As I have told you, there was a great struggle to succeed Theresa the Stubborn as Mayor of the Palace, and after the Battle of Peterborough this began to come to a head. Some more Counts of the Palace had put themselves forward in addition to those of whom I have spoken already. One was Roderic the Steward who had been born in the remote orient but who was a Pict by descent. Indeed his family lived in a Broch in that kingdom. This Roderic began his campaign by wandering the streets of the land, frightening the citizens like the circuitores of old, about whom the sainted Augustine speaks, by appearing in various places, here in a public garden, there in a fish market, demanding that passers-by discuss with him things in which they had no interest. This surprised all.

Another of his rivals was Count Jeremiah, vulgarly called the Qweynt. This was not Count Jeremiah Corbinus, who was in a different faction, but someone else entirely, indeed a distant relative of the Queen of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots. This Jeremiah was one of the most despised men in the kingdom for he was both malicious and incompetent. Once he had tried to preside over the Great Games, when Boris son of John had been trapped in the air by a mysterious contraption and had been the laughing stock of all. Jeremiah had been charged with ringing a bell to signal the opening of the games but had only managed to throw the bell at a passing citizen. Later he had been in charge of the National Apothecary Service, which the people of that kingdom love very much, but do very little to protect. While he was Count of the National Apothecary Service even the apothecaries had gone on strike, as they say, which was unheard of, and the alchemists, physicians and appliers of poultices with them. After that he was made Count of Overseas Diplomacy and when he was in a far-away land he forgot where his wife was from for he said she was from the land of Cathay, when in reality she was from Nippon. Or it might have been the other way round.

Then there was a strange little fellow called Count Michael the Gove, a gove being, in the language of that country, a worthless fellow or knave or so they say. This man was famously treacherous, slippery of word and deed and like only unto a new Judas. Once he had been a friend of Boris son of John but he had betrayed him when he had last made a bid to be Mayor of the Palace and now a great hatred festered between them. There were others but telling of all their iniquities and fatuities would make my book too long and thinking of something good to say about them would exceed my powers of imagination and rhetoric.

So it was that Boris son of John, Dominicus the Cosmographer, Sajid Cicero, Roderick the Steward, Jeremiah the Qweynt, Michael the Gove and the less interesting ones all assembled their forces and began to manoeuvre against each other. The faction to which these all belonged was called the faction of the Right Bastards, for reasons which I do not know. Some say it is because no man would want to own up to being the father of any of them. Now, the means by which this faction chooses its candidate to be mayor is very complicated. There are many shows of strength when the claimants have to show how many of the lesser members of the faction support them. Those with the fewest supporters are driven away in shame. Some of the contenders who were less important but no whit less unpleasant were eliminated early on and the surviving contenders had to strive against each other in a public ordeal. This would be a big challenge to Boris son of John, who had been kept in hiding by his advisors in case he did something especially stupid even by the standards of the faction. Just before the ordeal, in one of the shows of strength, Dominicus the Cosmographer was driven forth, to the relief of many.

Now, the ordeal which I mentioned is called the Ordeal of the Stools and is very barbarous. The contenders have to sit on stools in front of a crowd of people, presided over by a wise woman. The people ask them questions concerning relationships with the Western Empire and other matters concerning the governance of the realm, or other things that come into their heads, and the contenders compete to see who can say the maddest or most wicked thing. Jeremiah surprised many by proclaiming loyalty to some of the principles, regarding sex and penitence, of the stranger Aremoricans. Roderick the Steward had disappointed many in his faction by pretending not to be very mad at all, almost as though he not been aware of the custom of the ordeal. So he was expelled. Now the manoeuvring became more arcane and there were more shows of strength. Some pretended to support Jeremiah the Qweynt but in reality they were supporters of Boris and wanted to make sure that the Gove was driven away. In the end this came to pass and Javid was expelled too, having failed to either frighten or amuse people sufficiently with his strangely-shaped head, which in truth was the only thing he had going for him, though he had striven valiantly to be sufficiently shitty.