“He’s not going to the circus,” said Kittock and Wat was puzzled by her appearance. She no longer looked calm and wise but small and frantic like a frightened child.
“Forgive me for disagreeing madam, but he must! The circus cannot start without him! World champions are waiting to shake your hand, Wat Dryhope — Inongo, Winesburg and Pingwu, to name but a few. Commanders of great new recently created military leagues are here to shake your hand — Sheer Khan of Mongolia, Jack Ripper of Texas, Siegfried Krawinkel of the Fifth Reich. Every commander in Scotland is waiting to shake your hand — yes, Scotland will be a nation again and who but Wat Dryhope is fit to lead it? By gum, the Scots and Sassenachs can look forward to some grand scrimmages again! A whole galaxy of public eyeballs is also waiting outside but we won’t pay any attention to them. Come upstairs Wattie!”
With pursed lips Wat had been smiling, nodding, almost laughing at what Shafto said yet he did not go at once. Part of him knew he was being swept away by other people’s wills and that nobody should let themselves be swept away. He looked at Kittock. She stared back and shook her head in a slight, definite negation. He suddenly knew that not going would be the greatest and truest act of his life but Shafto, chuckling, put a warm friendly hand on his shoulder and said, “Why should a hero like you skulk away from his comrades like Achilles did? Achilles’ lovely bedmate had been snapped from him by the commanding officer but YOU are the supreme commander here and the lovely and famous Lulu Dancy awaits your command in the flying bedstead upstairs. Go to her! Besides, Colonel Dryhope, your life is partly mine! I saved it a week ago! Tonight I insist that you do as I want. I order you to stop being a damned dour reticent Scot and for once enjoy yourself!”
So Wat went to the circus after all.
NOTES & GLOSSARY EXPLAINING OBSCURITIES
NOTES ON THE PROLOGUE
Page IX
scunnered = a shrinking recoil more intense than disgusted. It derives from the noun sickener or scunner.
dreich = grey and dull; cold and dismal.
Page X
snibbing = latching; bolting; locking. uisge beatha = Gaelic for aqua vitae or water of life; a spirit obtained by distillation from a mash of cereal grains saccharified by the diastase of malt; otherwise known as whisky or Scotch.
Page XI
ramfeezle = muddle; confuse; exhaust.
Page XIII
tholed = suffered, endured or been afflicted with pain, grief et cetera. bumbazing = perplexing; stupifying.
Page XIV
malagroozed = injured; hurt.
clanjamfries = miscellaneous assemblies.
Page XV
lang-nebbed = long-nosed; over-intellectual; seeming wiser than is the case.
Page 3.
Five commanders … with … deeply scarred faces. Since medals were as obsolete as monarchs and presidents who had awarded them scars were now the only outward sign of a soldier’s experience. Many senior officers rejected medical treatment which would heal their faces completely, but unlike German student duellists of the late nineteenth century did not invite medical treatment which would make the scars more conspicuous.
Page 7.
An epoch when most men are over six feet tall. In the historical era good feeding and healthy exercise were often a perquisite of the officer class, whose average height, health and lifespan was usually greater than those who did not inherit wealth. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some scientists attributed such class differences to heredity: if the difference was genetic no political movement to better the lives of the badly fed could succeed. Yet in less than a century the average height of white Australians came to equal the average height of the British officer class, though at that time most white Australians were descended from poor people the British officer class had evicted.
Page 10.
bairns = infants, young folk, children or offspring. Of Teutonic and Scandinavian origin, this word was widespread in England as well as Scotland before the 18th century. Shakespeare and Swift used it.
loons = young people, usually male, of a mischievous, rascally, sexually over-active or violent character; also used as an affectionate disparagement of someone the speaker likes or of the speaker himself. Natives of Forfar liked being called Forfar loons; it was the preferred nickname of that town’s football team.
Page 11.
When your wounds heal join the veterans and Boys’ Brigade in the Warrior house where you will be the only officers … Teach the Ettrick youngsters how to avoid them.
There were no private soldiers in modern armies. The lowest ranks were the Boys’ Brigades which were seldom allowed to fight before the age of sixteen. Those who survived their first war and remained in the army at once became officers with full voting rights.
Page 13.
The Ettricks pull on their helmets and form a circle.
The helmets contained the only electronic equipment modern armies allowed themselves: earphones through which soldiers could hear their commander’s voice on a wavelength
inaudible to anyone else.
Page 20.
whins = gorse or furze, a prickly flowering evergreen shrub that thrives throughout Europe and Africa in thin or stony soils.
Page 21.
The only signs of battle on the moorland slopes were some gangrels collecting scattered swords, helmets, shields.
gangrels = tinkers, tramps, vagabonds, vagrants, gipsies, nomads of no fixed abode. The earliest kind of humanity were of this sort and wandered around the land for millennia in small family groups, improvising tools and shelter, gathering and consuming their food as they went. In some countries they acquired sheep and goats which they drove before them. The early Jews and Arabs were this sort of folk. When some early gangrels settled and started farming, weaving and making clay pots those who still moved between them became the first traders. Increasing settlement produced city states, empires and vast civilizations so gangrels inside their boundaries lived by migrant labour such as fruit picking, horse trading, scavenging, mending kettles, conjuring and making music. On the vast grasslands of northern Eurasia travelling nations of horse-riding herdsmen grew strong enough to counter-attack the settled lands of China pressing from the east and Rome from the west. Their attacks broke the Roman empire into the Christian nations of a new Europe, for the invading horsemen could not have gainfully managed the towns and territories they conquered without help from a priesthood who read and wrote. Their attacks gave China also a new ruling dynasty. When such gangrels became landlords their travelling days ended, except when they raided their neighbours.