#brutus rambles

Shropshire, near the Welsh border, 1605

“Are you sure this is necessary?” Arthur gripes as they secure his hands behind the stake. With chains, this time, instead of rope.

“Shut up, devil-whore.” The man spits, yanking the chain tighter than necessary.

“Look you already killed me once and you know it doesn’t work.”

The man shudders, as if remembering Arthur sitting back up after being mauled by the dogs they’d set on him. The bastards had clawed one of his best shirts.

The man shuts his eyes and vows as if praying. “The Lord’s vengeance shall soon be upon thee.”

“I’m just saying that I’m the third witch you’ve killed this year. Don’t you think you might be getting a little paranoid?” His new king is fanatical about the witches and daemons supposedly plaguing his kingdom.[1]

“It is our duty as servants of God,” the man says solemnly. “To weed out evil where we find it.”

“The last one you burnt just because her neighbour’s vines died.”

“Death unto death,” he whimpers.

“Look I just don’t want you wasting all this wood.”

“God have mercy on your soul.”

“Oh, very well,” England tests the give of the chains and the thick wooden stake creaks under his nation strength but does not snap. The pile of wood under his feet is insufficient for a proper burn, which means he’ll likely smoulder and choke to death.

“I suppose you should get on with it then.” He suggests helpfully.

The fellow staggers backwards, muttering under his breath, and the vicar steps towards him with a lit torch. Arthur’s nostrils flare at the smell of smoke and his hands instinctively clench and tug again at his bindings. He restrains the urge to flinch during the vicar’s sermon every time he brandishes the spitting torch close to the kindling. He should go to death with dignity at least. But it’s almost impossible not to track the movement of the flame with his eyes.

The vicar touches the torch to the kindling and, as he’d thought, it smoulders. The wood is too green, cut down in eager haste. The acrid smoke stings his eyes and burns his throat. He tiptoes as much as he can as the heat steadily builds, and his whole body instinctively fights the bindings with the desperation of a snared rabbit as flames slowly start to lick upwards. Is this how she’d felt?

THUMP.

England looks down and sees the arrow impaled in his heart. A quick merciful kill. He only has a moment to be grateful before his consciousness slips away into the cool, shallow pool of half-death.

---

Arthur wakes up to a cool, dark room and a splitting headache. Voices murmur downstairs in what Arthur guesses is a public house, which means he must be in the next town over at least. A chair is pulled up beside the bed, as if someone had been watching over him, but the occupant is nowhere to be seen. A longbow and a quiver of arrows is propped up in the corner.

The sheets feel stifling and he’s soaked through with sweat where the healing processes of his body have generated immense heat. His soul is back, but he waits for the rest of his body to catch up.

His fingers and toes gain pinpricks of feeling as blood rushes back into the tiny capillaries. His stomach gurgles horribly as his digestive system grinds back to life, and he tastes metal in the back of his mouth from acid pooled in his throat. His diaphragm pings like a bowstring as it settles back into place. He tests his smoked lungs and throat, humming a hoarse tune into the room.

The door opens mid-tune and Wales bustles into the room backwards, carrying a bowl and cup in his hands and kicking the door shut. His hair is longer than when England last saw him, dark and curly and loosely tied back. When he turns, he has a moustache and pointed beard in the current court fashion.[2] He is dressed for the road in a dark doublet, with sensible ribbons at his knees securing the ends of his trousers to prevent draft. A pair of worn leather gloves have been abandoned on the foot of the bed.

“Oh, good you’re awake. I thought I heard you.”

Dylan insists that he came up with the melody, whistled between them over centuries of campfires and journeys across rolling plains.

His brother sets the bowl and cup down on the small bedside table and Arthur smells some kind of pottage with lentils and peas. He’s suddenly so hungry it hurts so he tries to sit, kicking back the sweat-sodden bedlinens.

