#Betony Redyng

[woolyfaye]

I guess since twitter is dying I ought to remind folks I don’t just shitpost here and reblog fandom stuff. SOMETIMES, I write.  Anyways an unedited bit from The Tailor’s Kiss, since I plan on finishing it once my degree is completed.  For new followers, this follows the life of Betony Redyng, an alderman’s daughter, as she wards off her unsavory suitors in the spring and summer of 1381, when the pressures of the Poll tax lit London aflame and threatened its independent rule. 

“Hmm, yes. May I walk you home?” He nodded, though his eyes did not focus on her face as Edward’s did. He was partially turned away, despite the older man offering his arm to her. Walter’s red face was less flushed than usual, making the lines forming around his eyes and lips stand out slightly. It seemed his time serving the city as an enforcer of the law was wearing on him. Beneath her touch, his forearm was hard with muscle. It was a firm reminder that for all his talking, he was very much a man of action. He was, as a nobleman might say, preux.

  Betony tried to keep her touch as light as possible. He started without a verbal acceptance, the brush of her fingers enough to set him walking. Idly, she wondered if she’d have to get used to that, for with Geoffrey dealt with, Sheriff Walter Doget was the only man actively pursuing her. Betony didn’t want a life of her word being worth nothing, especially in the places it mattered. He at least purposely slowed his step for her, and he finally smiled down at her. He seemed more interested in her throat and brooch, his eyes only rising to land on her lips as he asked, “Have you heard much of the goings-on outside of London?”

  Betony’s brows rose. That was the last subject she’d expected him to ask about. She tilted her head to the side, grasping for the gossip that traveled through the city’s network of women. That word traveled slowly, but there was always some woman whose cousin in the countryside had heard about something from a traveler, or had heard something from a friend. By the end of it, of course, the tale had warped into the exaggerated silhouette of monsters and scandal, but Betony loved that about gossip. Now she almost hated it. “Many are refusing to pay the poll tax. Some I���ve heard have taken up arms.”

  Walter snorted. “Fat chance there is of that happening here—forgive me for my language, Miss Redyng—but I’ve made ensuring the tax is paid a very personal endeavor.” He seemed to puff up with pride, even as they stepped out into the unseasonably cold rain.

  Betony was glad her entire dress was a waterspot, or else this would certainly have ruined her dress. She grimaced slightly at Walter’s words, a shiver traveling up her spine. She’d trust that to be the rain’s fault, but the poll tax might have been another reason. “May I ask how you’ve managed to do that, goodman?”

  “I’m certain the details would bore you.” Walter laughed. Betony’s insides twisted. Her touch grew firmer on his arm only so she might imagine what it might feel like to twist his arm in the same way—but violence was not ideal, especially not towards the enforcer of London’s laws. An act like that would be just as bad as fighting the mayor. “I’ve simply ensured that those who don’t comply with our good king’s tax face certain difficulties, as they haven’t obliged the laws of the city.”

  This time, she was certain, the chill was not from the rain. She expected talk like this from Venetians, who never said what they meant and always tried to impress their audience, but not a good Londoner. Even worse, a Londoner so respected by the civic government that he’d been named Sheriff at the age of thirty. Betony let out a chuckle that half caught in her throat. “I thought the king’s men would do that for you.”

  Doget made a dismissive noise. “Bah, you know the king’s men. Too afraid to interfere with our city’s independence.”

  “London still owes fealty to King Richard.” Betony replied. The young king had yet to impress her, but she was fully aware of that. The city’s writ of self-governance had been threatened—revoked, even—in the past, and she would not see it revoked again by riots. “Perhaps a gentler hand might—“

  Sheriff Walter cut her voice off with a laugh that echoed across the streets. It seemed lent had left few of the ladies hungry for dancing, for the square outside the church was nearly empty. Sound carried further than she’d ever seen it go her whole life. He looked down his sloped nose at her. “Kindness doesn’t pay taxes.”

  Betony bit back a retort. Her face felt hot for all the wrong reasons, most of all her thoughts on the state of the city being outright dismissed. Goodman Doget was certainly well-connected, but as a man who’d been unmarried all his life, he seemed to have no connections to the word spread through the women of the city. That meant he missed the words of the women outside the city as well. Those who were widowed with young children by the ongoing war with France were the most affected by the tax. The crop hadn’t been good enough to pay it. But Betony couldn’t risk a larger blow to her reputation to argue.

  Instead, she looked about the streets for a way out. Betony knew none of the people they passed well enough to excusably break away. With a thin smile, she instead prayed to Jesus, Mary and Joseph that another might approach her or the sheriff, and the excuse of conversation could give her an exit. Betony would find her prayers unanswered. As her hazel eyes searched every dampened face and the depths of each doorway, she was met only with the frowns of others. “Are you taking me another route? This isn’t the way my kin take to Knightrider.” Betony asked. By now, her veil was entirely plastered to her head. Moving her head one way or the other was an effort, with the drenched linen heavier than any of her sins.

