Royal Peculiar by Ian Cassidy

Enclosed are the miscellaneous papers collected by my friend Ryford Mason. I am sure that they will be of some considerable interest to you and perhaps they will even prove to be lucrative. You are always talking about writing a book, well here is your chance; put the papers in order and get them published; they tell a remarkable story. I never had the time or the ability to do it. You claim to have the ability so put it use. I am only sorry that I shall not be around to see the fruits of your labour.

Let me give you some background to the papers that you will shortly begin reading. They were assembled by my dear friend Ryford Mason, Ford to his intimates of which there were very few or very few whom he could acknowledge in the circle that his conventional and overbearing mother demanded that he move. I was happy to belong that select band and happier to know nothing of those other intimates, the ones he met for furtive fumblings on Hampstead Heath or other such places.

His private life was his own, my interest in the man revolved around his most extraordinary imagination. Some might say that he displayed many of the forms of neurosis that Mr Freud and his disciples were at the time discovering or perhaps manufacturing.

Of his many eccentricities he believed himself to be a descendant of Perkin Warbeck and thus of Edward IV, he studied Nostradamus uncritically and believed in a race of superbeings descended from Christ and the Magdalene.

But it will perhaps be best if I refrain from listing Ford's areas of interest just now, suffice to say that he researched them all industriously and collected a quite fabulous library, regrettably sold off when he and his mother fell upon hard times. The fruits of his research are all in the box before you.

Before I attempt to explain their nature, let me tell you something of Ford himself, beside his homosexuality. He worked all his short life for Ambrose Heal, in the soft furnishing department and quite frankly, he hated it. He hated Heal's functional designs, longing for something more romantic, the outlandish works of Majorelle or Bugatti were more to his taste. He hated the fabrics in monochrome or cubist designs that Heals stocked, preferring something more on the lines of William Morris and Liberty prints. For a time he attempted to design his own furniture and fabrics. No examples of his sketches remain so I presume he did not consider it a success. He did design his own coat of arms, borrowing unashamedly from Morris and leaning heavily towards a pseudo-royal standard reflecting his belief that he was descended from Edward IV via Perkin Warbeck. I saw the coat many times and can tell you that it was unbelievably crass so I must say that I too do not consider his attempt to become a designer a success.

Everyday of his working life Ford left the Tottenham Court Road at lunchtime and headed for Bloomsbury and bookshops. There he sought out the scientific and learned tomes he needed to research whichever theory he was working on at the time or just wandered around the British Museum or Russell Square thinking.

What he came up with is contained in the files before you. Let me give you a quick summary of them, I am sure you are aching to open them for yourself but I hope my brief précis of their contents will make your work easier.

The files are colour coded.

Blue Folder. Perkin Warbeck. He really did believe that he was a descendant of royalty and harboured ridiculous notions of mounting a legal challenge to King's right to the throne. As an impecunious junior barrister at the time I was of course bombarded with requests for legal advice. I did my best to dissuade him from such a disastrously costly step and fortunately he lacked the funds to even get it started but he hung around my chambers looking through forgotten constitutional law manuals and pleading with me to point him the right direction. It was at this time that some of the more waggish members of the clerk's room on discovering his reason for being so often in chambers, christened him "Royal Peculiar".

When he tired of this theory he moved on.

Green Folder: Nostradamus. Ford read and studied everything he could on the could on the subject but as you are aware I always thought that this was complete tosh so I will move on.

Orange folder. Shugborough and the inscription. As it's on your doorstep you may know of the famous cryptic code that has never been satisfactorily deciphered but apart from that I think you will find it of little interest.

The same may perhaps be said of the Purple and Black folders. The former contains details of his experiments in numerology and the latter his research into the existence of a race of superhumans descended from Christ and the Magdalene. All I can say on this is if only he had had the inclination to popularise his fantastic theorising he would perhaps have given the world Superman a whole decade before the comic strip.

