Twisted tale

Well, 300 words is submitted and I chose the hospital with the doctor who had been told by the patient not to tell his relatives he was dying. It's submitted, so I can't post it for a month or so. It still leaves me with ideas for the waiting room at the doctors, the lawyers, the law court, the theatrical agency, the dentist, the school interview, the Palace, and the remote airport. I have a story with a twist to write and thought I would try the remote airport. The pilot is a young woman but that will only come out at the end as the twist. I had thought of doing it from Meekatara in Australia but I'm not all that familiar with that and changed it to South Africa and Upington. There's a storm on the way and one of the passengers insists on leaving as he has an important appointment. To go round the storm they divert to Springbok and have to stay overnight. It's at that stage the man tells thee pilot he's going to be best man at a wedding and the pilot tells him not to worry, they can't start without them, she's the bride. Problem - Why does the Best Man not know her? She's English and met her intended when he was over on a sabbatical. Why are they  getting Married in South Africa? He only proposed when they were there. Why not go back to England? Her parents wanted to make a holiday of it.
I've had two tales from that list of where the waiting room was for 300 words and the story line of at least the lawyers, the theatrical agents, the school interview and the Palace have legs. Which goes to show the value of story lists written down so that they can be referred to.

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Bruce and the Honourable Thing

 Our history teachers taught us all about Robert Bruce and the spider in the cave but I have discovered the Bruce family themselves were spiders drawing people into their web. We start with 1066. It was not just England that changed following that event, but the whole island. No one is sure if de Brus came with William the Conqueror, or is the canny laddie waited till he saw how things were going and came with reinforcements but when he did come, he was given large estates in Yorkshire.

The next time I stumbled over the family, now Bruce, was when one, Robert, went on a crusade. (the Big Thing in those days. Try it now and you get locked up.) Robert became friendly with a chap from South West Scotland, the Earl of Carrick. Unfortunately, the Earl was killed. When Robert came back to Yorkshire he felt it was his duty to tell his friend’s widow the sad news in person. Rather a decent thought, what! Anyway, when he got to the Earl’s castle he found the charming widow unwilling to let him go and Bruce did the honourable thing. The story goes that she locked and barred the gate and forced Robert to marry her. A malicious rumour was started that by putting the blame on the countess, Robert avoided paying the fine he would have to have paid to the king for marrying the countess without the king’s permission.

So, now we sit with Bruce having estates in Yorkshire and Scotland. I’ve no idea how he came by the Tottenham property but he may have bought it for the occasions when he had to attend Westminster.

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From the Empress of Germany to Robert Bruce

So, in our walk through the history of our island, here we are with Henry Plantagenet sitting on the English throne. His mother, the dowager Empress of Germany, no less. His grandmother  Scots by birth and his father French. A man of mixed race you might argue. Henry’s second cousin, sits on the throne of Scotland, so, when Henry marries the girl from Aquitaine, the family control the Atlantic seaboard from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. Now why was I not told that the Plantagenets had Scots blood in their veins at school? Because we were too absorbed in making sure we were true Scots and nothing else?

If we’d been told, we’d have known we had a connection to Richard Lion Heart, the one who was saved by a medieval Tom Jones, and his brother John, who, as we know, had his little ways, and sometimes no one spoke to him for  days and days and days.

The obvious question is which of them had the stronger share of Scots blood, the galant and ferocious Richard, the man with the Highland temper, or the miserable dour John.

I have , of course, glossed over the fact that Alexander 1 of Scotland had married Hery 1’s daughter, but it is time to mention that Alexander 11 of Scotland married King John’s daughter, and Alexander 111 married Henry 111’s daughter. As a result, by the middle of the 13^th century, and getting close to Robert the Bruce, the  Scottish royal line was well stocked with good English blood.

What price Brucie?

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What Shakespeare missed after Macbeth

