Stones and Thorns

by

John Presco

Copyright 2019

Chapter Two

Welcome to Dewville the home of the Plantagenet Elite

When Danny Dew and Poppy drove into town, it didn’t take long to find their new home. It was the one with the big boulder in front. There were some old Christmas Tree lights strung over it.

‘I hope this stone isn’t the main attraction, and, there’s something to do in this hick town!” exclaimed Poppy, as she lowered her L.A. shades.

“I thought you liked hick towns.” Danny jibed.

“Yeah! But not – real hick towns!”

It was Poppy who read the fine print and discovered the home they inherited was in Texas, and not England. After losing their home in the Kincaid Fire, they were desperate for a place of their own. He couldn’t take the Patti Page Empowerment sessions Poppy’s mother conducted in her home with the Scissor Sisterhood of the New Dawn. Patty Hansen had worked twenty-five years in the Napa Funny farm with basket cases. She had them making paper dolls to her Patti Page collection put on a reel-to-reel. Patty had a captive audience, and never understood why normal people couldn’t get along. The Scissor Sisterhood would make these mandala storyboards of colorful cut-out women making their way to the center of The Vortex of Bliss. Poppy sounded like Patti Page, and sang ‘I Went To Your Wedding’ with full maudlin justice.

Danny’s job in Clifford would not begin in a year. He would soon be glowing when he found himself in the company of men. Little did he know, Dewille was full of his kinfolk who had fallen on hard times, and were lured to this town founded by their ancestors. Walking into a bar they thought was open to the public, Poppy got the once over, and Danny, a dozen hard looks. Turns out these boys were Freemasons who preferred to call themselves the New Dewville Social Order. They had taken out the bar and threw in a bunch of old sofas. There was a refrigerator full of beer, and a coffee can with a slit cut on top for the Dew Dollars.

“Stone Cutters!” Danny said, then stepped towards the cowboy nearest him.

“My name is Danny……Danny Dew!”

“You two aren’t from Hollywood, are ya?”

“Why – no!” Danny answered, caught off guard.

“Why do you ask?” Poppy Chimed.

“Well, there was this nut-job, Cecil Fenwich, who wanted to make a movie in Dewville, called The Rolling Grail Stone of Jesus. He and his followers dragged that big rock you see outside, to town. He and his disciples got a write-up in the paper that is framed on the wall over there. Cecil claimed he knew Dan Brown. But, that turned out to be a lot of bullshit.”

Danny felt Poppy’s spirit leave him and glide over to the framed account, her phone out… taking it all in.

“Wait till my Woman’s Enlightenment Group sees this!” Poppy chirped, she all aglow whenever she captured collective narcissistic material for her White Soul Sisters of the Sacred Wineries of Sonoma.

“Say what?” A gnarly gentleman asked.

“Any of you fellows know how to grow grapes?”

“We don’t grow grapes in Texas. Just cattle!”

Poppy’s thumbs got to work and is now reading The Boys the Riot Act.

‘Think ‘Dewville Winery’ and a picture of a rising sun being reflected off the morning dew that gather’s on the bunches of grapes. Do any of you fellas know what a “boutique” is?”

‘I know what a Budweiser is, and that Texans drink a lot of beer! We don’t drink wine!”

“Wrong! Texans drink more wine than any other State. You’re number one in wine consumption!”

“We are?”

Poppy went into her newly acquired trance. Since she formed her own Wine Tasting Sisterhood, she had learned that hallucinatingg can work in your favor. Telling little white lies – is an art form. Telling Texans they are No.1, really gets their attention. Thanks to her father, Lord James Rosamond, as he liked to be called, Poppy had a vision of two labels produced by the Dewville Winery.

Rosamond’s Permission…employs the painting of Fair Rosamond down on her knees before Jesus on a golden cross. Rosamond is asking for permission to drink her first glass of wine. Her mother and father try to stop her because alcoholism runs in the family, and thus the Cliffords are right there in the mix, slugging it out with the cursed Plantagenets. Rosamond’s Permission is a right of passage for chaste young women of Texas.

Christine’s Peril…..is a deep blood-red wine that celebrates the famous alcoholism of her aunt, the world famous artist, Christine Rosamond, whose adventures with spirits replicated the Peril’s of Pauline. The complimentary wine is…….Dangerose.

Dangerosa is the grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was married to King Henry, and allegedly forced Rosamond Clifford to drink poison – at dagger point! She is the Queen Mother of the Plantagenets. Poppy had a vision of a wine that contains a scorpion, and is purplish in color. The bluer it is, the colder and more deadly. Dangereux is the most lethal. The rumor this wine contains masculine, is encouraged. The painting of Elanor finding Rosamond in the labyrinth, with flying monkeys and cherubs around her – with tiny exploding stars – suggests Dangereux is a intriguing and Magical Champagne . “Brewed for people who like to plot!” Poppy saw women in fancy restaurants playing a game of chicken with the scorpion, one considered a loser if it get poured in your wine glass. There is much shrieking and cackling.

“After your miscarriage, you’re beginning to think wicked thoughts like your grandmother, Rosemary!” Sir James told his daughter.

“Is this good, or bad?” Poppy asked.

“Let’ just say your creative side is – really coming out. You’re on your way to being a first class troublemaker.”

