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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 292 - On the Shelf for August 2024 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2024/08/03 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for August 2024.

Thank goodness for pre-scheduled podcasts, because when this show is going live—assuming nothing untoward happens in the mean time—I am in Iceland, having a brief stopover on my way to Scotland, where I’ll be attending the World Science Fiction Convention and then doing a couple weeks of sightseeing. I hope to have all sorts of fun tidbits to report in next month’s On the Shelf. I’ll be doing at least one interview for the podcast at the convention. And my sightseeing will include doing some deep-background location research for a couple different fiction projects, plus I’m hoping to make a sort of pilgrimage to Halifax to visit Shibden Hall. The last time I traveled for an entire month like this was back in 1999, so we’ll see what my stamina is like a quarter century later.

Barring unexpected complications (and I keep mentioning that, because my life has had a few too many unexpected complications lately) I’ll also have pre-scheduled this month’s essay—the first half of an “our f/favorite tropes” episode on theater and actresses in historic romance. Then when I get home at the end of the month, assuming everything happens on schedule, I’ll have a sound file from one of my narrators waiting for me and we’ll have another fiction episode to round out August. As you may have noticed, the episode with Elizabeth Birdsall’s “The Font of Liberty” should have been scheduled in June, but things worked out to move it a month later and I took the opportunity to have a brief break from writing new episodes and put it in the essay slot. But now we should be back on the default schedule of posting fiction on 5th Saturdays.

I’ve been having my regular mid-year panic attack about whether I’m doing the fiction series again next year. When I was freaking out a little about finding narrators, I was really dithering. And since next year is my retirement year, I’m going to need to take a hard look at the finances of the fiction series. But at the moment I’m still defaulting to doing it another year.

Publications on the Blog

The blog has seen a lot of new material this past month, all focused on research for the tropes double-feature about actresses and theater. I blogged a collection entitled Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage, which contained 14 articles. The contents were of variable relevance to my purposes, but several were quite valuable on the subject of what women were doing on stage at various times and locations, especially when one expands the question beyond professional paid acting companies.

Next was a dissertation rather than a published work: The Salon and the Stage: Women and Theatre in Seventeenth-century France by Elizabeth Grist. Only a few bits focused on women participating in theater, but those bits were quite interesting.

Michael Shapiro’s Gender in Play on the Shakesperaean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages was predictably more about the gender dynamics of having male actors play female roles—including female characters then disguising themselves as men—than about women in theatrical professions. But the book opens with a chapter on the social context of women cross-dressing in actual life, which is more generally relevant to the Project.

Finally, I have a somewhat scanty summary of Sophie Tomlinson’s Women on Stage in Stuart Drama, which is a socio-political history of the female presence in dramatic works, though not always about women performers. And that wraps up my deep-focus series on theater history. I probably won’t blog any new publications read in August because I’ll be traveling for the whole month, but I hope my momentum picks up again when I get back. It feels good to be blogging this much again.

Book Shopping!

To balance that out, I didn’t pick up any new research books this month, but I suspect maybe next month will make up for that.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

New fiction also seems a bit sparse this month. I have one correction to last month’s listings. I had Tasha Suri’s The Lotus Empire as a July book, which was the schedule when I first put it in my spreadsheet. But evidently publication was pushed back to November, so I’ll try to remember to mention it again then. There’s also one August book that I’m saving for next month, in part because the publisher doesn’t have a link up yet, and in part because I’m planning to interview the author for the September show. That leaves us with a half dozen items for this month, less than our usual haul.

First up is a two-fer, because the release of the second book in a series brought the first one to my attention as well. Rachel Ford’s Meredith and Alec Thatch Mystery series is a bit easy to overlook as sapphic fiction because it involves a closeted couple with a “female husband” marriage in 1920s England. The first volume, Murder by Multiples came out last year and is available for free if you sign up for the author’s newsletter.

Quiet Fenwood-On-Sea is the perfect place for an heiress with secrets to hide. Or a killer.

Beautiful heiress Meredith Thatch married for love, and scandalized her community in the process. But her neighbors don't know the half of it. These days, she and spouse Alec keep a low profile, managing her hospital for recovering soldiers and invalids - and growing the finest roses in the county.

But when the most despised landowner in the area winds up dead shortly after feuding with the hospital, the finger of suspicion turns on the couple. And that's only the first murder.

With a Scotland Yard inspector asking uncomfortable questions and a killer on the loose, they need to solve the crime sooner rather than later. But how can they find a killer when there are suspects everywhere they turn, and motives all over the place?

The second book in the series, Murder by Rote, is the new release that caught my attention.

Aunt Anne’s house parties are to die for. Sometimes, literally.

When heiress Meredith Thatch accepted an invitation to a house party on her aunt’s country estate, she expected an exciting weekend for herself and partner Alec.

The worst storm in decades wasn’t in the cards, though. Neither was murder. Then a guest winds up dead in suspicious circumstances – and the only road in the area washes out.

Trapped in the manor, with every guest a possible suspect – and everyone harboring secrets – Meredith and Alec race to find the murderer.

Before their own secret comes out – or the killer strikes again.

Next up we have what looks like a short story, or maybe a novelette, Shadow of the Moon by T. Lona.

Eleanor Wren, a young woman of privilege in Victorian England, finds herself constrained by societal expectations and her father's ambitions. While her father arranges her marriage to Edward Lancaster, Eleanor secretly harbors feelings for her friend Lydia Blackwood. As Eleanor navigates the complex social landscape, she uncovers a hidden family secret that challenges everything she knows about her heritage. With Lydia's support, Eleanor must decide between following her heart and conforming to society's expectations.

The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis from Atria Books is set in a mythological Greece, with direct participation of the gods. I waver a bit on whether stories like this can be shoehorned into the historic fantasy category, as opposed to pure fantasy, but since almost all sapphic romances set in ancient Greece have mythic elements I’d be eliminating the category entirely if I had strict limits.

Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.

When Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to an idyllic palace, hidden from the prying eyes of Aphrodite, Zeus, and the outside world. There, against the dire dictates of Olympus, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe.

