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darkspellmaster · 6 years

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The Role of the Gentleman or Lady Thief and their Detective/Cop/Agent Part 1

With Carmen Sandiego 2019 starting to heat up I figured that it would be a good time to explain why characters like Chase, Julia, and formerly Ivy and Zack were important to the over all story and why these dynamics are key in telling the story of the idea of Cops and Robbers.

To start with we have to go all the way back to the days of the Highway men and the likes of Robin Hood.

So let’s start with that. The myths around Robin Hood have grown over the years, most of which had the elements in there of him being a free spirited outlaw that was in Nottingham and being the enemy of the Sheriff came from earlier poems such as the Robin Hood and the Monk show that while he’s got some good in him, he’s not friends with the King, and that his robbing maybe more selfish, and the actions of the Merry Men are more in line with that of a thriller than the more epic adventure that we see later.

Robin’s stories changed over time from darker stories with thriller like plots, to comedic at times, and over time grew to show Robin changing from a character that simply robbed because of the fun of it, to someone who was robbing for the people, and that he could be outwitted by others and then they are invited to join with him.

Robin representing the lawful outlaw, the thief that while forceful to those that don’t fit into his moral code, can be gallant and kind to those that he finds right and just. He’s a Chaotic good type character in this case, leading into the Sheriff who falls under the idea of the dull witted idiot at times who get’s tricked and had by the clever robber. Over time Robin became a noble over a commoner, where as the Sheriff was always seen as part of the rich nobles that caused issue for the lower classes.

Thus a lot of the idea of the noble thief and the arrogant detective came into being. Though this dynamic wouldn’t stick around for long with these two as the Sheriff became more and more of a villain and Robin more of a heroic person who was only robbing to return the wealth to those that needed it.

Stories about Robin and his ways of stealing, namely their ballads, over time, influenced later writers who wrote about the exploits of real Highwaymen:

Later robber heroes included the Cavalier highwayman James Hind, the French-born gentleman highwayman Claude Du Vall, John Nevison, Dick Turpin, Sixteen String Jack, William Plunkett and his partner the "Gentleman Highwayman" James MacLaine, the Slovak Juraj Jánošík, and Indians including Kayamkulam Kochunni, Veerappan and Phoolan Devi.

These robbers were seen as heroic due to their bold actions robbing people face to face. A lot of the actions of later Gentle thieves can be attributed to the legends of these Highwaymens’ characters.

James Hind -Was a royalist who apparently helped other Royalist escape from troubles, gave money to poor royalists and also refused to rob cavaliers. A lot of his exploits were embellished, painting him as a Royalist Robin Hood.

Claude Du Vall - According to popular legend, he abhorred violence, showing courtesy to his victims and chivalry to their womenfolk, thus spawning the myth of the romantic highwayman. -from Wikipedia. Du Vall is most known for inspiring a lot of the legends around the “Romantic Highwayman” legends.

John Nevison - with the nickname Swift Nick, due to a dash of 200 miles from Kent to York to create an alibi after a robbery, Nevison was known for never using violence against his victims, always polite, and only robbing the rich.

Dick Turpin - was nothing like his legend, and was over time turned into an almost robin hood like figure. The reason that his name is used so much and linked with the other gentlemen Highwaymen is due to the book Rookwood, where he’s used as part of the plot and comes off as far more lively than the mains.

Sixteen String Jack - was known for his colorful costumes, wit and charm and typically robbed so he could afford said expensive clothing.

William Plunkett -wore a venetian mask and tended to be polite to women and only stole because he “was obliged to do so” not out of wontoness. He actually escaped with his life.

John MacLaine -a former son of clergy who became a grocer and, after his wife died three years after their marriage, went bankrupt and became the partner of William Plunkett. He, like Will, was seen a courteous and restrained when they were holding people up.

Juraj Jánošík -the Slovakian Robin Hood, who’s stories became more legend and was later used as a symbol against oppression. After helping another robber escape from jail, the two started a band, which Juraj became leader of at the age of 23, when the former leader left to settle down outside of the kingdom of Hungary. “ Most of their victims were rich merchants. Under Jánošík's leadership, the group was exceptionally chivalrous: They did not kill any of the robbed victims and even helped an accidentally injured priest.[5] They are also said to share their loot with the poor and this part of the legend may be based on the facts too.[5] -Wikipedia”

Kayamkulam Kochunni -is India’s Robin Hood. Like Juraj, Kayamkulam has become a legend and a bit of a deity as well. He was said to have robbed from the rich to give to the poor, focusing mostly on merchants that were wealthy. What’s interesting is that he’s one of the first to be well known and have a detective that is following him around, by the name of “ Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker” who was a known warrior and defender of the oppressed, and who supposedly captured Kayamkulam, leading to him being placed in jail for a year where he died.

Veerappan -a more modern day version of Robin Hood in India, who was active in the late 1960s and into the early 2000s. Unlike the other members of this, he was not known for giving back to the poor, rather his status comes from the fact that he was elusive.

Phoolan Devi -a lady bandit who’s last name was used as a title for her. Her history in India was well known, and she later was released from jail after she and her gang were arrested for the massacre of a rival gang that had captured and raped her. However publically she was somewhat praised for her actions. She later was elected to the Indian parliament but was assassinated in 2001 by a former member of the gang that she had killed.

Other Highwaymen tended to do so for revolution or rebellion based actions, such as those in Ireland during the 17th to the 19th Century.

In 17th- through early-19th-century Ireland, acts of robbery were often part of a tradition of popular resistance to British colonial rule and settlement and Protestant domination. From the mid-17th century, bandits who harassed the British were known as tories (from Irish tóraiḋe, raider; tóraí in modern spelling). Later in the century, they became known as rapparees. Famous highwaymen included James Freney, Count Redmond O'Hanlon, Willy Brennan, and Jeremiah Grant.[10][11]

James Freney - originally lost his family lands in 1650, after being a well off family that was considered a noble. As a young man he wound up working as a servant to another well off family, married, and had a family. He joined with a gang after the towns fees caused him to close up his pub. Like a number of other Highwaymen he was known for being polite for the most part, and saw his actions as a way to get back at the English.

Count Redmond O’Hanlon - his family at one time was a favor of Queen Elizabeth the first, however due to them siding with the Catholics during the events of the Irish Rebellion, his family got their lands seized during the Act for Settlement, where in they lost all their status and lands to England and it was given away to other land holders. Redmond was known for being an excellent actor, mimic and persuasive speaker who used these skills. Again he’s seen as a bit of a Robin Hood figure.

Using this as a base we can see how these men and women of reality became a sort of base for fictional characters, who later became part of the genre of the Gentlemen thief. Furthering the evolution of these characters was the idea of the opposition of the thief in the form of the rival police officer, typically either a detective/cop/Agent of Interpol who has been sent out to stop the likes of the Heroic thief.

Subsequently, a change happened between the time of the Sheriff from Robin Hood to the time of someone like Zenigata, from Lupin the third. The first changes could be seen in the idea of making the opposite of the thief be someone that has a more personal reason to want to capture the thief, or have a more sympathic reason behind their being the rival to the thief.

Another aspect added to this was that, in some cases the detective had it wrong about the thief and their heroic actions were being read wrong by the law. Best example of this early on was is the character of Javert from Victor Hugo’s Les Mis. written back in the 1860s.

Javert’s story focuses a lot on how he wants to capture Jean because Jean ran from his parole, and Javert feels like he must catch him, even after years of the man reforming his life. One of the aspects about this that draws into the modern day Phantom Thief idea, is that of the character that at all costs, MUST, capture the thief. Javert devotes his life to it, dealing with the fact that he grew up inside a prison and can’t for the life of him deal with the idea that a criminal can change. This leads to his death, and the obsession of capturing Valjean.

The idea of the obsessive detective focusing their life on the chase digs into later day characters that are like Javert, but less suicidal.

The famous Scarlet Pimpernel deals with one such character. While the Pimpernel is no thief in the normal sense, he seeks to “steal” the lives of innocent nobles from the gallows during the french revolution.

Created by Baroness Emma Orczy, Sir. Percy Blake is our lead (and shares with Carmen the love of Red) who through out the story plays up his foppish image to cover for the fact that he is the head of a ring of men and women who are covertly, under the black sky of the night, going to France to break out and save various people from death during the French Revolution. Blake is in a lot of ways the first user of the secret identity. But he also has a lot of the qualifications of being a Gentlemen Thief, including not harming people unless they attack first, and being ever so delightful to those he’s “robbing.” He’s a skilled fencer, an excellent actor, a master of disguise, an intuitive improvising and imaginative planner, and a quick on his feet escape artist.

Counter to him runs Citizen Armand Chauvelin, a cunning and ruthless man that is for the most part fearless and doesn’t care for his own safety -save where he figures that death is the only outcome of a situation. He’s highly intelligent and, in the past, was a close friend of Percy’s wife. During the stories we see him become the rival or counter to Sir. Percy, figuring out that the man is the Pimpernel but never having a chance to catch him, as Percy always eludes him, causing their conflict to keep dancing around all through the series.

