A Lepracornvertible Bond

A BOND Book two in the Complete Magicbox Saga A Lepracornvertible Bond The Bardic Musings of Nudds Stanza one Twas late in the year, In the CMS valley, When a young Lepracorn, On troubles did tarry, His mind was awash, Wish visions of death, And a disbelief he, Was the only one left, He turned to his queen, Whose assets were plenty, And asked for her guidance, For he was but twenty. She spoke with a wisdom, Of many a year, And to his Jap’s eye Brought a sorrowful tear, She spokes of a legend, To deaf ears had fallen, That spoke of a place, That history had stolen, A land of his kin, Excluded forgotten, Awaiting a King, Of heroes begotten, The mantel was his, Should he choose to explore, The manifold mysteries Laid at his door, He was the last, The loneliest one, But through him the others, Could bath in the sun, Released from their caves, Their centuries’ cell, And loosed on the world, Freed from their hell… Nudds stared out across the pink sky of the CMS. One year had passed since the great war, which had seen Xandor beheaded by his heroic, though tragic son, Daniel Charles. Andrew and Jo had returned to their world, and as Nudds had expected, failed to text or e-mail to let him know they’d arrived home safely. Currently his horn was dry, but he was feeling drowsy. A haunting dream had plagued the hours of darkness that ran longer than usual during the drawn-out winter months, and had moved him to distraction. Having regained his imagination, and thus his ability to think freely, he had found rebuilding the damaged and fractured CMS child’s-play. Assuming the vacated role of King was not only a logical, but publicly supported move, and Amy Galveston (who was surprisingly attractive, if not quite as amazing as Jaime Murray, Hustle, Series one Episode six, Pole Dancing daydream) had happily agreed to become his queen. The Titans had returned to the mountains, glad to be free of the pesky Akis. Emmareena had claimed much of the land for her fairy folk, and was grooming the young Evie-Mae as her successor. The Pirates, headed now by Omar Io who had united them all under one banner – The Jolly Eric – were heading off to a largely unknown land dubbed Canadia by those few explorers who had dared travel so far. Nudds doubted they would return for at least six months so the likelihood of post-war squabbles was significantly reduced. But as well as he had done to restore the world to peace, and no matter how considerate and measured his policies and legislation were, the troubles of the miniature monarch were internal. He was stalked by a memory that he was sure was his own making. He was harassed, and harangued to madness with the visions of others like him; a whole tribe, maybe even a country of Lepracorns, all smiling and calling his name…dancing to the Guanaco-Skin drum that pattered out the beat of his hammering heart… “Nudds?” Amy approached. “Oh…hi sweetheart,” he said, swinging his little legs as they dangled listlessly over the edge the castle rampart. “What are you doing up here? You’ve watched the suns-set everyday this week. Is everything alright?” “It is here,” he said, waving a cursory arm across his kingdom, “But I’m not so sure it is in here.” He tapped his noggin. “The suns…they are a beautiful thing. But the sight of them is too often taken for granted. They are ever burning beacons of liberty. They hang above us, their reddish glow an ever-present reminder of the blood spilled so that those who look upon them may do so. The fire that burns in them, burned in us all once…when we were forced to do or die.” He looked up at her, crystal green eyes glinting in the fading light. “Where does it go? Where do those feelings go? That desperation to survive. The drive to win at all costs. To be the best…Where is it now? Must we be moments from death to feel alive? Are we all so blind?” “Where has this come from,” said Amy, who had grown to love the young king during his recovery from almost absolute retardation. The fluctuation in his IQ was startling, and she found his transformation unnerving, though not unattractive. He was kind and thoughtful, but the latter to a fault. He had become inward, and if it weren’t for the drugs he took to calm his fizzing mind, he would surely work himself into a suicidal frenzy. “I don’t know,” he sighed, scratching his horn, which was, as it always did in Amy’s presence, tingling. “I’ve been having this dream…at least I think it’s a dream. It’s bothering me.” “I can see that,” she said, stroking his shoulder, “What’s this dream about?” “I keep…I keep seeing…No…It’s silly. Stupid. I don’t know…” “Tell me,” she cooed, gripping his chin gently between two knuckles and turning his face to meet hers. She kissed him delicately. “You can trust me.” He smiled weakly. She was right, of course he could trust her. Maybe he’d feel better to get it off his chest, no matter how childish it sounded. “I keep seeing other people like me…” “Other kings?” “No, no…other Lepracorns…” Had Nudds been looking at his girlfriend, he would have noticed the colour drain from her face like the value of Bradford and Bingley Shares, but as his eyes were rooted on an indeterminable point of horizon, he missed the transformation and she was able to recover her composure. “That’s…strange,” was all she managed as her brain floundered for answers: what should she say? How could she tell him? Would it be fair? Could she stand to lose another lover to a quest he couldn’t possibly refuse? Thankfully, her reeling mind was given more time as Nudds, as was his habit now the floodgates of imagination had burst, rambled onwards with all the tact and gentility of a runaway steamroller. “Strange indeed,” he said, flicking a loose stone over the edge of the battlements. It tumbled hundreds of feet, breaking the smooth, glass-like plane of the moat with such speed it barely made a ripple. “It’s so very real…so very, very real. More like a memory, but not a personal one. Like it’s been implanted in my head somehow. It wasn’t there before the war, that’s for sure! And now it’s all I can think about…all I am…It seems to me, Amy, that there might be some truth in this vision. I don’t know if what I’m seeing is real, or whether it ever was real, but I get the feeling it is definitely something. And if not a memory, a fabrication of my subconscious instructing me to investigate. Too long I have masqueraded under the blissfully ignorant title of “The last loneliest Lepracorn,” with little proof other than the fact I am here and no other appears to refute I am unique. But, my dear, if there is one thing that is certain, absence of proof does not necessarily mean absence, period. It is so much easier to prove than it is to disprove, and it is the startling truth that no man or Lepracorn, yours truly admitted, has put a concerted effort into uncovering some solid proof that I am in fact mistaken, and am in fact one of many…What do you think, my dear?” She opened her mouth and stopped. She had no choice. He was almost there himself anyway, she reasoned. Why not tell him? If anything it would make his life easier from here on. “Tell me,” she said, fidgeting as she spoke, “Tell me…are you intent on exploring these visions.” “Yes…” he frowned as he noticed her nervousness, “Amy, whatever’s the matter? You’re acting like you know something.” She sighed and said, “So whatever I say, you would pursue this…this dream?” “I don’t think I have a choice.” “Very well,” she said, her shoulders sagging, “I do know something. Something I should have told you months ago, as soon as the country had settled down after the war. But I couldn’t, Nudds. I love you, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you risking your life when we were so happy.” “Risking my life? What are you talking about?” “Years ago,” she said as she paced the battlements, “When Xandor had risen to power and was plotting to steal the Black Harpie from Countess Magicbox, the Lepracorns of the CMS planned to steal the harpie first in order to prevent the dark lord from doing what he eventually did. But as careful as your people were, there was a spy among them. He informed Xandor of his people’s plans. For this deed, Xandor anointed him his right-hand man and sent him to the other world to hunt for the Black Harpie. It took him nearly twenty years to find it, but when he stole it from Countess Magicbox and returned to the CMS, cutting a way through the dimensional wall using his horn, he found out that Lord Xandor had betrayed his promise not to harm the Lepracorns and had instead, imprisoned them in their caves by collapsing the walls around them. To protect himself further, the dark lord – ruthless as ever – flung the treacherous Lepracorn across the land, right to the other side of the world, where as far as we know, he still is. But unbeknownst to the bearded Lord, one Lepracorn, while out for a stroll with his son past Xandor’s then unprotected castle, had overheard the plan to trap his people, so he rushed back to their network of underground caves, leaving his son underneath a toadstool in case anything happened to their home. Sure enough, no sooner had the brave Lepracorn entered the caverns, Xandor collapsed all the exits, trapping the Lepracorns forever. In the same dastardly swipe, Xandor severed the imaginations of the whole population, rendering any kind of search for the Lepracorns impossible. The last, loneliest Lepracorn who had just watched his daddy get trapped underground, and felt the minds of his kinfolk leave their bodies, screamed with such anguish that his horn began to bristle with raw emotional power. Without knowing, the young Lepracorn cast a protection charm over his old home, preventing anything from entering the caverns, and thus protecting his people from Xandor’s ravenous minions. It was an old and powerful spell – the likes of which can only be reversed by the caster. Safe as the Lepracorns were, they were trapped: trapped until the boy returned to lift the charm that, over time, became a curse of sorts.” “What happened to the young boy?” said Nudds, his eyes glistening with tears. “He grew into a fine young man, and helped the heroes save the CMS. Currently he’s winning the people’s hearts in his new role as king…” Nudds’s jaw dropped. He was the boy? He had placed a protection charm over the forgotten kingdom of his fellow Lepracorns! “But why can’t I remember?” “You were very young…and a protection charm is the hardest spell to perform. Not even Xandor managed it, hence that horrible Basilisk of his.” “Ah, the LSE, I’d almost forgotten about it’s annoying stench.” “You must’ve been exhausted. In fact, it’s a wonder you didn’t die!” “Why have I been having these dreams? Why now?” he asked, gnawing his nails and scanning the horizon with jittery eyes. “I’d guess that the charm you placed on the caves has stopped the imaginations of your people reconnecting properly, and they’re still out there, floating around in the Porter’s domain. I think you can probably see them in your sleep when you are closest to our old friend.” The Lepracorn nodded and chewed his lip. “How long have you known?” he said, not making eye-contact. She said nothing. “How long,” he said, though calmly and kindly. There was no hint of malice or anger in his controlled tone. “Since the day it happened.” Nudds exhaled in disbelief. His slight form seemed to shrink in seconds to a waiflike shadow of his normal self. “And you never said?” “I didn’t dare…Nudds, if you go off looking for the cave anything could happen to you! Xandor may be gone, but his influence isn’t. The caves are the last monument to his power. Those who are loyal to him will defend their discovery to the death. The destruction of the Corn Caves, was a huge political step. It is still a marker for all evil overlords to live by. They will kill you if they know you have even an inkling that the caves exist! It’s a death trap!” “But they’re my kind! I have to save them.” Amy wanted to scream WHY!? But she knew the answer. She would do the same if she were in his position. All the arguments she came up with against her lover’s quest sounded selfish and cowardly. Perhaps he was too gung-ho about the whole thing, but his heart was a compass that knew nothing but morality. It was his duty to try, even if it meant the death of him. Stanza two And so the young king decided, He had not a choice, And departed at once, To the tune of a voice, Calling him home, And hoping to heaven, That her miniscule lover, Would be home safe by seven, But It wasn’t to be, And on he did plod, While his queen wept with sorrow, And prayed to her God, “Oh send him back soon, I need him I do, My life would be ruined, And the CMS too,” But will he return? With nought but a scratch, Or will Xandor’s faithful, The Lepracorn catch… An autumnal film seemed to coat the surrounding landscape, as the knotted bark of the nearby trees, glinted a fiery ruby in the suns waning light. Like currents of magma the bark did shine forth; lustrous and polished to an unnatural degree. Nudds collapsed against the foot of one such shimmering tree and uncorked his gourd, spilling the welcome water down his chin as he gulped greedily from the leather container. His mouth was dry as sand, and his throat was just as coarse. He coughed unhealthily. One too many cheeky Marlboro fags with Andrew after a hard day’s saving the world had left him a shadow of the ‘corn he once was. Those days were gone. Andrew was gone. He was in his own world living his own life. Word on the inter-dimensional grapevine was that he’d had a child…a real family of his own. Lucky man, thought Nudds, wondering what Andrew’s child looked like, whether it looked like its old man or, like most babies, an extra from E.T. He sighed and checked his water bottle; empty. He cracked open a whiskey miniature which, in his child-size hands, looked like a quart at least, and drank heartily. He wished he had a family. He had always been alone, and he had carried the abandonment issues that made him irritable and sometimes hard to love, with him ever since, wrongly believing he had been discarded by his parents. Now he knew the truth he couldn’t be happier that he had been loved, but whenever he thought of his father his found himself sadder than he had ever known; for now he knew that Xandor, had robbed him of a beautiful life that he had never imagined could have been his. Suddenly, without warning, one of the ruby-red trees creaked and collapsed at Nudds’s feet. He jumped up in a flash, his thirst forgotten and his senses sharpened. A guttural groan rumbled through the earth beneath his feet. His muscles were tense; poised to run, but the sound came from no particular direction, simply around, and therefore he had no idea which way would lead away from the danger he could smell on the air. “Oh…” the groan took on an accent, and a syllabic form that had previously been lacking. “Oh, my head.” Nudds relaxed slightly, the heels of his readied feet descending to earth. His shoulders slumped, and his primed fists lowered as he scanned the near horizon for the source. “Hello..?” he tried, his voice cracking with uncertainty. Nothing. He tried another swig at his gourd but it was bone dry, sapped of its last by his hungry throat. He coughed raucously, and, tasting the metallic tang of fresh blood, spat on the cracked dirt that spread out from beneath his Corny shoes and decorated the ground with a lattice tile, as far as the eye could see. “Ooooh, keep it down, could you,” said the rumbling voice. “That coughing…it’s driving me mad.” “I think I must be going insane,” thought Nudds, his eyebrow raising involuntarily as he searched in vain for the root of the noise. Ironically it was the root that led him to the detached voice’s owner, as the tangled knot of shoots protruding from the base of the fallen tree began to twitch and buckle; eventually curling themselves into what looked like feet, before the trunk rocked from side to side, and pressed its newly formed soles into the cracking ground. With a rasping crackle the Dryad straightened itself out to full height, towering above the little Nudds. The king trembled as the shadow of the Dryad drained the colour of the world around, and his mammoth, wooden head rose up, blocking the sun. Nudds swallowed hard and did what he could to compose himself. He was the king, he told himself, he need not be afraid! But somewhere in the depths of his mind was the distant echo of Xandor’s maniacal laughter, reminding him that for everyone citizen that loved him, and appreciated the changes he had made in the CMS, there was a counterpart, an equally ardent supporter of everything against what the king of sub-stature stood for. “Urg,” the Dryad grunted, “Why you got a branch on your head, funny man?” “’Tis a horn,” said Nudds, his mouth reacting to the question without need for encouragement. “Not seen a funny branch-face like you for a long time.” “I’m not surprised,” said Nudds, relaxing in the presence of the Scandalously Mimicked Ent (SME). “We’ve been off the scene for some time.” “Hard to find work?” “No…a faked extinction.” “Hard times.” “Tell me about it,” said Nudds as he lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs. His curly-tipped New Balance pixie shoes waggled with interest as the SME did the same, dropping to Earth with a crash. “I’ve had a bit of trouble finding work,” sighed the Dryad, picking a loose piece of bark from the area Nudds imagined would be anatomically classed as the forehead, and flicking it away morosely. “What’s your line of business?” asked the curious king. “Well…in the glory days; right before Xandor’s ascension to power, I’d carved for myself a pretty decent career as a Stock Broker. But this credit crunch…bloody hell…it’s felled any ambition I had of staying in that game. All these idiot bankers, moving money around like a pile of matchsticks. They didn’t care what happened to me…so I was left out in the cold; unemployed and apparently unemployable.” “How come? You seem like a respectable…tree.” “Well I thought so to,” said the Dryad, apparently taking little offence to the blanket term ‘tree’. He was a Driscollus Beechus, a variety common in the inanimate state, but rather rare amongst trees blessed, or cursed, with sentience. “But I tried applying to the fire service…no chance.” “Too flammable?” “It wasn’t that. I just wasn’t gay enough, straight enough, short enough, fat enough, sick enough or female enough to fill their necessary criteria.” “Ah, equality?” The Dryad nodded. “I never stood a chance. I was fit, strong, brave and keen, but unfortunately able bodied, able to lift even the heaviest man and use fire fighting equipment with ease and composure even when under duress.” “Not what they were looking for?” “Nope. These days you only get in if you pray to an unheard of God five times a day, were born outside of the CMS, have at least seven convictions for no crime less heinous than assault (preferably murder or sex offences) and have sub par eyesight. I did complain, as any self respecting tree would, but I was provided with the following scenario…” The Dryad’s eyes misted over as he took himself and his mental passenger back to the office in which his rejection was made official… “You see Mr Driscollus,” said the portly fire chief from behind his cluttered desk. Coffee cups were piled high in a pyramid of laziness, and unmarked forms were strewn from either end of the bureau, covering the once lustrous surface, which had been dulled by time, as had the harassed Chief’s enthusiasm for the force. “You’re just too…suitable.” “Too suitable, sir”? The chief scrunched up his eyes and shook his head in frustration as if he was trying to shake his mute tongue back to life. “Yes, yes,” he spluttered, “too suitable. And stop calling me sir, damn it. Nobody is that respectful these days. That kind of respect suggests hierarchy.” “Isn’t there a hierarchy, sir…sorry.” “Well of course there is; there has to be. Imagine anything getting done in a socialist society. Ha! There’s a joke. But we can’t allude to status, you see. Its unseemly. If you call me sir, and I don’t call you sir back, which of course I won’t because, why should I? I’m better than you! If you call me sir and I don’t return the geniality then that implies that I am better than you.” “But you are, sir. You just said so.” “Well I’m allowed to say it,” said the chief, starting to sweat, “But that’s because I’m in charge. I’m just not allowed to imply it. The crime’s in the implication you see. People have become so sensitised to political incorrectness that a full-on assault of taboo bypasses their senses when presented in the right context, by the right people. But a suitable error, or a decision made on solid fact that disregards the illogic of social equality is inexcusable. That kind of underhand dissension is unforgivable.” “I’m not sure I understand, s—” “Let me put it this way: Let’s imagine a house is burning.” “Right.” “And there’s a woman on the third floor, screaming her lungs out for someone to save her.” “Check.” “And along we come in out bright red engine, manly thighs pumping beneath our red-blooded hearts as we leap to action; to her sole aid no less, throw up a ladder and scale the dizzy heights to her rescue.” “Textbook, sir.” “No it’s not bloody textbook! It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Here we are with all our black and gold clad heroes, risking our bloody lives to save this young damsel in distress and what does she see? She sees a man climbing up a ladder, instructing her to climb onto his back. Does that sound fair to you?” “Yes sir.” “Well that’s why you’re just too suitable. That kind of blind logic has no place in today’s world. Let me tell you, she doesn’t see a hero, she sees an insult! By us coming to her aid we are implying that she cannot help herself. We are demeaning her character as a woman, and insulting her survival skills…I knew a man, called Tommy he was, had a great future ahead of him, but he had one flaw…he was just too suitable for the job. He saved a woman and got three years for sexual harassment. Granted he may have squeezed her thighs a little tightly on the descent, but come on! He was doing his job! Anyway, ever since that incident we’ve only been able to take on weaklings, cowards, and non-English speaking immigrants to fill our ranks.” “But, sir…” “Yes, Driscollus?” “What if I was stuck in a blaze, and you sent a four and a half foot tall woman to get me down from the third floor. I weigh over twenty five stone, how could she possibly lift me?” “Well, since Sally Gunnell left the force to pursue an odd, but strangely inspiring career in public speaking, I would wager she couldn’t. But when confronted with our attempt to not offend, you would surely have looked inside yourself and discovered a way to save your own bark covered arse, and spare us the embarrassment of explaining to the press why we let another forest fire sweep Australia when a few well place Lumberjacks could’ve sorted the mess out quick-time. But oh no, send the lumber-Jills and see how they fare! Well, they probably would’ve done alright if they hadn’t been doing their hair.” “That’s a bit sexist, sir.” “Did I mention that the reason why doing their hair took so long was because they were all blind?” “Ah…” “And so they are the suitable unsuitables. They tick all the boxes of inapplicability. They are perfect.” “Perfect, sir?” “Well, they say true perfection is flawed, so philosophically I guess they are.” “Sounds like a load of bollocks sir.” “That’s the system Driscollus, that’s the system…” “Golly,” said Nudds, hardly able to believe the tale of woe. “That’s terrible! What will you do now?” “Well,” said the lumbering woodsman, shifting on his uncomfortably bony arse, “no time to be bitter about it,” his brow seemed to flatten; the deep grooves of his brown bark reducing and giving the appearance of sanguinity, and youth, “At least I can focus on my true love now.” “Which is?” “Snow boarding.” “Really?” said Nudds, “I’ve never seen a tree snowboard?” “It’s quite a sight,” grinned the Dryad, his cracking lips curling back to reveal two rows of gravestone sized teeth that glinted a healthy beige in the simmering heat. “So tell me, little branch face, what ails you? I’ve been growing round these parts for more years than I care to remember and not once have I seen a man, branch faced or otherwise, with so much weight on his shoulders.” “I’m on a quest,” said Nudds proudly. “Ooo, I like a good quest. Is Peter Jackson involved?” “No, it’s an independent production.” “Shame. He did a good job with the Ents. By brother Barry Entwistle was in the battle of Isengard. He was the one with a big, dangly groin branch. Very artsy. Likes to paint.” “That’s…nice,” said Nudds, wishing Driscollus was less involved with his own thoughts. “My quest is a little different.” “No ring?” “No…” “No elves?” “Not yet…” “What about hobbits.” “I think I’ve kind of got the Halfling market collared,” grunted Nudds. “I’m searching for the rest of my people. They were imprisoned many years ago by Xandor. I need to find them. Do you know anyone who could help me?” The SME groaned as he searched his data-bark for an answer. His eyes closed and his head lolled to one side. Wispy words slipped from his unconsciously moving lips. Eventually, after a sneaky little kip at the King’s expense, Driscollus opened his eyes and said: “Y’know, I think I might. The last branch face I saw was chatting on about a cave of trapped branch faces. He was in a bad way though; drunk and all over the place. He’d been banished or something; thrown to the other side of the world by Xandor. He only found his way back to these parts a couple of weeks back. He said he was gonna move on, though. So you’re a few days behind him. I’m sure he could help you.” “Hmm, he sounds like the betrayer. I would like to find him, but I’m not sure I’d give him a chance to talk.” The small king bristled with rage. “How can I find him? Where has he gone?” “That way,” said the dryad, pointing to the East in the direction of the Desert of Moor. “Aw, crap,” whined Nudds, “Not the Desert of Moor. That is the most desolate place in the world.” “They say the wind speaks…” “And that men go insane from listening to it for too long.” “They say it is the resting place of the goddess Andi’s tortured mind.” “She was driven mad by her own incompetence…” “The God’s expected so much…” “But she had not the experience,” said Nudds, grinding his teeth at the thought of irresponsible employers. “She’d only worked in Natwest. Poor girl. Never stood a chance.” “She was perfectly unsuitable,” nodded Driscollus. “And so she went mad. Her mindless droning forever to fill the void of the Moorfields.” “’Tis a map of her mind,” lamented the wooden man. “Empty…barren…desolate…” “Shortcut to Brighton, though, mate. I reckon that’s were the little branch face was heading.” “Brighton! The cad! I must give chase.” “look,” said Driscollus, scratching his barky arse, “I don’t mean to be rude, but old branch face was a damn sight bigger than you and walked pretty fast for a drunk. I doubt you’ll catch him before he makes it out of the desert and by all accounts you’re little legs would likely strand you in the wilderness and leave you at the mercy of the Moorfield spirits.” “What do you suggest I do?” “Ride on my back. I’ve got nothing going on in my life and wouldn’t mind a trip. I can walk ten times faster than even the fastest branch face. Especially one that doesn’t know he’s being chased.” “You’d do that for me?” “You’re the king, aren’t you? Of course! It would be an honour!” Welling with pride, Nudds hopped on to Driscollus’s back and together they set off on the trail of the betrayer, not in any way looking like extras from a certain trilogy of films about a ring or something like that… Stanza Three To the desert of moor, Our heroes did tread, With excitement and hope, Tempering dread, The branch face had run, From his terrible deeds, But the King of the land, Was hot on his heels, With a tree for friend, And a blaze in his heart, They rumbled along, At the pace of a dart, The moors were as dusty, And more desolate yet, Than the dunes of Sahara, And the peaks of Tibet, But on they did plod, In chase of their prey, For neither could sleep, ‘til he lay in his grave. The desert nights were the bitterest Nudds had ever known. He hugged his green travelling cloak around his shivering shoulders, and snuggled up the wind-blocking bark of his snoring companion. Like a felled tree, Driscollus was laid out and fast asleep, seemingly untroubled by the constantly blowing winds that changed direction every few seconds and seemed to blow the same dust and sand back and forth across the desert floor. Nudds spat out a mouthful of yellow dirt for the umpteenth time that night, swore, and turned his face towards Driscollus in the hope that sand could not reach him there. He sat up twelve seconds later, coughing and wheezing, his lungs full of sand once more. “Bloody, bastard sand!” he roared, standing up and kicking the dirt. Resigning himself to the cold, he removed his cloak and wrapped it around his face like a mask. He lay down again and, once he had managed to control the cold and stay his body from trembling, fell fast asleep. For hours he slept and for hours the wind blew. Sand banked up around his slender form and by midnight he was buried completely. It was then he made the dubious decision to wake up and, finding himself buried alive, began to panic with as much vigour as a man trapped under three tonnes of condensed sand could muster. