Set down at last on their feet again, Miranda kissed away in one minute all the sadness the ogre had stored up inside him all his life. ‘This is my man,’ she declared joyously. ‘This is the Bestman of Ballyloch.’ And there was not a soul there who disagreed. ‘And who,’ she asked him, ‘who is the best girl in Ballyloch?’
‘Manda,’ said the Bestman of Ballyloch. ‘Manda. Manda.’
By the time they married a few months later, he could say the name of everyone who lived in Ballyloch, and could tell Miranda what every bird he saw was called, and every animal too come to that. After that he very soon learnt to talk well enough to make himself understood. Of course his work was more in demand than ever after the storm damage. Now wherever he went, he was invited in to eat at their tables and to warm himself at their hearths.
He was mending the roof on the weaving shed when Miranda’s father came in carrying over his arm the biggest and most beautiful jacket he had ever made.
‘For you,’ he said. ‘This is to ask your pardon, and to thank you for saving my daughter, for saving all of us.’ The ogre tried it on and it fitted perfectly. ‘You do not need to live out on your island any more,’ said Miranda’s father. ‘Come and live with us in the village. You are one of us now.’
‘It is kind of you, and this jacket is fit for a prince,’ said the ogre. ‘But Manda and I, we must stay with our swans.’
It was some time later that their first child was born out on the island, a girl child; and she was as healthy and as beautiful as it is possible to be. They were sitting by the fire one evening, the child sleeping in the cradle beside them. The ogre was silent with his own thoughts, thoughts Miranda found she could often guess at just by looking at him. ‘She does not know it yet,’ he said. ‘But when she grows up, she will know I am ugly.’
‘You are not ugly,’ cried Miranda. ‘You are as beautiful as your daughter is beautiful, as beautiful as your swans are beautiful. Do you think I would look twice at some smooth-faced Prince Charming? You’re my man, my Bestman, and don’t you forget it. I love you, every bulbous bump of you, every craggy crease of you, you great oaf! Now, off with you and catch my supper.’
‘Salmon or trout?’
‘Trout tonight,’ she said. ‘I feel like a nice fat brown trout.’
‘Well, you don’t look like one,’ he replied, and he was gone out of the door before she could find anything to throw at him.
In Ancient Time
William Blake once asked the question: ‘And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green?’ Maybe, just maybe . . .
England. First Century AD.
When I was young we heard it often, all of us in the village did, but whenever the old man began his story again, we listened rapt all the same. He was blind in his last years, but every time he told the story his eyes blazed as if he was seeing it happen in front of him as he spoke. He finished always with the same words. ‘See! He’s here! He’s here with us now.’ And he would point over our heads into the smoky darkness beyond the fire. Time and again I would find myself turning round to look, and I wasn’t the only one. Like the wind through the trees before the rain, we always knew when the story was coming. He would wait for a silence around the fire, lean forward warming his hands, and begin.
‘In ancient time before any of you were even born, I was a young man. No cursed Roman soldier had yet set foot in this land of ours. We were not then a beaten people. We were wild perhaps, quarrelsome certainly, but we were our own people.
‘My mother died in giving birth to me, and my beloved father fed me, taught me and protected me. Wherever I went I walked in his steps. He was a god to me. Then one day, whilst I was still only a small boy, he went off hunting into the forest with his brother, my uncle, and did not return. He had been attacked by a bear and taken off. Not a bone was ever found of him. That was what they told me. My uncle, who had no children of his own, took me in, and at once treated me as his slave. I gathered his firewood for him. I set his traps. I skinned his deer. I ground his corn. He was a giant of a man with arms like treetrunks, and the neck of a bull, and he had a raging temper too. It was not until I was nearly a man myself that I at last found the courage to stand up to him, to protest at how I had been used all these years.