Being the opposite of Percy, Armand plays up the darker aspects of the Agent. He’s shown wearing dark clothing, that he tends to brood more, and certainly while having some sense of mercy and sympathy, he feels that Percy should be stopped as he’s breaking the law in France. Much like Javert, Armand becomes slightly obsessed with capturing and outwitting Percy, but he never gets the chance to win.

This brings us to the idea of the inversion of the detective for the thief in the form of A.J. Raffles. Raffles was created by Sir. Arthur Conan-Doyle’s brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung, a poet and author. Raffles was created as a opposite to Holmes. Like Holmes there is a sharpness to his character’s look, though unlike Holmes, Raffles is far more of a social man and lives competing lives as a gentleman and a thief. It’s interesting to note that Doyle did not particularly like Raffles as he felt it was a slight to his character. Although of the two, Holmes has been used more frequently. Raffles also seems to share the whole “playing a role” to set up for his crime, but also feels that while he steals for himself, he tries to pick on people who can spare the theft.

This becomes important as later day thieves tended to play the part of hero and villain all in the same story in some cases.

The biggest and most well known though of all these Thieves and the most heavily inspired for western writers, is Arsene Lupin.

Pulling from Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail, Rocambole (an adventure hero that starts off as a thief like character and later became a heroic person), Arsene acts as a thief, stealing things that he deems worthy and always leaving some form of calling card to where he’s going to strike next. However he’s usually not the bad guy and the true villain of the story is far worse than he is. Lupin traditionally didn’t have a counter until his creator Maurice Leblanc decided to pit him against Sherlock Holmes (changed to Herlock Sholmes due to Doyle requesting it). This placed the two master minds against one another for several stories. Pairing them up in some cases to solve a crime or having Holmes go against Lupin to catch him and the other villain.

This pairing later lead to the creation of other characters that have bad guy like reputations but are really heroes, such as the Shadow, and Judex -from France (who probably inspired the Shadow).

One of the Key elements to come from these thieves is that there is always a code of honor, which seems to stem all the way back from the days of the Highwaymen. This code seems to be:

Be charming, well mannered, and courteous to your target and others.

Avoid the idea of physical or emotional force or violence to steal

No intimidation when stealing

Only fight to defend yourself

Some thieves are already wealthy, others will take for material gain, but a good majority of them will steal not for wealth of money but for knowledge or appreciation of the object. A good number of modern thieves tend to steal things already stolen and return them to their rightful home, or correcting a moral wrong. In most cases it’s only from a wealthy or corrupt person, and only stealing one rare thing or as a challenge, typically leaving some sort of message saying they were going to take it. And once in a while they will give it back, because it was a “for fun” thing.

With the rise of other Gentlemen thieves in the west such as: The Saint, Thomas Crown, Jimmy Dale, Filibus, Danny Ocean, and various characters from comics (Gentleman Ghost, Catwoman, Penguin, Gambit, Black Cat) and many others, it doesn’t surprise me that Arsene Lupin became influential to Japanese writers.

Kaito Kid, Dark Mousy, Lupin the Third, and Saint Tail, all have their own opposing rival detectives, and each seem to steal in some way for good (save for those that also take for themselves).

Looking at Arsene Lupin III you have a similarity to the original character. someone who is mostly stealing for fun, but also he’s “ Acknowledged across the globe as the world's number one thief, Lupin is a master of disguise and deduction, marksman, and inventor of numerous handy gadgets. His fun-loving, foolhardy incongruity covers a brilliant mind always extemporizing and re-evaluating. As such, he has been responsible for heists no right-minded individual would believe possible. While occasionally arrested and jailed, typically by his ICPO nemesis Inspector Koichi Zenigata, he always succeeds in escaping unharmed.”

Lupin’s personality over the years has changed as the various versions of the anime has over time cooled his harder edges and made him more of a chivalrous goofball, who can get away with things. In some cases he’s doing it for the thrill, but in several situations from the anime and movies he tends to do it because he wants to do the right thing, and maybe earn some side cash. In any event in the anime he’s not without his side kicks, and of course there’s Zenigata.

Monkey Punch, the creator of Lupin the Third said that Koichi Zenigata and Lupin have a Tom and Jerry aspect to them, and the only way the series will end is when they are equals. Either they both lose, they both win, or they both retire. Zenigata is more in line with the idea of the detective following a life long passion. He is, much like Armand and Javert, obsessed with capturing Lupin and has shown over various shows that he cares for the younger thief.

The origin of Zenigata's and Lupin's mutual regard was based early in the series when Lupin had the chance to shoot the Inspector, but instead wished him well and escaped. Since then, an unwritten understanding exists between the pair where neither will attempt to cause the death of the other. Further, the two are best referred as unacknowledged friends; several occasions have occurred where Lupin and gang aided Zenigata out of a life-threatening situation. When a woman the Inspector loved was killed by a criminal gang, Lupin participated in avenging her murder. And when an old enemy of Lupin's shot Zenigata point blank while he helplessly watched, a wild motorcycle chase began to apprehend the killer, partly for Lupin to conclude affairs with the adversary, partly to avenge the (supposed) death of the Inspector.

On the other end for the pairing you have the Kaito Kid and Detective Conan.

Now unlike Lupin who steals because it’s his way of life, Kaito Kid (aka Kaito Kuroba -yes that is his real name) does so to follow up on his family legacy and try to find the men that killed his father. The reason he steals isn’t for money or for fixing issues, no this is more of a personal thing. After taking the gemstones Kaito tests to see if they, under the moonlight, to see if the Pandora gem (a stone that has the ability to grant immortality) is inside for the express purpose of destroying it and keeping it from the hands of the organization that killed his dad. When he takes the stones, or any treasure he typically leaves a calling card, so the bad guys know what he’s going after so he can confront them, and later returns the items to their places.

Kaito doesn’t have an exact opposition, but normally if he is a bit of an antagonist in a story, that role goes to Detective Conan (aka Jimmy Kudo). Sometimes Conan is out to stop him from stealing something, but a number of times the two have teamed up as the organization that killed Kaito’s father was also connected to Jimmy becoming a small boy from a teenager. Kaito has played Jimmy from time to time, confusing friends and enemies for the young detective and also helping out when Lupin III showed up for his own heist in a movie. Jimmy though knows who Kaito is, yet he can’t pin any crimes on him.

The interesting thing about their conflict is that while Jimmy wants to stop him, he also knows that there’s more to Kaito’s actions than just being a thief, so unlike where Zenigata legitimately wants Lupin to reform, Jimmy knows that once Kaito finishes what he needs to do he’s likely going to stop being a thief, thus, while the chase is fun, unlike with Richard (the detective that Jimmy tends to knock out in order to explain the case) who sees Kaito as a thief, Jimmy knows that it will end and that in the end no one’s going to be hurt save the bad guys that killed Kaito’s father.

On the other side of things where in you have this idea of a pairing that has magic, you have Dark Mousey/ Daisuke Niwa and Krad/Satoshi Hiwatari.

Where as with Kaito who uses tricks to preform magic, Dark/Daisuke actually uses real magic to pretty much create a situation that has a lot of real magic in their thefts. See in the case of D.N.Angel, the story actually revolves around a curse. Dark is a being that may, or may not, have been a real person at some point in time. He is part of Daisuke, a middle-schooler who’s family has this curse placed upon them, where the first born son will inherent Dark and become a thief. The goal, to steal items that have a magical curse that was created by the Hikari family. Long story short if Dark and Daisuke fall for the same girl then Dark goes away from Daisuke and he waits till the next person or the curse is lifted (I can’t remember because last I read they were liking two different twin sisters, and keep switching who likes who.)

Opposing Daisuke is Satoshi Hiwatari, who is actually the adopted son of the Police Chief and the heir to Krad, Dark’s opposite. He has little control on Krad and is the descendant of the man who made the cursed items. Satoshi cares a lot for Daisuke seeing him as a friend and wanting him to stop using Dark, but the fact is that it’s not a possibility until the curse is broken for both. Both boy’s have their “specials” (I don’t know what they’re called) come out when they react to emotions. Daisuke is to feelings of love from a special girl that he likes, and Satoshi has it when Dark comes out and there’s a sense of challenge coming from Krad.

The thing that’s interesting with this cat and mouse game is that Daisuke and Sataoshi general want to be friends, with Satoshi being the cold character to Daisuke’s more warm and genuine personality. While Satoshi wants to stop Dark from stealing thing, Daisuke wants to find a way to release Dark and Satoshi from the curse that’s upon them because he knows Krad is hurting his friend. The point of the thefts though comes down not to robbing the rich, nor returning something for justice but for the sake of canceling out something dangerous in human hands. The idea that the art piece is cursed by an emotion and that the feelings of that piece need to be fixed, usually something to do with love and sadness and that sort of thing.

