The Troy Game by Jean Morris

Bodley Head HB

Jean Morris’s YA novel The Troy Game (1987), set in Dark Ages Britain, starts with Brannock, second son of the King of the Seven Kingdoms, being sent on a mission by the druid-like Elder, Mennor. There are rumours of invaders coming from the east, and Mennor needs a message taken to his Order at Caerdroia. He chooses Brannock because of his ability to use a “bob” to detect not just water and buried metal but hidden paths, as the way to Caerdroia is a secret to those not of the Order. Stopping off at his uncle’s kingdom, Brannock is given his eldest cousin Eilian as a guide, as she has accompanied their own Elder at least to the start of the hidden way. And as they embark on the final section of the journey, Brannock and Eilian begin to realise they are tracing a vast troy, like the ancient, now-fading dance-patterns in their own villages.

The book opens with such impatience to get Brannock on his way (entirely excusable in a YA novel) that the reason for his mission feels almost like an afterthought. Vague rumours of invaders from the east, and Mennor never explaining why he’s not able to take the message himself — it’s evident Morris basically wants to get her pair of protagonists onto the vast troy and tracing its weird path as soon as possible. And the troy is obviously the main point of interest, here, not the invaders from the east. It’s presented as not so much a man-made thing as a concentrated mystical aspect of the land itself. Walking the wrong way doesn’t just get you lost, it produces some dark, nightmare-like experiences; try to shortcut the circular path, and you’ll find yourself ejected and unable to find any part of the troy — entrance, exit, or even where you just were.

Chapters within the troy end with an illustration of the path taken so far…

Perhaps it’s the effect of having read Mythago Wood and its sequels, but the troy, here, feels very much like one of Holdstock’s mythogenic landscapes — particularly with Holdstock using terms like “the oak-vortex”, and “the ley matrix”, as though the troy were just a more ordered version of the same whorls of weirdness. Inside the troy, what seems like a small forest proves to be immense; an old Roman villa with a slightly ghostly inhabitant can be entered at the same point from two different directions; there are sudden changes of weather, as well as of landscape, all just as in Ryhope Wood. There’s even a hint of the same ancient, pre-human world behind it all:

“This was ancient deep forest; not the mild open kind that could be travelled with little trouble, but the oldest oak forest, where men never went, where the vast trees grew and died and toppled and rotted untouched, as they had done since the beginning of the world.”

Beaver/Red Fox PB, 1989

For most of the book, The Troy Game feels at the younger limit of YA — its getting quickly to the journey without bothering with much set-up, the vagueness about the invaders from the east and the broadly archetypal characters (kings and queens as parents, wizard-like old men as village elders) — but things take a disturbing and more complex turn towards the end of the book. The invaders from the east, when encountered, aren’t simply barging in Viking-like and taking over, they’re seeking alliances with the aim of fomenting a civil war, but claim to be merely looking for a new home. (In the wonderfully double-edged words of one of them: “we come in peace but in strength”.) The Elders themselves are divided as to what to do, and their leader seems too weak to really accomplish anything. Mennor, then, makes a desperate move, and summons the Wild Hunt, despite knowing it will not simply attack these invaders, but throw the land itself into chaos:

“The Wild Hunt may be invoked, but not controlled; once the Hunt is up, its prey is everything in its path.”

And that’s what happens. Chaos, then ruin. After recovering from the Hunt’s passing, Brannock begins his journey back from Caerdroia, and it’s as though the air of fantasy has gone from the lands he passes through: he’s out of story and into history. The Seven Kingdoms ruled by his father prove to be seven villages; the invaders from the east — blond and tall — are now scattered among the people of the land, married to village women, with young families already, making a go as farmers, not warriors. Why, then, the terror of the Wild Hunt? It’s as though all the Hunt did was stir everything up in one big land-wide cauldron, then leave people so disorientated there was no room for thoughts of war or conquest, merely survival. The invaders are part of the land now, and the land itself has spent something of its mystical power.

Brannock realises his recovery from the chaos of the Wild Hunt didn’t just take weeks or months, but perhaps years. None of his relatives recognise him. After the younger-end-of-YA feel at the start of the novel, there’s a distinct note of something broken and lost — the magic has gone away, and the Dark Ages story-world of kings and queens and elders has been replaced by a more realistic land of farmers and villagers repairing roofs and tilling the land.

None of this is overly examined and, in a way, that makes it less immediately dark than it sounds, but also more mysterious. Still, there’s a haunting feeling to the ending, the sense that the world has irretrievably changed from the magical-mystical to the historical. As a story — particularly read as an adult — it feels a little unsatisfying, but nevertheless there’s a poetic air which is quite appropriate for such a short book.

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