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” he panted, hardly able to breath. He had only survived thus far thanks to his cloak shielding his mouth from the sand. He wiggled his horn. Sand fell from the roof of his dusty tomb and stung his eyes, but he managed to hollow out a touch more breathing space, but still the sky was far from view. On the plus side, he found being buried alive to be a warm experience, and averred that, assuming his oxygen held out until morning, Driscollus would save him when he awoke. What Nudds did not realise was that the dryads often slept for days, and in so deep a slumber they might as well have been logs of no intelligence. And so it was fortunate that the desert was populated by a curious race of…well…Coal. The Coal (as they like to be referred to) were descended from regular bits of coal that, after generations of observing the mass genocide of their people, finally lost their heads and complained. This uprising, which was long overdue, was covered up rather well by the government who blamed the disappearance of coal from the world’s resources on its lack of sustainability. This is, of course, rubbish. The truth is that The Coal decided it was high time someone said something about all this flippant murder. One piece of coal in particular is revered as the Godfather of the new age. His name is Sean. Sean was, like many other pieces of coal, a young and dreamful coalman who aspired to rise up in the world and make something of himself. But it is the same for so many. Before they know what’s happening they’ve been thrown on the fire; sacrificed to stoke the flames of capitalism; offered to the gods of greed; their own hopes and ambitions forsaken in the name of profit and progress – the fruits of neither will they see. Sean knew he was destined for an equally anonymous fate and it really narked him off. So one day. He stood up in the middle of coal scuttle and started to have a right go at the capitalists. He was kind of like a coal-shaped Karl Marx without the beard. People listened. People were educated in the cruelty of their own ways, in the careless oppression of a culture that could have offered many things to the world, but had been sucked dry of its resources and its constituents raped of their self-respect. People liked Sean. He was a leader; destined for great things. He wasn’t coal scuttle grade crap. He had ideas. Sean’s next idea – post pro-socialist rant – was to take charge of his people and leave town until the heat died down. Sean dreamed of a kingdom of Coalmen and Coalwomen, where the Coalborn (that’s the baby coals) could live in peace and harmony. Regrettably, Moss Side was taken, Burnage had a strict no-coal policy, and the people of Glossop were still unsure how to deal with anything ‘of colour’. And so Sean, now in the guises of a modern day Moses without the beard, led his people to the Desert of Moor, and there by night, while spared the harsh suns’ rays, they lived in happiness. The Coalmen, their women and their born loved the cold night air. No chance of accidentally igniting. That had happened a lot in the old days. Sean had changed all that. And the night on which Nudds found himself interred was so gloriously cold, it will come as no surprise to know, that Sean himself was out riding his sheep, taking in the fresh air when he came across an irregular mound of sand and set about digging it up. Both ‘men’ yelped when they latched eyes on each other. Sean fell back and, being an anthropomorphic lump of coal, had some trouble regaining an upright stance. When he did he eyed Nudds and his horn with suspicion. “You got a licence for that there horn, mate?” he spoke with a delicate Mancunian accent, nodding at the glittering horn. “It’s alright,” said Nudds with a wry grin, “the safety catch’s on.” “Let’s get you dug out shall we?” said Sean, setting to work on the mound of sand that covered Nudds’s legs. “Who are you?” said the grateful King. “Sean Coalborn. You?” “King Nudds. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sean.” “Likewise. I’ve heard of you, you know. Saved CMS didn’t you?” “Yep,” beamed Nudds. “Couldn’t save the King of Pop though, could you.” “I’m not Jesus,” said Nudds, testily. “He’s another one you didn’t save. Don’t you feel a bit bad about that?” “Can’t say I have too much guilt.” “No, I heard that too. That horn’s seen quite a bit of action, eh?” “I’m not gonna lie. It’s been dipped on more than one occasion.” “You always ruin friendships by trying to put your horn up ‘em. Classic case of egomania driven sexual dominance. Freud would be proud.” “You seem to know a lot of things,” said Nudds, impressed with words his retarded self would’ve found difficult to process while retaining consciousness. He hadn’t met too many people like Sean in the CMS. They would normally find contentment at the bottom of a pint; working all week for labours not their own and dying in financial and emotional poverty. Sean had ideas. Big ideas about boats and planes and once, he even had an idea for an anti-gravity shoe but he lent the plans to MJ and didn’t get them back. He was a doer. He was better than the capitalist machine. He was an individual. An individual with a flaw. You see, every few seconds or so, Sean would repeat the above spiel in various incarnations, occasionally dropping a word here, a comma there, and basically rehashing his own brilliance. It was true; he had liberated a people, but that kind of biblical victory only serves to inflate one’s awareness of all that’s left to do. He was perennially dissatisfied with his efforts and coped by reminding himself and everyone and thing around that he was a dynamic individual with talent and that he was going places. True as it was, Nudds was tired of it by the time he had finished pouring sand from his shoes so he discharged a cloud of annoyance from the tip of his horn. That shut Sean up for a moment. “Wow, that’s pretty neat!” he said, reaching out to touch the cloud and finding himself instantly filled with grumpiness. As soon as his he lost contact with the cloud the feeling washed away and he was happy again. “Can you do other emotions?” “I can do pretty much anything. I’m still finding things out myself.” “How big can you make that cloud?” said Sean, his eyes fixated on the bubble of mist that was hanging in the air. “Around the size of a kitchen. That’s the biggest I’ve managed so far.” “And you could use it to influence people in range?” “I guess so,” smiled Nudds, who knew very well the extent of his power and the depraved things Amy had done while under its influence. He hadn’t meant to. He didn’t know how…persuasive he could be. “You’re quite an ally! Why, back in the old days we could’ve done with a chap like you around.” “Very nice of you for saying so, and thanks for digging me out there. I was a bit worried.” Sean smiled humbly and waved away the gratitude. “So what brings you to these parts?” he said, modestly diverting attention from his heroism. “I’m in search of my people. I’ve heard tell that Lord Xandor imprisoned them while I was a child and I believe I, and only I, have the power to save them from a life beneath the Earth.” “Ah! A liberator! A man after my own heart! You’re going places, Nudds! Just like me!” “Would you like to come along, Sean Coalborn? Your trusty sheep looks a hardy beast, from whose teats we might milk a sustaining life juice.” “Ah…old Betsy’s a barren ride if every I’ve known one. Dry as a stump for four summers now.” “Poor old girl.” “Still, she trots on. Going places, y’know.” “So I’ve heard.” “Whose the tree?” “Oh, that’s Driscollus. He’s a useful guy. Good at heavy lifting and corporate actions processing.” “We’ll have none of that rubbish while I’m around! Waste of time!” “I’m inclined to agree with you,” said Nudds, grinning at Sean’s lust for the ‘places’ he was going and the seemingly bottomless barrel of contempt in which he drowned distractions and trivialities. “First things first, Sean, we have to find the betrayer. He’s a sneaky little bastard: the traitor of my race. He’s been stalking these lands for years now. Exiled by Lord Xandor for his worryingly clear state of mind. The bearded one feared he may be overthrown by the horny aide. After Xandor’s demise and the reattachment of imagination, the betrayer seems to have been on the move. Wandering through disjointed parts of our kingdom, up to no good I’ll bet…” “Maybe he’s just on a bender?” “That is also likely. Last I heard he was heading to Brighton. We’ll need to catch him before he gets there. No doubt his horn will make him a hit with the locals who will offer him sanctuary if we let him get too far ahead. You’re an expert of these barren lands. Will you be able to guide us out of the desert safely?” Sean looked around; his eyes full of tears. “Out of the desert? I never thought I’d leave…” “But Sean…we need you. The world needs you…” “Well…I suppose my work is done here. The Coal are as self-sufficient as ever. They don’t need me like they used to.” “If you help us I’ll see to it you’re honoured! We’ll have bonfires and circus acts and chestnuts roasting on an open fire in your honour!” “Not so keen on coal based recreation.” “Sorry. Didn’t think. Will you help us?” After a long pause, during which time the wind had picked up such force, Driscollus was roused from his oaken slumber just in time to see the forging of an alliance that would be remembered as the king’s finest hour of diplomacy by generations of liberated citizens, all of whom owed their freedom to that one moment and the two misshapen attempts at life that stood, hand in hand in the desert as the sun rose in the sky. Stanza four For hours on end, Our trio did trek, Cross lands undulating, Till theirs homes were but specks, In the distance behind, So far away, They prayed that they would, Return there someday, But now there were three, With their mission defined, To catch the betrayer, And pilfer his mind, At night as Nudds slept, In the Desert of Moor, A vision of hope, Knocked on his door, His ghostly visage, With straw coloured hair, Bronzed rippling biceps, To which none could compare, Filled Nudds’s mind, And his heart with remorse, That the perma-tanned hero Now rode on Death’s horse… “I always thought you were out of your tree. Not in it,” said the hazy spirit of Johnoldham. Nudds rubbed his eyes and looked at the shimmering spectre with more sleepy confusion than fear. Johnoldham was perched on the tip of Driscollus’s uppermost branch, while Nudds was nestled on the Dryad’s head, having arranged the broken, hair-like twigs into something resembling a nest. “Am I awake?” “Are we ever truly awake?” said Johnoldham, reaching inside his semi-translucent robe and removing a thin-stemmed glass full of cherry-red liquid. “Woo woo?” “No, it’s bit early for me thanks.” Johnoldham snorted and polished off the cocktail with the ease of someone whose constitution knew not drunkenness and threw the drained glass over his shoulder. As soon as it left his ghostly fingers, it vanished in the air; it’s insubstantial image dissipating in a cloud of momentarily reflective droplets before it was gone completely. Nudds stared, open mouthed. “That’s a good trick,” he said in awe. “It’s hardly compensation for not being able to feel my own balls.” There was an uneasy silence. “I mean like, feel their presence, you know? Not like…touch them…I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to…my spiritual ball bag is bursting at the seams.” The silence from Nudds persisted. “I mean, not literally bursting. What’s there to burst? I don’t exist remember…I’m like your Obi-Wan.” “Obi-Wan never turned up in Luke Skywalker’s dreams to cogitate on the absence of wanking in the afterlife,” said Nudds, willing himself to wake up. “Don’t be coming over all sentimental about Obi-Wan! He was a knuckle shuffler like the best of ‘em. Why’d you think he wore that robe? Hides a lot of sins a robe does. And besides, there’s sod all else to do in death but think of life.” “No TV?” “Well obviously we’ve got terrestrial, but digital handover isn’t until 2012 on our side so until then I have to keep up to date with the Tour de France on that fiddly website that no one can understand.” “I see your problem,” said Nudds, hardly surprised Johnoldham’s leanings towards lycra-clad sweaty men had carried over to the afterlife. “I’ve missed you Johnoldham. When you…died…I had to clean out your desk. I broke down on more than one occasion.” Johnoldham went morbidly pale. “Oh God. What did you find?” “Well there was enough bronzer to cure MJ’s vitriligo, seven staplers, a dildo, fifteen un-actioned corporate action responses, a stack of four hundred signed Phil Jagielka postcards, and a nude photo of you and – ” “Don’t say his name!” screamed Johnoldham, summoning from without his see-through chest a roar of biblical volume. “Still knocking about in the afterlife is he?” “He’s doing a fair bit of knocking, that’s for sure. You hear that he split up with the Porter?” “Poor guy, how’s he holding up?” “He’s been off work for a couple of weeks. That’s how I’m able to get into your dreams, you see. He’s not guarding the plain between the memories of the living and actual spirits so well. He won’t even notice that I’ve slipped past for an hour or two.” “Convenient. Any chance you can help us with our quest? I take it you spirits know all about the world of the living?” “Yeah, I’ve been following you pretty closely. I like your girlfriend. Who’d have thought she’d have such massive bazongers AND be so young!?” “Bonus all round.” “As for your little adventure, I’m afraid my questing days are over. It’s my time to kick back and wait for eternity until Everton win the Prem. Then I might make some kind of ghostly reappearance amidst the celebrations. I quite fancy possessing Arteta. My greatest regret in life was never getting inside him.” Nudds tried to shun the mental image of Johnoldham raiding Arteta’s anus but failed. He was stuck in the horrible reverie when he was jarred from sleep and flung from his eerie, crashing into the ground twenty feet below at Driscollus’s feet. As quickly as he had appeared, Johnoldham was gone; trapped forever between the living and dead, wandering the aisles of limbo like all great heroes do. Men of history never die, they live on in a different way. Their names and actions exist so vividly in our consciousnesses that for them the afterlife is nothing more than a progression: a way to expand their influence, their voices amplified in death. Nudds rubbed his horn, feeling instantly guilty about such intimate contact while the image of Arteta’s ravaged maidenhood still hung fresh in his troubled mind. “What the hell happened?” he yelled at Driscollus who was standing still like…well…like a tree. His knotted eyes were fixed dead ahead and whatever they had fixed upon seemed to have struck the fear of God into Sean who too stood as blank-faced and immobile as…well…as a lump of coal. Nudds – the only member of the triumvirate not to resemble an inanimate object – was duly dynamic and hauled himself to his feet, pointing his horn in the direction of his companions’ interest. Before him stood a man; a tall, slender man with a bristling mane of curly red hair and frieze of fiery stubble lining his angled, elfin jaw. His cheekbones were high and as pointed as the tips of his ears and the sharp blades of his shoulders. Draped over the yoke of a crisp white shirt, was a salmon coloured cape made from old editions of The Financial Times. In his hand he held a staff, which, in reality, was a large biro no thicker than a stick of rock. Upon Nudds regaining composure, he took the über-biro in both hands and prodded the unreliable nib at the trespassers. “Who goes there,” he snapped in a high and strident tone. Nudds glared at the man who challenged his authority. “Your king goes there…I mean here…wherever I am.” “I have no king!” screeched the man, raising his staff in anger. He ferreted around inside his patchwork cloak that foretold nought but economic doom, and removed with no little delicacy, a crown made of staples and glue that had been polished to a blinding degree of shininess using BNYM issued Hygienics anti-bacterial moisturising hand gel: exactly what the financial sector needs to brighten up its ever darkening reputation. When quizzed on the necessity of self-drying hand wash, the man responsible for this seemingly inexplicable move had this to say: “Well, in light of company bonuses being cancelled this year, and everybody teetering on the brink of suicide thanks to reduced job security, the forced implementation of increasingly farcical procedures, a mandatory, company-wide reduction in the number of staplers per staff, our refusal to order the minions nice pens when the CEO is on 20 mill a year, and our insistence on employing poorly qualified management whose heads we feel more than comfortable lopping off whenever the media get a little too close to the truth and start suggestions our incompetent middle-managers are in fact a foil to our own gaffs/laziness/corruption, we thought the staff – the people that really matter – should be rewarded so we spent all their money on anti-bacterial hand gel and another $400,000,000 on installing space-age like dispensers around the bank. This was a good move, because not only does it reduce the likelihood of a swine flu epidemic breaking out and thus forcing us to pay thousands of dollars in sick pay, nobody will want to look like a twat by washing their hands on the go so we’ll never need to replenish the supply of the mysterious clear goo that we felt was a better use of resources than pens that work.” Needless to say, this outburst of honesty cost him his job. “Who are you then?” said Nudds, scowling at the self-governing redheaded man. “I,” and he paused here to create dramatic effect, but left it a touch too long and ended up looking a bit senile and preposterously pathetic, “am the LORD OF INVEST ONE.” Without pausing for breath, Nudds said: “Oh, man, that is so gay!” “’tis not! ‘tis a noble role.” “Emphasis on the NOB.” “How dare you slight me! I’ll drown you in reams of wasted paper!” Nudds was, with every passing moment, becoming less and less angry and more and more bemused by the queer man. The self-dubbed ‘Lord of Invest One’ was hopping madly from foot to foot, waving his biro-staff with reckless disregard and chattering curses and slurs at such an unrelenting pace, the white lines of his teeth blurred as they clattered together. Nudds took this opportunity to stoke the Lord’s ire by approaching him with subtle steps – passing unnoticed thanks to the odd man’s focused indignation – and tearing the corner from his shoddy cape. He read the article which ran as follows: Nudds read the article in disbelief. How could corporate fat-cats be so stupid, so arrogant, so self-involved? The Lord of Invest One was dancing around, yelping in tongues when the fancy took him, and looking a bit of a twit. Nudds tugged on his cape. “Hey…HEY!” he shouted. “Yes?” said the copper haired man, whose trance seemed to have tempered his foul mood. “What’s that rubbish you’re singing?” “It is a song for the gods of Financial Times! They inspired me to take up a career in finance! Thanks to them, I am a Lord!” “When did you start your career?” asked Nudds, a little worried the strange man was a touch behind on recent events. “Two years ago, my horny little bitch, two glorious years.” “Do you still…read the FT?” “No time! No time! My finger’s on the pulse! My managers inform me of all I need to know. Why, the last time I touched a copy of the FT was when I made this fabulous cape.” “So you think everything’s hunky-dory with the economy, then?” “But of course! What could have gone wrong?” He started to laugh sardonically, “I mean we pay the top-dogs so much, how could they make a mistake? And anyway, the government would foresee any sort of crisis. It’s full of honest, selfless, hard-working chaps after all.” Nudds bit his lip and held out the torn portion of the cape. “I think you better read this…and the rest,” he said, hanging his head as he thought of the weight of the blow the truth would strike. The Lord of Invest One took the salmon coloured paper and sank to his knees. Stanza five “Are you alright?” Nudds walked behind the Lord of Invest One, who was speeding ahead of the group, still muted by the unexpected collapse of the stock market. “Fine,” came the terse reply. “I really am sorry,” said the little king, “I kind of thought you’d have heard…” “Yeah, well, I’ve been busy. Very busy. I’m very important you see. I use figures. Lots of figures in my job. Loads.” “Yes…I understand,” said Nudds, not sure how the odd, visibly distraught man, could be consoled. Suddenly, the red-haired maniac stopped dead – so suddenly, in fact, that Nudds careered straight into the back of his slim legs, bounced off, and landed on his arse staring up at his newest companion, in whose eyes a light was starting to shine. “Maybe…just maybe we can sort this mess out!” “How?” asked Nudds, rubbing his shocked horn. “These Lepracorns you keep babbling on about…how many of them are there?” “I don’t know…thousands I imagine. They’ve been locked in isolation for 20 years…I doubt there’s much in the way of recreation save…well…you know.” “Brilliant. An injection of small foreign twats is exactly what the economy needs. They are cheap, abundant, desperate for work…this is perfect! If we can find these little shits, and flood the economy with them, they’ll be able to drag us back to black before I can say ‘I love fund accounting, I really, really, really do!’ and I say that a lot so can say it quite fast without messing it up…nine times out of ten I get it bang on!” “That’s quite impressive…it’s a real mouthful.” “Sure is! It’s even more of a mouthful when its sharing space with BK’s member. I like to get a-head in this game if you know what I mean?” The Lord of Invest One winked at Nudds, who wasn’t in any way sure whether he was being ironic or confessing to string of homosexual encounters with his company’s CEO. Nudds decided he didn’t want to know, or risk LIO revealing more of his sordid career than necessary. “So will you help us find my people, then?” asked Nudds, hope saturating every word. “I will, I will,” beamed LIO, sticking out his hand to shake on it. “And I know just where to start! You’re heading for the forgotten caves right? Well, I used to work in a place called archives and I can tell you: they’re not quite as forgotten as people think! While I was down there, sifting my way through several rainforests worth of useless, outdated shit, I found a map to the place in question…in fact, I think it’s part of my cape somewhere…have a look would you?” Nudds skim-read the articles of the salmon-coloured cape. Eventually, after five minutes of Driscollus’ bark-scratching, Nudds gave a cry of success, reached out his dainty little hand and ripped another portion of LIO’s cape clean off. “Hey! Stop doing that! It’s not like I can buy another one of these at toPSShop!” “Sorry, but look I’ve found it!” He held up the scrap of lighter coloured paper for the team to study. Coalborn tried to have a gander, but his coaly fingers made a right mess of it so Driscollus snatched it off him, but then started to cry when he realised he was holding a dead relative, so LIO took it from him, as sympathetically as a man with the emotional range of a tube-sock could, and read from it aloud. “The caves of the corns, Are written in time, And the path to their door, Is an underground line, O’er hills you may labour, For years, maybe more, But unless you go deeper, Your route will be flawed, Your mind will be lost, If you do persist, In walking the route, That many insist, Is correct and much safer, Though tales disagree, If you want to survive, Then listen to me, To the archives you’ll travel, And then up from deep, Through an office of madness, Be sure you don’t sleep, The door has no key, But will open with force, Of desperate love, And guilty remorse.” “I hate riddles,” said Nudds, gnashing his teeth. “What does it mean, Lord?” asked Coalborn. “It means we have to go underground, through the archives, and then we must endure a tedious escalation process, and finally we must cross an office, swathed in utter bullshit masquerading under the title of ‘business-lingo’, which is about as necessary as a torch on the sun.” “Yeah…but what if it’s night, eh?” said Driscollus, “You didn’t think of that, did you, eh?” The other three – and Betsy the sheep too – looked at Driscollus, toyed with the idea of stocking up on firewood and then, deciding against spontaneous homicide, shook their heads in despair. “Lead on to the archives LIO, and none of your spontaneous breakdowns – the closer we get the more pressing I feel our mission becomes!” And so LIO – the Lord of Invest One – lead them to the dark and towering maw of the archives that sat at the foot of Tedium Mountain. The journey was a swift one, though they were forced to stop to photocopy over a thousand outdated documents, which LIO assured them would guarantee them safe passage past the guards that kept watch over the archives with the sole intention of convincing the world that anything worth guarding was worth its weight in gold. This, as many things in the CMS seemed to be, was a lie, but it was a serviceable and widely accepted one as it seemed to be so blatantly nonsensical that anyone who thought of questioning its validity would stop short of rebellion in the belief that they must have missed the point and would likely end up looking a royal tit when the reason – which most assumed was obvious, though out of reach for drones such as they – was explained to them via an e-mail that had been expertly crafted to use a lot of irrelevant adjectives and non-existent nouns in order to give the impression that there was some extremely complex foundation underpinning patent idiocy. Reams in hand they approached the guards. “Halt! Who goes there!” Nudds cringed as he foresaw the utter twatishness of the exchange was set to follow between the guards and LIO. “’Tis I!” proclaimed LIO, not in any way allaying Nudds’s fears, “The LORD OF INVEST ONE!” “Have you papers?” screeched the premier of the two guards, both of whom were dressed monkish robes that billowed beneath swathes of unnecessary armour plating. They were both miniscule men – twins of each other – but despite their diminutive stature, their armour was ill-fitting and a size or two too small. They had close-cropped ginger hair, beak-like noses, dark beady eyes, and around them lingered the unmistakable stench of undue self-importance. “We have many papers,” said LIO proudly. “Are they special ones?” asked the less forward of the pair. “No, no,” said LIO casually, “They are effectively useless. No one will ever look at them. They will contribute only to the increasing hoard of meaningless documents, and continue our merciless destruction of the rainforests, and our continued evasion of the implementation of the long-ago promised change-over to a paperless environment.” “Perfect,” said the ginger little men in unison. “They sound wonderful! You may pass.” The group lumbered past the two guards. Driscollus – the last to pass – eyed them both with disgust, as their squinty little eyes followed him into the caves below. They licked their lips as the walking paper-factory passed them by: one wrong move in the depths of the archives and he might disappear, only to re-emerge as another thirty or so boxes of fiscal detritus. “That went well,” said Coalborn, sitting astride Betsy as they rolled along. “What’s next?” “Let’s not get too cocky,” warned LIO in hushed tones. “I don’t trust those two one bit. They’re the Corrigan twins – nasty little buggers. Blindly loyal, and fanatically stupid – they seem to think working for the archives is a righteous profession. Shameless self-promoters, sickening lap-dogs, unrepentant brown-noses…men like the twins…they just don’t get it.” “I guess working in a place like this could drive you mad,” said Nudds, looking around the high-ceilinged network of caves through which they were making edgy progress. He shuddered. There was something wrong with the air in that place. It was thin and miserly and hard to draw on, but on the odd occasion one managed to procure a whole lungful of the muggy stuff, it took on the properties of tar and weighed down the tiring bodies of our restless heroes. “They are a…special breed. They actually wanted to work for the archives. It has been said on many an occasion that their desires show a mammoth lack of foresight, and a level of delusion that, if identified pre-1980, would have constituted madness and resulted in an indefinite stay in an asylum. Thankfully for the twins, the Smiths alienated so many stabile young minds between ’83-’87, that no one notices the mindless twits anymore. They were merely re-dubbed ‘New Romantics’.” “I guess we have Tony Hadley to thank for that,” piped up Coalborn with an edge of Mancunian bitterness. “Don’t forget Simon Le Bon. He spent three years prior to an unplanned business trip to Rio, working in fund accounting. It did something odd to his hair, rendered him unable to sing, but left him with such an air of eccentricity and self-assurance, everyone else thought they were crazy for not getting it.” “Maybe there’s some Merit to the twins’ madness,” mused Nudds, “I mean look at Le Bon: everyone hung with him ‘til he released View to a Kill and atoned for his previous atrocities. Now he’s successful – massively so!” “But everyone still thinks he’s a prick,” added Coalborn. “If that’s ‘success’ then I’ll take credible obscurity any day.” As the quad of friends ambled on, deeper and deeper into the archives, the air became hotter and close. Nudds unbuttoned his faux velvet shirt another button and wiped his brow. In that moment, having closed his eyes to remove the streaming sweat that threatened to blind him, he stumbled on an unseen object underfoot and careened to the ground, landing face first in the dirt. “Ow, bloody hell!” he growled through a mouthful of grit. “Sowwy!” came a high-pitched warble from beneath Nudds’s legs. The miniature king’s hand flew immediately to his crotch – the voice had come from there: surely his danglebit had not come to life? Alas, Nudds’s malformed walnut-whip was as listless and lifeless as ever and, of the three states of matter, had come closer to resembling a liquid or gas since leaving his queen’s side than anything approaching a solid. Missions of grand intent tended to render the limp Lepracorn temporarily flaccid. As it happened the voice – strident and uncultivated as it was – had come from a small slug, around seven inches in length. It was a deep purple and almost invisible against the inky backdrop. From what could only be described as its head, two large, drooping yellow eyes extended on the tips of uneven stalks. The group stood in dumbfounded silence and studied the odd interrupter of their quest. “What the blazes are you!?” demanded Nudds. “Sowwy, sowwy,” squeaked the slug, “Me not see you come. Me no see so good. Me slug. Me have werry, werry teeny eye-bits.” “It’s fine,” said Nudds, his mood softening towards the near-brain-dead mollusc. “What’s your name?” “Slug, mister.” “Where do you come from Slug?” “Come from hairy man, oh yes, yes. Come from big hairy ‘uffalo man.” “Oh Christ,” said Nudds, passing his dainty hand across his eyes. “Not Daniel bloody Charles?” “Yes, mister, yes! He the hairy man. I live in his leg for moons. He cut me out with sticks and leave me here long time.” “What’s Daniel bloody Charles?” asked Coalborn, who was studying Slug with an air of mistrust. “Daniel Charles was an old…associate of mine. He was a deranged Buffalo Man. A sexual pervert of the highest order and, by some unpredicted twist of fate, a hero that will forever be enshrined in the account of Xandor’s downfall.” “Sounds like a nice chap,” commented Driscollus respectfully. “He was fine when he wasn’t trying to mount you…but those instances were few and far between and usually after he had been injected with a near lethal dose of tax and was too bummed out to…perform.” “What’s this slug all about, though?” asked LIO, prodding Slug with a nearby stick. “Me grow from bad juice in hairy man’s leg. Me grow big and black and then POP! me born.” He looked up at Nudds with those wide, pleading eyes and then, as if to reassert his lornness, said very quickly with no discernable gap between words: “I have no friends.” Nudds sighed. He had not envisaged adding another party member – things were getting hard enough to handle as it was – but slug was part Daniel Charles and the harassed king felt he owed his old friend to such a degree that he would care for his pus-filled offspring. “Well,” said Nudds, deflating to half his limited size, “I think you can be our friend. We will take you with us.” Slug, who was not used to kindness or charity, and had, up until that point, lived in complete solitude, eating and conversing with mud and poo and the like, beamed as prettily as was within a slug’s power. “Ooo, fank you! Fank you!” he gushed. “Me will guide you deep into caves, yes? Me have bright eyes!” “Anything from the Paul Simon era?” asked Nudds hopefully. “No. Just Bright eyes…” “Nothing at all?” “Well, I’ve got a remix of it by Harvey from So Solid?” “Um…” “And thirteen new edits of Ice, Ice Baby, from Vanilla Ice’s new album..?” “I think he means he has bright eyes…literally,” said Coalborn, banging his coaly head against the sooty heel of his hand. “That could be useful!” yelled LIO, “It gets pretty damn dark down there, and we’ve got a ways to go yet!” “Come on then slug,” said Nudds, sticking out his hand and allowing the slippery little bitch to slither onto his palm. “Let’s do this.” Stanza six How long they did trawl, Through seas of old paper, Matters not in the face, Of that most mundane caper, The archives were barren, A soulless wasteland, But they made their way through, Thanks to Slug of the hand, LIO was right, That world was a mess, And keeping ones mind, Was a wearisome test, But hard as it was, Our heroes prevailed, And reached a great door, That to them availed, A way out of there, That terrible place, And a whole host of problems, That next they must face… “I am glad to be out of there…” said Nudds, wiping his murky brow for the hundredth time that hour. “That place gave me the willies!” “We’re not safe yet,” warned LIO, who seemed to have calmed down considerably since they entered the caves. It was as if being in company had returned his mental state to something approaching sane. “These are the Halls of Escalation,” he said with grandiose fear dripping from his tone. He introduced the scene by opening his arms as if to embrace the bustling milieu like an old friend. Before the motley crew were hundreds upon thousands of shiny silver escalators. They rose up from the floor; connecting moving-stairways from further underground with the level on which they stood; and then carrying on up – high as the eye could see. Directly in front of them stood a desk and behind that desk sat a young, beautiful-in-a-plain-Jane-kind-of-way receptionist. She looked up from the papers that littered her rectangular, metal-framed desk and smiled generically. “Can I help you, sir?” she said, directing the enquiry at LIO who was heading the pack. He beamed widely. “At last! Some respect,” he chortled, clapping his hands together with delight. He approached the young woman; heels squeaking on the highly polished floor-tiles. “We have a problem,” LIO began. The receptionist interjected instantly with a worried expression accompanied by the clucking of her tongue and the shaking of her blonde head. “Oh dear, oh dear…well, you came to the right place,” she said comfortingly, reaching out a slender hand and touching the back of LIO’s, which was pressed flat against the surface of her desk. Her cherry-red nails traced fine-lines on his hand as they retracted their soothing touch. “This is where we resolve problems by ascertaining responsibility. Thanks to our advanced escalatory hierarchy, no problem remains in anyone’s hands for long enough for it to be considered critical at any one moment in time. That is of course until the problem becomes an issue, and then of course whoever is left holding the issue is terminated.” “Like a career-based game of pass the parcel?” chimed Nudds. She looked at him coldly. “No! It is not so trivial. It is a well-thought-out process. It is the way business works. You wouldn’t understand, little man.” “Yes, Nudds,” sneered LIO, clearly enjoying the preference the terse bimbo was showing him, “Leave it to the…professionals.” Nudds buttoned his lip and listened in silent cynicism. “Now it’s very simple,” continued the receptionist, focusing her eyes on LIO, “you take your problem up one of these three escalators. At the top of each escalator you will meet a fellow employee who will reluctantly take your problem from you.” “Should we give him any information.” “What…like an audit trail?” “Yeah…” She laughed. One short, brusque laugh. “No,” she said, patting our red-headed friend on the hand, “No, that would heighten the chance of early-resolution. We don’t have a faculty for that. “Okay…” “Once you have offloaded your baggage onto the poor sod who will likely come under fire for being in possession of some royal fuck-up that’s nothing to do with him and therefore totally beyond his powers to solve, your problem will further escalate through the appropriate channels until it reaches the top.” “What happens at the top?” asked LIO, with an air of grandeur. She looked at him blankly. “Well…what do you think happens?” “I don’t know…it ceases to exist..?” “…I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.” “But you know it does.” “…I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.” “But it says it right there on your sheet…I can see it!” LIO protested. “…I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.” “Okay, fine. Look, we’d better get going…this problem isn’t going to resolve itself!” “Alright,” she said, appearing to relax the moment LIO stopped grilling her, “Of what nature is your problem: personal; professional; or penile?” “Um…personal?” “Good…here is my number. Take the middle escalator. That’ll lead you to the right place. Oh, and don’t look over the sides…really…don’t.” “Okay… and thanks,” LIO smiled, took the blonde’s number and motioned to his companions to follow. As the ragtag bunch of crusaders passed the desk they each made some sign to her: Sean bowed, and old Betsy attempted a curtsy, which nearly threw her rider off; Driscollus doffed his leaf; and Nudds, ferrying Slug around on his shoulder, made an obscene, autoerotic gesture with his right hand and his horn, which caused her to blush and cross her legs. “Right, now, can anyone think of a problem?” said LIO as they mounted the first escalator, which stretched up and up and up into the seemingly endless space above their heads. There was some kind of illusionary trickery afoot. Nudds could sense it. They hadn’t been that far underground, but the network of escalators all around and, more pertinently, above them seemed to go as high as the moon, maybe Mars even. “I’ve got a problem,” said Nudds, sheepishly, “But I think we’re in the wrong queue for that…my horn’s been dry lately. Really fucking dry.” LIO looked at his kingly companion and wished to God that he would stop drawing attention to the fact that the semi-sentient, shape-shifting, bolt-firing protrusion that burst forth from his messy crop of auburn hair was tantamount to a futuristic sex-organ and prone to sudden bouts of wetness. “Nudds’s bone-dry bone stump…anyone think of a problem?” “Ol’ Betsy’s got gout,” said Sean tearfully. “I’ve got some flaky bark,” muttered Driscollus. “SLUG KNOWS!” cried the demented mollusc from the king’s bony shoulder. “What is it, Slug? What can we tell them?” “We is in the personal line isn’t we?” “Yes…” “That means that we is going to HR!” Everyone gasped. HR were known throughout the land for being an obstinate, unhelpful, deliberately obstructive, intermittently coy, sporadically aggressive, silver-tongued, blinkered, myopic, self-serving department of well-dressed, oddly shaggable hags. And utter fucking cunts. “We is telling them that we has been sick. More times than is ok.” “How can anyone put a limit on sick days?” growled Nudds. “It’s not like you can help it!” Everyone looked at him – even Slug turned to face the cherubic little nonce. “HR, Nudds…H-fucking-R,” cried LIO, “Don’t you know what that means? Heartless Revenge. That’s what they’re all about. Somewhere along the line, something really, really bad happened to each and every member of HR. They reached 26, were still living with their parents, spending Saturday night in with Ant, Dec, and Ann Summer’s latest gizmo when they realised that the only way they could be happy was to get a job telling other people – other, better qualified people – that sense, compassion, and hard work count for nothing in the face of pure, undiluted bitterness. They are like careers advisors with a more ambiguous title. The kind of people who get qualifications in literacy, or construction…not English or architecture…. They know just enough about everything to have an ill-informed, poorly reasoned, and inadequately referenced opinion on just about any corporate subject you could think of. Their roll in the corporate hierarchy is that of a spanner. Their purpose is to tighten up loose nuts – to pull all the parts together – but when mishandled, or carelessly applied, can end up wrecking the whole bloody machine.” “I like that,” grinned Nudds, “Sums it up real nice.” “Okay, so is we agreeing?” asked Slug, “Is we agreeing that we is sick, sick?” “Yes, alright,” said LIO, pleasantly, patting the slimy slug on his dodgy eye-stalks. “Here comes the first stop!” said Sean, pointing ahead with a trembling finger. “Hello,” said the dour-faced woman that awaited their arrival. It was clear to see that she had once been attractive, maybe even beautiful, but time and countless failures had rendered her a haggard and unforgiving figure. He cragged countenance was severe and dispassionate. She probably had children and probably hated them for robbing her of her youth and elasticity. She probably had a car – a saloon would have sat well with her deportment – but she probably hated it and wished she drove a 1967 Spitfire instead. She almost certainly had a husband who was distant and unfaithful, but whom she stayed with out of stubbornness and cruelty. She definitely lived in a new-build house on one of those colourless estates. She knew she was paid too much for being nothing more than a glorified, and widely regarded as inept, councillor, but she wanted more. She hated the underlings, as she called them: the worker bees; the drones; the proletariat. She hated them because they were young and beautiful and optimistic. They deserved not a shred of compassion. They had it all and had done nothing to deserve it. She had a chip the size of Death Valley on her shoulder. She was bitter, acerbic, and twisted. She had been young. She wanted to be a chef when she was a little girl, you know? But she burnt her Victoria sponge in year 7 and it all went downhill from there. The world was against her. She was a victim. By the time she got round to picking A-levels she chose a broad spectrum of subjects to maximise her opportunities when applying for University – by then she might know what she wanted. But she didn’t. So she chose HR, not really understanding that the course cost not just £3500, but also a portion of soul – collected twice per semester. She had had promise once. She remembered it. She still had the photographs of her and an earlier (not burnt) Victoria sponge. But it hadn’t gone right and she hadn’t got over it. And now she stood before our intrepid travellers, wearing those kind-of-sexy, thick framed, Osiris glasses from Specsavers, in a blouse that cost more than LIO earned in a month, a pair of unappreciated Manolos that she felt she deserved – such luxuries were her right…they were due compensation for her woes – and a pencil skirt that was made from the reconstituted skin of employees she had fired for being sick, handsome, or just plain nice. “Hello,” said LIO, smiling through his fear. He had seen all of the above in her staid expression before his feet had left the moving stairs and touched stationary ground once more. She was terrifying. It was like looking at a corpse. A really sexy corpse that was hot for all the wrong reasons. Women like her…they just looked like they needed a good time. Like one night of mad rabbit-style-love-making would help them snap out of it. But no. No one would satisfy those deeply-rooted, deeply-sadistic urges of animalistic monkey-lust that pulsed beneath the surface. LIO went through a host of emotions while they stood in tacit examination of each other. At first he wanted to run, but then he found a tugging sensation in the seat of his pants urged him to stay…she was beautiful…wasn’t she? Then a flash of malice that crossed her face – scarring it in its brief appearance –doused his fiery balls with an icy wave. Then he hated her. And from that hatred returned the desire; the anger; the frustration. He wanted to bend her over an MFD. He wanted to cure her ills. But she wanted his nads on a spike. And she would have them. O, dear God would she have them… “Name.” “Max,” said LIO, without flinching. The whole party raised a collective eyebrow. Max? So that was the name of the copper-haired maniac! The Lord of Invest One had seemed an unlikely birth name, after all… “Problem?” “Um…well Slug here has been off sick,” said LIO, doing his freewheeling best to convince the hard-faced bitch their problem was genuine. “How many times, Slug,” she sneered his name. “Um…sixsies?” said Slug, racking his pathetically slow brain for the rules and regulations of the company. “Yes…sixsies in four months and one day.” “Six!” cried the hawk-nosed harridan. “This is most irregular! Which days were you off?” “Um…fwee fwidays…a moonday and two toosdies,” said Slug, whose well-groomed response drew nods of approval from his on-looking friends. The granite-faced termagant was madly scribbling notes. “Three Fridays and a Monday?” “Um…yes.” “That’s awfully…suspicious wouldn’t you say?” Now, normally Slug – despite his clinical retardation and shoddy grasp of English – would have argued that the days taken sick were of no relation to each other and that the fact that they wrapped around a weekend – which is of course what the pernickety old hag was angling at when she termed them suspicious – was neither here nor there. He would have argued – and quite rightly so – that one could look back over any arbitrary dataset and draw meaningless conclusions. It is easy to see patterns where there are none. Especially if you are looking for them. This was HR’s problem. It wasn’t that their answers to questions or problems were without foundation, it was the simple fact that the questions were wrong. It was as if they were driving towards a crossroads with the instruction to turn right in order to reach their destination. Approaching the same junction from the wrong road will lead to a justifiable, but equally wrong conclusion. This was HR’s modus operandi. And it sucked. As it happened, though, Slug was in no mood to curry sympathy for his pseudo-genuine plight. It was – as he knew – far more beneficial for the party that he might surrender himself to the vicious virago in order to earn them passage onwards. “Um…yers. Ver ‘spicious.” “This is a very serious matter…” “Ver’ sers,” nodded Slug. “Sowwy.” “‘Sowwy’ won’t cut it, Mr Slug.” She glared at the quivering worm. “This problem had become an issue. I am hereby issuing you, Mr Slug, with a verbal warning. You must also collect three slaps on the–” she was about to say wrist, but check herself and instead said; “slimy underbelly. Go up this here escalator to receive your punishment.” “Can me friendies come?” squeaked Slug. The tribe of misfits put on their Sunday-best faces and, for the briefest of jiffies, the stony-faced shrew softened and yielded to the mollusc’s cutesy request. “I suppose so,” she sighed, and with it releasing a decade’s worth of withheld generosity. Woe betide any man who crossed her over the next ten years, for they would receive nought of the compassion she had stooped to offer the charred lump, the autonomous tree, the slimy slug, the red-haired loon, and their horny little friend (of whose kingship she was ignorant, but whose cheeky grin stirred in her a long-forgotten yearning for furious horn-action). “Ta muchly,” said Slug, baring his toothless gums in something that lay firmly between a grin and the onset of a stroke. The ragtag bunch of friends bundled past the zealous Xanthippe and stepped on to the next escalator – the heights of which they were reluctant, but obliged, to scale. As the snappy hellcat faded from view, they relaxed and all took turn in congratulating Slug on his sterling performance. But their joy was short-lived for the next guardian of escalation they were to meet instilled in them a mixture of fear and anger, on no-one’s part more than Nudds’s who, upon being confronted with the bearded midget, whose short, stout horn gave-away his identity at once, was compelled to do away with formalities and strike him down where he stood. Atop that second escalator, the Betrayer awaited their arrival. From beneath the weighty folds of his charcoal cowl his tiny sapphire eyes studied them as they approached. In his right hand he held a gnarled, wooden staff, which he tapped rhythmically on the shiny floor underfoot. His left hand was suspiciously hidden from view and, Nudds expected, that the perverse little git was likely indulging in a cheeky tug to pass the time. The cloak quivering ceased and the left-hand emerged as the group approached the squat little man. He was, in proportions as Nudds would probably be after a decade or two of indulgence. He was short in stature, but not noticeably narrow in the shoulders, and wore a burgeoning paunch in the same way a war-hero would wear the Victoria Cross. “You…” hissed Nudds. “’Tis I, little one,” said the old Lepracorn prophetically. “You don’t look surprised to see me,” growled the king. “Nothing surprises me anymore. I’ve spent significant time in Brighton. I’ve seen it all.” “What are you doing here?” “Waiting.” “For us?” “No…my punishment. During my banishment I took to the bottle somewhat. I turned up here, half-cut and out of my mind on horny juices when you’re departed friend, Countess Magicbox, returned to us our severed imaginations. Needless to say I was reprimanded for my intrusion and have been here every since, waiting for a resolution to my problem.” “But that was almost a year ago!” “Things have been a little…disorganised. They dumped me here on the second level and have been guarding me ever since. I believe the technical term is ‘brushing under the carpet’.” “Where’s your guard now?” “Havin’ a slash, I think. But the cheeky sod’s been gone for nearly half an hour. He’s not qualified to administer my punishment.” “Typical.” At this moment, LIO took the fore and began to quiz the betrayer in accordance with the normal line of furious curiosity one recently wronged – as they had been by the officious harridan of HR – employs when encountering another of similar affliction who seems not to have been punished as severely as they. “So you turned up here…what happened?” he asked bitterly. “I was implicated in an attempt to save the bank thousands through a systematic process of ‘fudging’.” “Ah, well then. Sounds like a disciplinary calling,” said LIO superiorly. “It shouldn’t have been,” grumbled the Betrayer, “I’m innocent.” “But are you?” “Yes!” “Well that’s beside the point,” smirked LIO, knowing full-well the procedural implications of false accusation. “If you are innocent you’re sure to be punished.” “But it wasn’t my fault!” protested the Betrayer, ramming