Before long, Psyche’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both—and transforms the very heavens.

I thought rather hard about including the next title—also set in classical Greece—for entirely different reasons. And this is going to sound a little harsh. I don’t normally filter books for inclusion in the podcast based on writing quality. Because such a large proportion of sapphic historicals are published independently, and because my goal is the support and encouragement of the field regardless of the author’s background, I consider my job to be the simple presentation of information. But sometimes I do want to put a caveat on a listing, either because I’m concerned about how it handles a sensitive topic, or for some other reason. In the case of Teleios: Flaw, is Perfect by Asvoria K., when I looked at advance reviews to confirm that the book has sapphic content, the reviews were in agreement that the writing has some serious quality issues. The author’s website notes that English is not her first language, which may go some way to explaining this. So if the cover copy strikes your interest, you may well enjoy the story, but be aware of what you’re getting.

In the dusk of Hellas, the shadow of Rome began to stretch its dominance. Arete of Syracuse had lost her father and her beloved city. Following his last wish, Arete embarked on her odyssey to stop the strange malevolent forces behind which controlled the Roman Emperor Nero.

Guided by a determination in her heart, Arete traveled to the fabled city of Oraiapolis to find a mysterious Teleios, the perfect woman who was rumoured to be the living Aphrodite.

Along her journey traveling through different villages and cities, she fought against ferocious creatures and forged unbreakable bonds with a diverse cadre of companions, each carrying the weight of their own life in their hearts.

What will transpire throughout their perilous journey that will shape their destinies? And what evil forces would seek to capture the Teleios for their own sinister ends?

The Roaring Twenties continue to be a popular setting for historic romance. Check out: Craze by Margaret Vandenburg from Jaded Ibis Press.

Fresh off the boat from Roaring Twenties Paris, Henrietta "Henri" Adams lands in New York in the midst of the Queer Craze that is taking the city by storm. An art critic by day and lady lover by night, she ventures into the clandestine worlds of speakeasies and drag balls, which free her from the tyranny of the gender binary. Fun-loving slummers crash the party, flocking to see queer performers at the Astor Hotel and the Cotton Club. Broadway stars rub elbows with Harlem Renaissance luminaries at the Hamilton Lodge Masquerade Ball. But the revelry can't last forever. Faced with Depression-era crackdowns, Henri calculates the risk of fighting back, prompting a decision with far-reaching consequences.

For those looking for a book aimed at somewhat younger readers—or maybe you like YA books yourself--Not for the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher from Bloomsbury Children's Books takes on the Robin Hood legend, with a twist.

‘You aren’t merry,’ said Clem to her captor. ‘And you aren’t all men. So there’s been some marketing confusion somewhere along the line.’

Mariel, a newly blooded and perpetually grumpy captain of the Merry Men, is desperate to live up to the legacy of her grandfather, the legendary Robin Hood. Clem, a too-perky backwoods healer known for her new-fangled cures, just wants to help people.

When Mariel's ramshackle band of bandits kidnap Clem as retribution for her guardian helping the Sheriff of Nottingham, all seems to be going (sort of) to plan … until Jack Hartley, Mariel’s father and Commander of the Merry Men, is captured in a deadly ambush. Determined to prove herself, Mariel sets out to get him back – with her annoyingly cheerful kidnappee in tow.

But the wood is at war. Many believe the Merry Men are no longer on the right side of history. Watching Clem tend the party’s wounds and crack relentlessly terrible jokes, Mariel begins to doubt the noble cause to which she has devoted her life. As the two of them grow closer, forced by circumstances to share a single horse and bed, one thing is clear. They must prepare to fight for their lives and for those of everyone they’ve sworn to protect.

Other Books of Interest

I’ve put one title in the “other books of interest” category because, despite being tagged as sapphic on the website where I spotted it, I can’t figure out the details from the cover copy. This is: Accidental Darlings by Crystal Jeans from The Borough Press.

In the night, I slept with my head under a shawl, listening to the ceaseless low groans of the house, telling myself that my mother would never have sent me to live with a murderer or a witch or a Miss Havisham…

1924.

When Anastasia’s beloved mother dies, she has no choice but to go to rural Skimpole and move in with ‘the Aunt’ – too fearsome for a first name, an outcast from the village who lives in a dilapidated mansion with two servants and an unruly pack of dogs.

The many mysteries of Skimpole are irresistible: how did Anastasia’s father really die? Who wrote the extremely raunchy love letters she has found in the Aunt’s bedroom, signed ‘Big Willy’? And why does everyone in the village hate the Aunt so much?

When some of the Aunt’s friends from her youth arrive at the house, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery, Anastasia may be closer to finding answers – but the truth she was so desperate to uncover will turn her entire world upside down…

What Am I Reading?

And what have I been reading in the last month? It’s been all audiobooks, as is often the case, in part because I’ve been doing so much print reading for the blog.

I rather enjoyed A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence in Jess Everlee’s “Lucky Lovers of London” series. It’s a Victorian-era sapphic romance that’s part of a loosely-braided series where the other titles feature gay male romances. I hope it’s ok to say that I liked this more than I expected to—in part because I’m coming out of a run of historic romances that rather fell down on the historic side. But Everlee sets up a solidly believable context for her ill-matched lovers, including a glimpse of what parts of society might find same-sex couples well within the non-conformity they’re happy to accommodate. The miscommunications and anxieties that put stumbling blocks in the path to happiness are all plausible

There was a new release in the “Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney” historic mystery series, featuring the neurodivergent son of Darcy and Lizzie and the adventure-seeking daughter of the protagonists of Northanger Abbey. In Claudia Gray’s The Perils of Lady Catherine De Bourgh, the two young sleuths are summoned to Rosings Park to figure out who seems to be trying to kill Lady Catherine. The mystery plot was slightly flawed in that I quickly figured out whodunnit based on which character the protagonists were obviously overlooking in their considerations—although the theme of being overlooked and ignored aligned with the motive. But we get further slow progress of the budding romance between Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney at a believable and satisfactory pace that ensures the series is likely to continue for further developments.

