The Legend of Broken (103 page)

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Isadora’s “makeup”
Ignored, perhaps not surprisingly, by Gibbon, are these examples of ancient and medieval cosmetics from opposite ends of the safety spectrum: rose water (produced when rose oil is creating through the steam distilling of rose petals) was used then much as it is today, for harmlessly scenting and softening the skin, while galena is the naturally occurring form of lead sulfide, with all the toxic implications that the term implies. Fortunately, Isadora is using it, as did many, as eye make-up alone, which would limit the area of application, diminishing absorption through the skin and making accidental interaction with the eye the only real danger. “Lip paint,” in which flower or berry juice was used for tinting, usually had a beeswax base, making the only possible toxic reaction in this case the effect of the poppies themselves: not a concern, as the plants had to have flowered to produce petals for tinting, whereas opium is derived from first scoring the immature seed pods of the plant, then harvesting the thin latex that oozes from the cuts, and finally processing it. —C.C.

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“surcoat”
Both Old Saxon and Old Low German had terms that contributed to the word “coat”; and so, while “surcoat” itself is derived from the French and is also a term that came into use in a later period, there was almost certainly an analogous concept in the Broken dialect. The more interesting question here is not one of etymology, but of the object itself, since surcoats bearing heraldic figures are not even thought to have been in use in Europe until well after the eighth century. Yet, because the crest that appears on the surcoat in question—the rampant bear of Broken—involves the emblem of a kingdom, instead of a family or an individual knight, it is consistent with the development of European heraldry, which was still using such crests as most ancient peoples (particularly the Romans) did: to connote national, imperial, or individual military unit identity, rather than family or personal distinction. —C.C.

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“… best marauder sword …”
The debate over which Eastern “marauding” tribes—that is, those who raided into Europe, such as the Huns, Avars, and Mongols—as well as which Muslim armies (or, more precisely, which parts of which Muslims armies) carried the kind of curved blade that Dagobert is said to be girded with, here, is one that has persisted for well over a hundred years. Some authorities claim that there is a widespread misperception—largely created by fiction and Hollywood—that such “exotic” or “Oriental” peoples as the Muslims and the Huns used curved, single-edged sabers and scimitars, in keeping with their non-Roman, non-Western appearance. But in fact, while there is strong reason to think that raiding peoples may have adopted such a weapon during the period under discussion for their cavalry units (curved blades being easier to withdraw from an enemy’s body at high speed), those marauder and Muslim soldiers who made up their infantry arms almost always copied the enormously successful double-edged, straight weapons of the Sassanid Persian Empire. As is so often the case, in such debates, one can scarcely do better than to go back to the remarkable archaeological work done by the famed traveler, adventurer, and “Orientalist,” Sir Richard F. Burton, contained in his
The Book of the Sword,
originally published in 1884, but wisely kept in print by Dover in an only slightly edited and abridged edition of 1987. —C.C.

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“… skulls piled as high as mountains …”
Gibbon writes, “This mention of the infamous piling of enemy skulls, usually associated with later leaders such as Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine is of use in dispelling those same legends: it demonstrates that the notion of enormous piles of skulls is a far older bogey for children than has previously been imagined, thus weakening the idea that it was ever anything other than a useful nursery tool.” In fact, the exact truth may never be known about such infamous and dramatic tales concerning the warriors of the East and their kings, caliphs, emirs, and emperors; but since, in this same passage of the Manuscript, we find mention of another legendary practice for which there is actually a good amount of reliable evidence—the cooking of meat between the legs of Eastern riders and their horses’ backs—we cannot agree with Gibbon’s skepticism too quickly, simply to obey the imperatives of political correctness or a more basic revulsion at the very idea. Certainly, for instance, the great Turkic Emir Timur (or “Timur the Lame,” often contracted, variously, to
Tamerlane
or
Tamburlaine,
A.D.
1336–1405) had his own spies disseminate rumors of “mountains” built of tens of thousands of skulls among populations he hoped to conquer, as a way to weaken resistance and sow panic, a trick practiced more than two centuries earlier by Genghis Khan; and in both cases, we have reliable accounts to prove that these men at least sometimes made good on their threats—as they must have done, in order to be sure that the threats themselves carried weight. “Mountains” is doubtless an exaggeration; but a pile of human skulls numbering in the tens of thousands must surely have
seemed
a mountain, to horrified onlookers. —C.C.

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Allsveter
and
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Wodenez
Two of the most common terms used to describe the deity whom Gibbon has already and correctly (but not adequately) termed “the patriarch of the Norse gods,” Odin (also known, as in Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle,
Der Ring des Nibelungen,
as Wotan). He had even more obscure names, among the Germanic tribes, since their adherence to this faith (again, contrary to much popular and even some scholarly opinion) predated the arrival of the Norse invaders, perhaps and importantly explaining the German people’s consistent fascination with the myths. For the purposes of these examples, however,
Allsveter
is almost certainly the Broken dialectal term meaning “All-father,” or “Father of all,” a concept that, we should note, is not, in any of its variations, synonymous with “all-powerful” or “supreme being,” as in the Christian sense of God: Wotan, like all the other great polytheistic patriarchs, had challengers, mistresses, and weaknesses; could suffer defeats; endured not only self-doubt, but regrets; and enjoyed the distinction of having been the only pagan patriarch to endure facial disfigurement, when he traded one of his eyes for Wisdom. —C.C.

