week when Killian suggests she consult with Dr. Whale, and after her latest round of heaving what had been lunch into the toilet, she pulls out her phone.

It’s a couple of hours and another episode of vomiting later when Whale returns her call.  “It’s got you too, huh?” he asks when she croaks her hello.

“Yeah, I think so.”  She holds the phone away from her a second so she can finish rinsing out her mouth, hurriedly drying her face with a hand towel and clearing her throat.  The early March sun floods their bedroom with brilliant light and gentle warmth as Emma absently runs a hand over her tortured stomach and crosses the threshold of the master bath to perch herself on the foot of the bed.  “It’s been going around, right?  I know Neal and a lot of his friends had it.”

“It’s still cold and flu season,” he agrees.  “Everyone’s got something.  Are you having any other symptoms?  Fever? Cough?  Aches?”

Emma glances out the window to watch the wind disturb the naked boughs of the tree that towers in the corner of the front yard.  “Uh, no. No, everything else is okay.”

“Eat anything strange or undercooked lately?”

“Not unless Granny has it out for me.”

“Probably just gastroenteritis then,” he says, sounding cheerful.  “I’m happy to call you in a prescription for nausea medication.  You’re not pregnant, are you?”

She blinks at the all-too-familiar twinge she suddenly feels in her chest and bows her head, her eyes focusing on the thick pile of the rug beneath her feet while she does her best to sound unruffled.  “Um, no. No, I don’t think so.  Why?”

“Oh, I always have to ask. Some nausea meds aren’t safe in pregnancy,” Whale explains breezily.  He pauses.  “Have you checked recently?”

The question prompts her to think, and her brow furrows.  “Uh, no?  I don’t think so.”

“Is there a chance you might be?” he asks, and the increasing interest in his voice makes Emma’s shoulders stiffen.  “I mean, are you and Killian using –”

“No!”  She cuts him off a little more abruptly than she means to, and her face grows warm as she clears her throat again.  “No, we’re…  we don’t.”

He hums thoughtfully in her ear.  “Well, do me a favor – check a pregnancy test and get back to me so I know what medication to order for you, okay?  Better safe than sorry.”

Emma bites her lip. “Uh, right.  Yeah. Okay.  I’ll call you back.”  She hangs up the phone and tosses it aside on the mattress with a heavy sigh, letting her eyes fall shut.  Fine, she thinks.  Fine.

Three minutes later she’s leaning forward on her bathroom counter and staring, dumbfounded, at the two pink lines in the oval window of the home pregnancy test in front of her.

Two lines.

But…

“Killian?”  Her voice comes out as a squeak, and, despite her shock, she has enough wherewithal to realize there’s no way he’ll have heard her. “Killian?” she bellows raggedly, feeling the burn of tears.  “Killian!”

“Emma?”  The sound of pounding feet is immediate, and he’s up the stairs and by her side in mere moments, brow creased and jaw tensed as though he’s prepared to face down whatever magical threat may have suddenly appeared in their bathroom.  His flashing eyes dart this way and that in search of danger before they fall on her. “Swan?  What’s wrong?”  His hand finds her shoulder, and he carefully turns her to face him, his perplexed gaze raking over her for a clue as to what the trouble is.

She covers her mouth with one hand now, her shoulders shaking with happy sobs, and wordlessly hands him the little plastic stick before her other hand settles over her belly.

Killian takes the test from her and blinks down at it.  She can see the cogs whirling in his head for half a second before his eyes light with hesitant recognition.  “Is this…?” He gapes up at her, incredulous, and seems almost afraid to say the words.  “Does this mean...?”

Emma manages a frantic little nod.

The test clatters to the counter, and he steps closer, reverence written across his features. “You’re with child?” he asks, now edging on a whisper.  

Her breath catches in her throat and erupts as a little barking gasp when she nods again and winds her arms around his neck, closing her eyes and savoring the strength of his embrace and the comfort of having his shoulder beneath her cheek.  “I…  I thought it was the stomach flu,” she says with a weak chuckle.

His rich laugh echoes off the tiles, and Killian cards his fingers through her hair and rocks them back and forth while she clings to him for all she’s worth.

Gods, it’s happening.  It might actually be happening.

 She freezes and pulls back a little.  “Wait. What if it’s wrong?” she asks with huge eyes, doubt suddenly flooding her chest and threatening to suffocate her joy so fast it makes her tremulous.  “I mean, these things aren’t always right.  What if –” She gnaws on the corner of her lip. “What if it’s not true?”

“Hey.”  Killian slides his hand forward to cup her jaw, his thumb sweeping across the tear tracks marring her skin.  There’s the faintest reflection of her anxiety in his earnest blue stare, but his voice is calm.  “Hey. It’s alright.  Do you want to check again?”

Emma’s heart rises in her throat at the prospect.  “Yes. No.”  She whimpers.  Could she bear to lay eyes upon another negative pregnancy test after this sudden injection of hope?  She’s not so sure.

His arms tighten around her when she leans forward and returns her head to his shoulder.  “I’m right here, love.  Whatever you want to do, I’m here.”  

She closes her eyes for a moment and tries to focus on how solid he is.  On how solid they are.  The subtle scent of his soap fills her nose when she summons her courage and sucks in a deep breath.  “I’ll need some water.”

Killian chuckles and gives her another encouraging squeeze and a kiss on the forehead before he escorts her downstairs.  She chugs eight ounces in record time, and she’s never been so grateful for a distraction when her phone suddenly rings, even when it proves to be an irate Leroy. Their friend is in rare form today, ignoring the pleasantries and launching into a twenty-five minute tirade about the rowdy teenagers who’ve left empty beer bottles and cigarette butts and other evidence of their late-night delinquency all over the dwarves’ break area at the entrance to the mines yet again, and Emma hums and otherwise acknowledges his complaints at the appropriate intervals, so well-versed in the art of placating the excitable little man that she could do it in her sleep.  The comical face Killian makes when she rolls her eyes at the fifteen-minute mark makes her fold her lips to suppress a giggle, and her mood is slightly less dour by the time she hangs up the phone.

“I take it we’re making another trip to the mines?” he asks dryly, one brow arched.

“Apparently.”  She massages her forehead with a pair of fingers and flashes him a feeble grin.  Her gaze alights on the clock, and she heaves a sigh.  “Guess we should get this over with before we go, huh?”

Five minutes later, she opens the door to their bathroom and her wet eyes lock with Killian’s.

She doesn’t have to say anything.  He knows.

His brows jump to his hairline, and it’s as though the sun itself rises in his expression.  He licks his lips and pushes himself up off the edge of the mattress.  “Two lines?” he asks carefully, and the width of Emma’s smile is only limited by the fact that she’s starting to tremble and cry again; big, fat, grateful tears dripping from her lashes and skidding down her cheeks.

She rushes into his arms, the test still in hand, and gives a relieved laugh when they collide with enough force to send them stumbling, their legs a jumble as they nearly fall backwards on to the bed.  “Two lines,” she mumbles into his chest with a loud sniffle.

His hand comes up to cradle the back of her head, and she’s a little surprised when his voice turns thick and he, too, appears to be a little overwhelmed with emotion.  As calm as he's been all these years, as resolved as he’s been that everything would be alright, it was easy for her to forget that he desperately wanted this too.  But he did. He does.  And here they are, laughing and crying and wrapped up in one another and reveling in the swell of their blinding happiness.  They’ve had a lot of amazing moments together, but this rivals them all, and for the first time in a long time, Emma is sure that there are even more moments like these yet to come.

[rogerblackwolf]

The Last Dragon

Estate of Elder Barnabus Jaeger

Bures, Suffolk, England

-2010-

The car ride was mostly silent as the family of three drove through the countryside. The father, a well-dressed man in his mid to late thirties with neatly combed dark hair and a trimmed beard, was driving while also following the directions on his smartphone. His wife, a beautiful woman equal to him in age dressed in a black dress and blazer, was simply taking in the countryside and occasionally checking on their son, a teen dressed similar to his father listening to his iPod. She had wondered where the years had gone, especially since they had just left a funeral. The service was for her husband’s father, a World War II veteran as well as former member of the SAS, Barnabus Jaeger, or “Barnie” as he was called by his mates and family. 

Barnabus loved his family as well, he always had something good to say and rarely raised his voice, and to his only grandson Henry he was a constant inspiration. Other than Barnabus’ military service, the wife knew that after the war he married young and went to college to study finance. He then went on to work for a successful corporation, which he later became CEO of, that helped him take care of his family, his wife Emily passed away only four years prior but Barnabus still managed his company. Sadly he took a turn health wise, he was mostly healthy but the loss of his wife took its toll. The wife took solace in knowing at least he would be reunited with his wife, hopefully filling the hole her loss left in his heart.

The car turned down a one way road and immediately into a driveway, they stopped in the driveway in front of a small mansion. It was only two stories tall, but the interior made it feel much larger, there were ten bedrooms, five baths, several offices, an attic, and a basement. The design was Victorian, which made it seem old but it was surprisingly well maintained, Barnabus did like making things last. As the family slowly drove, they noticed another car had already parked. 

“I reckon that’s the attorney.” The husband said, parking next to the black sedan.

“I reckon so. Henry, we’re here.” The wife added, before tapping her son on the knee.

The boy took out his earbuds then looked at his mother and father, they both managed to smile despite the reasons being at his grandfather’s home. 

“This won’t take long, promise.” The father said, patting his son’s head.

“You alright?” The mother asked her son.

The son only nodded, not feeling up to talk at the moment.

The family then got out of their sedan, stretching for a moment before walking to the front door, which opened suddenly, allowing them to be greeted by a familiar face. Before them stood a short but stout woman dressed in a Victorian style maid uniform, her auburn hair done up in a bun, and though she was mature in age she had a youthful attitude. Her freckled cheeks plumped up as she smiled warmly, doing a curtsy as she welcomed the family;

“Master Benjamin, Mistress Eveline, and young Master Henry, Welcome.”

“Hello Annette.” The parents said in unison, both sharing a chuckle how synchronized it was.

“Hi Annette.” Henry added, smirking for a moment before his frown returned.

Annette let the family in and took their coats before quickly returning.

“It’s good to see you again Annette, I wish it wasn’t on such terrible timing.” Eveline said.

“Oh think nothing of it, Master Barnabus was not one to be sad in such times. He always believed when he passed that we remember his life and not mourn his passing. If it’s not too bold of me to say.” Annette said.

“It’s alright, but I’m afraid we are also here on business. I assume the lawyer is here?” Benjamin asked Annette.

“Oh yes, they’re waiting in the office, right this way.” Annette answered, guiding them down the halls to a set of double doors, inside the sprawling office were three individuals, two men and one woman, the woman was the oldest of the trio in her mid forties while the two men seemed in their early twenties. The woman was holding a briefcase as the parents turned to Annette.

“Annette, why don’t you take Henry somewhere quiet, we shouldn’t be long.” Benjamin said.

“Be good Henry, listen to Annette.” Eveline said to Henry before he nodded and smiled warmly.