Poppy deduced correctly that Texans like to be seen as dangerous. They love to bond with dangerous people. They just might take to  wines that are forbidden – and dangerous! Of course there will be a wine for the Country Bumkin, the salt of earth type folks who think putting on airs is the greatest sin….

“Drink Big Rock Wine! Like there’s no tomorrow!”

“One of the biggest obstacles facing the Texas wine industry, though, is a lack of recognition caused by a tangle of Catch-22s. A million people each year tour Texas wineries, generating about $300 million in sales—an amount which exceeds the revenue produced by the wine industries in Washington and Oregon, combined. Yet both are ranked higher in production than Texas. National glossies like Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast rarely give Texas wines a mention. In fact, since statistics show that only 8 percent of the wines consumed by Texans per year are Texas wines, but 95 percent of Texas wines are consumed within the state, there’s no incentive for the Texas wine industry to advertise in national publications, nor any reason for those publications to tout Texas wines. And although Texas giants H-E-B (the largest retailer of Texas wine), Central Market and Spec’s Liquor retail Texas wines, that very fact discourages boutique wine markets and restaurants from supporting the industry.” 

http://www.davidorr.name/family/dew.htm

http://www.davidorr.name/family/dew.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Region

http://www.edibleaustin.com/index.php/people2/bev-artisans/406-future-of-texas-wine

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https://www.facebook.com/pg/DewvilleSocialClub/videos/

https://www.facebook.com/DewvilleSocialClub/videos/vb.1020634438025598/371770283438883/?type=2&theater

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/3241/dewville-cemetery

DEWVILLE, TEXAS. Dewville is at the intersection of a country road and Farm Road 1117, near the southwestern corner of Gonzales County twenty-five miles southwest of Gonzales. It is on the Old San Antonio Road between the sites of two defunct communities, Albuquerque and Sandies Chapel. Dewville is named for two brothers, John Frank and Thomas M. Dew, who opened a steam-powered gin on the site in 1885. A Baptist church was organized there about 1890. The community was granted a post office in 1894, and in 1897 Sandies Chapel Methodist Church was moved to Dewville. A two-story school building was erected in the community in 1901, and Sandies Chapel School was consolidated with Dewville in 1907. In 1914 Dewville had a population of fifty, a gin, a general store, and telephone service. Its population was estimated at fifty-five from 1925 until the 1960s. At different times the community had a blacksmith shop, a meat market, and an Odd Fellows Hall. In 1940 Dewville comprised a post office, two churches, a school, a cemetery, and scattered dwellings. The post office closed in 1955. The community slowly lost population, as the nearby railroad community of Nixon prospered, and the population of Dewville dropped to forty in the 1960s and to fifteen by 1970. In 1990 the population was still estimated at fifteen, and the Methodist church and a cemetery were at the site. The population remained at fifteen in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King%27s_Curse

 

Dangereuse de l’Isle Bouchard (Poitevin: Dangerosa; 1079-1151) was the daughter of Bartholomew of l’Isle Bouchard and his wife Gerberge de Blaison. She was the maternal grandmother of the celebrated Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was also mistress to her granddaughters’ paternal grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine.^[1] As the mistress of William the Troubadour, she was known as La Maubergeonne for the tower he built for her at his castle in Poitiers.

Dangereuse was a sobriquet she received for her seductiveness; her baptismal name may have been Amauberge.

Life[edit]

Marriage[edit]

Dangereuse married Aimery I, Viscount of Châtellerault, at an unknown date. She advised her husband to donate property to the priory of Saint-Denis-de-Vaux in a charter dated 1109, which means they were married before this point.^[2] Dangereuse was a woman who did as she pleased and cared little for the opinion of her peers.^[3]

Their marriage produced five children (two sons and three daughters):

• Hugh (died before 1176) succeeded his father as Viscount
• Raoul (died 1190) married Elisabeth, dame de Faye-la-Vineuse and had issue; he became grand seneschal of Aquitaine.
• Aénor de Châtellerault (c. 1103 – March 1130) married William X, Duke of Aquitaine, mother to Duchess Eleanor and Petronilla of Aquitaine
• Amable, married Wulgrin II of Angoulême
• Aois, married Pierre-Élie de Chauvigny and was the mother of André de Chauvigny.

Dangereuse and Aimery were married for around seven years before she left her husband to become mistress to Duke William IX; this became an infamous liaison.^[4]

Mistress to William IX[edit]

Whilst travelling through Poitou, Duke William IX of Aquitaine met the “seductive” Dangereuse.^[5] This led to her leaving her husband for Duke William, who was excommunicated by the church for “abducting her”; however, she appeared to have been a willing party in the matter. He installed her in the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers, and, as related by William of Malmesbury, even painted a picture of her on his shield.^[6][7]

Upon returning to Poitiers from Toulouse, William’s wife Philippa of Toulouse was enraged to discover a rival woman living in her palace. She appealed to her friends at the court of Aquitaine and to the Church;^[8] however, no noble could assist her since William was their feudal overlord, and when the Papal legate Giraud complained to William and told him to return Dangereuse to her husband, William’s only response to the bald legate was, “Curls will grow on your pate before I part with the Viscountess.” Humiliated, in 1116, Philippa chose to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault.