PLUS
All Things Sten
*****
What if the Cold War never ended -- but continued for a thousand years? Best-selling authors Allan Cole (an American) and Nick Perumov (a Russian) spin a mesmerizing "what if?" tale set a thousand years in the future, as an American and a Russian super-soldier -- together with a beautiful American detective working for the United Worlds Police -- must combine forces to defeat a secret cabal ... and prevent a galactic disaster! This is the first - and only - collaboration between American and Russian novelists. Narrated by John Hough. Click the title links below for the trade paperback and kindle editions. (Also available at iTunes.)
*****
CHAPTER TEN
THE NIGHTMARE HAD started a few weeks after Gramer Fahey died, and it had continued almost every night without relief for the past two months.
In the dream, Diana was standing in the main room of the Black Lamb with Saul Hatch's plump proprietary arm about her waist. She was his wife, and she could already feel a child kicking in her guts. The room was always full of New Kent's elite, and there was a jolly fire glowing in the hearth. People were drinking and eating and laughing at Nate Hatch's barnyard jests.
Another Diana—her "real" self—watched the scene from another part of the room. She looked with disgust at the self-satisfied smiles on the faces of the good people of New Kent. Then, with growing horror, she saw an identical look on her own face—the Diana who had Saul's arm about her waist. She moved closer, saw the vacant look in her eyes, the puffy pouches bulging under them, and a trail of grease on her chin from the pork joint that rested in the platter on the inn's main table.
It was a portrait right out of a political broadside, with pigs or forest apes dressed in village finery and mocking the pretensions of the landed class. Diana fit in perfectly with all the other pigs.
She saw her other self grab a joint and tear off a chunk of flesh. Still laughing, the woman gobbled the chunk down. Suddenly she gave a strangled gasp as the pork stuck in her throat. Her face turned scarlet and her eyes frogged from their sockets. The other Diana grabbed at her throat, waving wildly at the others, begging for help. But the Hatches and their friends laughed all the harder as she fell to the floor, kicking and clawing at rough boards, trailing blood from ripped nails. Somehow Diana became the woman on the floor, choking to death and peering up at bleary, laughing faces crowding over her and drinking in all the air in the room.
The dream always ended the same: Diana bolting up in her bed screaming for Gramer Fahey—who never came because she was a corpse now; lying in state on a broad board table on the other side of Diana's room, dressed in her Sunday finest, her arms crossed on her breast.
Something black sat chittering on her face, and Diana knew it was a rat, but she had to get up just the same, to move closer . . . closer . . . closer . . . and the rat turned to her so she could see it full on. It had heavy jowls and a ruff of white beard rimming its chin. The rat had the face of Nate Hatch!
* * * *
Diana never screamed when she awoke for real, because when the nightmare first began she became fearful the others would know how deeply she suffered from the old woman's death. They would use her grief as a weapon against her and pester her to distraction for details. To guard against a scream, she always tucked a corner of her blanket into her mouth before she went to sleep, and gripped it so tight during the night that her jaws felt swollen and bruised in the morning.
What disturbed her most about the nightmare was that she knew how easy it would be for the dream to become a reality. Since Saul's wife had died six months before, the pressure had been growing. To New Kent, Diana was the obvious choice to take the dead woman's place as mother to Saul's brood of five and head of the household at the Hatch mill. It would be an honor to her.
Diana's indentured status would end when she took to the marriage bed, and at fifteen she was young and strong enough to add at least a third of a score to Saul's virile name.
That is, if she managed to live through that many, be-cause she knew Saul would pump one out of her every ten or eleven months without relief, until she had not a tooth in her mouth and her bones felt like they were going to crack when winter winds blew. That was what had happened to Saul's first wife. She had died at twenty-three, bearing Hatch child number five—and half a year short of her fifth wedding anniversary.
The subject of the Hatch men's virility had become a quiet jest in the town since Nate married the eighteen-year-old Rhoda Parker. The wedding had been a bit of a mockery, with lush Rhoda—who came from a far poorer family— marrying fat old Nate Hatch.
For months, when Nate was in his cups, he would make not too subtle jokes about his prowess. But Rhoda's belly was stubbornly refusing to swell. Now the boasting had stopped and Rhoda could be seen giving her husband a look of disgust that did not speak well for bedded bliss.
Oddly, Rhoda's hard-won knowledge of the Hatch failings was no aid to Diana at all. Instead, Rhoda had become part of the pressure on her to give Saul some hope. If it were just the fact that Rhoda wanted her out of the household, she could understand.