Similarly in the actual magical thief department we have the character of Meimi Haneoka aka Kaitō Saint Tail or just Saint Tail in English. Like another magical girl thief Phantom Thief Jeanne, there are aspects of the magic girl series here. However unlike PTJ, Saint Tail deals more with the actions of actually stealing art rather than cleansing it and making it vanish. The difference here is that unlike Jeanne, Meimi is just using stage magic, much like Kaito Kid, so her actions are done with her own wit and guile. What’s interesting is that unlike the other thieves mentioned, Saint Tail is a thief that takes back what has been stolen.

Meimi’s goal is helping those who have had things taken from them or ease their troubled hearts, as her friend who is a nun in training gets to hear these issues and goes to ask Saint Tail for help in taking back what was stolen. Meimi, like the others above, has a rival detective in the form of Daiki Asuka who is also a classmate of her’s whom she classes with as he’s obsessed with catching Saint Tail.

What’s interesting about this set up here is that unlike all the others, where it’s male vs. male, this is male vs. female and, because it is a shojo series, there’s a romantic undertone to this story. Daiki, for his part, does seem to have a bit of a crush on Saint Tail but ultimately wants to bring her to justice, and in Saint Tail form Meimi does flirt with him. However the conflict comes down to the idea of her and Daiki not seeing eye to eye in their civilian lives, as Meimi has a bit of a tsudare sort of mask so that others don’t know she’s Saint Tail. Thus the two butt heads a lot, as both are stubborn, and Meimi is constantly grappling with her own jealousy for her alter ego having Daiki’s heart.

It’s not that often that you see this set up with the Detective and the thief eventually ending up as a couple (Yes this is a spoiler) since in most cases the thief usually has a side love interest that has nothing to do with his or her crime career (either the person is doing an alter ego thing, or the love interest doesn’t pay mind to their crimes) or they are working with them on their criminal sprees.

This means that Daiki and Meimi are a bit of a rare pairing, the only other one that springs to mind is Batman and Catwoman (though that has it’s own issues) and Sly Cooper and Carmelita Fox from the Sly Cooper games. However their cat and mouse game mirrors a lot of other Detectives and thieves. For Daiki the idea of catching Saint Tail means that he can prove himself to his dad who could never catch the “Fallen Angel” thief, who happened to be Meimi’s mom, and he feels that if he can catch her than it makes up for his dad not getting Fallen Angel. It’s interesting too that, as with Kaito Kid, Dark Mousey and Lupin III, Saint Tail leaves calling cards but with different reasons. Where as with Kaito it’s to lure out the villains who killed his dad, and Dark as a PR thing for Satoshi, or Lupin just to annoy Zenigata, Tail’s game is so that Daiki and the cops can arrest the person that stole the object in the first place and get them proof so that they will go to jail for their crime.

It makes their relationship far more complex than your traditional thief and detective.

The thing is that the role these two play opposing one another is a game of cat and mouse that is designed to thrill the audience. Viewers watch, or readers read, as the characters have to outwit one another. The thief must always be one step ahead of the detective. But never too far ahead, and the detective must always be one step behind but know the truth even if they can’t prove it.

This leads to some interesting dynamics in regard to the idea of the thieves that don’t steal for their own goal. While it does, at times, make the detective question if they are doing right by chasing them, the thief needs to always reaffirm to the detective that they should try to catch them. The thrill is in the chase for the thief too, and in some cases it is not just the fun that is being had, but also the goal in allowing the detective to become a friend and in some ways a companion to the thief.

Without the detective doing the chasing the challenge isn’t there, and, on top of that in the case of a robin hood like thief where they want the police to capture a worse criminal, then they feel like they are actually doing some law abiding things as well. In other cases, they only agree to give up to that detective or rival, and will only become lawful again once their mission is completed, or they feel like the two are then equals.

Part of the game for the gentleman or Lady Thief is that they will show a great deal of compassion for those that they are taking from in some cases, and also feel the same for the detective. In a few cases, as with Lupin and Sherlock/Conan, there’s a sense of admiration and appreciation for each other’s skills and intelligence. Or in other cases as with Sly and Carmelita or Tail and Daiki, there is genuine love and affection there that leads to romance.

It’s the sense of almost flirting and a chance to change the other persons view of the world. In a lot of cases the detectives can see the good in a person, as with Zenigata regarding Lupin, but also they know that what they are doing in in the wrong according to the law, and they want that person who could be an amazing good guy and ally to them to join them on the lawful side of things, rather than the chaotic good side.

So how does this all fit into Carmen and the others? Well this has gone on too long I think, so I’m gonna do that as a part 2.

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kwebtv · 5 years

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Happy Valley - BBC One - April 29, 2014 - Present

Crime Drama (12 episodes to date)

Running Time: 60 minutes

Stars:

Sarah Lancashire as Sgt. Catherine Cawood

Siobhan Finneran as Clare Cartwright

Charlie Murphy as Ann Gallagher

James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce

George Costigan as Nevison Gallagher

Steve Pemberton as Kevin Weatherill

Joe Armstrong as Ashley Cowgill

Adam Long as Lewis Whippey

Karl Davies as Daniel Cawood

Kevin Doyle as DS John Wadsworth

Robert Emms as Daryl Garrs

Vincent Franklin as DSI Andy Shepherd

Shirley Henderson as Frances Drummond

Julie Hesmondhalgh as Amanda Wadsworth

Katherine Kelly as DI Jodie Shackleton

Matthew Lewis as Sean Balmforth

Susan Lynch as Alison Garrs

Con O'Neill as Neil Ackroyd

Rick Warden as Mike Taylor

#Happy Valley #BBC One #TV #2000's #Crime Drqama #Sarah Lancashire #Siobhan Finneran #Charlie Murphy #James Norton #George Costigan #Steve Pemberton

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ofgraveconcern · 3 years

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24th August 1680, death of Anglo- Irish officer Colonel Thomas Blood, who in 1671 attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Captured while he and his accomplices fled the Tower with the Crown and Jewels stuffed into their clothing, Blood had refused to answer to anyone but the King, and was brought before Charles II. The King asked Blood, "What if I should give you your life?", with Blood replying, "I would endeavour to deserve it, Sire!” Amazingly Blood was not only pardoned but also given land in Ireland. An historical speculation for Charles' actions is that he had a respect for audacious scoundrels such as Blood. This can also be seen in Charles’ nickname of ‘Swift Nick’, given to highwayman and rogue John Nevison in 1676. Dying on this day, Blood shortly after exhumed to make sure that he did not fake his own death, in order to pursue another plot. Blood's epitaph begins: ‘Here lies the man who boldly hath run through More villainies than England ever knew’. See the Crime and Punishment section of the website, for original art inspired by other notable rogues, thieves and pirates of the 17th and 18th century. www.ofgraveconcern.com/crimeandpunishment Follow @ofgrave.concern for more dark tales from history #crownjewels #crownjewel #toweroflondon #toweroflondon🇬🇧 #thomasblood #charlesii #restorationengland #englishhistory #londonhistory #londonhistoryday #17thcentury #17thcenturyhistory #thieves #highwaymen #rogues #historyofcrime #crimestory #interestinghistory #strangehistory #weirdhistory #stealingthecrown #crimehistory #stuarthistory #crimelondon #historystory #historicaltales #talesfromhistory #interestinghistory https://www.instagram.com/p/CTFYE0xne3z/?utm_medium=tumblr

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metalindex-hu · 3 years

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Elfeledett jeles mesterremekek 32. - Damn Yankees: Don't Tread (1992)

Elfeledett jeles mesterremekek 32. - Damn Yankees: Don't Tread (1992) - https://metalindex.hu/2021/07/05/elfeledett-jeles-mesterremekek-32-damn-yankees-dont-tread-1992/ -

Az ám nem úgy volt ám, hogy jött a Frontiers és kitalálta a szupercsapat fogalmát, hogy azután évente (inkább kisebb, mint nagyobb sikerrel) megtöltse azt újabb és újabb muzsikusokkal, ötletekkel és tartalmakkal! Lószart, mama! Ez egy nagyon régi intézmény, pl. a Warner Bros. a ’90-es évek legelején alkotott ilyen tömörülést Ron Nevison producer közreműködésével. A Damn Yankees névre keresztelt csodacsapat jól ismert, kipróbált és nagybecsű muzsikusokat, remek zeneszerzőket tudhatott soraiban: Tommy Shaw énekes-gitáros a Styxből érkezett, Jack Blades énekes-bőgős a Night Rangerből, Ted Nugent énekes-gitáros pedig saját néven szerzett népszerűséget világszerte. Egyedül Michael Cartellone dobos számított akkoriban kevésbé ismerős zenésznek: de azután ő is “household” név lett a Lynyrd Skynyrdben töltött évek és a szerteágazó projektekben (Accept, Joe Lynn Turner, John Wetton stb.) való részvétele miatt.

