Finding Camlann (12 page)

The children’s game continues for some time in this mode of happy repetition, until a distant shout of lunchtime from the matron brings the proceedings to an end. Hugh would like to have children, Julia knows this, but motherhood has remained a frightening and inaccessible place for her. When she tries to think of it, she sees a remote plateau surrounded by unscalable cliffs. Dismissing the confusing, wistful thoughts that try to enter in, she returns her attention to the parcel on the table in front of her. The address has been written in her mother’s usual elegant, precise style, with the name of the house, Cair Paravel, segregated inside perfectly crafted quotation marks as if to emphasise Cath Llewellyn’s disapproval of such pretension.

Julia unwraps the fraying string, strips away the brown paper wrapping to reveal a cardboard box sealed so comprehensively with sellotape that it takes a long battle with scissors to break through to the seams. Inside, she finds some of her old things: a collection of diaries bound with a pink ribbon, some strange amorphous figures that she once carved out of a wooden block, one of her father’s sketch pads, yellowed with age. A page has come loose, a pencil drawing of a dramatic tilted rock-face set in a landscape of rugged tree-clad hills beneath a gleaming cloud-filled sky. The patterns of light and shadow in the rock, the luminous quality of the cloudscape, have been picked out with exquisite care. There is a short caption beneath,
Craig-y-Ddinas
, and the tiny initials in the corner, drl.

At the bottom of the box is a scrap-book with a dark green cover and a stout ring binding. There is a note stuck inside it, in her mother’s writing.
I want you to have this, no arguments now.
A name is boldly written in rounded girlish handwriting on the inside front cover, Catherine Maud Pursey. The pages are filled with the tokens of her mother’s young and happy life in Sussex, invitations to birthday parties, tickets to the Brighton pantomime, blurred family photographs taken at the seaside. Later on, there are cartoonish drawings of schoolteachers, notes scribbled by friends, various boys’ names written in the margins. One name appears more often than the others, Peter K., the blameless Englishman whom Julia’s mother would have married were it not for a holiday in Aberdovey and Dai Llewellyn standing there at the dock when she stepped off the ferry-boat.

Julia turns to a page at the back of the book. It is another of her father’s sketches, a young woman at a window, seagulls in the sky, small fishing-boats on the water beyond. Her hair is tied back in a scarf decorated with tiny loops and spirals. The beautiful Catherine Pursey, aged twenty-one, looks out across the Dyfi estuary with a gently mocking half-smile on her face.

Setting the scr Kttiut ap-book to one side, Julia unties the pink ribbon and lays the diaries out on the tabletop, four of them bound in the same bright red leather. She opens the first one and begins to turn through the January pages. The daily spaces are filled with a bold writing in pencil, a painful coming-of-age documented with all the ordinary entangled emotion of her lonely fifteen-year-old self writing these words in her room at Dyffryn Farm. There is a tug of memory now as she comes upon the entry for Valentine’s Day.

14
FEBRUARY

I had a card today from Ralph Barnabas. I think he really has a thing for me, but he’s very quiet about it, I suppose he’s a bit strange really. Maybe we have that in common. None of the other boys at school seem to like me very much, not that it matters anyway because Dai has a shotgun out in his workshop and I really think he’d use it if any one of them tried to come near me. Aunt Nia is coming over later to take me out. Not sure why she chose today but Thank God she’s coming.

There are more pages written in similar vein as the winter drags on; but with springtime comes a change, even the handwriting is neater as she composes her entries with a new style and purpose.

12
APRIL

I met someone at the Black Lion last night. It was Gareth Williams who introduced us, he said here’s a man I want you to meet. His name is Hugh Mortimer and he’s staying with his grandfather over at Ty Faenor, one of
the
Mortimers no less. He says he’s going off to Oxford University in the autumn to study history and politics. I like the way he knows what he wants from life, and the way he looks at me, too, a little bit mysterious as if he knows all about me.

Julia flips through pages filled with a surprising intense narrative, glimpses of Hugh in town on a Saturday morning, occasional awkward conversations on street corners, the time she ran into him when she was out walking with Dai, who didn’t much approve of Hugh’s father, and she had to pretend not to know him.