And finally I went on a deliberate hunt to fill in the gaps in my K.J. Charles collection and listened to Unfit to Print, a second-chance romance overlaying a mystery involving the Victorian pornography industry, with a delightfully diverse cast. The only minor disappointment was how abruptly the mystery plot was resolved at the end, with almost no input from the protagonists. A happy ending, but not an entirely satisfying one in terms of pacing.

For next month, we’ll see what effects travel has on my reading. Sometimes I find myself ripping through things quickly on planes and trains, and sometimes I’m so busy having fun I forget to read.

Author Guest

To finish up, we have an author guest this month! I’m talking to Melissa Addey, a prolific author of historical fiction.

(An interview transcript will be added when available.)

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

• Your host’s travels in August
• Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
  • Brown, Pamela Allen & Peter Parolin (eds). 2005. Women Players in England, 1500-1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage. Ashgate, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-7546-0953-7
  • Grist, Elizabeth Rosalind. 2001. The Salon and the Stage: Women and Theatre in Seventeenth-century France. Dissertation.
  • Shapiro, Michael. 1994. Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages. Ann Arbor. (Chapter 1: A Brief Social History of Female Cross-Dressing)
  • Tomlinson, Sophie. 2009. Women on Stage in Stuart Drama. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-0-521-81111-8
• Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
  • Murder by Multiples (Meredith and Alec Thatch Mystery #1) by Rachel Ford
  • Murder by Rote (Meredith and Alec Thatch Mystery #2) by Rachel Ford
  • Shadow of the Moon by T. Lona
  • The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis
  • Teleios: Flaw, is Perfect by Asvoria K.
  • Craze by Margaret Vandenburg
  • Not for the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher
• Other Titles of Interest
  • Accidental Darlings by Crystal Jeans
• What I’ve been consuming
  • A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence by Jess Everlee
  • The Perils of Lady Catherine De Bourgh by Claudia Gray
  • Unfit to Print by K.J. Charles
• This month we interview Melissa Addey and talk about:
  • Her several historical fiction series
  • Her sapphic historical romance set in 18th c China
  • Balancing research and invention
  • Sign up for Melissa’s readers’ group to get a free copy of The Consorts

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
• Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
• RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
• Twitter: @LesbianMotif
• Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

• Website: http://alpennia.com
• Email: Heather Rose Jones
• Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
• Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
• Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Melissa Addey Online

• Website: MelissaAddey.com

Although appended to a book discussing theatrical cross-dressing, this catalog presents a contrast in how actual women (of the lower classes) were treated when found or accused of cross-dressing.

Purpose

The recent announcement from the Glasgow Worldcon committee about some unexpected patterns in Hugo voting ballots, the conclusions made about those patterns, and the actions taken in response, have naturally raised interest in the nomination process for this year. As readers may remember, both the nomination process and voting process in 2023 had clear anomalies that cast severe doubt on the validity of the outcome and generated a great deal of concern among the SFF community.

The Glasgow committee’s commitment to openness and transparency with regard to data and communications has been highly appreciated. Because of that, I have every confidence that if they had observed anomalous patterns in the nomination data (as they clearly did in the final voting data) they would have taken appropriate action. But can we back that confidence up with any hard data, in advance of having access to the full nomination and voting statistics?

In response to some questions thrown out into the ether by ErsatzCulture, I opened up the historic trend analysis spreadsheet I created at the beginning of this year and plugged in the data we have available at this point. For each category, that data consists of:

• Total number of ballots with any nominees in the category
• Total number of distinct nominees mentioned for the category
• Maximum and Minimum nominations for finalists in that category [1] [2]

[1] Keep in mind that the calculation process for determining finalists is not “first past the post” but involves multiple rounds of data processing, with the result that an item that makes the finalist list may have fewer direct mentions than an item that fails to make the list. This process is too complex for me to explain here.

[2] Some potential finalists declined the nomination. It would make sense that these are included in the stats—possibly including the max/min stats. Some nominated items were determined to be technically ineligible and are therefore (presumably) not included in the max/min stats, but probably are included in the overall ballot/nominee numbers. (The difference wouldn’t be significant for distinct nominees.) When the full stats are available, I’ll update with the complete numbers, but for now this will be an approximation.

Methodology

I selected the following years to analyze:

• 2011 - the earliest year I happen to have data for
• 2012 - the last year before any Sad Puppy [3] activity
• 2015 - the year of the most intense Sad Puppy activity with known nomination slates
• 2017 - the first year of E Pluribus Hugo [4]
• 2021 - a recent year
• 2022 - a recent year
• 2023 - the Year of Shenanigans
• 2024 – the current year

[3] If this reference means nothing to you, count yourself lucky. But in that case, you probably aren't that interested in deep dives into Hugo Award data.

[4] Because I'm looking only at "how many nominating ballots included this item" the difference in how those nominations are processed pre- and post-EPH should not be significant, except to the possible extent that it affects how people nominate.

Note that Best Fancast and Best Series were added at various times during the scope covered by this study and so are not present in all the graphs. Best Game is new this year and is not included as there is no comparative data.

Because the available data for 2024 is limited at this time, I’ll be looking only at the following questions:

• How do overall numbers of nominating ballots (in each category) compare to the selected previous years?
• For the finalist on the largest number of ballots, how does their percentage of the total nominating ballots for that category compare to previous years?
• For the finalist on the smallest number of ballots, how does their percentage of the total nominating ballots for that category compare to previous years?
• How does the range in percentages between high and low finalist compare to previous years? (This will stand as a proxy for the slope of the top end of the nomination distribution.)

Analysis

Total Nominating Ballots by Category

Yes, yes, the figures are very hard to see at this scale. But to some extent that’s a feature, not a bug. Because we’re looking at overall patterns, not specific numbers. It makes it easier to see an overall pattern and the items that break that pattern.

Overall, in the fiction categories, plus Related Work and Drama-Long, there is generally a steady increase in numbers of ballots across the study, with starkly higher numbers in 2015 (puppies), 2017 (E Pluribus Hugo) and 2023 (Chengdu). The other categories are either running fairly steady or have no clear trending pattern, again with the exception of the specified years.

