Of Castles And Kings

Buildings, in many respects, are like people. They have their own charms, their own looks and their own characters. But perhaps they are most like people in one special respect; if you leave them alone too long, they fall apart.

Out in the woods, not far from a village whose name is not important, a man came wandering. He was known as Jocko but no-one knew why, least of all himself. His given name had been Malcolm Stanley McEndry but that didn't feel like his name either so Jocko was the name he stuck with.

He was in his fiftieth year, his last he knew, and his story wasn't a happy one. In his youth he'd been impressive; a drinker, a fighter and the king of his own world. He'd even been married once, at twenty-one to a lovely young lady whom he treated despicably. She had thrown him out by twenty-three and then he'd drank and fought and stole even more, only he was no longer a king but a knave.
And so he lived, steadily declining, losing his way never to find it.

At 35 he almost died. It had been a long cold winter and he was drinking turpentine and meths when he passed out and almost away. After the hospital mended him he decided to mend his own ways.

So he took to the road, tramping from city to town to village and back, keeping his head down and his innards clean. Where once he stole he now begged, where once he drank he now wept, and where once he raged there was now only regret. He'd burnt all his bridges and there was no going back along the path he had come. And so he became lonely, lost and marooned, the world he'd once ruled was now but an island, and he was no longer a knave but a tramp.

Thus he came to be wandering in those woods, looking for something but he didn't know what. Through thickets and bushes, by trees and across streams he stumbled, and in his time he came across an old stone cabin.


It was half ruined, one of its two rooms was all but caved in and its windows had long since been smashed. But still it stood.

A long time ago, before the woods had grown up, it had been used by shepherds, and when the shepherding had finished it had been used by foresters who tended the woodland which had grown nearby. Eventually even the foresters left and the meadow it once occupied became over-run with trees. But still it stood.

The memories of shepherds and woodsmen, laughing and working and sleeping and singing, kept it from collapsing. It knew, as much as a building can know anything, that people would not come to take shelter inside it, to bring their life into it, to give it some purpose. But still it stood. Stubbornly, it would not fall.

There were a couple of out-houses once, but they had long since vanished.

One had been a little workshop, kept busy by the foresters who repaired their tools inside. It had been important for a while, but once they'd stopped coming it had lost all its meaning. Within two summers it had fallen in on itself and within ten it had gone altogether.

The other had been a tool store, built from sturdy planks with a corrugated iron roof, but its timbers were long rotted away, its roof rusted to dust and even it's cement floor was gone, gnawed away by the frosts of four dozen winters.

Where they once stood there was now a tangle of brambles and a patch of yellow marigolds. Nature, in the end, reclaims all.


Jocko stopped when he saw it and looked for any sign of occupation, though none he expected. He crept up and touched its walls and he felt something he'd not felt for an age. He could put no name to the feeling, or none that he could remember, but you or I would recognise it as relief. He let himself in and barred the door, then rolled out his blankets and slept for a day.

When he awoke he gathered some wood and with matches he kept in a wad of polythene, he lit the hearth's grate. The cabin stirred from its slumber. It felt the warmth spreading from its fireplace and sensed the man who had come to stay. At first it wondered if still dreamt, but the chimney smoke was real and so was he. Slowly it remembered what housing life meant.

Its walls creaked and, imperceptibly, it embraced the man with all its being.

Now, the lonely have senses that the fulfilled do not have, and Jocko could sense the cabin around him, protecting him, comforting him and, if love is not too strong a word, loving him.

“Heh,” his voice was cracked like a crow's call at dawn, “we're both still here, eh?”

For all that day Jocko and the cabin lived as they had wanted to for so many years. Comforted, warm and with some kind of purpose.


Evening came and Jocko snuggled into his filthy sheets and closed his eyes to sleep. He had a ragged little smile on his lips, the first in too many years. He died that night, warm and content in his own humble way. The little stone cabin felt him go and if a building could sigh then sigh it did.

Empty once more, it pondered its lot. The man had given it meaning again, long after it had known what its meaning was. It was a reward, perhaps, for having stood so long, but now it was tired. Its foundations were cracked, its walls fatigued with time and neglect, and its roof, such as what was left, ached with the strain of staying aloft.

The cabin, alone once again, wanted to rest. Nature, it decided, could take them both back. The fire in its hearth finally died out, and the last wisps of smoke drifted from its chimney.



If you go there now, there's just a pile of bricks, with timbers all rotted and slates all amiss. But you and I know it's no ordinary ruin; it's the tomb of a king who lost everything - and found something else.