“Easy,” Dylan murmurs. He helps Arthur up and hands him the bowl and a spoon. Arthur takes it and lifts the spoon to his lips with shaking hands and manages to get about half of the spoonful in his mouth.

“Thank you,” he croaks with his new throat after a few bites when he can think straight again. He glances pointedly over at the bow and arrows resting innocuously in the corner and thinks of curling flames and grey smoke.

Dylan pretends not to see it and makes him drink the cup of hot water with verjuice and honey. “It’s not much. You’re lucky I found us a room.”

Dylan is the best marksman of them all whether his weapon is a bow or a matchlock musket. The arrow through Arthur’s heart had been a perfect shot, carefully and precisely delivered. There was no luck involved.

“It’s good.”

His brother grunts to accept the veiled compliment. He settles on the edge of the bed. England’s hand has stilled its incessant trembling as the food settles in his belly and Wales fusses and taps his hand to remind him eat slower. There’s a faint crash and someone cheers downstairs. Wales gently brushes a spider away as it crawls over the bedsheets. There's dozens of them up in the rafters, recently hatched.

“How did you end up on a bonfire anyway?” Dylan finally asks.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur counters evasively.

“Delivering the king’s messages. Now you.”

Arthur shrugs. “Cursed their well.”

His brother rolls his eyes. “And why’d you do that?”

“For a laugh.”

“Arthur.”

“So that they’d have to go to the marshes for water.”

Wales frowns. “What? Why?”

“For Ginny Greenteeth.”[3]

“You didn’t bargain with her, did you?”

“Not on purpose!”

“What do you mean not on purpose?”

 Arthur shrugs defensively, eyes darting anywhere but Dylan’s searching gaze. For a second Dylan can see a much younger boy squirming out of consequences for his mischief.

“I took something from the marsh.”

Dylan pinches the bridge of his nose. “You took something from faerie waters and didn’t think that might constitute some sort of bargain?”

“I didn’t know it was her marsh. She used to be further north.”

“What even was it?”

England mutters something unintelligible under his breath.

“Put your teeth back in.”

“A brooch.” Arthur says louder.

“A brooch?”

“Not just any brooch!”

Wales growls. “No, no don’t say it. You nearly got yourself burned over a piece of faerie jewellery?”

Arthur shrinks because Dylan’s anger is scarier than Alasdair’s for its rarity. “It’s manmade,” he ventures.

“Oh hag’s teeth Arthur!” Dylan cuffs him across the head. “I’ve met magpies less covetous.”

Arthur frowns and eats another spoonful of pottage to avoid replying, too embarrassed to admit the truth about the bog. And anyway, it was hardly true. He’d met magpies with far more egregious aspirations of wealth.

“What did you curse the well with?”

“Pig’s blood in the water.”

Wales makes a face. “You might be the first witch burnt to actually deserve it. I should have left you up there.”

England doesn’t feel particularly apologetic towards the people who had tried to kill him twice over, so he just slurps the dregs of his bowl obnoxiously.

“You should remove the curse,” Dylan says with a tone of reprimand—like one of the king’s bench judges. Wales has served justices before—he has the right level mind and sense of equity for it.

Arthur wipes his chin and puts the empty bowl down. “I’d owe Greenteeth then.”

“You got yourself into this mess you can get yourself out of it. Just give the brooch back.”

England blanches. “I’m not giving the brooch back.”

“What could be so special about some damn brooch?”

He shrugs again, refusing to meet his brother’s eyes. It’s part self-consciousness and part exhaustion, as the meal after his overnight resurrection has left him sleepy and warm.

Wales brother sighs and shoves him over. “Rest more. I’ll chew you out properly in the morning.”

---

Under the cover of night Arthur dresses and sneaks back to the village. He undoes the curse on the well, scuffing over his hidden curse-marks on the bottom of the bucket. It’ll give fresh clean water in the morning, and the parishioners will congratulate themselves for having burnt the right person.

