Argument: The King is playing his annual game of chess in a castle courtyard with fancydressed scallywags as pieces. He is facing defeat until a wizard idea creates a new knight.It was winter – and all epics must begin with the song to be wrung from the cloth of the language, the water of the song, here freezing to allow the children to slip their way on ice to the game.
But, first, grandiose I’ll say:
“I sing
of the dwarfish
Sir Lathynarn, the Half-height Knight
of the Castle-in-White,
of snow and ice.
“I’ll sing –
give me the time
give me once, twice, three times the lines –
of his year as a day
adventuring.
“We’ll sing
of his journey
to a land of Celebrity
and the gathering crowds
who ignored him.
“To times
when his Shortness
chose to leave, chose another path
to take as his journey
away from us.
“And more,
much more to sing –
but songs cannot choose to begin
the stories, the lessons
of Lathynarn.
“The Dwarf
Lathynarn – tall
in ambition, but short to see
the absences of talent –
no knightly star.
“Dull star
of midday cloud.
We – that is the royal we – sang
that is we all sang out
in his honour.”
Formalities complete, I’ll begin again…
I stood in my new square, the King had commanded me “Move There” and I had done so – I was a Pawn of his army – and I froze to movement, the snow writing on the walls their message, cold firm to the core this winter.
I do not know the rules of chess, I just did each of the King’s requests – “Move There.”
Bad move, the crowd murmured:
“What King
can you pretend
to be, stationed on high for us
that your objectives fail
in winning us?”
The King, to the side on his raised bed, his Wizard flapping feathered beside him and whispering what must have been suggestions, counsel:
“Fuck me,
you’ve just lost it!
Bloody fool of a magic man!
What can I do? What can
you now suggest?”
His enemy stayed calm and took me with his Bishop – my friend, Johnson, in mitre and scarlet slippers soaked darker by the half-melt snow.
I moved off the board to sit beneath the King’s raised bed and watched them move those boys around – I watched their game, their motion, ignoring the rules I did not know.
“There’s Bob
(…I whispered to me…)
as Rook – Edward
the Bullied, a dragged-up Queen, pure
as the snow-crowded mud
dirtied and stained.
“There’s Joe
and Wart, they dance
around the board on fake horses
plastic white and moulded
to seem unreal.
“They’re there
my friends – there’s Bill
and Jan and Dean and sick Brian –
they move over the board
like high bored waves.
“What boys
remain outweigh
the one who is no boy – look there:
it is our Lathynarn
in his dwarfness.
"Thirty
if a decade,
an old man to us and as high
as the smallest of us –
we speak rarely.
“Clearly
some great power
has put him amongst these chess games
with all their twisted names
and faux warring.
“His face
squashed to humour
filled with bile, spat phlegm, filled with blood…
The apothecary
moaned him awkward.
“We boys –
we boys always –
ignore the dwarf as he does us
with his silent voicing
and bee-stung buzz…
“The game
is slow today.
Four chimes of clock to hit midday
and only five pieces
remain on board.”
I turned around to see the action above me.
The King looked his side to his Wizard and his other to his enemy and asked one how to defeat the other.
“How to
slay the fucker?
Tell me with university
blood in your wizard veins
and get it won.”
The Wizard cleared his throat, whispered at the King who groaned, who beamed.
“That all?
Quite so simple?
Nothing else to do to win it?
Like stealing landmasses
from dull natives!
“King’s Pawn!
To promotion!
Take yourself to the final rank
and wait for me, calmly,
to make you new.”
He jumped down and, dropping his crown, ran to fetch his sword from the mortar where he stashed it.
Lathynarn – the King’s Pawn - had moved his one square on.
“You, boy.
Tell me your name
for in doing so you’ll win it
this chess-game-thing for me.
Now speak out loud.”
We boys at the side – everything is sides, all sides, to one side – waited to laugh at the King: he was no boy! no little child! a grown man squashed, yes, but grown irregardless.
“Dear King –
I must correct
your confusion in this matter.
I am no boy – my name
is Lathynarn.
“I go
from your king’s pawn
to be a queen, some go-between
to win your game for you.
Now promote me, sir.”
Lathynarn knelt in the gravel wet square, placed his knee, correctly, in a corner there, just, and held a head high to accept a queenly crown.
“No boy?
Dwarfish-thing then –
I’ll not make you up as a queen
instead as paladin,
as an equine.
“I’ll knight
you Sir – what’s it?
Sir Loofah? Sir Lifer? Say what
your damned name is to me
to complete it.”
Lathynarn smiled, a twisted jaw untwisted.
We boys enjoyed a queening – but here, now, we were cheated the humiliation of the dress, wig and lipstick – the making of boy to woman.
“My name
is Lathynarn.
And I shall be knighted to win
and serve you in this game
and all others.”
Zoom out, or spy from high towers, to see the action – steadicam at the ready to move through the crowd; perfect the lighting to capture the moment’s mood, both absurdly shining and shining absurd.
The King took his sword to the shoulders of Lathynarn and, we swore many years later, a pigeon crashed frozen at their feet.
“Arise,
give me check mate
Sir Lathynarn, you dwarfish knight,
you midget sword and shield.
Quick! fetch a horse.”
Jan was relieved of his pony and armour – Lathynarn dressed and knighted as such.
And so, by fate and some twist of the world that skewed itself more readily than flatten, Lathynarn became a knight.
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