Historical Vignettes 1st Series

Bernard Capes

Summary

“Halt!” The voice of an officer rang out in the heavy twilight, and with a sudden scream of brakes and jangle of harness the cavalcade came to a stand.
“Tell the Herr von Gastein his Majesty desires to speak with him.” The name ran up the long line, quick and sharp, like a rattle of musketry, and passed out of hearing of him who had uttered it. “Tell the Herr Captain to come at once.”
The Herr Captain was already, on the word, spurring back from the head of the cortège, which was of royal extent. It stood upon a flat road in a flat country, covering more ground than and including almost as many human souls as a modern mail-train. There was the King’s coach for principal item—a veritable little room slung on straps and drawn by eight horses; and there were carriages—seven or eight, and each holding as many people—for his retinue, and baggage-wagons, and a troop of fifty sabres to escort the whole. It took so much, or more, to carry this little corpulent apoplectic on his annual visit to Herrenhausen, whither he had already travelled to within a league or so of Osnabrück and a much-needed night’s rest.
The Captain von Gastein, having dismounted and thrown his reins to a groom, stood at stiff attention by the coach door. He was a patient, somewhat exhausted-looking man of fifty, spare-bodied, and with stone-blue eyes which rather matched the dusty Hanoverian blue of his uniform. His expression at the moment was one of a quiet fatality, as if the summons had not been altogether unforeseen by him.

Available since: 09/10/2023.

Other books that might interest you

A Blessing on the Moon

Joseph Skibell

At the center of A Blessing on the Moon is Chaim Skibelski. Death is merely the beginning of Chaim’s troubles. In the opening pages, he is shot along with the other Jews of his small Polish village. But instead of resting peacefully in the World to Come, Chaim, for reasons unclear to him, is left to wander the earth, accompanied by his rabbi, who has taken the form of a talking crow. Chaim’s afterlife journey is filled with extraordinary encounters whose consequences are far greater than he realizes. Not since Art Spiegelman’s Maus has a work so powerfully evoked one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century with such daring originality.

Show book

Brigantia - Vindolanda III

Adrian Goldsworthy

Flavius Ferox is the hard-bitten centurion charged with keeping the peace on Britannia's frontier with the barbarian tribes of the north. Now he's been summoned to Londinium by the governor, but before he sets out an imperial freedman is found brutally murdered in a latrine at Vindolanda fort. Ferox must find the killer, as he follows the trail, the murder leads him to plots against the empire and Rome itself. Bandits, soldiers, and gladiators alike are trying to kill him, old friends turn traitor, and Ferox is lured reluctantly to the sinister haunts of the old druids on the isle of Mona.

Show book

The Lord of Vik-Lo - A Novel of...

James L. Nelson

Having recovered from the wounds of battle and having won for himself a fortune, a crew, and a longship, Thorgrim Night Wolf makes ready to leave the Viking town of Dubh-linn for the long journey back to his home in Norway. But the gods have other plans, and Thorgrim and his men wash up in the small Viking longphort of Vík-ló. Thinking themselves among friends, they soon learn that the opposite is true, that Grimarr Giant, the Lord of Vík-ló, has reason to want Thorgrim and his son Harald dead. In a world where they cannot tell friend from foe, a world of violence at sea and on land, Thorgrim, Harald, Ornolf, Starri, and their band of Norsemen find themselves once again fighting not just for plunder but for their very survival.

Show book

Freeman

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam-a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army-decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind fifteen years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged."At the same time, Sam's wife, Tilda, is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and two of his other slaves from the charred remains of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search of an undefined place that would still respect his entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer.The book's third main character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for the former bondsmen, and thus honor her father's dying wish.At bottom, Freeman is a love story-sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient-about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. It is this aspect of the book that should ensure it a strong, vocal, core audience of African-American women, who will help propel its likely critical acclaim to a wider audience. At the same time, this book addresses several themes that are still hotly debated today, some one hundred and forty-five years after the official end of the Civil War. Like Cold Mountain, Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes from a fresh perspective, with stunning results. It has the potential to become a classic addition to the literature dealing with this period. Few other novels so powerfully capture the pathos and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the promise-and the terror-of their new status as free men and women.

Show book

Hood: Warriors' Harvest

Iain Meadows

England 1201 in the reign of King John. Nottingham and the shire are caught in the grip of famine - the rains have come and the crops have failed. Starvation and death have taken hold.Worse still, war with France looms and Phillips attempts to save the people have attracted the attention of old enemies - enemies who are intent on exacting a high price for previous losses.Forced to confront the truth of the situation, Phillip ventures into the one place where he may find the help he needs - Sherwood Forest.Phillip will face his enemies in a fight that will cost him that which is closest to his heart.

Show book

Escape to Alaska

mary wasche

A young Minnesota housewife arrives at the long tunnel leading to Whittier, Alaska, exhausted from a run for her life after witnessing her husband commit a murder. While earthquake-scarred Whittier is the perfect haven due to its geographic isolation, not everyone is as they seem and most harbor secrets of their own.

Show book