Az egyszerűen csak “Damn Yankees” címet viselő bemutatkozó albumuk (1990) pillanatok alatt dupla platinum lemez lett, a Jack Blades által szerzett “Coming Of Age” pedig egy ideig vezette az AOR slágerlistát is. Ugyan ma is állítom, hogy a “High Enough” az univerzum egyik legjobb hard rock balladája, a lemez maga nekem egy kicsit túl AOR-os volt, ráadásul a ’80-as évekből örökölt, tipikusan puffogó, csattogó, mély-szegény hangzás is erősen lerontotta nálam az élvezeti faktort. Ettől persze ez még egy klasszikus lemez, bizonyos körökben ma is kultikus státuszt élvez, így aligha kerülhetne be az “Elfeledett jeles mesterremekek” rovatba.

Annál inkább a folytatás! A jól sikerült bemutatkozás után két évvel megjelenő “Don’t Tread” ugyanis – annak ellenére, hogy szerintem egy jóval erősebb, érettebb, dögösebb arcát mutatja a formációnak – már nem lett dupla platina, csak aranylemez. Amikor bekövetkezett az ún. grunge (trutyi)-fordulat, a szélkakasként irányt váltó kiadó is gyorsan kifarolt mögülük, a zenekar annak rendje-módja szerint szét is hullott. Shaw és Blades ugyan még próbálkozott közösen, de a jelentős country hatásokat mutató, később pedig inkább földolgozásokkal foglalkozó Shaw/Blades koprodukció nem lett sem tartós életű, sem maradandó értékű.

Érdekességként jegyzem meg, hogy a Damn Yankees elvi lehetőségként, amolyan szellemcsapatként ma is létezik. 1999-ben akár meg is jelenhetett volna egy “Bravo” címet viselő albumuk, de állítólag egyik muzsikus sem volt elégedett a megírt dalok minőségével, így inkább újra szétszéledtek, hogy saját bandáikkal dolgozzanak. Azóta többször is játszottak együtt egy-két dal erejéig, időnként föl is repül a hír, hogy új anyagon dolgoznak, de a formálisan soha föl nem oszlott banda új anyaga azóta is várat magára. Reméljük már nem sokáig; talán éppen Serafino Perugino kiadója, a Frontiers lesz az, ami új életet lehel a tetszhalott kollektívába! A Night Ranger is már hosszú évek óta az ő égiszük alatt működik.

A lényeg, hogy a “Don’t Tread” nem lett kultikus lemez, jóllehet gyakorlatilag tökéletes 53 percben mutatja meg, hogy mi a kicsit vidékies (Amerikában értsd: Western) hatásokat mutató, megadallamos hard rock kvintesszenciája. A Shaw-Blades-Nugent triász fantasztikusan egészíti ki egymást, mindhármuk hozzájárulása nélkülözhetetlen: Shaw és Blades hozták a felejthetetlen dallamokat és míves kórusokat, míg Nugent szállította a dögöt és a fegyverforgató tehénpásztor (értsd: cowboy) vagányságát. Az utóbbiból határozottan több van a “Don’t Tread”-en, mint a debütáción. Persze itt is akad “High Enough”-szerű fülbemászó ballada (Where You Goin’ Now, Silence Is Broken), de hangsúlyosabbak a cowboy kalapos, western csizmás, pickup truckos hard rock himnuszok (Don’t Tread On Me, Fifteen Minutes of Fame, Double Coyote, Uprising). Ezek mellett szerepel itt még pár olyan dal is, mint a Mötley Crüe hatásokat mutató “This Side Of Hell” vagy a Van Halen által ihletett “Firefly”.

A lemez borítója tökéletes foglalata az itt hallható muzsikának: ez vérbeli redneck keményrock/hajmetál, de még mielőtt valaki a redneck kifejezéssel általában összekötött műveletlen, gyufaszálat rágcsáló vértahóra asszociál, adjon esélyt ennek az elfeledett mesterremeknek, s meglátja, hogy mennyi muzikalitás, hangszeres tudás. dallamérzék, finom intelligencia szorult belé!

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Tartuffe

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julio-viernes · 4 years

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El mejor corte del segundo LP de Billy Nicholls, “Love Songs” (GM, 1974), un disco que ha pasado desapercibido todos estos años en comparación con su debut, originalmente archivado, “Would You Believe?”. En él Nicholls une con pasmosa facilidad el pop recio Badfinger (“White Rose”) con folk a lo Cat Stevens (”Little Lady”) y este esplendoroso “White Lightning” a todo grupo y orquesta. Entre sus colaboradores, Ronnie Lane e Ian Mclagan de Faces, y mención especial para la guitarra solista de Caleb Quaye (Elton John, Hookfoot). Arreglos de cuerda de Jimmy Horowitz, ingenieros, Ron Nevison, Phil Chapman y Pete Townshend, menudo equipo. Un LP a recuperar, al que además corresponde el mérito de ser el primero de la historia titulado “Love Songs”.

#billy nicholls #badfinger #cat stevens #canciones #caleb quaye #hookfoot #elton john #faces

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pavspatch · 5 years

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Flanagan’s back and he’s hungry for more success

JOHN FLANAGAN’S name might still be synonymous with Curzon Ashton, where he enjoyed so much success, but nine long months after the Nash sacked him, he’s back in football and at the place he loves most — Seel Park.

Flanagan takes over the role vacated by Terry Hincks at the end of last season, and while he says titles don’t matter, he’s clear that he’s not a coach. His job is to be an adviser and mentor to manager Dave Wild.

“Dave’s a lad who did a bit of work for me at Curzon,” Flanagan explained. “We’re long-term friends.

“Quite a few years ago I was looking to try and get him involved at the club. Unfortunately I was never in a position where I could include him so I encouraged him to go and get some experience, which he did with Northwich Vics and Stockport Town.

“We’ve always stayed in touch and I think Dave has always seen me as a mentor. I think we both saw a situation at some point where I’d be the manager and he’d be the coach but the situation has changed.

“Dave phoned me several weeks ago, said he needed some experience, and asked if I’d consider giving him a lift. There was nothing concrete at the stage but when he got back in touch my first concern was to speak to my close friend and former Curzon assistant Ian Nevison.

“When Nev told me to get on with it I was able to join Mossley with a clear conscience.”

The Lilywhites narrowly missed out on the play-offs last year and Flanagan believes he and Wild can field a side capable of challenging for promotion to the Betvictor NPL premier division.

He sees the two of them as having the same outlook and so believes that makes them an easy fit.

Flanagan added: “I want to be involved with a team that plays the right way. I want to give my views to young players and help them to develop. I feel I can do that with Dave because, generally speaking, he embraces my philosophy.

“I’m not bothered about job titles. Dave’s the manager and he’ll make the final decisions. So long as I make a contribution and am allowed to have my say I’ll support him. I’ll give him as much advice as I can and hopefully, between us, we’ll get the team moving up the table.

“Dave’s very hungry and ambitious and wants to go on. I don’t mind him getting all the credit if I know that I’ve contributed.”

The nine months since getting the sack from Curzon proved to be a strange time for Flanagan, who has spent 50 years in football. He attempted to get back into the game by applying for four “higher level” managerial posts, but also admits that he enjoyed a close-season where he was able to relax and not face the stress of chasing players.

Yet he emphasises that his decision to join the Lilywhites was in no way motivated by a desire to thumb his nose at Curzon. Flanagan says he has nothing to prove. His record at the Tameside Stadium speaks for itself.

“You’re very quickly forgotten but I’ve got a lot of energy and ambition. I just feel that I’ve still got things to achieve in football, whether that’s promotion or a run in the FA Cup or FA Trophy. Whatever it is, I’m hungry,” he said.

“And Mossley’s right for me. I developed a deep affection for the place ten years ago when I was Chris Willcock’s assistant and then had my own spell in charge. I always told my sons I’d like to go back at some point.

“Seel Park is my favourite ground because it’s an old fashioned place and full of character. I love the passageways, the tunnel and all the other quirks.

“I’m very pleased that Dave’s asked me to join him. He had a good season last year and he’s signed some good players. It’s been a long time since Mossley had a promotion, so I’d really love for them to go up and me to be part of it.”

