Illustration: Erica Williams
‘Even the heroes wept. They loved, and they lost. Indeed, it was their loving and their losing that made their stories worth the telling.’ (p 371)
Bewitching precedent
Although his first, hugely enjoyable, novel Witchborn had a strong and, in many aspects, authentic historical setting in Elizabethan England, it was essentially an entertaining YA fantasy adventure, often witty, but with witchcraft bringing in elements of dark magic too.
His second novel for young readers, In the Shadow of Heroes, initially seems even closer to being a historical novel as such. Whilst clearly a fictional story, it is grounded firmly in the locations, events, beliefs and culture of a particular place and time. In fact Nicholas Bowling, a specialist in Greek and Latin himself, seems very much at home in the Roman world that is so integral to his narrative. His depiction comes across as authentic in detail as well as in broad background. He recreates the ethos of the ancient world quite wonderfully, and its atmosphere, by turns chilling and intoxicating, is endlessly fascinating. In many ways this is very scholarly writing (even Homer’s ‘wine-dark sea’ gets a notable revival), but the author wears his erudition lightly. His conjuring of a long-past world is highly evocative without ever being didactic, educational in the very best sense, and hugely entertaining with it. This is helped in no small part by language that is richly descriptive, but never heavily cloying.
History red in tooth and claw
At the heart of this story, as with so many of the best, are its characters - and quite wonderfully rich, vivid creations they are. Intelligent young slave, Cadmus, makes a fine protagonist. Supposedly found abandoned by a benevolent master, he has been educated far beyond his status and makes a sensitive and observant guide to his world, yet with enough flaws and foibles to make him readily empathetic. It is however, Tog, his frequent companion in adventure, who, for me, is the book’s most compelling creation. A runaway slave, her taciturn personality resides within a physical frame of mind-boggling stature and strength, that renders her eventual revelation as the offspring of a Celtic British warrior chief completely credible. In, quite rightly, ensuring that his tale features a strong female protagonist, to equal (or excel) his male ‘hero’, Nicholas Bowling has moved about as far away from the simpering princess as it is possible to get. And good on him.
Subsidiary characters are wonderfully drawn too, peopling Ancient Rome with the rich mix of the ordinary and the grotesque, the humble and the arrogant, the sympathetic and the downright chilling. They both bring his story to life and give it compelling power. They even include a megalomaniac and delusional Nero, whose portrait here, popular history tells us, may not be too far from the truth. The cruelty and violence of his time live and lurk behind the whole novel, but so too, in the telling of it, do the sensibilities of our own age
The story is not, in fact, confined to Ancient Rome itself, but ranges widely across the ancient map, embracing Athens and indeed the shores of a Roman Britain as well. Yet the real strength and greatest interest of the book lies in the way that it draws not only upon the actuality of this ancient world, but on its storytelling too.
Myth lives on
Deep into the fabric of this narrative are woven the myths of the ancient world, principally those recorded by Apollonius of Rhodes in the Argonautica, tales of Jason and his companions who sailed on the Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece. Particularly pertinent is the character of Medea, Jason’s later abandoned helpmate and wife.
What makes the book most particularly remarkable, though, is the way that remnants of this myth gradually impinge on ‘reality’, intrude into history and the lives of Nicholas Bowling’s characters. The self-claimed descendants of the heroes, the Heroidai, make an appearance as, indeed does the Argo itself. Wreck of an ancient relic that it has become, it is patched back into service, almost taking on a life of its own.
‘The heroidai were concealed completely in (the Argo’s) shadow, giving the impression that it was being drawn to the sea of its own accord. On either side, trailing back up to the forest, it left a bow-wave of swirling yellow dust.’ (p 249)
This is an Act of Medea played out long after Euripides’ version has ended. I suppose it could be thought of as a history mystery. Not so much ‘mystery’ in the later Blytonesque sense of The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat, but in the far older sense of the York or Wakefield Mysteries, masked actors, perhaps, reinvigorating the myths of belief amidst the daily lives of their times. This adds another rich dimension to the story and gives the title an extra frisson of meaning. It is delicious, original stuff, and very clever writing to boot; the perfect spell for conjuring an imaginative past from the dust of history. It builds a world whose own stories and beliefs mingle with reality in its fictional present, just as they must have in its actual past. It credits young readers with the ability to understand the distinction, and the lack of distinction, between them - and rightly so.
A future for the past
As well as everything else, this is a cracking story that surprises at times, shocks at others, and keeps the reader guessing to the end. The final door to Cadmus’ future is left open. So are we simply to imagine for him a life of further adventures, or is this author going to provide us with them? If a further instalment is to be of the quality of this first, then I sincerely hope it is the latter.
This highly entertaining ancient history adventure has protagonists of around fourteen, and therefore seems aimed at younger teens. I am sure that any who want to escape for a while from the realities of the present will revel in the mysteries of its superbly recreated world. However, I suspect that many avid younger readers, of nine or ten plus, will lap it up too.