his staff against the ground. “Look at Nick Leeson,” said LIO, continuing despite the obvious agitation of the little man, “Guilty?” “Of course!” “Disciplinary?” The Betrayer was silent. “No,” stated LIO, “Yacht? Yes. Mansion on a remote desert island? You bet. Scot-free? Mint. Now back to you: can you prove you’re innocent?” “Yeah…as long as they don’t ask me questions I don’t understand.” “I take it that’s what they did,” said LIO. “…” “There you go. Next thing you know you wake up in a ditch with a verbal warning round your neck and a written one on your inner thigh.” The Betrayer winced. “In blood,” grinned LIO, “your blood. And the piss of a fawn.” “Yes,” conceded the Betrayer, “That does sound about right…A written warning in my own blood,” he said ruefully. “And fawny piss,” added the Lord. “Sorry…I forgot about the piss.” “Never forget about the fawny wee juice,” said LIO, his eyes narrowing. It was, again, Nudds’s turn to take over the interrogation and he pucshed past his knowledgable friend so that he and the Betrayer stood toe-to-toe. “You and I…we have a lot to talk about.” “I am sorry, you know,” said the Betrayer, appearing at once to shrink to half his already limited size when confronted with Nudds’s massively kingliness and shinier – however arid – horn. “Sorry for you, but not for what I did.” “How does that figure?” glared the pint-sized monarch. “If it hadn’t been for my actions, however immoral they were, Xandor would have succeeded in overthrowing the CMS. You would have been lost as our people were, and the CMS would never have known the Golden-age your reign has brought upon it. I am proud for the part I played in your ascension to the throne.” Nudds smacked him in the mouth. How dare he take credit for the way things had turned out! He could not have known the conclusion would be so rosy! “I suppose I deserved that,” he said from the floor. A trickle of blood escaped the corner of his arrow mouth and stained one of the two white strips of hair that ran perpendicular to the cleft of his chin, with claret. “You’re damn right you did,” snapped Nudds, but then, after a few moments of calm reflection added in a sympathetic tone; “But perhaps you are right. Who knows the will of providence? It is not for me to condemn you when it is still possible for you to atone for your sins.” With that he reached out a hand and helped the wizened old-corn to his feet. “I must admit,” said Nudds, “I expected you to be taller and less…ginger.” “Time has not been kind,” said the booze-addled turncoat. “But you think legend would have recorded your…gingerness.” “Legend has a habit of dropping the unseemly truths. I don’t think people would be so fearful of me if they knew I was…well…you know…at a hirsute disadvantage.” “Yeah the ginger-haired midget doesn’t have the same ring to it as cold-hearted betrayer.” “I know I deserve this badgering, given my colourful history, but do you think you could lay off now? I have feelings you know!” “Alright,” said Nudds, his mind brimful with future put-downs, “I’ll let you off the hook for now. Provided, that is, you help us get out of here! Do you know how to escape?” “I’ve heard rumours,” mused the Betrayer, “But if what I think I know is true, all ways out of here are risky and mind-numbingly boring.” “We’ll have to chance it,” said Nudds without a waver of uncertainty in his tone, “We’ve got to save my…our people.” “Very well,” sighed the Betrayer, who could see the chance of arriving in Brighton in time for gay festivities slipping from his grasp, “I heard my guardian mention ‘the board room’. From what I gather it’s at the top of the escalatory chain. It’s where the top-brass hang out, puffing on cigars and churning out royal BS.” “Sounds heavenly.” “It’s not far off…but I don’t know it’s possibly to actually get there.” “Surely you just follow the escalatory chain right to the top,” said Coalborn, who was in the process of subtly milking Betsy’s one, semi-functional teat for its tasty juice-milk. Everyone turned to him – a blank look adorning each and every countenance. “Have you ever worked in a corporate environment?” asked LIO. “Do you even know what we’re dealing with?” said Driscollus. “It is never that simple,” added Nudds. “The fact the management reside on-site is a miracle in itself. It would be stretch too far to imagine they were contactable.” “Nudds is right,” confirmed the Betrayer, “Managers tend to keep themselves to themselves. They are like raindrops – from a distance they appear powerful and majestic, sweeping across the land and bending it to their will, but up close they lose all their allure. They just come across a bit wet.” “If…if we manage to reach the board room,” said Nudds, “What can we expect?” The betrayer checked his watch and inhaled sharply. “Damn…a pointless review meeting was scheduled for this week,” and then, looking at his unexpectedly welcoming companions said, in a grim and portentous tone: “Looks like we’re in this for the long-haul.” Stanza seven And so with another, Intrepid acquired, To the manager’s office, Our group did aspire, To enter and cross, In preference with ease, But knowing their luck, They will not succeed, In fleeing the caverns, That so far at least, Had slowed to a halt, Their march to the East, And so they pushed on, And their hopes did rely, Of the gingery midget, Telling no lies… “What will your guardian do when he realises you’re gone?” asked Nudds, as the six-strong group (seven including Betsy, the worn-out, well-ridden, humble old ewe) left the Betrayer’s point of escalation behind. “Poor kid will have no choice but to escalate himself up the professional column. He’ll end up where we hope to – the very top!” “How much further is it?” asked Sean, shivering. “My willy’s cold,” whined Slug. The sextet looked at the socially uncultivated mollusc with a mixture of fondness and disgust. “Not much further now,” said the Betrayer, hugging his dark cowl close. “I can see it!” cried Driscollus who, being the tallest, had the ad/disadvantage of being able to see further than the rest. “What does it look like?” said Nudds, rubbing his hands in excitement, though continuing until it became a conscious action for the warmth it granted him – a welcome thing, given the constantly thinning atmosphere. “It’s just a door,” said Driscollus anticlimactically, “a door made of solid gold! But wait…” The lumbering tree (now that’s genius – Ed) murmured something to himself. It was as if he was verbally processing some deeply disturbing thought that needed to be said out-loud to be believed. “What is it? Come on Driscollus, tell us!” “I…” “This is beyond a Joak!” “But I…I can’t be sure…” “Don’t be a sap, man! Tell us!” “It’s…it’s…floating…” “What?” “The escalators…they lead to nothing…they get close to the door but then they just…stop. The problems fall into a…” The group dared, for the first time, to look over the sides of the escalator and saw, with horror, that they were separated by nothing more substantial than a kilometre of space, from a huge, bubbling melting pot. “Oh, shit monkey,” said Nudds. And never before had the phrase been more apt. “Well this makes perfect fucking sense,” grumbled the Betrayer, sliding dejectedly down the wall of the escalator until he was resting on his slightly chubby haunches. “I knew they’d screw us over if we gave them the chance.” “But I was only a wittle sicky,” said Slug pathetically. He had started to cry. “Cheer up old son,” said Nudds, stroking his friend’s slimy behind. “We might make it out yet.” “As long as everyone…stays…CALM!” said LIO, promptly wetting himself. They were now but ten feet from the abyss and no closer to thinking of a solution. Fortunately, the guiding hand of fate chose to intervene by loosening LIO’s control over his bladder thus spraying the group with piping-hot piddle. Now, those who had sufficient rational, and some understanding of social courtesy, took the steaming jets to the face men – seeing it wise not to object as they were but a few urine-soaked seconds from death and it was not the time to fall-out with ones friends. Betsy, however, was not so accustomed to restraint and, upon receiving a particularly spicy stream of man-wee, she reared up, throwing her rider, and charged with all the beautiful ignorance of a barely sentient creature, towards the lip of the escalator. Fortunately for ol’ Betsy, Driscollus was in her way and by barrelling into his woody thigh at top speed she sent him tumbling over the edge instead. But as luck would have it, Driscollus was just tall enough so that the bristly crop of hair – in which Nudds had forged for himself an eerie of sorts – caught on the step of the Golden gate and within five seconds of losing his balance, he found himself firmly wedged between escalator and door. The escalator ground to a halt as it encountered resistance from Driscollus’s foot-root. The group cheered. They were saved! Sean hugged ol’ Betsy and planted a piss-drenched kiss on her meaty chops. He then milked for her his own coaly teat, and presented their unwitting saviour with a goblet of finest man-syrup for her unintentional heroism. “We’re saved!” cried Nudds, choosing not to dwell on LIO’s obvious embarrassment at having weed himself. “I’m caught between a step and a hard place,” moaned Driscollus, who was doing a sterling job of keeping very, very still. “Well, we’d be fools to look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Sean, placing one tentative foot on Driscollus’s root. “Ouch,” he said with deliberated suppression. “Sorry.” “Sean’s right,” said the Betrayer, “Single file now! And mind you don’t rock the oak! The last thing we need is a trip to the melting pot.” “It would be a shame,” said Nudds, as he ushered his companions over the gap. “A shame to fail when I feel we are so close…” A few minutes of careful shimmying later, the whole party, Driscollus – who had been hauled onto the step by the remaining group once they had crossed safely – included, stood before the Golden gate that led to the reputedly ominous board room. “Should we knock?” said Nudds, with his child-sized fist raised before the door. Everyone returned unsure looks, save LIO who was furiously scrubbing his crotch with a particularly absorbent section – the AIM page – of the FT. The group turned to him: he the unspoken expert on all things corporate and a little bit gay. In the pause that filled the ceasing of violent groin attention and answer to Nudds’s query, a sudden burst of putrid gas seeped from beneath the Golden door. It was, although only a misty cloud at its most visible, possessed of an almost human, or, at the very least, alien quality. It was composed of nought but loosely associated molecules and yet had hands that seemed to scratch with spiteful vigour, the innermost layers of ones flesh. It was rancid – an acrid, lingering stench. It was stale and fresh all at once. It was the smell of ripe decomposition or, for want of a more vivid description, it was the smell of shit – the rehashed, impersonal, duplicitous, backhanded, insincere, de-motivating brand of shit – often attributed to the bull – that was the common expulsion of the self-important nitwits that the powers that be saw fit to remove from the productive workflow by giving them titles that ensured they would never again be involved in actual work, and spend their days peering with ignorant curiosity over the shoulders of those who, on merit at least, were their superior. “Well don’t bother knocking,” said LIO. There was a hint of impatience in his voice, but it was all totally understandable – how would you feel if you’d messed yourself because the hand of providence – however divine it may profess to be – had fiddled with your plumbing. In front of your mates, no less. “If you knock you’ll give us away. No one important knocks. The best way to sneak in unnoticed is to stride in bold as brass as if everyone else present is there unnecessarily – almost naively – early, and greet the speaker with a supercilious flick of the head that signals they are at liberty to continue. No one will bat an eyelid.” “But we’re supposed to cross the room, aren’t we? Isn’t that all there is to it?” asked Sean. “Werry ‘ard,” mumbled Slug. “So werry ‘ard. Me is finkin’ vat it’s not so simples. Loadsa nice mens and ladies come here and I has never ‘eard of one of um leafing.” “Well it must be more taxing than a jolly jaunt across a room,” said Sean, rubbing his coaly chin. The funny thing – and yes, there is only one – about being an anthropomorphic lump of coal, is that you are, in relative terms, never dirty. Status quos, multifarious as they are, have none in their annals as muck-ridden as those of the Coal born. Sooty little bastards. And so the observation of Sean stroking his coaly chin and, duly so, receiving coaly fingers for his actions, is, to the Coal born, a non-event, whereas to LIO – a patron of cleanliness – the thought of soot upon skin is as disgusting as being invited to a fondue party between Jade Goody’s legs. It was postulated at the time of the Coal born rebellion that the reason nobody stopped them from escaping their myriad scuttles, was because nobody wanted to get their hands dirty. It is supposed that the phrase “washing ones hands” of something, originated from Sean’s filthy revolution. And so Nudds agreed with LIO’s assertion that confidence was the best guise, and officially washed his hands of responsibility should their plan go awry. They took a collective breath and pushed through the ingress. The choked on the smog. They had not been prepared for the sudden shift in atmosphere and its rife toxicity. Before them lay pile after pile of suited corpses, all in varying stages of decay. It was from these cadaverous mounds that the smell emanated. They had died of boredom or sheer madness when trying to cross the office, which, it had to be said, was particularly long and thin for an office, and more like a gauntlet – a likeness further characterised by the ornate decoration of the walls. Where one would have expected frosted sheet glass, an abundance of Ikea-beech wood, metal-framed chairs, and sterile décor, there were renaissance style portraits of former CEOs presented in art deco frames that resembled interwoven foliage, picked out in gold-leaf, the walls were painted and had at one time been coloured a garish red and smoky charcoal, were now dulled and faded with age and spoiled by the noxious fumes given off by the copious carcasses. On the long, narrow desk that marshalled the centre of the room lay pens discarded by deceased owners. They lay there like relics of some history-steeped field of war; the discarded weapons of warriors who had fought for the losing side. And most fearsome of all was the bespectacled orator that stood on a stout plinth at the head of the room – his droning voice almost inaudible over the vast distance between speaker and listeners. Behind him hung a projector screen, onto which fuzzy diagrams, charts, and graphs flickered and flashed. In his strident, Manhattan drawl, he talked at inappropriate length about facts and figures; revenue and risk; pay-scales and procedures. “He’s so…so…” Nudds yawned, “so boring.” “An awful…terrible…public…YAWN…speaker…” mumbled LIO, his eyelids becoming heavy. “Think I need…to…slee–” Sean tumbled head first over Betsy; his face smashing into the ground. The others looked at him with weary eyes, and then at each other – they did nothing: they could barely move their limbs, let alone coordinate a revival of their friend. They yawned as one. The hot, stuffy room; the asphyxiating stench of corpses; the thickness of the muggy atmosphere…there was no respite. The lullaby-like tones of the speaker lapped around their ears like docile waves lapping at the shores of oblivion. “Eh-eh-ehhhnd,” stuttered the incompetent orator, “theyuh wurz signif-fi-fi-fi-kent riise in prorfits this turm.” “I don’t care…” Nudds, “I really…don’t…care.” “Fur-fur-further morh, we don’t hahv to wuhry about hour compeitors gainainainaining any gr-gr-ground awn us, b’cauz we’ve elimmmm-inated the majority awf risk by fi-fi-fi-fi-firing almost awl of hour staff.” The New Yorker had barely finished the sentence before Nudds – struggling against the tide of sleep that was pulling him under – followed Sean’s lead and crashed into the hard ground. Seconds later Slug gave a whimpering cry and succumbed to the boredom of the quarterly report, and, with a deep, defeated sigh, LIO keeled over and lay prone alongside his pals. Only Driscollus remained and, as he stood there, watching guard over his slumbering friends, a piercing shriek stopped the speaker dead. One of the corpses near the front had started to move and, with the last dregs of resolve, was edging closer and closer to the distant door on the far wall of the office that led to the outside world; to fresh air; to freedom. The speaker looked at the jerky corpse with curiosity and detestation. And then, without warning or build-up, he barked a series of words at the struggling cadaver. “TAX!” “Noooo,” wailed the dying man. “INCOMETAX!” “Giiiiiarrrghhh!” “SCRIPS, DRIPS, and PAPER CLIPS!” “MOTHER OF GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!” There was a poignant silence. The orator stepped down from the micro-stage from which he had orchestrated the carnage that spanned the many metres between him and the last conscious observer of the bloody scene – Driscollus the tree-man. The spectacled speaker knelt down by the man whose ragged suit was stained with blood, and piss, and shit, and tears, and whispered: “Custody.” The man dropped dead. The speaker rose; his pallid complexion making him appear to Driscollus as a spirit escaping its physical bonds. Their eyes met across the room and Driscollus felt a cold sap dripping down the seat of where he should have been wearing pants. He looked at his little friends – each and every one of them in slumber-land, and close to death. What were they thinking of at that moment? What perverted pictures played through their worn-out minds? What would be the last imprint of their consciousness when the speaker finished what a few choice words had begun..? The reverie of Nudds: I am Nudds. I am King. What would the world be like if drugs were legal? Clean, top-grade cocaine sold over the counter; imported legally – never to know the soft, fleshy cage of the smuggler’s anus. What a tragedy that would be. Coke is one thing. Who doesn’t snort a bit of Charlie? I know I do. Tony Blair was off his tits on the shit. But really…where will it end? A cheeky line of china white on lunch break is alright – I can handle my drugs! Havin’ a laugh! But it’s the smack that gets me down. Can you imagine buying proper hard Aunt Hazel from boots? “Alright love, I’ll have a pack of Jonnies, a box of Rusks, and a seven% solution.” And then you’d get every bobby dazzler wired to the mains, snortin’ the talc and powdering baby’s bum-bum with a bit of snow. Legend. I took acid once. It was shit. But weed! Who doesn’t smoke a bit of weed? My old mam smokes a pipe for fucks sake. A pot-pipe, at her age! Blow me. Look at the Dutch, they’ve got it right. All you need is canals. Stick a fucking canal in the middle of Brixton and its suddenly capital of fucking culture 2010. Think about old Gordon Brown trying to found a string of sex-clubs in Buckinghamshire. No chance. Whack a canal in there though and all of a sudden Tesco metro start selling gift cards for three-way anal sex games and you can pick up a value harness on your weekly shop. The reverie of Slug: One days I wakes up and I has legs AND better than that! I has a real willy! A whole one to my selfsies. And its rather big. Like a baby twixt me thighs! The reverie of LIO: There are too many people in the world. Too many, god damn useless people. I reckon if we shave the population down by about 5.5 billion, the world would be left with a manageable population. You could have like, I don’t know, twenty people per country. Loads of space. But I guess Luxembourg wouldn’t have room for twenty so maybe adjust the number relative to siz. Say, three burly men for Germany, four or five sultry Spanish maidens for the Iberian peninsula, and one small girl for Luxembourg. Maybe a wee lad in Belgium. Now with that kind of spread you could change things. It’d all run smoothly ‘til the Jerries invade Luxembourg and plunder the little girl. But needs must. It’s hardly the holocaust is it so all’s well! I’ll have Edinburgh. Nudds can have Manchester, or maybe Sheffield. We can have races on the M1 and Gordon Brown won’t be able to stop us from staying up late and playing SNES. That’s the life. Now all I need is a handgun and a bit of time… The Reverie of Sean. I really want this. I need it. This is my chance to be something. Here I am, standing on a stage, shitting ma breaks, with a huge audience waiting my solo performance of Celine Dion’s ‘my heart will go on’. Because of the spotlights the crowd is all but invisible to me, but I can feel them there, bearing down on me…expectations high… The year is 2021 and television has had to up the ante to compete with super-realistic computer games and legalised crack. Britain’s got talent ain’t what it used to be. I see Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and the Tasty crumpet that is Amanda Holden. Man, I’d love to spread jam all over her boobs. So it’s my shot, but I’m nervous. Well nervous. The seven year old ballerina that performed right before me got three Xs and was dropped through a trapdoor into a gigantic, glass-fronted tank full of ravenous crocodiles. She was torn to shreds. I can still hear her mum screaming. Three acts prior, a little boy and his dog committed a few acts that, under Tony Blair’s evangelical rule, would’ve seen him banged up in Strangeways for four and twenty summers. Needless to say he was buzzed out of there and shot – just once – through the jugular. There was a bit of a delay after that – there was a lot to clear up, but the crowd loved it. Now it’s my turn. If I fail I’ll be in for a forfeit that may well cost me my life and if not that, my integrity/sanity at the very least. So I step out to rapturous applause and under the sultry, cock-arresting pout of Amanda Holden. I break into song and even before I get to the rousing key-change when you realise Jack is dead and not coming back, my voice wavers and Piers hits the button. Simon soon follows and I plead with Amanda with my eyes for mercy. But there’s an odd smile on her face and she hits the buzzer anyway. The crowd go silent as they wait for a trapdoor to open or a gunshot to ring out, but nothing. Then, as if in a dream, Amanda Holden stands up and walks on stage. She slides on smooth, caramel-coloured shoulder out from beneath her red dress and beckons me towards her. I stagger, unable to believe my luck and, by the time I’ve reached her, her dress is on the floor and she’s wearing nothing but black stockings and a provocative grin. I spring to attention and am about to fill my boots when she holds up a hand to stop me in my tracks. I feel the lingering presence of two, heaving, masculine bodies behind me. I look over my shoulder tentatively while the crowd giggles with sordid anticipation. Piers Morgan is totally naked and Simon Cowell has his wrinkled midget-cock pocking through the specially elongated fly of his high-rise chinos. I swallow hard and accept my lot. Amanda arranges herself on the stage and, doing my best to focus on the split second of pleasure I will enjoy with her and her alone, I step up and slide in balls-deep only to have bliss bastardised a second later as Piers bloody Morgan rams his tabloid sized nob up my jacksy. I wince but carry on. The crowd love it. Simon Cowell, grinning from ear to ear, positions himself to the fore and, due more to the motion of Piers Morgan’s ceaseless thrusting. I am forced to accept Simon Cowell’s meagre offering in my gob. Amanda’s enjoying it though, and it’s a damn sight better than the crocodiles, but if only Piers would stop that grunting; that animalistic quivering; the cruel scratching of his untrimmed fingernails on my coaly back, I might be able to enjoy being knee-deep in Amanda Holden. He shakes violently. His back contracts. I close my eyes and wait for the money shot. Amanda moans. And I… The whole room shook. The speaker fell from his stage, bashed his head on the edge of the table and lost consciousness. The group awoke, one by one, to see Driscollus lying face down. The felling of the mighty oak had saved the day! His crashing to earth had stirred them all from their private reveries. Nudds cheered and hugged LIO. He went to high-five Sean who looked severely traumatised and massively guilty, like he had been caught having a Tommy tank by his grandma who insisted he carry on and she watch so she could see how they did it ‘these days’. “Driscollus, you diamond!” cried Nudds, skipping around the now silent room. “You did it! We’re free!” Stanza eight Out of the caves, Not a moment to soon, It felt like an age, Since they’d last seen the moon, And there it did hang, In the sky up above, The were close to the end, Of their mission of love, With the betrayer in debt, He did swear on his horn, That he fight to the death, To free the trapped ‘corns, Who still after years, Were prisoners of war, And prayed that their saviour, Would open the door… “We are close now,” whispered the Betrayer as they slunk through a dense forest – the finger-like roots tugged at the hems of their trousers as they ran – their passage illuminated by the silvery threads of the moon that wove and draped a comforting blanker across the nightscape. “My horn is tingling,” said Nudds who, in his tiredness, ha accepted the kind offer made by Sean to mount and ride Betsy. Sean had insisted. Ever since he had come-to in the board room he had shunned physical contact with other living creatures and particularly despised the gentle rocking motion that was afforded those who sat astride the dried-up old ewe. Suddenly the trees – that had so recently been too dense and scraggly to see through – parted and before them rose from the earth – like a corded forearm and fist bursting through sheet ice and forever encapsulated in the moment of desperation to survive – a mountain of rubble. It erupted from the surface; the rock CAscading over itself in natural plumes. “There it is,” said the Betrayer in hushed tones. Nudds was too awestruck by the majesty of his forgotten home to notice that the squat, gingery bastard was wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “My home…” uttered the reminiscent king. Without warning a memory flashed into his mind. Was it his? He could not tell. It seemed the consciousness of his brethren abounded those straits which they had traversed. They were inundated with the severed thoughts of the forgotten race that hung in the air like a bad smell. On a genuinely olfactory note, however, the air was fresh and crisp and smelled of New Pine or one of those other non-descript air-freshener flavours. Like black ice. I mean what the fuck. What on earth does ‘black ice’ smell like? Like John Virgo’s aftershave, that’s what! “Look,” said Sean tersely, “If you guys don’t mind, can we get a move