* PLOT TWIST II

PLOT TWIST
Libby Boswell weighs in with more backstory.


I suppose ye could say that rum had been me undoin. Oh to be sure, tis easy to blame the drink, not the drinker, but really this time I make me case. Many months I spent t’ the workhouse, before I figgered out how things were run, and where best to gain some lever-edge. And when I finally had me a nice system, what with the ‘elp of one bailiff and a headmistress, we had a right lucrative trade going in contraband rum, to foist on any jacktar unlucky enough to run afoul of it.


We had a deal with the keeper of the Sotted Swine, down by the docks, to store the stuff upstairs, and sell it to the very thirsty and very desperate. Considering the peripatetic nature of our supplies, one would have to be rather both, thirsty and desperate, and e’en then you wouldn’t want to use a metal tankard.


Having just concluded a very lucrative deal to switch several barrels of Ol Rotyergut, for some pilfered good Barbados dark, we were celebratin., and havin a right good knees-up. Sadly, I ignored me own advice about drinkin the profits and whilst doin a hornpipe to the rather tortured fiddle of a semi-sober Irishman, and regrettably I were on a rickety table, when I heard again that VOICE.


"Belly up lads--drinks on Mad Peg!" "What?!!!"


Dame Fortuna can be a real bitch sometimes. Now, the fact that wee Violet and her crew of mates, newly pirates all, should pick this particular ale hell, this particular night while I was as drunk as David’s sow, and enter it ought not to have caused such a stramash. But it did. In shock at hearing Violet's voice again, I lost me shoe, which knocked out a largish sort offn’ a Bristol merchantman, and he knocked over a column what were rather dubiously supporting the paper thin floor above. Caught mid kick wi’ only one shoe, me table crashed over backwards into another column.


The resulting noise, what with the shouting of the Assize men, come to raid the tavern, the subsequent collapse of the ceiling, rum barrels all a-roll, and the shouts of ‘Pirates! Pirates!!! Take Them!” as Violet and Mad Peg were spotted meant that I was now under part of a rotted wooden floor, amidst the wreckage of ‘alf a hogshead of Rotyergut (and inexplicably a large jar of fishpaste), and weltering in me own gore.


When I came to the next morning, and rose tottering from the splinters, to the yowling of some six dozen cats who were somewhat nonplussed to see their break-fast suddenly grow legs and leave, it were to find meslf taken up for being a definite public nuisance and possible vagrant. Since I couldn’t explain the smell, my presence in a recently collapsed building or give a coherent answer as to where I ought to be, I was summarily headed for Newgate.


Enroute however, as a possibly familiar street doxy distracted my guard with a well-placed chamberpot, I managed to slip me irons—thanks to the oils from the fish paste--, and get instead loaded with a group sent off for extended indenture to the colonies.


And so, reeking and reeling, I said good riddance to Mother England, and prepared meself for what fresh new hell this voyage might produce-- but vowing to avoid demon rum at all costs.


--Libby Boswell
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* PLOT TWIST

*A message from Foxmorton:
Every now and again really cool stuff happens in my life....in this case it involves a wondrous lass I met at last year's reenactment. You know how when you meet someone and you just know immediately they're a kindred spirit? Well, this was the case. In following Violet's blog she apparently had a few tid bits of her own to add.......
And so, forthwith, unbeknownst to Violet, a PLOT TWIST written and sent to me by me new friend and fine mate: Libby Boswell.
I present it to you with humble gratitude to her for allowing me to share such a fine gift! Ain't creativity grand?!
~MF
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Aye well....little Violet may well wonder who set her up for the lobsterbacks.
Twere me...


You see we goes back a long ways....quite a long ways....not that far back dammit!! (cough) just to convent school. Aye... that far back.


You see while I were sittin making nice, tryin to worm me way into the inner circle of Lady Ath-ole, what should I hear from the back of the Lovely Ladies Tea (where I remember not to drop my haitches, and hoist me pinky)? I heard that VOICE!!! Well, that and th fart--I'd neer forgit either.


You see whilst sufferin through the purity o the Sisters of Perpetual Penance and Guilt's School for Possibly Redeemable Girls, I had discovered certain nooks and crannies where I could go to be more myself, like, and mayhap bring a friend or two of similar mind.


The broom closet...Sister Pancratia's armoire...The candle cupboard. Ah the memories! I had had set me sights on Carmen Bombazella--oh sweet mercy the sound of the creaking of her bodice strings on every inhaled breath were the stuff of me fevered dreams for weeks!!! So there we were..in the candle cupboard..about to discover the staying power of a #12 Advent Special when I heard that VOICE....


You see, I had no idea that the wee Miss Violet, dreaming of all things piratical e'en then, had been experimenting in the candle cupboard with making her own gunpowder...under the theory, I suppose, that no crew of self-respectin pirates would e'er turn down a lass what could produce her own ammo.


Aye well then. Wee Violet has ne'er had a head for the mathmaticks, so just as I struck me steel to flint, the better to see and appreciate Miss Bombazella's soon to be freed bounty....


I heard the fateful words "I wonder if that's too much sulfur?"


The flash and bang what resulted drove out the walls, and blew an 8 armed candelabrum through the ceiling and up through the retired nuns dormitory, where it skewered Sister Hepatica's pet parrot like a Christmas kebob. #8 Paschals rained down on frightened
juniors like cordwood, a thick grey ooze from smoldering lard covered the floor and the massive doorknob flattened the parson's ass

what he used to ride to visit the sick. The blast also ripped me drawers off, exposing a rather incriminatin tattoo....what were rather hard to explain. But worst, worst of all were the five pounds of feathers what were ripped from Carmen's bodice. She was STUFFED!!!


Or rather had been. What surging magnificance I had envisioned were as flat and hard as the stomach and abs of the new Spanish gardner boy what Violet landed on out in the yard. Oh aye SHE made out all right. Really. I mean she made out--arrrgh!! Enough o' her!! That wench!!


So I were summarily expelled, and sent to the work'ouse as being completely irredeemable. And I have ne'er forgot that voice....


submitted this day by Libby Boswell