“Come along young Master, I’ll fix you something to turn that frown upside down.” Annette said with a smile. She then took Henry’s hand and led him away from the room. Benjamin and Eveline shook the woman’s hand before taking their seats as did the woman, the two men standing behind her on both sides.

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger, my name is Bella Haleigh. I am the attorney provided by your father’s company and the Executor of his Will and Estate.” She spoke.

“Pleasure to meet you Ms. Haleigh.” Benjamin said.

“Yes, a pleasure.” Eveline replied.

“Before we start, let me just express my deepest condolences for your loss Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger.” Bella added.

“Thank you, Ms. Haleigh, it has been rough for all of us.” Benjamin said, with Eveline taking his hand in comfort.

“Your father was a great inspiration to us all. Forgive me for asking, but was that your son, Henry?” Bella asked.

“Yes, he was. I guess my father talked about him, huh?” Benjamin asked.

“Very fondly, he adored Henry. Forgive me for asking, but how old is he?” Bella asked.

“He just turned fifteen recently.” Eveline answered

“Oh fun age, your father had it in his mind that Henry would follow in his footsteps at the company.” Bella said.

“Well, he will make his decision in due time, then again he has it in his mind he wants to be an Art Curator.” Eveline added.

“Yes, we all have to make decisions in time, some tougher than others. I for one would be happy to have him in our company. The Financial district has very good benefits. But down to business I won't take too much of your time.” Bella said, opening her briefcase and retrieving the will.

As they tended to their business, Annette had treated Henry to some warm lavender tea, his favorite. It seemed to help for a time but Annette could sense he still had a dark cloud hanging over him. Suddenly Annette hatched an idea, she knew exactly what would cheer him up. 

"Young Master, why don't you go into your Grandfather's study while I see to my duties. I know your Grandfather left something in there for you." Annette said.

Henry smirked before walking through the halls passing portraits of medieval knights, suits of armor on stands with their swords and shields, the large portrait of his grandfather with the family, and the family flag of a red dragon holding a shield with its wings outstretched. Eventually Henry came to a room he remembered quite well, his grandfather’s study. The room was circular with several bookcases that went to the ceiling, on the far left side was a window that overlooked a pond in the garden where a gazebo was also set up. Henry walked over to the large desk where his grandfather would work and spend many nights in thought. He noticed a thick leather bound notebook on the desk with a note that said “for Henry” taped to its cover.

Henry gently removed the taped note and read it silently to himself;

“Dear Henry

Though my time in this world has come to an end, I have no regrets. My time was brief, and despite the horrors I have seen, my life was filled with so much wonder I can only thank God for how much I have been blessed. Especially for the joy you brought into my life. As a soldier I fought for my country and as a father I protected those who were dearest to me, my honor is assured.

This journal contains my memoirs and the truth of what I did, where I went, the things I encountered, and what I lost. Every word is true, no matter how fantastically absurd some of it may sound. As you grow older, I hope that you never lose your sense of wonder. Do not forget the things you enjoy and surround yourself with likeminded people, those people will always be your truest of friends. If I must have one regret, it is that I personally didn’t get to tell you of my adventures, I hope you can forgive me for that. 

Since it is Fate that we be separated on earth, I hope we’ll meet again in Heaven.

Remember me in your fondest memories.

Your Grandpa Barnie

Always.”

Henry sat in the chair as his hands trembled. A couple of his tears stained the bottom of the note so he sat it on the desk to avoid staining it more. After drying his face and calming himself he folded the note and placed it to the side before picking up the journal. It was an old leather bound style, the leather was aged and worn in some places, mostly around the edges. It smelled old as well, like aged ink and faint glue, and the binding was starting to come loose but it was still holding together. Taking a deep breath, he opened the journal.

The first page had a hand drawn portrait of a much younger Barnabus, Henry couldn’t help but see the similarities they shared. From the sparse stubble to the nose and even the curly hair, it all made him smile and even chuckle. The first few pages were of Barnabus’s being born in 1919, his childhood in post Great War Britain, his father was a veteran who struggled greatly until he was given the opportunity to work in construction. The next pages spoke of his family being German immigrants, which was the origin of their family name, “Jaeger’’ meaning “hunter”. Henry skipped ahead several pages, settling on the page that labeled his time in the army; at the start of World War II he readily joined the effort.

As he read further, Henry read a passage that was both disturbing and unbelievable;

“I was on night patrol with a couple of my mates along the coast just a couple hundred yards from our base camp, ours was one of many Anti-Aircraft Batteries along the coast to defend against bombing raids. We were part of a platoon, nearly fifty men, it had been quiet the previous couple nights so everyone was incredibly relaxed. We would regret not being prepared. The first time I heard it, I brushed it off as simply a gust of wind, a breeze from the ocean. The second time my squadmate, Joseph Makkey, turned to me and asked “you heard that, right?”, all three of us began looking to the sky. 

The moon was high but there was some overcast that obstructed any clear view. The sound was clearer now, a whoosh of wind followed by some kind of growl, but not the growl of an engine. No, this growl was too natural, no plane engine could imitate it. Suddenly the silence was broken by this haunting shouting voice, followed by several terrible roars. The world was ablaze as streams of fire rained onto our camp, the sounds of my comrades screaming filled the air as their bodies melted to ash, explosions of our ammunition and vehicles filled us with terror. 

Me and my squadmates ran to the camp, our training taking over, but before we could reach the outskirts, I saw them. Three large black shapes silhouetted against the moon as they got into formation to come around for another pass, I shouted to my mates as they reached the camp before me but it was too late as three pillars of flame descended from the sky. One moment my friends were in front of me, the next they were engulfed in flame, somehow I got a clear look as these creatures flew overhead. Each one was at little over thirty feet long with a wingspan of comparable length, scaled bodies, leathery wings like a demon, and from their mouths came fire. On their backs were men shouting and whooping in celebration as they saw their handiwork, the one leading them shouted something, and as quickly as they appeared they were gone.

As the fires died and morning came I silently sat surrounded by the ashes of my platoon, some of the bodies were barely even skeletons. At my feet was Joseph Makkey, his face was coated in ash, his torso was scorched of all flesh, and nothing but brittle blackened bones below his waist. His uniform had melted to his body, almost replacing his skin but what I will forever remember is the look in his eyes. How scared they looked, how much pain he was in, the raw agony of the fire. For so long I cursed God for leaving just me, why was I allowed to live and not more? Out of the fifty men in my camp, Why was I the only one who survived? They stayed forever young, and here I am still…”

Henry was a mix of sad and disbelief at how horrible his grandfather really felt, that under that chipper and loving exterior was a man who had been through Hell itself. Henry read the journal more, finding out that after the incident, which was labeled a surprise bombing, Barnabus was approached by a man who claimed to be part of the SAS. What stood out though was how knowledgeable this man was about the creatures that Barnabus saw, describing them as “Firedrakes”. He went into greater detail about them, adding that they were being used by the Germans as part of their Blitzkrieg, but also told Barnabus that the information would not be free. The other pages read about how Barnabus joined the man in a secret organization called The Order, the cost for surviving and knowing of their existence. 

As Henry read through the journal, back in the office downstairs the meeting was close to wrapping up with Ms. Haleigh set the will to the side and grabbed a final piece of paper.

“Now that we have the legal matters settled, it was the last request of your father that I read this to both of you.” She began, before reading the letter.

“Benjamin and Eveline 

While the mansion and estate have been my home in the twilight of my life, it barely felt like home since your mother, my Emily, passed away. Since it now belongs to you both, I will not fault you should you choose to sell it, all I ask is that my personal journal and my war chest be given to Henry. I know he has been interested in my adventures, and my one regret is I was unable to tell him everything. My hope is that even though my life has come to an end, I can continue to be part of his.

Your Father Barnabus” Ms. Haleigh finished.

Benjamin looked at Eveline and both agreed while they had their jobs in Cambridge it wouldn’t be too much of a change. If anything, moving into the mansion would mean adjusting for drive time since it was an hour from Cambridge to Suffolk. They could also agree that it couldn’t hurt for Henry to have some of his Grandfather’s things, it’s what Barnabus would’ve wanted anyway. And the country air would likely do them all some good, and the village people were all so nice. As the couple finished their business, Henry was still reading the passages in the journal.

He was barely a quarter through, learning Barnabus had joined a special battalion meant to hunt down and kill these dragons, they were aptly called The Dragonslayers. Several more pages described the Firedrakes used by the German’s Elite Air Division, most were thirty feet long from nose to tail, Barnabus did note that while he and his comrades brought down larger Firedrakes, the thirty footers were the most common. The Firedrakes only had four limbs, two wings, which folded to allow for walking on all fours, and two back legs and they could breath fire that could reach up to a thousand degrees fahrenheit. The Germans used hidden factories as breeding depots to churn out hundreds of these creatures in a matter of months and used strange devices that grew them to adults within only a couple months of hatching. There were detailed drawings of the creatures with lengths and wingspans, even descriptions of the saddles of the German riders along with their flight suits and equipment. 

Several pages later showed some new creatures that resembled the type of dragons he had seen in storybooks, four legs and a pair of wings, not to mention the depiction of them breathing fire. There was a chart labeling the sizes of the European dragon throughout their lifecycle;

“-Hatchling-Infant- around 20 inches long, 10 inches tall at the shoulder, wingspan comparable to body length, incapable of flight, unable to breath fire, scales are rough to the touch but not thick. Pupils are round and horns are nubby. After 6 weeks the hatchling is considered an infant and stays near its parent or nest. Susceptible to small arms fire.

-Wyrmling- around 40-50 years of age, 40 to 45 feet from nose to tail, standing 10 to 15 feet at the shoulder, pupils have constricted to a more vertical shape, horns have lengthened and sharpened to points, wingspan is same as body length, and scales have begun to grow dense. Scales have the same armor density as 25mm of steel, most small arms unable to penetrate. Heavy weapons or anti-tank weapons are advised.

-Adult- adulthood begins around 80 years of age, up 90 feet long from nose to tail, standing 30 feet tall at the shoulder, scale armor density equivalent to 90mm of steel, eyes have dim glow to them, horns show wear and tear, scales are bright and brilliant in color. Tank and air support is heavily advised.

-Great Wyrm- approximately 100 years of age, 140 feet long from nose to tail, 40 feet at the shoulder, scale armor density equivalent to 110mm of steel, eyes brightly glow, sometimes glossing over the pupil, horns beginning to splinter at the tips, wingspan same as body length, scales in some parts show signs of scale rot. Aside from breathing fire, one was observed to use lightning as a breath weapon and as an area of effect attack. Tank support, heavy artillery, and air support is required.

-Elder Wyrm- several centuries old, 280 to 300 feet long and 80 feet tall at the shoulder, scale armor density is near impenetrable except when worn down by continuous heavy weapon fire, scale rot has set in and is most visible around where the joints flex and bend. The body is covered in horn and spine growth, the wingspan is equivalent to the body length and capable of hurricane level gusts. The rarest of the dragon species, very little information, other than infield hunting, is known.``

Henry was confused by that last note, as he thought dragons were just fairytales. Yet why would his Grandfather have so much information on them? He turned the page to find several maps of France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and even England itself, all maps had X’s along with a date and page number next to them, each one signifying where various dragons were killed during and after the war. He flipped through the journal some more, passing a page that made him go back. This one had a location and a date, “Southern Bavaria, 1950, Elder Wyrm, casualties 97 of 110”, steeling himself, Henry read the passage.

