Dark North (Malory's Knights of Albion)

by Paul Finch

  She didn’t react, so he took her by the hand, and led her to the open coach door.

  “You can live in the comfort of the palace,” he muttered. “It’s the best I can do for you. Though many would die for such an honour.”

  “Oh, my love,” she said as she climbed aboard, “so many have.”

  Here endeth the Noble Tragedie of

  Lucan and Trelawna...

  About the Translator

  PAUL FINCH is a former cop and journalist, now turned full time writer. He first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of children’s animation. However, he is probably best known for his work in horror.

  To date, he’s had ten books and nearly 300 stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic. His first collection, Aftershocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002, while he won the award again in 2007 for his novella, Kid. Later in 2007, he won the International Horror Guild Award for his mid-length story, The Old North Road. Most recently, he has written three Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish.

  Paul lives in Wigan, Lancashire, with his wife Cathy and his children, Eleanor and Harry.

  Appendix I

  The Salisbury Manuscript

  UNCOVERED IN JUNE 2006 in the vestry of the nine-hundred-year-old parish church of St. Barbara and St. Christopher in Salisbury, the Salisbury Manuscript (British Library MS Add. 1138) – the only known copy of the The Second Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights – remains one of the most controversial documents in current medieval scholarship.

  Debate as to Malory’s supposed authorship of the text has reached fever pitch, forming three camps: the Maloreans, who argue that Malory wrote the work himself, as claimed on the title page; the Caxtonians, who argue that the London printer, William Caxton, or one of his clerks wrote the manuscript to “cash in” on the Morte’s success; and the Herefordians, who attribute the manuscript to a third person, “Pseudo-Malory,” who may have written in Hereford in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, possibly in Welsh.

  “There’s the notorious textual links to the Hereford, of course,” says Dr James Newton (Queen Mary, London), a leading Herefordian, speaking of last year’s discovery of common narrative elements in the Salisbury and The Children of Camelot, also known as the Hereford Fragment; see Savage Knight by Paul Finch for more on this. “Written as they are in different languages and at different times, there must have been some sort of translation or transmission of the story, but there’s still a strong argument for a connection. And Pseudo-Malory occasionally references Celtic mythic elements and a clash between the Christian faith and an older British religion, where Malory sees British Christianity at odds with Saxon paganism. And, of course, many of the stories are set on or near the Welsh border.”

  A similarly geographic argument supports the Malorean camp. “More than half the stories in the Second Book are set in the north of England,” says Dr Kayleigh Whybrow (Huddersfield). “Although the Morte D’Arthur was apparently written in London, Malory – according to some sources – may have been born and raised in the North. And several of the tales in the Second Book involve conflict with the Scots or with Reivers, which were pressing concerns during Malory’s time.”

  But Newton’s answer to this is simple enough. “Pseudo-Malory moved,” he explains. “The Cambridge scholars in the early nineteenth century dismissed the writer of the Hereford Fragment as the wife of an English nobleman, practicing her written Welsh. What if her husband lived in the north of England? Maybe there’s even a family connection with Malory – Pseudo-Malory could have been Malory’s mother or grandmother – and that explains some of the textual connections between the two books. Pseudo-Malory wasn’t writing a sequel to Malory; it was one of Malory’s sources.”

  Newton’s book, Pseudo-Malory: A Wife in Camelot, is due to be published in 2012.

  The Landsdowne Connection

  SPECULATION CONTINUES AS to the mysterious “Mr. Wm. Landsdowne,” who is named on the first, newer title page in the Salisbury Manuscript as having donated the Manuscript to “the Library.”

  While most of the 504 paper sheets of the Manuscript date to late fifteenth-century France, the additional title page was written on mid-nineteenth century paper stock from Liverpool. The added page reads “The Second Booke of Sir Thomas Malory, donated to the Library by the Hon. Mr. Wm. Landsdowne. MDCCCLXIII.”

