TBR Pile Review: The Story of Silence, by Alex Myers

I have this edition, gifted by Harper Voyager in a Twitter giveaway to Queer people. It’s very pink,

A knightly fairy tale of royalty and dragons, of midwives with secrets and dashing strangers in dark inns. Taking the original French legend as his starting point, The Story of Silence is a rich, multilayered new story for today’s world – sure to delight fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale.

There was once, long ago, a foolish king who decreed that women should not, and would not, inherit. Thus when a girl-child was born to Lord Cador – Merlin-enchanted fighter of dragons and Earl of Cornwall – he secreted her away: to be raised a boy so that the family land and honour would remain intact.

That child’s name was Silence.

Silence must find their own place in a medieval world that is determined to place the many restrictions of gender and class upon them. With dreams of knighthood and a lonely heart to answer, Silence sets out to define themselves.

Soon their silence will be ended.

What follows is a tale of knights and dragons, of bards, legends and dashing strangers with hidden secrets. Taking the original French legend as his starting point, The Story of Silence is a rich, multilayered new story for today’s world – sure to delight fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale.

My Review

A bad king blames women for the loss of two knights who are trying to steal their wives’ inheritance. He makes a law saying girls can’t inherit. The Earl of Cornwall has a daughter, who marries the kings nephew Cador. Since girls can’t inherit, Cador holds Cornwall in fief to the king, Evan, against the birth of a future son.

A child is born, but the child has a vulva, not a penis, and then the mother dies. Cador doesn’t want to lose his land, so he tells everyone that the child is a boy and sends him off to live in a remote hunting lodge called Ringmar with Griselle, a lady cousin of Cador’s – one of many daughters to a knight with little property. Griselle and the Seneschal of Ringmar raise SIlence, the Earl’s child. Cador is famous for killing a dragon and meeting Merlin. Over the years, Silence yearns to go to Tintagel, his family home, to train as a knight, but he isn’t permitted.

When he kills a wolf and saves a neighbours daughter, matters are taken out of Silence’s hands and he is deposited at Tintagel by the confused neighbour who can’t understand why the Earl would hide his precious, brave son away in the country. Forced to have his son at home or be shamed by the people who he is supposed to lead, Cador gives in but restricts Silence’s life, preventing him from joining in fully in the training or competitions.

Then Cador remarries, hoping for a ‘real’ son, one whose Nature matches his Nurture. So Silence leaves.

He runs away with minstrels to France, where he spends years learning to give up his dream of knighthood and be a minstrel. They end up in the court of the Count of Le Marche and life is rather good. One of the minstrels gets jealous and plots to kill Silence after they win a big prize at a fair. Silence leaves them and finds his friend Alfred with other Squires. Alfred is now out of work, his Knight Master having died at the fair. So they enter a competition and win. The Count of Nevers takes them on as Squires.

After a time serving one of the Count’s knights, they are called to battle. At the battle, their knight master is killed, but the young men distinguish themselves so the Count knights them. Then news arrives that Evan is besieged at Winchester and needs his cousin, the Count of Nevers, to bring men to lift the siege.

Silence finally gets to go home, a Knight, Nurture defeating Nature.

But then things go horribly wrong and Silence must find Merlin, release him from his curse and find themself.

Long synopsis, I know, and I haven’t mentioned everything! Least of all the things that go horribly wrong and how Silence comes to understand themself as both and neither, not in the binary, despite how they were born and how they were raised. Thanks to Merlin, Silence has a moment of understanding, and the minstrel that they meet in the inn at the start of the story changing the ending so that Silence can be themself, can continue becoming who they are.

The story is very powerful and moving, and the message that we are continually becoming rather than one fixed thing all our lives resonates hard with me. I was overcome when I first started reading this book almost two months ago, so much that I had to put it down for weeks before reading the second half this afternoon. It’s a 400 page book, it took about 6 hours to read in total. I was utterly gripped.

The authors states that they found the story in an old manuscript and this is purely a retelling. Not sure how much of that I believe. Alex, if you’re reading this, leave a link to the original in the comments, preferably translated, I can’t read medieval French.

Anyway, the story definitely has the flavour of medieval literature. Have you ever read Arthurian legends? The 13th century ones from Brittany or Aquitaine? Where courtly love was all the rage and the stories exemplify knightly behaviour. It has that feel, in the same way those stories are set in an imaginary 6th century where everyone dressed and spoke like 13th century courtiers, this one is set in an imaginary 9th century England and France where everyone speaks, dresses and acts like 13th century courtiers imagine they should. There are battles and romance and a very confused child. It has all the misogyny you’d expect, but the story shows the misogyny for what it is: false beliefs and hypocrisy.

Let us take an example from the book: Eufeme is condemned as a vile adulteress, but her husband is a serial adulterer and he kidnapped her as a twelve-year-old girl. Who is the most vile? A woman who was forced to marry a much older man while she was still a child, a man she didn’t and doesn’t love, and has affairs with men she is attracted to and who she does love, or the man who raped a child because she was his wife and then kept her confined in a luxurious cage while he was putting it about wherever he wanted?

Unfortunately Eufemia plays into the prejudices of the men around her – all she wants is a bit of fun, but Silence won’t play along. She uses the only power allowed to her, and lies. Everyone expects women to be wicked liars so it reinforces their beliefs; until they find out Silence also has a woman’s body. And Silence is brave, honest, chaste, so they make Silence the ‘virgin’ to Eufemia’s ‘whore’ in the ‘virgin/whore’ paradox and try to ‘lady-fy’ Silence. The men’s cognitive dissonance can’t cope with the idea that a person with a vulva can be strong, courageous, honest, chaste, hardworking and intelligent, so Silence must be made into a pretty, closeted, pampered maiden, no longer a knight.

I had relatives like that when I was a kid. Nothing changes.

Clearly cultural beliefs about what it means to be a man or a woman don’t work when you’re neither/both. If your cultural stereotypes have to be so rigidly enforced in case people break out of them, then your stereotypes are wrong. We are all born ‘becoming’ – we become who we are through our lives, our experiences. When Silence learns this, it gives them the courage to defy the king, give up everything and continue their ‘becoming’.

Is it obvious that I really liked this story? I really did, and I’m so happy I have two copies, different editions! It makes my bibliophilic heart sing.

Highly recommended.