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innervoiceart · 4 years

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Ten Years Gone (Remastered)

Provided to YouTube by Atlantic Records

Ten Years Gone (Remastered) · Led Zeppelin

Physical Graffiti

℗ 2013 Atlantic Records

Guitar, Producer: Jimmy Page Drums: John Bonham Bass Guitar: John Paul Jones Vocals: Robert Plant Engineer: Ron Nevison Writer: Jimmy Page Writer: Robert Plant

#Led Zeppelin #Ten Years Gone #Remastered #Physical Graffiti #Retro Music Love

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monstersofrock · 4 years

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A post shared by MONSTERS OF ROCK® OFFICIAL (@monstersofrock)

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On this day in 1987, Whitesnake released ‘Whitesnake’. 📻 In the spring of 1985, Coverdale and Sykes decamped to the town of Le Rayol in the south of France to start writing material for a new album; according to Coverdale, bassist Neil Murray also helped with some of the arrangements. Two songs that would emerge from these sessions would be two of Whitesnake's biggest hits: "Still of the Night", based on an old demo by Coverdale and Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore; and "Is This Love", originally written for Tina Turner. Coverdale, Sykes and Murray then moved to Los Angeles, where they rehearsed and started auditioning for drummers, and hired Aynsley Dunbar. With their line-up complete, Whitesnake headed up to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to lay plans for the new record. One of the first issues the band faced was John Sykes' desire to achieve a specific guitar sound that he wanted, which he eventually found with the help of Coverdale's friend and engineer Bob Rock, who had previously worked with Bon Jovi on the multi-platinum album Slippery When Wet. The next problem the band faced was a sinus infection with which Coverdale was stricken. This put the album's production behind schedule, especially when Coverdale underwent surgery and a six-month-long rehabilitation program. Sykes grew impatient and suggested bringing in a new vocalist and carrying on without Coverdale, which eventually led to the end of Coverdale's relationship with both John Sykes and producer Mike Stone. After Coverdale recovered, he started work on his vocal tracks with Ron Nevison, before soon switching to Keith Olsen, who also helped mixing the album. Keyboard players Don Airey and Bill Cuomo were brought in to record some keyboard parts, as well as Dutch guitar player Adrian Vandenberg to record the guitar solo for the re-recorded version of the song "Here I Go Again". Coverdale was also discussing the possibility of Vandenberg soon joining Whitesnake. (at MONSTERS OF ROCK) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-sKSH3pdOH/?igshid=xkxuio16lbc9

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daneycott-filmmaker · 5 years

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STICKS (AWARD-WINNING COMEDY) from Syd Heather on Vimeo.

WINNER - BEST COMEDY (HORSHAM FILM FESTIVAL 2019)

War breaks out when two friends start hunting down the other using only guns, wands and spears made from woodland sticks.

Written, Directed & Produced by Syd Heather Starring Sarah Langrish-Smith & David Frias-Robles

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Kamil Iwanowicz CAMERA ASSISTANT - James Coyne SOUND RECORDIST - Blai Escayola Bosch EDITORS - Adam Farrington & Carolin Krueger SOUND DESIGN - Freddie Nevison & Liz Horsman SOUND MIXER - Freddie Nevison ORIGINAL MUSIC - Liz Horsman ADDITIONAL MUSIC - Darryl John Hannan VISUAL EFFECTS - Sean William Abbott END CREDITS ANIMATION - Amanda Brent PRODUCTION ASSISTANT - Hansel Rodrigues POSTER DESIGN - James Shannon COLOURIST - Kamil Iwanowicz SPECIAL THANKS - Clare Pearce, Darren Rapier, Dan Eycott, Rachael Tarr & Philip Hardy

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minename0-blog · 6 years

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New Audio Archive Gives Voice To Philly Immigration History

Readers of the Hidden City Daily no doubt appreciate the rich photographic collections from the Philadelphia City Archives and Temple University’s Special Collections, which provide decades worth of precursors to Google Street View and allows local history enthusiasts like me to immerse ourselves in black and white Philadelphia. But less frequently do we get to hear directly from those who walked the streets, smelled the smells, worked in the factories, and lived in the row houses of old Philadelphia. Philadelphia Immigration, a digital oral history project born from a partnership among West Chester University and the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries enables just that.

https://hiddencityphila.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Cetrullo-Audio-Clip-1.mp3

Gilda Cetrullo (b. 1903 in Abruzzo, Italy) on how Philadelphia smelled upon her arrival in 1923. Explore the full interview. | Clip courtesy of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries

https://hiddencityphila.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lavin-Audio-Clip.mp3

Anna Lavin (b. 1892 in Dzernigan, Russia) on the prevalence of lice and her recollections of taking baths. Explore full interview. | Clip courtesy of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries

In the early 1980s, my West Chester University colleague Charles Hardy interviewed aging Philadelphians, many of whom had settled in the city after emigrating from Europe around the turn of the 20th century. Hardy used these oral histories to produce I Remember When: Times Gone But Not Forgotten, a series of 13, 30-40 minute radio documentaries broadcast on WHYY between 1982 and 1983. The programs—think of them as nascent podcasts—explored the history of Philadelphia during its industrial heyday through the memories of those who had lived through it.

Interviewees included Johnny Mulligan—one of four prominent boxers with the surname “Mulligan” in 1920s Philadelphia—who regularly won fights at the Cambria Athletic Club in Kensington, known as the “blood pit.” Armand diStefano, son of Italian immigrants John and Rose, grew up in his father’s business, the Victor Café, where he learned to love Italian opera. Bertha Gruenberg, Austrian by birth and a true Philadelphia outsider, lived and worked in South Philadelphia settlement houses as a philanthropic endeavor where she directed theater productions and taught English to immigrants less educated than herself. She eventually became an activist in the burgeoning birth control movement. Anna Levitin immigrated with her family from Russia in 1896, arriving at the Washington Avenue Immigration Station, where officials changed her surname spelling to Lavin, discarded her family’s shoes, and fumigated all their belongings.

A Dramatic Club of the Philadelphia Settlement in “The Merchant of Venice,” a theater production similar to the ones Bertha Gruenberg would have directed at settlement houses in Philadelphia. | Image: College Settlement Association Annual Report, Volume 11. Philadelphia, 1900

The interview cassette tapes sat in Hardy’s basement for the next 35 years. He knew what a rich historical resource these were and what was possible with today’s digital technologies. Following the success of our first classroom/archive partnership, Goin’ North: Stories from the First Great Migration to Philadelphia, Charlie and I again collaborated by team-teaching a course for West Chester History majors, grad students, and honors college students. Hardy transferred ownership of the cassette tapes to the Nunn Center, a leading academic center for oral history with a vast collection of interviews, where staff digitized them so our students could use them to create projects.

Each student worked closely with one interview, getting to intimately connect with the experiences of a young person growing up in the Jewish Quarter, in South Philadelphia’s Italian enclaves, in the Polish neighborhood of Port Richmond, or in row houses clustered among the factories of Kensington. Using OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer), an open source platform developed by the Nunn Center, students curated the interviews, making the audio searchable, situating interview segments in space through GPS coordinates, and adding period photographs that illustrate the interviewees’ recollections.

Students then created exhibits about the interviewees’ lives using photographs and other primary sources generously lent from local archives with rich collections from this era, including Temple University’s Special Collections Library, Hagley Museum and Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and The Library Company of Philadelphia. Students also produced digital storytelling projects centered on themes including the Stetson Hat Company, the influenza pandemic, assimilation and ethnic identity, and the types of work immigrants found in Philadelphia.

How a Stetson Hat Was Made, edited by Leonard Lederman using film footage from the industrial film, Making of Stetson Hats, produced by John B. Stetson Hat Company in 1920, and selected quotations from interviews with Antony Catalano, John “Herb” Rudolph, and Catherine Ehrmann. | Film footage courtesy Nevison Film Archive

What do these rich oral history sources help us know about Philadelphia in the early 20th century? At the simplest level, first-hand oral history accounts make history come alive, particularly to students numbed by years of textbook historical narratives in which the voices of individuals typically are silent. The interviews also make it possible for us to engage in a multisensory experience, in which we can hear the calls of the hucksters selling produce, imagine prostitutes in the Tenderloin’s brothels tapping quarters on the windows at the men passing by, and smell the bodies piling up in Port Richmond during the Influenza Epidemic.

https://hiddencityphila.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Clark-Clip.m4a

Dennis Clark (b. 1927 to an Irish-American family in Kensington) mimicking the cries of produce hucksters. Explore full interview. | Clip courtesy of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries.

https://hiddencityphila.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Van-Dyke-and-Strupczewski-Clip.m4a

Anna Van Dyke (b. circa 1904) and Elizabeth Strupczewski (b. circa 1892 in Poland) on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. Explore full interview. | Clip courtesy of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries.

Navy Yard Influenza warning. 1918. U.S. Naval Historical Center. One of the main entry points for the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak in Philadelphia were sailors returning home through the U.S. Navy’s shipyard in Philadelphia. Nearly 13,000 died in Philadelphia from the flu in the fall of 1918. | Image courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries

Considered as a whole, the interviews demonstrate that to those who arrived early in the 20 century, Philadelphia was both expansive—foreign and stimulating and full of the unknown—and a very small town. Chain migration practices resulted in ethnic enclaves that mirrored those left behind in Italy, Poland, or Hungary. But Philadelphia, the “Workshop of the World,” was also home to cinemas, saloons, and an intermixing of ideas, languages, and cultures. After acclimating and learning English, Sam Spritz dabbled in vegetarianism and socialism, learning about these new ideas from soapbox speeches in Fairmount Park. Young teenage girls growing up in Old Richmond sorted through a mountain of buttons discarded by a garment factory on Aramingo Avenue, where they picked out the most beautiful ones to take home to use on their own clothing. Neighbors were neighborly, helping one another out amidst Scarlet Fever outbreaks, home births, alcoholism, and malnutrition.

