I rarely share my creative writing here on Gum on My Shoe. Our blog is primarily focused on mental health and supportive friendships. On occasion, however, Fran and I give ourselves permission to explore other topics. This is one of those occasions. Writing has always been an important part of my life. I’ve kept a daily diary for over fifty years. During that time I’ve written poetry, articles, short stories, a novella, two books, and a great many blog posts. I’ve not written creative fiction for a while, but in We Are All Made of Stories I shared something of my past experiences in that genre.
I recently came across a short story of mine while looking for something else. “The Hundred Stories” was originally published in September 2001 in Reunion, the quarterly journal of Middle-earth Reunion (MeR). Founded in 1996 as a local group of the Tolkien Society, MeR parted company with the Tolkien Society in 2001. The final issue of Reunion was published in December 2005.
“The Hundred Stories” touches on a project I was working on during those years. The Tresco manuscript and the Lore of Life, Leaf & Stone purported to explore the true origins of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings. It interwove Tolkien’s life and work with British history and folklore, including accounts of the brothers of Lindisfarne (Holy Island) who carried the body of St Cuthbert around the north of England to escape attack by the Danes.
[Cuthbert] was buried at Lindisfarne, but his body was removed in 875 to protect it from Viking raids; after many moves in northeastern England, it was finally deposited (999?) in Durham Cathedral.
“The Hundred Stories” isn’t my finest or favourite work, but I like it. There are parallels with my own life, most obviously Emily’s diary writing. Hundred’s account of the book that was lost and then found parallels my coming across the story itself after so many years. The time overlap as Emily and Hundred meet feels familiar to me, as though these things happen all the time if only we’re open to recognise them. Their experiences on the shore echo times I’ve spent walking on the beach with friends.
I hope you will enjoy this little story as much as I’ve enjoyed revisiting it.
The Hundred Stories
He appeared in a vision to one of them named Hundred, and commanded them to make search for the book.
— Simeon of Durham
Emily woke suddenly from a dream of flames and screaming. She opened her eyes and for one dreadful moment everything remained the colour of fire and blood. Then she turned her head and recognised the early sunlight through the red curtains of the caravan. She sat up and reached her diary down from beside the narrow bed.
Friday. It’s only half past six but I need to write. Mum’s still asleep. I’ve had another of The Dreams. Each time it’s different but always there are the flames against the sky. If I close my eyes now I can still see them, and hear the men shouting. And hoof-beats. There was something else this time too — a beach somewhere. Two people walking, looking for something. I can’t remember.
What does it all mean? Mum says dreams are just your brain making pictures but these are more than that. They’re important, I know they are. Powerful, too, like the stories Dad used to tell me, about Vikings and dragons. The dreams don’t frighten me anymore but I wish I knew what they meant. The beach bit wasn’t horrible anyway, it was like when Dad and I used to walk on the shore when we lived at Silverdale.
I really hate the city! I guess I’d grown used to it after two years but this holiday has brought it all back. I know we had to go and live with Gran when Daddy died but its horrible being so far from the sea. There’s nothing to do in the evenings, except read — I do a lot of that! I love Daddy’s books about history. It’s like he’s still there reading to me like he used to. Oh dear. My favourite is the one about the monks on that island. Before the Vikings came to take their gold they escaped with everything they could carry. I traced their journey in Mum’s atlas once.
Emily closed her diary. She sighed. For the past week she had felt happier than she could remember. Walking by the sea again had helped ease the pain of her father’s death, that had never gone away. Now, though, she had had another of her strange dreams — and this was the last day of the holiday.
Emily drew back the curtain and gazed out. Across the caravan park that lay at the edge of the little Cumbrian village of Allonby on the south side of the Solway Firth.
Carefully, so as not to waken her mother, Emily found the battered road atlas and opened it across the bed. The page was already marked and she soon found the broad sweep of Allonby Bay. South along the coast stood Workington at the mouth of the Derwent river. Halfway to Workington, just above Maryport, the map bore the legend “Roman Fort” in small red letters. Emily measured the distance with her finger and compared it with the scale at the bottom of the page.