As it is so intermingled with characters in his play Macbeth, I’m surprised that Shakespeare didn’t follow Macbeth with what happened to Duncan’s prodigy for they have a story as twisted as anything he could have devised. During their seventeen year stay in England while Macbeth ruled Scotland, the Norman’s invaded. When William the Conqueror died, his son, Henry , after battles and betrayals, took over as King of England.
In the meantime, Edgar, the Aethling, Harald’s rival for the English throne had gone to Scotland and married the daughter of Macbeth’s successor Malcolm, known as Canmore. From this marriage came a daughter, who had, through her father, direct links to the old English royal line.
Henry decided it would be a good political move to wed this lass and change her name to Matilda.
From that marriage came a son called William and a daughter called Adelaide.
Adelaide married well, to the Emperor of Germany, no less, but the Emperor died and Henry recalled his daughter and renamed her Matilda.
Then, with the White Ship disaster, young William drowned, and Matilda became the only legitimate heir to the English throne. Henry married her off to a Frenchman, Henry of Anjou, nicknamed Plantagenet .
Henry tried to ensure there would be no arguments over the succession when he died and managed to get agreement that Matilda would take over on his death
However, when the old man died, a nephew, Stephen, jumped in and took over as king. It sparked civil war and Malcolm charged down to help, Stephen was captured and locked up.
Shakespeare hinted that Malcolm’s descendants would transform into the Stuarts and we know how headstrong they were, so it is not surprising that ex-Empress Matilda proved too ‘Royal’ and, when Stephen was let out, the aristocracy promptly got rid of Matilda and put Stephen in his place.
Like Duncan, however, Matilda had the last laugh because her son Henry succeeded Stephen as Henry Plantagenet and began that dynasty.
This is one of those tales that make nonsense of the idea of Scottish history and English history separated by a line on a map. I’m sure the girls in my class would have preferred that tale to Magna Carta and Simon de Mountford. I certainly would and I’m surprised it slipped through Walter Scott’s sieve as well. It’s a real blockbuster and better than ‘The Other What’s-her-name Girl’. I’ll have a go at this story one of these days.

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Macbeth and the Empress of Germany

As it is so intermingled with characters in his play Macbeth, I’m surprised that Shakespeare didn’t follow Macbeth with what happened to Duncan’s prodigy for they have a story as twisted as anything he could have devised. During their seventeen year stay in England while Macbeth ruled Scotland, the Norman’s invaded. When William the Conqueror died, his son, Henry , after battles and betrayals,  took over as King of England.

In the meantime, Edgar, the Aethling, Harald’s rival for the English throne had gone to Scotland and married the daughter of Macbeth’s successor Malcolm, known as Canmore. From this marriage came a daughter, who had, through her father, direct links to the old English royal line.

Henry decided it would be a good political move to wed this lass and change her name to Matilda.

From that marriage came a son called William and a daughter called Adelaide.

Adelaide married well, to the Emperor of Germany, no less, but the Emperor died and Henry recalled his daughter and renamed her Matilda.

Then, with the White Ship disaster, young William drowned, and Matilda became the only legitimate heir to the English throne. Henry married her off to a Frenchman, Henry of Anjou, nicknamed Plantagenet .

Henry tried to ensure there would be no arguments over the succession when he died and managed to get agreement that Matilda would take over on his death

However, when the old man died, a nephew, Stephen, jumped in and took over as king. It sparked civil war and Malcolm charged down to help, Stephen was captured and locked up.

Shakespeare hinted that Malcolm’s descendants would transform into the Stuarts and we know how headstrong they were, so it is not surprising that ex-Empress Matilda proved too ‘Royal’ and, when Stephen was let out, the aristocracy promptly got rid of Matilda and put Stephen in his place.

Like Duncan, however, Matilda had the last laugh because her son Henry succeeded Stephen as Henry Plantagenet and began that dynasty.

This is one of those tales that make nonsense of the idea of Scottish history and English history separated by a line on a map. I’m sure the girls in my class would have preferred that tale to Magna Carta and Simon de Mountford. I certainly would and I’m surprised it slipped through Walter Scott’s sieve as well. It’s a real blockbuster and better than ‘The Other What’s-her-name Girl’. I'll have a go at this story one of these days.

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After the trenches

Well, the Remembrance Day services for the centenary of the end of WW1 are still on but will fade into the background in the next few weeks. But what of the aftermath? I had several single lady  teachers who were unmarried because the young men they might have wed had been killed in Flanders in WW1. One of them formed the heroine of a novel I wrote to honour schoolteachers. The government had promised the lads going off to fight, a Land Fit for Heroes and I used that as the title. Those dear ladies took their class as their substitute families and treated us with great kindness and understanding.
Of course, the land fit for heroes never materialised and drifted into general strike and depression and teaching during those years must have tried those women's resolution but they carried on and educated those who would stand up in 1939.
In later years, I was taught by men from WW2 and, again, was treated with great understanding, they seemed to relate to our teenage rebellions and taught us to love their subjects, including Shakespeare and history.
It is as a result of those experiences that I remember the wars nd those who suffered, not just in the trenches but in the years that followed.

