A sneak peek at 'Twist of Fête'!

Lovely people, we are getting desperately close to launch day for Beaufort’s tenth adventure. In fact, it’s less than a week until Twist of Fête is out on the website, and all the usual retailers will follow on the 29th.

As such, I thought it was time for my customary sharing of the first chapter, just so you can see where those swords started from …

Happy reading, lovely people!

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Chapter one: Miriam

The Skipton Auction Mart was packed, the underside of the corrugated roof echoing with the chatter of bargain hunters and stallholders. The central space, where one might have expected to find well-groomed sheep and cows with polished hooves (Miriam thought – she was a little unclear on how livestock auctions worked, but she assumed the animals would be made to look their best) was packed with tables and booths, the glare of the commercial lights reflecting on old glass and faded fabric and dull varnish. Men in flat caps and short sleeves and women in loose tops and low shoes hovered around spindly-legged chairs and broken music boxes, or displays of tarnished jewellery and vast racks of clothing that ran the gamut from lacy ballgowns to questionably high-cut Lycra leotards. The channels between the stalls were filled with shoppers running their fingers over cracked marble birdbaths and old wooden trunks, or picking through stacks of creased books and faded LPs, or investigating carefully arranged collections of tarnished metal toys, or plucking at moth-eaten furs with their eyebrows raised questioningly.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Jasmine said. Her face was pink with both excitement and the heat, unexpectedly intense for spring in North Yorkshire. The morning outside was cloudless and clear, and the insulation under the tin roof was all but non-existent. With all the people jammed in here it had become somewhat sauna-like, and Miriam eyed up a folding hand fan at a nearby table. She was certain she had at least half a dozen at home already, but none on her.

There was only one thing to do in such heat, though, and it wasn’t shopping – or not straight away. “I think we start with a cuppa,” she said aloud.

“Good plan,” Gert said. “The cafe’s down there.” She headed toward it, leading the way through the press of people, a big woman in a pale blue, boisterously floral dress parting the crowd like the prow of a ship. Miriam rushed to fall in behind her, and Jasmine hurried to keep up, using the path Gert was carving.

The cafe was at the far end of the hall, and their route took them straight down the main aisle before turning left at one of the alleys running at right angles to it. It was no less busy the further in they went, or less warm for that matter. Miriam was starting to wonder if she should have brought her own car, rather than coming with Gert and Jasmine in Gert’s big white van, the back of which would be used by all ten ladies of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute to cart their purchases home. It was much more practical for if one found a nice chair, or a hat rack, rather than trying to wedge things into the back of a car. But the market was both awfully hot and terribly busy, and Miriam wasn’t sure she was going to want to stay all day. On the other hand, her ancient Volkswagen Beetle, Betsy, likely wouldn’t have survived the run out in this heat. Maybe Alice would go home early too, and she could catch a lift with her. It was very usual for the ladies to swap around who they arrived with and who they left with on these sorts of outings. It made things very convenient.

She was still considering if it might be a sensible thing to decide on sooner rather than later (there was already sweat gathering under her pale green blouse, which she was very fond of. It had some rather charming toadstools appliquéd on the sleeves, but right now she could’ve done without the sleeves entirely), when she spotted a familiar face in one of the stalls. Well, not face, exactly. More a head of dyed black hair, and a glitter of silver rings as their owner unpacked Perspex frames onto some rather wobbly-looking shelving.

“Oh, look!” she said. “It’s Ash.”

“Who?” Jasmine asked.

“Ash, Gilbert’s friend. Ash!” she called, waving. “Hello, love.”

Ash looked up, pale and fine-featured, and a bright grin lit up his face. He waved back, setting his box on the floor and coming to the folding table that made up the front of the stall. “Hello, Miriam,” he said. “How’s the treasure hunting going?”

“We’ve not started yet,” she said, as Gert and Jasmine stopped with her, Ash greeting them too. He was a nice lad, Miriam felt. They’d met him in the village of Eldmere, during a rather unpleasant run-in with a rival Women’s Institute chairperson, which had resulted in a tractor chase through the fells, a monster festival, and some near-drownings. Ash had been very helpful, and had, in fact, saved Beaufort Scales, the High Lord of the Cloverly dragons, from an actual drowning. He’d also formed a firm friendship with Gilbert, a young dragon who shared Ash’s passion for vegetarianism, piercings, and light anarchy. Miriam rather approved.

