The Realms Thereunder

3

She used the glove trick to get into the coffee shop. The practiced motion of pulling her hand out of her pocket to push the door open brought Freya’s woollen out as well. She went through the door anyway-pass one-and then put her hand back in her pocket. Her face registered puzzlement for a moment and then she turned and saw her gloves. She went back outside-pass two-bent down and grabbed a glove without really looking, pushed back hurriedly through the door-pass three-looked down to her hand and realised she had only picked up one glove, went back outside- four-picked up the second glove, and came back inside-five.

Five passes were enough in a place like this with lots of people, but there were some places she tried very hard to avoid and some streets that she wouldn’t even walk down. Being back in Oxford made her nervous. There were too many old doorways and arches. The bricked-up ones she came across-in her college’s hallways, in the sides of buildings and churches-made her especially nervous and she gave them a wide berth. She was going through her medication faster than she’d like. She’d have to talk to her psychiatrist about that, but that would have to wait five weeks until the end of term. What would she do if she ran out before then?

She ordered a latte and took a seat. It was overcast outside and she couldn’t see the sun-definitely a day to be cautious. Her watch said she had about forty minutes until the lecture. She had started chapter five of her Introduction to Moral Philosophy book three times. Her mind kept racing ahead to the lecture at ten a.m., and she hoped she could control herself this time. The medication would take the edge off at least. Maybe.

Leaving places was fairly safe, especially with a lot of other people milling around, so she didn’t have to test the doorway leaving the coffee shop like she had to when she entered it. From St. Aldate’s it was a short walk down Blue Boar Street to Merton Street and then into the exam schools. She circled around and entered via the main doors on High Street, which meant that she only had to deal with one set of doors to get into the building and then one more set to get into the room the lecture was in. For both of these, she pretended that she was waiting for someone to meet her; checking her phone and looking around allowed her to repeatedly duck in and out of the doorways. People would think she was lost, maybe, or a little ditzy, but they wouldn’t think that she was crazy at least.

The monitor in the entrance hall informed her that Textual Histories of Pre-Arthurian Britain was in the large lecture theater called “South Schools.” She followed the signs that led her up a wide stone staircase with a bannister made of rose marble. Then she took a right into a large wood-paneled, L-shaped room and found a seat, third row from the back. Scanning the room as students continued to file in, she didn’t find a single familiar face. Eventually the lecturer, a fortysomething woman dressed completely in black, came to the podium and cleared her throat, a cough that reverberated from the speakers and echoed off the walls.

“Good morning, everyone. I’m Dr. Fowler,” she said when the chatter had died down. “We’ve got a lot to cover this morning, so let’s get started.

“ ‘The Matter of Britain’ is the name that we give to the works that form up the early pseudo-histories of Britain, as told by the Anglo-Saxon settlers, orally, and recorded by monks in the ninth and tenth centuries. It should be noted as being separate from Celtic legends-in this context predominantly Welsh, Irish, or otherwise Gaelic legends, although there was quite a lot of crossover, as we shall see.”

The professor tapped a few keys on her laptop and the board behind her displayed an image of an ancient piece of paper with nearly indecipherable text printed on it. “This,” she continued, “is the first page of the Historia Brittonum written around 870 Common Era by the scribe Nennius. It is perhaps the oldest English account of the settling of the British Isles-and the originator, perhaps, of a lot of the confused and conflated myths traditionally associated with the settlement of Britain, myths that initially branched out of the Trojan tales of Greece, which were also very popular in Rome. It is thought that the work was created for wealthy Welsh families in the fifth century as a way to justify their claim to nobility and to cement their position as a ruling class-and obviously has little relation to objective fact. The tales centre around the legendary Brut, a son of-yes?”

Freya’s arm was in the air. Her heart was pounding partly with anxiety and partly with anger. “Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that those accounts are objectively true? Seeing as no other accounts disagree with them?”

Dr. Fowler shrugged. Interruptions were rare in this type of lecture, but she was professional enough to take it in her stride. “There may be certain grains of truth within the various accounts, but were you to read them closely-as I’m sure your tutor will insist you do-then the appallingly fabricated fantasies within them will show quite apparently.

“Now, this Brut,” Fowler continued, “was a hero of Troy-”

“I’m sorry,” Freya said amid a swell of groans from those around her. “We know that Britain must have been settled at some point. Why is it unreasonable to believe the tales which state that it was a group of exiled soldiers-veterans of the Trojan wars- and their families?”

“I thought I was scheduled to give this lecture,” the professor replied. The other students in the auditorium chuckled pointedly. “I’ll gladly change places with you-I did quite a lot of this during my doctoral thesis so it’s old hat to me.”

“But why not take the account at face value?”

“Because it’s completely unverifiable-fanciful even. Why-”

“Just because something cannot be proven true doesn’t mean it isn’t true-even if its claim to truth is unlikely. In fact, it’s more likely that an improbable truth would be recorded than a probable one.” This provoked more groans, and more than one request to “shut up.”

“But, reasonably, it is unlikely that an account of settlement could have survived two and a half thousand years to be recorded by an obscure Welsh monk.”

“If there were an accurate relation of settlement,” Freya said, her voice rising, “how else would you expect it to be recorded? Besides, the fact that there are many other surviving, corroborating, independent reports-”

“Not independent-derivative.”

“You say that they’re derivative of a lost source because they’re similar, but why can’t they be similar because they’re all true?”