“Hmm — Maryport’s only about four miles from here, maybe we could go there today. Oh —”
Her attention was caught by the chain of circles she had once drawn on the map to mark the journey of the monks all those centuries ago. From Lindisfarne on the east coast — almost into Scotland — south to Hadrian’s Wall ... then east.
“Haydon Bridge. Bardon Mill. Down into the mountains ... Back north again past Derwent Water. Then where?”
The stories hadn’t been very clear about that. Emily thought she could remember something about the monks trying to sail to Ireland. Ireland ...
Another image from the dream rose out of forgetfulness. A ship, tossing in a storm: a book, covered in gold. Then the two figures again. Searching. Something clicked into place inside her head. She recognised the location. She had walked there only two days ago.
“It was here they sailed from. It must have been!”
Emily dressed quickly and quietly. She took her diary and the atlas, and a bar of chocolate from the tiny larder. With a note for her mother — “Gone for milk” — she stepped down from the caravan and began the quarter-mile walk into the village.
Past the little shop; buckets and spades, ice-creams, postcards and fishing nets still asleep behind the painted wooden shutters. Past the restless ponies, stabled on the promenade beside the playground where climbing frames and swings stood like the skeletons of dinosaurs. Or dragons.
She crossed the narrow belt of dunes, down onto the beach itself. Emily stood still for a moment, gazing out across the Solway in the direction of Ireland. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure again the fleeting images from her dream, but nothing came. “Maybe next time they’ll be clearer,” she thought. “Only by then I’ll be back home and it will be too late.” She began walking aimlessly along the shore. She did not notice the boy until she had almost passed him.
“Oh. Hello.”
“What do you seek here?” he said, looking not at her but out across the water.
“Nothing,” Emily replied, startled. Then, more honestly, “I don’t know.” How old was he? Fifteen, sixteen maybe. But his clothes ... Sat above her at the top of the beach, he seemed to blend into the dunes, as if Emily could see grass and sand through him. He turned to face her at last.
“Your name.” It wasn’t a question, the way he said it.
“Emily.” She waved an arm in the direction of the caravan park. “We’re on holiday. Do you live here?”
The boy ignored her question. His gaze flashed over her, settling on her diary and the atlas she was carrying.
“You like books, then? Stories?”
“Yes, but —”
“I could tell you a story. Maybe”
“What kind of story?” Emily asked.
“Old. True.”
Without waiting for an answer he stood and began to walk east, up the Firth, in the direction Emily had been heading when they met. Should she follow?
“There’s something about him,” she thought. “A memory, almost ... And he’s so sad.” She had to run to catch up with him. As she drew alongside the boy began speaking again, as if reciting a tale often told.
“Hundred, my name is — because my mother came from Scilly, the Islands of the Sun, and that is their number. But I was born near Warwick, in the kingdom of Mercia.”
Beneath Emily’s feet the pebbles slipped and turned, amongst them the curious black stones that you could draw with like charcoal. The man at the shop had told her they were from the burnt-out wrecks of ships lost in the Firth long ago. The kingdom of Mercia? That sounded old. Lost. Long ago.
“In those days the Viking first came from across the sea. My father fell defending our village, and my mother fled, with those that could escape the terror that fell upon us. But I was taken, a boy nine summers old, and with some women and others of my age I was held in thrall for many years. Long I yearned only to avenge the slaughter of my people.”
Emily felt a thrill run through her as he spoke. He was talking about the Vikings as though it had happened to him. It couldn’t have — he’d said it was a story — yet that name, Hundred, tugged at her memory.
“... As the years passed I learned much of their ways, and my hatred cooled. One gave to me a token of jet, carved and pierced to wear. His own son’s it had been, who was slain, and he gave it as weregild: blood-price for my father’s life.”
Emily wanted to speak. To tell him she knew what it was to lose a father. But she was scared in case she broke the magic.
“North we were taken where the country lay mostly under their law, and those that held us took lands to themselves. Yet bold they remained and would dare many miles for rumour of gold. Then word came to them of a holy house in the North.”
Despite herself, Emily gasped. “Lindisfarne.”