“What’re you doing here, then?” Gert asked, opening a big folder that was lying on the table. There were half a dozen of them lined up, looking like fat photo albums. Inside were plastic sheets with multiple pockets, and in each pocket was a stamp, held in more thin plastic and neatly labelled. More boxes were stacked on and behind the table, filled with more albums and loose plastic sleeves and slim Perspex cases, each holding a single stamp or a selection of them.

“They’re my Uncle Vic’s. Great-uncle, really. He’s selling off some of his collection.” Ash pointed at the box he’d been unpacking. “Those are the really rare ones.”

“Victor Hargreaves?” Miriam asked.

“That’s him,” Ash said, smiling at a woman who’d opened one of the other albums. “Let me know if I can help with anything.”

She nodded brusquely, barely acknowledging him, and he turned back to the ladies.

“I didn’t know he was your great-uncle,” Miriam said, then supposed that was a silly thing to say. Why would she? Toot Hansell was a small village, but that didn’t mean everyone knew everyone else’s business. Not entirely, at least.

“Yeah, on my dad’s side. We don’t see my dad, so it’s all a bit weird, but Uncle Vic and Mum get on really well, and I like him. He wanted some help clearing out his house and doing all this, so it’s a good job for the summer. Plus it’s handy being in Toot Hansell. Me and Gilbert are working on some stuff.”

“Legal stuff?” Jasmine asked.

“Yes. Well, mostly, anyway.” He grinned when she gave him a disapproving look. “I’m joking.”

“That’s a very good specimen,” someone said to the woman who was still flicking through the folder. Miriam looked around to see a large man wearing a bright yellow T-shirt that read Stamp Collectors Take Some Licking. It looked a little incongruous over his smart, finely pinstriped trousers, although it did suit his well-worn trainers.

The woman looked up at him. “Twenty quid the lot?”

He stared at her, his eyes a striking blue. He’d evidently put a lot of effort into styling both his grey hair and his moustache, but they were drooping in the heat. “Madam, one of those stamps is worth a lot more than twenty quid.”

“It’s for my son.”

“He’d better save up his pocket money then, hadn’t he?”

She huffed and slammed the album shut, walking away, and the man offered Ash a takeaway cup, shaking his head. “So many time-wasters.”

“Hello, Vic,” Miriam said.

“Miriam!” He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I did mean present company excepted, of course.”

“What’re you up to, Vic?” Gert asked. “I remember when you did a talk for us, and you wouldn’t even let us touch your stamps. Called them your life’s work. This seems a bit of a turnaround.”

He sighed. “Yes, well. Circumstances change, unfortunately. Need to raise a bit of cash.”

“Oh dear,” Miriam said. “Nothing too dire, I hope.”

“No, no,” he said, giving a cheery, dismissive wave. “And good to get one’s life sorted out, I suppose.” He looked at Ash. “Here, where’s your shirt, lad?”

Ash sighed and took off his black T-shirt (it had two anthropomorphised beets on it, one dangling the other off a cliff while it screamed in terror. The caption said Drop the Beet). Underneath, he was wearing another T-shirt, this one yellow. It read Got to Lick Them All! and had a graphic of a stamp on it. “I’m so glad I don’t know anyone here,” he mumbled, and Gert cleared her throat. He looked at her. “Anyone who cares what I wear, I mean.”

“It’s very … it’s very,” Jasmine said, as if that settled things, then added, “Look! Alice and Rose.” She waved down the aisle at the approaching women, and Rose waved back.

“Come on, Ash, let’s finish unpacking,” Vic said, setting a bag on the table. “I got us some fuel. Three millionaire’s shortbreads, a couple of tiffins, and a flapjack so we can tell your mum I’m keeping you healthy.”

“I won’t be healthy if anyone sees me in this shirt,” Ash said, and went back to unpacking the Perspex cases, the stamps caught in them like insects floating in amber, suspended and separated from the world. Miriam thought it was an odd thing to be so passionate about, but it was harmless and rather charming, in its way. And there was room in the world for an awful lot of gentle oddness. It only made things more beautiful and interesting.

“I fancy a tiffin myself,” Gert announced. “Shall we get some teas in?”

* * *

The tea was strong, the millionaire’s shortbread and flapjacks (each split into bite-size pieces) intensely sweet but tasty, the shared scones a little dry but accompanied with generous quantities of jam and butter, and overall it was more than adequate fuel for a market day. Joined by Alice and Rose, they did have some difficulty finding a table, but Gert put her hand in the small of her back and pressed a palm to her forehead, complaining that she didn’t know if it was the heat or her dodgy hip, but she was coming over all a bit funny.