  “I thought I’d show you a new way.” Goodman Walter said.

  The chill was certainly from the cold.

  Betony found it much harder to keep up her smile now. She loosened her grip on the sheriff’s arm just enough so she could break away easily. Her heart pounded in her chest. “I’d like to be returned home quickly, goodman.” Her voice shook as she spoke, “I’ve a dress to finish for Easter. You are aware that the Guildhall has agreed we’re all to wear purple during Easter mass.”  

[guildedwriter]

The first of hopefully many character aesthetics for Tailor’s Kiss! First we have Betony Redyng, the eldest daughter of the Alderman of Castle Baynard in 1381! She’s spent most of her life learning the trade in her father’s tailor shop, which she’s set to inherit after his death. As such, many of the wealthy Londoners are interested in her dowry. 

[woolyfaye]

The more i write Betony the more I think she's demi

[woolyfaye]

Well, might as well share some writing on the new blog! An excerpt from a medieval romance I’m working on, set in London during the spring and summer of 1381

Together, they walked into the hall. Geoffrey turned towards the stairs, but Betony pulled them towards the storeroom. In the back of the house, it seemed as though it might have been the most private, the sterile white plaster only interrupted by the brightly painted furniture and a small window on the eastern wall. But Betony knew that the sounds of this room tended to carry when uninterrupted by draperies.

She stopped him before the red cupboard, where the pale moonlight fell upon his face. His eyes were…less sharp than usual, searching her face in darkness with confusion. With brows once again creeping up his forehead, his throat bobbed up and down.

“Betony Redyng, you are…perhaps the loveliest girl I’ve ever had the opportunity to court.” He said the words so smoothly, she could hardly believe he lied. Except, she’d been witness to the other women he’d taken to dark alleys. She heard the stories of Bishopsgate. Her throat tightened, warmth spreading up her face. Still, with the dark masking her reaction, he continued, “Never has London seen someone so wise, so good with her skill, and it would be a loss to any man to not have you at his side.”

Betony rolled her eyes. “Geoffrey, I—“

“Let me finish.” He held his hand up to silence her. The other still gripped her hand, clammy and shaking slightly. “I would like to marry you, Betony.”

Betony tried to tug her hand free. When his fingers didn’t relax, she reached forward to pry them off. At first, his eyes lightened with hope, but Betony’s resolve was firmer seeing that, when he had the mark of another’s affection showing on his throat. Finally, her hand was freed and she backed away, shaking her head. “I cannot marry you.”

“Why?”

“You have my answer already, Geoffrey de Essex. Please don’t open your heart to further wounds.”

His mouth gaped open. “But I thought—“

“Goodman, I cannot be the wife of a man who has already decided to burn rather than marry the person he lusts after.” She straightened, finally looking straight into his pale, wide eyes. “I allowed myself to be led astray by you, share kisses and touches that I have paid penance for, but I will not open my breast to you, even in a wedding bed. I have been kind, and tried to offer you warnings that I was not interested in your affections, but you seem to have mistaken that as the dance of courtly love. So I say to you now, Geoffrey.” She stepped forward, mere inches from his chest, but this time the only burning in her was of exhaustion. This wasn’t like her proximity to Edward, where waves of fire had brought thoughts she couldn’t bear into her mind.

Geoffrey sucked in a quivering breath, his eyes not moving from hers. They were pale as moonlight, though not nearly as cold as the light that made his pallor seem deathly.

“I won’t marry you. If you call upon me in that way again, I will have you shown out of my house.” She panted, her eyes widening as she realized that, perhaps, that had taken her refusal too far. Betony had simply heard too many apprentices, trouvères, and everyone speak of love as something that a man does, where the prey must refuse until marriage is proposed. Or, until the end of the tale where finally she is either taken or relinquishes that which makes a woman honorable. Betony stumbled backwards, then pointed to the door. “Please go. I’ll return shortly.”  

Silent as a mouse, he stepped around her and walked to the door. The creak of the door on its hinges was hesitant, but the orange light that flooded in disappeared quickly as he slipped back into the main sections of the house.

Betony found a stool in the dark and settled onto it, her head in her hands. “Sard…” She muttered, letting out a shaky breath. Her heart pounded in her chest, the brooch the coldest part of her. Her mother’s brooch, with its engraved words of “I am the brooch to guard the breast, that no rascal may put his hand theron.” Her fingers moved to trace the letters, while the room blurred. Her eyes itched with unshed tears threatening to spill and erase what little composure she had left. Anyone else, and she might have said yes against all her truest wants. That was the knowledge that had hurt the most. She didn’t know why that made her heart feel as though it was being rend from her chest, but that was the truth of it.

