After a heart attack, Niall Petersen is revived on the London Underground by an old lady who tells him he’s not entirely human. The old lady turns out to be much older than she appears, and explains that he has inherited the bloodlines of the Feyre, creatures of myth and folklore.
Now one of those creatures is hunting him and he must find a way for him and his daughter to survive. To succeed he must discover the secret of the two knives, one blunt, one sharp, the six horse-shoes, and why there are Sixty-One Nails.
An impressively accessible hero, Niall anchors the reader on a journey of discovery that feels constantly off-balance but never jarring. Comparisons to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere are both inevitable and erroneous; Shevdon’s grittily believable, charmingly described underworld packs a dark punch all its own.
Publisher’s Weekly – June 2010 (starred review)Mike Shevdon is a great, fresh voice in urban fantasy and has a fantastic new take on it, with a well-balanced blend of humor and gravity, making old folklore seem realistic and plausible in a techno-heavy world. It’s easy to fall back into childish passions for stories with this book, and enjoy it with some new adult friends.
Axie Barclay at the Sacramento Book Review
Afterword
STRANGER THAN FICTION
It has been said many times that truth is stranger than fiction and this book is, in some ways, a reflection of that. I came across the Ceremony for the annual rendering of the Quit Rents during research for this novel, as a reference in a book on English folklore. The ceremony itself is entirely real and is the oldest legal ceremony in England with the exception of the Royal Coronation. The ceremony has been performed annually since 1211 between the feast of St Michael and St Martin, usually early in October.
The origin of the ceremony goes back to the time of William the Conqueror. The county of Shropshire, then known as Salop, was granted to Roger de Montgomerie, a senior counsellor of William, in 1071, along with many other holdings. Roger was 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and lived until 1094 when he was succeeded by his younger son, Hugh de Montgomerie who became 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury and died without children. The land then passed to Hugh’s older brother in Normandy, Robert de Bellême who had a reputation for starting wars and kidnapping his neighbour’s children. Robert de Bellême was exiled to Normandy in 1102 after conspiring to depose Henry I and the land in Salop was forfeit. The majority of this land was granted to men loyal to the king, but a piece of wasteland, known as the Moors, just south of Bridgnorth, was retained and held directly of the Crown. The earliest record of a tenant is of Nicholas de Morrs who occupied 80 acres of land, 20 acres of meadow and 80 acres of pasture from 1211 upon the rendering of two knives, one blunt and one sharp. The purpose of the knives was to create tally sticks for the receipt of taxes where a hazel rod of one year’s growth (roughly the length of a man’s forearm) was notched with the blunt knife to represent payment. The sharp knife was then used to split the rod in two, forming two corresponding halves of a receipt.
In 1521, the obligation to provide the knives passed to six Mercers and then in 1556 to Richard Mylles. In that year one of the city men attending for the confirmation of the sheriffs attempted to perform the service with the knives. Neither knife would cut the hazel rod and Richard Mylles was fined ten shillings for contempt. At some point the two knives were replaced with a hatchet and a bill-hook (a hedging tool) and the hazel rod with faggots, small logs of wood. A hatchet and bill-hook used for the ceremony at this time can be seen in the Northgate Museum at Bridgnorth. They were probably made specifically for the ceremony as they are plated, possibly with silver. Nowadays, two knives are made each year, commissioned by The Worshipful Company of Cutlers for the City of London, and sometimes displayed afterwards in the exhibition cabinets in the main hall of the Royal Courts of Justice where the ceremony continues to this day.
The role of the Queen’s Remembrancer (or King’s Remembrancer, if the monarch is male) dates back to 1164 when Richard of Ilchester, Archdeacon of Poitiers and later Bishop of Winchester was asked by the King to stand alongside the Treasurer and “Put the King in remembrance of all things owing to the King”. There was also a Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer whose role was to “Know and keep all the secrets of the Kingdom”, a post first held by Master Thomas Brown a former Lord Treasurer of Count Roger of Sicily. Around 1830, the tax gathering element of these roles was transferred to the newly formed Treasury under the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. The word Exchequer is derived from the chequered cloth laid over a counting table where debts were set into the squares on one side and then, as they were paid, transferred to the other. Inns that bear the name “The Chequers” were often where the tax collections were held and the Prime Minister’s country retreat is still called Chequers, possibly due to links with the Exchequer. Nowadays, the ceremonial elements of the role of Queen’s Remembrancer remain with the senior master of the Queen’s Bench Division of the Supreme Court who still wears the tricorn hat of a cursitor baron on top of a full wig when presiding over the ceremony. A photo of the Queen’s Remembrancer, fully robed and wearing the wig and tricorn hat, with a horse shoe in one hand and one of the knives in the other may be seen in Keepers of the Kingdom, The Ancient Officers of Britain by Alistair Bruce, Julian Calder and Mark Cator (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999).
There is some debate around the circumstances of the establishment of the forge in Tweezers Alley, but it is likely that the forge was originally erected as a temporary facility in the corner of the tournament fields of the Knights Templar, who had the land close to the banks of the Thames near where Tweezers Alley now stands. The tenant, Walter le Brun, was allowed to go quit of the rent for the forge in return for the provision of six horse-shoes suitable for a Flemish war horse and sixty-one nails, ten for each shoe and one extra, perhaps as a spare. The rent is first entered into the rolls of the Exchequer in 1235. This continued until 1361 when the rent was commuted to eighteen pennies, provided that the tenant, Emma of Tewkesbury, provided horse-shoes for the ceremony to continue. The shoes she presented are still in use today and are the oldest horse-shoes known to exist in England. I have not discovered what purpose the Queen’s Remembrancer would have for the horse-shoes and nails; some things will always remain a mystery.
London is famous for one river, the Thames, but in fact has many. The Fleet river is one of the major tributaries flowing into the Thames and comes out at Blackfriars just near the Mermaid Theatre. The river used to flow openly and was navigable in its lower reaches, but became increasingly silted up and was used more and more as a sewer as London grew. It was eventually built over completely and now runs above ground from its source in Hampstead down to Kings Cross where it is channelled underground. I cannot say whether there is an island with an anvil or not.
Finally, during the writing of this book, it became necessary to invent a hammer in the story so that the Quick Knife might be remade. You can imagine, therefore, how delighted I was to learn that there are two hammers used in the ceremony of beating of the bounds of the parish of St Clement Danes, just across from the Royal Courts of Justice. They were used to keep order at the feast which is held after the parish bounds had been walked and were presented by Elizabeth I in 1573 and 1598 respectively. Each hammer is mounted with silver and has a Tudor rose and the letters ER upon it, together with the anchor of St Clement Danes. This is recorded in Curious Survivals by Dr George C Williamson (Herbert Jenkins, 1923) along with many other curiosities. The hammers are still used ceremonially today.
The Quit Rents Ceremony, along with the confirmation of the Sheriffs for the City of London, is conducted every year at the Royal Courts of Justice and members of the public may attend, though the number attending may be limited by space. In 2011 it will celebrate its eight hundredth anniversary.
Mike Shevdon, 2009