The interviews also reveal what it was like to be a young person, attempting to shed the Old World ways of one’s parents as they embraced American identities, sometimes eloping to escape strict fathers and crowded row houses, mimicking the characters they saw in movies, and immersing themselves in new ways of being. And yet these individuals often had to act old beyond their years, some leaving school at age 12 of 14 in order to work in sweatshops and factories, earning meager wages they turned over to their parents.

John Frank Keith, Group of young men and women sitting on a loading dock or wharf, drinking, Philadelphia. c. 1913. | Image courtesy of Library Company of Philadelphia

Our students gained empathy toward the experiences of immigrants by contemplating how these new Philadelphians obtained work, learned English, accessed education, and supported their families. In Spring 2019, we’ll continue the project, exploring these same themes within a 21 century context. Today, one out of four Philadelphians is a first- or second-generation immigrant. We are partnering with the Free Library of Philadelphia to conduct new oral history interviews in contemporary immigrant communities, creating the next layer of the Philadelphia Immigration digital project. In 2020, students will work on a new wave of digital storytelling projects that compare and contrast immigrant life experiences separated by 100 years—in the early 1900s and early 2000s.

About the author

Janneken Smucker is an Associate Professor of History at West Chester University, specializing in digital and public history and material culture. She also serves as the digital editor of the Oral History Review. In the classroom, she integrates technology and the humanities, working with students to create digital projects. She lives in Fishtown.

Source: https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/09/new-audio-archive-gives-voice-to-philly-immigration-history/

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nem0c · 6 years

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Men make a boast of pedigree - as well might the descendants of Richard Turpin boast of their's for both honours spring from robbery and sploitation - what was William the Conqueror but a robber by wholesale and what were his followers but highway men by his authority receiving titles by their expertness at plunder for which Turpin (a more noble plunderer if absence from fear or dareing achievements make one) received a halter because he dared to rob and could only show his courage for the liscence

John Clare, The Poor Man Versus The Rich Man

#implying john nevison wasn't the superior highwayman

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gardnerffox · 6 years

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Read chapter One from The Gentleman Rogue

Chapter One

He was garbed in black, from the tricolor hat that shaded his masked face to the jack boots on his legs. A long cloak, falling from the widespread of his shoulders to the loins of his black mare, rippled in the faint breeze that came swirling down off Hounslow Heath. The moonlight that fell in dappled patterns across the road did not touch him in the shadows, or the long-barreled horse pistol he held in a gloved hand.

The sack and canary he had consumed in the Brentwood Arms were still warm in the middle. It held the whimsical smile fixed on his mouth, which showed wide and humorous under the lace frill of his mummer's mask. Ian Montrose told himself, I look like Nicks the tobyman, with this barker in my hand and this domino on my face. John Nevison, known as Nicks all over England, had been a highwayman before they hanged him high on the gallows at Tyburn, years before. He had been a hightoby rider for the gold and jewels he could steal. Ian Montrose was here to steal a garter.

The English countryside was still at this hour of midnight. Faintly, across the lea that separated Strand Green from Hanger Hill, he could hear the mournful ke'wick of a tawny owl. Crickets chirped from patches of course grass, and once he heard the faint whinny of a distant horse. The moon was a slim crescent, touching the bracken and the gorse on the heath with silver radiance. This was open country, filled with mists and great barren trees reaching upward like brown skeletal hands, and rocks the size of boulders. Only in the far distance was their mellow light, from a farm cottage.

"Lud! It's a lonely place, this heath," the lone rider whispered to his black mare. "Cold and damp and probably haunted, too, by the highwaymen they hang here. Still, it's good to be home again, even if I find myself poor as a church mouse, and asked my half brother's parties only because of my name."

It had been at such a party, at Brentwood Arms on Fleet Street, that he had matched thirsts with the Duke of Amberston and the Earls of Lorwich and Kent. There had been a sack, heavy with its Spanish grapes, and Madeira, and gins and whiskeys from the north countries, and hot posset drunk in chinaware pots. He remembered singing, and dancing the gavotte with Lady Diana Loring, Viscountess of Blasfordshire, and of being warmly aware of her powdered arms and shoulders, disclosed so modishly by a daringly low bodice. Her body had been soft and disturbing to a man who had stepped off a sailing bark from India less than a week before. He had kissed the Viscountess in the shelter of a garden hedge, and the taste of her moist lips on his own, and their heat as they trailed a path from the corner of his mouth to his ear had aroused a slow fire in him.

That fire, and the sack and rich wines, had brought him here at midnight, onto this open stretch of barren heath.

It had been Lady Diana that suggested the prank.

"Most of us try to steal the bride's garter after she's married," she said with a laugh to the dandies surrounding her. "You gentlemen fancy yourselves as rakehells! Why not steal it before she's wedded?"

Their laughter was loud, but not so loud as the hammer of Ian Montrose's heart as he let his thoughts dwell on that idle challenge. More than once that evening his admiring eyes had moved to the woman who was to be the Countess of Southend at the end of this summer of 1714. She had been introduced as Lady Joan Sheldon, daughter of the late Earl of Harewood, ward and betrothed of Harold Montrose, Earl of Southend, Lord Somerset, his half-brother. Her height was the height of his heart, and the manner in which her blue eyes had smiled at him above her red, wide mouth, with its beauty patch set so close to the corner of her lips, added fuel to the liquors that bubbled in his middle.

He drowsed a little in his black leather saddle, waiting for the sound of coach wheels, letting himself dream of the manner in which her thick yellow hair had curled around her bared shoulders, and of the velvet fontange and scented ribbons that bedecked it. She wore a gown of mulberry taffety, low enough to disclose a hint of her full young bosom. Her satin stomacher and peplum clung to round hips whose sway added mightily to the dizziness already induced in him by the wines and whiskeys he had consumed.

Ian Montrose was not an envious man, but in this moment of his dreaming, he felt a mad, hot jealousy toward Lord Somerset.

If his fortune were mine, he thought, I'd not be sitting a cold saddle here in the middle of the night, waiting to steal Lady Joan's garter, but riding snug and comfortable, close behind her in the coach itself!

The lone rider straightened suddenly, standing in his iron stirrups. He could hear the creak of coach wheels approaching from the east, from London town. Lady Joan Sheldon would be in that coach, with Milord Somerset seated at her side. As his fingers tightened on the curving butt of his horse pistol, Ian Montrose grinned. It was worth the risk of hanging for this night's adventure, to anticipate the look that would cross his half brother's arrogant powdered face when he poked this barker under his nose! The creaking grew louder. Now he could hear the thud and pound of the horses' hoofs on the hard dirt road. Candle lamps winked in the night, and then the great gilded carriage was sweeping toward him along the Hounslow road, the driver in his blue Somerset livery tall and rigid on the seat, hands holding the reins stretched out before him.

Ian toed the black mare to a mincing walk. He came out of the shadows into the moonlight, as an apparition might spring from a witch's herbs tossed on a Beltane fire. He was tall and black, bulking ominously dark and silent by the crossroads.

"Stand and deliver," he called out harshly.

His pistol came into the moonlight, aimed at the driver.

The coach rolled to a stop in drifted dust powdered by moonlight into silvery motes. Brakes grated, squealing. A voice cried out from inside the coach.

"Come down and lie flat on your belly," Ian told the driver. He walked the mare forward as the coach door opened and Lord Somerset came out.

"God's wounds! What's this?" he asked, imperious eyes moving from the dark figure on the black mare to his serving man prone in the road.

"A robbery, milord," explained Ian with a smile. "There's no need for worry, however. I've a compunction against shedding blood, providing there's no call for it."

"A hightoby rider," snapped Somerset. "I'll see you hanged for this. You may know me for Harold Montrose, Earl of Southend, Lord Somerset, fellow! I've the Duke's ear, as Boling-broke had Queen Anne's! I've influence at court!"

The Earl of Southend, Viscount of Pensey and Litchfield, Baron of Borne, Lord Somerset, was a man of arrogance. It lay revealed in the flaring spread of his patrician nostrils, in the tilt of his handsome face with its thin mouth and dark, flashing eyes. Looking at him, Ian thought, this is my brother, this man in his fancy satin waistcoat and clocked silk stockings, with his slippers buckled in diamonds and the rings on his fingers worth a small fortune! Only I know the streak of cruelty in him. I've seen him blind a horse that displeased him. Only I know the lust for money and power that governs his life.