Diana was well-aware that her newly blooming figure was drawing the attention of the young males of New Kent, as well as longing looks and furtive fumbles from Rhoda's husband; just as she knew that if it weren't for Gramer Fahey, Nate would have trapped her in the barn and had her praying with her knees up years ago—before she had even a promise of a figure. No, it wasn't fear of Nate Hatch's near-senile lust that worried Rhoda. Diana was sure the good Mrs. Hatch just wanted her to join the misery.
Gramer Fahey was seventy years of age when the infant Diana Jameson had been brought from Philadelphia to New Kent. It was an act of charity—the Hatches always pounded at her—for them to take this "obscene child" in to raise.
They said her mother was a dirty little wench who was always betraying her mistress's trust, until she finally got caught out. But even then the good Quaker people she worked for cared only for their serving girl's reputation. The Quaker family had sought and found aid from their distant cousin, Nate Hatch and his wife, who had a slave to wet-nurse the child and agreed to hide the shame that was Diana in their own merciful keeping.
In turn for raising her to Christian womanhood, all they asked was that she share in their labors until she reached majority. What this translated to was that Diana was required by indenture law to work at any task, no matter how hard, and to eat any rations, no matter how unfit, until she was eighteen.
* * * *
Diana had no memory of her mother. She had died when Diana was still in flannels. It was the protection of Abigail Fahey—the mother of Nate's first wife and grandmother to the first six Hatch children—that made life tolerable for Diana. As the most respected midwife in New Kent, Gramer Fahey was a woman of uncommon prestige. There were few children in the area she hadn't boiled up sheets for, or eased the pain of their mothers. Her knowledge of medicine was vast, her tenderness legendary.
Diana was nearly plucked from the wet nurse's nipple when the slave—whose name was Sandra—caught the eye of a traveling dealer who bought her for the Boston market. It was then that Gramer Fahey took little Diana under her wing and raised her with the help of a succession of young servants. Later, Diana realized she was a surrogate for the brood of children the woman never had. At sixteen she produced her only daughter—Nate's future wife—and in the bloody aftermath of fevers and infections, lost the ability to bear any others. A year later her husband died—how, she never explained—leaving her destitute.
These two events pushed Gramer Fahey into an intense study of medicine, with an emphasis on child bearing and child rearing. It was a study that jumped from dusty volumes to Indian villages to midwives and back to the books again. She became so expert, she could charge the highest prices for her services and not expect an argument. Nor did anyone dare criticize her when she offered the same services for free to the poor.
The final tragedy—the death of her own daughter in childbirth—set her in stone. In all the years that followed, Gramer Fahey dedicated herself to shoring up the women of New Kent. She would lend them funds when their husbands drank what little they had away; she would tend their injuries when the same men took out their bitterness on them; give them shelter when they were abandoned; or nurse them through the early months of their widowhood.
Diana and Abigail Fahey made an odd pair: sometimes they behaved like mother and daughter; sometimes like sisters, with whispered confidences on dark nights; sometimes like teacher and student, poring over primers and Bible; and sometimes they behaved like two equals—mature peers—who strolled the marketplace, bargaining haughtily for the table.
Gramer Fahey told Diana hundreds of stories, but her favorites were those from Abigail's own girlhood. In each of the stories, she always found some common chord that applied to Diana's current life. Later Diana realized, with a shock, that the childhood the stories came from occurred in the previous century. Yet, the old woman viewed things with an eye as fresh as today—but with a reasoned perspective of a great distance.
A few months before Abigail died, Diana started a little book containing some of the things the old woman told her.
* * * *
On child bearing: "After my first, I spent nearly twenty-five years cursing my barrenness. Then when I saw the lot of the women around me, I spent the next forty praising God for His gift. My barrenness freed me to think for myself."
On romance: "There'll come a time when these loutish boys suddenly appear handsome and you'll weigh their every word as if it's a treasure from some great scholar. But it's only the cock in your eye you're seeing, not really them. After, it will be the same louts from New Kent you're looking at. Don't bed a New Kent boy, Diana. Promise me."
At the time, the promise was no trouble at all. But lately she was beginning to realize what Gramer Fahey meant by having a "cock in your eye," and was grateful that she was also raised never to break a vow.
On sex: "I still miss it, even though I had to give it up so young. New Kent is not the place to spread your knees and keep your independence. But in other places there are discreet ways a woman can leap into a man's bed as eagerly as a witch to the Devil's Sabbath and not chance her reputation. As for getting caught out, there's little reason in these times. I have means, which I'll teach you when you're older, so that you can have pleasure without fear—wedded or not."
