Book Title: The Immigrant Queen
Author: Peter Taylor-Gooby
Publication Date: 28th October 2024
Publisher: Troubador
Pages: 312
Genre: Historical Fiction
The Immigrant Queen
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Blurb:
Hated as a foreigner, despised as a woman, she became First Lady of Athens.
Aspasia falls passionately in love with Pericles, the leading statesman of Fifth Century Athens. Artists, writers and thinkers flock to her salon. She hides her past as a sex-worker, trafficked to the city, and becomes Pericles’ lover.
Her writings attract the attention of Socrates, and she becomes the only woman to join his circle. She is known throughout the city for her beauty and wit and strives to become recognised as an intellectual alongside men.
Pericles’ enemies attack him through Aspasia and charge her with blasphemy. As a foreigner she faces execution, but her impassioned address to the jury shames the city and saves her. Pericles is spellbound, they marry, and she becomes First Lady of Athens.
Sparta besieges the city; plague breaks out and Pericles is once again in danger.
THE IMMIGRANT QUEEN tells the true story of how Aspasia rose to become the First Lady of Athens and triumphed against all the odds.
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/4EvoOg
Paperback Buy Links:
Author Bio:
Peter Taylor-Gooby is an academic who believes that you can only truly understand the issues that matter through your feelings, your imagination and your compassion. That’s why he writes novels as well as research monographs. He worked in India as a teacher, in a Newcastle social security office and as an antique dealer.
Now he’s professor of social policy at the University of Kent, a Fellow of the British Academy, loves playing with his grandchildren and writes novels in what time is spare.
Author Links:
Troubadour Author Page: https://troubador.co.uk/author/glndwnle
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B001HD2YWQ
Book Excerpt:
Limander the slave, in love with music, meets Aspasia, his mistress, for the first time.
She stood by her writing-table in a wine-dark gown, her hair tied back. She wore no jewellery but held herself erect, like a warrior more than a queen, not young, not beautiful but the most handsome woman I have ever seen. I bowed before her, the light in my eyes and my breathing uneven.
The chamber was filled with the scent of magnolia. The view from the unshuttered window stretched out over the city to a sea that gleamed like polished bronze and away to fair Salamis. To the left I could see the white marble of the temple at Laurion, and the dark smudge of the entrance tunnel to the silver-mines beneath it, where so many toiled and died in a darkness thicker than the night of Hades, for the glory of Athens. Slaves, some from Mytilene. I shivered and prayed to the Fates for my fellows.
A jade Sphinx rested on the table and next to it a lyre. The inlay on the sound-box showed fair Ariadne, Princess of Crete, who loved Lord Theseus and was cast aside when he sought glory as king in Athens. It could only be island work.
I stilled the tremor in my wrist and lifted the lyre. She raised her hand :
‘Now play for me.’
She put her fingers to her chin and fixed her eyes on me. I breathed and struck the first chord, but the second would not come and the strings sounded broken music. The pit at Laurion yawned before me.
I bowed low, my mouth dry.
‘My lady, I apologise. Let me try a different song. My fingers are cold and I must court the Muse.’
She gestured and leaned back. I licked my lips, laid down the lyre and closed my eyes. I thought of Chrystophilos the Bard, blind as great Homer, who taught me in Lord Anax’s hall. I crouched at his knee when the wine-bowl went round and had ears only for his song.
Words came to me and I sang without music:
‘The sun came up o’er Salamis, the lovely island Salamis…
A thousand ships at break of day,
Yet when the sun set where were they?’
She clapped her hands together twice.
‘Salamis - so you know the tale of the lady who they say was my mother, who captained a ship at Salamis and fought the Persians? You choose well. I had not heard those words before.’
‘It is a gift of the Muse, Madam.’
The dark eyes studied me.
‘You are a poet, too? I’d like a poet for a bard, someone whom others will remember.’
‘The muses are gracious and send me song, when they choose.’
She nodded:
‘Now play something by Sappho. With music,’
I bowed to her.
“My tongue is frozen in silence,
A flame run delicate beneath my skin,
With my eyes I see nothing,
A trembling seizes my body.”
She was silent for a moment.
‘You sang at the harbour when they brought you ashore with the others, a slave to be sold at market. It surprised me that a man in chains would sing and so I bought you.’
‘Music is a solace for those who have nothing, my lady.’
I bowed again, played the first chord and sang:
“The old king sought out Achilles,
Knelt and clasped his knees.
And kissed the hands that had slain his son.
‘I come to beg the body of Hector,
That I may bury him with honour,
And speed his journey to Elysium.’
Great Agamemnon wept.”
She raised her hand and the ruby flashed in the sunlight.
‘They played that in the Great Hall when my mother brought me to sing there. Everyone applauded me, my family, my aunts and uncles and cousins, the lords, the burghers, the knights, the foreigners, the ambassador, even the serving people and the soldiers at the gates. All of them. I had a voice, I was young then and that was the first time I tasted glory.’
She looked out, over the city walls and the pastures of the island and beyond them the Middle Sea, into the distance.
‘Glory. It was the lure of glory that brought me to Athens, and I will find glory when the story of these times is written, but not through my singing.’
She paused and shook her head.
‘No matter. It is not a tale for a bard. Now listen. My house is honoured. Wise men will come to dispute here – perhaps Lord Pericles himself will be a guest.’ Her eyes softened as she pronounced the name. ‘You will play for them and bring credit to your mistress. Keep your tunes simple, philosophers like simple songs and intricate contention.’
She patted my arm as if I were one of her favourites, not a slave. I felt the colour rush to my face and bowed. She continued:
‘One other thing. People talk freely at my entertainments. You may hear and see things that others wish to know.’
She looked me full in the eyes. I could not meet her gaze.
‘You will tell me and no one else of such things. Now you may go.’
Outside her chamber door I shivered as at a sudden chill and walked slowly down the stairs, seeking to grasp a simple, thoughtful tune.
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Thank you for hosting Peter Taylor-Gooby today, with an intriguing excerpt from The Immigrant Queen. Take care, Cathie xo The Coffee Pot Book Club