She exhaled slowly, blowing the air out from rounded lips in a controlled stream. Then, she breathed in through her nose. Leaning her head back against a cupboard, she squeezed her eyes open and shut until tears no longer threatened her sight, and the rafters were barely visible in the shadows above. Her chest ached, but she dusted off the front of her skirt, the silk whispering her secrets to the dark as she rose, rolling back her shoulders. Like Hippolyta marching to face her foes, she marched towards the door and returned to the meal.

[woolyfaye]

More Tailor’s Kiss snippets! Because I’ve got a deadline for March 15th and another book in the same city (perhaps even at the same time) to finish. 

Scandalously, Betony and a few of her father’s apprentices break out some of the wine while working late, and here’s a bit of the aftermath: 

Her brows furrowed. “Are neither of my parents back yet?”

“They slipped past us while you were working.” Edward explained. With the redware in hand, he approached her table, refilling her glass one final time. “I told them it was fruit juice.”

A slow smile spread across her lips. “I’m doomed to be the worst wife, if this is how I corrupt the men around me.” She uncrossed her legs and let them hang off the table, finally setting down her sewing. At the rate her chest grew warmer, any more stitches would leave her having to unpick as much as she’d sewn that evening. Patting the space next to her, she smiled up on Edward. “Come, sit. It’s shockingly sturdy.”

“And how would you know that?” Edward raised a brow, his dark eyes dropping to the wood beneath her.

“Good carpentry.” She whispered, picking up her glass. “And Master Redyng used to sew here next to mother before I decided I liked it more.” Raising a brow, she peered into the depths of his eyes. Her heart pounded as she took a light sip from the glass.

With slow, cautious movements, Edward sat on the table, though it was much smaller than she’d thought. His thigh brushed against hers. When he pushed himself further back on the tabletop, his hand pressed dangerously against her rear. He let out a low chuckle. “Not much use in this spot when the sun’s down.”

“I still like it.”

Edward’s face turned towards hers and, this close, it was like they were in the alley once again. His breath tickled her face, scented with watered wine and cloves. His eyes met hers, then flickered down, and for once she wished she could see inside his mind.

Did his heart pound with the ferocity of a storm as hers did?

Betonly leaned forward, the painful thought of his lips pressed to hers breaking through the haze of her worries. She looked at his lips, soft pink beneath a stubbled upper lip. What would they feel like against her neck, where even the lightest touch could send a shiver? What—

Edward’s hand rested on her knee, and his warmth, that nature of most men, washed over her. She retreated as quickly as she’d fallen into the fire, staring back into his eyes. They swallowed her, catching everything she tried to hide beneath the pleasant smile that was her only mask. Betony looked away, her cheeks warm. It would be better if he didn’t know the things she thought of.

“Did you know that the widow Hokkelay will be joining us at mass this Sunday?” Betony asked instead. That was what Edward wanted: livery, not her.

“Oh.” Edward’s voice was dull. When she glanced aside to look at him, there were lines upon his brow. “How is she?”

“I thought to introduce the two of you.” She didn’t respond to his question, mostly because the words she said made her chest ache. With Geoffrey rebuffed, her only real option for marriage now was…the sheriff. That was a refusal she could be nowhere near as harsh with, not if she wished for Lecia to marry well. “She’s very lovely, and you could afford your livery with little time spent as a journeyman if you manage to wed her.”

“Betony, I think you should sleep, rather than plot.” He murmured gently.

His words caressed her ear. Her chest ached more than anything, but Betony couldn’t risk what she had here, a person she could sit beside and talk to without being expected of anything. Here she was not the prey. She blinked quickly, her face hot and her body cold. “I think I’ll retire, but please, I think you would like Christiana.”

He helped her up from the table, leading her to the base of the stairs. In his other hand were the wine-stained cups. Betony blamed them for the feel of her chest, for the way her head spun when she looked at him. There was so much she wanted to say, but—

“Good night, Edward.” She said instead, a smile on her lips, “Don’t break anything when you wash up.”

[guildedwriter]

Introducing The Tailor’s Kiss: a 14th century guild romance 

In the world of London’s wards and guilds, Betony Redyng will do anything to avoid marrying the whoring sheriff of London, including proposition the journeyman Edward Hosyar. Together, they try to increase Edward’s status while saving Betony’s hefty dowry from the Sheriff, but Betony finds that she’s looking at her old friend in a new way. As the tensions within the kingdom boil into revolt, their feelings boil into something more, until they take a leap of faith to save themselves. 

setting: Spring 1381, Castle Baynard, London, England. 

This is my NaNo project! I’m aiming for around 80k once it’s finished, though only 50k is the goal for November. I plan to finish it in December, then edit it through January and February.