‘“You whining wretch,” he cried. “Have I not fed you, clothed you, kept you warm through the winters?” And in his fury he took a great staff and beat me to the ground. Blow upon blow he rained down on me. I curled up like a hedgehog to protect myself. I would have lain there cowering in the dirt. But as he struck me he began to shout at me, a vicious curse with each blow, with each kick. And then after the curses came these terrible words: “I killed your miserable father, kicked him to death in the woods till there was no breath left in him. Like you, he too turned on me, and enraged me. Like this I killed him, and this, and this, and then left him to the bears and the wolves. So I will leave you. Your blood shall join his blood.”
‘Vengeance gave me all the strength I needed. With a scream of anger, I rose up and tore the staff from his grasp. I struck him about the body, about the head until he fell on his knees and begged me to stop, but I did not stop until he was stretched out lifeless at my feet. I ran then, stumbling into the forest, knowing full well that after what I had done I would never see my childhood friends again, nor ever return to my village, that I would wander an outcast for ever, alone all my life, a killer man, a cursed man.
‘I went west always towards the setting sun, and after many weeks, found myself high on a windswept moor, in amongst the sacred mounds where great chieftains lie buried, and the sea about me on both sides. It was a darkening winter’s evening. The howling cold bit into my bones and froze my spirits. For some days I had had little or nothing to eat, and no shelter either. I was a lost man, filled with remorse at my terrible crime, with nowhere to lay my head, no one to comfort me. I saw no hope, no end to my suffering. I wandered wailing in my misery through the high bracken that whipped me about the face and the grasping gorse that ripped at my clothes and at my flesh beneath, until at last I came to the edge of a towering cliff with the sea surging far below me. Here, I thought, here I shall end my life for it is not worth the living. I would be resolute. I would be brave. I stepped forward, but found that I could not, that my legs would simply not obey me. I felt a sudden hand on my shoulder.
‘“Friend,” said a voice. I turned.
‘He was a man still young, but older than I was, taller too and with a darker skin. He had eyes that looked into my very soul. “Come,” he said and, putting his arm round my shoulders, he led me away from the cliff edge. I found I had neither the will nor the power to resist him.
‘“You need food. You need warmth. You shall stay with my uncle and me,” he said. “We live close by. It’s not much of a place to live, but it is out of the rain, out of the mists. We have a warming fire and there’ll be food enough and plenty for another one. Come.”
‘So they took me in. He called himself Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, and his old uncle I came to know as Joseph of Arimathea. I had heard of neither place. They were travellers, they told me, who had come from an eastern land across the sea. They had come as far west as they could and were working a tin mine nearby. It would be hard work, they said, but they could always do with help, with another strong back, another pair of hands. So, for a winter, a spring and a summer, the three of us lived together, and side by side hammered and hewed in the tin mine. My spirits were restored and my strength too. I lacked for nothing, food, water, shelter, and most welcome of all, human companionship.
‘There was often silence between us, but it was the silence of friends at ease with one another. Both seemed often deep in meditation and prayer, and more and more I found myself drawn too into their life of contemplation. When they did talk they spoke of such wonders, such places and people as I could never have imagined. From them I first heard of the Romans, who already ruled their country and much of the rest of the world
too it seemed. It was a rare and wonderful thing, they said, to come to a place where the Romans did not rule. They had been as far east as they had west on a great voyage of discovery. They talked of mountains as high as the sky itself, of great temples high in the mountains of the east, of wise men and visionaries they had encountered in their travels; but most often they told me of their God, a god so powerful that he would one day prove stronger than even the mighty Romans themselves, and yet at the same time he was a merciful god who loved us, and forgave us, when we did wrong.
‘I listened in wonder to all of this – Jesus was a man I had to listen to, I wanted to listen to – and in time I began to ask questions for there was much I did not understand. “Who is this god you speak of? Where is he? Where will I find him?”
‘“He is in me,” Jesus replied. “He is in my uncle Joseph, and he is in you too. He is in all of us, if we want him to be.” This Jesus could seem somewhat obtuse sometimes. I was none the wiser. In all this time neither Jesus nor his uncle Joseph ever asked why I had come there or how it was that I had been found in so wretched a state, ready even to kill myself.