As Lord Somerset glowered at him, Ian let his memory linger on those days when he and Harold had matched dueling pistols side by side in a Sussex meadow and had stamped across half the halls in Southend Manor with their blunted rapiers. Dour Harold Montrose, son to the woman the Earl of Southend made his second wife, had always resented Ian's lighthearted, easy way with the wenches. In his envy, he conceived himself abused. Abuse brought hatred after it, and when Ian had boarded the brig Royal William for India, he and his half-brother were not even nodding to each other.

Ian's trigger finger itched. It would be easy to put a ball between his half brother's eyes, easy to doff his mask and black clothes and step into his half brother's estates without suspicion of murder. He acknowledged this temptation that flared in him even as he fought against it.

Ian leaned forward in the saddle, placing the round muzzle of his horse pistol close to the nobleman's face. His voice was calm and soft. "Keep your tongue quiet, by heaven, of I'll put a ball in your mouth!"

He was not aware of it, but his dark blue eyes were bright with drink, and reckless with the dislike that had been building in him for this half-brother who owned the Somerset fortune, and was to wed Milady Joan. They glittered through the slits of his mask with the feral hunger of a wolf.

Lord Somerset caught the hot recklessness of those eyes, but he shouted savagely, "Drop that barker, you huff! Drop it and I'll—"

"Into the coach, milord, and mind your conduct! I've no time to bandy words right now!"

Lord Somerset lapsed into silence, his face reddening above the ruffled jabot at his throat. In his injured pride, which saw him humiliated before the two women in his chaise, he would have hurled himself at this wolf's head, wrestling with him for that long pistol; but the bright eyes and something in the chin of the man told him he would live only so long as he obeyed his commands. In his plum velvet coat and breeches he stood rigidly, head flung back, his face taut and hard. At a wave of the pistol, he moved stiffly into the coach, to fling himself against its thick upholstery and gnaw at a thin lip as he watched the highwayman come down out of his saddle.

There were two women in the coach with Lord Somerset. Ian let his eyes dwell on the golden loveliness of Lady Joan Sheldon, seeing her pale face framed in the ermine collar of her velvet wrap, studying the manner in which her round bodice hugged the swells of her bosom and the sheer fichu through which he could glimpse the white sheen of its flesh.

The other woman was leaning forward, her own fichu falling away from the lifting mounds of her scarcely hidden breasts, showing them full and pale above the silver brocade that rimmed her taffety gown. She was possessed of a sultry beauty, this viscountess, and her green eyes were bold and predatory under their long red lashes.

"Joan, darling!" exclaimed Lady Diana Loring. "Isn't it too romantic? A tobyman!"

Lady Joan tried to still the trembling of her white fingers by clasping them in a scented lace kerchief. Her eyes were wide and frightened as they studied the masked face thrust into the doorway of the coach. She whispered, "I-I don't think it's so romantic, Di! He's a robber!"

The highwayman laughed softly. "But not such a robber as you ever saw before, milady! I take it you're Lady Joan Sheldon, Milord Somerset's intended. In that case, perhaps I should not be stealing from you, but rather giving you a wedding present."

The woman with the bright red hair was laughing softly. "A very gentleman of a rogue! He speaks of wedding presents while he takes our treasures!" She was busy stripping rings from her fingers.

Ian looked at Lady Diana Loring and at the wide red mouth that had scorched his lips and face earlier this evening in the little yew garden off the inner piazza at Brentwood Arms. She was regarding him almost with hypnotic attention, as though she expected him to vanish momentarily before the eyes that studied him so closely. Deep in those green depths, he could read mockery and a vast amusement.

He turned from that mockery toward Lady Joan, aware that a chill sense of foreboding was gathering in him.

Ian said, "I'll not attend your wedding, milady. Unable to remove your garter then, I propose to take it now."

Lady Joan gasped and threw herself back into a corner of the coach, lifting her ankles to tuck them under her thighs. Lord Somerset leaned forward, his mouth a thin, hard line. He rasped, "Damn your impertinence! I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'll not rest content until you hang for your crimes from Tyburn gallows!"

The horse pistol swung toward Lord Somerset. The masked man smiled. "I can kill your bridegroom at a touch of a finger on my trigger, milady. Do me a favor of removing your garter, before haste forces me to trespass under your petticoats myself."

"Never!" whispered Lady Joan, shrinking against the flowered upholstery of the chaise. "I-I'll never do it!"

Ian Montrose moved forward, resting one knee on the floor of the coach, heart thudding wildly. With his pistol gripped in his left hand, he slid the right hand forward under that billowing skirt. He felt a warm silken calf and knee beneath his fingers, then the swell of the smooth thigh. For one long instant, his palm lay hot against her thigh, so that he could feel it tremble. Then his fingers lifted and gripped the ribboned garter and slid it down, past the knee and over the ankle.

It dangled in the moonlight, a round and delicate thing of scarlet ribbon frilled with black lace. The scent on its silk, and the warmth that had been imparted to it from the flesh it clasped made his hand tremble.

Lady Joan never took her gaze from the bright eyes of the masked man. She sat like a cobra before the flute, swaying a little, held by some inner paralysis. Even the flush on her cheeks looked painted. In the bodice of her gown, her bosom lifted, heaving, as she bent her head forward into her hands and sat like that, her little ears turning beet red.

The Viscountess moved forward then, thrusting her rings and necklet of matched pearls, together with a velvet purse heavy with golden guineas, into Ian's hand, which still held the garter. "Please!" she whispered hoarsely. "Please take my things and Milord Somerset's purse, and let us be! Milord was a heavy winner at the piquet tables tonight. You'll find his purse fat enough to please you!"

Ian said, "But I—" when he realized, with his right-hand heavy with diamond earrings and emerald rings, velvet purse and that frilly garter, that there was nothing he could say to the Viscountess. If he denied his membership in the ranks of the night riders, he would as good as admit his identity. Yet if he took these riches that were being thrust on him, he would subject himself to pursuit by the queen's men, and a future hanging on Tyburn Tree.

Milord Somerset said thickly, "Yes, yes! Take my purse and go! Here, catch it."

Somerset brought his hand out from under his gold embroidered coat. There was no purse bulging in his palm, but a small pistol gripped solidly in tight fingers.

Had he been less shaken with jealous rage, he would have put a ball between Ian Montrose's eyes, but the hand that held so steady on the dueling lawns of Lincoln's Inn Fields at Hyde Park trembled slightly here in the mad fury that shook him.

His little pistol erupted in a belch of flame and smoke.

Ian staggered slightly as the ball plowed into his chest, scraping along his ribs. The pain came up like a red mist around him and drove his breath from his lungs. Then his right hand was sweeping up and the barrel of his pistol came hard against the pointed, arrogant chin of Harold Montrose, Lord Somerset.

That blow made a sodden sound in the night. Lord Somerset went back bonelessly, to recline like a dead man against the velvet quarterings of his coach. Ian stared down, dismayed by the savage fury that had been in him as he swung that pistol.

Lady Joan Sheldon screamed.

The Viscountess leaned forward, her slim white fingers moving gently as they fumbled under the many-buttoned lapel of Somerset's plum-colored coat. They came out with a velvet purse ornate with silver stitching and the iron pheon of the house of Southend.

"Take this purse," she cried out, thrusting the sack into Ian's hand. "Take it and go, for the love of heaven!"

Ian stared blankly at his half-brother, lolling so lifelessly on the cushions. Despair hammered its way up through the pain racking his ribs. Did I kill him, striking like that in anger? Am I to end in the hempen rope for murder, as a result of this night's jest? He could see the blood trickling down across Somerset's mouth and chin and dripping redly onto his jabot, and the drunken recklessness of the sack and whiskey fled from him, leaving him shaken and pale.

He grew aware that Lady Joan had lifted her face from her hands and was staring at him. Ian found himself unable to read her eyes, but he knew suddenly through the momentary fright in him that there was no fear in them.

He staggered as he backed away from the coach. Sliding a boot into an iron stirrup, he tried to lift himself into his saddle. The wound in his chest throbbed and pulsed, making him bend double. The mare sidled nervously, and he had to grab at her thick black mane. His teeth grated in the effort of will that lifted him upward and into the black saddle. Reins in a gloved hand, he toed the mare to a canter, aware that the Viscountess was standing in the moonlight, calling to the driver, and turning to stare curiously after him as he disappeared between the oaks and cedars bordering the road to West Action.

He rode at a canter, bent over to ease the fire in his side. There was wet stickiness on the fingers that he thrust into the tear in his coat, where they touched his bloody ribs. A little higher and to one side, he thought, and I'd be stretched out lifeless on the ground back there. The thought made him grimace wryly. Word would have been all over London, then. Ian Montrose, the poor relation of Lord Somerset, had turned highwayman to add to the fortune of which fate had seen fit to deprive him. At least, none knew who it was that trotted away from the crossroads tree with two purses, fat with gold, thrust into his saddlebag, with the jewels that had adorned the ears and throat and fingers of the Viscountess of Blasfordshire nestling close beside them.

