by Chris Tookey
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
The Book Guild Ltd
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Copyright © 2018 Chris Tookey
The right of Chris Tookey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 978 1912881 109
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
With gratitude to
James Branch Cabell
Lewis Carroll
C.S. Lewis
Mervyn Peake
J.R.R. Tolkien
and
T.H. White
Contents
Preface
1.Watched By The Lizard-Man
2.Village Matters
3.A Bit of an Adventure
4.Atlantis
5.Castle Otto
6.A Boy Called Mouse
7.Snakes Alive
8.Beware Falling Trolls
9.Small
10.The Fairy Princess
11.Mouse Droppings
12.The Teachings of Osprey
13.Across Atlantis
14.The Villa Honoria
15.Snow White and the Eight Dwarves
16.Roman Scandals
17.Morgana’s Magic
18.Return to Castle Otto
19.Things That Go Bump In The Night
20.The Werewolf Hunt
21.Sir Uther
22.The Witchen Knife
23.The Last Days of Theodosius
24.The Prophecy
25.Artorus Rides Out
26.Return to the Villa Honoria
27.The Royal Tournament
28.Proposals
29.The Return of Merlin
30.Mrs Scraggs’ Wooden Leg
31.A Slight Change of Plan
32.Partings
33.The Dragon Lady
Afterword
A Few Words About Disability
A Brief Foretaste of Volume 2
Preface
Shortly before my father was murdered by my mother, he made me promise never to publish these volumes. As a dutiful son, I obeyed his request. But one and a half thousand years on, as my own energies wane and my wife eyes me with impatience, the time has finally come to reveal the long-suppressed truth about my two oldest friends, Wenda and Wyrd.
Merlin – for that was my father’s name – confessed to me that he might have managed things differently. My father was not around as much as he would have liked to have been in their early years, or he could have prevented certain indiscretions. Merlin might even have forestalled the destruction of Atlantis, for which I know he felt responsible, along with several battles and more than one massacre. Still, as Wyrd grew up and my father became more of an influence, this less than heroic young man won renown as King Arthur, the Once and Future King. And Wenda became notorious as his disloyal Queen Guinevere.
Theirs seems to me one of the great love stories and by no means as tragic or dysfunctional as many have pretended. Wenda’s importance in the creation of our Island Kingdom has been undervalued and her character blackened for no good reason.
Though my achievements are few, compared with my illustrious father’s, I have inherited certain magical and shape-shifting abilities. As a marsh harrier, in summer I can often be seen hovering over the fields and lanes of North Norfolk. But I would never claim to be all-knowing, and have had to piece together this history from the reminiscences of many witnesses. All the same, it is – as far as I am aware – the truth, unvarnished and unexpurgated.
Wyrd was not, in the common sense of the word, Arthurian. He was not instinctively dashing or debonair. Nor did he rush to rescue damsels in distress. As you will see, most of the damsels he encountered – including Wenda – were more than capable of looking after themselves. And, especially as a young man, Wyrd suffered from what would nowadays be called disabilities.
My story also discloses for the first time the facts about my father Merlin’s lesser-known siblings in sorcery, Buzzard and Osprey. And it reveals for the first time the intimate connection between Arthur and Snow White’s eighth dwarf.
Previous chroniclers of orcs, goblins and other species have been guilty not only of suppressing important truths but also of what might now be called racial stereotyping. Many of these maligned specimens were perfectly responsible citizens until they had a few drinks inside them. Plenty of their descendants are still around and able to hold civilised conversations, provided the topic does not stray too far from association football.
I have also tried to avoid an even more common form of caricature: the notion that beauty is akin to goodness, and ugliness a sign of evil. I fear much blame for this may be lain at the door of the romantic poet Mr Keats, who wrote at the end of his Ode to a Grecian Urn that:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
My recollection is that Keats was only twenty-three or twenty-four when he wrote that nonsense. One and a half thousand years have taught me the precise opposite: that the truth is often far from beautiful, and beauty is not necessarily truthful.
Let me extend another warning to those of a sentimental bent. The Island Kingdom is full of deplorable behaviour, sexual misdemeanours and gratuitous violence. Unlike in the simplistic world of the cinema, not even dogs and small children invariably survive. There is copious bloodshed, in a multiplicity of colours.
The most controversial aspect of these chronicles may be some unsavoury but necessary revelations about Arthur. If you are of a sternly moralistic persuasion, please bear in mind that it is hard to be heroic all the time, especially if your feet hurt.
Wyrd is more than the childhood name of Arthur. Wyrd has brought you to this book, just as it compelled me to write it. Some prefer to call wyrd destiny, but wyrd is not some inexorable fate preordained by the gods; it is a web of events that are changeable, influenced by our own choices, by the decisions of others, by historical accident, by good luck and bad.
