Sixth Century Britain – the New Novel

Here’s the cover…

And here’s the synopsis…

In the Westerlands of those isles once named Britannia by the Empire and its vanished Legions, the brother of Ambros Skyhound is killed in a kinfolk-feud, which will ignite a vicious civil war. There are warlords who follow the new ways of the Christ-followers – those, too, who still defend their belief in the old order of the Oak Seers and the Great Melody. But the natural ravages of both Yellow Pestilence and the Endless Winter’s hunger may attack each side equally. And, in the midst of all this, Ambros has a dream. To unite all the territories of the four former provinces – to form a new Britannia Magna. It’s a dream shared by his teacher and mentor, Meridden of Sea Fort. And also by the blind song-sayer, Morgose. The journeys and struggles of Ambros, Meridden and Morgose through duplicity, betrayals, conflict, plague and famine, will become the stuff of legend. Yet that same legend, which should be shining a light on the road ahead is, through collective folly and the implacable forces of nature, paving the way for a terrible darkness.

Join me on this journey back to 6th Century Britain. Feel it! See it! Live it!

But, meanwhile, here’s the opening…

Chapter One

It began where it would also end. In death. At a fording place on the Ridge River.

The waters still heavy with the melt menace of the new year’s first fall of snow. Summer End’s Eve and the Calends of Novembres only recently behind us. Timid sunlight on mail shirt and buckler boss, the rust-red rays barely piercing the filthy famine clouds that seemed hardly to have parted for a generation. Trees so bereft that the Oak Seers would have wept for the gods’ blessings, beseeched promises of new beginnings. Forty foemen across the stream and blocking our advance. Spears shaken. Warriors shaken too: that chill-laden quaking as each man tested the depth and strength of his own mettle. Ash shafts crashing together. War hounds baying. A mortal challenge. While those on the further margin raged and ranted in return.

         The Empire of the Caesars was fallen apart. Dread had been bred in the bones of my father and many of his lineage before him at its loss. The bereavement still whimpered within us, all this time later. The word swarms sang of turbulent histories, while we struggled to fill the emptiness we had been bequeathed. Blood lines broken, divided. The weather gods turned against us. Pestilence across the Hibernian Sea. South too, among the Horn-Head folk. A pharmakos, ritual blame-beast, sought. And who better than the Outlanders and Incomers? So the Saesons scourged for our uncertainties. At least until they learned to savage us in turn. Yet, for some little while now, a collective intake of breath. Pause taken. Hope for the future, I thought. A tally of our stock, and just the normal cattle raids and cross-border squabbling – like this foolish venture – to provide so much of our entertainment. A time of relative peace.

         ‘Well, Master’ said the gleaming youth mounted alongside where I stood, and his bare legs hanging down the pony’s flanks, toes almost brushing the heather. ‘Any lesson here for us? Apart from the obvious.’ The weary sweep of his arm encompassed the frost-patched moorland before us, while his own hound, Charger, swung its great shaggy head at the movement, anticipating an instruction to hunt.

         ‘If I owned a gold solidus,’ I replied, looking up into those smoke-grey eyes, ‘for every time I stood in the shield-press, I should now be the richest teacher in all Westerland. Though I’ve not yet fought in one that added even a jot to my betterment.’

         The lad scratched at the red thatch inherited from his Incomer mother, wiped his fingers down the ring-mail coat that was one of his few conceits. It was always a delight to look upon his face, for his features shone, the skin translucent as though he were the living embodiment of Mithras himself.

         ‘Perhaps you have always chosen the wrong side, Mentor.’ He patted his pony’s neck to hide the smirk I knew he was wearing. ‘Or the wrong cause.’

The book also includes some maps, showing the way in which my Sixth Century, Dark Age characters may have thought about the lands in which they lived.  First, the region that they call Westerlands, those former tribal lands, which the Romans had called First Province, Britannia Prima…

Second, the area of Westerlands where the novel begins, in the White-Wilds, which we’ll later know as Gwynedd…

Third, each of the five former Provinces of Roman Britannia, now barely even recognised as distinct territories…

Fourth, the areas of Northland (formerly the Roman Province of Britannia Secunda) and Walls-Land (the former Province of Valentia), where some of the later action happens…

Fifth, a map showing my imagined spread of the various old tribal groups who, in 540 AD, still see themselves as distinct blood-kin, despite 400 years of Roman occupation. The map also shows the areas occupied by larger groups of Incomers (Irish) and Outlanders (Angles, Saxons and Jutes)…

And, finally, a map showing the way that “road maps” would have worked at the time – itineraries, in common use until the 18th Century, with highways shown as straight lines, with principal settlements, distances and a few other significant details…