This is a bit of an experiment, but I'm certainly enjoying it. Despite the tedium in several of the stories, I have enjoyed Irving's The Sketch Book. So I borrowed a bit of the concept -- and some fun references -- to start this short story. It's called "A Sketch on the Wickedness of Dueling."
(From the sketch-book of one Edward S. Irving.) The passage from Boston to Londinium was treacherous and wore mightily on the nerves. The sky was always a blank grey, and few fish attended our passing, which the sailors took as a very ill omen indeed. But in the end that is not so strange. We toiled up the Thames and landed safely in one of the English harbors so famed in worrisome verse and heated prose.
This passage of water seemed to have disconnected me from my home, and grouped in with my memories of the rambling old house were my father's plans for me, which mostly amounted to my studying under a Londinium newspaper man he knew and bringing back to Boston the many merits of good English journalism. However, the distance made me restless, and I hovered in the water-worn recesses of the metropolis for just a week before leaping aboard the first boat I could find destined for France.
This new passage was much more pleasant, with the sun burning away the mists each morning and blazing away as it drooped into the west. We landed safely in the capital of the new revolutionary French government, that shining island protected from the ravages of the continent. Brittany is strange indeed, for the son of a colonist's son. Men roamed the streets in packs, scratches and bruises displayed for best effect on faces and wind-whipped bare arms. The ladies glided past alone, or in pairs, their dresses concealing feet and their sharp, quick faces doing nothing to hide their wit and slyness.
All the men wore swords, and so for once I did not stand out – it had been my mother's habit to dress me with an iron dagger dangling from my breeches. My brother Francis tells me she started soon after I could walk. As I grew taller so the little weapon lengthened, until, when I stepped off the ship-planks at the Brittany port, a long, devilish hanger of some considerable weight thudded against the posts and greatly offended a youth – younger than me, at least – with a rapier sharp as fire in his hands seconds after I thumped his knees. It was only with a promise of a night of drinking at a public house of his choice that I got away with all my skin.
Later that very night I met him again at the Point d'Accorde. “Eduard,” my new companion said at the door, “entrez-vous. Come in, come in.” He was most cheerful, and his bright green eyes flared from the dimness of the eaves as a cat's visage might, the creature just awaking for a night's pleasures. The pub was crowded, in spite of the heavy sun still looming along the western waters. The pub jack hoisted barrels behind the bar, great sloshing canisters of ale and small, prim wine vessels. My erstwhile dueling-partner-made-drinking-chum, whose name was, he said, Fairfax – which didn't seem very French to me; given its status as an assumed name (a habit many in Brittany keep up, I found) it was understandable – beckoned the jack over and bid him scrape the refuse and dried drink from the bar. He did so, large, blacksmith-arms slashing a rag over the battered surface. “Maintenant,” Fairfax said, “bring us melomel.” He reared back on the stool, smiling his wide, fox-smile, and said to me, “young American man, you will be glad to have struck me, as it has brought you to this.”
~~~~
That's a bit less than half what I wrote today. It may not be all that interesting yet, but I'll (hopefully) deal with that in the second draft. I'd like to hear from some of you, concerning this bit, though.
