Gog

by Andrew Sinclair

  And Gog, looking round the palatial igloo of reading matter about him, can only nod and say, “Pretty, that’s just the word for it.”

  Evans goes over to the window, peers out to make sure that the courtyard is empty, then bends and pulls at a panel below the window-seat. The panel slides back to show a small recess. “They don’t think of looking here, indeed, the limey spies. They’re after me, they are. Ever since cursed King Magus perverted the secret of Druid power and sold it to our enemies.”

  “King Magus?” Gog says. “Any relation to Magog?”

  “What else? The bastard son, the ruin of the Druids, the apostate, the heretic Magus, who with his wicked ways made the gods turn away from the Druids for the stink of his abominations. Tyranny, may it rot! Magus sat in his shame and oppression in London and worshipped the golden calf, and now the Druids are no more, except in our spirits, that is. We shall return.”

  Evans straightens up, holding a brown roll of parchment in his hand. He scuttles over to the door, opens it, checks that the corridor is empty, closes the door, turns the key in the lock, and returns to Gog to give him the parchment as regally as if he were handing over the secret of the universe.

  “There you are, there you are. The true story of Gog and Magog, from the very beginning. The original version, set down by some old Welsh monk twelve hundred years ago, and he was drawing on a tradition of thousands on thousands of years. We had nothing to do with it, indeed. The monk, he did. And if his spirit speaks through our voices and his pen writes through our hands, it is the spirit of the bards come again, come again, to speak the truth to the Celts and remind them of the ancient wisdom.”

  Gog unrolls the parchment, brittle and stained and transparent with seeming age and looks at the crabbed script that covers it on both sides. His eyes can hardly decipher the sentences and the words make no sense, for Gog cannot remember any Latin, let alone old Latin. He sees certain repeated words, Goggus-­Magoggus . . . Talnus . . . Brutus Rex. But he cannot understand this document which at last may give him the secret of his origins in the giant, from whom Gog sprang, son of Gog, son of Gog, son of Gog, son of Gog, etcetera, etcetera, since the first rising of Albion from the waves of the North Sea.

  All the while, Evans chatters on triumphantly. “There’s proof, it is. Oh, they’ll raise their eyebrows in the ninniversities, they won’t want to believe, mark you, but there’s the original fragment, they can’t deny that. It’s not the same as your translation, the one you brought me in thirty-nine, I told you, I could only use the half that was the true Celtic spirit speaking. Because half was spurious, the false pen of the lying limey, no offence meant, a man can’t choose his own mother. And there were omissions, indeed. There’s shame on you, not mentioning the old giant Evans who stood at Gogmagog’s right hand against the Trojans and never fled at all, the only one, but lay left for dead on the field, before returning wounded to Wales undefeated. I set him in the Latin text, for there’s the truth, the Druids told me when I was working on the vellum.”

  Gog pretends to study the parchment and allows his eyes to travel along the lines of Latin, as though he understands what he is reading. Then he says, “You’ve done a marvellous job. It doesn’t only look like the original, it is the original account of the fight of Gog and Magog. The truth of the Druids revealed to you. But, one thing, you wouldn’t still have the English translation I first brought you? I’d like to compare it with what you’ve done on the vellum, if I could.”

  Evans looks at Gog with suspicious eyes, his shoulder hunched under his brown tweed coat like the shoulder of a long-legged bird with a broken wing. “For why do you want your translation, that is half-false and half-limey, when you’ve got the Celtic truth between your hands?” He seems ready to snatch back the vellum from Gog, as though Gog were a sudden enemy.

  Gog cannot confess that he has forgotten how to read Latin, so he says, “I must learn, Mr. Evans. I must learn to tell when the limey in me speaks falsely, so that I can guard against the devil’s inspiration of my bad heredity. If I can compare my old translation with your Latin script, I’ll be able to see what part of the truth I saw and what I didn’t. And, in the future, I’ll be able to do much more, much more for the Celtic cause because I’ll be able to guard against the limey spy born inside me, who is always intercepting my true thoughts and putting down lies through my pen.”

  Evans is reassured by Gog’s explanation, and he returns to the recess and produces several typed sheets, yellowed and brittle with time. “This is what you gave me,” he says, handing the sheets to Gog. “But there are bad errors, mark you, which I had to correct in the Latin. Learn to avoid them, Griffin bach.”

