Return to Narnia: part III – The Horse and His Boy
A traveller’s guide.
The Horse and His Boy is an oddity in terms of this series where I revisit my favourite childhood reads. That’s because I had very little memory of it in terms of either character or plot. Of all the books in the series, it’s the one where the spine has remained uncreased. This clearly wasn’t a book I loved or returned to time and time again. Despite that I didn’t feel I could leave it out of my reread of the Narnia sequence, and I thought that perhaps I might see something in that I’d missed as a child.
At first I wondered if my lack of a horsey phase meant that I simply hadn’t warmed to this tale of talking horses but I think there was actually something more fundamental going on. The story sees Shasta (the boy) team with Bree (the horse) to escape from Calormen. Shasta has been brought up by a poor fisherman who it transpires fairly quickly is not his father, and Bree was kidnapped as a foal and made to work by humans. Along the way they meet Aravis who is fleeing from an arranged marriage with another talking horse, Hwin. The book tells the story of their adventures as they head for Narnia, the home of the horses. In terms of C.S. Lewis’ sequence, the action takes place in the Golden Age of Narnia when Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are on their thrones. It draws on several well worn plot devices – the separation of twins and a prince being brought up humbly.
Katherine Langrish offers a couple of insights into the problem of The Horse and His Boy in her book From Spare Oom to War Drobe. Travels in Narnia with my Nine Year-Old Self:
What it doesn’t offer, alone in the Narnia books, is much in the way of emotion, wonder or awe.
And, when discussing the influence of The Arabian Nights:
Where are the flying carpets, magical rings, terrifying jinni, sorcerers and enchantresses?
The trappings are there but none of the magic. Langrish also discusses, and it’s difficult to avoid it in any serious reading of the book, the racial stereotypes and colonial undertones that are threaded through.
None of this however gets to the root of my dissatisfaction with the story. In this tale of Narnia there is no crossing the threshold moment. We don’t move from our world into another – there’s no equivalent of going through the wardrobe with Lucy or putting on a magic ring with Digory and Polly. We start in another world and remain there throughout. I think I was probably the sort of child that liked the security of knowing that the world in which I lived was solid and that, if other worlds existed, they could be visited and returned from.
It was tempting to leave thinking about The Horse and His Boy there but that didn’t feel entirely fair, so I reread it for a second time. Pauline Baynes’ illustrations include a map which, given that the book revolves around a long journey, seems like a good idea. Readers can follow the progress of the characters if they’re so minded. This got me thinking about the ways in which Lewis evokes the places along the route – the creek where Shasta lives, the city of Tashbaan, the desert, the mountain pass and Narnia. On one level the story functions as a travel guide to the journey.
Leaving home
Shasta and Bree’s journey starts at the fisherman’s cottage, where the nearby creek runs into the sea. The tight limits of Shasta’s universe are soon breached.
They had been going uphill and now were at the top of the ridge – that ridge which had always been the boundary of Shasta’s known world. He could not see what was ahead except that it was all open and grassy. It looked endless: wild and lonely and free.
The city
Shasta’s first view of the city of Tashbaan is from a distance.
A broad river divided itself into two streams and on the island between them stood the city of Tashbaan, one of the wonders of the world.
As he gets closer he can make out
… terrace above terrace, street above street, zigzag roads or huge flights of steps bordered with orange trees and lemon trees, roof-gardens, balconies, deep archways, pillared colonnades, spires, battlements, minarets, pinnacles.
however, there is a gap between appearance and reality. Like many travellers Shasta sees more than one side to a great city.
Inside the gates Tashbaan did not seem so splendid as it had looked from a distance. The first street was narrow and there were hardly any windows on the walls on each side.
The streets are crowded and smelly but there are pockets of calm and wealth to be glimpsed
And through the arched gateways of many a palace Shasta caught sight of green branches, cool fountains and smooth lawns.
Just outside the city walls are the tombs:
Great masses of mouldering stone shaped like gigantic beehives, but a little narrower. They looked very black and grim, for the sun was now setting right behind them… There were about twelve tombs, each with a low arched doorway that opened into absolute darkness. They were dotted about in no kind of order.
An interesting sounding landmark but not one where a traveller would want to spend a night.
Across the desert and into the mountains
From the tombs Shasta, Aravis, Bree and Hwin set out to cross the ‘blindingly white’ desert. Chapter nine is an account of their experiences.
He began to notice the vast grey flatness on every side. It looked absolutely dead, like something in a dead world.
Hours of riding leave them with headaches from the glare of the light on the sand. Eventually respite appears, they find a pool and waterfall, and spy a hidden valley with soft grass, bees, flowering shrubs and the song of a nightingale. There is a ‘brown, cool river’, moss, wildflowers and rhododendrons.
It was such a pleasant place that it made you want to ride slowly.
They’ve reached an in between place – the desert behind them and the mountains in front of them.
To the right there were rocky pinnacles, one or two of them with snow clinging to the ledges. To the left pine-clad slopes, frowning cliffs, narrow gorges and blue peaks stretched away for as far as the eye could reach… Straight ahead the mountain range sank to a wooded saddle which of course must be the pass from Archenland into Narnia.
As they make their way onwards they see dragonflies, rabbits and a herd of fallow deer. Lewis lists the trees too – oaks, beeches, silver birches, rowans and sweet chestnuts. As Shasta climbs upwards he sees
...more and more trees, all dark and dripping, and to colder and colder air. And strange icy winds kept blowing the mist past him, though they never blew it away.
Narnia
At the very beginning of the book, Bree describes his homeland to Shasta.
Narnia of the heathery mountains and the thymy downs, Narnia of the many rivers, the plashing glens, the mossy caverns and the deep forests ringing with the hammers of the Dwarfs.
Lewis is (mercifully) in slightly less poetic mood when Shasta sees Narnia for the first time.
The country which he was looking at was absolutely new to him. It was a green valley-land dotted with trees through which he caught the gleam of a river that wound away roughly to the north-west.
Druffle, a Dwarf, helps him get his bearings. On a modern map the spot would be marked with a viewpoint symbol.
You can see nearly all of south Narnia from here, and we’re rather proud of the view. Right away on your left, beyond those near hills, you can just see the Western Mountains. And that round hill a way on your right is called the Hill of the Stone Table.
Readers of The Horse and His Boy might anticipate a journey across a not terribly exciting looking map. At first glance it is dominated by the empty desert, with a smaller forested area in the bottom right and a mountainous strip across the top. However, attentiveness to Lewis’ descriptions of places and landscapes brings the map to life and revisiting it at the end of the book is to feel your feet burning on hot sand, to hear the clamour of the city or to smell the clean, cold air of the mountains.
Next month – Return to Narnia: part IV – Prince Caspian.
I have no memories of The Horse and His Boy although I have a copy of the book and I know I read them all. Some I must have reread several times as I know them well but I have some memories of all the others. You’ve made me think that perhaps I’d better reread this one, even though it wasn’t a favourite.
I was struck, last time round, by how different all the Narnia books are. The only structural commonality is entering the other world and leaving it at the end, and of course this one doesn't even have that. I think if Lewis were writing now, he'd be under much more pressure to follow a consistent pattern.