“It was a warm summer day, in the shadows of these mountains I’m pretty sure they were the Chiemgau Alps. There was this village we had arrived at situated in this peaceful valley, but there were wyrmling sightings in the area, we feared that meant an Adult was roaming around. The Order sent a hundred and ten of us to investigate, we had support from four Centurion tanks, each with a crew of four, a battery of these 5.5 inch guns, six whole guns with ten men on each one, and that left only thirty-four of us to engage the beast on foot. Well not on foot per say as we all had horses that we would be riding, like the knights of old. We waited into the night, we all sat and talked about the finer things, family back home, situations abroad, and other things. 

I remembered my time with the Dragon Slayers as we took the fight to the Germans, I remembered while the Firedrakes were used to take on our armed forces the Dragons themselves were reserved for more vile deeds. When Hitler’s final solution was enacted, they used dragon fire to extinguish the evidence of their fell deeds, burning hundreds of villages, taking the lives of countless innocents. For these crimes there was no forgiveness, our orders were to hunt down the beasts and end them. I didn’t question my orders, not once, for me it was as simple as avenging my comrades. Then all of a sudden, it happened.

The sky opened as a streak of fire rained on the village, the silence broken by the sound of rushing wind and the wails of the dying and panicked people. In the dead of night, it looked like day, like Hell itself, whether it was courage or our training we leapt into action. We spurred our horses onward as it came over again, setting the rest of the village on fire. There was a great rumble that made the earth tremble, then we saw him standing illuminated by his own fire. Crimson scales glowed in the light, his wings like great shadows stretched outward, his maw was like an open furnace and his eyes glowed bright, the size of him left us frozen, awestruck, frightened. 

From his mouth came death, flame so hot it turned buildings of stone to dust, our escape was cut off, our rearguard left incinerated. Our tanks and artillery fired on him, but those that hit barely grazed his armor, his impenetrable scales held even as we hit him with our anti-tank weapons. It didn’t faze him, what happened next shattered our hope. As he was assaulted by artillery, his body glowed red hot then took an orange color as sparks traveled up his spines, his neck, and wingtips, he faced the hillside where our tanks and artillery were and drew a deep breath. With a deafening roar, lightning spewed from his mouth, wingtips, and back, the hillside erupted in explosions, with one sway of his head the heavy guns were silent.

Our commander ordered us to hide as he went to distract the beast, we found a basement and took shelter as the beast continued his furious display. We dared not emerge until morning, we easily found the body of our commander, his body scorched from the chest down. Even when the dragon was gone, I couldn’t stop shaking. One hundred and ten men went to Bavaria and only thirteen came back.” 

Henry was shocked by the story, disbelieving if it could be real but he didn’t have time to think as the door was opened by his father.

“Henry, we've been looking all over for you. What have you got there?” His father asked in relief.

“It’s Granddad’s old journal, he left it to me, there was a note and everything.” Henry said, showing his dad the letter. 

It was then the rest of the mother and Annette came in. All three let out a sigh of relief before embracing Henry and his father. Ms Haleigh and her two companions also entered the room and, noticing the happy family, said her goodbyes before seeing herself out with her two escorts in tow. The family also decided it was time to head home as well, of course they took Barnabus’s war chest, a large trunk, with them before leaving. Once the family was back home they had dinner and discussed moving into the mansion, all agreeing it was a good idea, before turning in for the night. Henry however stayed awake to read more of his Grandfather’s journal, getting to the part where he fought the Elder Dragon a second time made him worry a little. 

Barnabus wrote that in the 1960s, he and the Dragonslayers returned to Bavaria, this time with more advanced artillery, in this case some experimental tanks we called Chieftains, three whole companies of them. Knowing that the same dragon they faced had roosted in the mountains, they were taking no chances this time around. Barnabus even mentioned they had help from a pair of magic users, which Henry questioned as dragons were one thing but people using magic was pushing the reality a little. He continued reading, getting to the part where the dragon appeared and as he breathed his fire, the magic users pushed it back at him. The Chieftain’s gun had been equipped with high penetration sabot rounds that were devastating to the once impenetrable armor of the dragon as every shot sent scales and blood flying. 

Though Henry was astonished by the passage, the following passage of the dragon’s lair left him in awe.

“…Deep in the cavern, among the blackened rocks and clawed trenches in the stone I found a central chamber with only one other occupant. Another dragon curled up in the back, its tail and wings covering most of its body minus it’s neck and front legs, the shorter horns and overall smaller size identified it as a female. Her scales were taken by the rot, once vibrant scales were now dull and brittle, her body was skinny and her limbs frail, her wings had barely enough leather for gliding let alone flight, but even in this state she could’ve still posed a threat. Seeing this female as she was made me feel something I thought I had lost, I felt sorry for her. I put down my rifle and sword before slowly approaching the female, her eyes burning holes in me not in rage but as if looking for something beneath my armor. 

Her voice startled me, so much it made my heart stop, she asked him a single question. “Why do you falter?” 

I replied that I didn't know, which was true. I had no idea why now I chose to take pity on her, just that for the first time in a while, I was unable to end her. She spoke again saying;

“Perhaps you finally know the gravity of your actions. The countless numbers of my kin you killed, and soon I shall join them.” 

“But why does it feel wrong now? Your kin burned countless people, erased villages, and for what?” I answered, my anger resurfacing but she kept her calm voice as she retorted.

“Me and my kin joined the humans of Germany because their leader promised us a return to our glory instead of living in the shadow of the new dawn. When we finally knew the cost of such promises, we were too late to oppose it and in truth many of us were blind to the consequences. We burned millions and for that alone your kind sought our extinction, but I must ask, was it worth it? When we are all gone, erased from your memories, does it absolve you of your own sins?”

Her words rang through me, in my own quest for revenge I had sullied my hands in the blood of countless dragons. I looked her in the eyes and told her how sorry I was. I even told her that, if it would bring her peace in her final moments, she could take my life. Instead she gave me a chance of redemption, she lifted her tail revealing a single egg laying against her body, covered in red scales and even had a faint glow to it. Tentatively I took it in my hands, it was heavy at least ten pounds and a little bigger than a soccer ball.

As I held the egg in my arms she revealed her name as Fyrasol, and with her last breath made me promise to care for her last hatchling. I vowed that day that the cycle of death ended with me and I would sooner end my own life before I broke it…”

Henry was speechless at the ending but decided that perhaps thinking about it would be best suited for the morning. He sat the journal on the nightstand and laid in his bed before drifting off to dreams of dragons.

-Ten years later-

Henry had finished looking over a report of a relocation project for an Adult dragon to one of the Shetland Isles. Seeing the team had successfully released the Dragon, he ordered them back to Headquarters as soon as they were able. As he relaxed he looked at the picture of him and his Grandfather when he was a kid, it made him think of how far he came after his Grandfather’s funeral. After he finished his secondary education, Henry was recruited by the Order, then further followed Barnabus’ footsteps in joining the Keepers, the former Dragonslayers who joined Barnabus’ dream to ensure the survival of the remaining dragons. As Henry sat in memory he suddenly got a call on his desk phone;

“Director Jaeger.” Henry greeted.

“Director, she’s ready for her afternoon flight.” A female voice answered.

“I'll be right down.” Henry said before hanging up.

Henry went to a closet and pressed a code on a keypad, revealing a black fitted flight suit, he got dressed in it before leaving his office and navigating the facility’s halls to a room overlooking a hanger bay. This hanger however wasn’t for aircraft, instead it had been turned into a lair for a rather exceptional female Wyrmling, she was born from the egg Barnabus saved all those years ago. Following her recovery, Barnabus returned to the Order where he and his fellow Dragonslayers vowed they would dedicate themselves to the preservation of Dragons. The newfound Keepers then began their efforts by locating and guarding the last remaining dragons in Europe, even coordinating with their comrades in the east, learning how to care for these creatures. Named after her mother, Fyra hatched in 1970 and was cared for by Barnabus until his passing in 2010, and less than a decade later she was placed under Henry’s care.

When Henry entered the room he noticed she was being tended to by several people attaching a saddle to her back and in front of her was a woman with glasses and a ponytail who waved at Henry as he came to greet them both. 

“Afternoon Director, I was just giving Fyra a weather update.” The woman said adjusting her glasses.

“I've flown in high winds before.” The dragon replied with a huff.

“Yes but our Director will be on your back, so I’m simply reminding you to be careful.” The woman says as Henry shakes his head, knowing all the regulations when he went out on such dangerous activities.

“Dr. Blume, I can assure you I will be just fine. Now I think Fyra has waited long enough, if everything is ready let’s get this ball rolling.” Henry said.

The men secured the saddle and joined Dr. Blume in the observation room as Henry put on his oxygen supply and a helmet to protect him from the high winds. He got onto Fyra’s saddle, secured a line to his harness, and gave the thumbs up for the hanger doors to open. Fyra stamped her feet excitedly, her wings extended slowly as a red light blinked slowly, once the doors were open fully the light turned green giving Fyra the go ahead. She started with a loping run before leaping out the hanger and taking to the sky, her excitement made evident when she let out a roar and a jet of fire into the air.

[goldeagleprice]

The Capped Bust Half Dollar, 1807-1836

by R.W. Julian

Mint Director Robert Patterson.

Today we think of the quarter dollar as the most useful coin in ordinary transactions. This was not always true. Prior to 1964, and the Kennedy half dollar, the half dollar was equally popular in many parts of the United States. The mass hoarding of the Kennedy version and the disappearance of this denomination from our pocket change has served to make us forget the former importance of the half dollar.

When the basic mint act was signed into law by President George Washington in early April 1792, one of the coins on the list was the 50-cent piece or half dollar. This denomination came about because our monetary system was based on the Spanish silver dollar (eight reales), and the four-reales piece was the same as our half dollar.

While coinage of half dollars had been very heavy as early as 1795, it was not until 1801 that full-scale minting resumed. At first, the mintages were hesitant because bullion depositors really did not want half dollars; instead, they wanted silver dollars for export in payment for foreign goods.

Finally, at the end of March 1804, Mint Director Elias Boudinot stopped the production of silver dollars and forced the bullion owners to accept half dollars instead. From this small beginning, the coinage of half dollars grew until, by 1808, it had passed the million mark.

In 1806, the design on the half dollar was the same as had been first used on this denomination in 1801: a Draped Bust head of Liberty on the obverse and the heraldic eagle on the reverse. By any standard, the Draped Bust design was one of quality, and the United States had something to be proud of when its coins found their way to foreign shores. However, all of this was to change after Robert Patterson became Mint Director in the summer of 1805.

The Draped Bust design had first been used in the days of President George Washington, who was considered a Federalist in politics. However, in 1801, Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, had been elected president, and there were several changes made in the way that the country was run. Patterson, who had been appointed by Jefferson to the mint post in 1805, was well in tune with the times and decided that a new design was required on all of our coins to reflect the political changes. (The modern Republican party dates from the 1850s, and the Republican Party of President Jefferson is now called the Democratic Party.)

