The Scold's Bridle
an excerpt

He wasn't a monster. That's the first thing to remember.

The story has long since passed out of our small village and into others. On its journey, little details change. Embellishments are added, names or features that are disliked are removed and it has become something else entirely. It's recognisable, but only if you know it intimately, and I know it very intimately indeed. It isn't a story, or at least, it wasn't, before they changed it. It was my life. My life, and his, and the others that became bound up in it.

As a fiction, it benefits us all. The house is hidden away and no one goes looking for a fairytale. We are all safe, buried in words on a page in a tale told to amuse, to inform and to entertain. It's what they all want, apart from Alain perhaps, but the sort of recognition he seeks isn't one that's obtainable from anyone except his peers, and who knows if they still exist? My dear sister, who let the story grow around her to protect us, tells me to leave things as they are, to be careful what I wish for. There is Bastien, who prefers the fiction to the reality he is mired in, and would want the truth to die with us. A selfish wish, but one I can understand. Who wouldn't prefer a fantasy where your love was not unrequited? Who wouldn't wish they could be everything their sweetheart desired of them? I wish someone would write such a story for me.

If you're reading this, then I hope I finished it. I am not as certain of our safe future as they are. The house is well hidden, but it is large. There are travellers who have stopped for a night and may remember it. Our only regular visitor tells us of a France increasingly unhappy with the aristocracy and it makes me worry, for Bastien's sake. I don't know whether his birth would make a difference to anyone who found him, but I think we would all be in grave danger should such a thing occur.

I've said before that they didn't want me to write this. I do not care for the opinion of my sister; she has made her own bed and it is a great deal more comfortable than my own, so I'll pursue any course that brings me comfort. At least the story still carries her name, more or less. They relegate me to a nameless shadow, barely even a role, barely even a person. I can't leave it like that. I don't expect the world to tremble when I pass, but I deserve more than an inaccurate caricature. Truth be told, and it will be, the image of my sister in the story is an amalgam of us both. For all that I sound fierce and determined, the leather-bound book that I persuaded Louis-Phillipe to bring me is still kept well hidden beneath a floor-board. Bastien does not like anything to disturb his dream-world, and I indulge him where I can.

This might not be the story that you've heard, or the one you were expecting. I've pieced it together as best as I can. Maybe you won't like any of us after you've read it; not one of us behaved as well as we should have. I would have myself liked, loved even, but I won't lie. You will, I am certain, prefer the fiction. This is my story; a small, clandestine account of a life.