  Exactly which library, and how the book made its way from the library to the parish church of St. Barbara and St. Christopher, is still unknown, and a number of researchers are investigating the subject, but investigation into the identity of “Wm. Landsdowne” has suggested a possible connection.

  Lansdowne is a field near Bath where a battle was fought in 1643, early in the English Civil War. A Parliamentarian army, led by William Waller, was positioned to defend Bath against Royalist expansion into the southwest. Lord Hopton, leading the Royalists, engaged Waller’s forces from an inferior position, and a confused and bloody fight followed, lasting most of the day, with routs on both sides. Finally, Waller retreated from the position, but Hopton was injured and his gunpowder was destroyed in a fire on his ammunition supply, forcing him to withdraw as well.

  Sir Bevil Grenville, one of Hopton’s officers, was killed in the action, but led one of the more important charges in the battle, and his grandson George Granville was later made Baron Lansdowne in recognition of Sir Bevil’s courage and loyalty. The title died with him, but the title Marquess Lansdowne was created a century later for John Petty, husband of Sir Bevil’s great-great-granddaughter.

  Initial investigation focused on the Lansdowne family, which is still extant, but proved ultimately fruitless; no record could be found of their having owned the book, or being particularly connected to a library. But the connection to the battle is possibly still relevant.

  Geoffrey Landsdown was buried in a churchyard in rural Somerset in 1649, with an entry in the parish records stating that he had died “a soldyr of the King,” although it’s unlikely that he was actually killed in battle, as non-aristocratic soldiers were generally buried where they fell or left on the field rather than transported.

  However he died, he is noteworthy in that there is no record of his birth, either in the parish he was buried in – St. Trudpert’s near Cheddar – or anywhere nearby. It could be argued that he wasn’t a local, especially given his trade, but there is a record of his marriage and the birth of his child. “Landsdown was married in St. Trudpert’s, his son Charles was born there, and he was buried there,” says Dr Celeste Sharp (Bournemouth). “Rather than assuming that he moved there, as is sometimes suggested, I propose that he changed his name. There were a number of reasons someone might change his name at the time: perhaps there were two Geoffreys in the same parish with the same name, and it seemed simplest to change it. Or maybe he just wanted to commemorate a battle he’d fought in.”

  However they came by the name, the Landsdowns lived in Somerset for generations, only dying out in the first world war. And an old record from a bookbinder’s shop, on display at a museum of town life in Taunton, holds the following notation: “rebind. goat lether. 504 pages, irregular folio. W Landsdn, 18s/–” The entry is dated 1863. It seems likely that this is the same “Wm. Landsdowne” who donated the book to the library, and maybe a member of the Landsdown family of St. Trudpert’s, who took their name from a battle their ancestor had fought in, in the defence of his King.

  Appendix I

  Dark North

  “Alle that I ever hadde or desired

  thy lede toke fram me!”

  THERE IS A thread of bloodthirst in the Second Book: already, in the first two stories, Sir Alymere (The Black Chalice) has been transformed from a loyal soldier to a hopelessly corrupt boy who dreams of murdering his king, and Sir Dodinal (The Savage Knight) has gone from a rather hapless adventurer to a berserk warrior seeking death as an end to his own fury. In that vein, we meet Sir L
ucan, once called “The Butler,” which in Malory’s day was not a household servant but the lord in charge of the court, alongside his brother Bedivere the marshal and Kay the seneschal. In the Morte, Lucan is one of Arthur’s most stalwart defenders, eventually succumbing to his wounds after bringing him home from his final battle; in the sixteenth-century English ballad King Arthur’s Death, it is he, rather than his brother, who throws Excalibur into the Lake. In “The Noble Tragedie of Lucan and Trelawna,” however, he has become murderous and pitiless, a tortured survivor of a loveless upbringing, bitterly exercising his fury at his dead father upon the bodies of his king’s enemies.

