Caesar's Sword (II): Siege of Rome

As promised, here is the shiny new cover for the second part of my trilogy set in the Late Roman Empire! I absolutely love it, and thanks go to the talented folks at More Visual Ltd for this one. 

Below is a link to the book on Amazon:

Caesar's Sword (II): Siege of Rome

Caesar's Sword

Book One of my 'Caesar's Sword' trilogy - Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death - will be available as a FREE download on Kindle from March 24th-26th:

Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death on Amazon

I am also offering three paperback copies of the novel as prizes in a Goodreads competition. The competition runs for four weeks, beginning on April 1st, and I'll provide a link when it goes live. 

Other developments include a brand new shiny cover for Book Two: Siege of Rome, which I shall hopefully reveal next week, and work in progress on the third and final book in the series, provisionally titled Caesar's Sword (III): Flame of the West. 

As a reminder, here is the plot summary for Book One:

It is the year 568 AD. From his monastic refuge in Brittany, King Arthur’s aged grandson, Coel, begins to write the incredible story of his life. Now a monk, he is determined to complete his chronicle before death overtakes him. 

His tale begins shortly after the death of his famous grandfather at the Battle of Camlann. Britain is plunged into chaos, and Coel and his mother are forced to flee their homeland. They take with them Arthur’s famous sword, Caledfwlch, once possessed by Julius Caesar. Known to the Romans as The Red Death, it is said to possess unearthly powers. 

When he grows to adulthood, Cleo enlists in the Roman army under General Flavius Belisarius, the most famous soldier of the age, and serves in the Roman invasion of Africa. He makes an enemy of the corrupt Empress of the East, Theodora, and falls into the clutches of Gelimer, the mad King of the Vandals. 

Caesar's Sword (I): The Red Death follows the adventures of a British warrior of famous descent in the glittering, lethal world of the Late Roman Empire. From the riotous streets of Constantinople, to the racetrack of the Hippodrome and the bloodstained deserts of North Africa, he must fight to recover his birthright and his pride...

The wonder of Troy

I'm back from my twelve-day break in Turkey, complete with a surfeit of amazing memories and a nasty cough that is proving very difficult to shake off.

Rather than bore readers of this blog with a 'What I did on my holidays'-style post, I would like to talk a little about one of the many incredible historical sites I visited - namely Troy, or the ruins in northwest Anatolia generally (but not conclusively) identified as the site of the historical city made famous in Homer's Iliad.

It is strangely difficult to describe my feelings when I visited the site. I had read the Iliad at university, and have been generally aware of the story of Hector and Achilles, Helen and Paris etc for as long as I can remember. The story itself has never filled me with any great passion - for instance, I always wanted Hector to beat the crap out of Achilles - and the 2004 film Troy, starring Brad Pitt, struck me as a campy load of nonsense.

That said, Homer's epic is deathless, and I was filled with a strange sense of awe while exploring its ruins: it was a bit like being informed that here was the historical Camelot, and over there were the remains of the Round Table, and over there was where Queen Guinevere used to take her bath...etcetera. I wandered about in a kind of daze, patting the ancient walls and trying to listen intently to the guide as he explained the site's complex history.

More than just a pile of rubble

Anyone visiting the site and expecting to find the vast, glittering city of Homer's imagination is doomed to disappointment. Compared with the ruins of other settlements in the region, such as the great Roman hilltop city of Pergamon, Troy was never very big, and at its peak probably never housed more than 7000 people. Some of my companions were dismayed by this, but for me it only made the place seem more genuine and exciting: the Camelot of the historical Arthur, assuming he ever existed, would have most likely been a rough timber hill fort rather than the splendid medieval palace described in Malory and Tennyson.

There is no space here to describe every stage of the city's existence, but I'll attempt a quick summary. Troy was founded in roughly 3000 BC, and flourished thanks to its control of the Dardanelles, through which merchant vessels had to pass. A series of migrations and earthquakes took their toll, and at some point early Troy appears to have been burned to the ground. It is possible that the story of the 'Wooden Horse of Troy' was inspired by some natural disaster hitting the city: the horse was apparently one of the symbols of Poseidon, god of the sea.

Ancient ramp leading to the royal hall of early Troy

The Trojans were a resilient bunch, and kept rebuilding their walls almost as quickly as they fell over. Troy VII, as the archeologists term it, is reckoned to be the one immortalised in the Iliad. This version of the city flourished from about the mid-13th century BC to around 1184, when it was all but destroyed by war and fire. Exactly who was fighting who and why is a bit unclear, but it seems most likely that the Greeks wanted to break the Trojan stranglehold on the Dardanelles (nothing to do with abducted princesses, sadly), while the Trojans were supported by peoples like the Hittites. Whether any of Homer's characters existed is also unclear, but there are debatable references in ancient accounts to various kings of Troy, one of whom is called 'Priamos' (possibly the King Priam of the Iliad).