The contents of the Yellow folder will interest you, it contains details of his experiments in mind expansion. I do not mean with drugs although I suspect Ford had recourse to narcotics from time to time. Call it an old man's prejudice but I associate the misuse of drugs with someone of Ford's inclinations, it's Oscar Wilde and his penchant for absinthe. His experiments with mind or brain expansion took a more prosaic route. Ford learnt, as I'm sure you are aware, that human beings only use a very small percentage of their brain capacity on conscious thought, the rest being dormant or taken up by the subconscious. He was convinced he could increase the percentage of his brain capacity that was in active use. His experiments are, if nothing else amusing.

Finally you will come to the red folder, that is the one. I believe it contains something important, something of interest to the wider world. Study it well and make use of it.

In order to continue my observations unencumbered by sexual frustrations I resolved to seek immediate relief and made haste to the closest public lavatory, deluding myself that my motives were purely in the interests of science.

I entered the scrubbed portal and initially made an attempt at my experiment. I first noted the acrid smell of urine and ammonia, the black and white glazed tiles, some clean, some filthy. I satisfied myself that there was no attendant on duty and positioned myself by the sinks.

I noted the state of the sinks but it proved hopeless, my mind was now firmly on other things. I looked about me, desultorily going through the motions of washing my hands.

I did not have to wait long, a young man in working clothes entered, I caught his eye as he went to the urinals, he looked away and I sidled towards him, joining him at the urinals and looking down at his crotch. I looked up again and our eyes met. He did not return my smile, he simply nodded towards the cubicles. I went into the nearest and waited with the door closed. I heard his boots clip along the harsh damp floor and prepared myself.

To my surprise he went into the adjacent cubicle, I was about to call out, thinking he had made a mistake when I noticed the hole in the cubicle wall. I looked expectantly towards it. Soon enough, his penis came sliding through, still damp and smelling strongly of urine. I stroked it gently and inhaled the strong male odour before placing it between my lips. I moved my mouth against it and in what seemed like no time I felt him tense and tasted his salty discharge on my tongue.

As I was spitting onto the grimy floor I heard him whisper: "Now you."

With some trepidation I unbuttoned my fly and with reluctant expectation I pointed my penis through the rough little hole in the wall.

My relief when his lips closed around it was such that I almost ejaculated there and then. With a great act of will I checked myself and settled back to take my pleasure. It was very brief and soon I spent myself into his open mouth.

I sat back on the harsh porcelain and closed my eyes.

I heard his door and ignored it expecting him to quickly take his leave, much as I intended to do. However my door opened and a red faced figure was framed in the low doorway looking blankly at my sprawled and sated figure. I gave a start and was about to rise when he slapped my face and spat the retained mouthful of my semen back at me.

"Filthy queer!" He screamed and ran from the room.

For a long time I sat there with the mixture of semen and spittle dripping from cravat and waistcoat, before struggling to the sink and cleaning myself up. As I did so the tears came.

The experiment was forgotten for the day.

The owner recognised me and whilst he was searching in the back room for a first edition of Middlemarch he knew I was anxious to add to my collection, he invited me to look over a tea chest full of volumes that had arrived from a house clearance that morning. Their provenance was impeccable he informed me in a flurry of crashing encyclopaedias from the rear of the shop. A house in Belgravia where the library had been shut up for over a century and he'd been lucky to get his hands on the few dusty volumes in the chest, the remainder having already been spirited away to Sotheby's.

I set about my task eagerly but the majority proved disappointing, a drab three volume edition of the Wealth of Nations, a first edition of Shirley, three battered bindings from the admirable Miss Bronte whilst she still went, professionally at least, by the name of Currer Bell. I already owned a far superior copy and was despairing of finding anything interesting when I chanced upon a small calf bound tome with mouldering boards. The spine was worn and virtually unreadable but rather than toss it aside I opened it up and read the frontispiece.

CIRCONMURIBALE.

By

Otto Schwenckfeld.