31
AUGUST

Sixteen today. Ralph was there waiting for me after school. He asked if he could walk with me for a while, and I couldn’t really say no. We’d gone as far as the Rhayader bridge when we saw Hugh standing there at the other end. When I told him it was my birthday, he ran and picked a rose from Mrs. Edwards’ front garden and gave it to me with a funny sort of smile. Ralph just walked away without saying a word. After that, Hugh stayed there with me and I was sure he was going to kiss me, but then he smiled in a sad sort of way and told me his grandfather had just died and he would be going away to Oxford soon. We stood there for a long time, watching the river going over the old waterfall.

There is some elusive significance in this final word,
waterfall
. It is only much later on, as Julia is preparing to go back up to the house and her eye falls on Caradoc Bowen’s journal article lying there on the table, that she realises what it is. When she first read the Song of Lailoken in the original Welsh, musing over its highly archaic constructions, she concluded that this was a true anachronistic masterpiece on the part of Siôn Cent. He wrote the poem in the ve Koem Afrnacular of the fifteenth century but with something of the character of Old Welsh, a version of the language spoken hundreds of years earlier. It is as if Geoffrey Chaucer had chosen to compose a work in the style of the author of
Beowulf
, but in such a way that it would be comprehensible to the common people of his own time.

She turns the pages rapidly now until she finds Bowen’s English translation of the poem. In the description of the final battle, where Siôn’s ‘Arthur’ fell to the creature Madarakt, Bowen renders the location of the battle-site as ‘the crooked vale where t
he three rivers fall’. This is the line that prompted his fruitless searching for just such a mountain valley in Wales. Julia makes a small annotation in pencil, substituting a more archaic and poetic usage of the Middle Welsh
llifeiriant
, interpreting it as ‘waterfalls’ rather than Bowen’s ‘mountain rivers or streams’. The line becomes ‘the crooked vale with three waterfalls’. It might be true, she thinks. It must be true. Without a moment’s hesitation, she picks up the telephone.

The Importance of
Aerodynamics

I
FFLEY
’
S LONG-SERVING VILLAGE
postman seems unaccountably cheerful as he leans his bicycle against the garden wall and makes his way to the front door of the cottage. Catching his eye through the front-room window, Donald walks across to open the door.

‘Popular today, sir. Is it your birthday?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Donald says with a smile, as he takes in hand a respectable haul. ‘Thanks all the same.’

The postman climbs back on his bike, looking askance at the heavy shower clouds now racing across the sky. ‘Clearing up by lunchtime, so they say. Pigs might fly.’ With this he is off down the lane, whistling tunelessly through his teeth.

Dropping the stack of post on the desk, Donald picks up his pencil and the notebook in which he has been writing furiously for the past three hours. A new idea has taken a fierce hold on him since he arose almost sleepless before dawn. It was Caradoc Bowen’s comment about Siôn Cent and the Song of Lailoken that set him off. Siôn claimed that his poem was taken ‘from the words of Merlin found in Cyndeyrn’s book which fate has brought to my hand’, and this book, Bowen said, should be dismissed as a pure invention, a clever ruse borrowed from Geoffrey of Monmouth.

In the preface to his
Historia Regum Britanniae
, Geoffrey claims that it is a direct translation into Latin of ‘a certain very ancient book written in the British language’,
quendam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum
, brought to him from Wales by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Geoffrey’s mysterious source has never been found, and most historians, along with Bowen, have found it sufficient to say that the ‘ancient book’ was entirely a product of his fertile imagination, a publicity stunt designed to discredit his scholarly rivals. But Donald has always found it an appealing idea that such a book once existed, and that Geoffrey drew upon it in some way when he came to create his famous history of the British kings.

So far, this is no more than wishful thinking; but now there are other pieces of the puzzle that seem to fall irresistibly into place. First there is the ident Nfy"oyhan wishity of the ‘Cyndeyrn’ whose book was claimed by Siôn Cent as his inspiration for the Song of Lailoken. A quick check in Butler’s
Lives of the Saints
confirms that St. Cyndeyrn, also called St. Kentigern or St. Mungo, was a celebrated northern churchman of the sixth century
AD
who is known to have established a monastery at a place called Llanelwy (on English maps, St. Asaph) in the north-eastern corner of Wales. It is St. Cyndeyrn who, according to the old Welsh story mentioned by Caradoc Bowen, encountered the poet Lailoken in the forest and wrote down his prophecy concerning the threefold death.