The professor sighed and took a moment to collect herself. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to be drawn in; she was falling behind schedule. Was this some sort of gag? “It makes no sense to spar with me about veracity when I have an entire section dedicated to authorial ‘tricks’ or ‘stunts’ of authenticity. You’ve obviously read some of the material, but if you understood half of what you know, then you would realise how outlandish your claims are.

“Why,” the professor continued plaintively, “on the same grounds, you could argue the case that Britain was populated by giants as was also popularly believed and recorded.”

“I do argue the case on the same grounds,” Freya said. This brought shouts of derision from the other students, and a couple of them slipped out of the hall to fetch the porter. “The history of giants in Britain is too independently supported to argue credibly against. Accounts of giant occupation are recorded in nearly all of the Brut legends, as well as Irish tales and sagas, such as the Fenian Cycle’s Acallam na Senorach, and Scandinavian histories like the Vatnsdal Saga-let alone those recorded in the Bible and other Middle Eastern histories as well as Slavic traditions.”

Dr. Fowler snorted and then smiled. “This is a joke . . . ,” she murmured.

“I’m talking about human interaction with giants in each of these cases,” Freya continued. “Not creation myths or rationalisations about the acts of nature. These are one-on-one encounters.”

A man in a blue uniform was now standing at the end of Freya’s row, beckoning furiously at her. The class had dissolved into noise-much of it directed at Freya. The professor seemed to be in a mild form of shock. The porter leaned into the row and called to her. “Miss, could you come with me please?”

“If giants had existed,” Freya continued defiantly, “in the way that they are reported to have been, they would have left exactly such an imprint on history. There are too many disparate sources, all with the same interior logic.”

“No, it’s impossible,” the professor replied, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “There is no archaeological evidence for-”

“That’s irrelevant!” Freya shouted. “There’s no archaeological evidence for anything until someone finds it! Absence of evidence isn’t the same thing as-”

“Miss,” the porter urged. He had now come partway into the row and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I must insist that you come with me!”

Freya gathered her bag and rose. “That’s no argument at all! If we were having this conversation two hundred years ago, you’d say that Troy didn’t exist either, but they found that, didn’t they? Then they thought twice about the so-called Myths of Troy!”

The professor stood silently and patiently as Freya was led out of the room in the company of the porter, and then she resumed her lecture with the legend of Brut. She had to run very quickly through, rather ironically, textual variants in Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, but she came through the ordeal in the end.

Outside, Freya was enduring another stern and predictable talk that referred to the student code of conduct and the privileges and responsibilities of studying at Oxford. Her mind was racing and she was angry, though mostly at herself. Idiots. They didn’t understand. Things weren’t “true” or “not true” just because they wanted them to be. History didn’t follow the rule “the most convenient is true.” But it was impossible to explain to anyone who didn’t want to listen. Why did she even try?

That was the real question: why did she even try?

“This is your second warning,” the porter was saying, not unkindly. “The next time I come in to remove you may be the last.

This is the sort of discussion that you should be having with your tutor.”

Freya nodded. That was something else they wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t talk to her tutor because her tutor wouldn’t know what Freya was talking about. She wasn’t reading English. She was reading philosophy and theology.

“Okay,” the porter continued. “I can allow you back in if you promise not to talk or make a fuss. Can you do that?”

Freya turned without saying a word and went outside. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she was a good way down High Street before she realised that she’d only gone through the doorway once on her way outside. She stopped immediately, paralysed by a building tidal wave of panic. She braced herself against the wall and watched the people pass her on the pavement and the traffic rattling up and down the street, oblivious of the terrible chaos that engulfed them-that existed in all things.

She needed order; she needed to know that things could make sense, that she could enforce her will upon the storm of existence. She crossed the street twice, and then four more times. This calmed her and she kept crossing the street as she made her way into town.

Why did she do it? What did it matter what people thought and believed, even if it was a lie? What right did she have to burst the fragile bubble of unreality that people surround themselves with? So long as they live happily, what does it matter if they live a lie? Ignorance is a blessing. It was futile to try to wake people up, so why did she do it?

Freya sighed. She knew exactly why she did it.

She was so wrapped up in these thoughts that she almost walked right into Daniel Tully, the one person in the whole city she was deliberately trying to avoid. She held her breath and saw that he seemed to be so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice her either. She walked closely by him, very nearly brushing his shoulder, and then took an immediate turn down a side street.

She forced herself not to break into an immediate run. If he didn’t notice her by now, he didn’t have a reason to come after her. Freya’s heart felt like breaking, though, seeing him like that, clearly living off the street. She had spotted him yesterday, sitting outside the Sheldonian Theater, begging. She was in a bookshop cafe across the street and must have stared at him for almost an hour, not sure if she should go to him or leave him alone. If she did, what would she say? What could she say? Did it matter if she said anything, and if it didn’t, then why should she put herself or him through the torture of awkwardness. And so she just sat there, oscillating between action and inaction, and doing nothing, on the verge of tears.

“Freya!” came a shout from behind her. It was definitely his voice even though it was deeper-a man’s voice now but unmistakably his.

Her heart nearly stopped but she kept walking.

“Freya, come back!”

That was too much for her; she broke into a flat-out run. She made it to the end of the street and did a quick turn left and then right, not stopping until she reached the Bodleian Library, which was students only-they wouldn’t allow him in there. She managed to keep herself together until she found an unoccupied study desk, sank into it, head in her arms, and started sobbing silently.