IV – The Emperor

‘James IV, Emperor of the Mountains, hated the moon. He spat at the heavens every time he left his yurt. Each morning he walked the seventy-eight steps to the stone throne like the three Jameses before him and hunkered down and issued decrees and pardons.
Surrounded by bearded goats, bearded yaks and bearded mendicants, and courtiers with chin-bristles down to their nipples, he was the last remnant of a dead civilisation, a grotty reminder of hate and discord. Now a glorious noocracy drove men and women up into the stars, away from the warstained scabs of the past.’
I wrote all that down and looked across the bed at Dom. My head ached with dreams. He’d sleep all night, and drive all day, engine throbbing beneath us as we scored a path down the Atlantic coast. At the violet hour we’d stop, have shellfish and wine in the nearest village and sleep wherever there was a room.
Tonight, the attic room of a cheap auberge. I could hear the sea when I put my pen down, and for a while that shut out the bleating of James IV and his goats. I thought about trying to sleep, but it was already half five, and Dom liked early starts. I went downstairs in my nightgown and out into the little cobbled square. There was a war memorial in the centre and I read the names.
It was quite cold in the evening, though it was already May. A breeze off the Atlantic lifted the corners of my nightgown. I shivered and watched the sea for a while, and read the names of the boats.
‘James IV was old. He dragged arthritic fingers through his greying beard, and clutched the painted sceptre, hammered out of rusty scrap iron. Behind him, the snowless crags stared down on his stony throne.’
“What are you doing?” Dom asked.
I turned round and saw him, in jeans and t-shirt. “I had an awkward dream,” I said.
“Come here,” he said, and took me in his arms.
“I can’t stand the goats anymore,” I said to Dom.
“It’s okay,” he said, and stroked my head. “It’s okay, you don’t have to worry about goats anymore. We’re okay now, sweetheart. We’re okay.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.