on. I really need to get home for some counselling. I saw some bad things back there in the board room. Some horrible, horrible things…” “Sean’s right,” said Nudds determinedly, “We mustn’t waste another second. I can hardly stand it – hearing their thoughts so loud! Help me, my friend!” He turned to the Betrayer who was resolutely eyeing up the gigantic mound of rubble. “It hardly seems right to call you the betrayer now,” said Nudds, laying a hand on the suddenly stoic midget. “Not when we’re on the cusp of liberating our people.” “I wronged them all…” he said, words catching in his throat. “I don’t deserve their forgiveness.” “What you did is in the past…” “I just want to be accepted…” “And you shall be!” “And loved…” “That you will!” “And all I want is to hear them call out my name! Cliff! Cliff! We love you! I saw it at Wimbledon once…it looked good.” “We will have it all…Cliff. Fear not! But help me! Together our horn lasers can break the charm I placed around our people. Ready now…one…two…THREE!” A mighty eruption of rainbow-coloured light spewed forth from the tips of their sodden horns. Pure emotion coursed through their veins, filling their dual lasers with enough energy to banish the curse of years before and break through the collapsed walls. Rubble flew up and around the group. Those who were not involved in the spell covered their eyes with their hands and arms. Sean hid behind Betsy. A minute later the spell had been broken and before the league of extraordinary misfits and gaping tunnel loomed. “We did it,” said Nudds in an echoic tone, “We broke the spell!” From the deep, lightless hollow the distant sound of melodic laughter and the snap of lather on bum-cheek could be heard. The titillating sounds were carried to the groups’ confused ears on the back of a bassy, orgasmic moan. “What the Dickens are they doing in there?” said LIO, cupping his ear and learning into the gaping orifice. “Sounds…loose,” said Nudds. This was not how he had imagined his triumphant return to his home land. He had imagined fanfares and streamers; fireworks and illuminations; brass bands and blowjobs. Looks like the last part was the only one close to the mark. “Well…” said the horny little king, “I guess we’d better investigate.” And with that, he stepped over the threshold, shuddering as he did so. The stench of old sweat hung in the air. And there was something else…the smell of…well, let’s just say it smelt like the unaired bedroom of a fourteen year old boy the morning after his girlfriend – a young strumpet of dubious character – had been over to stay and had left without her Primark knickers before dawn. They travelled deep into the moist tunnels that twisted and turned to the core of the mountain when all of a sudden the burrow through which they had been walking, opened out into an enormous, high-ceilinged cavern of gold. From their vantage point, which was about halfway up the wall of the circular cave they were staring out across, they could see it all – all of the Lepracorns kingdom. In the very centre of the domed cavern, was an enormous golden fountain – a statue in the image of the late Lord Xandor of whose betrayal the poor fools had been unaware. From Xandor’s generous gusset, streams of water poured forth and filled a multi-tiered moat that fanned out from the base of the golden effigy until it merged eventually, with the concentric canals that, despite appearing flat as a pancake, were brimful with flowing water that whizzed around and around in an anti-clockwise direction. The majority of the cavern was filled with these canals or other similar forms of irrigation, but it appeared that the presence of the canal system was as much for fun as it was agriculture for on the crest of the never ending waves that began with Xandor’s crotch and continued at high-speed until they disappeared off into unmarked caverns, through cast-iron grates, were tens upon tens of happy-looking Lepracorns skidding along on inflatable rings and yelping with joy and mindless excitement at the top of the squeaky voices. But this was an afterthought – a forgettable quirk of the background – when considering the scene that dominated the fore. Our heroes stood with no little unease, in full view of a hundred or so Lepracorns indulging in a spot of kinky horn-play. Most of them were coupled, but there was the odd group of three or more dotted around, with one particularly memorable scene that included seven male Lepracorns doing their homosexual best to impersonate a daisy chain. Most of our heroes turned away, but Nudds could not. He watched, slack-jawed, as his kinsfolk poked, infiltrated and rammed each other to a state of apoplectic frenzy. He was so taken-aback he had not the strength or inclination to stop Cliff from having a danger-tug. No one noticed anyway. In fact, Nudds and LIO stood out like sore thumbs. Coal born was alright because he was naturally filthy. Driscollus was inexhaustible fodder for ‘got wood’ jokes, so he was okay. Ol’ Betsy had enjoyed more cock than Jenna Jameson and that kind of experience can be seen in the eyes. And as for Slug…well…he just looked like a nob. “What…is…going…on!?” said Nudds, alerting the nearest couple to his presence. It was his mum and dad. “Hi son!” said his father, in too blasé a tone for a corn who had not seen his own flesh and blood for nearly twenty years. “You look well.” Not for one second did the aging corn, whose abs were chiselled from years of kinky horning, miss a thrust, a pump or squirt. He relentlessly pounded Nudds’s mum in the fashion one often dreams of dismantling an HR rep: remorselessly; degradingly; unyieldingly. “What are you doing…dad..?” said Nudds, taking the revelation of his parentage in stride. “I’m servicing your mum, son. There’s sod all else to do down here. We’ve been at it for years. Doesn’t take much mental energy, you know? In fact, come to think of it, the blanker your mind, the easier it is! Actually, come to think of it, I haven’t come to think of anything for nigh on twenty years. What’s that voice I can hear in my head, son?” “That’s your conscience, dad. We reattached it.” “Oh blimey,” said the older corn, stopping for the first time, in his relentless pummelling of Mrs Nudds’s experienced hide. Nudds’s dad looked the king up and down. Nudds himself avoided eye-contact where possible – it is very hard to have a conversation of any seriousness with your father while he is buried balls deep in your mum. “The shit is about to hit the fan. As soon as everyone realises they’re able to realise stuff, they’ll realise they’re naked and broad-daylight-boning.” “You know what, dad,” said Nudds, studying the ceiling, “You’re just as eloquent as I’d hoped.” His wryness was lost on his father. “Thanks, son. Means a lot to hear you say that. Been a rough ride, these past twenty years. I used to be a scholar you know? Professor of geology. But I’ve been up to my nuts in your mam’s guts for so long now I doubt I could tell the difference between quartz or calcite anymore.” Nudds whirled on his heal and glared at Cliff. He was doing his laudable best to avoid the graphic scene of penetration with which he was confronted. “Betrayal is one thing,” the king fumed, “imprisoning a race is another. Consigning an entire culture the annals of history I can just about handle…but nothing in my remarkably fraught life could have prepared me for…this. I do NOT enjoy meeting my bloody father while he’s tatties deep in my MUM!” “It’s only natural darling,” said his mother, speaking for the first time through the mouthfuls of pillow on which she’d been biting. “Mum, I love you unconditionally and all,” Nudds refused to look at his mother’s flushed cheeks, “But if you could not talk to me when your ass is winking at the sun, I’d appreciate it.” “Righto love. Would you like a biscuit?” She offered him a digestive. A chocolate one. “Yeah…thanks.” He took it. It was a chocolate one after all. Yum. Shaking himself out of his almost numbed state, his fury returned and he glowered at Cliff once more. “You,” he said, pointing an accusing finger, “You degraded them…they’re animals!” “They look pretty happy,” observed Cliff as a buck in the near-distance blew his beans over the pert chest of a young Cheryl Cole-esque Lepraqueen. “They’re a virulent bunch of aids-ridden bum-broncos! They’re an inbred colony of sexually active shag-monkeys, rife with disease and nonchalant t’wards their ills! You did this! You butt-raped a nation!” “I’m just saying,” said Cliff, holding his hands up in defence, “That they seem to be enjoying the butt-raping. That’s all I’m saying. Just gonna throw that out there.” “I will deal with you later,” growled Nudds, returning his gaze to his father who, although the possessor of a legendary and oft aspired-to level of prowess, had reached the point of no return and was making the sort of face one would associate with bulldogs, piss and thistles. “Champion,” he said, letting out a long, wheezing breath. “Thanks love.” He patted Mrs Nudds on the backside and hopped off, helping himself to a digestive on the way. “Dad,” said Nudds, “What’s that stuff on your horn?” “What, this?” said the panting patriarch, snapping a shard of greenish crust from the base of his bum-baster. Nudds nodded. “Ah, we’ve all got a bad case of horn-rot, my boy. All this shagging leaves its mark, I’m afraid.” “All of you?” “Every last one. We’re infested.” “Good lord…that’s awful!” “You get used to it. It’s kind of like having a rubbish job. You put up with the scummy shit that grows over your soul, because you get paid or, in our case, laid for the bother.” “We have to get you out here! There are doctors who could help you!” Nudds’s father hung his horn and shook his head as he said: “It’s too late, son. We’re a doomed race. The only flipside to our lot is that we now have nought to live for but pleasure.” “Dad we have to go,” said Nudds, suddenly taken by a dizzy feeling that sent him staggering around the caves. “Son, what is it?” “I feel dizzy, dad…like all my inhibitions are leaving my body…” As the reeling king spoke, the rest of his party began to sway. Tottering from side to side, weaving around and about each other. LIO collapsed with a shudder. “Ah, it’s the gas,” said Papa Nudds prophetically. “The…gas?” wheezed Nudds. “Yes. Our perennially sweaty bodies let off a heady musk that intoxicates the mind making it even more prone to sexual deviance. That’s why we’ve been at it for so long. It’s a vicious circle.” “What…should I…do?” gasped Nudds as he felt the lucidity of thought leave him. “Go with it! There’s plenty of young maidens around for you to bounce! Fill your boots son, and your mates too. That wooden chap will be a real hit! Not so sure about the coaly bitch through. I know, set him alight. The girls love a hot bit of stuff, eh? What? Eh?” “Very…good…dad,” said Nudds as his consciousness succumbed and his raging mastodon of an erection took over his being. Stanza Nine So all through the night, The young king did hump, Blowing on tits, And nibbling on rump, But come the bright morn, As the fresh air appeared, The young king did realise, The worst of his fears, For twixt his taught thighs, And upon his sharp horn, Was a crusty green lesion; The curse of the ‘corn, His bonking had left, Him cruelly diseased, He knew that his missus, Would not be best pleased, So he rallied his troops, The return of the king, And on their long journey, He’d buy her a ring, Marriage would ease, That guilt deep inside, But the scab on his horn, He’d endeavour to hide. “What happened last night?” said Sean. He was slumped over Betsy’s back. His arms hung down by her withered flanks and, every so often, a jet of projectile vomit would spew from his chapped lips and splatter around Nudds’s feet. The king, who was walking alongside his coaly mate, didn’t seem to mind. With every step his curly little pixie shoes were become more and more covered in sick, and yet not once did he pause in his tireless march home to chastise his irresponsibly hung-over friend, or to change his slip-ons for a clean pair of fresh-smelling brogues. “What do you think happened, Sean? What do you think?” snapped Nudds. “Well…” said the coalman, squeezing every available fibre of effort he could summon into scouring his brain for something at least resembling a memory. “I feel like I got drunk and had sex with about a hundred women.” “Lepraqueens…” “Yeah…Lepraqueens, but unless I was absolutely toasted I couldn’t have been drunk, because I don’t even remember the intention to drink. Let alone drinking itself.” “That’s because there was no drink,” said Nudds tersely. “It was gas. We were drugged out of our minds on sexy Lepracorn fumes. And we all…filled our boots.” “And a lot more!” said LIO, who was walking with a confident, John Wayne-esque swagger. “Yep,” smiled a subdued Driscollus, “If I’d bottled all the sap I leaked last night I would’ve made packet.” “A load, even,” chuckled Cliff, who too was grinning from ear to ear. Behind our intrepid travellers, the Lepracorns followed. At the front of the horny pack were an abundance of Lepraqueens who had received a right royal servicing the night before at the horn of Nudds. They kept giggling and cooing for the boys up front to stop and pay them some attention. They were enjoying varying degrees of success. Driscollus, LIO and Cliff were winking and pointing and shouting lewd things back at them, much to their delight. Sean kept throwing up in their general direction, which he meant as a compliment was received a mixed reception, whilst Nudds ignored the harem of harlots into which he had ploughed his previously faithful horn. He was racked with guilt and compelled to act. He wanted to show Amy how much he loved her so he had resolved to buy her an engagement ring and propose immediately upon their return. This is the way men deal with guilt. They are so unused to feelings of any kind they do very, very crazy things whenever their uncontrollable hormonal responses come a knockin’. On a cheery note, the mission had been a success and the Lepracorns were free. But another fear festered in the back of the king’s mind. The icky fungus that they had all contracted through frequent, unprotected, genuinely filthy sexual contact, was spreading – it’s effects unknown or, at least, concealed by the Lepracorns who all went a shifty shade of red and lost the ability to speak in anything but a mumble whenever the topic was raised by the curious group of travellers who had given them their freedom. On the frequent – and by this point, embarrassingly direct – occasions that Nudds inquired as to the prognosis of one with horn-rot, he was faced with blank stares and drifting sentences of vague content. The spreading spore sat heavy on his mind as his kingdom came into view. Their trek had lasted months, but since this is going on a bit (as usual) and nothing remotely interesting or amusing happened over its duration, forgive me for skipping what would have been a long, exceedingly tedious account of jack-shit. “Wow,” said LIO, as Nudds’s castle appeared from behind a range of lush green hills that I have thus far failed to mention, but felt would add a tangible, cinematic quality to this scene – much like the bit in Land Before Time, when Littlefoot and his Dinosaur pals find the green valley (they did it – they did it together). “It’s a palace fit for a king,” he added, rather unnecessarily. “And within it my queen awaits!” said Nudds, sucking it up and charging ahead of the group who were, at the sight of the majestic spires, whooping with delight and non-sexual ecstasy. The young king barrelled through the unlocked doors of his mighty citadel and careered up the winding flights of stairs that led to his beloved’s chamber. He burst through the door to find her reclining on a rocking chair, leafing through the latest copy of Attitude with a guilty look on her face. “My sweet!” he cried. “Nudds! My darling! You have returned to me!” “Returned triumphant, my little cherry tree! And with much in my heart to bear to you.” “Bear it – bear it all over my face!” she implored. Now, usually I would be tempted to graphically describe a rampant love scene, in which Nudds – voracious little horn-doggy, that he is – would mercilessly drill his sex-starved missus. But this is a love scene, and the actual smashing-up that is heavily alluded to will follow his overblown speech. I’m not going to go into detail. I think I’ve exhausted my capacity for colourful metaphors. Make it up yourselves. But remember: it’s got to be messy. “I love you, Amy. I love you more than words can say.” This is convenient – had Nudds’s eloquence extended to the realms of romantic expression you might have been in for an epic divulgence of heartfelt claptrap. As it was I can use this opportunity to say that the coming proposal will be much to the liking of Driscollus who has, for the duration of this story, been silently contemplating an occasion on which he might get chance to wear his finest wedding day Polo-sack, which he sewed himself from Sports World off-cuts. “I love you too.” “Amy…while I was away I did some thinking. There isn’t anyone else in this whole imaginary world that I’d rather spend my pathetic life with… Will you…marry me, Amy?” There was an tense pause, inserted solely to create dramatic effect, because her answer is bleeding obviously going to be: “Yes, yes! A thousand times yes!” they embraced and…well, now it’s over to you to imagine the most uncomfortable, anti-climatic 27 seconds-including-undressing-time experience of his fiancée’s seasoned life. Stanza Ten After the grimmest coital snippet of Amy’s life was over, and their engagement announced to the cheering masses, she retired to her private quarters and studied the life-size posters of Chad Michael Murray, Brad Pitt (in fight club – Ooo la la!) and Stone Cold Steve Austin that decorated her walls. She sighed. She was tied for life to a pint-sized midget for whom her feelings had waned since his departure. With him gone she had overseen the running of the CMS and found that sole-power was to her liking. Things had almost been better in the Xandor days. At least he had a fuzzy beard which had, once upon a time, tickled her thighs. She felt a sudden pang of grief for her dead son, Daniel Charles, whose slimy offspring had returned with Nudds and reminded her of his unique charms. Nudds, however unwitting in those days, had been an active member of the resistance that led to the death of both men in her life. How could she love him after that? Sure, when the war finished she had been swept up in the optimism of change, and fallen for him genuinely. His horn was prolific. She had enjoyed their fledgling courtship but now…things were changing again. With the Lepracorns’ return she felt the world was on the brink of a new dawn and she – the soon to be queen of CMS – was steering the ship over the horizon. Soon her chance would come to wrench power from her spouse, whose obvious infidelity had rankled her beyond belief. No one fucks with Amy Galveston and lives to tell the tale. Following a barrage of senseless, painfully ignorant e-mails, the spiteful black-widow will pounce and devour. No trace will be left. But how to depose Nudds? He was annoyingly diligent in his duties, and a well-loved king. Straight-up regicide would not go down well and, in a land that still permitted the death penalty – administered via the Herzog method – nobody was safe. Getting herself killed was not on the agenda. She had to be smart. She had to wait for an opportunity. And as fate, and the ostensible desire of the author to hurry this tale along to its conclusion, one such opportunity is about to present itself…NOW! “Yeeeearrrrrrghhh!” came the blood-curdling scream from above. Amy hopped out of bed, kissed Chad Michael Murray’s airbrushed abs, adjusted her skewed night-dress and dashed out of her room in the direction of the sound. “Yeeeeerrrrrrggggg!” came the second cry. It was closer now. It was coming from Nudds’s room. Her heart fluttered with hope – maybe he was having a heart attack! Result! She’d always said those two Pepperami’s a day would be the end of him. Serves him right the porky little bitch. She burst through the door and was confronted with a sight the finest words of Bram Stoker would struggle to do justice. Lying, curled-up in the foetus position in the middle of a wine-red rug, was Nudds. His skin was grey and cracked like dodgy masonry; his horn was translucent and iridescent like diamond; his eyes were red and blazing with the fury of a thousand women scorned. Every few seconds his increasingly granitic body was overtaken by violent convulsions, accompanied by a gut-churning howl. “Help me,” he growled gutturally. “What’s happening to you?” she asked, feeling in that instant an overwhelming wave of guilt for planning his demise. Now that he was on death’s door she found herself reconsidering her feelings. There was, at least, a shred of love left in her heart for him. “The infection…” he spluttered through plumes of scarlet blood that dripped down his chin, “It’s spreading. The others. Find the others. Quickly! Secure the castle!” He wailed again, but she had already taken flight and was sprinting down the corridors, banging on doors and knocking people up with desperation. A few curious heads appeared and started discussing what might be going on, but she didn’t stop to explain. She sprinted on, rousing as many able-bodies as she could. She was ten feet from the doors to the great banquet hall where all the others Lepracorns had taken up residence when a cry, ten thousand times as deafening and spine-chilling as Nudds’s ripped through the otherwise still night. She stopped dead in her tracks. There was silence. Then there was laughter. A creepy, maniacal laughter. At first there was but one voice, but it was soon joined by another, and another, and another, until every single one of the disease-ridden gargoyles that had, just a few hours before been happy, smiling Lepracorns, was cackling in unison. She stood, rooted to the spot. What could she do? The corns within the hall had obviously survived the painful transformation process. There was thousands of them. And she was but one. “I’m afraid all hell is about to break loose,” came a voice that she thought she recognised from behind her. There was a faint recollection of that voice – like the memory of a dream; of something not quite right; of something out of tune… She swivelled on her heels slowly, until she was facing the monstrosity who had addressed her. It was Nudds. But it wasn’t. He was only recognisable by the cheeky twinkle in his now red eyes. His skin was grey as a Mancunian sky and crackled and split with every ragged breath he took. From his shoulder blades, through his tattered clothes, hooked, leathery wings had sprouted. The slate-coloured membrane quivering as his whole body – still in shock from the agonising transformation – shook and trembled. Sharpened teeth lined his jaws – standing to attention like regimented soldiers, garbed inn ivory armour. They gnashed at the howls of his kin, saliva dripping between them. “What have you become?” she asked, cowering at the sight of his mutilated form. He was a grotesque; a beast; a freak show; a monster. “I have become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. It is time for me to leave the CMS and go on to pastures new; to lay to waste those who stand in my way. I want to be king of the world and, with my new strength, nothing will be able to stop me from attaining my goal!” “You’re mad,” she whimpered. Funny how just a few long-winded paragraphs ago she had the upper hand. Not now, though. Now she was shitting herself. “MINIONS!” Nudds’s voice boomed from his stony maw. It echoed in his cheeks as a bomb-blast would a high-ceilinged cavern. There was silence from the great hall. A horrible, eerie silence that was more terrifying than the inhuman chatter of the newly spawned gargoyles. Then, as if to mark the very second that the sun rose on this new and awful dawn, the doors to the banqueting hall were flung open, with such force that the hinges were jarred in their settings and chunks of dislodged masonry jumped from the wall. From the cloud of dust and smoke that billowed in the ingress, the first of many squat, hulking forms emerged. It was Nudds’s dad. He too had become a winged rock-monster and as the rest of their race followed him through the doorway, it became apparent that none had avoided that fate. “Ah, my people,” said Nudds, his voice slithering across the gap between him and his igneous army – a gap populated by nought but Amy’s rigid form. “Too long you have dwelt in the shadows. Today you will bask in the sun of a new world! A world that will be ours! The world of man.” There was a rapturous cheer from the crowd. Towards the back, one of the less experienced Lepracorns had a bit of an accident that his father watched with shame. “Clean that up,” he whispered, “Now is not the time. We’re going to war. Didn’t you hear?” “Nudds, don’t do this!” cried Amy, feeling that nothing but catastrophe would follow the assault on the real world. “Out of my way, wench!” Nudds shoved her aside. That’d teach her for sending so many ignorant e-mails. Nudds arched his back and, with a mighty roar, unleashed a beam of such intense light from his horn, all those present had to shield their eyes. The laser cut through the ceiling and the roof, sending a spree of rubble raining down, and on into the sky where it seemed to meet some resistance before tearing through and invisible barrier. The penetration was accompanied by a biblical clap of thunder as the portal to the world of humans began to widen. “To the skies my winged bunch of freaks! Through the gap in the heavens! We will march on them today! We will be victorious! And all the worlds will be under our control!” “But Nudds,” said Amy, clinging to the tattered shreds of his green velvet tunic, “You have plenty here…why make them suffer? Why? You worked so hard to protect them! Why!?” “We protect the week so we appear good,” smiled the king with a malicious grin, “We sustain them. We have the power to pull them up to our level, but we do not. We force them to languish in an impoverished limbo so they depend on us. And when we decide, the rug will be pulled from beneath their feet so suddenly that they will not see us coming. We will be richer and they will cease to exist. ‘tis the way of things, my queen. ‘tis the way of the CMS.” And so to the skies, The gargoyles did take, With Nudds at their helm, And blood-thirst to slake, Through the gap in the sky, To our world they did go, Will they defeat us? Well, nobody knows! With Andrew and Jo, Still there to protect, The hatred of Nudds, We might yet deflect, But the young king was keen, And unbendingly cruel, He’d slaughter and pillage, His way to our rule, Behind him was Amy, With her nerves ever twitching, And to make matters worse, Her foo-foo was itching, That horny invader, Had left her diseased, And fled from the scene; (She was not best pleased), So come back again, There remains only one Part to this tale, And then I’ll be done. I promise. x

Some of my old notes on Melandra Castle in Glossop...

