The Dark Cloud
The Dark Cloud was inspired by the return to Scotland of The Book of Deir, a very early illuminated manuscript. St Drostan brought Christianity to Pictland in the 6th century. His story is part of a wider network of legend, history and romance.
In the year AD 535 a volcanic eruption blotted out the sun across the northern hemisphere, from the far east to the unknown new world. The volcanic winter that followed brought famine and war in its wake – and terror, since the cause, Krakatoa, was beyond the ken of the inhabitants of Europe in the 6th century The Dark Cloud is a story of survival in the face of this environmental disaster. It is not fiction; historical, geological and oral narrative research confirm the conditions and events which battered Drostan and his 6th century contemporaries in the land of the Picts.
Born in AD 520, in the north west of Ireland, Drostan was the son of a sea-raiding chieftain of Tyr Chonaill. At the age of 12, he was sent, with his cousin Columcille and his Baltic dog Pavlov, to school at Whithorn in Scotland. From that peaceful monastic haven Drostan and Ysa, his cell mate, were forced to flee to the Great Caledonian Forest. There they encounter the Wild Man of the Woods, Lailoken, or Myrddin, guarding his King after the bloody battle of Camlann.
In gratitude for their help, Lailoken directs them to the land of the Picts, and the great hilltop city of Taponoth.
This coming-of-age tale is set at a high point of Pictish civilisation, at a time of the earliest beginnings of Christianity, and incidentally, of the Grail legends, in Scotland.
The story is fully illustrated. It is suitable for teenage or adult readers and for students of early Scottish history.