White-Faced Seneschal

By Lara Biyuts

“White-Faced Seneschal” is the previously self-published novel “Vampire in the Mirror”, re-published with the new title. The need to change the title of the novel was brewing, and it’s done. The book “White-Faced Seneschal” is a sequel of the contemporary novel Lord Jocelyn; at the same time, it's a separate new story. Jocelyn and his foster father Tony Claire spend the summer in a fictional Grand Hotel nearby a big waterfall in Switzerland. One day, when hiking, they find an old manuscript. Greetings from past. Part 1. And the novel is about more than one old manuscript. Part 2. A stranger looks for the old manuscript. Who is the man? What kind of secret ends he has? Jocelyn and his foster father Tony Claire want to find answers to a lot of questions. The novel is a story about more than one old manuscript. For mystery lovers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lara Biyuts
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370343256

Lara Biyuts

Lara Biyuts (aka Lara Biuts) author of 14 books of fiction, writer of the RevueBlanche.blogspot, collage maker for her bookcovers, translator, who signs her translations as Larisa Biyuts. Her novella A Handful of Blossoms is 2012 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention. Her works are accepted for anthologies: Cat’s Cradle Time Yarns (Time Yarns Anthologies), Authors off the Shelf (Lazy Beagle Entertainment), Of Words and Water 2014 (Words and Water group supporting WaterAid), Hope Springs a Turtle, The Black Rose of Winter, and Greek Fire (Lost Tower Publications). Her old tale and poems are featured on TheHolidayCafe.com (2013). Her poetry is on the monthly eJournal The Criterion (April, 2014). She is a Goodreads librarian.Her novel La Lune Blanche is the first of the series. "The novel is the world where pleasures of life and pleasures of art are just norms." (Turner Maxwell Books)“The author produces a setting which is detailed and believable, and also characters which the reader gets to know well. Also the plot moves along nicely through-out the story.” (April O., facebook.com)“Lara Biyuts’ writing is deep and multi layered.” (Maggie Mack Books, maggiemackbooks.com)“Lara Biyuts comes to us from the great tradition of Nabokov and Conrad, enriching our literature in English with the rich cosmopolitain perspecitve of the East European tradition leading back to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Like those great masters she takes us also into the shadow world of sexuality with its hidden psychology, possession and sensual revelations.” (Robert Sheppard, Author of the novel Spiritus Mundi, linkedin.com)“The secret of Lara Biyuts is her tales. The secret of her tales is their charm. The secret of the charm is Lara Biyuts.” (Les Hudson, goodreads.com)Favorite quotes:“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!” (Mikhail Bulgakov)“Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.” (Mikhail Bulgakov)for emails: larisabeeATyahooDOTcom

Book preview

White-Faced Seneschal

by

Lara Biyuts

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Lara Biyuts on Smashwords

White-Faced Seneschal

Copyright 2016 by Lara Biyuts

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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White-Faced Seneschal

"…about water and flowers;

often, about mirrors

and what mirrors reflected from what never was ours."

(Henri de Regnier. THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN THE BOOKCASE)

PART 1. Story in Fusion

"There is a separate audience for every picture

and every book."

(a worldly wisdom)

August 2. Switzerland. Misfits Unabridged

Jocelyn would never overhear the conversation but for the wet spot on his trousers.

The water in his glass was ice-cold, which was pleasant on the hot August day. Drinking, but busy with reading one book on his iphone, he noticed a drop of water on his trousers.

Jocelyn could stand the spot of water, moreover, he could stand a spot of milk or ice-cream, but he knew that Anthony could not, if it happened to Anthony’s trousers. Jocelyn’s attendant Rouboko and his tennis mate Jason had nothing against his leave. He rose from the table -- in front of the Grand Hotel Kauzbach in the lovely shade of the white parasol with the boom of the water in the background -- and went to the Hotel entrance to change in his room. That’s why he chanced to overhear the phone talk.

Unlike his adopted son Jocelyn, Anthony Claire didn’t play tennis, and he could be elsewhere in the Hotel precinct this morning, but he was in their room, when Jocelyn came in.

…listen, you, scumbag… Jocelyn heard the familiar voice from the chaise longue in the balcony. Jocelyn could not see much, but the tone suggested a phone talk and the fact that Anthony could not see him or hear his coming in, at the moment. …I can hear your voice – that’s enough for me to understand all. All about you. You miserable druggy… I was informed, and I trust my informer… Big Brother? I am your Big Brother only in case of your involving into anything about the trash. Your calling me Big Brother betrays you. It’s a manner of guilty ones. The first they say to his friend, who caught him in the act, is you are Big Brother…

The speaker’s tone suggested his talk with his friend, who had some drug problem. Jocelyn knew only one case like that. The life of their family friend Ellingham Brooks in London was a time-bomb for their family, as Anthony believed. If Jocelyn didn’t step back to the closed door, he would lose his balance and fall, maybe, being smashed by a power that came from Anthony’s look or voice or something else or all together. An eruption of swear words like this was what Jocelyn hardly ever heard from him. Uncharacteristic, therefore alarming. In general, Jocelyn could not listen to the phone talk any longer.

Forgetting of getting changed, he stepped back and left the room.