Then there is the well-documented fact that Geoffrey, late in his life, was elevated to become Bishop of St. Asaph, a position he had long coveted. It is, at the very least, interesting that there is a geographical connection between Geoffrey of Monmouth and St. Cyndeyrn, via the Welsh diocese of St. Asaph. More intriguing still is the fact that Geoffrey’s
Historia
, with its famous Merlinic prophecies, and (if Siôn Cent is to be believed) the book of Cyndeyrn each contained elements of prophecy or poetry that were claimed to have been spoken by Merlin himself.

It would be easy enough to accept Caradoc Bowen’s line of reasoning, to say that Geoffrey’s ‘certain very ancient book’ and Cyndeyrn’s book were entirely fictitious. But what if the evidence, thin though it may be, is taken at face value? Could it possibly be true that both books once existed, and indeed drew on the same prophetic tradition, or even some common written source? This is the thought that struck Donald like a thunderbolt as he lay in bed in the small hours, sent him running electrified down the stairs.

It is a tantalising idea, but his excitement is tempered by the recognition that this is just the kind of loose, hopeful reasoning that he has so often criticised in the more enthusiastic popularisers of Arthuriana. For now, he is too tired to develop his ideas any further. His eyes are dry and gritty, his head pounding from the intensity of his concentration. He puts down his pencil, stretches his arms high over his head, then begins to sort distractedly through the pile of post on the desk. There is the latest volume in the
Archaeologia
series from the Society of Antiquaries, some apparently misdirected marketing pieces (Johnson’s Fine Shrubs and Perennials, Ma Baker’s Texas Fruit Cakes), a newsletter from the local ramblers’ club, bills for electricity and water rates. He sets to one side a leaflet for the Tintagel symposium on the archaeology of Devil’s Barrow, which is due to start at the weekend. Two envelopes at the bottom of the pile immediately catch his interest.

The first, postmarked in Oxford, is addressed to him by hand in a tiny flowing script. Inside is a letter written on faded paper headed with the Jesus College crest, three silver stags on a bright green field. It is a short and surprising note from Caradoc Bowen, thanking him for his visit and expressing the wish that he should come again whenever he likes. It occurs to Donald that Bowen must have looked him up in the phone book to find his address. He feels a small surge of gratitude, almost of affection, for this curious old man. With a renewed sense of optimism, he picks up the second letter. It is from London sw1, a long white envelope bearing the sinuous blue logo of Crandall & Boyd.

Dear Donald

I’m afraid I have some bad news. You may have heard that C&B have been in some financial difficulty recently. We’ve been hit by rising paper prices, high bookshop returns and, frankly, some di Snklmp;sastrous publishing decisions. Things came to a head last week, and we were asked to review all existing book contracts, particularly those that are very overdue. Yours came up for consideration, and I’m afraid I couldn’t save it, in spite of what you gave me when you came up to London. It’s really not finished yet, is it? I am so very sorry.

Here’s my advice. Keep working on your book, and send it to me when you are truly satisfied with it. I’ll either resubmit it here, or try to place it somewhere else. It’s important work, and it deserves to be published.

We’ll be sending you a formal contractual release in due course.

Very best wishes, and good luck.

F
ELICITY
W
ICKES

Executive Editor

Donald holds Felicity’s letter by one corner for a few seconds, then lets it fall to the floor. This is a not entirely unforeseen disaster, and he finds that the news brings no immediate feeling of shock or outrage. A fantasy darts into his mind, of burning his manuscript in public, page by page, perhaps on the Iffley village green, explaining to the bewildered onlookers that it was all wrong anyway. In a sense, it no longer seems to matter. If he is right about Geoffrey and the ancient book, he will have something truly important to say to the world.

He is outside at the bottom of the garden, pruning back a tough old rosebush that has survived despite a summer’s worth of benign neglect, when he hears the telephone ring. At first he thinks to ignore it; then changes his mind, remembering that he is expecting a call from his father. As he sprints back through the kitchen, he notices with a twinge of guilt that an archaeological report he promised to send along, a study of Roman lead mining in the Mendip hills, is still there on the table. On top of it is a first edition of W. G. Hoskins’
The Making of the English Landscape
, which he found in a second-hand bookshop and intends to give to his father as a gift. He gets to the phone on the eighth ring, lifts the receiver and pauses for half a second to catch his breath.

