The Book and the Blade started out as a stray thought in the back of a drunk kid’s head. Me. I was that drunk kid. I was 18 years old and trying to make my way back through the city of York to my student accommodation. I’d only been at uni for a few weeks but I was already in love with the city. Cobbled streets, historic buildings, a rumoured 365 pubs within the walls, and more ghost stories and folklore than you could shake a bunch of sage at. Imagine if you got so drunk you could talk to ghosts, I thought. But you wouldn’t know it, because you were so drunk. Well, that’s how it started… and about twenty years later I wrote it down.
One of my favourite things about The Book and the Blade – and the subsequent Arthur Crazy novels – has been researching the myths and legends of the city and figuring out ways to weave them into the narrative. In the third book, The Saint and the Shadowman (released last month), it is revealed that Arthur himself has a list.
The list was actually two A4 pieces of lined paper folded together with neat writing on both sides. Arthur had wanted a Moleskine diary, but they were so bloody expensive, so he just nicked some paper from the office and got to work. It was a list of names and places and other notes. Some had been crossed out. Some had been added to. Some were detailed and some were vague.
The Saint and the Shadowman
Well, the list exists and I thought it might be fun to share it with everyone. And because I’m a much bigger nerd than Arthur (and I also don’t have a Moleskine diary… anymore) I decided to create some ‘playing card’ style graphics to go along with it.
Those with an eagle-eye for certain aspects of nerdery might recognise a nod or two to the classic Hero Quest tabletop game.
The first card off the deck is, The Black Cats.
Black cats are often regarded as being harbingers of ill fortune and bad luck and are treated with suspicion and distrust. I am guilty of this throughout the three Arthur Crazy books (well, Arthur is) but I shouldn’t be. As Arthur’s mum rightly says in The Sword and the Hounds,
“You’re in Yorkshire now, Father. Nothing unlucky about a black cat crossing your path here. Quite the opposite in fact.”
The Sword and the Hounds
Black cats are a sign of good luck in York and the surrounding country, so much so that the city has pretty much adopted them as an unofficial mascot. Statues of cats have appeared on the walls and rooftops for over two hundred years. In fact, ‘The Cat Trail’ makes for a pretty good walking tour if you fancy something different from a packed Coney Street.
The story goes that the original statues were intended to act as ‘scarecrows’ to scare off the disease-infected rats and mice, but of course this is Yorkshire we’re talking about, so there’s also the added bonus of warding off evil spirits. Arthur’s first realisation that something might be amiss comes when he sees a black cat do a fairly passable David Bowie impression (a la Labyrinth) and defy physics to run up a vertical wall. Mind you, now that I think about it, we used to have a cat that could pretty much do the same thing (she used to perch on the top of the door) so maybe it was all in Arthur’s head?
The cats in The Book and the Blade aren’t just comedy asides and unsubtle foreshadowing, however, in fact two specific felines take centre-stage about midway through. These are the cats of one Lord Acaster… the ghost of a Royalist officer cursed to spend eternity tending to his wounded soldiers in what is now Ye Olde Starre Inne pub on Stonegate (but we’ll get to that) and Arthur wouldn’t have got very far without them.
SEMI-SPOILERS AHEAD:
There perhaps should have been a trigger warning in The Book and the Blade because not all of our furry little friends make it through the night. Although I can reliably inform you that one particular unfortunate feline does in fact have 6 lives left. I know this because a) I wrote it, and b) I have a little black cat with a number 6 tattooed on my upper arm thanks to my tattoo-gun-wielding friend Amy… because I’m from Yorkshire, remember. Where black cats are lucky.
Thanks for reading,
Cheers!
Future ‘Arthur Crazy’s List’ entries will include Sarah Brocklebank, The Grey Lady, Headless Percy, Mansion House, and the Fetch.