What breaks this overall assessment? Best Related Work is out-of-trend in 2024, with total ballots almost as high as 2023. Fancast is also out-of-trend with the highest number of ballots in my data set (and this was not a category with unexpectedly higher numbers in 2023). Other than these two categories, nothing jumps out as unexpected when viewed in the historic context.

Percentage of Ballots for Top Finalist

The next pattern to examine is the percentage of ballots (out of those with any nominees in the category) that listed the finalist that appeared most often. (I’m trying very hard to find concise language that doesn’t imply value judgments.) Again, I’m going to start with a high-level graph that is more for the shape of the patterns than the specific numbers, but this time I’m then going to break it up into groups for better visibility.

The analysis here is that there’s normally a relatively narrow range for the percentage of the top finalist—mostly between 10-30%. For a number of categories, 2023 significantly breaks this pattern with much higher values. But 2024 not only returns to “normal” but in most cases has a lower top percentage than in previous years.

The category that breaks this pattern is Best Related Work, where 2024 had the relatively most popular “top performer” of the data set. It’s not only higher than the anomalous 2023 value, but also higher than the previous peak in 2017. (Looking back, this points out that sometimes there’s simply a run-away favorite, especially in a category with a relatively limited set of known candidates. That runaway favorite in 2017 also won the final ballot on the first round of counting.)

In the fan categories, it’s interesting (but perhaps not meaningful) that Best Fan Writer currently appears to be increasing focus on the top performer, but not in the same stand-out sort of way. And given the previous observation that Best Fancast had an unusual spike in numbers of total nominating ballots, this doesn’t appear to be due to a runaway favorite, as the most popular nominee appears on only 15% of the ballots—almost the lowest in my data set.

Percentage of Ballots for Bottom Finalist

The next question has some sharper, but less interesting, patterns. What percentage of ballots list the finalist who has the lowest number of listings? This is a much tighter range—eyeballing suggests mostly around 7-12%. Again, I’ll start with the high level overview where the overall pattern is clearest. What’s clear, is that all the most significant out-of-trend items are from 2023. The pattern is much starker that the higher percentages for the top finalist.

In fact, let’s flip the data to cluster by year rather than by category. (Due to the nature of my spreadsheet, the years are numbered in order rather than labeled by year—see the key above.) Here it’s easy to see that 2023 had overall higher percentages for the low finalist. But we can also see that 2024 is running lower than typical for the low finalist. (There are various possible hypothses that would explain this, but I’m not going to speculate until I have the full data.)

I’m not going to zoom in on this one because, frankly, it’s not that interesting.

Span Between High and Low Finalists

When I put together the data showing the difference in percentages between the high and low finalists, I thought it would be easy to interpret, but it’s actually rather complex and requires a number of individualized explanations to make sense of. I’ll put up the high-overview graphs grouped by category and by year, simply because I have them. But I’m not seeing anything meaningful to say.  2024 seems to be running to larger spans in everything but the fiction categories, but I don’t know what that means.

With regard to the two categories that seem most interesting, Best Related Work has a large span, indicating either a very sharp tail-off or a runaway favorite. Fancast has an utterly typical span.

Conclusions?

To sum up, there are two categories that stand out as having at least one unusual feature. Both Best Related Work and Best Fancast have a larger number of nominating ballots cast than history would predict. However while the top finalist in Best Related Work appears on an unexpectedly high % of the ballots and has a larger-than-typical difference from the bottom finalist, the % ballots for the top Best Fancast finalist is not merely typical, but lower than usual, and the span between top and bottom finalists is utterly typical.

Best Related Work is a category that has historically been rather variable in performance, and there have been previous instances of clear favorites as early as the nominating process. Given that we can assume the total nominating ballots include withdrawals, and presuming that the max/min stats also reflect pre-withdrawal data, it is plausible that the bump in the Best Related Work category reflects the peculiar virality of one nominee who declined nomination.

But another explanation might come from one nominee that appeared in both Best Related Work and Best Fancast, but was ruled ineligible for the latter. (I know in some circumstances a work nominated in two categories can have nominations moved to the more numerous category, but I don’t know if that would happen with eligibility issues. So I don’t know how/if that would affect the numbers.) A second item nominated in Best Fancast was also ruled ineligible (in both cases, on the basis of being professional productions). If the nominations were counted under “total ballots” but were excluded from the max/min data, that could explain why the nominating numbers were unusually high without it being reflected in the popularity of the top finalist.

Anyway, that’s as much as I can make of it at the moment. Any potential relationship of the above analysis to the question of which finalist was the beneficiary of attempted ballot-stuffing is left entirely to the reader’s speculation. It may be related, it may be entirely unrelated. There are a number of high-level theories about what the purpose of the attempted ballot-stuffing was, and each theory would have an entirely different potential relationship to nomination patterns.

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 291 – The Font of Liberty by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall - transcript

(Originally aired 2023/07/20 - listen here)

Here we are, scheduled only a little bit later than originally planned, the second fiction episode of 2024. “The Font of Liberty” by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall is set in Paris in 1830, among the printers and booksellers who dodge around the capricious demands of the censors. As a bit of pop culture historic grounding, this story takes place two years before the revolt that is the climax of Les Miserables. I love this story for the varied community of women it depicts…and for the word-play in the title.

The author, Elizabeth Porter Birdsall, lives in Boston with her wife, a lot of books, and a lot of tea. In her day job, she's a French to English translator, and she worked as a translator and editor on the video game Harmony: The Fall of Reverie by Don’t Nod. Her short fiction has been published in places such as "Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories," the "Women Destroy Science Fiction!" special issue of Lightspeed Magazine, and Etherea Magazine. In her free time, she likes hanging out in nature and flitting between entirely too many hobbies, especially handicrafts. She can be found online on Bluesky and Mastodon. See the links in the show notes.