For hundreds of years Arthur and Guinevere were dismissed as myths, but now reputable historians accept that they did exist in the so-called Dark Ages, after the Romans had left Britain.
Many contradictory books have been written about them. It is almost as if there were several King Arthurs, or there have been deliberate efforts to disguise the King’s real past. In particular, the role of Guinevere has been drastically misrepresented. My father is to blame for much of this, out of political necessity and the need to placate certain interest groups that today might be considered sexist. Hence my decision to reveal the long-suppressed truth behind the legend.
Even now I cannot be sure if the world is ready for my revelations. However, in the light of ancient treasures recentl
y unearthed, I trust that more people may be willing to challenge the dominant view that the Romans were the first civilised people to reach British shores and that civilisation departed with them when they withdrew around 410 AD.
Modern scholarship confirms my personal recollection that the Dark Ages were not so very dark, uncivilised or unattractive. Britain was warmer then. It was less densely populated, with many unexplored places and extraordinary natural beauty.
There were many more species in the old days, and – with apologies to Mr Darwin, who saw a kind of beauty in the survival of the fittest – I find myself nostalgic for dragons, gryphons and other exotic creatures, though I never did care much for ogres, who were seldom green and never friendly. If you have ever wondered why these – and numerous other creatures such as fairies, elves and harpies – disappeared from the modern world, my history will explain.
This is Arthur and Guinevere’s story more than my father’s. All the same, I hope these pages will put paid to certain slanders, such as that my father was some wild man of the woods or a fanatical Druid priest. I have seen it written that the Devil was his father, and his mother was a nun. That is at best a half-truth. My grandmother was certainly no nun.
The legend of Arthur and Guinevere remains with us. I recently visited the Palace of Westminster, to sort out some political crisis or other, and found myself in an impressively spacious room in which every wall portrayed scenes from their lives – all of them misleading.
Nevertheless, beneath all the ‘fake news’ about Arthur and Guinevere lie a real man and woman. They remain a timeless reminder that justice, tolerance and equality under the law should be at the heart of any government, even real ones.
So here is Scilly Seasons, the first volume of The Island Kingdom, my account of how our too often disunited United Kingdom was formed. Whatever else it is, The Island Kingdom is a more accurate biography of Britain’s first High King and most scandalous Queen than anyone else has attempted.
May trolls not drop rocks upon your iPod, and bugbears never set fire to your hair.
Marsh, Harry R.
North Creake
Norfolk
1
Watched By The Lizard-Man
In 451 AD, our youthful hero is blissfully unaware of plans being made to kill him
A skylark sang, invisibly high, a hundred feet above the sandy bays and deep, sapphire waters of Atlantis, the most beautiful island on earth.
Bearded mermen, basking on jagged, inhospitable rocks, snarled at the unseen creature above them. They slid into the ocean, to purge their salt-caked ears of the noise. They hated anything that impaired their ability to hear wind fill the sails of ships that were their prey. The mermen fumed below the waves, waiting for the nuisance to go away.
Over pastures of green, ancient Lyonesse Lay to the east, and the purity of birdsong showered down upon the ears of elves toiling in the valleys below. One young elf sang blithely along. Nearby, his sister rolled her eyes. Not every elf is musical.
The skylark’s song gladdened the hearts of even the dourest dwarves, blinking as they clambered vertiginously up from tin mines on the craggy Cornubian coast.
The bird flew on, stretching his silver chain of song eastwards into Dumnonia. Bugbears, plotting their next attack, hunched their massive shoulders at the din, jabbing at their fire with branches they had broken, so that the crack of twigs drowned out the melody above their huge, horned heads.
Above a snaky stream the skylark flew, past the dilapidated mill where the baker whistled as he pummelled his dough, then further eastwards to where a village perched on an undulating hill. The skylark darted past the grove that was its home and hovered hesitantly over a flock of sheep. It peered to see if their young shepherd was with them. He was, and the bird dived swiftly down, its beak pointing towards the wormy ground.
The shepherd lay in his favourite field, his face immersed in the summer scent of warm, waving grasses. For the moment, he could forget his status as the weediest boy in his village, the one with fewest skills and least prospects, the one who answered not only to the name of ‘Wyrd’ but also to the nicknames ‘Crip’, ‘Cripple’ and ‘Freak’. He knew that he had one leg shorter than the other and that he was clumsier than normal children. He found it difficult to keep his balance, especially when someone shoved him, which was often. Right now was the middle of a delphinium blue afternoon, and he smiled at the familiar song of the skylark, as free and light as the air.