What had been his house has been picked clean floor to ceiling. England reaches up and brushes his hand over the rafters over his bed. There, concealed from prying eyes, is the gold and red enamel brooch he’d taken from Greenteeth. He thumbs the trefoil patterns as he sneaks back to the inn Wales had taken him to and climbs back into bed as slowly as he can. Dylan snorts and rolls in his sleep but does not wake. Arthur sleeps with the brooch clutched to his chest.

---

“This is what you took from the marsh?” Dylan gapes, dropping his spoon into his porridge with a wet splat.

Arthur scuffs the toe of his boot under the table, looking down into his oats. “If you don’t want it, I can just give it back.” He reaches for the brooch to take it out of Dylan's hands but his brother snatches it away.

“What do you mean, give it back? This is my brooch you know.” Wales says indignantly but his eyes are gentle.

England shrugs, embarrassed. “I thought you might miss it.”

“I haven’t seen this in centuries.” Wales reverently turns the brooch over in his hands, feeling the pin tip for sharpness. “It looks the same as it did the day it went in.”

“You dropped it?”

Dylan nods absently. “I was carrying you, I think. You’d gotten an infection in your foot, and you didn’t want to walk.”

He pins it to his doublet. It looks completely out of place against the new fashion. But it makes Wales look a touch more how England remembers his earliest memories of him.

“I recognised it when I saw it,” he says.

Wales brushes a thumb over it. “I’m surprised you remember it. You would have only been little.”

There’s an unspoken truce between them. Siblinghood comes at the price of justice. Wales had lost his laws, his kings, and his sovereignty at the hands of England’s Plantagenets. Who in turn were not really England’s Plantagenets at all but descendants of France’s wayward nobility. Arthur can’t give Dylan his kingdom back. All they can do is remember and maintain the act of brotherliness. Dylan is a better man in that way than Arthur is, who still wants to tear Francis’ throat out even though his kings have not been French for a long time.

For now, at least, Arthur is away from court and Dylan, as a king’s messenger on the border between England and Wales, is closer to the crown than he is. In a year’s time it may change, and trouble is brewing around the crown’s anti-Catholic stance.[4]

“So…you’re happy to see it?” Arthur fishes for approval in a way he’d never admit to in front of his European allies and enemies.

His older brother grins. “Well let’s see if we can offer Greenteeth something else.”

---

“No.” The green hag sneers. “I’ll drown you.”

“You haven’t even considered it.” Wales replies in old Welsh and waves the brass belt buckle at her.

“I don’t want your new trinkets. I want that,” a long spindly finger reaches for them from the ragged edge of her brown cloak dripping with slime and bladderworts. Greenteeth points stubbornly at the gleaming brooch affixed to Dylan’s chest. “Back.”

“It’s not even yours,” Dylan plants his hands on his hips.

“Is mine!” She cries indignantly, spitting a fragment of broken mossy tooth in rage. “Is mine and the Wessex boy took it.” She splashes the stagnant black water around her at them, glaring at Arthur.

“I dropped it and Arthur returned it to me. That’s only fair.”

Greenteeth grumbles. “Dropped it so long ago.”

“I could say there is a dirwy due for not telling me when I dropped it.”[5]

Greenteeth licks her teeth, weighing her options against the grave charge of concealment. “Give me something else.”

Wales makes a show of turning the buckle over in his hands and considering it. “Something else?”

“Yes.”

Dylan reaches for Arthur’s ear and pulls out the golden hook through his ear lobe.

“Oi!”

Dylan shushes him and presents the earring to Greenteeth, and her yellow eyes light up with curiosity.

“Dylan,” England growls. “That was a gift from Portugal.”

“Hear that Greenteeth? This is all the way from Lusitania.”

Greenteeth blinks like a frog and turns the earring over in her hands, shaking it so that the enamel starburst jangles in the low grey light.

“Do we have a deal?” My brooch for the earring?”