  Outside, a bird calls, zit zit, zit zit, zit zit, three times. Evans hears the call, pulls a turnip watch out of his top pocket and consults it with satisfaction. “The martin’s call, that is. There’s the signal it’s safe.” He cups his hand about his mouth and whispers to Gog. “There’s a secret meeting this morning along the street. The Celtic Council. Now the war’s over, we’re going to send representatives to the United Nations they’re talking of setting up. We’re going to secede, we are. Form the Celtic Union, the true Albion, the old land. We’re going to petition for a new federated country, Britanny, Cornwall and Devon, Wales, Eire, the Isle of Man and the Western Isles. The countries where the last of the Celts are and where the Druids will rise again in power and glory, indeed. And if Magog and Magus try to stop us in London, why, we’ll burn it down like Boudicca, the fiery Queen. Oh yes, the Romans may have killed off the Druids in Mona, but at their backs, London was burning. And if they don’t let us rule ourselves now, home rule for the Celts, London will burn again, though I have to do it myself.”

  Gog is almost ready to laugh at the thought of Evans the Latin with a Druid brand setting fire to all of London, but he checks his laughter when he sees the fierce light in Evans’s eyes, as he pulls an old cap low on his forehead and moves towards the door.

  “One fire in Pudding Lane and the whole of London burned in 1666. They’ll see it flame again, mark you, if they don’t let the Celts have their Union.” Evans takes an old bottle-green scarf from behind the door and winds it round the lower part of his face. “I have to disguise myself, I do. They follow me everywhere. Everywhere. All limeys are spies, by their crooked nature. They’re always spying on me, the immigrants in Celtic country, and sending back word what I do to Whitehall, indeed. But they won’t know me now.” Evans swings back towards Gog, his face swathed in his scarf and his head swallowed up in his cap, but his hump making him the most obvious man in all of Totnes, if not in all the West Country. “Read you, mark you, learn you, and inwardly digest you the original Druid lore of Gog and Magog, as revealed to you in part and to me in whole six years ago in the original spot where King Brutus landed in Albion. And if they knock on the door to take you, Magog and his men, swallow it whole.”

  Gog looks with horror at the decayed inky hide in his hand and suddenly realizes he hasn’t had any breakfast. “You haven’t got anything to eat, have you?”

  “What need you food, when you have the words of the spirit?” Evans thunders. “Swallow it whole, mind you, if they come. You won’t have time to chew it. Swallow it whole, lest the truth fall into their cursed hands once more. Cymru ambeath, Gog Griffin.” And Evans turns and goes out to the clandestine meeting of the Celtic Union, slamming the door shut behind him and turning the key in the lock to keep Gog inside with the precious manuscript. At the slam of the door, however, the columns of books ripple and shake and begin to slide downwards in an assault of dust, so that Gog has to leap up and be a constructive Sampson and shore up the pillars of the temple of Evans from bringing down the roof on top of him. Choking and spluttering, Gog manages to push back the skidding volumes into a precarious equilibrium, before settling down on the cane chair to read the version of the discovery of Albion by the Trojans, ascribed to him by Evans the Latin. And as he turns the cracking pages, he does not know whether he
is reading a true transcript of an old document or a forgery suggested by his own imagination, half-Celt and half-limey and all myth, mysticism and muddle.

  The typescript is headed, A Translation from the Gaelic of a fragment about the early history of England, author unknown, probably a Welsh monk at Jarrow, circa 600 A.D.

  . . . In that dark awakening, when the green belly of the fell of Albion heaves nine times and the earth of the valley of Albion cracks long and the sinews of the hidden creeks of the sea beneath Albion press the sides of white chalk deep underground and nooses of closing stone squash me forth in green slime out of the cave into the gorge flooding with the torrent of the weed from the buried waters and I bawl in the hollow of the hands of the hills and the heaven opens its black pouch to empty down the washing rain and the great raven of the darkness cuts with his beak the cord of earth that plaits me to the cave and the wild goats slough their skins as a blanket for me and the dawn pours its yellow sand into my eyes so that I can first see, in that dark awakening is all I know of Eden. For I wake to find a monster lying at my side, his ankle touching my ankle. He lies twelve cubits sprawl, dressed in a tunic taken from the skin of wolves with leggings taken from the belly of otters. His legs lie white on the ground in two ridges and the white bridge of his lower belly points down because a wolf’s tail from his tunic falls between his loins. And the face of the monster is lean and pitted, his nose the iron blade of a scythe so sharp that his eyes lie far back in their sockets out of fear. And he smiles towards me and he says, Brother Gog. And I howl again and I rise to my own height of twelve cubits so that I may flee and there is a trap on my left leg and I look down and behold, where my ankle meets the ankle of the monster, we are joined by the flesh under one skin and one blood flows through our veins.

