Dueling Novels

“They’re only stories,” he would say, “What do stories matter?” But he wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Myrddin that in the end stories are all that matter.
--Here Lies Arthur

“The heroes, the Trows--the stories that bind us, Halli. The stories we live by, that dictate what we do and where we go. The stories that give us our names, our identities, the places we belong, the people we hate.”
--Heroes of the Valley

Story seems to be the theme of my reading lately (see here for more), and these two books made for interesting companion reads. One is about the creation of legends and the other is about how legends create us. Both are roughly medieval, one quite historically so and the other purely an author’s invention.

You’ve heard of him. Everyone’s heard of Arthur Artorius Magnus; the Dux Bellorum; the King that Was and Will Be. But you haven’t heard the truth. Not till now. I knew him, see. Saw him, smelled him, heard him talk. When I was a boy, I rode with Arthur’s band all up and down the world, and I was there at the roots and beginnings of all the stories.

That was later, of course. For now, I’m still a snot-nosed girl.

Here Lies Arthur is a fascinating conjecture about the creation of the Arthurian legends, set in a grittily realistic Britain of 500 A.D. The story is told by Gwyna, a young servant girl who is initially fleeing the burning of her estate by a roving war-band led by a powerful brute of a man. An excellent swimmer, she flees by means of the river and washes up near a man who shelters her. That man is Myrddin (i.e. Merlin). He is a bard, a traveler and spinner of tales. The Romans have abandoned Britain and the Saxons have started moving in to fill the void. Myrddin wants to see the invaders driven from their shores, but the country has fallen into the chaos of warring bands of strongmen and he sees their only hope as uniting under a strong leader. He has made it his task to turn Arthur into that man, using his bardic craft as his tool.

Having seen what a good swimmer Gwyna is, Myrddin decides to adapt one of his schemes around her. Within a day or two, after the dust has settled from the raid and Arthur seeks to gain the allegiance of the area, Myrddin is leading Gwyna away from the group with a special task. He hides her behind a waterfall at the back of a pool of water with a glamorous sword and some instructions: when Arthur makes a spectacle of wading into the pool to ask for the blessing of the Lady of the Lake, she is to take off her clothes, swim under the waterfall, and thrust the sword into the air for him to take, then return to the cave unseen.

Myrddin later returns for Gwyna and takes her in, disguised as his serving boy, and we see how the rest of the legends are created from her perspective. And why they remain legends, with no clear historical record of who the man really was. I found this a fascinating read and loved the way it examines its themes. Unfortunately, I was never entirely caught up in the story and had trouble sustaining my interest for long periods of reading. I’m not sure it would make an engaging read for someone not familiar with all of the legends. Still, for those who are I highly recommend it.

Heroes of the Valley, on the other hand, drew me in and wouldn’t let me go. Stroud finds just the right balance of exciting action with dwelling on details and letting the story unfold in its proper time. And even though there’s no Bartimaeus in this one, he manages to once again work in a good bit of dry humor. I loved it.

This is the tale of a valley of roughly Nordic folk at the edge of the sea. They are not a sea-faring people, so it is one boundary of their world. The other boundaries are the cairns that surround the edge of their valley, the burial mounds of their 12 founding heroes and all of their ancestors since. You see--according to the Beowulf-like stories--when the valley was first being settled by those who had descending from the high surrounding peaks, it had been beset nightly by trows (trolls). They terrorized the people until the strong leaders of the 12 houses decided to make a final stand. All 12 died, but they slaughtered so many trows in the process that the creatures took flight. The heroes were buried with their swords as sentries, creating a protective barrier that has not been crossed to this day. Within a couple of generations laws were established and swords forgotten, and the people have been enjoying a peaceful agrarian existence ever since.

Halli Sveinsson is the second son of the current arbiter of Svein’s House (a ruling estate with many smaller farms and households on their land). Someday Leif, his older brother, will inherit their father’s role and Halli will tend some of the fields on the edge of their lands. But Halli has always been restless, a practical joker who creates mischief and gets into trouble. He most looks up to his uncle Brodir, who often wanders the valley and has some dark secret from his past. When it is the Sveinsson’s turn to host the annual festival and leaders of the other houses visit, that secret rears its ugly head. Halli, who idolizes the heroic ways of his house’s founder, decides to take action in response and learns more about himself, his valley, and the legends than he ever expected.

”Your mistake, Halli Sveinsson, is that you aspire to the wrong thing. You did a hundred brave acts during your trip down here, but they weren’t the ones you were expecting. You kept waiting to find a sword somewhere so you could fight outlaws and monsters, and finally lop off Olaf’s head. None of that happened, did it? So you’re disappointed. But you shouldn’t be, Halli, because it’s all nonsense, all of that. It’s just stuff that happens in the stories. None of it’s real. . . .

“Think how the stories overlap and contradict each other, how they’re told differently up and down the valley. Think of what the heroes are supposed to have done. Take Arne, dear Founder of this House. He could throw boulders the size of cowsheds and leap over rivers in full spate. He once climbed the cataracts holding a baby in one hand. . . . He took on ten men with his hands tied behind his back, though what he fought with in that instance I don’t dare guess. Oh, and he went into the hill and killed the Trow-king before coming home for breakfast. . . .

“It’s true you’re a bit extreme, but you’re not the only one at it. Everyone’s fixated with the tales. Remember Brodir and Hord swapping insults about each other’s heroes during the feast? Say something rude about someone’s Founder and it’s like you’ve struck them in the face. It’s pathetic. And you know what? Deep down it’s all about the rules, all about keeping everyone in their place.”
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“There’s nothing a man can do that can’t be turned into a tale,” he used to tell me as we rode from one hall to the next through the hills of summer. “Arthur can do nothing so bad that I can’t spin it into gold and use it to make him more famous and more feared. If the tales are good enough, even the poor man who goes hungry from paying Arthur taxes will love him. I am the story-spinning physician who keeps his reputation in good health.”
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But when we had eaten, Myrddin took out his harp and spun the day’s fight into stories, listing the brave deeds that each man had done, leaving out none of them, not even Bedwyr. He touched his story with humor, telling us how none of the enemy had dared face Owain, because he was so beautiful they thought he was an angel sent to help Arthur, and how they had fled before Cei, who was so ugly they thought he was a devil come to help Arthur. And slowly, as we listened, we started to forget how afraid we’d all been and began to remember it as he told it: Arthur’s shining victory.
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In the silence as the story ends, I look about. I see their faces, and I feel the same look on my own. An enchanted look. It’s not that we believe the story. We all know no green man really came here or walked around with his head held in his hand. But we feel we’ve heard a kind of truth. Even Arthur feels it, lounging in his big chair with Cunaide at his side and his hound Cabal at his feet. For a moment, the real Arthur and the story Arthur are one and the same, and we know that we are all part of the story, all of us.

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What stories define you?