Despite various disasters, Troy continued to endure into the classical Roman period, when it benefited from the patronage of figures such as Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Augustus and Hadrian. This extremely long and complicated history means that the surviving ruins are a mosaic of different eras: the remains of Hadrian's odeon sit beside a roofless council chamber probably used by Bronze Age Trojan kings and their councillors; the stump of a fortified tower built in 1300 BC overlooks a wide ramp leading up to the foundations of a royal hall dating from a thousand years earlier. And so on. The only false note is struck by the massive wooden horse erected outside the grounds for the benefit of tourists, though it was fun to climb around inside.

Possibly not the original wooden horse...

So what at first looks like a scattered and not terribly impressive pile of rubble is really one of the most fascinating sites anyone could hope to see. Thank God - or the gods - that I was lucky enough to do so...

The Hooded Man

This will be my last post for a few weeks before I go on holiday - huzzah! Before I go, here is the latest instalment of my Robin Hood serial, The Hooded Man. It is available on Kindle and will be on *FREE* download from March 1st-3rd.

Robin has been gone a while, and he returns to England to find all not as it was...

Summer, 1242 AD. King Henry III of England is locked in a disastrous war with his rival, the King of France, and about to engage the French army at Taillebourg.

Serving in the English army is a captain of archers named Robin Hood. Forced to leave his homeland, Robin has spent fourteen years in exile, serving as a soldier in various garrisons and embracing the heresy of the Cathars.

After the English army suffers a catastrophic defeat, Robin obtains a royal pardon from the King and makes his way back to England, hoping to see his beloved Matilda again. In his long absence, the legend of Robin Hood, the Hooded Man, has spread and flourished. Robin finds he has become a legend in his own lifetime, and inspired other men to take up the fight against Norman tyranny.

Most of his old followers are dead or scattered. Those who survive are leading quiet, honest lives, desperate to avoid the notice of the law. Driven by his heretical faith and a desire to strike one last blow against injustice, Robin attempts to bring the survivors together again in Sherwood, and spark a rebellion that will drive the Norman oppressors into the sea.

Unwilling to accept that his time is past, Robin risks all to bring England to the verge of civil war, even the lives of those he loves. War and death loom on the horizon as Robin’s enemies prepare for the return of the Hooded Man...

The Hooded Man on Amazon

Heresy!!

Recently I've been nose-deep in the dark and bloody history of the Cathars, one of the most popular and widespread 'heretical' groups of medieval Europe, and as such doomed to a horrible fate at the hands of the established church. 

The Castle of Queribus in Southern France, a Cathar stronghold

The Cathar religion is a fascinating subject, steeped in ancient mysticism and consisting of beliefs that seem downright insane to the modern mind. It was a dualist faith, effectively believing in not one God but two: a God of light and goodness, and a God of evil and darkness. Unlike the Christian religion, which believes that the forces of good are superior to evil, the Cathars placed evil on an equal footing.

Put simply, they were obsessed with evil, and saw it everywhere, in all living things. To a Cathar, all physical matter was by its nature corrupt, and goodness could only be achieved via the spirit. This meant that Jesus Christ had never taken physical form in the world, and the stories of his crucifixion and resurrection were lies invented by the Church. Christ had only ever existed as pure spirit, and the souls of the dead would join him once the corrupted matter of their bodies had ceased to breathe. Essentially, they believed in reincarnation.

Doesn't sound too bad, you might think, and vaguely reminiscent of Buddhism in some respects. But the Cathars didn't deal in mere theory. Since all earthly flesh was sinful and generally rotten, they considered sex an abomination, and marriage as a form of prostitution. Their goal was to obtain purity and become 'parfaits'. These parfaits served as unofficial priests of the religion, preaching to their followers and demanding they abstain from meat, sexual pleasure, and generally as much physical expression and interaction as possible.

Medieval depiction of the persecution of Cathars

The Pope hurled his military forces against the Cathars

The Cathars were largely based in the Langudeoc in the South of France, where they found much support among peasants and nobles alike. The Counts of Toulouse, who owned large tracts of the south, were rather more forward-looking than their peers in the rest of the country, and permitted the Cathar faith to spread in the early 1200s.

Initially the Pope and the Catholic church attempted to mediate with the Cathars, but then in 1208 a papal legate was murdered by an agent of the Count of Toulouse, and all Hell (which the Cathars didn't believe in, incidentally) broke loose. The Pope flexed his military might, hurling army after army at the Cathars and declaring successive Crusades against them.

