Slow march of history. (Pavane - Keith Roberts)

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	Pavane - Keith Roberts
Date:	26/06/01 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Elegant and timeless prose, a fully realised world excellently presented, a story which moves forward with the true inexorability of history.

Disadvantages: SF genre marketing will scare away many punters who might have enjoyed this book immensely and, conversely, sf fans in hope of simple Boy’s Own adventures will not get what they are looking for, almost universally an unhappy and somewhat depressing book.

Science fiction is, essentially, a form of literature which seeks to examine the ways in which humanity will be or could be altered or affected by scientific concepts. Of course, many of the classic templates of the genre take place in the future, in theoretical eras where technological progress has affected humanity in some profound way which makes possible occurrences which are clearly not possible here and now.

But, of course, science is not a cause exclusively limited to the development of new gadgets, and in a similar vein neither is science fiction; Alternative Histories — justified scientifically by using interpretations of quantum mechanics which state that each possible outcome of an event is, in fact, played out, each in its own separate universe — have long been popular within the genre, and although modern readers are probably more likely to be familiar with recent examples such as Robert Harris’ ‘Fatherland’ (which has been turned into a film), examples of the sub-genre date as far back as the 19th century.

One classic example of an Alternative History is Keith Roberts’ ‘Pavane’, which has just been reissued by Millennium as part of their ‘SF Masterworks’ series (it is volume 35). Pavane is actually a slightly difficult book to review, for it matches its position as non-traditional sf by being a non-traditional book: Pavane is a fix-up novel, essentially a volume consisting of several related short stories, each of which bears some relevance to the others but not such a close relevance or progression as might be found in the chapters of a more standard novel. This, of course, is part of the nature of Pavane as a product of the pulp sf era, when it was often more profitable to write short stories for magazine publication than to write novels, and stories were often bagged together later as novels just to screw a bit more value out of the author’s work, but actually in ter
ms of reading the book it turns out not to be such a disadvantage as one may think.

The overall framework of the novel is a history in which England is still dominated by the Catholic church. This comes about, we are told in a very short prologue, because of the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I in 1588 and the subsequent victory of the Spanish Armada. The book is then chiefly divided into six “Measures”, each of which is essentially a short story, and I believe it would be beneficial to consider each of these measures individually before attempting to provide an opinion of the book as a whole.

— First Measure: The Lady Margaret —
‘The Lady Margaret’ takes the best part of 50 pages, and yet it is actually an extraordinarily simple tale with very little actual event for much of its length. The measure begins as Jesse Strange, new owner of transport company Strange & Sons after the recent death of his father, takes his favourite locomotive (essentially a traction engine) ‘The Lady Margaret’ out on its transport run. For the first 20 pages we follow his gradual progress and his thoughts, as he controls his beloved piece of machinery on the several hour journey to where most of his cargo will be offloaded, worries about ‘routiers’ (highwaymen) and considers the future of the company.

Having reached his destination he realises he cannot possibly make the complete journey back to Durnovaria before nightfall, and hence travels out to Swanage to stay at an inn and to frequent the local public house. Ever since Jesse was a child he has been besotted with Margaret, the daughter of the landlord and now working as a barmaid in the pub. Whilst in the pub, Jesse meets up with Colin de la Haye, an old acquaintance from college and apparently a loveable rogue of a man, and the two talk and drink … Jesse rather too much, it would seem, for later, in bed at the inn, he has the uncontrol
lable urge to see Margaret. In a drunken and dishevelled state, he knocks on the pub door, awakening Margaret; she lets him in, and he pours out his feelings to her in a long torrent. Apparently, she knew of his feelings, but simply does not love him, although she hopes they will remain friends. Jesse leaves, sobered, and knowing deep down he will never pass through Swanage again. The following day, as he is leaving, Colin joins him in the cabin for a ride since his horse has been injured, and the two talk about old times and Jesse’s encounter the previous night (Colin laughs), as well as the relative values of the cargoes in each of the trailers behind the engine. After Colin disembarks, the routiers attack, Colin among them, and seize the rearmost trailer as the one Jesse told Colin was carrying the most valuable cargo. As Jesse drives off having lost one of his trailers, there is a huge explosion: nobody messes with Strange and Sons.

