Shining Light On Our Ladies: B. G. Denvil and Rosie

A series where my guests are female writers 

talking about their female characters

(and yes, I'll be doing the chaps next!)

Today: 

Meet Barbara Gaskell Denvil 

and

ROSIE

May I introduce you to Rosie? I’ll even let you into her secret, since she’ll never know and would forgive me anyway. Because she’s a witch. A very nice one too.

Born in the late medieval, she grew up at The Rookery, a spreading cottage on Kettle Lane not far from the Wiltshire village of Little Piddleton. Beneath the thatched roof live the bats, sleeping during the day but ready to swoop out and hunt when the stars come up. There are owls too, but it’s the crows that live here all year, and keep the witches amused.

The Rookery is an old people’s home, but the people, all being witches or wizards, do not need much looking after.  Some are, perhaps, getting a little daft in their old age, but most also have some fine magic abilities. Getting together for meals is the ideal time for squabbles and arguments, though sometimes a few of them trot off to the village to drink at the local tavern, and here arguments need to be kept quiet, for they can’t let the villagers know that they aren’t entirely human.

Having been brought up by a domineering mother and a mostly absent father, Rosie accepts being the scullery maid, cleaner, water collector, dish washer and general bed-maker. Her magic isn’t strong, and she’s used to obeying orders. Yet she has always had a dream – a dream of more – and of finding a better place in the world.

But this is ‘Kettle Lane’, not Cinderella, and Rosie needs to uncover a whole heap of secrets before the magic starts working for her too.

There’s not a lot of history here, since witches and wizards usually lead an unconventional life at the best of times, but it is the medieval age, so water comes from the well, dinner is cooked over the fire, light comes from the candles, and there’s no bus to town. You walk – or, being witches – you fly, as long as no one is watching.

There are many limitations in medieval times but being a witch or a wizard brings some definite advantages, and Rosie simply wishes she might discover a few more of these and have enough time to grow stronger.

Peg is one of the older residents of The Rookery, and she’s apt to disappear when she gets her spells in a muddle, and there’s Whistle who likes Rosie and occasionally invites her into his rooms for a cup of wine or a story of times past.

With the great old city of London at some considerable distance, none of the residents at this home for the elderly have much interest in kings, queens, wars, or lordly scandal. They live quiet lives, they chat to the crows, they bundle into the kitchens and experiment with mixing spells over the fire and mumbling the words they’ve made up themselves.

Rosie has her own small room in the big cottage, but spends little time in it, for she’s usually serving dinner or supper, cleaning it up, or sweeping the stairs. Not that many of the wizards use those stairs, since they simply fly up to their rooms instead. But Rosie cannot fly. Her magic is too weak. Yet she dreams of flying, of looking down on the village rooftops, of feeling the wind in her hair, of escaping the rain by flying above the clouds, and of joining the huge flocks of birds flying off for winter, or flying back in for spring.

With such a large number living in one place, Rosie has many friends but few other than Whistle and Peg take too much notice of the cleaning girl. Mandrake is a flirt, and she would like Montague to flirt but he doesn’t seem to know she exists. Uta and Ermintrude are sweet, but too busy to do more than thank her when she brings them dinner. But Ermintrude has discovered chocolate, even though that most certainly does not yet exist in medieval England, and sometimes gives a delicious heap of it to Rosie. The first two women in the world to enjoy chocolate!

Rosie’s mother also has a weak magical force, yet somehow, she manages to produce some remarkable results, mostly unpleasant, and Rosie would like to know why. She’d like to know a lot of things, and gradually, as events start to slip and slide from the very wilds of a many coloured yonder, things suddenly start to make sense.

‘Kettle Lane’ is the first book in Barbara Gaskell Denvil’s new Cosy Mystery series, The Rookery. Written under the name of B G Denvil. There is also a short introduction ‘One Small Step’ if you would prefer to give it a test run first.

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