A compiled history of Melandra Compiled and Edited by Robert J Nudds Illustrations and additional research Mike Brown Forward By the editor: The chance to work on the history of Melandra castle was one that presented itself to me through luck but it is one that I am very pleased to have taken advantage of. The main aim of this compilation is to provide a single comprehensive referencing point for all the work ever undertaken on the site of Melandra Castle in Gamesley, Glossop. As an addition I hope that my own interpretation of the data in front of me is fresh and insightful and I intend to pose questions for the future that hopefully will one day be addressed by someone who has the time and dedication to explore this topic further. On mentioning dedication I am reminded of Mike Brown, the man who has made the production of this compilation possible not only through his willingness to help the editor but also in his lifelong commitment to the site of Melandra; a toil that has spanned five decades and left him with a plethora of paraphernalia pertaining to Melandra and its surrounding buildings. I must apologise if at times it seems that I have “dumbed down” any of the information provided; this is a deliberate attempt at making this anthology more accessible, readable and enjoyable. I should point out that this book is not a comprehensive source for all the finds from Melandra and it neglects to include the laborious dig reports, which altered only marginally on a year-to-year basis. What it does include though is a thematic history of the site and even that of the digs whose specifics have been omitted. Having finished this book you will possess a thorough knowledge of the site of Melandra and the work undertaken so far that has led us to the understandings in this publication. Inclusion of all the written works finds and reports would complicate this volume to the point where it would be of little use and just a catalogue of events. If you wish to analyse finds from a certain year, staff at the Glossop Heritage Centre would be happy to help with enquiries if it is possible. The wealth of information presented to me by Mr Mike Brown, was immense and despite the enormity of the task every effort has been made on my part to include everything that I see to be relevant and integral to not only the understanding of the location in a categorical sense but also in the character of the site and those who have given up their lives attempting to preserve this fascinating slice of history for us all. The book is structured into nine sections:: Section one: A brief history of the site Section two: The fort itself Section three: The bathhouse Section four: A chronological history of the excavation summaries Section five: Melandra in the media Section six: Further insight to the Brigantes Section seven: Summary of information as of 2006 Section eight: Conclusion and future study Section nine: Additional images There is also a website available which contains a copy of the work for computer referencing and a complete chronological list, which organises the record of events on a purely year to year basis, ignorant of the sub-categories of ‘bathhouse’ or ‘castle’, for those interested in only the events of a certain year. The website can be found at: www.geocities.com/history_of_melandra A brief history of the site We know now that the first occupation of the Melandra castle site began sometime around 79/80 AD and continued up until 140 AD. Despite the relatively short occupation time, Melandra was an important site in the context of northwest England during the Roman Empire. So prolific was the Roman influence on the British that after three or four generations, the inhabitants of England regarded themselves as Roman. Melandra provides an insight into the changing practices of the expanding Roman Empire towards its latter days of dominance. This far fling corner of a Common Market, which stretched beyond the continent of Europe, still harked back to the administrative conformance of Rome regardless of its geographical displacement. The word Melandra derives from the Greek word Melandryon, which means ‘a herb among corn, with a white flower’. One thing is certain: Melandra was not the name the Romans used for the fort (despite the word we use (Melandra) being a Romanisation of the Greek). Unfortunately, no written record of the fort’s name exists but it is likely that it was named after the nearby River Etherow, as this would be consistent with Roman practices of the time. From this assumption, suggestions such Edrotalia, Ardotalia and Zerdotalia have arisen with the former being the most likely and commonly used to refer to the site. For the sake of standardising the terms used in this book I will refer to the site as Melandra so not to confuse the reader, however, I urge you to remember the context in which I use this name and be mindful of the fact that during the periods we are referring to, it was known as something else. Before I delve into the history of Melandra’s ontogeny a brief summary of how the Romans came to be in northwest England is required in order to paint a fuller picture of the site in context: The Romans Arrive The expeditions to Britain by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC were more to explore than seriously attempt the annexation of Britain to the expanding Roman Empire. Before he left Britain, Caesar made treaty arrangements with several of the leading native rulers, in the hope of discouraging them from raiding the coast of Roman Gaul. Military expeditions were expensive in manpower and money the Romans found no pressing cause to interfere in British affairs again for almost 100 years. Instead, the Emperor Augustus and his successors endeavoured to keep Britain friendly by diplomatic means. In the years after Caesar’s expeditions there were political developments among the scattered native kingdoms in south Britain which resulted in the rise of a group of powerful kings controlling tribal confederacies. The technology and the art of the tribes were highly sophisticated, and they minted their own gold and silver coinage for commercial transactions. The Brigantes (see chapter six for more information) The seat of power was in the corn-growing lands of southern Britain. In the North of Britain, the ‘kingdom of the Brigantes’ covered most of the modern day counties of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland and Derbyshire. The basis of Brigantian wealth was the husbandry of cattle, sheep and horses, as they had no coinage to speak of. The lack of a standardised monetary system can most likely be attributed to the fact that despite being the largest tribe known in pre-Roman Britain, their population was scattered thinly over a very wide area with no central administrative complex. Each valley supported its own community, and it was a difficult task for the tribal ruler to keep a grip on all corners of his ‘kingdom’. The Iron Age hill-forts of Derbyshire and Cheshire give us some idea of where the main population centres may have been; for in times of danger the local people took refuge in their own hilltop forts, massively defended with ramparts and ditches. A group of hill-forts crowns the central ridge of Cheshire, but there is none in south Lancashire between the Mersey and the Ribble. Mam Tor near Edale is perhaps the best-known Derbyshire hill-fort. The Invasion of Claudius The Emperor Claudius launched the main - and ultimately successful – invasion of Britain in A.D. 43. Although Claudius was nominally in charge, an experienced general, Aulus Plautius, who brought with him four legions and numerous auxiliary regiments, commanded the expeditionary forces. The channel crossing and initial landing in Kent presented few problems for Plautius and his men as the general had profited from Gallic traders knowledge of the country and its coastline. Opposition from the British was fierce but short-lived, and soon the British capital of Camulodunum (Colchester), was in Roman hands. Not all the British rulers were anti-Roman; their domestic squabbles led them to form pro and anti-Roman factions. The best-known pro-Roman kingdom was that of Cogidumnus, king of the region around Chichester. The splendid Roman villa at Fishbourne may have been his home. During this period the ruler of the Brigantes, Queen Cartismandua, allied herself with Rome. Her kingdom was in no danger of being taken over at that stage as initially the Romans were only interested in annexing southeastern England. The alliance also suited Claudius: having a pro-Roman kingdom on his northern flank could do him no harm. However, the Brigantes (many of whom were fiercely anti-Roman) assumed that their Queen’s declaration of allegiance would at least save them from Roman domination and allow the Brigantian people to continue life in the peaceful fashion they were used to, unfortunately, they were wrong. The growing unrest amongst the anti-Roman Brigantes came to its first head in A.D. 48, when the Romans were operating in Cheshire. Three years after this altercation Queen Cartismandua handed over the British guerrilla leader Caratacus to the Roman authorities, an act which once again, brought the tensions of the ruling party of Brigantia to the surface. Cartismandua quarrelled with her consort Venutius, who attempted a coup against her, but she was saved by Roman troops and restored to her throne. Venutius however, did not give up and in A.D. 69, so successful a revolt was raised that all the Roman forces could do was to extricate Cartismandua herself from danger. That was the end of her ‘client’ kingdom. Meanwhile in southern and central Britain, the Romans consolidated their hold with garrison forts and later a network of roads, linking more permanent fortifications. They were unable, however, to find an easily defensible line for their northern frontier and so pressed forward in stages, striving to eliminate sources of trouble beyond the zone, which they already controlled. The conquest of one area led to the conquest of the next in a series of piecemeal operations, which eventually, after nearly 35 years, brought Roman troops up to the southern territory of the Brigantes. Wales had posed particular problems to the conquering forces, and it would have been strategically unthinkable to begin the conquest of northwest England if the Welsh tribes were still capable of revolts in the rear. The Conquest of the Brigantes Roman expeditionary forces had already penetrated deep into Brigantia on a number of occasions to shore up Cartismandua’s regime, but they had limited objectives and withdrew when these were obtained. The Roman governor Ostorius Scapula may have passed through parts of Cheshire in his campaigns of A.D. 48 against North Wales, but the first evidence we have of concerted action against the Brigantes is under Vettius Bolanus (A.D. 69-71), who appears to have operated in the southern Pennines. In A.D. 71 the collapse of Cartismandua’s pro-Roman polices made the subjugation of Brigantia a logical next step. The governor Petillius Cerealis, leading the Ninth Legion, overran the Pennine Chain and the plains to the east and west of it in a series of campaigns that have left few recognisable archaeological traces. Certainly, he does not appear to have planted garrisons to hold the territory he had won. After A.D. 74 there was again a period in which Roman energies were concentrated on pacifying Wales, but in A.D. 79 the forward movement was resumed under the governor Agricola, to whom the conquest of the North West can be properly attributed. We can see his handiwork in the forts and road systems of our area, but we do not know much about his actual progress. In Agricola’s time the North West was crossed by two strategically placed Roman roads. The first ran east west across the Pennines linking the legionary fortresses at Chester and York, and making the movement of troops and equipment relatively easy. The main route northwards left this line at Manchester, which thus stood at an important point in the communications network. It passed up the western foothills of the Pennines into the Lake District and ultimately into Lowland Scotland. Consolidation Agricola had no security problem in the North West, since the population was so thin on the ground. The forts that he founded at Manchester and Ribchester were carefully sited on river crossings, and his other forts – such as Melandra, Castleshaw and Slack – were in tactically strong positions. By A.D. 100, a secondary route had been opened up, linking Chester more directly with the Lake District, an area that Agricola seems to have ignored. Settlements (as opposed to forts) at Wilderspool near Warrington and Walton-le-Dale mark a line across the Lancashire Plain, which leads north to the newly founded fort at Lancaster. The Roman garrison forts of the North West were manned by auxiliary troops, distinct from the legions stationed at Chester and York. Auxiliaries were raised in the less civilised parts of the Roman Empire and their role was to support the better-trained and equipped legionaries. Auxiliary units could be cavalry or infantry, 500 or occasionally 1000 strong. Often, auxiliaries brought their native style of weapons with them into service of Rome, so the Roman army was not a completely stereotyped organisation as it is often thought of as being today. Roman forts, however, were laid out according to a standard. Throughout the history of excavations of the Melandra site, this has been an irrefutable blessing as such ‘blueprint’ structures provide archaeologists with a virtual map of what they should be looking for. Because of the idiosyncrasies present in every Roman fort, any Roman soldier entering such an edifice for the first time would know just where to find the main buildings. An auxiliary fort typical of those we find in the North West was ‘playing card’ shaped in plan (not quite as simple as a rectangle as the corners were rounded off). It was defended by a rampart – at first of turf and timber, later stone-faced – and ditches. There was a gate with guard-towers in each side of the fort. The headquarters building and its offices (arranged around a central courtyard), lay in the centre of the fort, at the main road junction. The commandant lived in a large house next door, while the private soldiers were quartered in barracks constructed as long-strip building. Other buildings, such as granaries for the corn supply, a field hospital and workshops, were grouped around the central buildings. For cavalry, stables were provided. This is precisely the layout one would have expected to find at Melandra. Excavation over the past 70 years has shown that an earth and timber rampart, fronted with one or more ditches, enclosed an area of about 3 ½ acres. Later, perhaps soon after A.D. 100, a stonewall was added to the front of the rampart, and impressive gateways allowed passage through each of the four sides. The only internal building completely excavated is the stone HQ building in the centre, which probably had a timber forerunner on the same spot. This seems to be the only structure in stone; for the soldiers were housed in timber barracks throughout the fort’s history. It is hoped that current excavations will reveal more in due course about the internal arrangements. There was also a military bathhouse discovered outside the northwest corner of the fort. It was soundly constructed, dressed in stone and tile. Civilian Settlements The Roman army offered the best-paid regular job in the Roman world. There were excellent career prospects and wide opportunities for travel. A soldier’s life was attractive – but to many the most attractive thing about it was the money. However, soldiers on garrison duty had little chance to spend their hard-earned cash anywhere away from the immediate areas of the forts, so enterprising provincials with something to sell, flocked to the garrison forts to make their fortunes. This is the origin of the civilian settlement, the vici, which grew up round most forts in northern Britain. There were large civilian settlements attached to the forts at Ribchester and Manchester, as we have discovered by excavation. Their buildings lined the roads out of the forts but were not allowed to encroach upon the military zone within the fort ditches. Indeed, the camp commandment had the right to order the levelling of the vicus, if he felt that it had become a fire risk or blocked an essential line of vision from the ramparts. Melandra had an extensive vicus at an unusually early date. We know that it contained a large house in timber, perhaps a rest house for travelling officials. There are traces of private and commercial buildings, too, east and northeast of the fort defences. A rampart and a single ditch, which ran along the eastern and southern edge, protected all of these structures. Forts and their civilian settlements have been excavated in the North West, but we know surprisingly little of other civilians, the Romano-British population. They must have tilled the cultivatable land on the Cheshire plain and in the Dales, or eked out a living with their flocks on the moors, as they did in Northumberland. The industrial revolution has blotted out a great deal of course, but intensive fieldwork, both on the ground and by the use of aerial photography, can be expected to fill this gap in due course. Later History The Roman conquest of the North West did not bring an unbroken ‘Roman Peace’. The Brigantes did not take kindly to Rome’s tight bureaucratic control and regular taxation. Under Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) there are signs that a strong military presence was maintained west of the Pennines. This contrasts with the Yorkshire side of the Pennines, where many of the garrisons seem to have been withdrawn. Hadrian did not trust the provincials in the North West. Nevertheless, by about A.D. 140 both Melandra and Castleshaw were given up, probably to man the newly built Antonine wall in Scotland, and were never reoccupied. Hadrian’s optimism with regard to the Central Brigantes was misplaced: for in the years following A.D. 150, some of the abandoned forts had to be reoccupied. The Brigantes must have been restive. There are signs of renewed trouble 35 years later, when some of the Brigantes took the opportunity of settling old scores against local garrisons. Coins found in Manchester show that the fort was still occupied after A.D. 370 as one might expect from its important position on the road system. Excavation at Lancaster in 1971 revealed a mass of pottery dating to the last years of the fourth century. So both Lancaster and Manchester may have retained their original functions until the departure of Roman administration in A.D. 410. After 410 there was a power vacuum in the North West, in which the native British dynasties may have reasserted themselves. It is known that the plains of Lancashire and Cheshire served for several centuries as the link between the powerful British kingdoms in Wales and their counterparts in North Britain. The fort itself Before I talk in depth about the intriguing history of the fort itself I feel I should start by discussing the very essence of the structure: the stone it was eventually fortified with. At first glance, stone appears to be extremely boring. It is cold, grey, lifeless and uninspiring to the untrained eye, but to that of an archaeologist, it oozes intrigue and answers to questions posed by the more fascinating components of such a fort. Where did the stone come from? How was the fort put together? Who built it? When was it built? All these questions can be answered from the bricks themselves in the material, style and dressing of each individual stone. So where was the stone for the fort quarried? There is no shortage of stone in this area so identifying the exact location would be difficult without clues left by the Romans themselves. In this quest we must be careful not to be thrown off the scent as one might be temporarily when studying the legend of Hooley Wood Quarry in Padfield. The fact that many Roman coins were found there in 1838, suggests that Hooley Wood could be the place where the Romans got their material. But here we run into a few problems, which are worth addressing to highlight the thought process one must go through to eliminate candidates such as Hooley Wood. Firstly, as far as investigating the site of Hooley Wood goes, it does not feature on any map meaning we are unsure of its location. Hamnett suggested that travelling a mile northeast of the fort to the township of Padfield would lead us to the site of ‘Hooley Wood’. 1.28 miles in this direction gets one to Padfield and a stone’s throw further to a quarry, which lies next to the former railway line route. Here is where we stumble across problem number two, which despite being more of a talking point, is still a proverbial spanner in the works. The coins were discovered in 1838, not surprising really as that date coincides with the mining of the stone to make way for the railway itself being laid. Now unfortunately, we cannot simply draw concrete conclusions from what this means. Whether there was a quarry there before the railway is difficult to ascertain, especially thanks to the fact ‘Hooley Wood’ doesn’t appear on any documents that could guarantee its placement, I would say it was likely that a quarry existed but cannot be sure. Also we don’t know how the coins were unearthed; by that I question whether they were surface finds or whether they turned up after considerable digging. For ‘Hooley Wood’ to be the location from which the Romans who built Melandra to acquire their stone I would assume that it a) would have to have been a quarry before 1838 and b) that the coins were found on the surface. More likely though, considering problem number three, ‘Hooley Wood’ was not the site that can be credited with the stone used for the fortification of the fort at Melandra. Problem number three is in the coins themselves. They are mainly coins of Alexander Severus (A.D. 231-235) and Empress Julia of around the same time. These coins would be contemporary with the second occupation but not the first and so, we assume not at the time of refortification from wood to stone. Another more likely explanation comes from Mr. Jim Chatterton of Tintwistle who purports to know the actual location of Hooley Wood. According to him it is situated on the Padfield side of Torside River just below Woodhead Dam. There is no shortage of quarries in this area so it is definitely possible but problem number three still stands; wherever the coins where found, be it Hooley Wood according to Hamnett or Hooley Wood according to Chatterton, the location probably throws no more light on the source of the material that built Melandra as it is definitely more likely that the stone was quarried from either, Hargate Hill, Cown Edge or Tintwistle. Such a concrete conclusion was struck upon by the quizzing of a local stone mason, who, when asked of the stone’s origin, replied: “Bit of hard stuff you have got here, comes from Mouselow or Tinsel, or some other local source.” As Sharp rightly says; no knowledge for Latin needed, just a lifetime of experience. Add this opinion to the fact that the other stone in the area seems to have come from the same place and been dressed in a similar way and it seems plausible that we have stumbled across the source for the fort: local stone. Extract from Glossop remembered: “The early excavations of Melandra found that the foundations of the walls consisted of grit stone flags resting on boulders embedded in the clay. Above these flags was the first course of the wall built from stones with the characteristic picked finish. The stone wall was narrower than the foundation in the same manner as we would build today. The total height of the walls can only be estimated, but it would need to be at least shoulder height above the rampart and may have had castellations.” The Structure of the fort The fort is of the common ‘playing card’ shape and covers approximately three and a half acres. The defences consisted of an outer line of ditches (some of which were filled in while the fort was still in use) and stone walls, backed by earth ramparts. Each gateway had two flanking towers; three of the gates were double but the south gate was much narrower because the approach from this side was easier, making it more likely to attack. There was a tower at each corner of the fort but so far no trace has been found of ‘internal towers’. The fort interior held barrack blocks; store sheds; granaries; officers’ billets; the commanding officer’s house and the Headquarters building; at present only the foundations of the Headquarters are visible- most of the other buildings appear to have been timber framed and have left little trace, The camp ovens were built into the rampart on the eastern side of the fort so that the prevailing wind would carry sparks away from the fort. Melandra was a ‘one cohort fort’ - with a nominal garrison strength of 500 officers and men so 6 barrack blocks were need, each housing a ‘Century’ of 80 men. A ‘Bath-block’ lay outside the northern rampart and various small huts lay between the ditches and the outer palisade. A ‘Mansio’ or ‘posting station’ lay between the fort and the present Melandra Castle Road and a fair sized native settlement, or vicus, lies under the present Gamesly estate. The accumulating of building materials; the clearing of grazing land for pack and draught