The Fool on the Hill: Intermission

Meta-meta-narrative: this piece is written as an experiment. If it works, it will end up being the first of a series of intermissions into the narrative of a story on which I'm working, which has the work-in-progress title 'Merchant'. These intermissions will collectively describe the process by which the narrative arrived in its final form — if it ever does.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single author in possession of an unruly imagination, must be in want of a plot.

Reader, you can skip this bit.

I am in possession of — or am possessed by — an extremely unruly imagination. It is all too closely related — kissing cousins, or better — to my sexuality, and neither is decorous or reputable, nor fit for polite society. From my deep unconscious emerge vivid, disturbing scenes, often rags of half remembered dreams, for which my imagination seeks to evolve explanations, which need further explanations, which become narrative.

One problem with this process is that I have an internal critic who does not like these narratives. My critic is a woke prude, burdened with puritan repression, Quaker pacifism, and twenty-first century post feminist male guilt. I don't like my own narratives. I am shocked by them.

But the other problem is that these narratives which spiral out from unconscious roots, deep in the id and twisted by childhood trauma, lack structure. They sprawl. For half my writing life I struggled to reduce any of them to a publishable form.

For that, you need a plot.

So how do you find a plot?

Larceny, theft, thuggery, rapine.

I wrote Merchant because I had a world. A world in which bad things happened: in which tyranny was the default form of government, in which money ruled, in which the position of women of all classes was pretty much terrible. I had written all too many stories set in that world; the world building was done. I wrote Merchant to see if I could write a story about how you could make that world better, as one of a series of exercises in making that world better. But I also wrote it to see if I could produce a publishable novel set in that world.

There's nothing new in stealing plots; as Christopher Booker observed, there are only seven plots in literature. But if you're going to steal, it's good to steal from the best; and thus, when writing Merchant, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice became the victim of my ravishment.

I wrote it. Structurally, it worked.

It just turned out not to be a story I liked.

It doesn't feel OK to write only about the elites of society. And I've done the story of the elite woman who falls into a man's power, struggles to free herself, and then finds she still wants it, too many times. Yes, it's clearly speaking to an obsession within myself, but it doesn't feel like a story which it is needful to tell.

So, should I throw it away and start again from scratch, or do I tear it apart, and build some more interesting structure from the pieces?

Reader, I rent it asunder.

There was silence. At last Kateran cleared his throat. "Now that Arista Selchae has joined us, should we go on to the matter of the Seal Mother's embassy?"

There was a rumble of assent. Pentarff intervened.

"Arista," he said, "is it true that you claimed to be the God in the square last night?"

"I said I was the Seal," said Selchae, briefly. "I am."

"Is that not the same thing?" Pentarff asked.

Selchae shrugged. "Yes, and no," she said. "I am the avatar. That is just a fact. I do not feel that I am the God, but it is my task — my duty — to try to represent the God to the people. It does folk good to feel that the God is among them; it aids morale. And, furthermore, Sôf, who was doing such an excellent job of bringing folk together and giving them both hope and purpose, no longer can. I owe it to her to take up her burden."

Pentarff's brow tightened.

"Are you making an accusation, Arista?"

"I was not," said Selchae. "Should I be?"

There was silence. After a moment, Kateran broke it.

"The season for the Rite of Quickening approaches. The Seal Mother has sent word to us that she desires safe passage into the city to begin making arrangements for the ceremony. Seeing that the former Seal Maiden, Tanzathael, is dead — so we believe, at least — the custom of the city has it that Arista Selchae should take that role."

For a long moment, no-one spoke.

Kateran looked directly at Selchae. "Arista, do you wish to speak on this?"

"That is a version of the ancient custom, certainly. But the laws of the city are contested."

"What mean you, Arista?"

"There are at least five laws which might be followed. Or we might make new ones. But the merit of any law of succession is that if all acknowledge the law, succession may take place without open conflict. Not all acknowledge any one of these laws, and we have open conflict. Thus the law does not serve."

Pentarff stirred at this. "Five laws?" he asked.

"It does not matter," said Selchae. "They do not serve. In any case, a ceremony cannot be held in the old sanctuary unless it serve Rothic's purpose, nor in the new unless it serve Selachen's. What says the Seal Mother?"

"Nothing, yet," said Kateran, "but that she demands of us safe passage."

"But not of Rothic?"

"No," said Kateran. "No messenger of any kind has sought to go to the Residence."

"Then you are answered," said Selchae.

"Hold," said Kateran. "You said we had open conflict..."

"We have. The Seal Mother's people sought to kill Master Dalwhiel."

"If a compromise could be reached," said Pentarff smoothly, "there need be no further open conflict."

There was an expectant silence. It stretched.

Kateran cleared his throat, and said, "Arista Selchae, such a compromise would depend on you."

She stood, slowly, small, grubby, weary, strained. "Outline this compromise to me, Captain Kateran," her voice was dangerous. "I do wish to serve my city, and I do wish to see peace, but I do not see what compromise I could aid."

"Arista," said Pentarff, "your brother holds the road north, and already few peasants from the north are bringing their harvest to market in the town. Now he moves west, to cut our west road, and we may be sieged."

"I did not know this before tonight, but you do not surprise me."

"He seeks to become Tyrranos."

Selchae looked at Pentarff, making no move.

"It's the custom of the city," said Pentarff, "that the consort of the Seal Maiden..."

"No!" said Selchae. "It is not. It is the ancient law of this city that I rule, because I am, through no merit of my own, descendant through the female line of the God. That's ancient law, which no-one now supports, and all seem to want to forget. It is ancient custom that the avatar chose her champion at a contest, and that she publicly took his seed in a Rite of Quickening held on the shortest day, the day the city is dedicated; and it happened commonly that her champion fathered children on her and on other women of the city, as the strongest bull fathers pups on all the seals on the shore. It's been the practice in this city since the first ariston came here and slew the champion that the tyrranos hold the avatar more or less prisoner and force his seed upon her — call it marriage if you will. But it is the practice of the aristons that son succeed his father, and of the city that daughter succeed mother, and so we have this dreadful succession of men bedding their mothers and sisters and daughters, and false contests where an armed and armoured ariston faced an unarmed and drugged 'champion' in a slaughter on the shore."

"Let us then say it has been the practice..." tried Pentarff. Selchae looked at him, and his voice petered out. She looked across the circle at Dalwhiel, but he avoided her eyes.

"Is it the will of this council," she asked, "that I surrender my body to my brother to have him force his seed on me, so that you can turn this city over to him and abandon all that you, Kateran, and you, Dalwhiel, have worked so hard for, without a fight?"

"War is costly!" said Pentarff.

Selchae looked at him. She looked, slowly, round the circle.

"It is late, Captains," she said, "and I am weary. I shall retire."

She marched briskly across the circle to where Dalwhiel sat, and spat in his face; and then turned on her heel before anyone could react, and walked back down the hill.

Meta-meta-narrative, continuing: it turns out, having written this, that I'd already made this decision, about this very novel, fully ten years ago. I wrote changes to it then which turned it from being fundamentally a novel about a sexual relationship to mainly a novel about civil governance; and then, still dissatisfied, abandoned it. But when I reread it this year, thinking, is this worth salvaging? the idea of writing about moving a city from tyranny to bourgeois democracy no longer felt enough; and leaving the ending being one in which Selchae still subjugates herself to one man didn't feel as though it gave her character sufficient honour or agency. So that which had been rent asunder once, is now being further ravaged, in the hope of finding some elusive golden kernel.

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