Patterson did not think that the current chief engraver, Robert Scot, was capable of executing the new artwork, so the President was asked to authorize the employment of an assistant engraver named John Reich. Patterson believed that Reich, an indentured servant freed by Chief Coiner Henry Voight, was better suited to carry out the new artistic direction on the coinage.

It was made clear to the President that Reich was wanted for the specific task of redesigning our coinage. Jefferson, of course, knew that there already was an engraver at the Mint but that he was a Federalist, and one assumes that a member of the President’s political party would, of course, do a better job.

The President, whatever his views on coinage design, had very clear ideas about spending public money, and it was not until March 1807 that Director Patterson was able to persuade the Chief Executive to permit Reich to be hired as an assistant engraver at the sum of $600 per year. (Scot received $1,200 per annum). Shortly thereafter, Reich arrived at the Mint and began to prepare designs under Patterson’s supervision.

In his letter of March 25, 1807, to the President, Patterson noted that the “beauty of our coins would be greatly improved by his [Reich’s] masterly hand.” Modern collectors are not quite so charitable when it comes to this statement, and most think the design was a step backward. Yet the finished product has a distinct charm of its own, and many numismatists specialize in the half dollar coinage of 1807-1836.

The first Reich design to be approved was for the half dollar, then considered the most important coin being struck by the Philadelphia Mint. Within a matter of weeks, Reich had produced drawings that were acceptable to Patterson.

Because of a Mint memo that was written in the 1860s and later published by a researcher, there is a persistent rumor that the model for the new Liberty head was Reich’s “fat mistress.” Considering that Philadelphia was a relatively small town in those days, it seems unlikely that the memo was reporting the truth, however. It was more likely a case of sour grapes from someone who simply did not like the design.

Patterson was closely involved in the design work and would certainly have known had Reich, in fact, used a mistress as a model. Under no circumstances would such a woman have been portrayed on our coinage in those days. There would have been political fallout for the President had this become known, and Patterson would have been aware of the risks.

Oddly enough, there was a second rumor, in the 1850s, that Reich had portrayed Mint Director Patterson’s wife on the coinage. The story was furnished to a French numismatist, Alexandre Vattemare, who published this attribution in 1861. One suspects, however, that Mint officials were having a little fun at Vattemare’s expense because he also reported Pocahontas as the model for the Draped Bust Liberty head of 1795.

The reverse of the new Reich half dollar has an equally interesting story in that Director Patterson had ordered that the Great Seal, as found on the silver and gold coinage of 1796–1807, be altered so that the eagle would have a more natural pose. Even the motto (E PLURIBUS UNUM) was retained to show what was intended.

Later mint directors, including Dr. Samuel Moore, felt that the retention of the motto was a mistake, and it was dropped from the coinage by the mid-1830s. It was Moore’s contention that the motto properly belonged with the Great Seal but not the new eagle, since the meaning of the motto was little different from the words “United States of America.” In 1873, the motto returned, because by then it was thought that the motto was supposed to be there, regardless of the historical background.

Whatever the source of the design, half dollar coinage with Reich’s new dies began towards the end of 1807. In the late 1850s, Mint Director James Ross Snowden stated that about 750,000 of the new coins were made, as compared to 300,000 or so of the 1807 Draped Bust half dollars.

There are reasons for believing that Snowden simply fabricated the figures when he was unable to find anything in the mint records about the changeover. He certainly did so for at least one other coinage: the cents dated 1823.

Half dollars of 1807 are scarcer than indicated by the 750,000 mintage figure. According to the monthly price guide appearing in Numismatic News at the time of this writing, in XF40 the value is a strong $750 for the most common variety, which compares to $480 for the 1814 in this grade with a mintage of barely over one million. The true mintage of the 1807 Reich design was probably less than a half million pieces.

The first Capped Bust half dollars were struck in the fall of 1807. (Images courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

There are several varieties of the 1807 half dollar that are collected by specialists, including obverses with large and small stars, a reverse where the figure “50” was punched over an erroneous figure “20,” and the “Bearded Goddess” obverse. The latter, which brings as much as $4,000 even in VF20, is the result of a damaged die.

For the years from 1808 to 1814, the values are much more reasonable, and in most cases, an XF40 specimen can be obtained for as little as $350. Those collectors specializing in the half dollars of 1807-1836 tend to go after the higher-grade pieces because they are, after all, relatively common. This is partly due to the fact that banks used these coins as backing for their paper currency, and as late as the 1930s, half dollar hoards were still being discovered.

The fact that banks used these as backing for paper currency has led to an erroneous belief that half dollars really did not circulate in the years before 1840; nothing could be further from the truth. Except for the copper cent, the half dollar was the most common United States coin to be found in daily use.

In just one case, the famous Economite hoard of the past century, more than 100,000 half dollars from before 1840, were found. Even the rare 1815 date was uncovered to the amount of more than 100 specimens, probably forming a fair part of those in collections today.

Not only were half dollars widely used along the Eastern seaboard, where the bulk of the population lived, but they were also to be seen on the frontier. Indian treaty payments were often made in half dollars, which were promptly spent by the natives in local stores and with itinerant peddlers.

Although little noticed today by collectors, the half dollars of 1807 and 1808 did not strike up well in the presses; for this reason, Reich executed a new hub, in lower relief, of the Liberty head, and this was introduced in 1809. There was another minor redesign in 1812, perhaps because of some dissatisfaction with the 1809 revision. There were other changes from time to time, but these are of little interest except to specialists.

The half dollars of 1807-1836 all have lettered edges that read FIFTY CENTS OR HALF A DOLLAR. Because the denomination was put on the reverse in 1807, the wording on the edge was pointless (no one read it anyway), but the presence of lettering did have the specific purpose of deterring counterfeits. (Some of the 1809 issues have a special edge in which “XXXX” or “IIII” is found between certain letters.)

1836 was the last year for Capped Bust half dollars with lettered edges. (Image courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

Although half dollars are relatively plentiful today for the years 1808 through 1812, in 1813 the supply of silver bullion began to decline. In those days, the government did not coin money on its own account, and all gold and silver coinage was derived from private deposits. In 1814, the mintage dropped to barely over one million, well below the peak of 1.63 million in 1812. Even though 1814 mintage is lower, in XF40 the value is a reasonable $480.

The War of 1812 created an unstable economic market; as a result, people began to hoard silver coins, and very little bullion found its way to the Mint after the middle of 1814. One firm (Jones, Firth, & Company of Philadelphia) brought in a quantity of silver in late 1815 and, just after the end of the year, in early January 1816, some 47,150 half dollars were struck with the 1815 date. A few were paid out to others, but most of the coins went to this particular firm.

The half dollars of 1815 were actually struck in January 1816. (Image courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

The 1815 is a rare date and the most difficult to find for any year after 1797. Even in G4, the value is an impressive $1,400, while a VF20 tips the scales at a strong $4,800. All of the 1815s are actually overdates, 1815/2, there being only one obverse die used for this coinage.

1817 Overdate Half Dollar with Caption: One of the rarest Capped bust half dollars is the 1817/4 overdate. (Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions)

In mid-January 1816, there was a fire at the Mint that damaged some of the outbuildings. Unfortunately, the rolling mills were contained in one of these structures and were destroyed by the flames. Director Patterson took the opportunity to order special rollers from the English firm of Belles and Harrold.

With the new rollers on hand, half dollar coinage resumed in May 1817, and through the end of this series in 1836, the number struck continued to grow. The best year was 1836, with more than 6.5 million produced.

The increased coinage means that specimens from the 1820s and 1830s are progressively cheaper for the collector to obtain. By the 1830s, an XF40 specimen can be obtained for about $120, certainly a bargain in view of the age and historical importance of these coins. Those of the 1820s vary of course by date but usually can be found in about the same price range for most dates.

Perhaps the most interesting issue of the 1820s is the 1823, which has some odd figure 3’s in the date. One is called a “patchwork 3” while another is simply called an “ugly 3” with good cause.

The figure 3 in the date 1823 is known for its poor quality. (Image courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

A modified portrait was executed in late 1833 by Chief Engraver William Kneass, and coins of the final three years, 1834 through 1836, used the revised motif.

Regular proof coinage began at Philadelphia in 1817, although for the early years such pieces are few and far between when it comes to finding one for a specialized collection. Probably the reason for the silver or gold proofs from that time was the new rollers, which gave a better finish to the strips of metal. Most proof half dollars before the 1830s bring strong prices; the 1820s, for example, have a book value of at least $50,000.

A stylized view of a screw press in operation. All Capped Bust half dollars with a lettered edge were struck on this kind of press.

In 1836, the Mint finally introduced steam coinage in place of the antiquated screw presses, but this meant that the lettered edge would have to be dropped; only plain or reeded edges could be struck in the new machines. This, in turn, meant that new dies were required. There was an abortive attempt to coin the new pieces in November 1836, but it was not until early 1837 that the reeded-edge coinage got underway. It was still the Reich design but modified by a new engraver, Christian Gobrecht.

The collector may encounter some lettered-edge half dollars dated after 1836, but these are counterfeits. Pre-1837 dates also exist, usually made from copper-nickel or some similar metal in color. There is a certain value to these contemporary counterfeits, and a market for them does exist.

With the end of the lettered-edge half dollar coinage in 1836, only the collector was left to appreciate the coin that had once served the nation so well.

The post The Capped Bust Half Dollar, 1807-1836 appeared first on Numismatic News.

[aion-rsa]

This Is How You Lose the Time War Solves the Time Traveler’s Wife Problem

https://ift.tt/2XL9buY

One lover time travels, while the other waits… until Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s epistolary time travel novella breaks the mold.

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Before time travel agent Red finds the first letter from rival Blue on the battlefield, she thinks there is only one way to win the time war: her side’s way, barreling through time and ruthlessly cutting strands as needed. Similarly, before This Is How You Lose the Time War, Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s new epistolary science fiction novella, the time travel love story had become stuck in an outdated formula that too often left one lover at a disadvantage. But, as Red and Blue leave one another love notes on infinite battlefields, they remix a time-crossed love story into a wholly new take that elevates the subgenre.

What had become the archetypal time travel love story came to a head in 2013. Following the release of time travel rom-com About Time, a spate of articles highlighted how actress Rachel McAdams had completed the odd hat-trick of playing the time traveler’s girlfriend/wife without ever getting the chance to travel herself. Taken separately, each of the three examples is amusing, but together it’s a worrisome pattern.

read more: 7 Epistolary Time Travel Stories

In The Time Traveler’s Wife, Eric Bana gets yanked into the past or future at inopportune moments, and McAdams waits for him to return to her present. Owen Wilson hops into a vintage car to the past every Midnight in Paris, and McAdams ditches him for their modern hotel room. About Time sees Domhnall Gleeson pressing the redo button on his past interactions with McAdams, perfecting the bad moments and reliving the good ones, as she proceeds through each interaction without the same benefit of hindsight.