When looking for narrators who can do right by the various settings of our stories, I belatedly realized I had a great international resource in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. I was attending the annual SFWA conference a few months ago and mentioned that I was looking for narrators with some specific competencies and rather hit the jackpot. Our narrator for this episode is C. J. Lavigne, a Canadian SFF author. Her urban fantasy novel In Veritas, from NeWest Press, was a finalist for the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in Speculative Fiction and the 2021 Crawford Award, and was the Alberta Book Publishers Association 2021 Speculative Fiction Book of the Year. Her short fiction has appeared in On Spec, Fusion Fragment, Augur Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, PodCastle, and other publications, and her novella The Drowned Man's Daughter is forthcoming from NeWest Press in 2025. She is generally busy drinking coffee, petting the cat, and being a full-time media studies academic.

Without further ado, let’s get to our story.

This recording is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License. You may share it in the full original form but you may not sell it, you may not transcribe it, and you may not adapt it.

THE FONT OF LIBERTY

by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall

Sandrine dropped into the chair beside me and stretched her back dramatically. I took the opportunity to admire the view, as I was sure she intended. “Ugh!” She wiggled her fingers high overhead. “Never be a compositor, Mylène my beauty. You’ll have to typeset a scholar’s list of sources in eight point, half of them in Greek.”

“I don’t speak a word of Greek,” I pointed out, though it didn’t need saying. When would a girl from a little Normandy village have learned such a thing as Greek? Sandrine was the one who had grown up in this printshop two streets from the Quartier Latin, not me. I had the impression that she didn’t read it terribly well herself, come to that; the king’s censors had been striking out texts so eagerly recently that the shop had been taking on jobs we might ordinarily have farmed out.

“Then you’ll have to learn to read Greek by typesetting such things,” Sandrine retorted, “off that same scholar’s badly scribbled fair copy, which is the least fair copy I ever saw, by the way. Then your pretty dark eyes will cross forever. Mine certainly have; I don’t think I’ll see straight for a week.”

“Charge the scholar extra for the trouble to your pretty grey eyes,” I suggested, and she laughed.

“Oh, we are! You’re right, though, I’ll put his coins on my eyelids to soothe them.”

It always felt daring to flirt with the boss’s daughter at work, for all that she’d been flirting with me since I’d arrived six months back, and we’d kissed up in her room more than once. More than kissed, too, out in the fields outside the city where her mother wouldn’t overhear us, and some marvelous romps those had been. Sandrine was a warm and playful soul who didn’t seem the least vindictive. If we broke matters off tomorrow, it would be awkward, but I didn’t think she’d get her mother to send me off, especially when they’d just trained me up to make the ink and be quick at stitching bindings.

Still, all of that was part of the reason I kept on sleeping on Isabelle and Lucie’s spare mattress, instead of taking a room over the printshop.

Lucie worked at the cabaret around the corner, where we all loyally went for wine and mediocre food at breaks. Here, meanwhile, Isabelle operated the press, set type when Sandrine was busy, and generally acted as the foreman this shop didn’t officially have. That left Sandrine and Mme Barthélemy free to meet with clients and keep the budgets and all the other business of an owner and her only daughter, with Sandrine’s cousin Antoine doing apprentice work. But if Mme Barthélemy had had a living husband and a dozen daughters, I think Isabelle would still have ended up in charge of the shop floor. She’s that kind of person.

Just as I thought that, Isabelle herself thumped down a whole stack of freshly printed and folded pages next to me. I yelped. “Hey! Isa, you fiend, you print too fast! Here I thought I’d get the chance to take a break.”

Isabelle grinned her craggy slice of a grin, and mimed a thump on my shoulder. “You need faster fingers than that to get ahead of me, young chicken!”

I pretended to sulk about the blow that hadn’t landed, dramatically shaking out my fingers even though they weren’t actually sore, and she laughed. “Don’t fret, lunchtime’s not so far off. If you get through that whole stack, I’ll buy you a drink, how’s that?”

“Deal!” I wasn’t at all sure that I’d manage the stack, but I was willing to make a go of it. And for all that she looked like a belligerent wine cask in a dress and printer’s apron, Isabelle was a soft touch at heart; odds were good she’d buy me the drink even if I fell a little short, as long as I made the effort.

“Ugh!” said Sandrine. “I was going to offer to help you, but now I’d be costing you wine for it. Well, there’s no help for it, I’ll have to go start printing that play of Borel’s.”

I glanced over in some surprise, unspooling the first length of waxed thread. “Haven’t you already?”

She grimaced. “Well... I’ve been putting it off. Just in case, you know.”

Halfway across the room, Isabelle snorted. “That one! Wild as they come and then some. He’s part of that Romantic set our Sandrine loves so much, you know, the young ones. The Petit Cénacle or the Young France or whatever they’re calling themselves this week. Can’t help but push every boundary there is.”

“The censors are hemming and hawing about whether to approve his script,” Sandrine clarified. “Just because it has some soul in it! But they can’t stand real art, you know.”

“And meanwhile the actors are already cast!” Isabelle hoisted up the press bar. “But if the censors won’t get off their asses—” Wham, went the paper frame, down onto a fresh sheet of paper. “—then for all we know, we’re throwing away money every minute we spend working on the damn thing. Soul won’t pay the bills.” As she spoke, she hoisted the press up again—the job of a strong man in most shops, but as Lucie often said with a sly grin and a rather different meaning, who needed a man when you had Isabelle?

“Still, we’re throwing away money if I don’t get off my ass, too.” Sandrine shook out her arms, adjusted some infinitesimal shifting of her sleeve covers, and stood. “I finished that monograph and Isa’s already well launched on Favart’s pamphlet, so there’s nothing else in shape for me to work on but Borel’s eccentricity. On I go.”

On she did go, and on I went too, till my hands were starting to get sore for real. Sewing paper bindings is different than sewing shirts. More pleasant, in my experience, and easier on the eyes, but harder on the fingers. And all of our work accompanied by the steady slam of the press. Every so often Isabelle paused to let Antoine shift the racks around, with clatters and thumps, and then up the slams would start again.

I’d had to learn to tune it out. It hadn’t taken me too long, though. After the house burned down, after the fever took Dad away from me, I’d spent a few months living with my aunt and her shouting husband. She gave as good as she got—he’s an awful husband, as far as I could tell, but she isn’t much of a wife either, and the two of them just make each other miserable all day long at the top of their lungs—so it was a great relief when dear sweet Mlle Sophie Boudreau down the street offered me a letter of introduction to her old friend Isabelle, and the excuse to go earn my bread in Paris. Ten printing presses running top speed night and day would have been better than that house.