She hobbled to the nearest table, where four men in mismatched spectacles but curiously similar waistcoats, all of which looked as if they’d been made from an assortment of old sofa cushions, were eating egg sandwiches. “Are you almost done?” she asked, setting one hand on the table and leaning on it heavily enough to make the spindly folding legs creak. “It’s so hard to stand, on account of my poor knees.”

They stared at her, then at their sandwiches and half-drunk teas.

“And my back,” she added with a sigh.

“Um,” the youngest man said, then winced as if someone had kicked him.

“We’re still finishing up,” one in a green paisley waistcoat said.

Gert put her hand out to Miriam. “You’ll have to help me, dear. I feel I could faint at any moment.”

“Oh, heavens. You look like you might throw up, actually,” Jasmine said, and Miriam stared at her around Gert’s back, then looked to Alice for help. Alice just smiled at the floor, and Rose was grinning broadly. “We’ll never make it to the loos in time, though.”

“We’re leaving,” a man in a red waistcoat said, and the youngest man looked vastly relieved as he got up hurriedly. “Come on, lads.”

“But we’re not—” Green Waistcoat started, and Alice cleared her throat, raising her eyebrows at him. He stared back for a moment, then looked down at his sandwich. “I suppose I can take it with me.”

The four vacated the table, and Gert sat down, grinning. “Just need one more chair.”

“What was that?” Miriam asked.

“I’m older than them,” Gert said. “Probably, anyway.”

“Not you. Jasmine. You’re a Police Community Support Officer!”

Jasmine looked at the counter. “I’m going to get us some tea,” she said, and hurried off. Rose followed her.

Miriam looked at Gert, who shrugged.

“She’s surprisingly good at improvising.”

Miriam tried not to feel that was a slight on her. Being called dear by Gert had confused her enough she hadn’t had time to figure out how to pretend the other woman was infirm. It was like imagining an infirm dragon, and she had yet to encounter one of those. One wouldn’t even call Lord Walter, who was so old his scales curled at the edges (where they were still intact) infirm. Not if one wanted to escape unsinged, anyway.

“It just seems out of character,” she said, sitting down.

“I wouldn’t say so,” Alice said, taking one of the other chairs. “She was quite impressive at that Lachlan’s house in January. As were you, Miriam.”

Miriam grimaced. She didn’t feel she’d been very impressive when they’d had to tackle a rich man’s fake water bottling plant that winter. She’d ended up mistaking mud for quicksand, tripping over her own feet, and sliding down a muddy slope and into a hidden pool of run-off, where she’d fully expected to find any number of bodies. It wasn’t something she wanted to repeat, any more than she wanted to repeat any of the many, many investigations they seemed to have been caught up in over the last few years. Although, she had to admit it had been calm since then. She was rather enjoying the break, and hoping it continued, preferably indefinitely. She had an idea she might not be that lucky, though.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked Rose as she returned to the table with a tray of mugs.

“Swords,” Rose said cheerily. She was wearing a neon-pink sleeveless top and had dyed her hair a luminously clashing bright green, a combination which left Miriam feeling somewhat envious of both her lack of sleeves and success with hair colours.

“Swords?” she asked. “Are you redecorating?” She hadn’t put Rose down as an ornamental sword person. Or an ornamental anything person, really.

“No, real ones,” Rose said. “I’m going to take up sword fighting.”

“Fencing,” Alice said.

“Sword fighting,” Rose countered. “Fencing’s too tame.”

Miriam thought they both sounded terrifying, but she just took one of the mugs and watched Rose somehow acquire a chair from a young man who looked slightly nonplussed as he vacated it, but didn’t protest.

At least sword-shopping and chair-requisitioning wasn’t an investigation. That was positive, and they were hardly going to run into trouble at a flea market. That would be a stretch, even for them.

* * *

By the time the ladies gave up their table to another group (made up of two women and three men of a similar age, two of whom were limping pointedly while a third pressed a hand to his forehead and complained loudly about an incipient migraine), Miriam was feeling quite positive about heading back into the stalls. She didn’t need anything, but the beauty of the thrice-yearly flea markets in Skipton was that there was always something interesting. Last time she’d gone home with a porcelain birdhouse in the shape of a gingerbread cottage, plus a glass butter dish patterned with butterflies. The birdhouse had broken in the first storm, and the butter dish hadn’t survived the first dragon visit, when Mortimer had wanted to figure out the technique used to paint the butterflies on, but they’d been rather nice anyway.