Greenteeth peers suspiciously up at Wales. “They’re a pair. Both earrings.”

“Deal,” his brother says happily.

“Dylan!” Arthur says indignantly again, but his brother elbows him hard then smiles beatifically at him when he grunts.

“Give her the damn earring.”

Arthur reluctantly hands it over, mourning the loss of Portuguese gold. Greenteeth snatches it and cups the jewellery in her hands, stroking over the delicate enamel work. 

“And—” Dylan reaches into their shared bag between them and pulls out a handful of baby spiders, scuttling and rolling over his hands like smoke at the sudden low light. “These. Just a few bites and your teeth will be as white as milk.”

“Like milk?” Greenteeth murmurs covetously, reaching out for the handful of baby spiders.

“By oak, ash, and thorn,” England swears solemnly.

Greenteeth stuffs the spiders into her mouth and rolls them around, chewing and making a face around globs of black spittle.

“Well?”

Greenteeth swallows and grins hopefully at him, showing a row of mossy crumbling teeth and chewed up spiders’ legs wedged between them.

“You’ll make the queen of fairies herself jealous,” Wales says.

Satisfied, Greenteeth thrusts her hand out and crunches another mouthful of spiders when Arthur hands them over.

“We have a wedd?”[6]

Greenteeth hums and nods. “I will spare you this time, green sons of Brutus.”

Shrewsbury town, Shropshire, 2026

Portugal raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Spiders?”

“Spiders.” England affirms solemnly.

The other sighs and stirs his coffee with the pink spoon provided by the trendy Danish café they’d dived into to escape the rain. He sips it, makes a face, then tears open two packets of sugar and dumps them in.

“So, am I out of trouble?” Arthur aims for light-hearted but even to his own ears it lands as a spurned husband hoping his wife will let him back in the house for dinner after staying out too late.

Gabriel’s lips pull up slightly around the rim of the coffee cup. “You’re forgiven, though I have a bone to pick with Dylan now.”

“Be my guest,” Arthur exhales, happy to be out of the line of fire.

They sit in comfortable silence, listening to the bustle of the café and the baby babbling at the table next to them and watching the rain slide down the window.

Gabriel frowns as if having recalled something and swallows the mouthful of pastry he’d been chewing pensively. “And what about that ring I gave you—the one with the carnelian? Cost a fortune. You’d better have that at least still?”

The ring is deep in the caves of the Peak District with one of the pixies who had demanded a toll fare for Arthur to leave the faerie circle he’d carelessly stepped into. To break one ring, you must gift another.

Arthur clears his throat. “Well. You see…”

Historical notes

[1] Referring to King James I (VI of Scotland), who actually wrote his own book ‘Daemonologie’, which endorsed the witch-hunting craze.

[2] i.e. the Stuarts. The fashion in the seventeenth century tended towards fuller facial hair and pointed beards.

[3] A grindylow hag-figure from English (particularly the Shropshire/Cheshire/Lancashire counties) folklore who pulled unsuspecting victims under the water in bogs and marshes.

[4] In November of the year this fic is set the Gunpowder Plot will be attempted and Guy Fawkes discovered as one of the co-conspirators. Soon after that, England will establish its first North American colonies, fundamentally changing Arthur’s place in the world and in his relationships.

[5] Dirwy – a fine (Welsh).

1068

England rips out another handful of grass and tosses it over the edge of the cliff in frustration. The wind playfully blows it back in his face and he splutters.

He’s getting cold. And he should be elsewhere. William will be angry. His new bastard-king has a quick temper and an even quicker hand. The king is staying nearby to settle a rebellion,[1] and Æthelwulf has walked for two days just to get away from him. He’ll be punished on his return, he’s sure.

Wæs þū hāl little kingdom.

England jumps hard at the deep rumbling pitch which vibrates through his feet into his bones. The giant speaks so slowly, like every syllable is dragged up from the depths of the ocean.