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AFricans and mixed race Remembered WW1

IN the midst off all the hype about remembering the men of the commonwealth in WW1 I hope no one forgets the men of mixed race who fought under General Smuts in Kenya and Tanganyika. Those men insisted on being included and fought not only in East Africa as the Cape Corps but also in Palestine and were later sent to restore order in Egypt when the dockers went on strike. After a hard fight and a blistering march they came singing into camp and the general commented, the only men who would come in singing after the time they have had are the Cape Corps.
They also fought at Tobruk in WW2.
I learned about these in the village of Pniel near Cape Town, a village that ignored Apartheid and got on with life.
With the Cape Corps in East Africa were unknown thousands of tribesmen who acted as bearers. While the dead of the whites and the Cape Corps are recorded, no one knows how many bearers were killed, died of fever, or were eaten by lions. They have no memorial and the unknown soldier is also for them.
I promised to write the story of the Cape Corps and have written the prologues but, to my shame I have not tackled the war on the Rufigi River.

Oor Wullie or Why French William came to Britain

The Portuguese went round the Cape of Good Hope in search of the spice trade. Columbus sailed west to develop trade with Japan. Cabot went back to Nova Scotia because he thought there was gold there. Why did William the Conqueror invade Britain? Because he wanted a piece of the action in the North Sea. The North Sea was at that time the busiest trading area in the world; iron ore, timber, amber, furs from Scandinavia; tin, lead, copper, wool, from Britain. All France provided was wine.
BY ignoring Cnut's empire historians miss the influence it had on the Norman invasion. There are tales of how Harold went to France to pay homage to William and tales of how Edward the Confessor naming William as his successor but none of it explains why William wanted to leave sunny France for a wet and windy Britain. If all he wanted was land, surely he'd have gone south or south east to the Riviera. How many Frenchmen retire to Cleethorpes?
Anyway, there were several claimants to the throne, was it ever different until Victoria. There was Edgar, the Atheling, with the most obvious claim, there was Harald, who had outlawed his brother. That brother and Edgar, who was Malcolm of Scotland's brother-in-law, joined up in Scotland, they could hardly go to France, could they? These two got together, convinced Malcolm to charge down into England while Harald was under threat from William. They tried their luck at Stamford Bridge. As usually happens at Stamford Bridge, the Scots lost, but then Harald had to rush down to Hastings.
I always thought that was pretty much it but it turns out that William turned on the Scots and Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy. I went to school in Scotland but nobody thought to tell me William the Conqueror was at Abernethy. It was of course the capital of the land of the Painted People, the Picts. The local church was founded by an Irishwoman, St Brigit of Kildare - not one of the raiding Scotti from Ulster.
So what are the people of Abernethy? Viking, Norman, Irish, Scots, or Picts? Maybe just British.

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Cnut

Our school history jumps from Alfred the Great to 1066 but there is a lot going on in the interim. For a start, Cnut, the Viking, appears as if by magic, defeats Edmund and becomes the first Viking king of the Anglo Saxons. In fact the one who really unites the country.

In my researches I found one gem from the past in the form of a letter written by Cnut himself that makes one wonder, with Brexit boiling, if people have changed all that much.

... I spoke with the (Holy Roman) Emperor himself and the Lord Pope and the princes there about the needs of all people of my entire realm, both English and Danes, that a juster law and securer peace might be granted to them on the road to Rome and that they should not be straitened by so many barriers along the road, and harassed by unjust tolls; and the Emperor agreed and likewise King Robert who governs most of these same toll gates. And all the magnates confirmed by edict that my people, both merchants, and the others who travel to make their devotions, might go to Rome and return without being afflicted by barriers and toll collectors, in firm peace and secure in a just law.

The more I read about the man, the more irritated I became over how he was ignored in my school history.  I learned of him in an art appreciation class talking about a poem about some old woman trying to sweep the Atlantic Ocean out of her front door, yet here is the king whose empire stretched around the North Sea; in other words, the major trading area of the time. Think of it, amber, ivory, fur, iron ore, timber, from Scandinavia, tin, copper, lead, wool, from Britain, all trading with Germany and the empire of the Tzar, possibly even the Far East through the Caspian and Black Seas.

Pie in the sky? If I jump a bit to the days of Braveheart Wallace, when the Scots wrote to the outside world telling them Scotland was free and open for business, they didn’t write to the French or the Venetians, they wrote to Hamburg and Lubeck, their old trading partners across the North Sea.  

Back to Cnut. The Scots paid homage to him, not just Duncan’s father-in-law, Malcolm, but Macbeth, who killed Duncan, not in his bed as Shakespeare made it, but in open battle. For the next seventeen years, not Shakespeare’s weekend, Macbeth was king of Scotland. A settled Scotland that allowed him to visit the Pope in Rome and return, still King of Scotland.

In the meantime Duncan’s sons had run off to England, where they learned how the English court ruled and took those ideas north when they returned to Scotland.

All this, yet a time ignored by the conventional teachers of history in preference to battles and royal marriages.

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