  Malory – or Pseudo-Malory, if the Herefordian camp is to be believed – has made of Lucan and Bedivere’s father Duke Corneus a veritable monster, who tortured his vanquished foes to death and drove their mother into an early grave. Just as the brothers despised him, for his cruelty and his “might makes right” mentality, and would have gladly killed him had fortune not robbed them of that duty, Lucan fears that he will become him. And though he rails against that fate, he also seems to embrace it: he keeps his father’s two bequests – the great sword with which he so brutally slaughtered his foes and the wolfskin cloak that came to be his emblem – as a reminder, and perhaps as a warning to others.

  The Romans

  “THE NOBLE TRAGEDIE of Lucan and Trelawna” is set against the events of Book II of Le Morte D’Arthur, “The Noble Tale Between King Arthur and Lucius the Emperor of Rome,” which tells the story of Emperor Lucius’s embassy demanding tribute from the former colony, of Arthur’s refusal, and of the subsequent war, which Arthur won, placing a regent on the Imperial throne.

  This remarkable piece of anachronism sits awkwardly in the midst of a whole fabric of anachronisms. Malory’s Arthurian world is set in the fifth century, and yet home to the technology and fashions of his own fifteenth century; of the ideals of chivalry itself, a largely recent creation; and even of countries and cultures that had only come into being a century or two before, such as France. Yet Arthur goes to war on the Roman Empire, whose collapse decades before his career was the only reason fifth-century Britain wasn’t Roman in the first place.

  In the Second Book, Malory (or Pesudo-Malory) brings Rome into his world, making them an Italian state and firmly part of the Renaissance world. It is no longer Rome, but “New Rome,” a contemporary Christian kingdom wearing the trappings of its former greatness and attempting to regain the lands and power it once held.

  So what is Rome? Lucius Bizerta – Lucius Tiberius, in the Morte – is himself evasive. He first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, and the source is unclear, but there are two possible candidates. Glycerius was the Byzantine emperor from 473 to 474, before being rejected by the court at Constantinople; his name was sometimes rendered Lucerius, which Geoffrey may have shortened or further misspelled. Tiberius II Constantine was the Byzantine emperor another century later, which makes him very late for Arthur, but he was known for his attempt to re-establish an imperial hegemony in the west. Of course, it’s possible that Geoffrey invented him. In any case, to Malory, he was the Roman emperor from Arthur’s time, established in his most important source.

  More than anything, Rome, to Malory, was the antithesis of Britain. The Romans are decadent and corrupt, where Arthur’s court are principled and honest; the priests of the Roman church set hierarchies and ceremony above the worship of God, where Britain’s virtue is protected by knights, and wise hermits, and pious ladies.

  But is British simplicity and virtue so untainted? “The ‘Noble Tragedie’ is filled with references to clothes, to games and songs and other fine culture, which had come to Britain in Malory’s day,” says Tamsin Redmore (Roehampton). “Where the Romans expect a land of barbaric savages feasting in smoky halls, they find instead a sophisticated country, where knights dress in the latest fashion and ladies are devoted to the Cult D’Amor. It’s possible that Malory is just appealing to the interests of his audience, but he may be saying something about British society. Was he simpy saying that the British were every bit as enlightened and cultured as their Roman detractors? Or was he needling his readers, highlighting the similarities between the two peoples? Perhaps suggesting that British society in his own time had become too soft, too interested in finer things? He’s judging them, and warning them. The British were complacent in their belief in their own piety, but in fact they were no better than the Romans.”

  And indeed, as Maximion tells Lucan at the end, the British way is doomed. Roman corruption is the “future” of Lucan’s world, the present of Malory’s.

  Might Makes Right

  IF BRITISH CULTURE is being judged, then so is British chivalry. The conflict between Lucan and his father highlights one of Malory’s greatest anxieties, and central to the story of Arthur’s war with Rome: the legitimacy of force.

  The Pentecostal Oath, the code that Arthur and his knights swear, insists that “no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, ne for no world’s goods.” This principle of war pursued only in a just cause is the heart of chivalry, and expressed over and over throughout the story. And yet, in Malory’s world, and even in other sources for the life of Arthur, it is often not adhered to.