I do earn my bread, too, and enough besides to send a few sous home to my aunt now and again. She did take me in, after all, and gave me a made-over dress to bring with me to Paris, and it’s much easier to feel sorry for her at a distance.

Especially since I’d landed so very much on my feet, thanks to Mlle Sophie. A place to stay, steady work, a girl to have some fun with, and a web of likeminded women who welcomed me in as another bead in the netting. (At this point, in fact, I suspected dear Mlle Sophie of having been a good deal closer to Isabelle than I’d originally realized, back when she’d moved to Paris in the heady years of the Revolution. I wondered how much of her kindness had been simple generosity to a neighbor, and how much recognition of a certain kinship between us. She’d sent me to Isabelle and Lucie, after all, and a single day in their home had made it clear to me how close the two of them were.)

To take my mind off my sore fingers, and stop myself watching the clock tick with glacial slowness towards our eleven o’clock break, I started to speculate about what Lucie’s cabaret might have on the menu today. It wouldn’t be anything fancy, being just a corner cabaret, but the owner didn’t like to bore himself by cooking the same thing every day.

At ten fifty, Mme Barthélemy came in like a stormcloud.

I hunched dutifully over my work, sewing away like a busy little ant. It’s not that I was afraid of Mme Barthélemy, for I got over that my first week, but I was the junior girl in the shop and she was the boss. Why would I put myself forward with her scowling away like that, hanging up her fichu and slapping down her things as if she wanted to be throwing them across the room, and both Isabelle and her own daughter in the shop to take on the matter instead of me?

Like any self-respecting busy little ant, of course, I pricked my ears as sharp as they’d go to listen.

“Maman! You look like Hernani himself.” Sandrine’s clever fingers didn’t pause in their work, but her brows drew together. “What on earth has happened?”

“If that’s Favart’s pamphlet you’re working on, drop it.” Mme Barthélemy untied her bonnet with a sharp jerk and flung it onto a shelf. “Our good idiots at the censorship bureau have forbidden it.”

I fumbled the pages I was holding, nearly sending the whole half-sewn pamphlet fluttering onto the shop floor. Memories of a Family of the Theater, with some Accompanying Witticisms stared up at me from the front page, by Antoine-Pierre-Charles Favart, with allusion to his Grandfather’s Memoirs. All those hours this morning, all those needlepricks, and the whole stack useless?

Sandrine let out a terrible oath. “We can’t print them?”

“Language, my dear. We can’t sell. We can print all we like, if we want to throw away money, but it amounts to the same thing.”

“That fluff?” I’d heard Sandrine irritated, and coquettishly mock-angry, but this was a deeper frustration than I’d heard for anything but political rants. “What about Borel’s play?”

“Oh, Borel! Never a word on him, yea or nay. Not that it matters much. Sorry, my darling, I know that you love him—”

“His work, mother, I love his work—”

“—but it’s a small print run and a short play, that one. You know it’s even odds the play won’t go ahead, especially with his name attached. But Favart! All his fans, all his father’s and grandfather’s fans, all that theater gossip, all those people who hated one Favart or another and would have bought the pamphlet to argue with! I was going to tell you to save the plates, I was sure we’d have a second printing at the least. And now, these idiots, they have their heads so empty of everything but kissing the king’s royal... fingers, they’ve decided that he’s a subversive radical. He mentions young ladies running wild, does he perhaps mean those demoiselles causing a ruckus down south in the Ariège? Perhaps he supports them! He writes of the Opera upholding its contract with the audience, ah! No doubt he’s making a sly reference to the Charter! Half a dozen more like that.”

“But those are so minor, surely he can just…” Sandrine faltered, no doubt remembering that we were well past the point of making any changes to the text. Silently, I lifted a stack of newly bound signatures and let them thump back down.

“Indeed,” said Mme Barthélemy, with an awful dry finality. “No doubt he will, but in the meantime, we’ll have to pulp the run. Put them away in the corner, Mylène, child. We’ll give it a few days. I doubt he can talk them round, but I suppose he’ll want to try.”

I did as I was bid. Sandrine rounded on her mother and they started in again, both of them furious at the same distant, entirely uncaring men, and sniping each other for lack of a closer target. Isabelle and Antoine, equally silent, folded up the printed pages, stacked them up, and started in on the arcane and precise work of moving the trays of type and etched plates out of the press. I shuffled back and forth with armfuls of paper. I’d never be able to carry the same amount Isabelle could—my arms were strong, but my left leg had never grown quite straight, and it limited me—and each load felt twice as heavy as it should have, just from my mood. All that work! I don’t mind working hard, but when it’s for nothing at all, that gets to you.

I was just straightening the fifth and last armful when the clock tolled eleven. I stared glumly at the stacks of paper. I’d nearly finished; I would have, if not for Mme Barthélemy’s news. Isabelle would have owed me that drink.

Isabelle’s voice interrupted my dark thoughts. “All right, my chickens, the eleven o’clock break is sacred no matter what the censors are up to. Mylène, you’ve earned your wine, and our dear Jesus knows I want some of my own. Come along.”

And off we all stumped. The wine did help a bit, or at least drinking it in company did.

We rallied for the afternoon, of course. We had to; sitting around moping wouldn’t earn us our bread, nor Mme Barthélemy the coin to pay us with. Two or three months ago, we’d have had a backlog of lower-priority printing to go through, but things had slowed down, between censors’ cancelations and skittish authors. Still, any shop always has make-work tasks, so we had enough to scrabble together. When there were no signatures for me to bind, I scrubbed at ink smears and practiced my memorization of the font organizational system. Mme Barthélemy was out more than she was in, bustling about on errands I wasn’t sure I had the right to ask about. So was Sandrine, either accompanying her mother or sent off with some cryptic direction like “Sandrine, my dear, go talk to Josée down the way, and see how things are with her father.” Isabelle stayed to keep charge, trading looks and low incomprehensible comments with both Barthélemies whenever they were in. I scrubbed harder to keep from minding being left out.