For the first time he looked into her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Lindisfarne. In haste they went, and I with them. From the shore I watched them ride, terrible and wild, along the narrow causeway to the island. And in the night I saw the buildings burn. Then they returned, galloping to race the tide.”
Hoofbeats. Fire and screaming.
“Much was looted and all the monks slain, save one only, Witmaer by name. His life they spared and he was brought in bondage across a horse. Friends we became and on a night of little moon we escaped together. We travelled first westward and then south. Wherever we passed Witmaer asked of his brothers, for the bishop had been forewarned of the attack and with a party had fled before them.”
“Yes,” Emily said, suddenly excited. “I know this story. They took books and gold and — things.”
“That is so. You say you know this story but not all was written. They took with them also the body of their Sainted Cuthbert and relics of past bishops of their isle, and things else of great beauty and worth. Many things.” For a moment the boy was silent.
“At last we came upon the brothers close to the ford of Eden above Salkeld. They seemed a weary and a ragged bunch, yet great was their joy to see Witmaer who they had thought lost. For two years I lived amongst them upon the road. Never for long did we rest in one place, yet the further we travelled the greater our dangers grew. Then Eardulph the bishop declared to lead us across the waves to Ireland, where we might be safe and the treasures with us. So we passed north again into the mountains and came at last to the coast where a boat was found to carry us across.”
“Where on the coast?” asked Emily. It had to be here at Allonby, it had to.
“Ellenborough — the old Roman landings.” He pointed east. “Three, maybe four miles.”
“But my dream! It was here, I saw it!”
The boy answered quietly. “You saw the boat sail from here?”
“Well, no, but this is the beach in my dream, and —”
“Listen. We had passed no distance from the shore when a mighty storm arose, such that all feared greatly for our lives. Waves covered the boat and many things were swept away. Eardulph set to turn about if it could be done in so wild a storm but as the boat was turned the winds fell, and we came back easily to land.”
He paused and glanced at Emily but this time she did not speak. It had occurred to her that the gently shelving beaches of the bay were not the most suitable place to bring a boat to shore. Or to launch one.
“For three days we remained by Ellenborough, and all the brothers wept for the treasures that had perished in the sea. Greatest amongst these was a gospel book in its case of gold. Yet above books and gold I counted my crude token of jet — and that too had been lost to the waves. Then on the third night I dreamed where the great book might be found. In the morning I told Witmaer of my dream and together we walked three miles or more along the shore.”
Once again Emily’s vision returned to her, this time more clearly than before. Two figures walking along this very stretch of beach. Fifty yards beyond where she now stood, a narrow tongue of stone stretched out from the dunes to the sea. In her mind’s eye she saw the figures stop there and kneel in the sand.
“That’s what I dreamed!” she gasped.
“Yes.” The boy pointed to the stones just at their feet. “And there the book lay, still in its wrappings of oiled cloth. Great was the bishop’s joy that it was found, and much they praised me, though truly it was not done by my own craft or skill.”
Emily stared at him. “No. No — it was over there, by that rock! In my dream,” she added, surprised at her own certainty.
Now it was the boy’s turn to look unsure, as though a familiar sequence of events had just taken an unprecedented turn. He glanced around as if taking bearings from the shape of the shoreline. “The book was here,” he said at last. “There is no mistake. Show me.”
They walked the short distance to the outcrop of rock. Beneath their feet the pebbles slipped and turned; amongst them the curious black stones that drew like charcoal. One stone, larger than most, caught Emily’s eye. It was flat and round, pierced as if intended to be worn. And black. Black as jet. She picked it up. It felt smooth and warm in her hand.
“It’s your stone!” What had he called it? Weregild: blood-price. For his father.
“My father was killed too,” she said. She held the stone out to the boy.
“I think it is yours now, Emily.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Jet is special — one of the elf-stones. They have many virtues. Healing is one.”
“This is what my dreams were about, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps now we will have different dreams.”
He smiled at her and for the first time his face looked free from pain and remembering. Emily realised she was smiling too.
“We had best return,” he said and the two friends turned to begin the walk back along the beach.
“Hundred,” Emily said, the elf-stone clasped tightly in her hand. “Do you know any more stories?”
Photo of Allonby by Andrew Hall at Unsplash.
