A magical realist, quasi-historical legend of the loss and redemption of innocence, told in part through an allegorical fusion of Norse and Celtic mythology.
It’s not hard to see that this is just the biggest, most magical and yet most humane story of wild adventure that I could possibly imagine – which is quite therapeutic, believe me, everyone should try this – and if it seems implausible and unpublishable, derivative or cliched, well, at least I can read it to my kids!
Warning! Spoilers…
Synopsis
A young squire of the Teutonic Knights of Jerusalem, Konrad Bak[1], escapes from the fall of Akra, last stronghold of the Christian Holy Land, and makes an epic seven-year journey to his ancestral home in Denmark. On the way his destiny becomes magically entwined with that of Anne Wynne, an English noblewoman also fleeing the fall of Akra, and of Gustav de Boigne[2], a Frankish vagabond adventurer.[3]
The three central characters are teenagers roughly the same age, about fourteen when the tale begins. Lost in a hostile world, their fate continually separates and reunites them in a maze of loss and rediscovery that cements their friendship and eventual love for each other. Their journey alternates between the historical world of the Middle Ages and a parallel Otherworld where the bond between them is further entangled in mysteries, leading ultimately to a realisation of their true destinies and identities.
Over the course of seven years they are many times separated and reunited, finding and losing each other, rescuing and imperiling each other, buying each other in slave markets or losing each other in routs. When they are together they struggle with the choice of their separate destinies, to return home to Denmark, England or France by the many possible land and sea routes across Europe. When apart, the sense of loss becomes mythic – they seek each other with a growing desperation that in the end carries them beyond the world, via doors in the Celtic otherworld, across the universe. Discovering who they are, they realise they cannot part, and together they create a final destiny that has nothing to do with who they thought they were.
The villain of the story is an Ulster buccaneer called Rydearg[4] who they encounter again and again throughout the seven-year epic. Rydearg is emblematic of violence and cruelty against children in particular, but he is only one of many such monsters, human and otherwise, that the three heroes must face on the journey. In his life of violence Rydearg has lost his left eye, hand and foot. He is a formidable adversary, a relentless survivor with a bitter black heart.
Faced with such enemies, the lives of Konrad, Anne and Gustav become an accidental quest against the enslavement and brutalisation of children, a quest which ultimately fails as the violence of the journey and their childhood’s end lead to their own loss of innocence. Through a semi-historical retelling of the tragedy of the Children’s Crusade, it emerges that Rydearg also was once a brutalized child, and the story of his corruption is repeated in the destiny of the three heroes.
Through the journey the three friends grow to adulthood, their loss of innocence redeemed by their emerging adult capacity for love and loyalty. In the end, having lost their faith in humanity, they realise that they still believe in themselves and each other. This discovery illuminates their emerging mythical identities, and brings them to an eventual homecoming as legendary kings and queens of their own destiny.
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Above all the story is a cracking yarn of adventure and mystery laced with magic and mythology. In fast-moving episodes the heroes experience all the dangers and adventures that the mediaeval landscape, its peoples, sects and mythologies, can throw at them: through shipwrecks and deserts, barren mountains and wild forests, walled cities and monasteries, they meet and befriend or confront and outwit an array of Saracens, Templars, Assassins, pirates, ascetic priests, berserk barbarians, and all the castes, classes and guilds of the medieval world, across the untamed lands of the Middle-east, Asia Minor and Europe.
The seven years of the journey are told in seven cycles or books, structured principally on epicyclic stories of the three friends finding and losing each other, and secondarily on the four seasons that effect the chances and perils of a wandering life. The seven cycles all begin and end differently; in some the lead characters are separated, in others they are reunited, at the start or finish of each story.
The winter season is crucial as the turning point and crux of the challenge in each cycle. Winters involve varying stories of survival, loss and redemption: wandering in vagrancy, cloistered in a monastery, homeless in a great city or bound in imprisonment, a crucial quest or some bitter military campaign. Spring and autumn highlight the beauty and ethereal qualities of the young Anne Wynne – she vanishes, or returns, in the spring or autumn – while summer bears the strength and vitality of the young men’s adventuring as legendary friends and occasional enemies: their desert-crossings, dragon-slayings and villain-thwartings, or the rapture of battle and slaughter with sword and lance.
