Prologue: How did I get here?

York, Sunday 30 August 2009

It's half past four in the morning and I'm in the train station at York, having just got off the coach from London. There are no lights in the sky and dawn won't break for another hour or two, I'm afraid. I'm tired, I'm cold and I'm slightly scared by being in a strange town in the pitch black night and with nobody in sight. There's nobody in the streets and on top of that it's Sunday. As a Spaniard with a very basic knowledge of British geography right now I could pinpoint York on a map just because I bought a slim tourist guide before I came here.

How did I get here?

By becoming the kind of person who goes to English Civil War battles re-enactments. One year ago I would have been quick to mock the people who spend time in such events. And yet here I am, the last weekend of August, six hours of bus from London, cold and frightened in foreign and dark York, just to check out the annual re-enactment of the Marston Moors Battle, by The Sealed Knot Society.

Of course one year ago I couldn't even begin to predict that I would be writing a novel about the English Civil War myself.

After one hour or so hanging out in the train station - feeling slightly safe in the knowledge that there was a guard patrolling the whole place, but cursing that the cafes wouldn't open until 7 - I decided to venture into the city, suspecting the first lights. As it turns out it's a very beautiful town, and for a couple of hours I had it all to myself. That's the advantage of arriving in the middle of the night. The deserted city looked even more beutiful, ancient and haunting. I spent a great deal of time walking around the York Minster - appealingly gothic - before the cafes opened for a Full English breakfast.


I was trying to get myself all inspired and I had brought along some Ted Hughes volume for its sounds, reading to myself and wandering among the ruins of St.Mary's Abbey. I had always been curious about THE NORTH and since the main characters in my book it was decided would be Northerners, it was a good excercise in place-inspiration to breathe the air of these parts.


From my notebook of those hours (not even a day): "It feels a priviledge (& a small wonder) to be here and feel the air of the centuries, the birds in flight a rustle of feathers louder than the minster's bells. To be here and stare at the decay of things made by men, and their strange resilence too, for nothing is lost here, everything is skin-deep carved into these stones, the sorrows and the joy."



I walked and wandered, searching for clues on the city, hints of why I was there, why I had come to far and was I right in doing so?

Although the place was well signaled - or rather, I had printed out various maps, from Google Maps to the own Sealed Knot Society indications, I must have looked a bit ridiculous walking around checking all those papers - it took me quite a while to get to the site, the York racecourse. For one, I had no idea what an empty racecourse looked like, or what a british racecourse looked like, for that matter. But I turned left on a street and I found some open ground and as gloomy and gorgeous clouds filled the sky, I knew I was in the right place. The horizon started drawing tiny figures of people and tents and cars and there was smoke here and there.

And then I heard drums.

I had arrived.


Thanks to the running commentary (a modern-day solution to the confusion of watching the battles unfold) we could follow the various figures on the battlefield; we had one Cromwell, of course, and we even had a Thomas Fairfax.

"Here learn, ye mountains more unjust,
Which to abrupter greatness thrust,
That do, with your hook-shouldered height,
The earth deform, and heaven fright,
For whose excrescence, ill designed,
Nature must a new centre find,
Learn here those humble steps to tread,
Which to securer glory lead."
Andrew Marvell, UPON THE HILL AND GROVE AT BILLBOROW.

It was an eye-opening journey, but also a confirmation of faith. It was what I had hoped it would be, but in ways I never imagined it would be.