While the latter two examples are original films, they were no doubt influenced by the first, a 2009 adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 novel about chronologically-impaired librarian Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire, his artist wife. With its twisty timelines, in which each of the lovers knows more than the other about their relationship depending on the time of their interaction, and its bittersweet ending, Niffenegger’s book remains one of the best time travel love stories. Unfortunately, it’s also part of a larger trend, in which this type of romance plays out along very gendered and heteronormative lines: the man travels, and the woman waits for him.

Interestingly, neither Red nor Blue’s gender is mentioned in the marketing materials, yet ever since this book was announced, I was somehow convinced they were male and female—a glaring assumption that I can't really justify beyond the fact that the co-authors are male and female. Most likely, it was just the way I’d been trained to read the dynamics of a time travel romance on the gender binary (see most epistolary time travel stories).

Red and Blue both use she/her pronouns, but neither fits the heteronormative mold of femininity. Broad-shouldered and brutal, Red is a marvel of machinery, with the ability to adjust bodily components to match the mission parameters. Sometimes that means passing as male in Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, other times it’s determining whatever shield will provide the greatest brute strength in battle.

read more: An Interview with Max Gladstone

Red’s constant self-modifications bring to mind Paladin, the robot protagonist in Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous, who changes their pronouns from he to she over the course of the novel. Like Red, Paladin’s hulking size leads others to assign masculine qualities to her, despite the fact that in her world bots have no designated gender. But when her human lover Eliasz seeks to call her by female pronouns, in order to combat his own internalized homophobia, Paladin recognizes this request as “the first time he’d been given a choice about something that might change his life”—the first step toward autonomy.

As creatures who are part biology and mechanics, Paladin and Red are able to value their gender identity as an expression of their freedom to move through their respective worlds unconstrained by binary gender norms.

read more: Best New Science Fiction Books

By contrast, Blue favors disguises; a consummate spy, she dons silks to lay down a honeypot or slaps on a chrome mask and typewriter keys to infiltrate a cyberpunk future in which, ironically, Red would fit in much better. She is a femme fatale and a wife, depending on which persona the mission requires. Each time agent performs gender in a dozen different ways throughout the story, depending on where in the time braid they find themselves.

The more that Blue and Red appear in different forms, the less their gender actually matters to the story. As “she” applies to dozens of different time agents, its usage begins to feel universal, like in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. In the Imperial Radch, the author explained on her blog, there are neither gendered pronouns nor much of an emphasis on gender; so, something translated out of Radchaai defaults to she/her.

read more: How Red, White, and Royal Blue Hopes For a Kinder America

Posing herself the hypothetical question of what a particular character’s gender is, Leckie writes: “I probably don’t know. Because it didn’t matter to the story and because of the pronoun choice I’d made, I didn’t have to figure it out.” For Red and Blue, gender is just another layer, another tool in her respective arsenal rather than something wholly identifying.  

What has made the time travel romance formulaic, it turns out, is not entirely rooted in gender. Since 1991, Diana Gabaldon has been subverting time travel tropes in her Outlander books, which includes reversing the traditional gender dynamics of the series' core romance. Her traveler, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, is a woman who passes back and forth between the 1900s and 1700s, while her highlander lover, Jamie Fraser, patiently moves through his own linear lifetime until she reappears—in one case, a full twenty years after the last time he lays eyes on her.

read more: The Best Female Time Travelers in TV History

Jamie experiences what feels like a whole other lifetime in those two decades: full of war, a stint in jail, fathering a child and taking on more than one new identity. Yet when the Claire who left Jamie as a pregnant nurse two decades prior returns as a doctor and mother of their now twenty-year-old child, Jamie the soldier-turned-printer is ready to carve out room for her in his new life. In this case, Jamie is the one who waits for his time traveling love to return.

However, Jamie and Claire’s romance is still a heterosexual love story anchored in—and here's the kicker—one party being active and the other passive. In most cases, that dynamic is gendered to the woman's disadvantage: Time Travelers’ Wife’s Clare makes art and raises a child and hopes that she'll get as much time as possible with Henry. When he gets pulled out of time on their wedding day, she instead marries his older self who steps in; she has no choice but to go with the flow.

read more: Outlander Season 5 — Everything We Know

In most cases, later in life, she doesn't even know when she'll encounter him again; she can only count on the notion that he has dropped in and out of her future as he did her past, his visits like little surprises (or love notes). Not possessing the Chrono-Impairment gene, the closest Clare comes to taking the reins of time travel is to, after Henry gets a vasectomy following several miscarriages of time-traveling fetuses, convince a younger version of her husband to try to conceive one more time.

Henry and Clare's dynamic inspired former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat to write the episode "The Girl in the Fireplace," in which Madame de Pompadour herself waits on the Doctor for her entire lifetime. Yes, "waiting," in this case, means that Reinette still becomes the king's mistress and enjoys all manner of parties and acclaim in the meantime, but she is always glancing toward the mantel, hoping for another cameo from her "Fireplace Man."

read more: Doctor Who Season 12 — Everything We Know

While mere minutes pass for the Doctor, flitting from room to room on a ship in the 51st century, months and years pass for Reinette, her heartstrings tied up in girlish hopes. Despite being intelligent enough to understand companion Rose's explanation of time travel and sensitive enough to read the Doctor's mind, when granted the opportunity to become a time traveler herself, a young Reinette falters: crossing over onto the ship and hearing her own anguished screams at age 37, attacked by clockwork androids, she elects to take the "slower path" and live in linear time.

By the time she reaches 37, survives the android attack, and is finally ready to join the Doctor, he makes the mistake of stepping back onto the ship for a moment… and when he returns, Reinette is dead, having succumbed to tuberculosis. In a letter she leaves for her “lonely angel,” she begs him to hurry back, despite the fact that she must have known he would never reach her in time. 

read more: Doctor Who — What's Next For the Show?

Neither Blue nor Red ever has to choose the slower path, instead darting upbraid and downbraid, following one another's tracks, each time greeted by a taunting (later, tender) letter in lieu of the other's physical presence. The closest either comes to a linear life are the missions in which Blue, in accordance to the Garden that grew her, embeds herself into missions that require her to live out an entire lifetime—sometimes even married—in order to plait the strands of time just so through her interactions with a partner and/or child. Red's Agency treats its officers less as individual sprouts and more as points in a massive cloud, aware of their quasi-siblings as if they were supporting characters in one another's dreams. In this way, as well as on her missions, Red too goes through countless lives in the scope of her career.

In response to those 2013 thinkpieces, author Charles Stross put forth his own consideration for why women were less likely to be travelers: if one treats time travel like any other form of tourism, historically, the fairer sex is more vulnerable when traveling alone in unfamiliar locales. Especially when it's the far past, as Claire Fraser can grimly attest to after multiple instances of being labeled a witch—not to mention narrowly escaping countless attempted sexual assaults. Even poor Kivrin, the historian traveler in Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, who prepares as well as she can to travel to the Middle Ages, is immediately labeled as an escaped nun; that's the only period-accurate explanation for her knowledge and skill set.

read more: Paper Girls TV Series Ordered by Amazon

Red and Blue are not tourists. They are professionals. Neither waits on the other for guidance or answers. They seek each other out, yes, lay playful traps, and spend generations cultivating missives in pieces of nature. But they do so as equals. Despite radically different upbringings and ingrained outlooks on what is the correct timeline, neither is subordinate or dependant in the relationship. They perform gender, and time travel, in as many different ways as the infinite iterations of blue that Red glimpses in the world, and the countless shades of red that Blue documents and treasures.

Henry and Clare, and Claire and Jamie, are part of the kinds of time travel love stories that establish the canon upon which all others are built. Red and Blue's correspondence, preserved in this charming and incisive novella, explode those binaries into a color spectrum so vast that the eye is constantly discovering new shades the closer it gazes and the longer it looks.

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Feature

Movies

Natalie Zutter

Jul 15, 2019

Science Fiction Books

Rachel McAdams

Doctor Who

from Books https://ift.tt/2jJ9Ees

[rockleefangirl987]

Deep Breath and Here...We...Go!

Nothing like a glass of 🍷 to get one emboldened!

I may end up running this again in the future, depending on when I start actually posting the main story, but this is what I was talking about earlier. This is my introduction to the story…and a brief history or background to set it up.

The tentative title of the story is All This…and Heaven Too. It was the title of a Florence and the Machine song, but it mainly comes from a tragic movie with Bette Davis and Charles Boyer. Always loved that title. I hope it fits. My story in no ways will be that tragic. Anyway…here goes and all my thanks to @sausage-fist @ten-all-over @nejicanspin @fruitysmellz @morganknightos @teacher-monica @samlovesmaitogai @shock777 - just for helping increase my love for a little team called Team Guy. 

All This...and Heaven Too

Introduction

There are many ways to tell a story.

This is one.

While some of the most common things become accepted canon, we don’t always agree, oftentimes forcing even The Creator of the signature work to admit ‘I was wrong,’ frustrating us to no end because now it is ‘set in stone’. Which is why we create alternate universes, to satisfy our hunger for...well, whatever the case, be it to right some wrong, give our hero or heroine satisfaction, or to complete a journey we felt was never satisfactorily finished.

This is another version...a tweaking...a difference here and there, some so minor, they may not be immediately noticeable.

Consider this a level of the multiverse, finite and infinite, each universe part of a vast assemblage and existing simultaneously, the numerous realities unaware of the other. Therefore at first glance, should you, in the reading of this account, discover something you believe a contradiction, recall this introduction and remember - this is only one version of the story and the lives entwined with it.

From a French motion picture entitled Beauty and the Beast, directed by Jean Cocteau and released in 1946 according to our known universe:

Children believe what we tell them.

They have complete faith in us.

They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict.

They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home.

They believe a thousand other simple things.

I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood’s Open Sesame:

Once Upon a Time...

A Brief History

Briton.

Their people had always possessed a sense of exploration and adventure, to know what lay beyond the boundaries of the island which was the heart of their ancient kingdom, beyond the lands which were part of their growing modern Empire. It was in their blood, their nature, not as conquerors but as seekers, explorers, their desire taking them across immense, seemingly endless oceans and uncharted continents. It did not happen overnight. The usually peaceful unification around the world took decades, centuries…

Their society prospered, built on advancing technologies with a singular passion for steam, until almost everything - from modes of transportation to their homes and fashions were born of that industry. An historian eventually coined it ‘steampunk’. The term stuck.

However, it was not always the growth of an Empire pushing them forward.

There were times when the fates gave someone the right amount of determination or insanity to pursue what even the most foolhardy and adventurous of Britons had yet to attempt, to decide to travel east of the Empire’s Bharata, beyond the splendors of independent Cathay, into territories where few had gone. An intrepid archaeologist/historian/college professor made it to the borders, spending the next year performing survey work with his team and seeking rumored treasures from ages past. When he returned home, although he had made no direct contact with the inhabitants, his journals made mention of human beings with supernatural abilities, some of whom he alleged were witnessed flying through trees and bending elements including water or fire to their will.

They made for good stories. The Empire had seen much in its’ travels. And the archaeologist was well-respected for his previous retrieval work in finding legendary objects, in particular lost religious items. For the most part, his records were accepted as fact.