This first measure is actually emblematic of the book as a whole, and this is the reason why I have divulged the plot almost entirely and will discuss the implications slightly more thoroughly than with the other individual measures. Probably the first thing that will strike the attentive reader about the book is its quality of prose; Keith Roberts is a textual artist who weaves his sentences from their constituent words with an obvious enthusiasm and love for his work. Possibly the second factor to be noticed will be the level of depth and texture to the alternative history he has created, especially in terms of the technology used, all of which is described in utterly convincing detail (of course, since the traction engine is a piece of equipment that actually exists, even if it is not used to the extent that it is in this book, this is not entirely an act of scientific extrapolation). These two factors collectively define why it is possible to be so engrossed in the book even when nothing concrete seems to be actual
ly happening. As I pointed out above, the first 20 pages of the novel are actually concerned with a perfectly routine haulage trip … which does not go wrong. But by the time I was 15 pages into this novel, I already knew that my reading choice had been a good one; because of the writing quality and the level of resolution in the world creation, as Jesse Strange drove, I was content to go along for the ride.

Perhaps the other thing, noticeable in this story and to be carried along throughout the entire book as a motif, is the sadness in tone of the events which happen; hope is briefly held and then brutally dashed, friendship is betrayed and in this alternative history the old fairy-tale ending of “happy ever after” has never, it seems been invented in the first place. The way the first measure is written serves as a warning to the reader that Pavane is not to be a happy book; as soon as Margaret rejects Jesse and he leaves, we know the state of affairs is going to be permanent, and the fact that Strange and Sons’ tactics to dissuade the routiers from attacking seem to be succeeding, this will provide the company’s new owner with scant reprieve from his grief.

— Second Measure: The Signaller —
A Signaller lies bleeding to death on a moor a short distance from his signalling post, having been attacked by a wild animal. He painstakingly makes his way back to the post and sees heretical visions as he lies within, alone in his unconscious state. Meanwhile, we learn a little of the life story of this Signaller, how he dreamt of joining the Guild of the profession as a boy, how he did so and how he progressed from then on…

Similar to the First Measure in terms of not much actually happening in the contemporary storyline — much of the tale, that of the young man entering the signalling profession, is essentially told as memory and hence takes on an entirely different resonance — ̵
6;The Signaller’ actually shares pretty well all of the strengths of the previous tale as well: once again, firstly, the elegance of the prose in the Signaller’s current struggle to survive and a highly effective emotional association between him and the reader as he struggles against his plight; secondly, the depth of the world he has created — commerce, we knew from the previous tale, was undertaken in this world by hauliers using road locomotives, and now we learn about the high speed communication of this world, using signalling towers separated by relatively large distances but always within line-of-sight, and the political power of the Signallers’ Guild, which even the Church would think twice before opposing; and thirdly, the dignified but inevitable slide towards the ultimate conclusion, as the Signaller gradually succumbs to his wounds and dies in his remote place of work, alone.

This story has the added aspect, however, of the highly inventive execution of the Signalling process, including the various codes used by the Signallers, the ‘co-axial signalling’ process, and even the concept of lighting torches and adding these to the tower arms to deliver an important message in low visibility — this story most definitely has scientific extrapolation, and is another strong addition to the book.