“It’s not fair,” Æthelwulf says out loud, now that he has a familiar audience.

Life never fair little kingdom.

“At least you get to rest out here. I have to live with him.”

Another rumble that sounds like faint amusement. The spine of blackened rock breaching the ocean surface rattles, and a flock of seabirds screech as they take flight. You could rest in sea if want.

For a moment it’s tempting, and Æthelwulf dares a meek look over the edge. It’s a long way down.

“I can’t breathe under the sea like you do,” he settles on an excuse.

Giants not breathe, Wessex.

Æthelwulf shakes his head. “I’m not Wessex anymore. I’m England.”

The sea breaks violently against the giant’s hunched back as he settles. Wessex. England. All same. Soon you become more than England.

Æthelwulf snorts derisively. “How? There’s no more island left to become something else.”

More lands. Across sea.

Is he talking about France? The thought alone makes England angry.

“France is on my lands.”

No. Over other sea.

The other sea? England has no idea what the giant means. He speaks strangely often, like he can see things in the future that Æthelwulf can’t.

“Will you come up to see me?” England asks hopefully. His mind has conjured a hundred different facsimiles of the giant’s face and he burns with curiosity. Do giants have hands? Teeth like headstones? Eyes like great sea pearls? Dripping clumps of seaweed for hair?

Not today little kingdom.

England rips out another handful of grass.

1139

Wæs þū hāl little kingdom.

“They’ve written a book about you.”[2]

The earth underneath Æthelwulf rumbles as the giant stirs with something between amusement and curiosity. A book?

Technically it’s a book about England, not Gogmagog, but he’s in it and that has to count.

“Yes. About the giants and the first men.”

The rumbling pitches lower, as if Gogmagog is recalling unpleasant memories. Threw me in the sea.

“Corineus?”

Yes.

The silence settles. Gogmagog (that’s what they said his name was) is very still today, and the sea laps lazily around the hump of his back. England runs his hand over the grass around his crossed legs and adds more to the little pile he’s been collecting.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, for lack of something better to say.

Æthelwulf is in book?

“Yes, it’s—” England’s brow furrows as he thinks on how to explain Geoffrey’s history to Gogmagog, who doesn’t seem to have the same concept of men’s lifespans as England. “It’s a book about how the first men became kings of my lands, and about their sons and daughters.”

Why need book? Æthelwulf remember.

He shrugs. “They want to make sure they remember too I suppose.”

Gogmagog muses on this. Æthelwulf forget?

“Of course not!” England says loudly into the wind, indignant at just the thought.

Gogmagog rumbles, as if he doesn’t believe him.

“Will you come up to see me this time?” England ventures. Maybe he could persuade Gogmagog to help him subdue Cymru. Swinging an oak tree like a great club and drowning his brother’s fields in saltwater.

Not today little kingdom.

England sulks. “You always say that.”

1497

“Gogmagog?”

The wind whips around England’s face, stinging his eyes and branding salt into his cheeks. He’s lying on his belly, right at the edge of the cliff, and for a long time it’s silent. England is starting to get bored when he finally hears it, the faint rumble of wakefulness off the shore.

Wæs þū hāl little kingdom. The voice is slow, sleepy. It vibrates through his stomach and chest where he’s laying down.

“We just say hail now,” Arthur corrects, but deep down he’s feeling warm relief in his chest that Gogmagog answered.

Strange man thing, Æthelwulf. To change words.

He almost feels bad about correcting Gogmagog again, but that name sounds so old and useless now that he can’t resist. “Not Æthelwulf, Arthur. My name is Arthur.”

That gets Gogmagog to stir properly in interest, and the sea crashes against him and the cliffs below.

What wrong with Æthelwulf? Æthelwulf good name.

“It’s old-fashioned. Nobody uses names like that anymore. And Arthur is a good name too.”

Arthur not as good name.

England pouts. “Yes it is, I chose it! It’s the name of an old king.”

