M A L L E R S T A N G

Hayley was a Cumberland working woman.

The Duchess.

The oldest whore in town.

Her two pimps were complete bastards and regularly beat her to a pulp.

The violence had been terrible that winter; a constant pounding to her kidneys. She felt sick but no way were they letting her go to hospital.

It was the end of her shift, the young tipsy nuclear plant worker had left her an early glowing compliment on the bed. 

Done too soon, he'd paid only half and left and whilst she was slowly buttoning up her shirt, her eyes closed tight, her bosses barged in and dragged her to the office.

"You're not shagging enough Hayles!" Blasted Jezzer, "you need to fuckin' shag more punters and do it quicker or else!"

Another left hook into her soft midriff and she went down wretching, staring at the puke-stained carpet of the so-called office, again.

"All the other girls can shag on a sixpence!" Lorded Runsy, as he yanked her head back with her long grey hair.

"You're getting too fuckin' old Duchess and we might just have to put you down see!" He warned.

"That's right!" Yelped Jezzer, "We can't be wasting our precious time on an old cunt like you! We're businessmen! You've got one week to turn it round or we'll put you out of your misery! Know what I'm saying you dried-up fuckin' slag!"

They both shoved the cowering woman out of their room onto the landing. 

A final kick to the waist!

Vicious twats they were, Jezzer and Runsy. Both sadists, they'd branded their 'herd' with a hot poker too. Brands, punches and kicks. Routine torture, but never to the face, so no-one would see. Clever evil bastards. She fuckin' hated their guts.

She coughed up scarlet in her palm. A wet red message her time was nearly up.

Not surprised, a bloody rasp was all Hayley could muster most days.

Her lungs were raggedy punch bags now. 

At 50 years of age she was by far the oldest of the 'girls'. Oh, by absolute decades. Like a goddamn Queen Mother!

 It's all she knew though. Working like this. She'd made an OK living. And then her last pimp had sold her to Jezzer and Runsy, the cruellest fuckers she'd ever laid eyes on. Shed been royally screwed!

She told the younger girls to get away whilst they could, but really they all knew that the two pimps would find them and beat them senseless, force them to take more drugs and make everything even worse than it already was.

One week.

That's what they'd said.

One week to turn it round.

She was knackered. There was no turning anything round and she knew it. 

Her days were numbered, she could feel it. In seven days, after shagging like a wrinkled rabbit, it still wouldn't be enough. She was just too fuckin' ancient. They'd beat her to death, get rid of her body and that'd be that. The others wouldn't say a thing. They're just too damn scared.

Fuck!

She had to do something or else they'd kill her and chuck her in one of those steaming atomic pools near Windscale, as sure as night follows day, and her pointless life would dribble down the plug-hole. She'd come back as a plump Cumbrian sausage on Jezzer's breakfast plate and he'd fork her again! It was karma!

There was only one thing she could do.

Run away.

At least she might get six months freedom before those shitheads found her.

Six months! God!

It was enough.

She'd fuckin' escape.

Yes!

That night!

She choked with secret excitement. Yep, She'd show those good-for-nothing stinking scumbags.

She'd leave the name Duchess behind too! She'd always hated it. There had to be more!

Gasping, she grabbed her inhaler. Even the Ventonil couldn't take the edge off her damn croaky throat. No matter, she felt buzzed. A feeling Hayley hadn't experienced in a decade. Not since she'd had a son, her Prince. For a brief moment the world had seemed beautiful, like a virgin sunrise, but then they'd sold her baby too.

Jezzer and Runsy.

Those heartless fuckpigs. The deserved to die.

Sneaking into the brothel's dingey front room and without switching the light on, carefully leaning over a sleeping girl, Hayley grabbed a tattered atlas from the half-empty bookcase.

Hiding it, she took it to her bedroom and there, in the milky hope of the moonlight, Hayley let her gnarly finger wander up the road, out of the town and .....

to the hills on the edge of Westmoreland and beyond.

Her finger stopped.

It read Mallerstang.

M-a-l-l-e-r-s-t-a-n-g.

She let her tongue roll round the name, as if she'd discovered reading for the very first time.

She said it out loud.

What a fabulously ancient-sounding word she thought, jammed with magic and promise and just far enough away to give her chance to stop and think where to go next in her new life.

Yep, the vale of Mallerstang it is.

Around one in the morning, she packed a bag of grubby clobber and without a sound she nicked the car keys to Jezzer's Mini from the fuckfaces' office.  They were in the attic getting their end away with two of the girls.