1732.

My Latin is not strong as I have only made fleeting attempts to unravel it's intricacies but there was something about this obscure little book, some frission of excitement, some expectation that came from just holding it in my hands. The author's name meant nothing to me and the title only slightly more, "Round wall" I ignorantly translated. I did not know if it was a novel, a work of scientific discovery or a political tract but I just had to have it.

Concealing my excitement I reluctantly put it down, I was unwilling to let it go in case someone else came into the shop and was similarly drawn to it.

The shop owner returned and handed me a somewhat indifferent copy of Middlemarch, in poor condition with foxed pages and a sickly smell emanating from within. I feigned satisfaction and asked the shop owner the price. He responded with the exorbitant sum of ten shillings. I paid it willingly and as a seeming afterthought asked the price of the tatty little Latin novella, explaining that I was revising my classical grammar and the book looked sufficiently unchallenging for that purpose. The shop owner gave it a cursory glance and asked the princely sum of two shilling.

I placed the coins in his hand and rushed from the shop. My lunch hour was rapidly drawing to a close and I'm afraid I had quite shamelessly lied to the shop owner, I could not even attempt to revise my classical grammar for I had no Latin in the first place. I careered into the next bookshop I encountered and purchased a schoolboy's Latin crammer.

Drudgery at Heal's precluded me making an immediate start. That had to wait until I got home in the evening. I confess I made a very poor dinner companion for mother that night, I was almost wordless throughout and I bolted my meal before retiring unceremoniously to my study.

Progress was very slow and so it was every night for the next month but every fraction of that glorious little book as it slowly gave up it's secrets provided me with infinite joy.

What follows is a summary of what I read, I do not often attempt to translate and I apologise in advance for the clumsiness of my work when I do attempt a verbatim reproduction.

The book was written by Otto August Schwenckfeld, a junior librarian at the Schloss Charlottenburg in 1732. His central theme was that the Ancient Scots and Picts were not the barbarians that they are made out to be. Scotland in Schwenckfeld's time due to alliances with France and Spain and elsewhere was a far more civilised and sophisticated country than Britain. It was also socially, politically and technologically more advanced. He then argued that Scotland or Caledonia as it was known at the time of Hadrian was similarly more advanced that it's southern neighbour. It was not a bleak hell hole of untamed brutality with vicious red haired, kilted maniacs claymoring everything in sight. The Picts were cultured and peaceable and came to a mutually beneficial accommodation with Rome and Hadrian built his wall for other reasons. Assigning responsibility to the Picts was a spectacularly success piece of Pre-Christian news management aimed at covering up not only Rome's military shortcomings but also the real reason. The existence of a race of extra terrestial beings that had to be kept out of the Empire at all costs.

Schwenckfeld goes further, pointing to evidence that it was not just Scotland where these beings made a home. They lived throughout colder northern regions of the Earth. The Romans and other peoples, most notably the Chinese (apparently the Great Wall of China was built on the foundations of a much more ancient earthwork) had constructed huge walls and earthworks all around the globe to keep the alien invaders at bay.

Schwenckfeld then produced a map showing the position of these fortifications.

They followed the line of Hadrian's Wall, in Britain, then on to Denmark, following the edge of the Baltic to Kaliningrad. The line then turned sharply downwards and headed for the edge of the Carpathians at L'vov. It followed the Carpathians and branched out to Odessa, then followed the shores of the Black Sea, then stuck out across dry land again tracking the path of the Bolshoi Kavkak mountains as far as Baku on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The line then tracked across Iran and Afghanistan until it reached the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas before meeting up with the Great Wall of China.

In the USA the line followed a similar path through mountain ranges and following the along the banks of inland seas and lakes. The route took it through the Appalachians in New England and then through the Great Lakes across the American prairies close to the Canadian border until reaching the Rockies and the coast at Vancouver.

