Stories of Bath, Chapter 1, Prince of Pigs

Stories of Bath

Chapter 1, Prince of Pigs

The story of Bath begins in 863 BC, with the exiled prince of England, Bladud. Having caught leprosy, an unremitting, numbing disease that turned skin colours of snow and ash, the royal courts deemed the prince unfit to inherit the throne from his father, King Hudibras. Sent away to fend for his lonesome, Bladud wandered the lands of Somerset as a swineherd, a keeper of pigs.

Bladud laid himself down against the sheer trunk of a willow tree. The trunk was thin and gangly, not unlike the swineherd himself. His shoulders jutted out from the willow, and so Bladud huddled himself into a ball with his head drooped low and his legs crossed, in order to protect himself from the bitter northerly winds. The winter had been harsh and showed no signs of ceasing, so Bladud had been forced to venture further and further along the River Avon to find ungrazed land for his pigs. Knowing that they would come back to him when their stomachs were full, like a faithful dog, he sat and waited.

For Bladud the passage of time seemed not to matter. It was as if the stinging cold had numbed both his senses and his perception of time. In the winter months where daylight appeared for but a fleeting moment and the skies seemed to be under an everlasting gloom, it was hard not to lose yourself.

Not an hour had passed before the sound of crumpling snow awoke Bladud from his slumber, but of course he knew not how long he had sat there for. The ground was still a grey mush of mud and ice, the skies still a blackened blanket, the wind still blowing from the north and his hands, still numb to the bone. Nothing had changed, and so for Bladud, time was irrelevant. Except something had. A warm aroma of freshly bathed skin permeated through the icy air. Steam was emanating from the pigs as they approached Bladud, a fine white mist that made the otherwise ordinary animals look quite majestic in the twilight. Bladud lay there, his body unmoving, but he began to notice something as the pigs drew closer. The skin of the pigs, which normally bore the same leprous lesions as he did, for through close contact he had infected them, were now pink and smooth. Bladud held out his hand and softly grazed the skin of the nearest pig. It was warm, not frigid and raw like his own, and his eyes did not deceive him, for it was smooth - a sensation he had not felt for such a long time his hand recoiled in shock. For a moment he and the pig were at eye level. Bladud looked at the pig with confusion but the pig met it with only a gaze of contentment. In that moment Bladud felt as powerless as he did the day the royal courts had casted him out. As the last pig trotted across the frozen land to reach Bladud, he pointed in the direction it came from. And as if they knew, the pigs turned back and started to walk towards the hidden hot springs over yonder, and Bladud followed, the swine leading the swineherd.

The pigs led Bladud to the hot springs. The waters were said to have a mythical healing property, and the prince was soon cured of his leprosy. He returned to the royal courts and took up his position as the rightful heir of the throne. During his kingship, Bladud founded a city upon the hot springs that once saved him, so that others might benefit from the magic waters.