‘We were sitting silent around the fire one autumn evening. I was filled with remorse, as I always was when contemplating my dreadful crime. I looked up and found them both watching me. There was no accusation in their eyes, only a tenderness, an understanding that moved me at last to speak out and tell them my story. When I had done, Jesus reached out and put his hand on mine.
‘“Go home where you belong,” he said. “Your uncle lives. I tell you he is not dead.” He spoke with such certainty. “We will go together, for the time has come when we too must go home where we belong. We have wandered long enough in this wilderness. I have God’s work to do, and I must wait no longer.”
‘So early one morning with the autumn mists still shrouding the valleys we set off together. The closer we came to my village the more I worried how I might be received, and the more I began to doubt Jesus’ assurances that I would find my uncle was still alive. We parted by the river below the village, in the shadow of the great alder trees where the salmon lie low in the pools. I was fearful, and reluctant to leave my companions. I urged them to accompany me into my village. “Go on alone, friend,” Jesus whispered as he embraced me. “All shall be well.”
‘“If ever you need us, come to Palestine. You will find us easily enough,” said Joseph. And they left me to find my own way.
‘It was as Jesus had said. My uncle was indeed alive. More than that, he was a changed man, utterly changed. He fell on his knees begging me for forgiveness before the whole village. I could see at once that he meant it, that all the fury and cruelty had gone out of him. I forgave him readily, knowing only too well what agony of remorse he had been through. There was great feasting and rejoicing that night, for I had long been supposed dead.
‘But despite all my uncle’s kindnesses to me – he treated me with such affection after my return, like a long lost son – I found myself restless, no longer content to stay all my life in my village. I longed to go to Palestine to be again with Jesus and Joseph. So after only three summers at home I set off on my own voyage of discovery. I travelled over the sea into Gaul, to Rome itself, then by ship again to Egypt and across the desert at last to Palestine. The closer I came the more I heard of Jesus of Nazareth, how his words touched the hearts of the people, of the poor and the downtrodden, how he had given hope where there was none. Some said he made miracles. Some were calling him the Messiah. Some said he would set them free and drive the Romans from their soil for ever. He was on his way to Jerusalem, they said.
‘So I went at once to Jerusalem to meet him. There were very few people about. I asked after him in the market place. They just laughed at me and told me I had better hurry. “Why?” I asked.
‘“Why do you think there’s hardly anyone here in the market? Always the same when they crucify someone – half the city goes to watch – ruins our trade. It’s all his fault, that Jesus of Nazareth. It’s him they’re crucifying, him and a couple of thieves.”
‘“Where?” I could scarcely find my voice.
‘“Golgotha,” they told me and pointed up the hill. “Outside the city walls. Just follow the crowd.”
‘So I did. I joined the surge of the crowd as they packed the narrow streets, pushing and jostling my way through until at last I found him. He was staggering under the weight of his cross, Roman guards whipping him on like a donkey as he went. Someone had pressed a cruel crown of thorns on to his head and his face was running with blood.
‘Our eyes met, and he knew me at once. He smiled through his pain. “All shall be well, friend,” he said.
‘Swept along by the crowd, I followed. I was there when they nailed him to his cross and raised him high. Those same accursed Romans that now infest every corner of our land stood there and mocked him in his agony. But Jesus shouted no curses at them. He simply said: “Father forgive them. Father forgive them.”
‘He took almost all day to die. As I watched huddled under my cloak, my eyes filled with tears of anger, tears of grief, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Come, friend, we have seen enough. Come away.” It was his uncle Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.We left Jerusalem that same morning. It was not safe to stay. Every one of Jesus’ friends was being sought out and hunted down. In fear of our lives we moved from village to village, travelling only by night, and hiding by day.
