Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 40

By Small Beer Press

The contents of this zine were produced under pressure but contain a short break and distraction from the everyday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781618731623

Book preview

9781618731623.jpg

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

4 0

Made by

Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link.

Proofreader: Jenny Terpsichore Abeles.

This is Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 40, December 2019. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731623. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $20/4 issues (see page 42 of the print issue for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2019 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration Moon Garden © 2019 by Cat Mallard. Thank you authors, artists, and readers. In reasons to celebrate we had two titles on the recent ALA Booklist Top 10 Debut SF&F list — Abbey Mei Otis for Alien Virus Love Disaster and Sarah Pinsker for Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea. Also, on October 1, 2019, we opened a bookshop: Book Moon. We can often be found there, at 86 Cottage St., Easthampton, Mass. We have a website, of course, bookmoonbooks.com, and are even on Instagram, if not quite Twitter. Come by and say hi! Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Peace.

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LCRW is this here zine: a twice yearly burst of fantastic fiction, poetry, and a cooking column—and for ~20% of print subscribers, it comes with a chocolate bar. DRM-free ebooks & ebook bundles available: weightlessbooks.com/lcrw. Subscribe online or order back issues at smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. Send a check/money order to: Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027. Thank you.

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3 — $38 — as no. 2 & a good chocolate bar each time.

4 — $45 — as no. 3 & a random chapbook.

6 — $54/64 — as no. 4 & #1 and/or 2 of Reckoning.

8 — $76 — as no. 4 & signed copies of Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Andy Duncan’s An Agent of Utopia.

10 — $1,000 — as no. 4 & a $1,000 donation to Franciscan Hospital for Children. Everyone (hearts) you.

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19 — $2,500 — as no. 4 & Everything we publish from now on.

Ink, and Breath, and Spring

Frances Rowat

The wheelbarrow thumped a jolt into Palwick’s arms with every third step as he led Mattish back to where he’d found the corpse, out in the northern reaches of the garden. The trees waved dimly at them under the grey sky, and the thin morning light crept across the rolling ground with its whispering carpet of dead grass. Out in the north of the garden, the wind never really stopped.

Mattish had sent for a page when Palwick told her about the corpse, and had scarcely said anything since. She certainly hadn’t offered to take the wheelbarrow for a little while.

The flat silver sun had cleared the trees and eastern wall by the time they reached the corpse. Palwick had found it on the ground, gloveless and naked. He’d wrapped it in his overcoat and set it upright against the bayberry bushes before going to find Mattish; he’d never dealt with a corpse before, but couldn’t stomach the indecency of letting it lie there.

Three birds squabbled in the air above it; two crows and something paler. As Palwick and Mattish approached, the smaller of the crows darted off, shedding a feather. The pale bird shrieked after it, a flat sound in the wet morning.

The corpse was a man who might have been a little taller than Palwick himself, but waxen and crisp as a rose petal. Its left hand was missing, and it had an oddly unremarkable smell, like laundry and a rasher of raw bacon. The skin left on it—Palwick’s coat hid the raw wound covering its back—had withered a little from the cold. He guessed it had been there a week or more, even if nothing had been at it yet.

Mattish glared at the corpse for a minute. When it failed to apologize and leave, she reached for its remaining hand. The joints were stiff, but she wrenched it palm up and examined it.

Well, she said after a moment, dropping the hand. He’s soft-handed; unless he’s from inside, or new staff from somewhere else in the gardens, he must have come over the wall. The page’ll know.

She started working the corpse free of the bayberries, glancing up as the birds wheeling overhead screamed again. Palwick stepped up to help. The bayberries smelled bitter and bright, and the thorns bit at his gloves. Their branches were pliant and strong, snagging the sleeves of his overcoat. Might be easier to pull him out, he offered after a moment. You really think he came over the wall? With one hand?

Mattish shrugged, pulling the bayberries free and keeping them away from the corpse with her elbow as she worked. She had thinner gloves than Palwick’s, but tough ones; the fingers were pieced and tanned leather, and she ignored the pricking thorns. He might have been wearing more when he got in, she said. It’s still winter. If he snuck in and tried to hide in the garden, the cold might have taken him.

Palwick nodded. Cold wet wind wouldn’t kill as fast as a winter storm, but it would cluster blood around your gut and heart and leave you stunned and sweating. Then you’d do something stupid, like strip from the heat, and then there was nothing left but to pray you were found sooner rather than later.