animals as well as the continuing gathering of fuel had a considerable effect on the land around the fort: plant evidence suggests that small farmsteads were established in the vicinity. The Garrison The two units who worked on the site were both auxiliary infantry cohorts and used as skirmishers in battle and as the garrisons of the small forts, which were built to keep occupied territory quiet. I Cohort Frisiavones was recruited north of the Rhine – as this area was in revolt in 96 AD, the raising of this cohort was probably done some time between 98 AD and 100 AD: there is no mention of their being in Britain until early in the second =century and it is likely that they were brought in as a reinforcement in the early Trajanic period. III Bracara Augustani came from the colony of Bracara Augustanorum (Braga in Portugal) and was probably made up of Iberian Celts. They were transferred from the legionary headquarters on the Rhine to Caerleon in 89 AD and seem to have been attached to the XX Legion Valeria Victrix at Chester. The 1st Cohort of Frisians being a ‘1st Cohort’ would have roughly a thousand men, including specialist craftsmen such as carpenters and stone-masons who could do the skilled work of building – which explains why the ‘centurial stone’ from the walls of Melandra is of the Frisians and not the Bracara. We do not know which unit provided the permanent garrison at Melandra but it seems likely that the Bracara, being ‘hill-men’ and the most experienced unit, would have been better suited to hold Melandra. Auxiliary units were not equipped to the same standard as the legionary infantry – they were often issued with slightly old fashioned, cheaper helmets and body armour, and some units used their traditional tribal weapons rather than the normal legionary types. The most obvious difference could be observed in the body armour: auxiliaries tended to wear either chain mail of lizard scale shirts while the legionaries wore the ‘lorica segmentata’ – the articulated hoop armour. Whichever unit provided the garrison would have had to carry out a variety of duties – escorting official ‘convoys’; patrolling the district; working on road construction; helping to collect taxes and providing the labour at harvest time to supplement the food supply with locally grown produce. Auxiliary soldiers served for 25 years and it is possible, in view of the date of the arrival of the Bracara in Britain, that some of the farmsteads close to the fort were ‘allotments’ given to veterans who had completed their years of service. The Headquarters building The H.Q. or Principia seems to have been the only building made wholly of stone: it contained the Assembly Hall (which will hold a full century of men): the C.O.’s office; the shrine and the unit pay and records office. The small buildings, which line the courtyard, were probably for ‘unit stores’ of the more valuable sort. The shrine (the centre room at the rear of the building) has a floor of crushed tile. The Imperial Alter was kept at the southern end of the room and smaller altars, one for each century, stood along the walls with the various standards of the unit. The top of the Imperial Altar has survived, but the altars themselves, which were renewed annually, the previous one being securely hidden, have never been found: five of the small uninscribed altars are still in existence. At the rear of the building there is a small cobbled pavement which amrks the spot from which the ‘official witnesses’ could watch ceremonies in the shrine through the grille above the Imperial Altar. The room at the western end, the C.O.’s office, has a door leading to the platform at the end of the assembly hall: the room at the other end, judging by the lines of nails found during excavation, once has a board floor and at some point in its life had a hearth in the centre of the room. Some indications have been found of an earlier timber building on a different alignment to the present H.Q. Gateways and Gates Paradoxically, the gateways were the weak points of the defences for they were the only places at which a concerted rush could be made without the enemy having to clamber in and out of the ditches: to reduce the danger, the gateways were made into defensive strong points from which missiles of various sorts could be fired at the attackers in both flanking and enfilading fire. The gates themselves were of extremely stout construction to withstand attacks with battering rams and the hinges were normally shielded by the edges of the gateway. Although the gateways at Melandra had two towers, the south gate had a different gate – a single ‘door’ of the ‘spear’ type in which one of the timbers of the door acted as a pivot. Ditches The ditches of a Roman fort were intended to prevent attackers reaching the foot of the wall in large numbers: the ditches were deep and wide enough to bring the attackers virtually to a standstill within javelin range. At Melandra, the ditch system is relatively slight and some of the ditches were filled in and cobbled over during the fort’s active life, suggesting that the garrison did not expect large scale attacks: the numerous small buildings close to the ditches on the north side of the fort also suggest relative freedom from fear of attack since they would have provided cover within the ‘killing ground’. Walls and Corner Towers The timber palisade was replaced by stonewalls some twelve feet high, four feet thick and faced with roughly dressed stone cut from the quarry on Hargate hill. The rounded corners of the fort were built to a radius of 32 feet with ‘corner towers’ built on the inside. The base of the tower closest to the modern car park was found to contain quantities of charcoal: fragments and wasters of bronze workings were found close by so the charcoal may have been the fuel store for a workshop but it may have been the result of firing the internal timbering of the tower when the fort was abandoned. The exposed base of the N.W. tower has masonry of better quality and the marks of the roman masons’ chisels can be seen on some of the blocks. The badly eroded S.W. tower had a final period of military use in World War II as a Home Guard Machine gun post. No evidence of Roofing has survived but the exposed site and the severity of the weather make it likely that all the towers were roofed. Road System Although Mr P. Rowe has investigated the road from Melandra to Buxton, the rest of the road system has not been positively identified though one stretch of road is known to be under Melandra Castle Road and another can be seen as a crop angling across the slope below Carr House Farm. The roads in the fort have been resurfaced to protect them and there is a short stretch of road from the S. gate to Melandra Castle Road: several cremations have been found along the edge of this road. The Disappearance of the Fort Melandra was used for centuries as a convenient source of stone, rubble and gravel for local builders: re-used stone has been found at Wooley Bridge; Melandra Farm and in Various walls throughout the district. It is believed that considerable quantities of the stone were used in the building of Mottram Church and that the large amounts of gravel taken from the sides of the site for road levelling the 18th-19th century may explain some of the casual finds of roman material last century. Small Finds From Melandra The acid soil of the fort attacks iron and even pottery, but some objects have survived to throw light onto the everyday life of the garrison. A number f small bronze objects- dress fasteners; weights; the suspension hook for a ‘steelyard’ type balance; a harness ‘terret’ and fragments of waste bronze serve to show that there was probably a bronze caster working in the vicus. Very few coins have been found. The pay of auxiliary soldiers was low enough to make sure that they were careful with their money. Most of the coins found are in poor condition and of low ‘face value’. Those which can be dated indicate, as does the pottery, that the periodic of maximum activity in the fort was between 80-140 AD with the occupation ending between 140-150 AD. Various objects and scraps of leather have been found: a section of a leather tent panel; a sling; ‘army boots’ and slippers have been found in the damper levels of the ditches. Some timber has survived in the ditches in good enough condition for it to be treated and preserved for future exhibition. The most important wooden objects found are the tent pegs which are in extremely good condition and may well date from the construction phase of the fort or show that troops in transit were allowed to camp between the fort and civil area. Following are the excavation reports for the fort as documented by Manchester University from 19??-19??. These extracts have been omitted from chapter 4 for ease of referencing. The Bathhouse In 1971, Michael Brown stumbled across the remains of a Roman Bathhouse on the site of Melandra. Upon excavation it was clear that his find was of standard military design as seen at Cumbria, Vindolanda and Hardknott. The discovery was at first perplexing due to the incomplete nature of the structure, however it soon became apparent that over time, land subsidence had cause the bathhouse to slip away from its original location and in some parts, collapse down the hillside towards Glossop brook. It had been thought that either there had been no bath house at Melandra or that it had disappeared without trace but the subsequent excavations under the direction fo Dr. J.P. Wild, instigated by Brown’s discovery of the first wall of one of the hot rooms, have shown that the bath house was much larger than was thought at first and that it passed through several phases of alteration and reconstruction. These typical military baths consisted of a number of rooms, changing rooms, probably toilets and some that had under floor heating. Wood Burning furnaces at one end of the block produced hot air which passed under the floors and up inside the walls, heating the rooms, A sequence of rooms had increasingly high temperatures so that the bathers could sweat the dirt out of their pores which could then be washed and scraped off with oil and strigils or scrapes. The baths were often used by the troops as a social club in which to relax and play games of chance in off duty hours. Often fragments of home made gaming boards and counters or game pieces are found in bathhouses and the one at Melandra was no exception. The baths were built over some of the earlier fort ditches when discovered still retained some of the largest sections of stonework and tile to be found on the site. Investigations are still continuing. It is possible that the Rev. Watson, the first person to write about the fort, who witnessed the demolition of buildings still standing on the north side of the fort in 1777 actually saw the bathhouse in its original location before its innocuous journey down the hillside over the next two centuries. Personal account of M Brown, post discovery: 1972 (the extract has been edited for ease of reading) “…During the course of Sunday, August 13th 1972, masonry noticed on the edge of falling ground North of the fort, approximately between the North gate and the Northwest corner tower. Previously in the ground, some three feet above this level and an equal distance towards the fort were large pieces of floor (?) of pinkish material/mortar containing red tile/brick aggregate. Also, portions of keyed flue tile have been found (thin silt noticed in early 60s masked over site plans and air photos. Previous finds of Hypocaust tile reported to P. V. Webster, author of the forthcoming report, M.O.W digs 1966-1970). The wall found consisted of between 4 and 7 courses of mortared stone on a mortar and rubble foundation standing on clay. It ran in an East-West direction and a short abutting wall some 2’ 2” wide joined it from the North. The short section appeared to descend the hill and after some 4’ became robbed our leaving only the denatured mortar base in the clay/ The areas over and around the wall were packed loosely with broken Hypocaust tile and broken up plaster and brick-much of it almost completely rotted. On the clay level was a black deposit, varying from 3-6 inches in depth, presumably the accretion of soil before robbing took place. The wall appeared to return at right angles toward the fort and following this is proved in actual fact to be a curved wall of some 4’ 6” radius which decreased from 7 courses to 2 over some 7 feet…” Following are the summarised excavation reports for the bath block as documented by Manchester University from 1973-1996. These extracts have been omitted from chapter 4 for ease of referencing. 1973 Extracts on the Bathhouse from newspapers and other publications:ANCIENT SAUNA BATH DAMAGED by Bernard Pratt (no date available, publication is assumed to be the Glossop Chronicle) “A newly excavated military sauna bath at Melandra Roman fort in Derbyshire has been damaged by children. Archaeologists found yesterday that many of the floor supports, which were the most delicate part of the excavation, had been smashed with heavy pieces of stone on Sunday night. They will now have to be cemented together again. The site is close to housing and the children who broke up the hypocaust were only keeping up a 200-year old local custom. Before about 1770, Melandra Castle- as the ministry direction signs insist on calling it- was still recognisably like a fort, with stone faced walls laid out in the classic Roman playing card pattern. Then the more enterprising villagers of Dinting Vale began transferring the masonry down the hill to build their houses. All that is left now are the earthworks of the outer walls and the foundations of a few buildings. Dr Colin Wild, who is directing the excavation as part of the training programme of Manchester University archaeologists, believes all the stone from the walls is within half a mile of the fort. He also means to have it back. Local amateur archaeologists are keeping records of the cottages with Roman facing stones, and as they come up for demolition, the Roman masonry is being stored by High Peak Borough Council. Eventually it could be used to restore the outer walls of Melandra. Dr Wild is also philosophical about the latest damage, which is not serious. The hypocaust had been measured and photographed before it was attacked, and he believes it will be safe once it is cemented. The children who threw the stones about, it should also be said were only completing some vandalism started by the troops when they were posted northwards from Melandra in about AD 140-145. Dr Wild believes they demolished it before moving out. His team has found traces of the original wooden fort built on the site by Agricola in about AD 80. The facing stones were not added until about AD 105, and there are signs that a team of military masons from the Frisians stationed at Manchester was sent to show the local unit how to do it. At present the main work is centred on the headquarters building and the area excavated includes the foundations of the shrine, where the battle standards were kept. The money was also kept there, but the soil is so acid that metal objects have not survived. This may be a blessing because the site is so accessible that it would be overrun by trippers with metal detectors at the drop of a denarius.” Further insight to the Brigantes During this project I stumbled, quite by accident, upon a great deal of information on the original inhabitants of the area: the Brigantes. This information presented itself to me in the form of local residents’ own interest in the tribe that spanned a relatively large geographical area at the time. In particular, Diana Virgo of High Street West, Glossop, encouraged me to pursue the mystic of the Brigantian peoples further. Her insights and beliefs of the people and their practices spurred me on to write this chapter and include it amongst information in which the information discussed is most relevant and enlightening. It is common for peoples such as the Brigantes to be thoroughly mentioned but rarely explored in texts focussing on an event in which they played a part but were not the pivotal characters. Because of their ‘bit-part’ in the history of Melandra the richness of their culture is oft ignored and although not necessary to the fundamental understanding of the site, is particularly interesting to the scholar wishing to form a more complete picture of past events in their mind. That is, of course, the aim of this book; to provide a comprehensive history, and I felt that in the case of the Brigantes, some embellishment was required. I have no doubt that more in depth texts on the Brigantes exist and I would urge the enquiring mind to pursue these works in an effort to fully understand the impact of Melandra on the tribe’s existence. What follows is merely to whet the appetite for more thorough questioning of the peoples involved in the fort’s history. Brigantia and the Brigantes Brigantia was the kingdom of the hill people who were devotees of the goddess Brigantia. The people were numerous and the territory was extensive, covering the whole of northern England from sea to sea from the Trent to Tyne and Solway. They were a restless people, more primitive in their ways than their neighbours the Coritani and he Cornovii but they were powerful enough to have been able to abandon their hill forts and live instead in sprawling townships which the Romans called ‘oppida’. The tribe was both warlike and acquisitive: their name passed into Latin and then into Italian to become the modern word ‘brigand- a fierce robber operating in wild country. They were ruled at the time of the Roman invasion by a ‘Queen’ called Cartismandua who was astute or cowardly enough to accept the superiority of the Roman forces and become a client-ruler (which meant that in turn for regular payments and ‘protection’, she would make the tribe behave). She was not always successful: in 47AD, Tacitus records the fact that the Brigantes had been raiding across the Trent but dismisses the raids as being of little importance. Cartismandua was estranged from her husband, Venutius, and wished to divorce him so that she could marry his ‘armour-bearer’ (reputed to be pro-roman). The tribe divided and a civil war broke out. The Queen asked for Roman assistance and the troops were sent into the tribal territory. The attempt to quieten the tribe was unsuccessful and in 69 AD the Romans moved in with the intention of bringing the area more fully under their control. Cartismandua was brought out to safety and a long campaign was fought against Venutius, ending, according to the Roman account with his final defeat at Stanwick- though as there were outbreaks of unrest amongst northern tribes for the next hundred years, the victory may not have been as final as Tacitus suggests. Melandra in the media Within this section I will include extracts from newspapers, other journals (where the extract fits nowhere better than this chapter), photographs taken by the public or by journalists and hand-written notes on the site. The purpose of ‘Melandra in the media’ is to collect all the varying documentation of the site and the digs that have gone on there in one place. The information in this section may not be of much academic or scientific interest but is essential to the historian who wishes to fully understand the changing perspective on Melandra through time. Extract from “Derbyshire life March 1970” (photo needs scanning, in YF) MELANDRA CASTLE “On the bank of the River Etherow at Glossop and therefore on the very border of Derbyshire, stand the remains of a Roman Station 120 yards by 112 yards in extent. The picture shows the base of a corner rampart of Melandra Castle.” Extract from “Derbyshire life June 1980” (no photo) EXCAVATIONS TO CONTINUE “The Roman fort of Melandra Castle at Gamesley, near Glossop, may yield some more of its secrets to the archaeologist’s pick, shovel and trowel this summer. Dr and Mrs John Wild are planning to carry out another fortnight’s excavation on the site in June with a digging team of students from Manchester University’s archaeology department. The rampart and ditch, which defended the fort from 79 to about 140 A.D., are surprisingly well preserved. The stone foundations of the headquarters building in the centre of the fort are also visible, but most of the barrack accommodation for the soldiers in garrison at Melandra was in timber, and nothing survives of it but the stains of post-holes in the ground. Almost every Roman fort had a bath block - built outside the rampart to reduce the fire risk – and Melandra is no exception. Melandra’s baths were not located until 1971, just outside the northwest corner, and since then archaeologists have been able to excavate and map out piece by piece the layout of the rooms. The baths were built in at least two stages – and there was some monumental bungling, for which the soldier architect must have been carpeted! The first three rooms to be built – a ‘cold’ room, a ‘warm’ room and a ‘hot’ room, with under floor heating – were set on a terrace cut into the hillside. But part of the terrace was dumped earth and soon it started to slide down the slope causing the building to crack. It must soon have been unusable, and so two more rooms with under floor ‘hypocaust’ heating were added to the side nearest the fort. The digging is slow. Every change of colour in the soil has a meaning for the archaeologist, whose aim is to extract the maximum information from it. In the years to come much more will be discovered about the lives of those Romans who spent a few windswept years up at Melandra.” Notes on the site of Melandra by Peggy Davies, formerly of Glossop Heritage Centre. (Best efforts have been made to include all of what is said but much of the writing was illegible. Grammar and spelling have been modified in some places to make the passage readable but most is original) “Large numbers of roofing tiles found with nail holes and an abundance of iron nails have been found on site. Mortar has been found with limestone from Castleton area. “We can imagine Roman carts loaded with limestone climbing the steep road over the Snake Pass to Ladyclough then turning down Doctor’s Gate and across the moors for the new fort building at Melandra. “Agricola (78-85) probably chose the site at Melandra as he was famous for picking good sites – not a single fort established by Agricola was either stormed by the enemy or abandoned by capitulation or flight. “3 points were necessary: abundance of wood, food and water. “Central buildings housed a sanctuary – standards were deposited, a strong room (treasure house or bank) storehouses or granary, commandant’s and officer’s quarters and barracks. “In a fort such as Melandra whose special function was to watch the hill tribes, the sentry duty was rigorously carried out. A new watchword would be given out every night. To avoid detection the word was never said aloud but written on a wooden tablet (tessera) and handed by a commander in chief to the tribune. The tribune in his turn handed the tessera to the vessarius who returned with it and passed it along the line of soldiers. “Melandra lay in an amphitheatre of hills, from which the River Etherow flowed. To the southeast stretched the hills of the Peak where to the northeast stretched Longendale (in Doomsday described as ‘waste’). “Derbyshire had three of these forts; Little Chesterworth of Derby, Brough in the Noe Valley and Melandra. “Coins found at Melandra suggest it was founded in Agricola’s time (78-85). Originally named Ardotalia. Became Melandra castle in 1772. “Excavations in 1905 and 1899 seemed to show that the three double gateways at Melandra were massive stone structures consisting of two double arches of equal span springing from six piers and flanked by towers which may or may not have had useful chambers in the ground floor. “The fourth may have been smaller and spanned by a single arch or even enclosed in a wooden frame. “Approx area 3 ½ acres (Ribchester 5 acres, Manchester 6 acres). “Number of men determined size. (The next paragraph is illegible and seemingly nonsensical so has been omitted) “At this time of the Roman conquest there were two clearly defined regions- the lands of the South and East. The first was a district in which troops were posted. The second was a peaceful area whose soldiers were rarely seen. The uplands consist of the West Country moors, Welsh hill and the Pennine Chain and northern highlands that adjoin it. “Romans easily conquered the Lowlands in three-four years (43-47). “When they attacked the Brigantes – a different tale. It took nearly forty years to subdue the uplands (48-85). “Lowlands were civilised. Minerals worked, corn grown, wool dyed, little wealth but orderliness and peace. Civilian life stops were the hills begin. Forts and fortresses in the uplands. Garrison of 40-50 chosen men keeping the hills sites quiet and keeping the peace. “The garrison consisted of two grades of troops – Legions and auxiliaries. The legion was a body of 5,000-6,000 heavy infantry. “Three legions were garrisoned in Britain. One in each of the three large fortresses – York, Chester and Caerlon. “Besides the legions were troops of the second line – auxiliaries. They were less paid, less favoured and were in units of 500-1,000 men. They lived in forts- rectangular walled areas with 4 gates in opposite parts. There were headquarters in the middle and barracks and storerooms