  And the monster rises and smiles and says, Brother Magog, Brother Gog. And he steps forward towards the South, swinging his right foot that is joined to mine at the ankle and I must stumble willy-nilly with him or fall, although the surface of his skin is cold and scaled as an adder and he has no more smell to him than a dry stone. Where he goes, I must go, and as I shrink back from him, I am tugged forwards by the pain of my ankle that is joined to his. As I cry out, he only smiles and says, Gog-magog. And he puts his arm about my shoulder so that our bodies touch at ankle and hip and rib, and we stride together with our three feet taking one hundred paces to each league.

  Behind us is the gorge which is called Cheddar and we go past the Hole called Wookey which is the navel of Albion until we cross eleven rivers, Axe and Brue and Cary and Parrett and Otter and Clyst and Culm and Exe and Yeo and Teign and Bovey, so that we may come to Totnes on the Dart river. And the soft knees of Albion hump about us as hills and the streams run brown with the peat of the moors and the badger scuttles away at our passing, only Magog stoops with his hanging hand and scoops the beast as a morsel into his mouth, breaking its back with a gnash of the iron points of his teeth as its head jerks from one corner of his lips and its hind legs scrabble from the other corner of his lips. Then Magog pushes the beast into his mouth with the flat of his palm and chews three times and swallows, while I root out the red-berried elder and strip off the clusters and squash them into my mouth. And Magog licks clean his lips and the iron points of his teeth so that he may sneer at me with the red juice running down my chin. And he will not rest, even to drink from the rivers, for King Brutus and the Trojans have set up their camp at Totnes and the giant sons of Albion must fight.

  Round the holy ankle-bone of Albion, the mound of Totnes, the Trojans have dug a ditch and set up a rampart of earth. The brush of the roofs of their tents rises as a thicket within their walls and a great hum of many men walks the air with the neighing of horses and the screech of iron against stone and the bleating of sacrificial sheep and the chant of priests. For Albion, wounded in his skin by the digging of strangers, has called together a score and four of his giant sons, my half-brothers from the Southland and the Midland. Although Magog and I are spawned from the mother sea herself that girdles Albion and supports him as an ark, the mothers of my half-brothers are from the three and thirty daughters of the King of Syria, Diocletian, who banished his daughters to the ends of the earth when they slit the throats of their three and thirty husbands. When these furies came to Albion, he sweated up devils in the likeness of walking oaks and they came to the three and thirty daughters of Diocletian at Ogbury, on Avon, where Albion threw up a great camp for their spawning with walls three and thirty feet high and one mile round. And there our half-brothers were begotten on the daughters of Syria by walking oaks, that went away and were rooted by Albion on Hampstead Hill in a sacred grove outside the marsh of London. And the three and thirty daughters of Diocletian died behind the great walls of Ogbury, each giving birth to a giant, my half-brother and only six cubits tall.

  The leader of the score and four giants met outside Totnes is Caugherigan of the single eye and the middle hand which grows from his chest that he may strike his enemies without loosing the ash tree that is his club and the millstone that is his shield. And on his right hand stands the giant Tregeagle from Dozmare Pool, who is condemned for rebellion by Albion to empty the pool for all eternity with a limpet shell and is now released to fight the Trojans, bearing a barnacled rock of three cubits’ girth to crack the helmets of the Trojan warriors. And Little Grim is come from Lincoln, bearing a pouch of stones as large as a man’s head and smoothed by the waves to cast at the foe. And Bolster of Portreath with the stretching legs, so long that he can put one foot on the Beacon and the other on Carn Brae, stands by Trecrobben of the ten fingers and the two thumbs and the twelve toes and no joints, and at their back is Termagol of the trident arms. And the giants of the Welsh country are there, Palug riding on his mighty cat with the jaws of fire and Annwfn’s Chief of the tusk teeth sharp as stakes and Tyrnoc of the hair of vipers and Pen Palach of the oaken skull and Manawydan of the dark net that holds in the darkness and Pryderi that leaves no shadow, so black is he. And they draw themselves up about me, making a rampart of stone and wood and night to the right and the front and the back of me, and to the left I am joined by the ankle to Magog.

  [Here Evans the Latin has made his only written comment on the translation – LIMEY LIAR, WHERE’S MY ANCESTOR, EVANS THE GIANT, THE OLDEST AND BEST OF THEM ALL?]

