The Silent Quarter

In the midst of the city is a place of absolute quiet. Its bounds are irregular, adhering to the property laws of several centuries and a few regime changes ago. 

Absolute quiet means exactly what it sounds (or, as it were, doesn’t sound) like. An enchantment has been placed on the quarter of the city, meaning no sound can be heard there. A struck drum will vibrate to the touch, but no drum beat will be heard. Yelling, laughing or weeping will produce appropriate sensation in the yeller, laugher or weeper and the suitable physical signs of a contorting face, streaming eyes and the like. No-one powerful enough to break the enchantment has felt it worth their while to do so; conversely, there are plenty who have felt it worth their while to make their home in the Silent Quarter as the city has grown around it.

The most obvious group to come to the Silent Quarter are scholars and mystics, who appreciate the quiet that the Quarter offers – renting cheap rooms or study cells in the boarding houses and study halls built for that purpose. Far from them (and hopefully downwind) are the slaughterhouses that deafen the clamour of penned-in nervous animals (and butchery of same) by placing themselves in the Silent Quarter. 

The quarter has been used for less industrious or straightforward purposes. Secure rooms (frequently the garret) of the boarding houses of the quarter are sometimes used to home those mentally ill folk who would be disturbed by the noise of the city proper. Of course, not being to hear a single thing and not being able to leave the quarter to go back among society is not necessarily a cause for sanity: the scholars and butchers of the Silent Quarter have ample opportunities to leave. Likewise, the Silent Quarter gives the kidnapper, footpad and murderer ample opportunity to pursue their work free of noise.

All this said, some prosper in a more wholesome fashion in the quarter. Mutes and the deaf can make a home here and converse in sign language - and all others must follow their lead. The borders of the Silent Quarter are home to numerous interpreters of this language, who help facilitate such liaisons as are necessary for those doing business in the quarter (they will sign words on a slate; just using the slate is considered awkward and impolite - and would doubtless count against you). Lip-reading is known, but has a greater possibility of error.

The entrances to the quarter are known as ports; these have only rarely been turned into active gates, but the streets that lead into the quarter are marked by statues of humanoid figures covering their mouths and ears. These are maintained by the citizens in adjacent houses and give a name to the street (the port of angels, the port of demons, the port of maidens, of babes, of fauns, of goblins…). 

The first two figures are from the port of bones.
I do not know where the third has come from.

Local government in the Silent Quarter has always been a problem. The nature of the quarter hampers efforts towards licensing, tax collecting and law enforcement. The layer of criminality in the quarter complicates this further, as does the general air of separateness from the outside world. The city watch patrols here much as anywhere else, but largely succeeds in removing criminal activity from the main thoroughfares rather than stamping it out. A regular tax is collected both on behalf of the city and the state, but estimates of what any given household owes are reliably lower than other urban areas. Town criers and the like are, naturally, unknown, but the city does provide the pay for signallers who raise the flags that signal the passing of the hours.  

It is into this place that you may one day walk, for it is the kind of spot that offers opportunities for those willing to seek them.

Ten Silent Quarter Features

1. A man in country dress turns pale and begins to look very concerned as he walks past the statues of the port. He is presumably a newcomer.
2. Officers of the watch chase after somebody into the quarter, their hue and cry having little to no effect on passers by. 
3. A monastery crosses over the bounds of the quarter; the cells and library being within the silent zone; the chapel and refectory being outside. The monks may say their prayers at the approved hours then return to the realm of quiet.
4. Members of a persecuted minority maintain a few houses within the quarter. The silence does very little to foster community spirit, but the quiet does prevent some forms of attack from their foes.
5. Music is utterly pointless within the quarter, but mimes and dancers can earn money performing on the street corners. Heckling occurs via rude gestures.
6. Horses are generally led through the Silent Quarter to prevent accidents from unheard hoofbeats or panic on the horses' part. An unwatched horse is cause for alarm, and there is one over by that trough. What has happened to the owner?
7. The retinue of a visiting dignitary blow trumpets in a show of wasted pomp.
8. A wizard, looking to make money, is advertising telepathic services and ‘mindspeech’ just outside the port of nymphs. The interpreters look at this with scorn and anger.  
9. Litters and sedan chairs enter the quarter - largely with heavy curtains lowered.  This one is not only firmly shut up, but also well guarded.   
10. The Voiceless House looms over one part of the quarter. This prison takes those whose speech is held to be dangerous: renegade wizards*, political agitators and leading heretics. Of course, imprisonment within the Silent Quarter is held by ancient statute to be an extreme form of punishment: all those in the House have their cases reviewed each year by the court. The time of this appeal is always kept secret, to prevent formation of mobs or intimidation of the judiciary. If you could learn the time of such a retrial, it would be valuable indeed.  