‘Hello, Donald. Are you there?’

It is disorientating to hear the warm, familiar voice. ‘Julia—’

‘Could we meet somewhere? I have an idea I want to discuss with you, about the poem. It’s too complicated to explain over the phone.’

Donald’s eye falls on the leaflet for the Tintagel symposium, there in front of him on the desk. ‘I’m heading down to Cornwall tomorrow for a conference on the Devil’s Barrow finds. If you’d like to sign up, it’s not too late. I’m sure we could find some time to talk.’

‘Yes, I’d like to come,’ Julia says, with only the barest hesitation. ‘Just tell me what I need to do.’

After he hangs up the phone, Donald picks up Felicity’s cancellation letter and lays it out flat on the table. He folds it in half lengthways, opens it up again, then folds the corners down in two symmetrical triangles, joining in the middle. He makes two more symmetrical folds into the middle, folds the whole in two, then creases each side back down at an angle, half an inch below the apex, to make two swept-back wings. Finally, by making small tears in the trailing Sthesesedge, he adds two narrow rectangular flaps, one at the back of each wing.

He goes upstairs to his bedroom, uses both hands to force open the narrow sash window. A breath of chilly air steals into the room. He lifts his creation from underneath, adjusts the flaps, then launches it gently through the opening. Its nose lifts at first in the breeze, then dips suddenly, forcing the plane into a steep descent that ends in a crash-landing against the churchyard wall. Two small boys on their way back from choir practice clap ironically. One of them picks up the aircraft, makes a small modification at the tail, then relaunches it. The second flight is beautiful: looping and diving, swept up by the wind, the plane performs stately aerobatics above the middle of the road before gliding to a perfect landing on top of a mildewed old tombstone. This time, all three of them give it a round of applause.

HUGH IS WAITING
there in the twilight as Julia wheels her bicycle in at the back gate. It will later occur to her that he meant this as a gesture of reconciliation, a throwback to a simpler time when he might genuinely have done such a thing, but now it feels more like an ambush as he steps out from around the corner of the garden shed.

‘I told Ruth I would walk down and meet her in town for dinner,’ he says.

Julia pushes her bike into the shed, shuts and padlocks the door. ‘Please say hello from me.’

Hugh lingers by the gate, makes a show of lifting the latch and opening it. ‘I was hoping we could talk,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you. I’d like to try to make things right again, if I can.’

Caught off guard, Julia finds herself speaking words that she hardly meant to say. ‘By having dinner with Ruth?’

‘I’ll cancel it.’

‘It’s fine, Hugh, there’s no need. I wanted to ask you something, though. Do you mind if I go away for a couple of days? There’s an archaeological symposium in Tintagel.’

‘That’s a bit of a stretch for you, isn’t it?’ He says this almost carelessly, though she can read the uneasiness in his face.

‘It’s related to the discoveries at Devil’s Barrow, the thing we saw on the news.’ Julia is torn by a sudden feeling of guilt and regret that is out of all proportion to what she has said to him, or not said. ‘Would you like to come with me?’

Hugh looks at her for a long moment, his expression difficult to read. ‘Yes, I would, but the timing’s really bad for me. We’re about to close on the Merton thing.’

‘So we’ll talk after I get back?’ she says.

‘Yes, we’ll talk. I hope you have a good trip.’ With this, he is through the gate and on his way with a backward glance and a hand raised in what seems a deliberately casual farewell.

Up at the house, Julia packs a small suitcase, working quickly and decisively; then sets it down by the front door, ready to go. Later in the evening, when the place begins to feel too dark and empty, she phones her mother at Dyffryn Farm.

‘Your father’s been much better,’ Cath Llewellyn says. The relief is palpable in her voice. ‘Just a twinge of angina, the doctor says. He’s been ordered to stop smoking and leave o Sg apeakff the heavy work. I even got him out for a walk today, just the two of us, strolling hand in hand along Cyncoed Lane. Can you imagine?’

Julia smiles at her mother’s girlish enthusiasm. Her parents have been lucky in their love for one another. ‘Can he come to the phone?’

‘He’s sleeping like a baby. I’d best leave him to it, love. Will you speak to him tomorrow?’