It was not until the stewardship of the second Hokage of Konohagakure - Tobirama Senju - did the Britons finally meet these people of whom the eminent Doctor Henry (aka Indiana) Jones reported.

Charles and Amelia Stanley - noted explorers, historians and experts in anthropology and archaeology - accepted the next adventure, their exploratory team penetrating the borders of what they would learn was the Land of Fire. The Stanleys became the first Westerners to discover Konohagakure...Konoha...the Village Hidden Among the Leaves. They came not as conquerors or interlopers, but to learn if the Jones chronicles were accurate. It wasn’t long before they also learned that what he had seen was the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

When the Stanleys and their party returned to the Briton capital two-and-a-half years later, they were accompanied by a few of the ninja granted permission to travel with them. The ninja were also on their own mission of discovery and exploration, so Konohagakure could be part of the outside world they, too, had heard whispers about.

Before long the Empire knew of them too. While some remained doubtful about people flying through trees, controlling elements or walking on water, it did make for a rousing good story. Most importantly, ninjas existed and the witnesses saw they possessed gifts equal to if not greater than those of the acclaimed medieval magician Myrddin of Caerfyrddin.  

Talk of forming an alliance of some sort came into being, not with the Leaf Village as a part of the Empire, but as an ally, equals.

The murmurs about athletic games so each society might compete in friendship began, pushed by  then Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister William Pitt, and members of the royal family. By the time the ninja returned to the Village, accompanied by the Stanleys, there were diplomats with them too, as well as scholars, historians, surveyors, as well as those with the knowledge of agriculture and anthropology.

Charles and Amelia’s multi-volume Hidden: The History of Konohagakure, the Village Among the Leaves became required textbook reading on the university level. An abridged edition became a popular best seller.

The Alliance became reality, both on paper and in a vocal agreement. While many “on the outside” could not comprehend such a thing - that a force such as Konoha with its’ shinobi would consider itself on a level plane with the likes of mere mortals. It happened. It succeeded. The athletic games to push each side to their best happened every few years, usually in the Village, but on several occasions in Briton, giving the few who made the journey a chance to see their allies on even more personally. Each side benefited.  

The ‘final’ Games. The Glorious Games were how they came to be known, both in Briton and among the Villagers. Of all those which had been conducted, these were considered the best and most memorable. Emperor-King Edward IX accompanied his athletes, along with his beautiful Queen, Alexandra, and their little daughter, the heiress-apparent, Princess Elizabeth. The Briton team was the largest in the history of the Games and people came from far off lands to watch the competitions, realizing with amazement that there were actual mortals with such fortitude they might make a jonin tremble, if only for a second.

There was already talk of the next Games becoming even more magnificent.

They never happened.

The Nine-Tails came. That story is chronicled in the histories of Konohagakure and need not be repeated here.

Briton could not have come to their aid had they even desired. The greatest war in their history, their one and only world war, broke out against the invading fascist forces of Germania and Italia intent on global conquest. It took several bloody years before their armies were pushed back and defeated. One dictator was executed by his own people who were part of the Resistance - him along with his mistress. The chief leader and instigator of the war - his dreams of conquest swept away - hid himself in a bunker in their nation’s capital, along with his mistress, general staff and those of his military and personal echelon. As the Imperial Briton armies surrounded them, the man worshipped as Der Führer took his life, as did his mistress and others not wishing to live in a world without him.

One World War was over.

The conflicts in Konohagakure continued almost without ceasing.

The Alliance was broken, broken for years, but never forgotten.  

But you see, there are moments when the perfect time arises for renewal.

This was the moment.

Once Upon a Time...

[minervacasterly]

Secrets of the Six Wives: Anne of Cleves -Knowing Your Worth:

“Henry VIII, an aging King is looking for his fourth wife” and who does he turn to for advice? His favorite painter of course! Hans Holbein the Younger does a flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves, one that is turned more beautiful by Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s top man, singing praises of her, heightening Anne’s status to the point of turning her into the most beautiful woman that ever walked the Earth.

At this point, Henry VIII was a sickly obese man who surrounded himself with sycophants. A man who had turned his back in reality in return for safe spaces. But what his court, especially those who had been made by Henry, failed to notice was that just as quickly as he could turn them into powerful men, he could easily unmake them and their families.

Thomas Cromwell thought he was playing the same game he started playing when he became Wolsey’s aide. But the rules of the game had changed. Henry VIII was no longer a man who needed an heir, he now needed “a spare” as Dr. Lucy Worsley put it, to secure the Tudor Dynasty. He was after all the spare to his father’s line. If it weren’t for him, the Tudor line would already be finished and the Stuart regime would have become the ruling dynasty of England a century earlier. He was also a man who needed someone beautiful, someone who in his view could provide him with a perfect prince because for the royals, it was all about appearances.

When Henry VIII finally met Anne, in the New Year of 1540, he was shocked. Anne asked to dine with her new English ladies and the ambassador, and be taught how to play cards, so she could be ready for her future position as English Consort. Sadly though, everyone had failed to mention that Henry VIII was still fancied himself the great prince of Europe, handsome and strong, who loved to surprise his women, disguising himself as Robin Hood, and with his band of merry men, ask for their favors. This is a huge contrast to Henry VIII’s first foreign bride. Despite what people think about Catherine and her family, the Spanish Princess had grown up in a cultured court where they also engaged in courtly love. Henry VIII’s disguises, along with Catherine’s are well documented. The two also loved going on picnics and play various role, the helpless maiden, rescued by the knight in shining armor and she never failed to give him her favors during the jousts.

Anne of Cleves had never had that. She had been given a simple education, a domestic one. The Cleves court was very strict, emphasizing more on female virtue than they did in England and Spain. It is no then, why Anne of Cleves was immediately taken by surprise when the elder monarch came to her chambers, surprising her and her ladies, asking her for a kiss.

“A blind date proves to be a disaster.”

Indeed. Anne was immediately repulsed by the sight of him. Not so much because of his appearance, but because here was a stranger who for no reason is asking a woman of high birth for a kiss. Who does he think he is? The King of England? As soon as she realizes her folly, she tries to remedy the situation by paying him simple compliments. Henry is not satisfied. “I like her not.” He allegedly says and immediately seeks ways to undermine his marriage, starting with bringing up the matter of her pre-contract which doesn’t become useful until much later when he no longer needs the Cleves and other Protestant counties and duchies alliance. And England needed those allies, because Henry’s break with Rome and Spain’s recent alliance with France, had left England isolated.

But soon problems start to arise. Henry tries to consummate the marriage and surprise, surprise! He can’t! Oh no! What will he ever do? Where does the fault lie? It can’t be with him. He is the King, God’s representative on Earth. It must be with somebody else. And voila! He is back to his safe space again when he summons his royal physician, Doctor Butts who tells him that nothing is wrong with him. He is in perfect health. And to prove that His Majesty is still the dashing prince, he says that Henry has been having “nocturnal pollution” aka wet dreams. It must feel good to have a royal space, just imagine, if the sky is pink -even when it isn’t- you can still be told it is by your personal physician and loyal courtiers.

“My theory is he couldn’t manage it” Lucy Worsley states and to support her theory, she reminds us of Henry’s weight and the ulcer in his leg, rendering him “probably impotent.”

To humor the King, everyone agrees that the King’s new foreign wife is everything he says she is. Ugly, and plain. But in private, they think differently. Foreign envoys are puzzled as to why would Henry say these things of her when their eyes are telling them otherwise. As far as they can tell, Henry VIII’s fourth consort is good looking. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but attractive.

There is one envoy in particular that takes this too personal and that is the Cleves Ambassador.

“Madame, this is an outrage.”

We do not know for sure what Anne of Cleves must have thought of all of this. She was a woman who was bred to be a royal bride. As such she knew her worth and Lucy Worsley manages to recreate this by having her tell the Cleves ambassador that if Henry is going to annul their marriage, she is not going to go empty-handed. She also reminds him: “This is King Henry.” Meaning, that like the townsfolk of South Park in season 19, when they hung reality, he doesn’t care about what is convenient, as long as he is happy. And in the end, isn’t that what all of his wives were trying to do? Keep him happy? Of course, Anne was one step ahead of most of them, knowing full well that if Henry wanted something, he was going to get it no matter what. So as soon as her marriage was declared null and void, she brought her own set of rules. She would agree to everything as long as she was well paid off.

“She becomes the King’s sister … Here is the good bit. Two palaces … Huge entourage of people and lots of money.” One of these two palaces is none other than Hever castle, the former Boleyn stronghold and where Anne and her siblings had grown up. Anne becomes comfortable in her new position. Being the King’s legal sister suits her. She is freer than any woman in the kingdom to live her life how she wants to live it. She starts hosting parties in her homes, and as time goes by, she is granted more manors.

“She never remarried but she did become one of the richest women in England. Anne outlived all of Henry’s wives, and Henry himself.”

The segment ends with Lucy Worsley’s summing up Anne of Cleves’ life perfectly after she lays a rose on her tomb at Westminster Abbey. She was the one wife who outlived her husband and her successors, and her stepson. During Edward VI and Mary I’s respective reign, she continued to figure prominently. When Mary became the first Queen Regnant, she had her as part of her female entourage, in a carriage of gold and silver trappings, taking precedence, along with her youngest stepdaughter, Elizabeth, above the other women. When she died, she was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, given a funeral fit for a royal princess and former consort.

Recommended reading: Anne of Cleves by Elizabeth Norton, The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser, Six Wives: Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey, The Six Wives and the Many Mistresses of Henry VIII by Amy Licence and the Private Lives of the Tudors & Thomas Cromwell by Tracy Borman (while she does lends credence to the myths that Anne was ugly, which by the way, mostly stem from secondary sources, she makes a fine point, emphasizing Thomas Cromwell's stretching the boundaries of everyone's imagination by heightening Anne's beauty more than anyone ever did).

[gododdinman-blog]

Sir John Kirk and the Resonance of Slavery

Slavery as a tangible fact is not something one would particularly associate with Angus, more than any other part of the British Isles, though the county of course had its connections with that trade. Interesting and little-known material about the decent and doubtless God-fearing lairds who quietly owned slaves far away, back in the day, can be unearthed through web sites like Legacies of British Slave Ownership, and though it may seem churlish to name and shame those associated with that business after all these years (people who in themselves doubtless led complex and rich lives), it can still be instructive as an eye-opener.

  Among the interesting data is that concerning former slave owners who claimed compensation from the British government when slavery in the British Empire was abolished and they were financially disadvantaged. A cursory search through the records reveals the follows Angus folk as former slave owners:  David Langlands of Balkemmock, Tealing, Alexander Erskine of Balhall, David Lyon of Balintore Castle, George Ogilvie of Langley Park, James Alexander Pierson of The Guynd, Thomas Renny Strachan of Seaton House, St Vigeans,  Mary Russell of Bellevue Cottage, David McEwan and James Gray of Dundee, the 7th Earl of Airlie.