  And there are the twelve giants of brass and copper and iron come from the marsh of London, Hand of the two brass faces upon his cheeks and Hyle of the clubfoot bound with iron and Coban of the copper arm studded with bolts and Guantok with sickles growing upon his wrists and Peachey of the clashing maw and Brereton of the burning cauldron and brass gloves and iron-girt Slayd with the headless Hutton on his back with spiked flails for limbs and Scofeld of the axe-pointed tongue one cubit long and Kock of the hammer head and Kotope of the crushing ears of copper and Bowen of the rolling brass barrel set about with glass. And they draw themselves up about Magog, making a tower of brass and copper and iron to the left and the front and the back of him, and to the right Magog is joined by the ankle to me.

  And the Trojans come against us out of their rampart, leaving their ceremonies of blessing the new land half-done. And they draw up the spearmen in the middle squatting behind a row of shields, as close set together as the scales on a red dragon. And the Trojan horsemen stand on each flank, with manes of horsehair on their curved helmets steady above the waving manes on the necks of their mounts. And they await the charge of the giants with the wall at their backs and the gates of the camp closed. For King Brutus with his champion Corineus of the red beard, the hero of the Trojans, does not wish to flee back over the seas from Albion, the White Island, but to build a New Troy here or to die with all the Trojans, whom he has led out of captivity under the Greeks.

  And Little Grim casts his smooth stones so that many a rider finds himself astride a headless horse and the row of shields is broken as if a tooth has been pulled from a mouth. And Treg­eagle runs forward with his great rock and slays seventy hors
emen, crushing them down on the broken backs of their mounts. And Caugherigan smites with his ash tree many men and breaks in the ribs of others with his millstone and strangles yet others with his middle hand, so that the number of the slain is one hundred and seventy and three. And Bolster squeezes to death seven spearmen at a time between his stretching legs and Trecrobben writhes about a dozen horsemen and flings them in the air by a sudden straightening and Termagol sticks six times six men through at once with his trident arms. And Palug’s Cat grasps forty spearmen in his jaws of fire, melting the bronze heads of their spears in his gorge. And Annwfn’s Chief impales nine warriors on each of his tusk teeth sharp as stakes. And twenty-three horses and their riders turn blue and swell monstrously as Tyrnoc passes by with his head of vipers and Pen Palach of the oaken skull slays seven men at a blow by ramming them with his head against the wall of the rampart. And Manawydan casts his net of darkness about whole lines of warriors and strangles them in its black cords, while Pryderi makes him invisible in darkness, so that no man can wound him.

  So would I follow my champions, but Magog stands still behind his champions of brass and copper and iron, and I am bound by my ankle to his side. And the Trojans beset the giants as yellow flies beset heaps of dung, hacking and hewing at their ankles and calves, until Tyrnoc flees on bloody stumps and Palug’s Cat runs away with mighty mewling for its pierced paws and Annwfn’s Chief breaks his tusk teeth between clashing shields and engulfs himself in the underearth which is his house and Pen Palach charges the rampart so hard that his oaken skull becomes caught in a crevice in the wall and he is cut into twenty pieces and Manawydan’s net of darkness is severed in seven places and Pryderi, pierced by a barbed arrow, flees, leaving Manawydan without cover and pricked on the points of a hundred spears. Little Grim, seeing the fortunes of the battle go against him, scuttles back to Lincoln, saying that he must search for more smooth stones, which only are found by the East Sea. Tregeagle is cut so much that he limps back to Dozmare Pool, finding his penance easy after such tribulation. And Bolster’s legs are knotted by the many legs of the milling horses so that he goes off groaning on his knees and the backs of his hands. And the ten fingers and twelve toes of Trecrobben are lopped one by one until he rushes away howling and holding up his two thumbs for mercy. And Termagol of the trident arms flees with his prongs splintered inwards so that every time he strikes at a shield, the blow glances back and wounds him grievously in the ribs with his own wooden barbs. Only Caugherigan still slaughters the Trojans, until he finds himself before Corineus of the red beard, who lops off the middle hand of Caugherigan with a magic axe of sand-blessed iron and breaks the millstone of Caugherigan about his head and splits the ash tree of Caugherigan in twain with the point of his shield and slices Caugherigan into two parts from crown to thigh so that each half of Caugherigan falls away from the other on one leg. And still Magog and his champions of brass and copper and iron do not stir, even though I howl and plead to join in the battle.