Gogmagog seems to ponder this. Why king name good?

Arthur settles into the stories he’d heard many times over. “Arthur pulled a sword from a stone, which made him the king. Or maybe a lady from a lake gave it to him.”

Arthur suddenly has an idea, and he tips his head over the edge of the cliff to look at Gogmagog properly. “Could you give me a sword?”

Gogmagog’s answering hum sounds angry, and a spray of rocks tumbles from his back into the sea with a rattle and a splash.

No. No sword. Will not give.

Arthur looks up to the horizon with a pout. Gogmagog’s next hum is gentler.

What else this king do?

“He had a group of loyal knights—men who serve the king—and he went to the other lands and fought the Romans.”

Gogmagog does not recognise this word. Romans bad for Arthur?

England isn’t sure how to answer him. “The Romans were very strong,” he finally settles on.

He’s leaving out a part of that particular tale, about King Arthur slaying the giant at St. Michael’s Mount on his way. He’s not sure Gogmagog will understand that the giant was evil. And that Arthur was a good king because he was a strong and noble warrior.[3]

Gogmagog grumbles at England’s vagueness. You did not see me for long time. Long long time.  

England knows this but he’s surprised Gogmagog noticed under the sea. “Sorry. I was busy.”

More big now. England supposes he is. He’s a squire now.

Why here?

Arthur exhales heavily, frustration bubbling under his skin. “The people near this land rebelled.”

Rebelled?

“Fought against their own king.”[4]

Gogmagog had been a king of the giants once, so perhaps he understands the weight of the crime. The earth hums. You killed them?

There’s a lump in England’s throat and he swallows angrily. “I had to. They were going to burn London. My heart city.” He plunges his hands into the grass around him and rips out handfuls of it, squeezing it into a dense green ball in his hand.

Gogmagog shifts, the rocky edges of his spine creaking. For a moment England thinks he’s going to breach the sea, huge and terrible, but he settles again.

Throw them in sea for me?

“What? No!”

Why not? Sea for dead things. Arthur will throw many men in sea.

“No, not…not dead people. Dead people get buried in the land. Or…” Arthur makes a face. “Cut into pieces. Rebel leaders get cut into four pieces as punishment and the king puts their heads on spikes on London bridge.”[5]

Sea would be more good.

“No, it wouldn’t, not for people. They have to be in consecrated ground for when Christ returns.”

Would look after them.

It might be the nicest thing Gogmagog’s ever said. Or maybe he just gets lonely between Arthur’s visits.

“I’m here to make sure no more people rebel,” he replies lamely.

When you kill them, throw them in sea.

Arthur throws the little wad of grass he’s been collecting in Gogmagog’s direction.

“Will you come up to see me if I do?” England thinks maybe his people would stop marching to London if there was a giant keeping watch.

Gogmagog rumbles. Not today little kingdom.

“Not little. You said I was bigger now.”

Gogmagog rumbles again, slower, lower, as if he is sinking further into the depths. Sea more big.

1690

England is getting tired of waiting. He’s managed to escape London for a while, but he can’t sit on the clifftop for days on end waiting for Gogmagog to answer him. His new Dutch king is in a bad mood. Parliament had just passed a new bill limiting the prerogative of the crown to exact excessive justice, impose financial burden, or practice violence against England’s people.[6] It’s a sensible bill, and Arthur admires the thought behind it. In his coat pocket he has a copy of John Locke’s newest book on the human mind and how humans acquire knowledge. It feels like its weighing him down on one side.

“I’m going to leave in a minute,” he threatens. It’s a cold grey day. He pulls out a handful of grass and lets it float through his fingers on the wind. He feels a little bit like Alfred, the petulant, impatient child that he is.

“Gogmagog!”

There’s no response and Arthur growls in outrage. Fine. He takes the book out of his pocket and starts reading where he left off.