There is more information surrounding the Cruickshank family, who lived at Keithock House, Stracathro House and Langley Park.  Alexander Cruickshank of Keithock was born in 1800 and married his cousin, Mary Cruickshank of Langley Park (formerly Egilsjohn or - colloquially - Edzell's John).  In the middle of the 19th century Alexander unsuccessfully attempted to claim compensation for the loss of slaves owned on the Langley Park estate on the island of St Vincent.  The whole family's fortunes were inextricably linked with slavery.  Patrick jointly owned the estates of Richmond, Greenhill and Mirton in St Vincent with his brother James who was compensated £23,000 by the government following slavery abolition in 1833. The St Vincent estates had more than 800 slaves.  Originally from Wartle in Aberdeenshire, the money to buy the Egilsjohn estate in Angus came from a fortune made in the Caribbean; its name was even changed to commemorate the St Vincent estate name of Langley.  The Angus estates of Stracathro and Keithock followed.  But we are told (Baronage of Angus and Mearns, p. 64) that Alexander Cruickshank's 'affairs eventually got embarrassed - and he returned to Demerara, where he shortly afterwards made his demise, leaving a son and daughter.'

  Emigration to the colonies was by no means a passport of quick riches to those who went there with slender means to begin with.  John Landlands, son of a tenant farmer from Haughs of Finavon, went to Jamaica in 1749 and found that his promised employment did not exist, though he was helped to secure another post at the vividly named Treadways Maggoty estate.  In time he acquired his own coffee plantation, complete with valuable slaves.  On his death he provided for his mistress/housekeeper and his natural son born to her, but the estate of Roseberry was burdened by debt and had to be disposed of by his cousin back home in Angus.

  There was less known commercial speculation in the slave trade in Angus ports than in other places, though there are records held in Montrose Museum of a business deal from 1751 concerning the ship Potomack, whose master Thomas Gibson struck a deal with merchants Thomas Douglas and Co to travel with cargo to Holland and thence to west Africa and there pick up slaves for the North American market. Researchers reckon that some 31 Montrose vessels were engaged in human slave trafficking, though records survive for only four ships (the other three being the Success, the Delight, and the St George).

  One Montrose family of the 18th century who went on to great things financially were the Coutts family, ancestors of the private banking dynasty which migrated to London later and dealt with the fortunes of royals and the nobility.  John Coutts (born 1643) was Lord Provost of the Angus burgh five times between 1677 and 1688 (having been made a councillor in 1661).  the family were involved in the Virginia tobacco trade and doubtless incidentally involved to some extent in slave ownership.  John's third son Thomas went to London and was one of the promoters of the 'Company of Scotland, trading to Africa and the Indies', better known as the company who initiated the doomed Darien Scheme.  A grandson of the first John Coutts was another John (son of Patrick), among those in the family who left Montrose for business opportunities further south.

John Kirk - Doctor! Botanist! Knight! Our Man in Zanzibar!

  There were few places as strange to the intrepid foreigner in the mid 19th century as Zanzibar, even in an age when the whole continent of Africa held a jewel-like fascination for Europeans.  The island was just off the continental coast but was truly a place apart.  It had in effect been colonised and annexed before any Western interest in the place by an Arab dynasty from the north. The ruler of Oman, Seyyid Said, made the African island his capital in 1838 and brilliantly maintained his power through diplomacy with the British East India Company and a cannily managed business acumen.  The Arab management of African slaves more than matched the newer European-sponsored slave trade operating in west Africa.  Throughout Seyyid Said's rule it continued unabated and Zanzibar was its unashamed fulcrum, dispatching human cargo and attendant misery across the Indian Ocean.  Alastair Hazell states that the mid-19th century population of the island was possibly 100,000, or which around half were slaves.  Said had personally transformed his new centre of operations 'from a mere backwater, a slave market with a fort, to the largest and most prosperous trading city of the western Indian Ocean'.

  Gold, ivory and gum copal were other products which flowed out of the continent via the island, but it was the process of the oldest institution on Zanzibar, the slave market outside the Customs House, which was the most outstanding element of that market place to outsiders; here described by the English traveller Sir Richard Burton.  It was a place, he said:

where millions of dollars annually change hands under the foulest of sheds, a long, low mat-roof, supported by two dozen tree-stems... It is conspicuous as the centre of circulation, the heart from and to which twin streams of blacks are ever ebbing and flowing, whilst the beach and waters opposite it are crowded with shore boats.

  The slave market was in the centre of town and here every year many thousands of bagham, untrained slaves, were tethered and publicly auctioned.  In the mid-1850s, Hazell tells us, able-bodied young men could be bought for $4-$12 - 'about the prince of a donkey'.  Girls and women were sold for sex, passed on many times  via different owner/abusers.  A premium was paid for 'exotics' from India or fair haired unfortunates from as far afield as the Caucasus.

                 The Boy from Barry

Step up John Kirk.  The latest biographer of John Kirk - Alastair Hazell - makes the fundamental mistake of stating that Kirk was born in Barry, in Fife!  This is a shame because his book, The Last Slave Market, is a well-researched account of this important figure who did much personally to end the intolerable anomaly of Zanzibar's slaving in a time when many cynically turned a blind eye to it. John was the third of his name in succession, following his grandfather (a baker) and father, who was born in St Andrews in 1795 (which perhaps explains Hazell's error).  The Rev. Kirk was appointed minister of Barry in June 1824 and transferred to nearby Arbirlot in 1837.  In the religious turmoil of the times he joined the Free Church and was minister of the Free Church in Barry from 1843 until his death in 1858.  The minister was 'a man of cultivated mind, of a deportment becoming his high calling, and of a conversation that savoured of the things of Christ'.  His wife was Christian Guthrie, daughter of the Rev. Alexander Carnegie, minister of Inverkeilor.

John Kirk as a young doctor.

  The youngest  John was he second of four children, born  19 December 1832  and must have inherited much of his iron-clad morality from his parents. The only other sibling who seems to have attained any prominence was his elder brother, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, born in 1830.  He became a noted naval engineer, but unlike John did not take part in any kind of public life, dying in Glasgow in 1892.

The explorer's eldest brother.

Early Career and Into Africa

  Kirk qualified as a doctor and went on to serve in the Crimea War in 1855.  (His interest in botany was  evident in Edinburgh, where he studied in the faculty of arts at first before switching to medicine.)  Learning Turkish, he travelled widely in the Middle East, mainly pursuing botanical interests. His most significant appointment was that of a naturalist accompanying the famous David Livingstone on an expedition to east Africa in 1858.  This second expedition of Livingstone's, exploring the Zambesi region, did not go entirely smoothly.  Livingstone was no great communicator and preferred either his own company or that of native Africans.  His brother Charles was also part of the party and was a more petty character than David, arguing with colleagues and dismissing some of them.  Kirk generally got on tolerably well with Livingstone - both were doctors and of course Scots - and also accepted his plans and decisions even when these looked ill-judged and even foolhardy.  But Livingstone, driven by instinct and his own demons, was at times looked upon as a madman by his younger colleague.  On 18 April 1874 he was one of the pall-bearers who carried Livingstone's coffin into a funeral ceremony in Westminster Abbey.  (This was despite the fact that Livingstone's chief mythologiser, Henry Morton Stanley, tried his damnedest to blacken's Kirk's name on the false basis that the doctor had not done all he could to assist the great man in his last expedition.)

  John Kirk returned to Britain in 1863, but three years later he was back in a different part of Africa, appointed as a medical officer in Zanzibar.  He soon became Assistant Consul and then Resident.  He had been appointed Consul in 1873, succeeding Henry Adrian Churchill, who had been actively working towards the abolition of the slave market on the island.  Churchill's health broke down to such an extent that Kirk advised him to return to the U.K. in 1870.

  The final defeat of the slave trade in the island was accomplished by Kirk's astonishing guile and nerve. While the years in which he served primarily as a doctor in the consulate were quiet and he took no active part in public life or against slavery, there was one incident which marked him out as a risk taker.  This was in 1866 when he joined in the successful attempt to smuggle the sultan's sister out of the territory.  Seyidda Salme had become pregnant by a German and was at risk of death if she had remained in Zanzibar.  For much of the time, Kirk pursued his own interests in Africa, collecting information about botany, trade, slavery, in an even handed and non-judgemental fashion.  More of a pragmatist than the strange visionary Livinstone, he was caught between the rock and hard place of the British government and the East India Company, which often had differing ideas about slavery and much else.  In 1873 he was put in an invidious position of receiving two contradictory instructions from London.  The first ordered him in no uncertain terms to give the Sultan the ultimatum that he should close the slave market and cease all trade in slaves, or else the British government would blockade the island.  The second order warned Kirk that no blockade was to be enforced, for fear that it would drive the territory to crave the protection of the French.  Kirk only showed the first communication to the Sultan, with the result that Barghash caved in within two weeks and the slave market was closed forever.

  Despite the best efforts of Kirk and his successors, slavery actually surreptitiously survived the closure of Zanzibar's public slave market. Special Commissioner Donald Mackenzie visited the island and its neighbour Pemba in the last decade of the 19th century and found that slavery was still flourishing in the agricultural estates:

In Zanzibar a good many people had been telling me how happy and

contented the Slaves were in the hands of the Arabs; in fact, they would

not desire their freedom. At Chaki Chaki I walked into a tumble-down

old prison. Here I found a number of prisoners, male and female,

heavily chained and fettered. I thought surely these men and women

must be dreadful criminals, or murderers, or they must have committed

similar crimes and are now awaiting their doom. I inquired of them all

why they were there. The only real criminal was one who had stolen a

little rice from his master. All the others I found were wearing those

ponderous chains and fetters because they had attempted to run away

from their cruel masters and gain their freedom— a very eloquent commentary on the happiness of the Slaves!

The British Consulate, Zanzibar.

Kirk's Later Years and Legacy

Kirk returned to Britain finally in 1886, settling in Kent. His awards included the K.C.M.G., G.C.M.G., K.C.B., plus the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. The welfare of Africa still concerned him and in 1889-90 he attended the Brussels Africa Conference as British Plenipotentiary.    In later years John Kirk grew progressively blind but he maintained his interest in the natural world. He died at the age of 89 and was buried in St Nicholas's Churchyard in Sevenoaks.  Among the tributes paid to him was one by Frederick Lugard, Governor General of Nigeria:  'For Kirk I had a deep affection which I know was reciprocated.  He was to me the ideal of a wise and sympathetic administrator on whom I endeavoured to model my own actions and to whose inexhaustible fund of knowledge I constantly appealed.'

  Substantial records survive concerning Kirk, including the journals he kept on the expedition with Livingstone,  Apart from that there are his contributions and discoveries in zoology, biology, a substantial corpus of photographs(over 250).  He maintained close connection with Kew Gardens until his death. The Kirk Papers have been secured for the future in the National Library of Scotland.  As far as I know, there is no memorial to Sir John Kirk at Barry, but if not,  there definitely should be.

Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Sir Barghash bin Sa'id (ruled 1870-1888).

Selected Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kirk_(explorer)

John Langlands: An Aberlemno Slave Owner

C. F. H., 'Obituary:  'Sir John Kirk,' Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine, volume 15, issue 5-6 (15 December 1921), p. 202.