‘One day, hiding out in the dark depths of a mountain cave, he showed me the cup for the first time. “This cup,” he told me, “is the very cup Jesus drank from at the last supper he ate with his friends. I shall hide it somewhere where it will be safe, safe for ever.”
‘Joseph was very tired and frail by now, and I knew we could not keep on running for much longer. “Let’s go home, Joseph,” I said. “Let’s go back to my land, my village. There are no Romans there. We’ll be safe. The cup will be safe.” He was too exhausted to argue.
‘The journey was long and arduous, so it was nearly winter before we came home at last. And for one short autumn we lived here together, Joseph and I, in my uncle’s house. Never a day went by that we did not speak of Jesus. We drank from his cup every evening at supper – it was one way we could feel close to him. To both of us the world seemed such an empty place without him. Sometimes he liked to walk up the tor at Glastonbury to watch the sunset. He found the climb hard, and often had to lean heavily on his staff. We were up there at the top one evening as the world went dark around us.
‘“Bury me here on this hill, friend,” he said, “with Jesus’ cup beside me. He is here with us now. Can you feel him?” And I could. I could.
‘When the time came, I did as he had asked me. I laid him deep in the earth of Glastonbury Tor, set the cup from the last supper in his hands and filled his grave. As I walked away, I drove his staff into the ground and left it there.
‘I did not go back until the snows came. At the very place I had left his staff there now grew a great hawthorn tree, covered in white blossom. It is still there to this day. Blind as I am, I can see it now, as I can see Jesus. See! He is here! He is with us now.’
The old man died many long years ago, and I myself am now as old as he was. The Romans are still here, but one day they will be gone and we shall be our own people again. The hawthorn tree still blossoms on Glastonbury Tor in the depths of every winter and, rest assured, it always will. Now it is I who sit by the fire and tell the old man’s story to the young ones. Each time I tell it I feel as if I am passing on something precious, more precious even than the cup that still lies buried somewhere on Glastonbury Tor.
KENSUKE’S KINGDOM
Winner of the Children’s Book Award.
I heard the wind above me in the sails. I remember thinking, this is silly, you haven’t got your safety harness on, you haven’t got your lifejacket on. You shouldn’t be doing this . . . I was in the cold of the sea before I could even open my mouth to scream.
Washed up on an island in
the Pacific, Michael struggles to survive on his own. With no food and no water, he curls up to die. When he wakes, there is a plate beside him of fish, of fruit, and a bowl of fresh water. He is not alone . . .
MICHAEL MORPURGO
The master storyteller
For more great books see:
www.michaelmorpurgo.org
www.egmont.co.uk
‘Excellent . . . Beautifully written adventure story.’
Observer
‘Dreamy. . . this is a thoughtful, elegiac story; the author’s many fans will not be disappointed.’
Independent
‘Michael Morpurgo’s latest novel bursts into life when the action hits the island and Michael starts fending for himself . . . an absorbing read.’
Daily Telegraph
‘The writing is in a class of its own. It is not just the presence of the Japanese soldier which brings this island to life. It is the author’s imagination and careful attention to detail...Hugely satisfying.’
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WAR HORSE
Runner-up for the Whitbread Children’s Book Award.
‘ I saw the grey soldiers ahead of us raise their rifles and heard the death rattle of a machine gun . . .’
In the deadly chaos of the First World War, one horse witnesses the reality of battle from both sides of the trenches. Bombarded by artillery, with bullets knocking riders from his back, Joey tells a powerful story of the truest friendships in the worst of wars.
This special edition of Michael Morpurgo’s classic tale is beautifully illustrated by award-winning artist François Place.
MICHAEL MORPURGO
The master storyteller
For more great books see:
www.michaelmorpurgo.org
www.egmont.co.uk
‘. . .Very moving, sparely and beautifully written and well researched . . . Michael Morpurgo shows us both the heroism and tragic futility of war.’ Jilly Cooper, Times Literary Supplement
From Hereabout Hill Page 11