‘…that the existence of God is made clear to us in so many ways, and the obedience we owe him agrees so much with the light of reason, that a great part of mankind proclaim the law of nature…’[7]

He’s so distracted that he almost misses the faint grumbling from the depths of the sea.

Wæs þū hāl little kingdom.

England ignores Gogmagog for a brief second, making sure to finish the sentence he’s on, before closing the book and sliding it back into his pocket.

“Took you long enough.”

There’s a long silence and England wonders if he imagined him.

The land is loud.

“The land?” England frowns.

Loud. Underground.

“Oh mining. It’s the mining you can hear. They’ve started using gunpowder. It’s a much more efficient way to mine for ore.”[8]

Make stop?

“I can’t. We need the copper and the tin in the ground to make bronze for cannons.”

Gogmagog doesn’t reply and the wind whips into England’s clothes, chilling him.

“Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing?” he asks.

There’s no response.

“Will you not come up to see me?” England demands. If he could witness Gogmagog then perhaps he could understand him better. It’s not fair that Gogmagog expects him to keep coming back on pure faith alone.

“Are you even there?” England stands up and yells into the wind, angry.

A low rumble echoes up from underneath England’s feet but there’s no answer.

“Fine, have it your way!” England snarls, turning on his heel.

He looks back over his shoulder and pauses, just in case. The sea is flat, grey like the sky, and the hump of black rock in the water is unmoving and implacable. All of a sudden, despite his recent growth and his wardship of his new colonies, Arthur feels very young and very, very small.

He turns and storms away. “I didn’t want to talk to you anyway!”

1802

Arthur very nearly doesn’t bother. He’s travelling on the road from Totnes to Plymouth on business. The Royal Society of London has sent some scientists into Cornwall to work out why the tin and copper-miners all die so young.[9] Arthur is accompanying them, glad for the break from London and maps and kings and councils. They’re barely a couple of hours into the journey when Arthur calls out for the carriage to stop.

“Sir?” one of the scientists, Cooper, enquires when England steps out.

“I’ll meet you in Plymouth later. I have an old acquaintance in the area I have business with.”

“Very good sir.”

The walk from the road to the bay is bracing, criss-crossed with stone walls and sheep placidly grazing on the neatly divided farmland. By the time he reaches the coast he’s tired, hungry, and thinking about the warm hearth he could be sat in front of in Plymouth by now if he’d only stayed in the carriage. It’s almost evening, and the sky is putting on an eye-watering display of orange and pink clouds over his head.

England settles himself on the edge of the cliff.

It feels silly to talk to the hump of rock standing out from under the waves. But he’s come all this way.

“I’m here,” he says finally, with little conviction.

Nothing happens. Arthur huffs and pulls out a handful of grass to inspect it. Red fescue. Common bent. A sprig of purple thrift. The sunset reaches its glorious crescendo, sinking like molten ore from a crucible into the horizon.

“There will be a war again soon. I can feel it. France’s new consul is pushing for it.”[10]

England’s not sure why he’s confessing. He hasn’t been Catholic for a long time. But it feels cathartic to finally speak out loud what everyone in London is too afraid to say in words.

There’s no response from the rocks. Of course there isn’t, he tells himself. He doesn’t even bother to ask Gogmagog to come up to see him.

Angry with himself for wasting his time, Arthur stands and turns his back on the sea.

1936

England had been in the area when he’d heard of a shipwreck being towed and beached just beyond Salcombe harbour. They’re worried about the hull splitting and thousands of tons of rotten grain leaching into the water.[11] A gaggle of amused spectators are peering over the cliff edge, with the youngest daring each other to crawl closer, all under the watchful eye of the farmer’s son. Each time a new visitor walks up the boy thrusts his hand out expectantly, explaining it’s a shilling to cross these farmlands and look at the wreck. Arthur pays the boy and peers over the cliff edge. It’s a pretty ship, a Finnish clipper with tall elegant masts. The water around it is turning a murky brown as the ship leaches oil and grain out of the compromised hull. Shame it wrecked.

