Torque and Feu and the Legend of the Lost Roman Gold

The idea for this book came to me a few years ago when I was working with an upgrade to a 3D modeling program. The program had added “bones,” which would allow me to animate the characters I created. I wanted to test this new capability, so I set out to create a short scene in which a character—a miner—would find a huge diamond. The miner was a big guy and I arbitrarily named him Torque.

I soon realized that because of the way the 3D program had implemented the “bones,” making Torque's shirt wrinkle when he bent over to pick up the diamond was going to be an exasperating project. To simplify things for my test I changed the scenario, and Torque became a medieval soldier, the problematic shirt became a rigid armor breastplate, the hard hat became a helmet, and the pickaxe became a spear. But Torque would still find a diamond. As I worked, the simple scene in my mind developed into a full-blown story idea.

It soon became apparent that the 3D program wasn't ready for prime-time character animation, and I gave up on the scene. But I liked the Torque character and continued thinking about his story, and eventually added a sidekick I called “Feu.”

My wife suggested that I go ahead and write down the story, and so “Torque and Feu” began. I thought it would be a fairly easy story to write; I already had my beginning and my end. I set my story in the early dark ages of England. Any earlier, and the story would have been about the Romans; any later and the story would have been in the time of King Arthur or Robin Hood—all of which had been written about so many times. I also didn't want to write about magic rings or dragons; I wanted my story to have at least a little bit of history behind it. I didn't think that last part would be a real problem. I could visualize the various scenes because I had seen so many Hollywood movies.

I knew that we call this period in history “the dark ages” because so little is known about it. Yet somehow it didn't occur to me that it would be hard to write about this period precisely because so little is known about it!

From college, I thought I knew the year that the Roman army had pulled out of England, but wanted to verify it, so I looked it up. Along the way I discovered that there were details I didn't know about and things I just had wrong. So began a long research project. It seemed that for every page of my story, I had something to research. In the scene where Fotidus flips hot coals at Torque, originally the coals were a red-hot horseshoe—until I found that they didn't have horseshoes until much later.

I found that most texts on the early dark ages reach the point where the Roman army pulled out of England and then skip to the Viking period. And even when the period in between is discussed, the texts seem vague or contradictory. Did all of the Roman army pull out at the same time or piecemeal? Were there still Roman troops on Hadrian's Wall after the main army left?

Maybe if I write another book, I'll make it a future science fiction story in which I can just make things up!

A book by James Dawkins

Celtic village illustration by James M Dawkins