Together and apart, the heroes encounter and conquer many increasingly mythical dangers: lost spirits, medieval vampires, mountainous giants and other elements of myth that provide the challenges by which they grow. These magical adventures begin and end with Anne, seemingly expressing her sole destiny but continually drawing in Konrad, who wins Anne’s heart through a combination of courage, accident and the difficult discovery of personal love in an era of chivalry before such notions existed. Gustav shares in their mythic and romantic adventuring with an ironically cheerful and stoically human outlook, relying mostly on his sword and an accumulating stock of armour. He is a dangerous rock of plain humanity who frequently saves his friends’ lives or as often inadvertently tips them into deeper peril.
The central mystery of the story rests on the character of Anne, who from the start is ethereal and mystical, an incognito fairy caught in the fall of the human world. Her true identity emerges in stages over the seven years, and in the end she arises in glory as an aspect of Aine[5], the Celtic goddess of love and fertility. A fearsome enemy of rapists, her quest against the corruption of innocence is abstracted by her own loss of innocence, her rape, the passion of her underlying personality, and the fury of her revenge.
Similarly the true identities of Konrad and his friend or competitor Gustav emerge through the seven years: Konrad becomes associated with Conaire Mor[6], a legendary High King of Ireland whose stories are retold in allegory, in particular the many taboos imposed on him, such as the ban on his killing of birds, and his naked march to claim a Kingdom. Gustav, who competes violently for the love of Anne and for the lead heroism of the epic, emerges as an aspect of Aonghus, Celtic god of love and therefore related in spirit to Aine. In legend Aonghus is always associated with birds, so his fate is dramatically entangled with that of Konrad as Conaire Mor. It eventually transpires that he is in fact their son, in the same sense that Eros (Cupid) is the child of Venus and Mars[7].
Other significant storyline figures also undergo changes in identity. A mentor figure, the Turkish nobleman Talessin al-Khan, emerges finally as the legendary Celtic seer-bard Taliesin. Rydearg himself is revealed as an Irish Fomorii, the one-eyed, one-handed, one-legged sea-monster Searbhan.
The identities of the central characters, initially Danish, English, French, Turkish and Irish, are thus gradually transformed over seven years into significant figures of Celtic legend and mythology. The transformation is accomplished largely through the resolution of mysteries that confront Konrad in dreamlike journeys into the Otherworld and beyond: he encounters Anne, Gustav and other storyline characters in epic guises of myth and legend, and gradually pieces together the mystery of their identity and his own.
By the seventh book the heroes find that their destiny is so closely shared, their love and loyalty to each other so great, that they cannot willingly part. Arriving at last in western Europe they travel together to their homelands in France, Denmark and England, but at each point they find they cannot say goodbye, and agree to journey further to see each other home.
Confused by their merging destinies, but compelled to pursue the Irish villain of the tale, they journey at last to Ireland, where their legend joins with that of the great Ulster warrior Cu Chullain in his final magical battle. They defeat and kill Rydearg, Gustav as Aonghus meets his true love the swan-woman Caer, and Anne and Konrad at last throw themselves into each other’s arms.
Victorious in the end, and reconciled to their own downfall as adults, the lovers settle in wild lands west of everything, far from home, where it is easy to believe they will live happily ever after.
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An alternative telling of the story is set in the modern age, near future, with a collapsed Middle-east and disunited Europe in turmoil leading to a chaotic refugee flux from Palestine through Lebanon and Syria into Turkey and Europe. This more realistic theme does not lend itself to the idea of magical solutions to the essential problems of growing up, so it is not really a viable alternative for the magical scale of the story I want to write. It is perhaps most useful as a prism through which to see (and write) the story: events in the 13th century should be plausible in a 21st century context as well. Thinking of the characters as modern people adds depth and dimension to their characters, as well as contextual richness to the settings in which they find themselves.
Admittedly the medieval setting is also unlikely to appeal to teenage readers, especially if there is any suggestion that it is “educational” on the history or peoples of that period. The context of the times is kept in the background as much as possible, with the foreground firmly occupied by the protagonists’ inner lives and the mythology that emerges around them. In a deliberate appeal to the adolescent mind the story is individualistic, even contemptuous of “bigger pictures” such as geopolitics or any type of culture other than individual expression. As the characters emerge as young adults they eventually come to admit the existence of a valid adult world, but they never really participate in it, rather they sharpen their means of rebellion against it.
Their rebellion stems largely from their destructive experience as refugees in a world without even the idea of safe haven or asylum. They suffer the loss of their childhood most acutely because they also lose the stability of a normal life. They desperately grieve their families and friends, suffer ordinary teenage preoccupations that they cannot easily explore, and instinctively regret the truncation of their practical and spiritual education towards the things they aspire to be as adults. Gustav, a free spirit to begin with, is the least effected by this but is alienated by the loss of his honest trade as a merchant sailor. A robust personality, he turns to the criminal life of a vagabond with ease, but not without bitterness.