At three o’clock, when I was running through the title case for a fifth time and making the same mistakes I’d made the last four, Mme Barthélemy stumped in and dropped her basket. “All right, everyone. Let’s save something for Monday. Off you go. I’ll pay you full wages for the day, but there’s nothing worth doing just now. Goodnight.” She undid her bonnet with a tired air of finality. I traded a look with Isabelle and Antoine, Sandrine being off on one of those mysterious errands still, and got to my feet.

“You run along,” Isabelle told me, still sitting. “I have an errand myself before I head home.”

All the way home, I stewed about it. (And I went the long way; there had been rioting over by Rue Saint-Denis this morning, and I wanted no part of that tangle or the mop-up.) It was strange to be walking home so early. That strangeness muddled up with the day it had been and made me feel a sort of formless prickliness.

This wasn’t a normal lull in business. I wouldn’t have known that back home, as the king’s edicts came slow to Normandy and all I knew of what was in the newspapers and pamphlets was what I read there. But in Paris, the king speaks and the streets know it on the instant. From Sandrine and Isabelle, and from keeping my ears open, and from a hundred little comments by a hundred different people, I had learned my way about in all sorts of new ways.

The general election hadn’t gone well for the king and his ministers, and Charles X wasn’t a king who liked to be balked, if any king does. The government was a thunderstorm. The censors were feeling a rush of power, or were urged to it by the king, and were kicking out like yearling bulls, reckless and eager to bruise all and sundry. And their kicks fell mainly on us, and the customers who came to us to send out their words for purchase.

It seemed so unfair. We were just little rabbits in the field. The customers who came to us weren’t all little rabbits—why, we had Favart, after all, and he’d been in the Paris Salon!—but they weren’t high and mighty, either. So why the bulls should have kicked at us so much I didn’t know.

Except I did. We weren’t rabbits, not really. Nobody in Paris was. Maybe we were goats, or dogs. Something that could band together and scare a cow—send even a bull running, or kill it, like old headless Louis, the king’s older brother—and they wanted to keep us bruised. Cattle dogs, Sandrine would have said, with that merrily ferocious grin of hers: cattle dogs that ought to be the ones doing the herding, if we’d only work together for it. Her talk frightened me.

But it was exciting, too. And maybe not all of it right, but… maybe a little bit right.

I took my thoughts home, to the apartment where Isabelle and her Lucie had first loaned and then rented me their spare mattress in the corner of their sitting room. I buried them in the busyness of feeding their little caged canary and tidying up—I always tried to make myself useful, because I wanted Isabelle to keep liking me well enough to keep sharing a small shop floor with me, and because I knew Isabelle and Lucie were giving me a very good deal on the rent, and because anyway I liked to be busy. Dad had taught me that.

I buried my thoughts, but I didn’t stop thinking them.

Later that evening, I sat by the window with Isabelle in her squashy chair drawing—she’s a terrible artist, if I’m being scrupulously honest, but she knows it and she likes to draw anyway, so where’s the harm?—and Lucie at the table putting her hair in rollers.

Sandrine had stopped by earlier on her way to a salon at M. Victor Hugo’s place, but only briefly. She’d tried to entice me along—but Mylène, anyone who’s anyone will be there! Talking of real things, important things! It’s good to know such people, my dear, especially with everything going on Paris now. You really ought to—but I’d refused. She’d taken me to one some time ago and it had made me feel like a sluggish provincial with mud for brains to be surrounded by all those witty uproarious theatrical radicals, all outrageous fashion and political opinions.

Besides that, my leg was hurting, and I was peeved on top of that. I’d been hoping she’d stay in for a bit of a cuddle, especially as she’d been running errands for her mother after work all week. So we’d half-quarreled—or maybe more than half—and she’d left in a huff a little while ago.

I was trying to read. But it was hard to focus on much this evening, somehow. It had been even before the sunset started to steal away the sunlight. I put the book down and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

“Is the light fading, Milou? Come over here, I’ll get a lamp.” Lucie is the sort to nickname everyone upon a day’s acquaintance, and warm enough to make the habit endearing instead of annoying.

“The light’s fine,” I told my sleeves. “It’s my brain that’s fading. Ugh.”

“You shouldn’t take little Sandrine’s enthusiasms to heart. She thinks everyone ought to enjoy everything she does, that’s all, but she’ll listen when you say you don’t.”

“It’s not that,” I said, though it was, a bit. I didn’t like feeling like a mud-for-brains, especially around her, and I didn’t like coming second best to a stupid salon. “She says it’s real things, all that stuff they talk—and the plays and the poems and all—and she’s probably right, she knows so much—and their politics, too, it’s not that I disagree, mostly, but twelve citations and three puns for every opinion, even the wrong ones—ugh! If that’s real things I’ve never had a real thought in my life.” I lifted my head and sent them an apologetic grimace.

“I went to see Hernani, you know,” Isabelle volunteered. Hernani was the most uproarious of the theatrical uproars, shattering every rule of theater in sight, the darling of Sandrine’s artistic circles. Everyone at that salon I’d been to had quoted it constantly. “In March or so. Couldn’t see what the fuss was about, to be honest.” She shrugged.

“It doesn’t make a great deal of sense, really,” I agreed, with a quiet thrill of transgression. Sandrine loved it so much that it seemed a sin to admit that I found the language beautiful but the way it discarded classical strictures almost too daring and the plot absolutely idiotic. Even aside from the fact that it was nearly impossible to hear the actors over the audience. All the Romantics yelled out lines and jokes and callbacks, and all the classicists yelled out insults, and sometimes they actually fought each other in the aisles about it, and the actors yelled grimly over the whole thing. You got double the show for your money, at least, I’ll say that.

Isabelle made a face. “All that stomping and swooning and dying in each other’s arms for no good reason. And I’m old, call me a relic if you like, but I rather like the classical unities. You go to a play and you know what will and won’t be in it. Real life gives us all the chaos I need. But these young artists, they think if you just make your art wild and free enough, put every emotion you’ve got into it, you can build a better world out of that.”