New troubles to come. New policemen in his life, new and old lawyers, a new journey or flee, that’s what the event, if any took place somewhere in London, meant to him. On the other hand, as always, his lawyer was to care about it all, and this instant, nothing evident could do with their stay at the Hotel. Jocelyn spent a moment more at the closed door, thinking.

When he came in the room again, Anthony was in the chair, with no phone in hand. Are you all right, dear? he said narrowing his eyelids like a short-sighted person, though he was back the daylight coming from the window. As it often happened, Jocelyn didn’t know that he himself, the day lit comer, looked like a feast for eyes. Me too, Anthony said in reply to Jocelyn’s silence, Do you know what’s happened? Jocelyn shook his head. Anthony patted on the arm of his chair to invite Jocelyn and said, I found the best opening for a novel, the best to attract readers’ attention from the first page. Abiding by the fact that the most eye-catching there are two things: a bed scene and explosion. To look captivating to the majority, the bed scene should be heterosexual. Thus, this is what we have… Lovemaking on a bed, with a time-bomb underneath the bed. At the moment when the lovers reach climax – the bomb explodes and the scene bursts into flames. How simple. How simple it is to get readers interested nowadays. A culmination in the novel should be a blast in Vatican. Tasteless. A mere lack of good taste. Platitude… It’s exactly what makes the world go round.

Thus, Jocelyn never was said that anything serious happened, and that they were to leave the Hotel for fleeing right now; he was not told about the phone talk -- therefore nothing to worry about.

Recently, on July 26, Jocelyn was 15, and the best birthday gift was his reunion with Anthony who returned after taking the cure at the Medical Health Center here, nearby. Their stay at the Grand Hotel Kauzbach was to be a month long, at least, because Anthony continued his communication with a doctor. Anthony Claire the author continued his work on his latest book, which he did with the aid of his netbook, like many authors

Emailing the first file of his writing in progress, which was to be released on the Herm Press book publishing website, Anthony said in his message to Jocelyn, We live in a small way, sometimes, our life is insipid, talentless and dull. Life in the novel is quite the contrary. We are healthy and rich, warm and safe. Really, what hideous can happen to us in our life of idlers? An accidental spot on our trousers, at most. The novel’s title was Through the Baltic Looking-Glass. Runes, paduasoy, remote land and my emerald crown, featured in enamels and gems.

Funny, it happened today –Jocelyn thought, perching on the arm of the chair, meaning a spot on trousers and not adventures or paduasoy.

The endemic humidity of the breeze made it cool, always, even at a hottest noon, therefore most enjoyable.

Look at that! How weird… Anthony said looking at Jocelyn’s face, I can see my reflection in your eyes! So small and clear in the tiny lack mirror of the pupil.

In your eyes, I look small too.

When humans look each other in the eyes, they only look into one eye. Besides, the manhood is equally divided here -- half of us look into the left eye, the other half -- into the right one. But in the time when you are in love with somebody, you look into eyes alternately, now in the left eye, now in the right one, so that no eye remains neglected. One can look at the nose bridge instead. But this way seems senseless… Zut! Your eyes are misty. Anything’s wrong?

I feel sad, for some reason. I love you.

Anthony feared Jocelyn’s mood like this, for something in the boy’s elegiac feelings, words and look, could be prophetic.

It was time to change for lunch.

The big old fashioned building of the Grand Hotel Kauzbach perched high above Lake Bernzee, next to the foaming Waterfalls. To the elegant Park Restaurant Gartenzimmer facing the falls, Anthony went alone. Jocelyn was to get his lunch in the room. A plate of sfinciuni, a good helping of fruit salad with mango and strawberries.

Canapés and aperitif, sweet cakes and pink champagne. A long while ago, Anthony left alcohol as a remedy and tincture. It had stopped to be his medicine, a long time ago. Today, he merely wanted some consolation, unable to share his problem with Jocelyn in virtue of the boy’s tender age, like he was always unable to share a bottle of good wine with the boy, in virtue of the same temporary circumstance and the nude fact that the boy could not hold alcohol for a reason known to both of them and to the boy’s doctors first of all. He asked himself, what it was with Jocelyn today – sadness or fear? And his own fear of Jocelyn’s prophetic feelings… One should conquer fear. The fear of tomorrow and the unknown was always, in every civilization.

Humans have a prejudiced attitude towards the future. Monks believe that every day is eternity, and one should live as though it’s his last day. Psychically, fear takes us much efforts and energy. Most of powers, obstructive to humans, are derivatives of their fear. What we do today is fulfillment of our yesterday projects. In turn, today, we should make projects for tomorrow. With a renewed energy. The energy that wanes as the years wax. Our yesterday, which is archived, we revisit in order to get the information of how it was designed and why our project failed. On the other hand, those who do projects for tomorrow, risk missing projects for present day. One should live today and for today.

His friend’s addiction turned the young man into a mere scumbag in Anthony’s eyes. It proved to be more serious than Anthony believed when he left Ellingham Brooks in London at the business. The nice gay job of a manager of the Clair de Lune Club. Ellingham the friend turned into a scumbag with eyes, sly and genuine as a three-dollar bill, which Anthony knew to his own cost of a young drug-addict. The addiction, so usual and common, could be truly dangerous for Anthony’s name, today, when he was with someone. Disastrous. That’s why he lost his head when thinking of it. So, he had to ask Otto again. Otto’s men alone