The Peacock Cloak

everyone hissed.
    Thomas was puzzled. He hadn’t noticed before that Edward had a speech impediment. And why the animosity?
    He really was feeling very peculiar. Perhaps he was unwell. Perhaps he was anaemic or something?
    “The Britons , Edward” he corrected. “The ancient Britons .” But to his surprise this sounded all wrong. So now, having corrected Edward, he corrected himself: “The Brythons, rather. That’s right, Edward. Well done. The Brythonic Celts.”
    There was a leak in the ceiling in the middle of the classroom and rust-coloured water was dripping into a grimy plastic bucket. Somehow he’d never noticed it before. Nor had he ever seen that large piece of lino that was missing from the middle of the floor, with the rough boards showing beneath, or the paint that was flaking off the metal window frames…
    He cleared his throat.
    “And of course in 300 AD or thereabouts,” he said, “the Romans expelled the Brythons. Most of them made their homes in Gaul and Iberia, in the countries we now call France and Catalonia and Spain, from where they spread out into the New World.”
    Catalonia and Spain?
    It was hot . Outside the window the skylark went twittering on.
    “…and many of them assimilated into the local population which at that time was Celtic-speaking like the Brythons themselves. But a small number held onto to their own Brythonic faith, in spite of persecution, maintaining that the Brythons were the chosen people of God – y pobl Duw – and that their lost homeland of Logres – Lloegr as they called it – remained their birthright, given to them by God himself when Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff at Avalon, cut from the same tree as Christ’s crown of thorns. Or so they believe anyway.”
    The odd thing was that, though his own voice was saying it, all of this was news to Thomas the teacher. He had never referred to the Ancient Britons as Brythons before. He had never heard before of them being expelled by the Romans. He had never heard of the Brythonic faith .
    “A century or so ago, Brythons from the Americas and from mainland Europe began to settle in this country, believing that, even after seventeen hundred years, it was still theirs, although we English had been living here all this time and the country itself was now called England…”
    He had never heard of any of this before. He had no idea where any of it was coming from. It was all very eerie and odd, and yet there was something familiar about this feeling all the same. He had a vague memory of there having been another time like this, like the memories we have in dreams of other dreams long since forgotten in waking life. He knew that this wasn’t the first time that he had stood in front of the class intending to tell one story and another completely different one had come out of his mouth.
    In fact now he thought about it, he realised there had actually been a whole string of these moments. And now, quite suddenly, he could see them quite clearly, stretching back through time. He found he could contemplate them while his mouth continued to teach its unfamiliar lesson on its own. It was as if he had emerged from the mist onto a hilltop from which he was able to see other peaks all round him that were normally hidden from view.
    And he knew too that soon they would all be hidden again. He would forget. He would forget all the histories except one. He would believe that it was the only history there was…

    “Excuse me, sir. Do we need to write all this down?” asked Belinda Dewsbury.
    “Oh for goodness sake girl, not now,” Thomas snapped, “Can’t you see I’m trying to remember something.”
    Belinda looked as if he had struck her across the face. There were tears forming in her eyes. Oh God, what was he doing? Everyone knew that poor Belinda had been having dreadful problems at home. The whole class was staring at him, appalled.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry Belinda. Sorry everyone. Distracted for a moment there. No, no need to write all this down. All this is just by way of a general introduction.”
    Oh dear. Something had distracted him and you couldn’t afford to let that happen when you were standing in front of thirty teenagers. But what had it been? What had he been thinking about? There’d been something important, something he had badly wanted not to forget…
    He looked down at the textbook on his desk, hoping for clues. English History it was called, tattered and threadbare like