The map also showed gates in the walls and Schwenckfeld contended that due to a certain amount of interaction and perhaps trade between the races each side of the wall, that cities in the vicinity of the gates had become centres of excellence, cities of learning and culture or industrial innovation, such as Newcastle, Tashkent, Hamburg etc.

Schwenckfeld drew his evidence from the writings of numerous scholars and scribes from across the centuries. Beginning with a Roman Tribune, known only as Eboracus, who had fought with the Ninth Legion at Carrhae and survived to record his experiences. There were the writings of an illegitimate daughter of Philip Melancthon who had encountered the aliens in the Bremen region of Germany. The records of an English monk and mystic called Schelly and a Ukrainian mercenary called Kovalesky.

Let me begin with a summary of the tales told by Eboracus. Schwenckfeld is scathing about the quality of the writing, being classically educated he is fussily critical of the mixture of barrack room dialects that the Roman soldier employs. Once he has gotten over his attack of pedantry he sets down Eboracus's story and he is not scathing about its contents. As it is an eyewitness account he gives it great credence. It seems that the Ninth Legion left York in a triumph of banners and standards. Eboracus returned to York alone, he skulked back into the city, starving and dishevelled, with a taste for the distilled barley drink so popular in Caledonia. That being the only thing that could make him forget his harrowing experiences north of the border. To expunge the memory of the massacre of his comrades at the Battle of Carrhae where even the highly drilled and battled hardened Ninth Legion were no match for the Picts and their technologically advanced alien allies. Schwenckfeld details Eboracus's descriptions of these aliens, taller than the Picts with a dark bluish tinge to the skin and lobeless ears.

Next Schwenckfeld deals with the writings of Raphael Schelly, born 1290, a priest, student of pagan religions, member of various Millenarian Sects and ultimately a hermit living in a cave in the Lake District. Before heading into self imposed Purdah Schelly produced a beautifully illuminated manuscript, that was in Schwenckfeld's possession, setting out a history of Northern and border folk lore and mystic belief. Among the stories of Green Man like figures and other primitive tales, Schelly found what he believed was evidence of a strange race of people differing from the indigenous population. A dark haired swarthy race considerably taller than the norm.

Then there are the writings of Perdita Melancthon, which like Schelly deal with folklore in the north of Germany but also contain a series of diary like entries detailing a sexual relationship with one the peoples from the north.

Finally Schwenckfeld comes to the most compelling evidence of all, that of Spiridon Kovalesky a Ukrainian mercenary from the time of the third Crusade. On his return from the Holy Land Kovalesky led numerous archaeological expeditions in around the Carpathian mountains and uncovered the remains of many sections of the earthworks. Schwenckfeld here reproduced more detailed maps and diagrams as recorded by Kovalesky.

I studied the maps and a shiver ran down my spine, it all made a great deal of sense. Why just build a wall in Scotland? Why not extend the fortifications eastwards, it would certainly make sense for the Romans to do so, they had the money and the slaves.

I reread Schwenckfeld's book and resolved to do some independent research. With difficulty I obtained a card for the reading room at the British Library and spent every available moment there. Incidentally I enjoyed several brief but enjoyable couplings in the conveniences there.

Through my research I discovered the writings of an American gentleman going by the name of Cyrus Decken, although that may well be an alias. Decken was the son of a New England farmer born in 1812, who enjoyed a somewhat chequered career being variously a priest, businessman, soldier, writer and evangelist. The dates of his death are somewhat uncertain.

Whether he had knowledge of Schwenckfeld's work I cannot say but he makes no reference to it and appears to have come to believe in a race of alien people in the northern regions of the earth quite independent of European influence. Decken draws heavily on the teachings of an Hidatsa Indian mystic known as Red Deer or the Sakakawea Wise Man. As with all such teachings they are not written down and so subject to some latitude of interpretation. Like Schelly, Red Deer talked of a race of tall dark people who came from the North and also of the defences his people and the early white settlers put in place to keep the border safe. Decken provided no map of the fortifications but did provide a possible route for such a defence spanning the Great Plains of the USA and Canada. It appears that unlike Kovalesky he did not carry out any archaeological survey of the area although it seems he did raise quite a considerable sum of money for just such a project only for the money to be diverted elsewhere, not doubt an orgy of alcohol and chorus girls.