Without headlights, she set off in the Mini straight up the A1. 

Yes!

"Those mean cunts will be too fucked to notice that shitty old Mini's gone. Or me! Serves the bastards right!"

Hayley laughed our loud like it was Christmas Day with her Mother, a laugh that felt so good, but so utterly alien, she barely recognized the sound, the tearful relief of hopefulness.

She sang loudly to the radio. The Smiths.

"I've heard it happens in other people's lives and now its happening in mine!"

Yes! She banged the steering wheel, whooping with a new-found desire to live.

With the weather dry but cold, after a quick getaway, she reckoned two hours careful driving would do it. After an hour she pulled up to a phone box and rang a BnB in the yellow pages, Avalon House and got a room for two nights, including, treat of treats, a full English. There'd never been time for decent meals on the job, someone always after a screw. 

She'll feel like royalty in that Bed and Breakfast! She was ravenous! 

Her apprehension about escaping  felt under control, as she motored across Westmoreland, wending her way through snow-dusted peaks and barren moors, as the borderland with the Tees spread out like a made bed.

It was simply beautiful and Hayley kicked herself for not leaving earlier. It was easy to see why it was basically all a National Park: the dry stone walls, the burbling rivers, the sheep barns, the undulating levels and the high crags. Like Eden itself. A no brainer!

The miles flew by and the little car chewed up the road. She was already feeling invigorated and was so damn glad she'd heeded the urge to flee those toerag Windscale pimps. It was a life or death decision for sure.

As the day waned she didn't have too far to go. Just a few more miles up rural lanes into the wilds of the, yes, goddammit, the Eden Valley no less! It was a really called Eden! There was the sign! It was too good to be true, surely, but soon she would be there, somewhere she'd never been, somewhere she'd never even heard of until that day.

The name kept repeating in her mind.

Mallerstang.

Mallerstang.

It was a worm in her head, as if calling her. It was true that she felt an incredibly strong pull to be there, but concluded that it was simply her yearning for glorious escape and crisp, fresh air to rekindle her brutalized frame. Nothing more. Nothing .....

And there it was, an old metal road sign pointing up the road. 

Mallerstang

1 mile.

Hayley felt her heart begin to pound as she began that final stretch. She couldn't understand her tension. Was it the tug of her old shitty life slowly stretching to breaking point or was it simply a new and pure excitement, like she'd felt as a kid centuries ago? Nothing was impossible and maybe she'd even find her baby again?

She would soon find out and see at last what this remote corner of the Northern hills actually entailed.

And then it appeared. 

No need to carry on.

A ruin. 

A lonely castle ruin by the side of the road.

 This was her destination.

 she knew it for certain.

A kind of dejâ vu.

It was as if she'd been here before.

Hayley parked the Mini, put on her parka and gloves and walked the short way through the iron gate to the building.

She was instantly drawn to the weathered plaque screwed to the wall.

The Castle of Uther Pendragon.

As she read it the clouds darkened and the flock of sheep on the hillside stopped and stared, their eyes mirrors of a world beyond.

Hayley shivered and pulled her parka tighter. It had begun to sleet when she stepped into the pile, the icy flakes slipping over the stonework like frozen milk.

Once inside she was transfixed, as if tied to the spot. The heavens cracked and thunder slapped, snow swirling round her, a vortex of white, the wind shrieking, crows spiralling, ravens riding the backs of barking foxes.

"Well, what have we here?"

The ancient female voice encircled the girl.

"The cream-maid, the ass-trout, the slutterbus, the pissant nag Igraine!"

"That's what we've got!"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE HARLOT?"

Hayley was scared shitless.

She stood among the ruins completely still. She had no idea where the voice was coming from but guessed some local joker was hanging out here.

Well, it wasn't fucking funny!

"I'm Hayley. I don't mean to upset you!"

"Upset me! You upset me bitch when you let my sweet King Uther take you in your bed like a potioned hag!"

"I'm sorry but I don't know what you're talking about. My name is Hayley and I don't know any Uther!"

"King Uther to you! You think Igraine you may be Queen but it is I, Vivienne, who shall take the King's side!"

At this an ethereal mist arose from the ramparts; the fogged spectre of a fierce woman, finely robed, brandishing a broadsword, cursing!

"Prepare to die Igraine, Queen of Whores!" 

Suddenly there was a crack of thunder and lightning and the castle's wreck lit up like a day in the dark night.