  “Arthur and his court frequently quarrel with their enemies without provocation,” says Dominic McDowell-Thomas (Miskatonic), “and the business with Rome is typical. In Monmouth’s Historia, Arthur throws the Roman embassy out of his court, stating that ‘nothing acquired by force and violence is justly possessed by anyone.’ Yet he promptly raises an army and sails to France to make war.”

  Is Arthur justly responding to extreme provocation? Or is he spoiling for a fight? In the Morte, Malory observes that Arthur’s knights were “many days rested” after a long period of prosperity, and excited at the prospect of war with Rome, “for now shall we have warre and worshype.”

  In the Second Book, through the words of Lucan’s father Corneus, Malory is even more explicit. “Theer is no lawe but thine owen,” says the dead Duke, in a letter to his son. “Godde regardes him that conquers and makes triumphe in His name.” This is the lesson Lucan learned as a boy, and one he struggles against all his life.

  The “father’s letter” originally appeared in the middle of the “Noble Tragedie,” in lines 612-627, after Lucan’s discussion with Turold about his decision to don his wolf fur. Lucan reminisces about when he acquired the fur, and what it meant to him; to Malory, it was an indicator that Lucan has transformed from the guardian of civilisation to an avenger, intent on the destruction of those who had wronged him. But in many ways, it serves as the overall theme of the work. “The conventions of Malory’s time forbade him from breaking with a linear narrative,” says McDowell-Thomas. “He could use reminiscences, prophetic dreams, even intrude with his narrative voice and refer to other events, but he couldn’t simply drop in text where he wanted without a narrative reason for it. But Corneus’s letter is so central to the story that, had he been able to open with it, he probably would have done. Everything in the story is about the exercise of power. Lucius’s intended conquest of Britain, Arthur’s siege of Rome, Rufio’s seduction of Trelawna and Lucan’s vengeance; are all exercises of power, all shows of strength.”

  Even his marriage to Trelawna tells of the problem of force. The prize of war, taken from her family’s household when Lucan destroyed them for his king, she was a good wife and a dutiful one, but never loved him. She never came to be happy in Penharrow, and they never had a child. And when she is stolen away by Rufio, and Lucan tracks him down to be avenged, at the last she is lost to him; she lives, and he bears her home, but he cannot take her back to his home in Penharrow. Again, nothing aquired by force is justly possessed by anyone.

  And what does Lucan learn? Upon finally achieving his goal in Castello Malconi, Lucan finds his enemy unworthy of him. Zalmyra’s magic brings him face to face, in the end, with his father, and here the true conflict arises. Lucan
is confronted with what he rails against in himself, with what he could become. His ersatz father proves indestructible; the lightning that destroys it comes not from Lucan’s strength, but from God’s will. In the end, it seems, there is only one legitimate authority, and it lies not in the hands of men.

  Son of a knight and aspirant to the Round Table, Alymere yearns to take his place in the world, and for a quest to prove his worth. He comes across the foul Devil’s Bible - said to have been written in one night by an insane hermit - which leads and drives him, by turns, to seek the unholy Black Chalice. On his quest he will face, and overcome, dire obstacles and cunning enemies, becoming a knight of renown; but the ultimate threat is to his very soul. Malory’s Knights of Albion: The Black Chalice is the start of an exciting new series of never-before-seen Arthurian adventures.

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  Sir Dodinal the Savage is more at home in the wild forest than in the tilting yard or the banquet hall. Keenly attuned to the natural world, but burdened with a terrible rage, he turns his back on Camelot to find peace, or a just death.

  In a quiet village on the Welsh border, Dodinal believes he may have finally found a home, but the village is struck by child-stealing raiders from the hills, and he must take up arms once again in his new friends’ aid. His quest will take him into the belly of darkness, as the terrible secret hidden in the hills comes to light...