Outtake from Forbidden Rose

You may or may not know this;
I spent a lot of time agonizing over the beginning of Forbidden Rose.

I rewrote the beginning a dozen times.
I'm still not sure I made the right choice. *g*


Here's  a beginning I wrote and discarded and put in and took out and put in and took out.
It was almost Chapter One.
Instead, it went in the waste basket.  Such is the life of a writing snippet.

******* beginning of outtake *****

France was a black line cut between the starred sky and the sea.  They were killing each other in Paris and at convenient spots in the countryside, all in the name of Revolution.  Doing it in imaginative ways.  The gates of hell were open and all the devils were loose.

If there'd been a general increase in liberty, equality, and fraternity, he hadn't seen it.

William Doyle took a wood cask from a smuggler, rested it on the gunnels to shift his grip, and lowered it over the side, down to outstretched hands.  The next cask was ready when he turned back.

Everyone worked in practiced, heavy-breathing silence, in the dark.  The rhythm to it came half came from these Devon smugglers, who knew about heaving bales and boxes from one boat to another, half was the sea itself.  The sea lifted the French fishing boat towards him and drew it back, then lifted again.  He and a barely-seen Frenchman timed the waves and passed cargo when the ships knocked sides, clapping against the bags of sand that kept the hulls silent.

This cargo was Assam tea leaves, pressed into hard blocks and packed tight in waterproof kegs.  It'd be poured into teacups in the Faubourg St. Germaine by the end of the week.  He didn't expect to get to Paris half that quick himself. 

If he ever got to Paris.  That was looking damned problematic.

His own personal cargo was the two crates over there, bobbing in the French boat. Counterfeit notes.  Troublesome stuff.  Then there was the boy, also troublesome.  He was starboard, puking his guts over the side as he'd been doing with some regularity, every ten minutes, since they left Dover.

Almost made him feel sorry for the murderous little animal.  Almost, not quite.
   
This was just a duckfooted mess of a job.

Doyle hefted the last keg, grunted, and handed it down.  Soft-footed on the deck, whispering, the French smugglers scuttled about, tying and securing and covering illegal cargo with canvas and fish.

The transfer was complete. Time to get a move on. The boy crouched with his back to the forecastle, pale gray in the flicker of the dark lantern, sullen as a dirty rag. 

He strolled over and nudged all that suffering with his boot.

"You."  He spoke French.  The boy understood just fine. "Get the bags." 

No response.   

"Or stay on the boat.  They'll drop you off somewhere.  Mid-Channel, probably."

The boy, Hawker, got to his feet and staggered off to get their luggage.

***** end of outtake *****


I kinda regretted not using this.

Now, just in the interests of full disclosure and maybe somebody is interested in how this all works, down below the cut I've put up what this little segment actually looked like when I set it aside.
Which is to say, with all the notes I make for myself still in. 



This, below, is what a Second Draft looks like. 

****** begin rough draft of  segment outtake *****

France was a [thin black] line [cut] between the starred sky and the sea.  They were killing each other in Paris and at convenient spots in the countryside, all in the name of Revolution.  Doing it in imaginative ways.  The gates of hell [caps?] were open and all the devils were loose.

If there'd been a general increase in liberty, equality, and fraternity, [caps here?] he hadn't seen it.

William Doyle took a wood cask from a smuggler, rested it on the gunnels to shift his grip, and lowered it over the side, down to outstretched hands.  The next cask was ready when he turned back.  [is this how you move stuff from ship to ship?] Everyone worked in practiced, heavy-breathing silence, in the dark.  The rhythm to it came half came from these Devon smugglers, who knew about heaving bales and boxes from one boat to another.  Half was the sea itself.  It lifted the French fishing boat towards him and drew it back, then lifted again.  He and that barely-seen Frenchman timed the waves and passed cargo when the ships knocked sides, clapping against the bags of sand [would this work?  Is it what they used?] that kept the hulls silent. [did smugglers transfer cargo directly off the French coast?]

This cargo was tea leaves, pressed into hard blocks and packed tight in waterproof kegs. [is this how it travelled?' [This assam tea would be poured into cups] It'd be poured into teacups in Monmartre [in the Faubourg St. Germaine] by the end of the week.  He didn't expect to get to Paris half that quickly.  [adverb or cockney adj?]

If he ever got to Paris.  That was looking damned problematic.  His own personal cargo was the two crates over there, bobbing in the French boat. 

Then there was the boy, starboard, puking his guts over the side as he'd been doing with some regularity, every ten minutes, since they left Dover.[the devon shore]  Almost made him feel sorry for the murderous [too strong?]little animal.  [Almost/not quite.]   
This was just a duckfooted mess [Irish jig] of a job.

Doyle hefted the last keg, grunted, and handed it down.  Soft-footed on the deck, whispering, the French smugglers scuttled about, tying and securing and covering illegal cargo with canvas and fish.  The transfer was complete. 

Time for them to get a move on. [american? not period?  date?] The boy crouched with his back to the forecastle, [something on deck.  what the hell is a forecastle?] pale gray in the flicker of the dark lantern, sullen as a dirty rag. 

He strolled over and nudged all that suffering with his boot.  "You."  He spoke French.  The boy understood just fine.  "Get the bags." 

No response.   

"Or stay on the boat.  They'll drop you off somewhere."[mid channel?]

The boy, Hawker, got to his feet and staggered off to get their luggage.

*** end of outtake ******