The Cathars had a problem in that their faith forbade them from taking up arms. However, despite their rejection of the trappings of wealth and power, they did enjoy the support of wealthy patrons, and so hired mercenaries to do the fighting. For over forty years, they stubbornly held out in one remote fortress after another, the dramatic ruins of which can still be seen scattered about Provence and the Languedoc.

Appalling massacres were committed by the papal Inquisition, set up during the mid-1220s to root out the Cathars and other heretical groups. I don't intend to go into the sickening details of the punishments inflicted by the Inquisition: even at a distance of 700 years, it is enough to turn the stomach. Suffice to say that by the 1240s, the remaining Cathars had been driven from their last refuge, though they lingered on into the next century. The last known Cathar, Guillaume Bélibaste, was burned alive in 1321.

And now I shall look for some lighter reading matter...

Screen Kays

Following on from my last post about Sir Kay and his development (or rather, degeneration) over centuries of Arthurian legend and storytelling, I want to post something about the various depictions of the character on film and TV. I am aware of four Screen Kays, though obviously there are many more screen versions of the story. If anyone knows of Kays I might have missed, please feel free to say.

First up is Cartoon Kay, from the 1963 Disney animated version of TH White's The Sword in the Stone. White's book and its sequels are, for me, far and away the greatest version of this very old story, full of pathos and humour and imbued with one man's righteous fury against the dreadfulness of humanity as a species. The film encompasses none of these things, but then it doesn't try to. It's an efficiently amusing cartoon for kids, in which a young Arthur - or Wart - gets turned into various creatures by Merlin, with the occasional sing-song and dancing teapot thrown in.

Arthur's older brother, Kay, is one of the most obnoxious depictions of Kay since Malory showed him slapping a woman to get Sir Percival's attention. This Kay is not only an unpleasant bully who makes Wart's life hell, but dumb as a post.

WAAAARRRRTTT!!!!

Even when Arthur draws the sword from the stone, Kay has trouble figuring out what's going on, and we last see him squinting miserably at his own feet after his father, Sir Ector, forces him to kneel before King Arthur.

Next up is Sexy Celtic Kay, from the 1970s series Arthur of the Britons. Made by HTV between 1972-3, this series was an interesting but flawed experiment, the first screen version of the legend to make an attempt at placing Arthur and his followers in a believable historical context i.e. post-Roman Britain. The warlord Arthur and his men are just a bunch of grubby Celtic warriors living in thatched halls and roundhouses, though they do have fabulous hair - none more so than Michael Gothard as Kay (Kai).

Mmmmm....Celtic

Kai is a Saxon orphan, reared as Arthur's brother by their father, Lud. Stern and loyal and perpetually unsmiling, the nastier side of the character is largely absent in this depiction. In general, Arthur of the Britons was a bold effort, but hamstrung by a tiny budget and some iffy pacing and editing. A remake might be interesting.

Screen Kay no.3 is my personal favourite. Played by Niall O'Brien, Sir Kay in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981) plays a subtle but important role in the film. Boorman clearly did his research on the character, and allows Kay his proper place as Arthur's loyal seneschal, a constant and dependable presence when all the other knights are falling to bits (quite literally, since they never take their armour off. That stuff rusts).

This Kay remains by Arthur's side when the rest of the knights ride off on the doomed Grail quest, here reinvented as an almost pagan symbol of fertility and renewal. A hint of his obnoxiousness remains, such as when he says to an aspiring young squire: "kitchen knives and greasy spits will be your weapons, boy - to the kitchens!" but otherwise he is a decent, upright sort of chap.

Me? Evil?

When the evil Mordred, played here by Robert Addie as a truly vile product of incest, rides up to Camelot and demands Arthur's castle and kingdom, it is Kay who (I'm paraphrasing) warns the horrible little jerk to back off unless he wants Kay's foot up his shiny metal ass. Kay is one of the few men to ride with Arthur to his first battle, and the few to ride with him to the last, a weird, mist-shrouded affair in which knights in shiny silver armour and knights in dirty black armour cut each other to bits. Kay is last seen hacking away at the bad guys, before a white-bearded Lancelot thunders in to save the day.

The fourth and last of my Screen Kays is sadly the worst. Played by Peter Mooney in the ill-fated Starz series Camelot - or Hack n'Shag, as it might have been called, such was the degree of naked tits and softcore humping on display - this Kay lands with a dull thud. Mooney is one of those routinely handsome actors that seem to populate all modern fantasy/sci-fi shows, and his character is as boring as his haircut. Not a whit of Kay's traditional nastiness remains. Without that, and without much natural charisma from the actor playing him, Kay is reduced to just another knight, though he keeps his role as Arthur's foster-brother.

