When We Tried To Be Good (The Woldsheart Chronicles Book 3)

Book summary

Joshua, Poppy, and Ishita are drawn into a web of ancient feuds and buried secrets in the legendary Woldsheart. As each grapples with ambition, identity, and escape, they must confront hard truths about their pasts and their desires. A compelling fantasy journey set in the rich world of the Woldsheart Chronicles.

Excerpt from When We Tried To Be Good (The Woldsheart Chronicles Book 3)

1st May 2029, Nottingham, England

Like most people, I tried to be good. Indeed, I considered myself to be a good person. However, not only was I good, I was someone special. A first amongst equals. A leader. A man destined for great things. The heir to a noble house which nobody much talked about, living hidden in exile. The secrecy only added to what was special and pleasurable.

My paternal grandmother, Josephine Delacourt, told me tales when I was a little boy that both drew us closer and encouraged my parents and wider family to cut contact with her.

“Only foolish people believe there is only one world, this world,” she would tell me. “You and I know better. We know the truth. Don’t we, Josh?”

I would beam back at her, basking in the knowledge that I was her favourite grandchild and enjoying her stories because they were interesting in themselves. Whether I was a sporty seven-year-old watching Britain do so well at the Olympic Games during that glorious summer of 2012, or an eleven-year-old trying to understand what was going on when my country voted to leave the EU, her tales were a backdrop to my life.

My parents disapproved of these tales. I was an only child and my father’s plumbing business made plenty of money, so they were on the alert to my becoming spoiled. They were kind and loving, but also firm and clear-headed. They knew I had an ego, a tendency to arrogance and to have a high opinion of myself. They realised Granny Josephine’s fantastical tales were not helping me to become a pleasant, grounded and balanced person.

Looking back, I think the bizarreness of her stories stopped them from taking them seriously for years.

Granny Josephine told me how, many millennia ago, there were multiple worlds, many universes which existed side by side until the gods decided to amalgamate them into two worlds.

“Ignorant people don’t believe these gods and goddesses exist. They either don’t believe in any deity, or they believe in false gods. However, we know better, don’t we?”

Of course we did. We knew that Fairy Folk once walked in the other world and that their magical powers still lingered in their descendants. We knew that, in the other world, dragons did not just live on Welsh flags or Chinese takeaway signs. We also knew that there was a noble house in this other world, the House of Lothwold.

“It’s the noblest, most ancient house in the Kingdom of the Woldsheart,” she would tell me. “Our ancestors, Lord Augustim and Lady Richeldis, came over some two hundred years ago. They were the heads of the House of Lothwold, but they were betrayed, then overthrown by a couple of evil usurpers. Their descendants apparently still rule those lands in the Woldsheart, but it’s not right, Josh, it absolutely isn’t. I should rule, and you should be my heir.”

“Me? Not Dad, or Uncle Ashley, or Auntie Lou? Why me and not them or any of my cousins?”

I knew why. I just wanted my ego stroked.

She would shake her head.

“No. Neither of my sons or my daughter would do. They don’t have the courage, the ability or the strength of character to rule. I also reject five of my grandchildren. Instead, I choose you, Josh. You are a worthy successor, my only worthy successor. You are the true heir, by right of blood, to the House of Lothwold. How I curse the descendants of those who stole from our ancestors and who occupy that place which should be ours.”

She sighed heavily, her light blue eyes gazing into the distance at a life which had been snatched away from her, before turning her attention back to me.

“You must always be good, Josh. You must always be a good boy and set an example to your peers. Lead by example, whether you are on the football pitch or in the classroom. Your behaviour must be worthy of your house and your rank.”

Other lads might have taken this as a command to behave well, to be polite and respectful towards others and thus earn their respect.

Not me. I took it as a licence to always be right, to always lead and to never compromise on anything. My parents tried to curb this domineering behaviour, but as I grew older, they could do less and less to control me. My grandmother, who did not receive the calls from the school about my refusal to cooperate in class, or hear complaints from parents that I had upset their sons, made it clear that I was perfect in her eyes. I could do no wrong. Teachers who could not handle a high-spirited child had no business being in a classroom. My football coach was overreacting. I was not dangerous on the pitch; I was just an enthusiastic player. My friends must have spun their parents a lie, because I was a good boy. I would never knowingly harm anyone.

Growing up and having nobody to play with, or being mocked for making crazy claims, meant that I had learned to temper my arrogance and keep quiet about my noble blood by the time I started secondary school. Granny Josephine approved of the second change.