"Enough! Enough Vivienne I say! I command you as your King! Away, away with you to the shadows and the blackness of your hatred!"

A new phantom had emerged, a huge male figure wearing a crown. 

Hayley fainted. The crowned figure stooped to care for her, gently lifting her head with mailed hands.

"Igraine, my sweet, awaken! You have returned from the millennia, returned to me my darling Lady and to our Land, it's true Queen!"

The spectre King wept. 

Hayley opened her eyes.

"My sweet Lady, you're back! I have waited a thousand years for this moment!"

He gently kissed Hayley on her cheek.

"Who are you?"  She asked, staring into the man's tender eyes.

"I am Uther Pendragon, King of the Britons and you my Lady Igraine are my Queen."

Hayley felt a tide of emotion sweep over her as the centuries rolled by. She knew now that she had been here before. This had been her home when Britain was young and she had been the Queen of its people.

Elation filled her heart, as it had never done before. Not since she had had her baby.

The years of pain and suffering at the hands of a thousand fiends fell away and she stood next to the welcoming King. 

An overwhelming sense of belonging made her quiver.

She was home.

Pendragon Castle.

And she was sure it was here she'd stay.

It was then she noticed a small group at the ruin's entrance. She recognised their shitty silhouettes in the moonlight.

"Jesus Christ No! The bastards" She screamed!

It was Jezzer and Runsy. They'd somehow followed her here. The spectre of Vivienne had placed a sword at their feet, which Jezzer hefted, unaware of her.

"You fuckin' bitch Duchess! You thought you could just leave did you! Thought we'd never find you! Well, sorry you slut, here we fuckin' are and you're going to fuckin' pay .... With your miserable pointless life!"

Jezzer loped toward her, dragging the sword with Runsy close behind grinning like a Hyena. 

Vivienne smiled in the shadows.

Hayley stumbled backwards and fell. Jezzer raised the huge blade and brought it swiftly down.

" Die you slag!" Screamed Jezzer

"Die you bitch!" Yelled Runsy

" Die, Queen of Harlots!" Shrieked Vivienne whirling over the scene in her ragged robes.

The sword descended.

But at the very last second it was parried by an even bigger blade, a gigantic sword bearing the symbol of the dragon.

Despite raising it again, Jezzer's weapon, borne of Vivienne's terrible hate, was no match for this adversary but the mad pimp persisted and charged.

"Stop! Dog! I am Uther Pendragon, King of the Britons and this is my sword Caliburn, powerful and ancient and forged in the fiery breath of Dragons. Behold it's beauty, peasant, for it is thy doom!"

At this Jezzer ran at Uther, roaring with his hands high.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck Yooouuuuuuu!"

Uther thrust with lethal, seasoned skill.

Time stopped.

The ravens froze.

Caliburn had impaled the intruder, the divine steel passing easily through the soft porcine belly and reappearing out of his back, the terrible point shearing the spine neatly on two.

Jezzer flopped. Uther withdrew.

Another blow and Jezzer's head fell away.

Blood pooled at Uther's feet.

He wiped Caliburn.

Runsy stared in shock.

Vivienne careened in her madness like a ripping flag and faded into nothing.

Hayley looked on in disbelief.

"Noooooooooooo!" Balled Runsy, weeping for his friend, now dead and beheaded on the stones, and fearing for his own life, fled the castle in a terrible haste.

Reaching his car, he sped off wailing lunacy in a mist of dust, the starving ravens following close behind, landing on the roof.

 He would not have long before the ravenous crows had full beaks again.

Uther helped Hayley rise and upon her standing, he bent down on one knee and kissed her hand.

"Dear, dear Igraine, I am filled beyond joy at your home-coming! Please, please my love, accept my sacred vow of marriage and be my Queen again."

"I accept! I do." 

She whispered this smiling, her place in the castle, her home from whence she came , assured once more.

At this King Uther raised Caliburn again.

He thrust.

The metal was swift and bore witness.

Haley's battered body fell and lay down for the very final time, her face a picture of tranquility at last.

The old tired Duchess was at peace, a smile gently forming on her mouth.

Her spirit rose to join the King as Queen Igraine, her second coming in the once and future land, where they would live together again for always, she bearing a child, Arthur, her little Prince returned, returned to the waiting world, who one day also would be King.

And so, within those regal ruins by the roadside they dwell still, at the head of the River Eden, in the Castle of Pendragon, in the vale known as ... 

Mallerstang.