How I longed to go and see these places for myself, to tour the sites of this great earthwork. Perhaps even to set up my own archaeological expedition. So much more fulfilling than the tedium of soft furnishings. Perhaps I could man the expedition with a team of lithe young men. What bliss!

After I exhausted Decken's work, my trawl through the library's card index took me surprisingly back in time to Boswell and Johnson and their tour of the Highlands. I found several quotes from Boswell's book.

"With these celestial wisdom calms the mind, and makes the happiness she does not find."

&

Here falling houses thunder on your head and a female alien talks you dead."

&

"There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can receive not answer."

There was also a letter from Johnson describing Skarra Brae and the Old Man of Hoy. Johnson could not believe that Skarra Brae was built by the Picts and finds evidence of the work of a much more sophisticated hand. He can find no explanation for this, advanced technological help could not have come from Europe or the USA and so Johnson concludes it must have come from another planet.

Orwell writes: "Night on Jura, a sodden night of rains. A sickly half light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the hillside. I was walking when I came upon a group of men, tall, dark men. "Good." Their leader said: "Join us."

"Join you in what?" I asked. But received no reply.

We waited.

A prisoner had been brought out of his cell, he was an outsider, a puny wisp of a man, tall, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall outsider warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood with pikes, while the others handcuffed him and passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was still there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Seven o'clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated over the hills. The leader of the group who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the heather with his stick, raised his head. He was a military man, with a grey moustache and a gruff voice. "For the Lord's sake hurry up, Grumble," he said irritably. "The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?"

Grumble, the head jailer, a fat outsider in a white suit and gold spectacles, waved his dark hand. "Yes sir, yes sir." he blubbed. " All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.

"Well quick march then, the others prisoners can't get their supper till this job's over.

We set out for the gallows, two warders marched on either side of the prisoner with their pikes at the slope, two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, outsiders and locals, followed behind.

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare, dark back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the outsider who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves in the wet soil. And once in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puzzle I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. The man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the brown soil and the grey hills and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.

The gallows stood in a small clearing, separate and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a wooden erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey haired outsider in white uniform, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Grumble the two warders gripping the prisoner, more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope around the prisoner's neck.

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle around the gallows. And then when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out to his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of "Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon!" not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour sack and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again; Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon! Javon!

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, Javon! Javon! Javon! never faltering for an instant. The leader, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the heath with his stick; perhaps counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number – fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The outsiders had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the pikes were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries – each cry another second of life; the same thought in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise.

Suddenly the leader made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. "Gutung!" he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished and the rope was twisting on itself. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.

The leader reached out with his stick and poked the bare dark body; it oscillated slightly. "He’s alright," said the leader. He backed out from under the gallows and blew a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his pocket watch. Eight minutes past seven, well that’s all for the night, thank the Lord.

The warders marched away and we followed them from the gallows. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.

The outsider boy beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile; "Do you know, Sir, our friend, the dead man, when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case? Classy Earth style."

Several people laughed – at what, nobody seemed certain.

Grumble was walking by the leader, talking garrulously: "well sir. All hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It was all finished – flick! Like that. It iss not always so – oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor was obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner’s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable.

Wriggling about eh? That’s bad. Said the leader.

"Ach, sir, it is worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit it, sir, that it took six men to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg.

I found I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the leader grinned in a tolerant way. "You’d better come and have a drink," he said quite genially. "I’ve got a bottle of whisky in my cave. We could do with it."

We went through the damp opening in the rock. "Pulling at his legs!" exclaimed an outsider official, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment, Grumble’s anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, local and outsider alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.