A key development in the story is their growth and maturation as young adults, and the emergence of their skills both ordinary and extraordinary. They learn to love each other in an era before romantic ideals; they discover loyalty when betrayal and venality are normal; they find magical and mythical power in the midst of a Christian stranglehold on the human spirit; and the two young men develop tremendous fighting skills when this is the yardstick by which most men are valued. In one cycle Konrad and Gustav are reunited by a momentous military victory and are knighted by the Holy Roman Emperor himself. In another cycle Anne and Konrad find each other across the gulf of stars but are lost, to be saved only by Gustav who rescues them and severs the enchantment.
Their growth as young adults is paralleled by their loss of innocence, their corruption from within by the challenges and dangers of adulthood. Idealistically they make an enemy of a villain who has corrupted their childhood, and widen their vengeful quest to include all who would do so, but are themselves corrupted and tainted by the quest. Konrad, who is no stranger to killing even from the start, learns that against some forms of human evil, killing is not enough. Anne, damaged by rape, learns that forgiveness is a more powerful weapon. Gustav, a wild, Dionysian figure, revels in his loss of innocence and is never challenged by the contradiction.
They are never idealized young people, having all the hang-ups, passions and agonies of typical teenagers and young adults. Their fall is genuine – they do a lot of bad things, and only come to any sense of conscience when they are older. Their story is comparable with that of Rydearg at a similar age. There is an implied choice, which they make with the wisdom of youth, to continue on that path or to find their own way to adulthood.
Their hang-ups are a significant aspect of the story, since they encounter every situation through the prism of their strengths and weaknesses. Alienated, disillusioned, confused, horny, wanting to just hang out with other young people, for a long period their wild adolescence leads them away from their goals, and always complicates and confuses matters.
The epic is thus an allegory of childhood’s end, of growing up and the changes in identity and personality that go with it. The birds that recur throughout the story, the swans in particular, are typical of Celtic myth, recalling the ugly duckling story as a metaphor for the adolescent struggle. At several points in the story there are transformations into swans, including the first significant magical event in the first chapter and the main theme of the fourth cycle.
Key aspects of their underlying character are drawn as widely as possible from myth. Gustav’s encounter and discourse with a great black bird recalls the killing of the sphinx by Oedipus. His kinship with Aine and Conaire Mor as mother and father is also Oedipal, with the twist that the father (Konrad) kills the son. The identification of Aonghus with Eros provides many clues to his headstrong character, such as his love of archery and the chaos he seems to create everywhere. Anne’s passionate revenge recalls goddesses from Artemis to Astarte, and her death and resurrection in cycles 5 and 6 derive from the fate of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess and precursor to all such goddesses in later mythology.
The sense of a quest builds slowly in each cycle, illustrated by encounters with children under the brutal occupation of adults in the mediaeval world: children caught in war zones, in shipwreck and piracy, children in slavery or terrible poverty, prevented from speaking their own language or ever going home. The three young heroes begin as witnesses to cruelty, by their own youth helpless or unable to act. The toughening experience of the first cycle leads them to action in the second and third, when their emerging capacity for action leads them to intervene in the plight they have witnessed.
In the fourth cycle this virtuous tale turns sour, as they encounter the cynicism of old Europe and enter the ennui of later adolescence. They turn bad, run wild in Constantinople street gangs, fight savagely against authority and each other. They almost forget their desire to return home, and utterly forget their quest as they brutalise and kill other teenagers in the carnal landscape of old Constantinople before its ultimate fall.
As they pass this crisis they recover the threads of their journey, achieving some truly spectacular rescues in their quest, but their view of things is increasingly adult, varying with their personalities: Konrad becomes opportunistic, Gustav avaricious, Anne frankly lascivious.
Nevertheless they begin with innocent ideals mainly derived from religious upbringing, and a large part of their loss of innocence stems from their loss of faith. The Christian church has been defeated across most of the world they must travel, so for years they are unable to practice their beliefs. Their return to Europe is dominated by a realisation of the cruelty and corruption of the church, marking them out as heretics and thus in as much danger in their own spiritual homelands as in the Saracen lands of the Middle-east. Gustav is the one most free of Christian prejudices, and loses the least by this corrupting journey, but even he is disturbed by the loss of sanctity in his imagined mother church.
Despite this loss of faith, the three heroes share a self-belief that is symbolized by the godlike presence of greater ideals that their emerging identities are based on – a greatness that people can believe in. Although in the end they realise that their quest is futile, they discover a love and loyalty to each other that cannot be corrupted.