Hazell, Alastair, The Last Slave Market:  Dr John Kirk and the Struggle to End the African Slave Trade (London, 2011).

Low, James L., Notes On The Coutts Family (Montrose, 1892).

MacGregor Peter, David, The Baronage of Angus and Mearns (Edinburgh, 1856).

Mackenzie, Donald, A Report on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Mainland Protectorates of East Africa (London, 1895).

McBain, J. M., Eminent Arbroathians (Arbroath, 1897).

Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (volume 5, new edition, Edinburgh, 1925).

Wild, H., 'Sir John Kirk,' Kirkia, volume 1 (1960-61), pp. 5-10.

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The Capped Bust Half Dollar, 1807-1836

Today we think of the quarter dollar as the most useful coin in ordinary transactions. This was not always true and prior to 1964, and the Kennedy half dollar, the half dollar was equally popular in many parts of the United States. The mass hoarding of the Kennedy version, and the disappearance of this denomination from our pocket change, has served to make us forget the former importance of the half dollar.

When the basic mint act was signed into law by President George Washington in early April 1792, one of the coins on the list was the fifty-cent piece, or half dollar. This denomination came about because our monetary system was based on the Spanish silver dollar (eight reales) and the four reales piece was the same as our half dollar.

While coinage of half dollars had been very heavy as early as 1795, it was not until 1801 that full-scale minting resumed. At first the mintages were hesitant because bullion depositors really did not want half dollars; instead they wanted silver dollars for export in payment for foreign goods.

Finally, at the end of March 1804, Mint Director Elias Boudinot stopped the production of silver dollars and forced the bullion owners to accept half dollars instead. From this small beginning, the coinage of half dollars grew until by 1808 it had passed the million mark.

In 1806 the design on the half dollar was the same as had been first used on this denomination in 1801: a Draped Bust head of Liberty on the obverse and the Heraldic eagle on the reverse. By any standard the Draped Bust design was one of quality and the United States had something to be proud of when its coins found their way to foreign shores. However, all of this was to change after Robert Patterson became mint director in the summer of 1805.

  The Draped Bust design had first been used in the days of President George Washington, who was considered a Federalist in politics. However, in 1801 Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, had been elected president and there were several changes made in the way that the country was run. Patterson, who had been appointed by Jefferson to the mint post in 1805, was well in tune with the times and decided that a new design was required on all of our coins to reflect the political changes. (The modern Republican party dates from the 1850s and the Republican Party of President Jefferson is now called the Democratic Party.)

Patterson did not think that the current chief engraver, Robert Scot, was capable of executing the new artwork so the President was asked to authorize the employment of an assistant engraver named John Reich. Patterson believed that Reich, an indentured servant freed by Chief Coiner Henry Voight, was better suited to carry out the new artistic direction on the coinage.

It was made clear to the President that Reich was wanted for the specific task of redesigning our coinage. Jefferson of course knew that there already was an engraver at the Mint but that he was a Federalist and one assumes that a member of President’s political party would of course do a better job.

The President, whatever his views on coinage design, had very clear ideas about spending public money and it was not until March 1807 that Director Patterson was able to persuade the Chief Executive to permit Reich to be hired as an assistant engraver at the sum of $600 per year (Scot received $1200 per annum). Shortly thereafter Reich arrived at the Mint and began to prepare designs under Patterson’s supervision.

In his letter of March 25, 1807, to the President, Patterson noted that the “beauty of our coins would be greatly improved by his [Reich’s] masterly hand.” Modern collectors are not quite so charitable when it comes to this statement and most think the design was a step backward. Yet the finished product has a distinct charm of its own and many numismatists specialize in the half dollar coinage of 1807–1836.

The first Reich design to be approved was for the half dollar, then considered the most important coin being struck by the Philadelphia Mint. Within a matter of weeks Reich had produced drawings that were acceptable to Patterson.

Because of a Mint memo that was written in the 1860s and later published by a researcher, there is a persistent rumor that the model for the new Liberty head was the Reich’s “fat mistress.” Considering that Philadelphia was a relatively small town in those days it seems unlikely that the memo was reporting the truth, however. It was more likely a case of sour grapes from someone who simply did not like the design.

Patterson was closely involved in the design work and would certainly have known had Reich in fact used a mistress as a model. Under no circumstances would such a woman have been portrayed on our coinage in those days. There would have been political fallout for the President had this become known and Patterson would have been aware of the risks.

Oddly enough, there was a second rumor, in the 1850s, that Reich had portrayed Mint Director Patterson’s wife on the coinage. The story was furnished to a French numismatist, Alexandre Vattemare, who published this attribution in 1861. One suspects, however, that Mint officials were having a little fun at Vattemare’s expense because he also reported Pocahontas as the model for the Draped Bust Liberty head of 1795.

The reverse of the new Reich half dollar has an equally interesting story in that Director Patterson had ordered that the Great Seal, as found on the silver and gold coinage of 1796–1807, be altered so that the eagle would have a more natural pose. Even the motto (E PLURIBUS UNUM) was retained to show what was intended.

Later mint directors, including Dr. Samuel Moore, felt that the retention of the motto was a mistake and it was dropped from the coinage by the mid–1830s. It was Moore’s contention that the motto properly belonged with the Great Seal but not the new eagle since the meaning of the motto was little different from the words “United States of America.” In 1873 the motto returned because by then it was thought that the motto was supposed to be there, regardless of the historical background.

Whatever the source of the design, half dollar coinage with Reich’s new dies began towards the end of 1807. In the late 1850s Mint Director James Ross Snowden stated that about 750,000 of the new coins were made, as compared to 300,000 or so of the 1807 Draped Bust half dollars.

There are reasons for believing that Snowden simply fabricated the figures when he was unable to find anything in the mint records about the changeover. He certainly did so for at least one other coinage: the cents dated 1823.

Half dollars of 1807 are scarcer than indicated by the 750,000 mintage figure. According to the monthly price guide appearing in Numismatic News, in XF–40 the value is a strong $750 for the most common variety, which compares to $480 for the 1814 in this grade with a mintage of barely over one million. The true mintage of the 1807 Reich design was probably less than a half million pieces.

  There are several varieties of the 1807 half dollar which are collected by specialists, including obverses with large and small stars, a reverse where the figure 50 was punched over an erroneous figure 20, and the ‘Bearded Goddess’ obverse. The latter, which brings as much as $4,000 even in VF–20, is the result of a damaged die.

For the years from 1808 to 1814 the values are much more reasonable and in most cases an XF–40 specimen can be obtained for as little as $350. Those collectors specializing in the half dollars of 1807–1836 tend to go after the higher grade pieces because they are, after all, relatively common. This is partly due to the fact that banks used these coins as backing for their paper currency and as late as the 1930s half dollar hoards were still being discovered.

The fact that banks used these as backing for paper currency has led to an erroneous belief that half dollars really did not circulate in the years before 1840; nothing could be further from the truth. Except for the copper cent, the half dollar was the most common United States coin to be found in daily use.

In just one case, the famous Economite hoard of the past century, more than 100,000 half dollars from before 1840 were found. Even the rare 1815 date was uncovered to the amount of more than 100 specimens, probably forming a fair part of those in collections today.

Not only were half dollars widely used along the Eastern seaboard, where the bulk of the population lived, but they were also to be seen on the frontier. Indian treaty payments were often made in half dollars, which were promptly spent by the natives in local stores and with itinerant peddlers.

Although little noticed today by collectors, the half dollars of 1807 and 1808 did not strike up well in the presses; for this reason Reich executed a new hub, in lower relief, of the Liberty head and this was introduced in 1809. There was another minor redesign in 1812, perhaps because of some dissatisfaction with the 1809 revision. There were other changes from time to time, but these are of little interest except to specialists.

The half dollars of 1807–1836 all have lettered edges which read FIFTY CENTS OR HALF A DOLLAR. Because the denomination was put on the reverse in 1807 the wording on the edge was pointless (no one read it anyway) but the presence of lettering did have the specific purpose of deterring counterfeits. (Some of the 1809 issues have a special edge in which “XXXX” or “IIII” is found between certain letters.)

  Although half dollars are relatively plentiful today for the years 1808 through 1812, in 1813 the supply of silver bullion began to decline; in those days the government did not coin money on its own account and all gold and silver coinage was derived from private deposits. In 1814 the mintage dropped to barely over one million, well below the peak of 1.63 million in 1812. Even though 1814 mintage is lower, in XF–40 the value is a reasonable $480.

The War of 1812 created an unstable economic market; as a result people began to hoard silver coins and very little bullion found its way to the Mint after the middle of 1814. One firm (Jones, Firth, & Company of Philadelphia) brought in a quantity of silver in late 1815 and just after the end of the year, in early January 1816, some 47,150 half dollars were struck with the 1815 date. A few were paid out to others, but most of the coins went to this particular firm.

  The 1815 is a rare date and the most difficult to find for any year after 1797. Even in G–4 the value is an impressive $1400 while VF–20 tips the scales at a strong $4800. All of the 1815s are actually overdates, 1815/2, there being only one obverse die used for this coinage.

  In mid-January 1816 there was a fire at the Mint, which damaged some of the outbuildings. Unfortunately the rolling mills were contained in one of these structures and were destroyed by the flames; Director Patterson took the opportunity to order special rollers from the English firm of Belles and Harrold.

With the new rollers on hand, half dollar coinage resumed in May 1817 and through the end of this series in 1836 the number struck continued to grow. The best year was 1836, with more than 6.5 million produced.

The increased coinage means that specimens from the 1820s and 1830s are progressively cheaper for the collector to obtain. By the 1830s an XF–40 specimen can be obtained for about $120, certainly a bargain in view of the age and historical importance of these coins. Those of the 1820s vary of course by date, but usually can be found in about the same price range for most dates.

Perhaps the most interesting issue of the 1820s is the 1823 which has some odd figure ‘3’s in the date. One is called a ‘patchwork 3’while another is simply called an ‘ugly 3’ with good cause.

  A modified portrait was executed in late 1833 by Chief Engraver William Kneass and coins of the final three years, 1834 through 1836, used the revised motif.

    Regular proof coinage began at Philadelphia in 1817 although for the early years such pieces are few and far between when it comes to finding one for a specialized collection. Probably the reason for the silver or gold proofs from that time was the new rollers, which gave a better finish to the strips of metal. Most proof half dollars before the 1830s bring strong prices, the 1820s, for example, having a book value of at least $50,000.

  In 1836 the Mint finally introduced steam coinage in place of the antiquated screw presses but this meant that the lettered edge would have to be dropped; only plain or reeded edges could be struck in the new machines. This in turn meant that new dies were required. There was an abortive attempt to coin the new pieces in November 1836, but it was not until early 1837 that the reeded-edge coinage got underway. It was still the Reich design, but modified by a new engraver, Christian Gobrecht.

The collector may encounter some lettered-edge half dollars dated after 1836 but these are counterfeits. Pre–1837 dates also exist, usually made from copper-nickel or some similar metal in color. There is a certain value to these contemporary counterfeits and a market for them does exist.

With the end of the lettered-edge half dollar coinage in 1836 only the collector was left to appreciate the coin that had once served the nation so well.

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