Title: Beastly Manor
Author: Alex Hall
Genre: LGBT Fantasy
Once upon a time in a faraway land a very wealthy merchant lived on a
good piece of land just west of the hamlet we now call Littleton. The merchant
was blessed with luck and guile, strong bones and sharp eyes, a pretty wife of
gentle spirit, and four healthy children whom he called Faith, Hope, Beauty,
and Corbin.
An LGBT twist on the classic love story.
Author Bio
Alex Hall writes LGBT speculative fiction for Madison Place Press. Find
out more about Alex, Beastly Manor,
and Alex's forthcoming dystopian M/M romance, The Stranded, at www.sarahremy.com
Excerpt:
Once upon a time
in faraway land a very wealthy merchant lived on a good piece of property just
west of the hamlet we now call Littleton. The merchant was blessed with luck
and guile, strong bones and sharp eyes, a pretty wife who had both wit and a
gentle spirit, and four healthy children. He was called Jean de Beaumont, after
his father and his grandfather both. His wife liked to call him ‘Roux’ for the
color of his hair. To his three daughters the merchant was always ‘Papa’, but
his eldest child and only son always called him simply ‘Da’.
Like many of the tenant farmers subsisting on
squares of land just outside Littleton proper, de Beaumont dedicated his time
and talents to the making of good cheeses. The native soil was made rich with
salt from the nearby sea, and that fragrant earth produced a grass greener than
the king’s most rare verdigris dyes. Black and white cattle grew fat in the
fields. Their milk was thick and sweet, suitable for drinking straight from the
pail, or churning into butter. More importantly, this milk was the very key to
the family’s survival, for de Beaumont poured it into great bowls and set it
aside to curdle before molding. The milk turned into cheese, the cheese now
called Camembert.
Camembert was not
so rare around Littleton. But de Beaumont, being a clever man with a head for
experimentation, began to add an extra ingredient to the cheese: a special
brandy his wife made from the apples collected from the trees growing wild
amongst the hedges. Only she knew how to correctly prepare the brandy, and only
de Beaumont knew when to add the sweet-smelling liquor between curdling and
molding, and then again before he sealed the cheeses in wooden boxes and set
them aside again to age. The recipe was a family secret kept only in de Beaumonts’s
head. As word of the unusual and delicious Camembert spread so did demand, but
de Beaumont was canny and never increased production. He raised the price for a
wheel. His fortune was made in a matter of years, while Corbin was still a babe
not yet out of his cot.
They say there
are still wheels of de Beaumont Camembert laid aside in the king’s cellars,
held back for a special occasion. If this is true the king is a very lucky man,
as by all accounts de Beaumont’s special cheese exists nowhere else. It is
possible the merchant meant to teach Corbin the recipe once the child came of
age, so that as heir he could pass the secret on through the generations,
ensuring the family’s continued fortune. But God plays tricks on a man, gives
with the right hand and takes with the left, and like de Beaumont’s pretty
little farm and charming family, that magical strain of Camembert is nothing
more than a distant memory, a lingering taste on the tongue of good fortune, a
fleeting recollection of pleasure.
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