But more importantly, they win! Rydeargh is killed in his sea-monster form, they all fall in love at last and are transported as champions of their own destiny, as much Kings and Queens of the Small World as they are undoubtedly young nobles of the highest rank in this one.
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Endnotes
‘Once their origin is know [faeries] are bound to return home, in most cases never to be seen again. One wonders at the reason for this. Perhaps it is simply that the Otherworldly beings fear retribution once their non-human origin is revealed; given the persecution meted out to anyone who showed any unusual abilities in the Middle Ages this would not be surprising. It seems as though there is an Otherworldly law operating here as well – those who are born in the Otherworld may only sojourn in this world as long as their secret is kept.’[14]
[1] pron. Bach
[2] Pron. d’bWANya
[3] Love triangles between two men and a woman are common if not universal in Celtic myth.
[4] pron. RYd’ck
[5] pron. AY in a
[6] Konrad also has echoes of the sun-god Lugh, who slew the cyclopean monster Balor of the Fomorii and was the Father of Cu Chullain. These relationships are explored in Konrad’s antagonism with Rydearg and his encounter at the end with Cu Chullain himself.
[7] Turquoise is associated with horsemanship, as in Gustav’s ride with the Mongols, and with protection for sailors. It is also considered to bring luck to travellers: Gustav is turquoise and is at some point seen as a blue stone. Anne I presume is diamond and Konrad is cornelian. The stones are further explained by the emerald of the Holy Grail which fell from the crown of Lucifer after being struck by the sword of Michael. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the grail to a safe place where they were guarded by a king. Christ’s blood is a ruby.
[8] From Tristan and Iseult: “…on a day when certain merchants of Norway, having lured Tristan to their ship, bore him off as a rich prize, though Tristan fought hard, as a young wolf struggles, caught in a gin. But it is a truth well proved, and every sailor knows it, that the sea will hardly bear a felon ship, and gives no aid to rapine. The sea rose and cast a dark storm round the ship and drove it eight days and eight nights at random, till the mariners caught through the mist a coast of awful cliffs and sea-ward rocks whereon the sea would have ground their hull to pieces: then they did penance, knowing that the anger of the sea came of the lad, whom they had stolen in an evil hour, and they vowed his deliverance and got ready a boat to put him, if it might be, ashore: then the wind, and sea fell and the sky shone, and as the Norway ship grew small in the offing, a quiet tide cast Tristan and the boat upon a beach of sand.”
[9] The two refer to each other by surname, Bak and de Boigne
[10] According to the classical geographer Strabo of Amasia (62 BCE-24 CE), at some time in the distant past the Orontes river flowed for some of its length underground.
[11] Taliessin or Taliesin was a 6th century Welsh Bard about whom almost nothing is known except that he wrote a book of 57 poems called the Book of Taliessin. In Celtic mythology Taliessin has been elevated to a seer and changeling often depicted as an Eagle in journeys to the otherworld. He accidentally tasted a greal of all-seeing wisdom. His name means Shining Brow. See Druid Magic: The Practice of Celtic Wisdom by Maya Magee Sutton (Google Books) or The Book of Taliesin http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/llyfrtaliesin.html
[12] Spying out a stall selling dried meats and fruits he is surprised to see the Turkish nobleman, his earlier victim, the mark of the stone still on his head and his servant following him. Konrad ducks out of sight to avoid being seen, knowing the servant got a good look at him, but his movement attracts the suspicion of the stall holder, who shouts and throws him out into the dusty street. Everyone in the street turns to look at him. The servant points and shouts excitably. The nobleman looks as though he has been looking for Konrad, raises his hand and begins urgently to speak. Konrad leaps into action, hurdles a stall, is halted by one of these great scimitar wielding black men, turns back and finds the nobleman barring his way, his hand still raised. Konrad throws himself directly at the nobleman, swinging his sword-staff in a massive blow against the head, bringing him down a second time. He runs wildly, hoping he has killed the man this time. The market seems to close in on him, a guard swings his scimitar, he ducks and throws his shoulder into the man’s muscular stomach, but the impact throws him off balance and he sprawls into the dust. Hands are on him. He is dragged to his feet, a punch lands in his face, but there is the sudden hissing sting of a crossbow bolt striking, a scream and he finds himself free. He runs again, and now Gustav is with him, both running like lunatics.
[13] Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, is often depicted riding a horse with a foal, suggesting a connection with the fertility goddess.
[14] Matthews, 1996. ‘The Knight of the Swan’ in Baring-Gould, 1996. Myths of the Middle Ages. Cassell London
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Michael Ifans 