— Third Measure: The White Boat —
Becky is an adolescent who lives with her authoritarian father and siblings in a remote bay, earning a trade along with the rest of the family through fishing. Becky has the habit, unpopular with her father, of sitting and staring out across the bay, and her curiosity is piqued by the arrival of a mysterious white boat on certain nights of the month. However, the consequences of her interaction with the occupants of this vessel may be very serious indeed…

‘The White Boat’ is the shortest measure of the book, and also the least absorbing
and memorable. Although it is by no means actually a bad story, there is a slight lack of relevance since the majority of this tale could be set anywhere and at any time, and in addition to this the character of Becky is slightly less well drawn than usual for Roberts. The end of the tale is slightly better, as Becky rushes to warn her Smuggler acquaintances (for that is what they are, and this will come as no surprise to any reader) that the Church’s troops are lying in wait for them with cannon, but the problem is that there is no specific reason for the Church to be particularly interested in killing smugglers any more than any other government which believed in capital punishment — this tale, therefore, does not particularly add to the alternative history mythos of the rest of the book, although as short prose passages go it is not completely without enjoyment.

— Fourth Measure: Brother John —
The Adhelmians are a small but well respected religious Order, and Brother John lives his life as an illustrator and designer within the Order, designing labels for the wines that the Order sells with such success that commercial orders start to pour in, and generally excelling as an artist. John is a relatively innocent man who has lead something of a blinkered life; he does not always obey the strictest doctrines of his Order, but is tolerated because of the success he has brought to the organisation. One day, however, Brother John’s services are called upon by the Pope himself, and John travels to Londinium in his capacity as an artist to record the activities of the Court of Spiritual Welfare (an organisation which used to be known as the Inquisition) in their punishment of the enemies of God, so that His Holiness may have an account of how his orders are carried out in far away England.

What John sees, however, are events of such a horrific nature that he is never the same again; his paintings complete, he travels a
way from Londinium in a daze, feeling numb at the actions of his own Church and guilty in that, despite the actions he was witnessing at the time, he still actually enjoyed the act of drawing. Eventually, in a dishevelled and pitiable state, Brother John becomes a figurehead for an anti-Rome movement in England, and the armed forces scour the country, fighting with the rebels and all the while looking for Brother John…

After the comparative disappointment of the Third Measure it is nice to see the book in full and effective flow once again, and ‘Brother John’ is a very powerful tale well told. John himself is a very well-drawn character, someone who one might consider to be a pleasant person, perhaps a little absorbed in his work and willing to bend the rules of his Order a little — for which he often gets chastised gently by his superiors — but nonetheless a harmless man.

His change from innocuous monk to official leader of heretics is a convincing one: as he first arrives at the court, he finds one of the women in the lines of the accused rather alluring (as a monk, of course, he does not encounter women often), and is a little overwhelmed by the place he has just entered; next, as he sees the barbarity of the actions committed in the name of Christos he is appalled — the Inquisitor’s are attempting to save the accused’s soul from the Devil, and this involves breaking their body to extract a confession of guilt in a set of rituals in which the breaking of the body is paramount, since a confession freely given could be either a lie or the words of the Devil and is hence meaningless; finally, he leaves, his lifelong beliefs in tatters and even his self-respect now non-existent. Around him, the rebellion begins — we are now into the second half of the book and the world we are experiencing is starting to tear itself apart. But for Brother John personally, the end is not to be a glorious one, as h
e fades into obscurity, a half-crazed idiot forgotten by his cause once they no longer need him as their centre.

— Fifth Measure: Lords and Ladies —
Jesse Strange is dying, and around his death bed are his relatives and a priest attempting to exorcise an evil spirit from him. One such relative is Margaret Belinda Strange, Jesse’s niece, who stands at the back of the room, knowing that she should aid the priest in his prayers but secretly believing that the malign and demonic presence in the room is her. As her uncle gradually dies before her, her memories slip back through her life: through her childhood memories of her uncle, now a very rich and powerful man at the head of a company, Strange and Sons, which is the monopoly haulier throughout much of England, the competition having been unable to keep up pace with a company whose boss never, ever stopped working, in the manner of one possessed or one working deliberately to the exclusion of all other thoughts; through her education and young adulthood; and finally to her encounter with the young aristocrat Robert Purbeck, heir to Corfe Gate with whom, after a brief romantic affair, she has sex before marriage. The aristocrat, perhaps expectedly, has not contacted her since their last encounter, and now Margaret believes she is pregnant out of wedlock, a sin against the teachings of the church.