Arthur looks past the crowd to the stack of black rock breaching the sea just off the headland of the bay.

For a second he entertains the ludicrous thought of speaking to it.

Arthur scoffs and mutters under his breath quietly enough that no-one else can hear him. “Foolish. There’s nothing there.”

Something grumbles in his bones. No-one else seems to notice, though. It’s a hot day and he hasn’t eaten or drank anything in a while. Indigestion. He tells himself firmly.[12]

2026

The clifftops around Salcombe are well-managed. Arthur has walked across them via a neatly kept trail with helpful National Trust posts directing him to stay away from the edge.[13] After a quick glance to check he was alone he had left the path, wading through the long grass to sit on the top of the cliff over Starehole Bay. From stair, one of his very old Gaelic words meaning passage. Or crossing. Arthur can almost feel Alistair frowning with disapproval at his shoddy translation.

The wind is always brisk here, ripping up from the Atlantic to hurtle down his coastline. It tastes like salt and something wild. The hump of rock off the point of the coast is still there, but it looks greener than England remembers. As if it hasn’t moved for a very long time.

He dares not say anything out loud. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for. Some hum. Some faint rumbling stir of life. He keeps looking out to the opposite end of the cove and the jagged edge of the headland. Maybe if he pretends to not be paying attention it will happen. He plaits grass between his fingers absently, just so he has something to do.

The cliffs in this bay are inert volcanic schist, as the helpful information board had informed him at the start of the trail. Arthur risks another look at the sea stack. Nothing happens.

“Are you…there?”

He feels faintly ridiculous. The boy who never grew up, still trying to talk to giants.

“I’m here. I’m…” he pauses. There’s no word adequate, and he’s still learning how to take accountability for the last few centuries. “I’m sorry I forgot.”

There’s no sign that anyone has heard him.

He waits for a very long time.

Eventually, England gets up to leave, abandoning the plait and brushing the dust off his jeans. He turns his back and starts to pick his way back up the grassy bank to find the path.

A sigh deep from the ocean stops him in his tracks. The sea crashes and seabirds scream behind him as something large moves below the surface, breaching like a great whale, hands resting on the cliff face to support a dripping body rising from the seabed.

A deep, gentle voice rumbles up his spine, clearer than it’s ever been.

Wæs þū hāl little kingdom.

Historical notes

[1] At Trematon castle, a Norman stronghold.

[2] Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Historia Regum Britanniae”, finished around 1136. The ‘first men’ that England and Gogmagog are talking about are the legendary figures of Brutus of Troy and his men, including Corineus who, according to Geoffrey, slew the giants that lived in England and established human settlements. Corineus killed Gogmagog, king of the giants, and threw him off the coast of Cornwall near Plymouth. The nearby Starehole Bay, where I set this story, is in Devon under modern boundaries, but having visited the area it’s one of the more remote spots on that bit of coastline and has a sea stack, so I’ve set it as Gogmagog’s resting spot.

[3] There are many versions of the Arthurian myths and legends stretching back centuries, but Arthur is thinking about Malory’s ‘Le morte d'Arthur’ in this case, which was first printed in 1485 and would probably have been accessible to him in the 1490s.

[4] The Cornish Rebellion of 1497, put down by King Henry VII at Blackheath outside London, was raised over heavy taxation imposed on the Cornish.

[5] Hanging, drawing, and quartering became the accepted punishment for treason in England sometime around the fourteenth century, though the practice is much older.

[6] The Bill of Rights, 1689.

[7] From John Locke’s "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", published in 1690.

[8] Developed in 1689 in Somerset.

[9] Arsenic. It’s arsenic.

[10] Napoleon Bonaparte, who came to power in 1799.

[11] This is a real case of a clipper ship called Herzogin Cecilie running aground in the area in the summer of 1936 and being beached at Starehole bay.

[12] This is a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference from Arthur to “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.