Yawn

Kay was spared the embarrassment of appearing in the 2004 Bruckheimer-produced abomination King Arthur. This was billed as the Truth Behind the Legend, in the sense that Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves was a gritty, realistic, hard-hitting exposé of social conditions in late 12th century England.

So far as I'm aware, no more Arthurian films or televised dramas are planned for the near future, though doubtless there will be: one recent idea, apparently shelved, was a remake of Excalibur. Hopefully, the next time Sir Kay appears onscreen, he will be in his full glory as an obnoxious, sarcastic asshat capable of breathing underwater, shooting fire from his hands, killing oxen with a single blow and shooting up to the height of a tree. At least it would be good for a laugh.

The degeneration of Sir Kay

As part of my recent swerve into Arthurian legend, I wanted to post something about one of the most unfairly maligned characters in the story, namely Sir Kay, Arthur's seneschal and foster-brother. 

Anyone familiar with Chrétien de Troyes and Malory will know that Kay is a pretty undesirable character: jealous of the prowess of other knights, a buffoon and a braggart and a bully, he is frequently humiliated and beaten up, yet never loses the affection of his King, who seems to regard Kay as indispensable. After one particularly embarrassing episode, in which Kay fails to defend a noble lady, Arthur says to him:

"Seneschal, stay at court as usual, and you may be sure that I have nothing in this world I would not give you without hesitation just to keep you here. "

The hapless Sir Kay fails again

One gets the impression that the medieval writers found Kay's presence something of an irritant. Unlike the other knights, he occupies a unique place in the story, being arguably closer to Arthur than even Queen Guinevere or Sir Lancelot: he is certainly more loyal than either. His deathless loyalty remains intact throughout most versions of the legend, even though his character and ability as a warrior are ruthlessly degraded.

In fact Sir Kay (or Cei in his original form) is one of the oldest of all Arthurian characters. He and Bedwyr (later Sir Bedivere) are the first of Arthur’s named companions in the early Welsh texts and triads. From the beginning, he is a difficult and slightly ambivalent personality, ferocious in battle but inclined to be rude and quarrelsome. His own father, named as Cynyr rather than Sir Ector, prophesies that his son’s heart would be eternally cold, and his nature exceptionally stubborn.

A depiction of Cei in Welsh legend

Cei is also infused with magical powers, as the following extract from Culhwch and Olwen describes:

"Thereupon Kai rose up. Kai had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kai's sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity,--so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire."

Unlike his later incarnation, Cei is also a ferocious and terrifying warrior. The tenth century Welsh poem Pa Gur says this of him:

Prince of the plunder,

The unrelenting warrior to his enemy;

Heavy was he in his vengeance;

Terrible was his fighting.

When he would drink from a horn,

He would drink as much as four;

When into battle he came

He slew as would a hundred.

Unless God should accomplish it,

Cei's death would be unattainable.

Worthy Cei and Llachau

Used to fight battles,

Before the pain of livid spears...'

Even at this early stage, however, there is a stubborn and quarrelsome side to Cei. When Arthur makes the mistake of mocking his exploits, Cei explodes with rage and flounces off, declaring that he will have no more to do with Arthur or his court: henceforth: 'Cei had nothing to do with Arthur from then on, not when the latter was waning in strength, or when his men were being killed.' This is a rare instance of Cei showing disloyalty to Arthur, and an early warning of the dark side to his character. 

As the Middle Ages progressed, new characters were introduced into the Arthurian cycle, often at the expense of the old. Many of Arthur's oldest followers were jettisoned entirely in favour of the likes of Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad etc, but Cei (now Sir Kay) remained, albeit in a much-reduced state. His traditional role of the gatekeeper to Arthur's hall is downgraded to 'salver' i.e. a sort of glorified butler, and his chief purpose is to act as a blundering foil for the younger knights, insulting and belittling the likes of Sir Gareth and Sir Percival until they lose patience and give him a thrashing. Thus the mighty British warrior of old was robbed of his dignity and turned into a laughing stock.

Sir Kay annoys the hell out of Sir Percival

Some writers have detected a more subtle meaning behind Kay’s behaviour, and suggested that his bullying was a deliberate tactic to keep order at court. This set me on the road to thinking of Kay as a more clever and subtle character than his latter-day reputation suggests – ‘very subtle was Kai’, as an early Welsh text puts it. The idea that he played the bully to keep Arthur’s knights in line suggests a man who was rather more intelligent than most of them, and perhaps entrusted with political secrets. 

Gradually an idea for a story centred on Sir Kay took shape in my mind, but more on that later...