The lanes between the stalls were crowded, and the ladies spread out as they hunted for treasure among the tat, ignoring plastic rotary phones and peeling tin signs while they investigated clothes racks and costume jewellery and ragged wigs and old books. The remaining five ladies of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute had arrived as well, and they called out to each other as they worked their way through the market, waving enthusiastically and holding aloft their prizes. Miriam thought, judging by the size of some of them (Priya had found a full-sized dressmaker’s dummy, and Teresa had bought a teddy bear almost as big as she was for Martha, Pearl’s old Labrador), Gert’s van was going to be put to good use on the way home.

She clapped approvingly when Rosemary popped out of makeshift changing room (a shower curtain on a rail that hung precariously across the corner of a stall) in a sky-blue jumper, then turned to her own search. She spotted a long skirt with frogs stitched along the hem and fished it off the rack, holding it against her while she tried to decide if the muddy brown colour of the corduroy was intentional or if the fabric was actually very dirty. By the time she’d decided it was the latter (mostly because it was coming off on her fingers), the others had vanished further down the aisle. She followed, detouring to look at a watering can (it had a hole in the bottom); a very nice ottoman (it had a very nice price, too, and Miriam backed away rapidly, in case any residual grime from the skirt leaped onto it); and a collection of tin plant pots which she most definitely did not need, but bought anyway, mostly because they had little ladybirds painted on them. She was very fond of ladybirds, but she did resist a blouse printed with them, for the sole reason that she already had two. Three seemed excessive.

She had just about decided it was time to find Alice and see if she was thinking of heading home when she bumped into Rose, who was coming out of a cluttered stall full of rusting farming implements and old deep sea diving equipment and ancient sailing paraphernalia.

“I’m not sure about this,” Rose was saying. She had a sword resting on her shoulder, and to Miriam’s eyes it looked as tall as she was. “It’s a bit weighty.”

“You could take it back,” Alice said from behind her.

“He said all sales were final.”

Alice made a small noise which suggested she felt such things were negotiable and also that Rose should try, then smiled at Miriam. “Have you found anything interesting?”

“Not as interesting as that,” Miriam said.

Rose swung the sword off her shoulder and the tip crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the exposed toes of a woman in a rather pretty summer dress and walking sandals. She looked at it with less horror than one might have expected, and said, “Should’ve worn my work boots.”

“Sorry,” Rose said. “Still getting the hang of it.”

“Evidently,” the woman said, and wandered off down the aisle, carting a large shopping bag which was sprouting a shade-less lamp from the top.

“Can you really just carry it around like that?” Miriam asked. “That seems risky.”

“It’s blunt,” Rose replied.

“Even so …”

“The seller did try to wrap it,” Alice said. “One can’t just wave a blade about in public.”

Rose tried hefting the sword up again, then shook her head. “I can’t wave it about at all. It’s too big, Alice.”

“I told you that,” Alice said, raising one eyebrow.

“I think I need a short sword. That sounds good. Yes. I’d like a short sword. Or a rapier, I suppose.”

Alice nodded. “As you prefer.”

“Do they sell those here?” Miriam asked.

“I’m going to find out,” Rose said, still trying to find a way to lift the sword back to her shoulder.

“Maybe a fencing foil?” Miriam suggested, and looked at Alice. “That seems like a better option, perhaps?”

“I have suggested it,” Alice said, her tone still mild. “And my equipment supplier is excellent.”

Rose gave up on lifting the sword. “I don’t want some feeble, wobbly little thing that’s all for show. I want something I can hit people with.” She turned back into the stall, dragging the sword after her. “Come on, Alice. You can scare him into an exchange.”

“Yes, I’m the scary one,” Alice said to no one in particular, but followed the older woman into the stall.

Miriam watched them go, wondering how she’d come to be friends with someone who had their own sword supplier. It was all most unnerving. She had a tarot card supplier, and had thought that was quite daring until recently.

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Lovely people, if you’re waiting for the paperbacks (and the fancy hardback!) they’ll be available to order next week. On our Circle community: KEITHs, I’ll have your paperbacks in the post to you as soon as I can!

Audio will follow too, and I’ll keep you updated as to when that’s ready.

And if you’d like to grab an ebook pre-order, here are the links:

22nd Oct direct from the website: https://readerlinks.com/l/5608759

29th Oct at all other retailers (inc Amazon): https://readerlinks.com/l/5616682

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I can’t wait to share a cuppa and a tale with you, lovely people ❤️

And now tell me in the comments – what would you be arming yourself with to brave a flea market (or an investigation, for that matter)?

Looking for your people? Join our Toot Hansell Auxiliary community on Circle. You’ll find bonus content and a wonderful group of readers chatting about dragons, books, cake, and life in general. It’s completely free to join.