He dismounted at a stile to remove coat and lingerie shirt and make a bandage of the shirt, which he wrapped tightly about his chest with trembling fingers. In the bright moonlight, he discovered that his wound was more painful than dangerous, for the break in his skin was clean where the ball had glanced against a rib and torn out through his flesh.

My loving brother would give much to see me stripped to my buff before him, he thought wryly. It would be all the proof he'd need to send me to the gibbet. He wondered if Hal were alive, even, and shuddered at the thought.

Ian Montrose debated with himself, seated on a flat milestone in the shadow of the stile. To return now to the Red Hart Inn, which had been his starting point an hour before midnight, would be to reveal to Ebenezer Gunn and his pretty daughter, Nancy, that young Ian Montrose was on the high road, with the black mare and the horse pistols he had brought with him from India.

Rather ride back to London, where one more late rider will pass unnoticed, then let them see me this way, he decided.

He owned treasured boyhood memories of the old tavern that stood on the road to Bockhorst Hill, with its timbered walls wreathed in green ivy, its stone lintel smoothed by a hundred years of boots and slippers moving across its surface. The Red Hart Inn had been built in the days of Drake and Hawkins, and its musty cellars were labyrinths of passageways once used by the smugglers who had brought coffee and tea, canary and Madeira, silks and satins from France and the Lowlands, Spain and Denmark, to their storage spaces. Behind its sprawling walls were the stables, and a buttery with matching wash house and brewery. In the days when he sought refuge from a tutor who used a ferrule overmuch, he found those cellars and those stables alive with a thousand nooks and crannies to be investigated, always with young Nancy Gunn tagging at his heels.

Later, when he had come home to Southend Hall from Oxford and Christ Church, he discovered that Nancy Gunn had grown up. Her lips were like sweet fire, and her soft arms clung with a frenzied strength, to assuage a little of his loneliness. His mother, a Marchioness in her own right, had died when he was two, and his father, the old Earl of Southend, was a sporting buck who thought more of his fighting cocks and racehorses than he did of his son, who was left alone to raise himself according to the dictates of his rebellious blood.

The Red Hart Inn became a home to him in that first year of Oxford. Ebenezer Gunn was a more understanding man than the elder Ian Montrose. When the Earl discovered that young Ian was spending his weekends galloping across the leas of Bockhorst on horses borrowed from the Red Hart stables, he went to the Lord of the Admiralty and made arrangements to secure passage for Ian Montrose on the bark Royal William, bound for India.

That voyage had taken four years and included the shipwreck of the Royal William, a rescue at sea, and a docking of the rescue brig at Calicut. There, in the alabaster temples and zenana gardens, silken bazaars and hill forts, he worked long and hard for the East India Company. He made lasting friendships with the naiks of Mysore and the Nawab of Arcot, aiding the Nizam al Mulk to found his dynasty at Hyderabad, and laying a solid foundation for the English against the French, who were penetrating into Pondicherry and the Carnatic lowlands.

He was aware that the strange fascination of India was in his blood. He had been the Inglisi khan too long not to acquire a taste for sugared ginger and buttered kichri, and a hunger for coppery women in clinging silken saris. He found himself dreaming with a touch of nostalgia, on the quarterdeck of the barkentine that brought him back to Europe, of golden howdahs and silver palanquins set with blood rubies, of high silken turbans and the fragile veils of women who wore the circular red caste marks on their foreheads, of mullahs and rupees, and the bronze figure of the Dancer, six-armed Siva. He had seen black pearls the size of fingertips taken from the seas off Ceylon, precious jade carvings from Cathay, and great bronze chests filled with diamonds and emeralds.

Those pearls and jades, diamonds and golden howdahs were symbols to him of the natural riches of that vast country stretching from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to the warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean.

It was a land of waiting for the man who possessed enough strength in his fist to take it. Ian Montrose wanted that man to be an Englishman. A colony like India, together with the vast New World over which England and France were fighting, would mean the first rank among the nations of the world for the land that owned them.

"A nation that strong will need a strong hand to guide it," he whispered to the heath below Mile End Road. "Anne is a woman grown old with age. A lonely woman, too, now that Prince George, her husband, is dead, and her quarrellings with the Duchess of Marlborough out in the open."

When Queen Anne died childless, the throne would be vacant for the taker. Even now, court gossip suggested that the son of James II would sit that throne. Here and there, men like Lords Stanhope and Townsend were mentioning the name of George of Hanover as an aspirant to the crown.

In his youth, Ian Montrose had visited at the court of Zell with his father, the Earl of Southend. He had known Count Konigsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea. This George of Hanover was a strong man, a man with convictions and enough strength of character to maintain them.

And so Ian, in his first flush of enthusiasm about India, had stopped in Denmark for an audience with the Electoral Prince. He had met the gross, fleshy George, had talked with him five hours and had been introduced to the Earl of Morley, who was in Denmark to explain that Anne of England was a sick woman. She had not long to live. If George wanted the throne, he must act now, or not at all.

"I have enemies in England," the Prince of Hanover announced the Ian, staring across the richly paneled audience room with protruding eyes. "Bolling-broke and Oxford. Enemies who are powerful men at court."

Ian protested, with the conviction that this man would make a good king strong within him. "You have friends too, your grace. Men such as Stanhope and Townsend. The Whig party is strong. All it needs is your consent to work on your behalf. Sire, England is approaching a crisis with destiny. India awaits a conqueror. So does the world. Great lands. Lands a hundred times England's size!"

George of Hanover let his thick lips loosen in a faint smile. "You are an enthusiast, Montrose. Well, enthusiasm is a good thing in a man. Especially in a man who sees king material in me. Do as you want. Befriend me in London, among court circles. I'll not be ungrateful if the time ever comes for remembering friends."

Within two days of his arrival in Bristol, Ian Montrose was being shown the will made by the old Earl, his father. It left Ian penniless, his father believing him dead on the high seas. The will left the title and the vast Southend fortunes to his half-brother, Harold.

As he cantered his mare over the wooden arch of Knight's Bridge and along the pasture lands of St. Giles' Fields, he thought back on the high hopes with which he had left India. Instead of finding wealth and a title, he came back to England to find himself penniless, without funds other than what he had managed to save from his sojourn in Calicut.

He knew, of course, that, as the old Earl's elder son, he had only to claim the title to make it his. The Earl could bequeath his estates to whomever he wished, but the title he could not dispose of in so cavalier a fashion. That could be inherited only by his eldest living son, and that son was Ian.

Yet, thought Ian, of what use was a title to him without the estates and the money to back it up? A penniless earl, with nothing but a name and a few suits of clothes to his back, a brace of horse pistols and this black mare between his thighs—he would be the laughingstock of England, and, worse, a man lost in a limbo between two worlds, unable to live comfortably in the society that the title made his, separated from the great mass of men by the same title.

No, Ian reflected, under the circumstances, the title would be more of a liability to him than an asset. Let Hal keep it, along with everything else. For the present, at least...

He dismounted and unsaddled in the small stable under the little townhouse that was his sole inheritance from his mother. Upending the worn leather feed bag, he dumped out the dried dust and dirt that was the accumulation of the years.

"There's not even a bit of grain in the bag for you, girl," he said to the mare, stroking her soft nose. "In the morning I'll visit the livery stable and obtain credit. I'll put a good meal under your hide before we go back to Bockhorst, my word on it!"

A narrow wooden stair led upward from the stables to the kitchen. With black saddlebags slung over a shoulder, he mounted past a wide landing fronted by a leaded window to the second story.

He turned into the bedroom and struck the flint to steel, wincing as the sudden movement sent pain through his wound. A standing lamp revealed a wide room the width of the house, with a great oak poster bed and wall hangings of Mortlake tapestry. A marquetry chest-on-chest fronted a section of paneling fitted with frame paintings, opposite a silvered mirror.

Ian took the saddlebags to a walnut side table with cabriole legs and unfastened the straps. Shaking them out, he stared down at diamonds and emerald rings, at a pearl necklace worth the yearly rental of a prosperous farm, and two velvet purses heavy with golden guineas.

Then he lifted out the ribboned garter that had come from the leg of Lady Joan Sheldon. For a moment he stared down at the tiny lace rosettes and ruffled pleatings. He sniffed the faint fragrance of perfume on its lacy frills.

"A dainty pretty indeed, Ian Montrose," called a mocking voice, "but a dangerous thing to be caught with, in the privacy of your own bedroom! It proves you the highwayman who hit Lord Somerset with a pistol barrel a few hours ago, outside Hounslow Heath!"

He whirled, fingers tensing on the scarlet garter. The Viscountess of Blasfordshire stood with a knee braced on a Windsor chair, her tippet-edged wrap fallen from a white shoulder. There was a cruel smile on her wide red mouth.

In her right hand, she held a small, silver-mounted pistol. It was aimed at Ian Montrose where the buckle of his leather belt was fastened at his middle.

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