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“‘… the runes …’”
Evidently, Gisa taught Isadora not only the practices of a skilled healer, but other talents, as well, talents that, under the old, traditional faith of Broken, would have gone hand in hand with healing: those of a seeress, a woman (and such divining figures were almost universally women, among the Germanic tribes) who could cast runes—anything from collections of bones and sticks to chosen stones carved with runic symbols—and gain, not specific details of the future, but an idea of general trends, most importantly for her tribe. —C.C.

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“… the family’s modest litter …”
Gibbon writes, “Although this was doubtless another of Oxmontrot’s attempts to ape Roman customs, it also served, as so many of his policies did, a secondary and pragmatic purpose: Romans rode litters borne by slaves, as opposed to horses, as both a mark of status and as a method of limiting the amount of horse dung and urine that cluttered their already narrow and foul streets. The imperative for the second of these purposes in a city of stone, built upon the summit of a lone mountain some three and a half thousand feet in elevation, would have been even greater.”

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Selke
and
Egenrich
Although evidently inscrutable in Gibbon’s day, the names of Keera’s and Veloc’s parents can now be traced more certainly:
Selke
—like
Elke,
in Frisian, from which the name was derived—is apparently a Broken “pet name” for the Germanic
Adelheid
(or
Sedelheid,
in the Broken dialect), the usual meaning of which is “kind and noble.” But in the Broken version, “noble
because
kind” would be closer, and the fact that
Selke
appears to have been a name used only by the Bane reminds us that compassion was a quality found in greater abundance among the exiles in Davon Wood than in Broken. Besides being a virtue, for the Bane, compassion was also good sense—it kept the tribe open to new outcasts, who thus increased their numbers, brought new blood into the breeding pool, and increased the Bane’s strength and good fortune accordingly.
Egenrich,
meanwhile, is the Broken version of the very common German name
Heinrich,
by way of the Old High German version,
Haganrich,
all three of which mean roughly the same thing, “strong ruler.” Thus, the couple together stand for “compassion and strength”: not only the highest of Bane virtues, but an apt description, to judge by their actions, of the role they played in the lives of their two natural children and their one adopted (if wayward) son. —C.C.

T
HE
I
NTERLUDE

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the title “Interlude: A Forest Idyll”
It is unclear whether Gibbon detected any note of either irony or outright sarcasm in the title of this section of the Manuscript: whatever the case, while the subject matter broadly resembles what we would expect to find in a typical “idyllic” pause between more narrative episodes, and while the central relationship between the two characters introduced in these pages would certainly seem to justify such a label, each of the histories of those characters is so marred by tragedy and violence, the examples of which are so carefully, indeed graphically phrased (and with so little concern for the elements of poetics or aesthetics), that it seems probable that the narrator, rather than attempting a true idyll, is attempting an earnest—indeed, a grim—broadside against some of the most fatuous popular misconceptions and literary foibles of his time. —C.C.

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“… the forces of revolutionary destruction …”
Gibbon refers to the growing Romantic movement, and particularly to that school most obviously represented by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), whose theories centered on the Natural World, the “Social Contract,” and what is perhaps unjustly dismissed as the theory of the “Noble Savage.” Rousseau’s views on social and societal relationships among humans were indeed twisted and prostituted to the cause of excessive, unchecked violence during the French Revolution, as well as other unsavory episodes during that period and others to come. The most sensible of Romantics recognized the limitations of the philosophy, to say nothing of its dangers, during the French Reign of Terror; but many held on to the ideas tenaciously, rationalizing brutal behavior among human societies that any animal species would certainly have disdained. —C.C.

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neura
Gibbon writes, “This is, of course, a term taken from Greek antiquity, one originally employed by [the fourth century
B.C.
] physician Praxagoras of Cos to describe what he thought were a special set of arteries that transmitted the ‘vital force,’ or ‘divine fire’ which all progressive Greek medical minds called
pneuma,
an invisible substance in the air that is inhaled and traveled from the lungs to the heart, vitalizing the blood that was to be sent to the various appendages and organs of the body, making function and animation possible. However, Praxagoras’s student, Herophilus of Alexandria [335–280
B.C.
], building on his teacher’s work yet pushing well beyond it, realized that the
neura
were in fact not arteries, but instead represented an entirely separate method of transmitting the
pneuma.
In the modern age, of course, when we have learned through the work of the chemists Lavoisier and Priestley that it is
oxygen
that in fact fulfills the role assigned to the
pneuma,
such opinions may seem quaint; but we ought not underestimate their importance as steps along the way to the truth.” One need only add that we ought, too, to recognize that the work of the ancient Greeks is remembered in the name eventually and correctly given to that other “special set of arteries,” the
nervous system,
or
nerves,
the adjectival root for which is, of course,
neural,
and whose basic units of signaling all sensations are
neurons
using electro-chemical transmission. —C.C.

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“the
thirl
”
A term used by various northern tribes—including, apparently, the old man’s unnamed steppe horse people, who were likely from the Ukraine or some other pseudo-European area—in the same sense that we use the word “thrill” today. Indeed, there is an obvious etymological connection between the two, and a behavioral one, as well: the old man’s tribe, like many modern people, actively sought such experiences. —C.C.