in wood or stone covering the interior. (Next paragraph is completely irrelevant so has been omitted) “Melandra stands on a promontory overlooking valleys of Glossop Brook and Etherow. It is rectangular – each side had a central gate. Main entrance: double gateway on the northeast. From this the road led into the valley of Glossop Brook, down a steep descent. In the southwest gate a road curved round to the east. Southwest gate: small – maybe because it was the weakest side of the fort. Hills or streams protected the other three. We think this site was occupied in Pre-history times. “As Melandra lies within the southern boundaries of the Brigantes it would have been occupied by Roman troops during these skirmishes. Brough was occupied about 158 A.D. and as a Roman road connected Brough and Melandra we can believe they were occupied about the same time. Melandra was occupied probably from about 80 A.D. till towards the end of the fourth century.” Analysis Firstly I have to remind you that despite the last line of Ms Davies’ notes stipulating that Melandra was occupied until the end of the fourth century there was a gap (of probably more than a century) between the evacuation of the Romans until they returned at a later date. The occupation was not continuous. BATHHOUSE A Roman bath worked on a sauna principle. The bather having striped off in the changing room, went into a series of warm and hot rooms, which made him sweat. The Romans had no soap as we know it but oil was used on bathers body and then scraped off using a STRIGIL. Both hot and cold water were on hand for sluicing down and in the larger bathes there were plunge pools’ swimming pools and swimming baths. Some baths had exercise halls or yards for playing handball or doing training drills. On his way out of the baths the bather reversed the sequence of rooms so that he had cooled down by the time he reached the dressing room. It is the sequence of rooms at different temperatures, which determines the construction of a bathhouse. The stoke hole for the hot room is always as close as possible to the area which it has to heat; there has to be a way to bring in fuel and store it ready for use and the coal rooms usually lie as far as possible from the main source of heat. The Melandra’s Bath-House is a relatively small and simple one, intended to serve only the Garrison and a few of the civilians, but it was altered and extended several times (phases) which is why it has already taken a number of years to dig and record the remains of the building. In addition to this the land northwest of the fort had fallen away considerably since Roman times, because of subsidence. Because of this, many of the features that comprise the first phase of the bathhouse as well as other Roman buildings now lie some distance away from, and below their original positions. (Plenty of Mike’s pictures can be added in this section, they need scanning!) HIGHSTONES There was probably signal station at Longendale. The fort is in the bottom of the valley and to pass messages to the forts on either side repeater signal stations would be necessary. In all probability there would have to be one at Mottram, from where Manchester could be seen, and one at the earthworks still visible at Highstones near Crowden. From Melandra the site at Highstones is visible and possibly another further up the valley would alert the for to incoming traffic on the route over the Pennines from Doncaster, York or Lincoln. (Map can be added here and do some more research on signal stations cause it’s proper interesting :P) Excavations at the fort 1899-1900: West wall and gateway. East Gate and Corner Towers 1906-1907: Excavation of the HQ 1908-1911: Ramparts and roads inside fort 1911-18: East gate and HQ 1935-1938: Excavations of the Ditches and Barracks (2 weeks per year) 1958: West gate and south gateways 1966-1969: Excavations by the Dept of the Environment on the site of the civil settlement South and East of the fort prior to the building of Gamesley estate 1973-1998: 16 excavations on the HQ, the ramparts and the Bathhouse by Manchester University The Garrison if the fort The only known reference to any Roman army units at Melandra can be found in two items. The centurial stone which names Centurion Valerius Vitalis and the 1st Auxiliary Cohort of Frisiavones as part of the unit, which built whatever part of the fort that, the stone came from. (Now in Buxton Museum) A fragment of roof tile bearing the stamp of the 111 Auxiliary Cohort of Bracara Augustanorum found in the bathhouse. Matching inscriptions were found at Manchester and it would seem that two units worked together. The stonework being constructed by the Frisian unit and the tile work by the Iberians who very probably set up workshops and tileries close to the site. Remaining Masonry The North West tower base still remains as found at the start of the excavations on the site. Part of the HQ building wall was cleared and consolidated by the Melandra field Group in the early 1970s, as was part of the South East corner. Part of the interior of the semi-circular pool in the south face of Phase 1 of the bathhouse remains uncovered but is presently overgrown. Historical information Early in the second century A.D. TRAJAN became emperor (98 A.D.) Soon afterward, he gave orders that some of the old wooden forts in Britain should be rebuilt in stone (this suggests that there was still trouble in Northern Britain: the fort at Melandra was one of those rebuilt) The old turf ramparts were replaced by stonewalls. Proper stone gate towers and corner towers were built and old buildings in the interior were demolished or burnt. Before the new buildings were erected, the whole of the interior of the fort was covered with a layer of clay to provide a new building surface. The Headquarters was rebuilt and the Bathhouse altered. At about this time, a Mansio or lodging house for travellers was built in the area outside the fort (Vicus), which was used by civilians. The outer ditches would break up the force of an attack leaving the attackers to face the problem of climbing out of a deep ditch and up a steep bank on top of which was a wooden stockade manned by trained soldiers in armour. The only weak places in the defences were the gates and these were protected by flanking turrets, which allowed the defenders to concentrate heavy volleys of arrows, javelins and stones on to the attackers packed into the narrow approach to the gate. Even if the fort was attacked by a very large number of men who decided to lay siege to it, the reserve of food in the fort was large enough to allow the garrison to sit out in the siege without being forced onto starvation rations. Fire was probably the only real siege weapon that had any effect, and even that could be fought by organised ‘fire parties’. Old age was the real enemy of wooden forts, for after about thirty years many of the timbers would have rotted. The fort continued in full use until about the middle of the second century A.D. with a marked increase in the use of the place in Hadrian’s reign. In the latter part of the century there was again trouble in the North and the troops who had been garrisoning the Derbyshire forts had to be taken further north. Melandra was never reoccupied. The garrison deliberately damaged the fort when they moved out and the place gradually fell into ruins, the process being speeded up by locals foraging for anything useful, stone robbers taking stone for building and the extremes of weather. After sixteen centuries the fort had almost gone. There were a few buildings, in ruins but still standing, on the North side but the only real sign that it had once been a Roman Fort was the outline of the place, revealed by ramparts. In the Eighteenth Century, the Rev. Watson, of Mottram, drew attention to the fact that there could have been a fort on the Castle Carrs and began the process of investigation that continues today. Extra Vicus info All Roman forts had an outer area, which contained workshops and stores: this area was known as the VICUS and at Melandra, it lies between the ditches and the outer perimeter formed by the ditch and bank enclosure. The fact that the soldiers had money to spend (and little option of where to spend it!) soon attracted local trades to the vicinity of the fort so that small shops (including wine shops) soon sprang up and in a great many places. Civilian villages developed beyond a military style. Many towns in Britain owe their origins to this pattern of development and some continued to grow after the fort itself had been abandoned until the fort disappeared under the new civilian buildings (at Chester and Manchester). Forts were normally sited at staging points along the roads so provision was made for official travellers to be able to change horses; these animals were kept at stage stations known as Mutationes. There were larger inns for use by any traveller, these were called Mansiones (such as the Mansio at Melandra). The Mansio at Melandra lies between the fort and the Gamesley estate. It was a large timber framed building with many small rooms as stables and kitchens. By 47 A.D., the Romans had established a frontier along the east bank of the River Trent which separated the lands of the CORITANI and the BRIGANTES. The Brigantes carried out a raid across Trent but were easily beaten. The Queen of the Brigantes, Cartismandua, was a client Queen. This meant she was paid by the Romans to keep her tribesmen well behaved. She allowed the Romans to begin trading with her people and to start exploiting the lead and silver deposits in the Peak District. In the mid fifties of the first century, she handed over to the Romans the British Resistance leader, Caratacus who had come to her for help. Unfortunately for her, the tribe became restless and an anti-Roman group formed under the leadership of her divorced husband Venutius. Fighting broke out amongst the tribesmen and Roman troops had to be sent in to bring Cartismandua out and take her to a place of safety. The Romans began to build forts in the tribal area to try to maintain order. It is at this points that the story of Melandra begins. No-one is yet quite sure when the first, wooden, fort was built at Melandra but it was probably during the ten years of campaigning which followed Cartismandua’s escape in 69A.D. Wooden forts could be built quickly- one the size of Melandra could have been constructed in about one month by using a large number of men, and were strong enough to withstand most attacks by tribesmen, though there is some evidence else where that forts were sometimes overrun by natives. The real strength of the forts was derived from their ditch system which broke up the force of an attack; the turf Ramparts which, with the palisades on top of them had to be climbed to get into the camp: the well equipped and trained soldiers and above all, the fact that enough food was stored in the fort to enable the garrison to sit out even a lengthy siege. ROMAN ROADS Although some of the roads in the area have been plotted, the area closest to the fort is the least documented. Roads were found leading south from the civil settlement but other roads are not yet known with certainty. A TIME CHART FOR MELANDRA 43 CLAUDIUS: Comes to power. 47 CLAUDIUS: The Roman invasion of Britain. The ‘FOSSE WAY’ frontier is established. 56-68 NERO: Trouble amongst the Brigantes. Boudiccan revolt. Colchester, London and St. Albans, burnt. Anglesey attacked. Forts built in Brigantia. 69 GALBA, OTHO, VITELLIUS: The year of the three emperors. Troops taken from Britain by Galba. Cartismandua rescued. 69-79 VESPASSIAN: Advance into Brigantia by Cerealis. Fortress at York. Frontinus in Wales. Fortress built at Chester. Agricola conquers Wales. Brigantia consolidated and possibly the first fort at Melandra. 79-81 TITUS: Agricola advances into Scotland up to Forth-Clyde line. 81-95 DOMITIAN: Further advances into Scotland. Agricola recalled. Legion II Adivtrix withdrawn from Britain. Colonia founded at Lincoln. 95-98 NERVA: Colonia at Gloucester. Welsh Forts rebuilt in stone. Excavation of Scottish forts began. 98-117 TRAJAN: Chester fortress rebuilt in stone. Also York. Stone fort built at Melandra. Revolt in North. 117-138 HADRIAN: Hadrian visits Britain. More troops brought in. Legion IX Hispana replaced by Legion VI Victrix. Hadrian’s wall begun. Revolt in North. 138-161 ANTONIUS PIUS: Advance into Scotland. Antonine wall built on Forth-Clyde line. Revolt in North. Circa 155 Derbyshire Garrisons withdrawn. Melandra Abandoned Antonine wall excavated 161-180 MARCUS AURELIUS: Some forts rebuilt. Final withdrawal from the Antonine wall. Further revolts. Summary of “Glossop Remembered” by Neville Sharp Roman forts did not necessarily require the planning or investment of time one might originally think. Due to the usually strategically orientated location of such structures it seems obviously that they played a part in a grander plan. Of course, this is true, the forts did link together in a way that facilitated communication but what we must remember is that all Roman soldiers were trained to erect fortifications, bridges, culverts and roads in a matter of hours. This was so marching legions could build a safe camp to protect themselves from attack each night. By this, what I mean is the fact we have no real idea of who actually built the first fort at Melandra, is not in the slightest bit surprising. In fact I doubt we will ever know for sure as it is possible that the first such fort on the site could have just been an overnight camp or a temporary base with no original intention of permanent fortification, at least, not contemporary with the time it was erected. We know that two cohorts of auxiliary troops inhabited the fort at Melandra, the 1st cohort of Frisians and the 3rd cohort of Bracara. Proof of this could be found in Centurial stones (slabs with inscriptions of the cohort’s name). Luckily, just such a stone was found for the “1st cohort of Frisians” by Sammy Cooper, of lower Gamesley and he built it into the wall over his home’s doorway. The stone can now be seen in the Museum at Buxton and the inscription read “C(o)ho(rs) 1 Frisiavo(num) (Centuria) Val(erii) Vitalis. Watson’s translation was “Valerius Vitalis, commanding a century, or company of the first cohort of the Frisians, was stationed here.” The Frisians, being a 1st Cohort would have roughly a 1000 men including the specialist craftsmen such as carpenters and stone masons who could do the skilled work of building; which explains why the centurial stone from the walls of the fort is that of the Frisians, not of the Bracara. Refortification of the fort into a stone building probably took place around 108 A.D. The site of Melandra was first noticed as being a Roman station by the Rev. John Watson, rector of Stockport who visited the site in July 1771. After identifying the site he wrote to the society of antiquaries to tell them of his finds. There have been two epochs of focused attention on the archaeology of Melandra. The first of which being the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with most work being carried out by Mr. Robert Hamnett (whose ideas are summarised in this book). Hamnett worked on the site with colleagues between 1899 and 1907, carrying out two digs; a preliminary search in 1899-1900 and a further excavation in 1906-1907 after a report on the site had been published by the Manchester Classical Association in 1906. When considering the results of the physical excavations of this time we must remember who it was carried out by and what context the information we have was recorded in. Unfortunately, Victorian Gentlemen who were well versed in the discipline of archaeology didn’t like getting their hands dirty and so paid the lower class working men of the time to carry out the manual labour for them. This of course is fine in principal, but in practice you would not doubt be left with damaged items or soil contexts, poorly excavated trenches, through ignorance of the task in hand, not laziness. Despite this many items were recovered from the early dig and considering the consistency of finds on the site over the last 100 years you can imagine how teeming with artefacts it must have been at the turn of the 20th century. Roman bronze and lead weights, an iron spearhead, a hatchet, lead dice and a soldier’s iron signet ring were all found. On top of this, a wealth of bronze and solver coins were found (as had been found by Samuel Shepley in 1841 who stumbled across the coffin of a Roman soldier containing a silver coin bearing the head of Domitian, 81-96, while making a goyt for his mill.) Strangely the coins seem to signify two stark periods of occupation on the site, one of which, one might find surprising. The first is as to be expected, coins show a range from 69-135 A.D. so they would have been in use at the time of the forts premier occupation from around 80 A.D.-140 A.D. The second period however is much later, between 259-388. Not only does this show us the enormous time span of Roman occupation but it also raises the issue of the re-colonisation of the fort, post-abandonment during the reign of Antonius Pius, in 140 A.D. A direct extract from Glossop Remembered by Neville Sharp (225) describes the entrance to the fort at Melandra extremely well: “The width of the rampart would be such that sentries could pass and the defenders wield their weapons effectively. There was a tower at each corner with a rounded outer face, the entrance to the towers being from the rampart as no trace of an entrance from ground level was found. The lower rooms of the towers could thus [be used] as prisons or storerooms, with the sentries on the rampart being responsible for the safe custody of their contents. “The fort had double gateways, and there was an inscribed stone over the centre of the outer arch. The sentries stood in the recesses between the entrances and there was a small guardroom in one of the lower rooms. There was a gravelled road between the western and eastern entrances and some of the kerbstones lining the road were still in place in1900. This road divided the fort roughly in half with the principia or headquarters, granary, offices, and alters in the southern part. The northern section contained the soldiers’ huts and workshops. The floor of the granary was paved with square tiles. Floor tiles, wall tiles, and fragments of hypocaust tiles were also found. Some of them have the letter R on them, some VV, which is an abbreviation of ‘Valiant and Victorious’, the motto of the 20th Legion. Another interesting find was the iron shoes of the south gate, which were found on the stone sockets of the gateway. “The eastern entrance was cleared to the foundations which were found to be perfect, with a guard chamber on the left, and a small tower on the right, having their lower courses of stone still remaining, The gateway was a double arched one, and many of the arch stones were found in the debris which enabled a portion of one of the pillars of the arch to be restored with the original stones found at its base. A stone flagged conduit was uncovered for over sixty yards which was probably the main drain for the camp, and outside the station, near the west tower was found a gravel road nine feet wide, leading to a plateau in an adjoining field which may have been used as a parade ground.” Sharp also thinks to outline the possible ‘demise’ of the fort: “ Evidence was found that the fort had been destroyed by fire with signs that many of the stones had been subjected to intense heat, and charcoal was found near the inner walls in the Praetorium and elsewhere. When the Romans abandoned a fort it was routine practice to remove the gates and burn them to prevent use by others, which would explain the charcoal. Alternatively it could have occurred in A.D. 367 when the Picts swept over Hadrian’s Wall, looting burning and slaying.” References The collections at Glossop Heritage centre The work of M Ward 2006 Manchester university dig reports Photographs supplied by Mike Brown Glossop Remembered Neville Sharp (2005) Refs from Derbyshire Archaeological Journal Hamnett, R., Melandra Castle, Derbyshire., DAJ, vol. 21, 1899. Garstang, J., Melandra Castle. , DAJ, vol. 23, 1901. Hamnett, R., Report of the excavations in 1889-1900., DAJ, vol. 23, 1901. May, T., Roman weights found at Melandra. , DAJ, vol. 25, 1903. Dawkins, W.B., The ancient roads connected with Melandra and the site. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. May, T., Further notes on the trade weights found at Melandra., DAJ, vol. 28, 1906. (Anonymous), Plan of the Roman fort, known as 'Melandra Castle', Derbyshire (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Dawkins, W.B.and R.S.Conway., List of miscellaneous remains in the custody of Mr. R. Hamnett. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Conway, R.S., The Roman coins found at Melandra (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Classical Association, Manchester and District Branch., Melandra Castle; being the report of the Manchester and District Branch of the Classical Association for 1905, ed. by R. S. Conway. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Bruton, F.A., The excavations at Melandra in 1905. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Bruton, F.A., Some features of Roman forts in Britain. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Conway, R.S., The trade and coin-weights found at Melandra. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Hopkinson, J.H., The pottery found at Melandra. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Williamson, H., Legio XX, Valeria Victrix (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Williamson, H., The probable date of the Roman occupation of Melandra. (Appendix)., DAJ, vol. 29, 1907. Hamnett, R., Excavations at the Roman camp of Melandra, 1906-7. , DAJ, vol. 30, 1908. Lawrance, H. and Holland, W.R., Melandra Castle. I. Excavations, 1908-1911 by H. Lawrance II. Origin of the name, by W.R. Holland. , DAJ, vol. 34, 1912. Petch, J.A., Recent work on Melandra Castle: preliminary report. , DAJ, vol. 64, 1943. Petch, J.A., The date of Melandra Castle: evidence of the pottery. , DAJ, vol. 69, 1949. Petch, J.A., Melandra Castle Excavations 1958., DAJ, vol. 78, 1958. Petch, J.A., Melandra Castle Excavations 1959., DAJ, vol. 79, 1959. Petch, J.A., Melandra Castle Excavations 1960., DAJ, vol. 80, 1960. Petch, J.A., Melandra Castle Excavations 1961., DAJ, vol. 81, 1961. Petch, J. A., Melandra Castle., DAJ, vol. 83, 1963. Webster, Peter V., Melandra Castle excavations, 1966., DAJ, vol. 87, 1967. Webster, Peter V., Excavations at Melandra Castle, Derbyshire, 1969., DAJ, vol. 89, 1969. Wroe, P. and Mellor, P., A Roman road between Buxton and Melandra Castle, Glossop., DAJ, vol. 91, 1971. Webster, Peter V., Melandra Castle Roman fort: excavations in the civil settlement, 1966-9., DAJ, vol. 91, 1971. Wroe, P. and Mellor, P., Roman road between Buxton and Melandra Castle., DAJ, vol. 91, 1971. Melandra references from Archaeology Sources on the Internet Burnham, B C, Keppie, L F J, Esmonde Cleary, A S, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin R S O, Roman Britain in 1994, Britannia XXV, 1992, p350 Frere, S S, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1976, Britannia VIII, 1977, pp387-8 Frere, S S and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1982, Britannia XIV, 1982, p299 Frere, S S and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1988, Britannia XX, 1989, p286 Frere, S S and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1990, Britannia XXII, 1991, p245 Frere, S S, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1986, Britannia XVIII, 1987, p370 Frere, S S, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin, R S O, Roman Britain in 1991, Britannia XXIII, 1992, p323 Goodburn, Wright, R P, R, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin R S O, Roman Britain in 1975, Britannia VII 1976, pp322-3 Goodburn, R, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin R S O, Roman Britain in 1977, Britannia IX 1978, p432 Goodburn, R, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin R S O, Roman Britain in 1978, Britannia X 1979, p293 Grew, F O, Hassall, M W C and Tomlin R S O, Roman Britain in 1980, Britannia XII 1981, p335 Hassall, M W C, Wilson, D R, Wright, R P and Rea, J, Roman Britain in 1971, Britannia III, 1972, p314 Keppie, L F J, Esmonde Cleary, A S, Hassall, M W C, Tomlin R S O and Burnham, B C, Roman Britain in 1998, Britannia XXX, 1999, p344 Richmond, I A, Roman Britain 1910-1960, The Journal of Roman Studies L, 1960, p179 Wilson, D R and Wright, R P, Roman Britain in 1966, The Journal of Roman Studies LVII, 1967, pp180-1 Wright, R P, Roman Britain in 1958, The Journal of Roman Studies IL, 1959, p108 Wright, R P, Roman Britain in 1959, The Journal of Roman Studies L, 1960, pp215-6 Wilson, D R and Wright, R P, Roman Britain in 1969, Britannia I, 1970, p283-284 and 285 Wilson, D R, Wright, R P, Hassal, M W C, Bowman, A K, and; Thomas, J D, Roman Britain in 1973, Britannia V,1974, p420 and 464 Wilson, D R, Wright, R P and Hassal, M W C, Roman Britain in 1972, Britannia IV, 1973, p285 Roman Britain in 1937, The Journal of Roman Studies XXVIII, 1938, p182 Acknowledgements Dr Petch Mr P. Webster Mr Walter Waterworth, Dr J.P. and Mrs F Wild Mr P Wroe Pat Ellison Derbyshire archaeological society Dianna Virgo

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