altivo

Nanowrimo word count: 35199 words (4266 today)

Sponsor me!
Story draft available here.

There. Finally caught back up with the normal daily quota, which says I should be at 35K words by midnight tonight. Today's two segments are already posted, and cover the royal party's arrival at the port of Hareflot, hiring the ship Cormorant to take them over to Southhampton, and the boarding of goods, personages, and some horses. They now await the morning tide for their departure.

Onward to Richard's coronation. The Archbishop of Canterbury is Baldwin of Exeter, appointed to the see by Henry II, Richard's father. Baldwin tried, mostly without success, to enforce some secular reforms on the church structure and in particular to reduce the cult of Thomas Becket. He crowned Richard and then joined him on crusade, preceding the king to Acre and dying there prior to Richard's arrival. I've promised to depict the contentious Baldwin, who locked his own cathedral chapter into the cloister for a year when they disagreed with him, as a hare. XD

While I was flailing away at the keyboard to get Richard, Blondel, Eleanor, and John finally on the way to England from Normandy, Gary was busy rearranging the small horse barn. Our woodshed, which was in poor condition when we bought the place 12 years ago, is about to collapse. So he has moved the wood racks into the barn. There's plenty of room there and it should be much more convenient when the snow is heavy. We'll no longer have to clear a path to the woodshed door, and can push a wheelbarrow right up to the racks to get a load of wood for the house.

Weather gloomy and windy, but no rain. In the midst of all this, we saw three bluebirds sitting on the birdbath outside the dining room this morning. I'd have thought bluebirds should be long gone by now, but there was no question of their identity. Two males and a female, I'm quite sure.

Short week, perhaps only two days if I'm lucky.