On independence: "If you live past your child-bearing years, you can expect a long life. But you cannot and should not also expect the protection of a man. He'll die in war, or the plague, or just go away. Once we've survived the change, there's few men who will outlive us. So you must have some means of earning your own keep, so that you can be your own woman, no matter what path the Lord leads you to.'\
On men: "You'll think from my nattering that I view men as the enemy. There is some truth to that, but only if you are weak or foolish enough to choose the wrong man. I know the thinking here is that sooner wed, less time for sin. But this is a great falsehood. Take your time, Diana dear, take your time. And if you're wondering about that special man—the one they talk about in stories, who sweeps women away in great romantic fashion—I don't know if such a man exists. However, I can tell you this . . . There's none being bred here in New Kent that will test my notions."
* * * *
Gramer Fahey could never see a life for Diana in New Kent. She urged that as soon as her period of indenture lapsed, she move on to some city—"not Boston, it's nothing but widows and squalor"—like Philadelphia or New York.
It was to this end that the old woman pointed Diana's entire education. No book crept through town in a traveler's pocket without being sniffed out by Gramer Fahey and then judged for its worth. "It's the witch in me," she used to say. "I can smell printer's ink in a snowstorm."
Just as importantly, Gramer Fahey also sniffed out a talent in Diana that promised to pay: her eye for beauty. Before Diana even knew her letters, she was sketching crude copies of pictures from the primer. Then anything and everything became her subject: broken milk stools, cows, trees, and a dozen cats who were driven to feline insanity from being constantly prodded and poked into poses for young Diana.
The most interesting thing, the old woman noted, was that Diana always found a way to make the object she was drawing appear more comely than it did in real life. "You don't want to be an artist, Diana, dear," she said. "Only the wives of royal governors and merchant princes are allowed to be artists or poets, and no one ever pays them.
No, it's the needle you must take up. That's the way to your fortune."
By taking up the needle, Gramer Fahey did not mean mindless sewing of farmers' breeches, or coarse dresses hacked together by a squatter's wife. She meant fine clothing cut from the best bolts of silk and cotton and linen, dyed with the richest of colors and graced with the most elegant of lace. From the moment the idea came to her, until years later when she fell fatally ill, Gramer Fahey taught Diana every trick she had learned over a lifetime with the needle.
It wasn't an easy course: months would go by when Diana would grow childishly bored and impatient with the detailed work the old woman insisted on. "Front or back, the stitches should look the same," Gramer Fahey said. "If you wear the dress inside out, only the seams—not your needlework—should give it away."
The turning point came when Diana was twelve. Abigail convinced her she should take on some project that would test all of the skills she had learned so far. It should be something that she could keep forever, to hand on to her own daughter, or the woman who married her son. It was a comforter. A child-sized comforter—just four feet by three. They planned it together, but it was up to Diana to construct.
The project took her months. For a time there seemed to be no odd-shaped or colored swatch of material that was safe from Diana. She gathered hundreds of pieces of cloth together and then sifted and refined and cut and sewed and tossed them aside in disgust at her clumsiness. But then it all came together and the comforter was done in a smooth rush. It had a broad band of blue surrounding a deep, rich red—"the color of your lovely hair, Diana, dear." Through the whole thing she worked an intricate pattern of colors and cloth that pleased the eye close up, but turned out to be an even more eye-pleasing forest scene when viewed from afar.
Gramer Fahey studied it for a long time. The suspense was maddening. But the old woman just nodded and mum-bled and looked. Finally came the ultimate test. She turned it over. It was exactly the same. No matter how closely one looked, not one stitch revealed where or even if it had been tied off.
"It's the most stunning bit of needlecraft I've ever seen," Abigail said. "I don't know a woman in New Kent who could match it."
Diana had lived on that moment of praise ever since. It was what kept her from fatal error when Nate Hatch cheated her of her inheritance.
Gramer Fahey kept a heavy leather bag of coin and currency in her sewing chest. In it she had her own money and what Diana was beginning to earn from her needlework. They both knew it would take no excuse at all for Nate to seize anything the girl earned to pay for the bread he begrudged her every day.
As Nate Hatch saw it, the long, hard hours she worked for him didn't count against more than a crumb—"especially in these hard times of rising prices and tight-fisted customers who expect a glass of the best for naught." All of his indentured servants—and slaves, when he had them—were required to turn over their excess earnings to their master. Diana was exempted, but only because of Gramer Fahey. Hatch feared not only the old woman's tongue, which could be worse than a forger's rasp, but the power of opinion she wielded in New Kent.
The money was to be used by Diana when she was eighteen to finance the new life Gramer Fahey saw for her. If the old woman died first, Diana was to inherit. If she chose, she could use part of the money to buy out the rest of her contract and leave then. All of the Hatches knew this. Abigail Fahey had made it plain to them so there could be no mistake.
After Gramer Fahey was buried and the family returned from the services, the first thing Nate Hatch did when they entered the inn was march upstairs to the old woman's room. Diana listened in dread as she heard his heavy footsteps clomping around and the trunk being dragged open.