“And you think they’re fools.” I tried not to sound glum, but I was feeling it, even though I’d been resenting those same young artists a moment before. Why does everyone of a certain age feel the need to tell the young that they’re starry-eyed fools?

“No,” she said.

I goggled. She shrugged again, more expressively this time. “Well, maybe they are, but maybe I am for thinking it. It doesn’t matter. If they do manage that better world, I’ll be the first to thank them with all my heart! And plenty of them are doing a good deal more than art, you know, for the cause. You can write a play that makes no damn sense and help a wanted man out of the city and stand ready for a barricade, all three. The play’s not the point. The point is, none of us know how to get to a better world, or we’d have done it already. Even the Revolution—it overthrew so much that was old and awful, the people took great strides forward in ‘89, but it had its bad sides too. The ones who rail about it aren’t all wrong. We’re all blindfolded in a dark room, trying to fumble our way to the exit, trying to tear off the blindfold so that if we stumble across some light we can see it.”

I thought about that, and about Sandrine’s fierce certainties. She was so much surer about all her convictions than I’d ever been in my life. “How do you know when you’re going right, then?”

Isabelle made an eloquent who knows? face. It was Lucie who spoke up.

“You look at the people you’re with,” she said, and smiled. “If they’re people you trust to steer to a good end, then you’re probably doing all right.”

On Sunday I went to mass, as always, and made confession. I didn’t tell the priest anything that wasn’t his business—my prickly unsettled feelings about the haze of rumor and riot in the air, the exact dimensions of my friendship with Sandrine—but it always does me good. You feel your sins washed away, and you sit and hear the holy Latin rolling over you, and that washes you clean too. Sandrine calls me a provincial for it, and I suppose all her artistic radicals would too, but I don’t see why there’s anything provincial about trusting in God.

On Monday morning there was a stormcloud charge to the air. It felt as if all my prickling had spread outside my head to the whole of Paris, or at least the whole of our neighborhood. Usually on the walk to work I just feel tired and grumbly (and stiff too, until I’ve walked a few blocks and gotten everything in my bad leg moving again), but that day I was wide awake and jittery. Everyone around me seemed to be casting quick glances and passing whispers, but I couldn’t quite catch why.

I’d only just settled into my chair and started to lay out my tools when there came a quick commotion of running feet, followed a youthful yell. “Madame!” the kid cried, skidding to a halt between the two typesetting stands. “Madame Barthélemy!”

Jacques, it was, old M. Daigneau’s grandson from three blocks over. Every printer in Paris had a few children running notes around town, be they relatives or neighborhood urchins or both, and in these unsettled days every printer was keeping ears to the ground. Daigneau’s is a bigger shop that can handle more bulk work, and Barthélemy’s does better fine work, so there are notes and runners going back and forth all the time. We see a lot of Jacques.

“Now then, Jacquot, what’s the fuss?” Mme Barthélemy strolled over. She gets worked up herself, but when someone else is worked up instead she turns into a lump of imperturbable stone, and that was in full force now. “Word from your granddad?”

“It’s the king!” Jacques cried, nearly vibrating with his excitement. The atmosphere galvanized, just at the word, and I fumbled a needle. Anything the king did was news, and unlikely to be good. “He’s altered the Charter by decree, him and that rat Polignac. Sent out ordinances. Just this morning—Grandpa got it from the folks at Le National. He’s suspended freedom of the press, that’s one of the ordinances.”

“Suspended it?” That was Isabelle, sharper than I’d ever heard her, and on her heels Sandrine demanded, “Temporarily? Or permanently?”

Mme Barthélemy lifted her hand to shush them, and they shushed. “Well, child?”

Jacques fumbled in his vest and pulled out a newspaper: Le Moniteur universel, and without seeing the date I knew it had to be this morning’s first printing. He shoved it at her. “Suspended, that’s all it says! See for yourself, Madame. Grandpa says to tell you it’s time.”

Mme Barthélemy gazed down at the paper in her hands. “Well then,” she said. “Well then.”

The hair was up on the back of my neck. I felt as if I was still in a dream, and simultaneously so full of nervous energy I might explode out of my skin at any moment. I flicked my eyes at Sandrine surreptitiously, and saw her whole face shining. Isabelle looked like a mountain all by herself: stolid, huge, all looming power.

It dawned on me that perhaps not all of those errands they’d been running had been to customers; I felt as if I’d been standing on a hillside for months, and only just realized it was a volcano.

She folded the paper and tucked it away in her basket with small, unhurried motions. She patted the kerchief she kept over it back into place. “Well then,” she said one more time, as if to herself, and then raised her voice. “All right, my girls. Shop’s closed today. There’s no point in the press without its liberty, now is there? Mylène, Antoine, home you go. There’ll be fighting in the streets before long, if I make my guess. I hope I’m wrong but I’m sure I’m not. Sandrine, Isa, here we go, my dears.”

I found my voice. “I’m coming too.” It came out thick and halting—I hadn’t known I was going to say it until I did, but I meant it—so I cleared my throat and said it again, clearer. I couldn’t be shooed home from this. We provincials have voices too, loud as anybody else.

“Oh, Mylène, I knew you would!” cried Sandrine, but Isabelle made a sharp hushing gesture.

“Mylène,” she said. “Are you sure? It’ll get messy today. Bullets and barricades and blood in the gutters, kind of messy. No shame to want out of that.”

Sandrine’s shining pretty eyes or not, I made myself return Isabelle’s steady gaze. I swallowed. “I’m sure. I’ll leave if ever I’m not. But it’s not right—it’s not right, that the king should think he can overturn elections and the press and all just to suit him. I’m not trotting off home. And you all know what you’re about, don’t you?”

Isabelle nodded at me, solid and steady. I trusted her, I realized; I trusted her to lead the way to a barricade across the Rue Saint-Denis, if it came to that. Mme Barthélemy sighed, but she was smiling faintly down at her basket too, and Sandrine beamed right at me, bright as the July sunlight stretching over the roofs of Paris.

Show Notes

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