Beside Wyrd, half-hidden in the grass, a shepherd’s crook lay like a dark, extended question mark. But no dark questions disturbed his ten-year-old mind. He was aware only of the grasses tickling his bare legs and feathery breezes on his back, and blissfully unconscious of the crouched lizard-man watching balefully from the lower branches of a nearby oak.
Wyrd raised his head and gazed downhill, supporting his open, honest, not especially handsome face on his elbows. He rummaged in a pocket and held out a crumb for the skylark as it hopped up to greet him. He had taught the little bird – so much more modest in appearance than in song – to accept treats from his open palm. The skylark pecked up the crumb, swallowed it in a single, neck-extended gulp and opened its beak to trill a joyful cascade of silvery sound before it darted upwards into the clear, cerulean air, exulting in its youth, its liberty, the rapture of flight. But before it could achieve much greater elevation, there was a distant twang, a swish and the skylark fell to earth, pierced through the brain by an arrow.
“Oi, Hogfrid!” cried Wyrd, clambering clumsily to his feet and setting his hands indignantly on his hips. “I’d just taught that bird to trust me!”
“More fool, it,” said a taller, older, fatter boy, emerging from the woods with a bow and a quiver half-full of arrows. “Still, thanks for lulling it into a fatal sense of its own security.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Wyrd.
“Shooting supper, of course,” replied Hogfrid, picking up the skylark and carefully extracting his arrow. “Skylark and blackbird pie. Unless I can find a couple of hedgehogs.”
“For goodness’ sake, Hogfrid, don’t you like animals?”
“Course I do. Yum,” he added, plucking a few feathers off the bird. “Shame this one isn’t bigger.”
“Animals are our friends.”
“Wyrd, you are such a freak,” said the older boy, scornfully. “They’re not our friends. For a start, they’re lousy at conversation. Ever tried chatting to a chicken? Pigging useless. I like my animals safely tucked up under pastry or turning gently on a spit.”
“You are so horrible,” said Wyrd.
“Better horrible than hungry,” remarked Hogfrid, continuing up the hill to the village where they both lived. “Good luck with your mangy flock, nature boy. Let me know if any of them try to engage you in intelligent conversation.”
The younger boy wondered if Hogfrid really had the imagination of a tree stump or was merely affecting it. Wyrd sighed and stretched his legs in the glorious sunshine. If anyone had told him these were the Dark Ages, he would have laughed with the cheery confidence of someone who had never strayed far from his own village, harboured no ambition to see anywhere else in the world, nor seen anything worse than Hogfrid dismembering a hedgehog.
Wyrd’s father had taught him the duties of a shepherd and done his best to make him grow up strong and sturdy. The boy felt that he had let the old man down. He’d once overheard his father telling their neighbour, “If there was a prize for slowest runner or clumsiest child, that boy would win it.”
Every time he thought of that, Wyrd felt a red flush cover his face.
It was Wyrd’s mother who had tried to make him read and write, but his inability to hold a stick of charcoal for long periods made writing a long, hard process. “It makes my hand ache,” he used to say, until eventually his mother took pity on him.
Because everyone
– except possibly his mother – regarded him as the nearest the village had to an idiot, he was left to live without many responsibilities. Shepherding left him plenty of time to study the small world around him, ingratiate himself with the less life-threatening forms of wildlife, and practise his marksmanship on defenceless trees with a slingshot. Needless to say, he wasn’t very accurate, but now and again he thought he might be improving. On a good day, he hit the target three times out of ten.
Wyrd smiled as his best friend, the sheepdog Rulf, prevented the most adventurous long-horned ram from attempting to leap the chattering stream that bordered the meadow. The job of shepherding during the day was to guard the three-score sheep belonging to the village. They were small creatures, only knee-high to an adult, and exceptionally dim-witted. This made them easy to manage. They shed their wool naturally each summer, so there was no urgent reason to shear them. Their tails were naturally short, so they did not need docking. Hardy in all seasons, the sheep were also highly resistant to the diseases, intestinal worms and hoof ailments that afflicted their bigger brethren. Their only drawback was that they tasted awful.
They had been reared in Britain for nearly six thousand years, since the Stone Age. Wyrd knew this and was fairly sure that the curious flavour of their mutton – a mixture of grass, eczema and excrement – was responsible for the ever-increasing popularity of beef, pork and poultry.
He also knew that, small though the sheep were, they could be surprisingly heavy if you had to carry one all the way up the hill – usually because it had injured itself with an injudicious advance towards another ruminant of the same sex, or been savaged by a carnivorous predator, such as a lynx, wolf or dragon. Lately, though, even the predators had been content to leave them alone. They tasted that bad.
Rulf was far away at the end of the field, which stretched down the hillside to the stream, which was the home of otters, sticklebacks, kingfishers and the occasional giant crocodile. It was one of the latter which had eaten Rulf’s mother.