He’d found the corpse later, that was all.

Still. I didn’t find his clothes.

Wind might have taken them. The bayberries slipped under her elbow and sprang back to whip around the corpse and snag the overcoat anew, and she cursed and stepped back. You’re right; get him out, and get the coat out later.

The second crow broke away from the squabble above them and fled eastward, tacking into the wind. The remaining bird wheeled down and perched on a thin bayberry branch. Its white feathers were banded and speckled with rich black, like paper dashed with ink.

Mattish glanced after the fleeing crow, then straightened, brushing her gloves off on her coat. Palwick followed her gaze and saw a page approaching from the library. You could tell the pages at a glance, even from too far away to make out their white eyes and bare hands; they never seemed to carry anything, and they walked as if on carpets.

He turned his attention back to the corpse, slipping his arms gingerly under the overcoat and around its torso. The thorns clung to his overcoat, but the corpse pulled stiffly free. The inkpaper bird bobbed its head and screamed as the raw bacon smell grew stronger. There were two small, blue dots on the corpse’s shoulder; he guessed they were a bit of winter mold.

There’s something wrong with his back, he warned. Mattish peered as it was exposed to the thin morning light, then let out a disgusted bark. The corpse’s back was an expanse of raw flesh, studded with tatters of dead grass. The wound stretched the width of the corpse’s shoulders and the length of its spine, bordered by the tiny toothmarks of a sharp knife.

"It’s flensed," she said, her voice shivery, and gulped air. She took a step back as the page drew up beside her, gazing thoughtfully in the direction of the corpse with fog-white eyes.

The page was a page of key; her marker hung around her neck on a green-black ribbon, a dark iron piece of teeth and scrollwork as long as Palwick’s hand was wide. Her hands were bare; none of the pages needed to wear gloves, within the library or without. This one was dressed for an indoor room, a single long skirt and a sleeveless cowled shirt. She wasn’t wearing shoes, but neither did the frost melt under her feet.

Which of you found him? Her voice was mild. The pages all spoke mildly, even standing barefoot near a part-flayed corpse with a missing hand in a damp winter chill.

That’s I, milady, Palwick said. The page appeared to consider the corpse, but you couldn’t really tell what they were looking at. There was a moment’s pause while Mattish wrestled with her gorge as quietly as she could, and the inkpaper bird grumbled screechily.

You found him here?

On the ground. Palwick looked away from the page’s bare fingers. Didn’t seem right to leave him there.

Have you ever seen such a thing before? The page glanced between them.

Being spoken to by a page calmed Mattish a little. The cutting? I’ve not. She gulped air again and blew it out slowly as she peered at the wound. I think it was done a while back. See, he wasn’t bleeding; he must’ve begun to heal. She pointed at the clean hard lines where the skin had been cut away. "Must’ve happened outside. Same time someone took his hand, maybe. Noone in here could have—he must have climbed the wall in, been desperate to get away. Then the cold got to him, and he died, and lay here until Palwick found him."

The page of key reached with bare fingers towards the wound’s border and the inkpaper bird launched itself towards her. Palwick threw his arms up between them, dropping the corpse, which tumbled to the ground like wet firewood. The bird’s wings beat the air like silk ripping, and then it sank its claws into his sleeve and ra-kaawwwked miserably.

Close up, Palwick could see that the black and white on it wasn’t as crisp as he’d first thought; the markings’ edges smudged into ashy grey. He pulled his head back; the bird was the size of a rabbit or a cat, and he thought it might eat meat. Better to keep his face clear of its beak.

The page of key looked to Palwick. It’s a guest’s animal, she said. The guest is in the library. Will you mind it until it leaves or they come for it?

Palwick blinked at the bird. Surely, he said.

But the bird flew away shrieking when Mattish bent to pick up the corpse, and he had to help her get it into the wheelbarrow after all, and roll it back for keeping in the cold cellars until the ground thawed enough to dig a grave.

Palwick hadn’t dug the spring midden-pit in years, but Mattish was upset about the corpse, so when the frost on the ground thinned out four days later she put him on the job. The first morning, he went out to the fallow ground where Pemberly had chalked the outlines on the dead grass and lined up the spades.

A woman he didn’t recognize waited there, huddled into a thick sweater and long skirt with a short-sleeved overcloak belted atop that. She had a long nose and mushroom-pale skin, and her brown hair had a bruised purplish tint. It

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[adjustable · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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