Worthing Flash

By  J. L. Dean Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette’s favourite portraitist, speaks of their last portrait. Roses were her flower. She was right to insist on them for the portrait. They matched her in complexion, in grace and in the appearance of simplicity. It is how I like to remember her. Already her popularity was fading. The Queen of France; forever a foreign princess. She understood and, child that she was, responded by playing straight into their hands. She looks out from the canvas, her expression sardonic, holding her flower, a ribbon between flesh and thorn. Yet it is what I see in her eyes that stills. Did she know ? Was it really such a short step from the libelles to the mob and their sharp-tongued Madame ? What little attention we paid at the time. Yet ten little years was all it took for a mistreated people to rise in support of new manipulators. Should I have taken more care? The dress I had her wear; it was not her shift, as the scand...

By  J. L. Dean The Office of the Dead continued, its ringing tone slipping between the cold stones of the church to settle with those buried below. Agnetha remained inert, becoming to a corpse, even a breathing one, as it passed from the life it had known. Hands grasping in the dark; too many hungry eyes on her, and her fortune. She kept her eyes on the bishop, her uncle, whose oft-professed love for her had taken on a different hue when she had asked her favour. The taste of him lingered in her mouth. Yet the favour had been granted. She had taken her vow; she would remain here, in this cell attached to the church. As anchoress, a living saint, she would be left to decay in piety without the corruption the world demanded. Above the chanting, she heard birdsong. Her heart broke even as it lifted. The natural world thrummed around her in all its sustaining beauty. She mourned, but saw no alternative. Her parents were dead and there were too many wolves in the fo...