‘Lords and Ladies’ is the first of the Measures to explicitly remind us that time is gradually passing in this world. The previous four Measures could all have happened roughly simultaneously, but here we have a situation in which Jesse Strange, the central character of the First Measure, is an old man on his death bed being watched by his niece. Not only that, but we have the increased fortune of Strange and Sons, an increased fortune achieved at great price to Jesse who has had no life of his own, and we also have a brief an implied account of what happened in the life of t
he original Margaret after the events of the First Measure.

In intertwining excerpts from the lives of Jesse and the younger Margaret Strange (always told from Margaret’s perspective and hence always of events at which Margaret was present), we see a combination of an increasingly old man who has not lived much of a life outside work for many years now, and a younger woman stubbornly resisting the strict upbringing she is receiving from her father and Sarah, her tutor, in an attempt to live a full and happy life. Unfortunately, the young Margaret never truly understands why old Uncle Jesse, a cold man feared by nearly everybody, seems to be softer on her than even her own father is, and as Jesse dies, and Margaret enters a serious situation of her own, she never will.

— Sixth Measure: Corfe Gate —
The Lady Eleanor Purbeck is current Lady of Corfe Gate; daughter of Robert Lord Purbeck and a commoner who died in childbirth, Eleanor identifies more with the common people of her area of the country than with the edicts delivered on high by Rome. When she refuses to pay a new level of taxes which would have left half her county starving by winter, armies loyal to the Church are dispatched from Londinium to quell her threatened rebellion. The King, who so far has protected Eleanor from harm as a result of her less-than-respectful attitude to England’s foreign rulers, has just left the country on a tour of the New World, and in his absence England is destined for civil war…

In this, the final Measure of the book, many of the problems that have been bubbling away under the surface of this convincingly realised world come to the fore, and the battle is well and truly joined. In our history, Elizabeth I was able to defeat the forces of Spain by dashing their ships across the rocks of Scotland, but here there is no such easy solution. Not only is Lady Eleanor Purbeck facing the forces of, as far as she is concerned,
the entire world at once, she also faces troops loyal to the Pope already in England, and the situation looks grim indeed. Travelling along the seemingly inevitable parallels with our own history, it looks as if, even in this world, the forces of progress cannot be halted forever. However, as with many of the other tales in this book, although the greater cause might have been furthered, the solution is not an absolute victory, and the personal costs for those who step out of line are high.


Pavane as a whole is an intricately linked book containing a number of delicately told tales. This ‘fix-up’ approach to novel-writing seems, in this instance, to have all the advantages of a novel in its continuity due to its careful writing, together with a greater scope than any novel written in the conventional way might have. In the brief Coda a small strand of storytelling which consisted of accounts of the ‘Old Ones’, religious figures from before the incursion of Christianity onto the British Isles, is brought to the fore, and this serves to set the rest of the book into focus.

To be honest, each of the constituent parts of Pavane is extremely impressive in itself. Roberts manages to generate a level of empathy in the reader for his characters which would normally take an entire novel to achieve in only a few pages, as well as telling stories which are both believable and not ridiculously melodramatic and yet manage to be both exciting and memorable.

A ‘pavane’ is a “Slow, stately dance, in duple time, of 16th and 17th cents.” [Universal Dictionary of the English Language, 1952]; it is by these rhythms that history moves, and Keith Roberts has caught this tone perfectly in this wonderfully created alternative history’s move towards a Renaissance.

In terms of character, writing style, realism and intricacy of presentation and layering, Pavane is a world-class piece of literature.
In terms of world building and extrapolation, Pavane is a masterwork of the science fiction genre, and yet another very worthy addition to the SF Masterworks range.

Recommended.

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