*Any magician capable of casting spells without a voice is unlikely to be caught - or taken alive.

Something for Your Shelves: John James's Votan

Found in a secondhand bookshop near York Minster, this was the first I had heard of John James. A three-book omnibus published by Gollancz in their Fantasy Masterworks line. Pictured below, it contains Votan, Not For All the Gold in Ireland and Men Went to Cattræth under the title Votan and Other Novels.  The collection has an introduction by Neil Gaiman. 

As pictured. 

I am going to focus purely on Votan (published first 1966) today. This is perhaps the most accessible of James's works in that collection and the one I can best discuss. I hope the following will show you why.

A brief discussion of what Votan is about. A Greek physician and priest with some mercantile connections is living on the German frontier of the Roman Empire in the first century AD is lured over the border into the trade links and battles of the Teutons - particiapting in and giving rise to the tales of Norse Mythology taking on and creating the guise of Odin (Photinus > Photin > Votin > Votan >Wodin > Odin). It is rarely outright 'fantasy', but I do not think it is wrong to call it fantastical, even if it is only slightly within the bounds of speculative fiction.

The trick, if you will, is in how James does this. Photinus is explicitly of his time; he never feels like a time-traveller, condemning his own time or trying to stand outside it. Part of this may be because he is an outsider for most of the novel: a Greek from the world of the Empire reacting to the world of the Norse. He is even putting on an act: impersonating a deity or a priest, not just to save his own skin, but in order to make a great deal of money from the profitable amber trade, as well as to leverage such other benefits as he may from the position he finds hismelf in. But even while he is putting on the act, he does it at the behest of a divine figure he seems to have a genuine belief in.

This never feels, I am glad to say, anything like the Hollywood-esque 'The TRUE Story behind the Legend!!' affair this might be. Even where James's prose gets a little too slick or humorous (Photinus on German costume: 'Trousers are funny things to wear. You can always feel them on your legs. It takes you a long time to get used to riding a horse with them, the cloth spoils the contact with the beast's side.'; 'It was wonderful to walk round with bare legs, like a real human being.'), it never feels glib or referential in that manner called 'fanservice'. Of course, this is a book full of reference to Norse myth, but one doesn't get the impression that Photinus is inventing this all out of whole cloth. He is inhabiting a role and has to keep moving and struggling to shift through intact.

So, why bring this up here? In part, because of the reaction to it. I made a search after reading it for writing about it, in addition to Gaiman's introduction (it occurs to me that if folk read the books Gaiman introduces as readily as they read the stuff he pens, this would be fine indeed). I dug up a brief article on James from Tor Books by Jo Walton. But eventually I bit the bullet and went to GoodReads. One of the longer reviews did not rate Votan highly; complaining of the excessive detail Re. German tribes (Vandals, Marcomannni, Frisians....) and trade networks. 

Well, the narrator is a merchant and is able to exercise his powers by sitting in Asgard at the centre of trade networks and between tribes; further, he is an outsider and must untangle this for hmself mentally, whilst standing apart from the Germans. Besides, he is taking on the role of Odin - a knowledge god. What could be more appropriate than demonstrating this?

But aside from my defence of James's Votan, what makes me write this post? Photinus's tale and status is rather reminiscent of a tabletop fantasy RPG player. He is from a different civilisation from that which he moves through and some of his abilities and knowledge come from this. He must learn the ways and tricks of this world. His financial motivation and cynicism is not unlike a certain vision of the player: the murderhobo model, though tempered by his vulnerability. He even shows the occasional, hidden scrap of sincere belief and religious fear - like a player paying occasional service to in-universe beliefs. 

In all, a book worth reading.