A few minutes later Nate marched back down again, holding up the big leather bag. He came right up to Diana, towering over her, menacing. "I'll be keeping this," he said, "and there will be no argument about it. Is this understood?"
Diana was too stunned to say anything at first, but then as it began to dawn, her mouth came open to protest.
Nate thundered at her before she could speak: "Is it understood?"
Her mouth snapped shut. She had never been struck by any of the Hatches—they wouldn't dare when Abigail was alive—but she had seen them administer brutal beatings to other servants. At that moment Diana knew if she spoke she would soon be lying on the floor, with only a broken jaw if she were lucky.
Even then Diana was too stubborn to give them the satisfaction of a nod of agreement. Instead, her heart thundering against her ribs, fear and anger pounding at her temples, she whirled and stalked out of the room.
Nothing was ever said about the matter afterwards.
Except, that was when Saul Hatch began to call.
It was then that Diana determined to run.
NEXT: The Die Is Cast
*****
S.O.S. ALLAN'S NEW NOVEL
Between February and May of 1942, German U-boats operated with impunity off the Florida coast, sinking scores of freighters from Cape Canaveral to Key West and killing nearly five thousand people. Residents were horrified witnesses of the attacks—the night skies were aflame and in the morning the beaches were covered with oil and tar, ship parts and charred corpses. The Germans even landed teams of saboteurs charged with disrupting war efforts in the factories of the North. This novel is based on those events. For my own purposes, I set the tale in the fictitious town of Juno Beach on the banks of the equally fictitious Seminole River—all in the very real Palm Beach County, a veritable wilderness in those long ago days. Among the witnesses were my grandfather and grandmother, who operated an orchard and ranch in the area.
*****
A DAUGHTER OF LIBERTY
The year is 1778 and the Revolutionary War has young America trapped in the crossfire of hatred and fear. Diana, an indentured servant, escapes her abusive master with the help of Emmett Shannon, a deserter from the desperate army at Valley Forge. They fall in love and marry, but their happiness is shattered and Diana Shannon must learn to survive on her own. From that moment on she will become a true woman of her times, blazing a path from lawless lands in the grips of the Revolution, to plague-stricken Philadelphia, to the burning of Washington in the War Of 1812.
*****
TWO NEW AUDIOBOOKS ONLY $4.95!
Tales Sometimes Tall, but always true, of Allan Cole's years in Hollywood with his late partner, Chris Bunch. How a naked lady almost became our first agent. How we survived La-La Land with only the loss of half our brain cells. How Bunch & Cole became the ultimate Fix-It
Boys. How an alleged Mafia Don was very, very good to us. The guy who cornered the market on movie rocks. Andy Warhol's Fire Extinguisher. The Real Stars Of Hollywood. Why they don't make million dollar movies. See The Seven Pi$$ing Dwarfs. Learn: how to kill a "difficult" actor… And much, much more.
THE TIMURA TRILOGY: When The Gods Slept, Wolves Of The Gods and The Gods Awaken. This best selling fantasy series now available as trade paperbacks, e-books (in all varieties) and as audiobooks. Visit The Timura Trilogy page for links to all the editions.
NEWLY REVISED KINDLE EDITIONS OF THE TIMURA TRILOGY NOW AVAILABLE. (1) When The Gods Slept;(2) Wolves Of The Gods; (3) The Gods Awaken.
*****
A NATION AT WAR WITH ITSELF: In Book Three Of The Shannon Trilogy, young Patrick Shannon is the heir-apparent to the Shannon fortune, but murder and betrayal at a family gathering send him fleeing into the American frontier, with only the last words of a wise old woman to arm him against what would come. And when the outbreak of the Civil War comes he finds himself fighting on the opposite side of those he loves the most. In The Wars Of The Shannons we see the conflict, both on the battlefield and the homefront, through the eyes of Patrick and the members of his extended Irish-American family as they struggle to survive the conflict that ripped the new nation apart, and yet, offered a dim beacon of hope.
*****
NEW: THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION OF
THE HATE PARALLAX
What if the Cold War never ended -- but continued for a thousand years? Best-selling authors Allan Cole (an American) and Nick Perumov (a Russian) spin a mesmerizing "what if?" tale set a thousand years in the future, as an American and a Russian super-soldier -- together with a beautiful American detective working for the United Worlds Police -- must combine forces to defeat a secret cabal ... and prevent a galactic disaster! This is the first - and only - collaboration between American and Russian novelists. Narrated by John Hough. Click the title links below for the trade paperback and kindle editions. (Also available at iTunes.)
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm- ravaged night.
BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.
*****
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
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Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
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In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
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