“A wise man knows when to shout, when to speak and when to stay silent. There is no point in casting pearls before swine. Besides, there are enemies everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” I was surprised. Sure, I had fallen out with half of my class, but they were just other ten- or eleven-year-olds. What harm could they really do to me?

“Oh yes. With power comes danger. People want what you have. Look what happened to our forefathers. Forced into exile in an alien world, via a void full of evil creatures, obliged to live at a lower rank than their blood merited. No. Face people head-on in battle when you have to, but it is no disgrace to avoid unnecessary conflict.”

By now, my parents wanted me to avoid unnecessary contact with my grandmother. They had been glad of our close bond, and her caring for me after school had saved them money, but they no longer thought she was a good influence on me. They no longer thought she simply told me tall but harmless tales to entertain me.

Slowly but firmly, Granny Josephine was removed from my life. By the time I turned twelve, late in the autumn of 2016, I realised I had not seen her alone for months, and when we did meet it was not for long. As soon as I realised what was happening, I protested, but to no avail. My parents never said anything explicitly, yet we were kept apart. The following spring, she fell ill and was moved into a home, where she died the following summer.

Although I was devastated by her death, life moved on. Friends, watching or playing football and school distracted me. I became interested in girls. Now that my grandmother was no longer around to show blatant favouritism, I started to get on better with my cousins and other wider family, although they were spread out all over the East Midlands, so we did not meet often. My parents and I remained in South Loxley, a prosperous suburb of Nottingham.

Over the years, I thought about Granny Josephine and her stories. I missed her and her love, that was constant, but my feelings towards her tales of a secret world, where aristocrats ruled in a mediaeval manner, dragons were ridden and my ancestors were usurped, changed frequently.

I had learned to keep quiet by the time I started secondary school, so nobody teased me or raised concerns. As a teenager, I became convinced that she had either been deluded while appearing sane in all other areas of her life, or she had made up a fantastical tale to entertain her beloved grandson. She probably never realised that I had taken her words as seriously as I did.

However, this changed when I was in my mid-teens. It was 2021, the third lockdown was dragging, and I was sixteen. I was as fed up with restrictions as the rest of the nation was. I wanted to be out and doing things with my friends. Like everybody else, I also spent too much time online, where I amused myself by reading about conspiracy theories. I would shake my head in a superior sort of way, knowing myself to be too smart to believe in such nonsense.

One day, I read about one that I could not shake off as made-up rubbish. Indeed, I could not stop re-reading the words.

My grandmother’s wild story was being reported as fact. There was a secret world. In the distant past, there had been many more worlds, but they had become combined into two worlds. A void, full of danger, separated our world from this other world. However, it was possible to pass from one world to the other. Portals had existed in the past and might exist again in the future.

Of course, most people mocked these claims, just as they and I had mocked those who insisted that the Earth is flat and that Covid vaccinations contained microchips. However, a small but significant number of people either believed these tales, or at least did not dismiss them out of hand. Instead, they asked questions.

A few people, a thousand people, who could tell how many online, stated that they had travelled between the worlds, that they knew someone who had, or even that they came from the other world. Their accounts differed but had many similarities. A sort of medieval society where a kind of paganism dominated all aspects of daily life, like the Catholic church had in the Middle Ages. The landmass that we knew as Great Britain was split into multiple independent kingdoms. The aristocracy held far greater power than they did in modern Britain. Words like Lothwold, the Woldsheart and the Westlands danced before my incredulous eyes.

Granny Josephine was right. She was telling the truth. I really am noble, the rightful heir to the House of Lothwold, a descendent of Lord Augustim and Lady Richeldis. But what should I do now?

I told my parents, showing them what I had found on my phone. They were flabbergasted and did not know what to say. Later that day, my mother tried to persuade me that Granny Josephine had been inspired by what we had both read online. I had simply read the origins of her tales.

“It doesn’t make them true,” she warned me.

The caution in her eyes showed how she feared I would be sucked in again. Become arrogant again. Start acting like a mediaeval lord again.

“Granny never used the internet any more than she had to,” I retorted. “It took Dad several months to persuade her to have an email account, and none of us could ever persuade her to use it. She told me many times that she didn’t trust the internet, she thought it spread viruses to humans, and it was full of lies. She reckoned she could get all the information and entertainment she needed from The Times, Radio 4 and the BBC. I bet she knew the truth before those posters did.”

“Josh…” my mother’s voice trailed off. “Please. Please be reasonable and think. Those posters have not posted anything true. It’s nonsense. Imagined, fabricated nonsense. The result of people being cooped up for too long by themselves. This is all just a coincidence. It must be. You are studying for science GCSEs. You must realise that this cannot be true. It’s simply impossible.”