Finding Camlann (16 page)

‘I think you’re putting a little too much faith in the wisdom of Caradoc Bowen,’ she says, fighting down a small surge of irritation. ‘He’s a poet and a historian, not a linguist. He doesn’t know everything there is to know about the evolution of the Welsh language. And once he has an idea in his head, he finds it impossible to let it go. I know this to be true.’

There are loud noises from the kitchen, a crashing of pans, heavy footsteps on the floorboards presaging Mrs. Carwyn’s reappearance with their main course. They watch in silence as she serves up giant portions of a thick meaty stew from a heavy stoneware pot. After she has left, neither of them moves to eat.

Donald smiles at Julia now, showing the laugh lines etched around his eyes and mouth. ‘Well, I think you’ve made a remarkable deduction. So it’s not the crooked vale where the three rivers fall, but the crooked vale with three waterfalls. What are we going to do about it?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Julia reaches for a napkin, takes a pen out of her bag, sketches an outline of Wales. She adds in the mountains: Snowdonia in the north-west, the great upland tract known as the Elenydd across the middle of the country, the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons to the south. [e sh three018;If I were looking, I would start here,’ she says, drawing a circle around the southerly ranges. ‘I’ve heard there are many beautiful waterfalls in those hills, though I have never been there.’

And so they talk on into the evening, planning their hypothetical expedition to scour the Welsh mountains for the lost valley where, according to the Song of Lailoken, Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r made his last stand. Donald tells Julia his father’s story of Caradoc Bowen and the geological maps, Bowen’s conviction that Siôn Cent’s verses could be read literally in this way. Together they work through the lines of the poem, try to fix in their minds the picture of this imaginary place. Mrs. Carwyn returns at some point, emanating a faint disapproval as she circles the table, clearing away their barely touched dinner plates.

Later, they walk outside into the night air deepened by thickening cumulus clouds, a breeze through the treetops carrying the fragrance of falling leaves and the distant sound of the sea. They stop at the footbridge across the stream, stand there in the middle of the span looking down at the water tumbling through the arch, ghostly white in the darkness. Donald picks up two small sticks from the path, throws them far out into the stream, tries to follow them as they are carried back under the bridge.

Julia feels him move closer to her now, reaching out for her in the darkness. She cannot properly see the expression on his face, but there is no doubting the touch of his fingers as he brushes the hair away from her cheek, the firm grip of his hands as he pulls her towards him. She does not resist, holds on to him tightly as he bends to kiss her.

But the moment is too brief, shattered by the sound of voices, a small band of archaeologists, torches in hand, heading out on some night-time expedition. ‘A pleasant evening,’ says the leader of this group, an overweight, heavily bearded man who cannot take his eyes off Julia as he steps around them and across the bridge. His companions follow him in single file, some of them nodding awkwardly to Donald as they pass by.

In their wake comes a great drowning wave of guilt and humiliation and sadness. ‘I have to go,’ Julia whispers, as the last of them disappears into the darkness of the trees. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?’ She is on her way back up the path to the mill before Donald has a chance to react.

THE SYMPOSIUM IS
to be held in the grand ballroom of the King Arthur’s Castle Hotel in Tintagel, a massive Victorian crenellated construction squarely built from blocks of local granite to resemble a medieval keep. Completed in 1899 to a design by Silvanus Trevail, the famously depressive Cornish architect, the hotel is situated alone on an exposed hilltop facing Tintagel Island. It seems to Donald, as he walks towards this oddly misconceived building, that the crumbling remnants of Earl Richard’s much earlier effort remain by far the more evocative of an imagined Arthurian past.

But he is more immediately occupied with other concerns. He has not seen Julia since she left him on the bridge, though he waited for her at breakfast in a state of hopeful confusion. It was Mrs. Carwyn who rescued him with an emphatic serving of bacon and eggs and the crucial information that she had seen the young lady leaving the mill shortly after dawn. She was going out for a walk, she said, to get some fresh air. Thinking about the night before, Donald sees one moment with perfect clarity, causing almost a physical pain in his chest as he [s cing relives the fatal interruption at the hands of the boorish Raymond Grint (known to him by reputation only as an outspoken iron-age man from the University of Bristol) and his party of blundering acolytes.

By now he is late for the start of the morning’s plenary session. He heads through the hotel lobby and along the corridor to the ballroom entrance, slips in through the double doors, finds a seat at the end of the back row. From there, he takes his measure of a large space lushly appointed with heroic tapestries on the walls, a thick embroidered carpet underfoot, tall, heavily swagged and curtained windows at the eastern end. The whole has been thrown into twilight by the dimming of the giant chandeliers overhead. There is an impressive attendance of perhaps two hundred people in closely spaced wooden chairs.

In ordinary circumstances, Donald would be in his element amongst this worthy gathering of cautious professionals, but for now there is no question of settling his thoughts to archaeology. He scans the room, finds that Julia is nowhere to be seen. Lucy, meanwhile, is there in the front row, looking disdainfully up at the smiling, suntanned man standing at the lectern.

‘It is with genuine pleasure,’ Paul Healey is saying, ‘that I welcome you here to the King Arthur’s Castle Hotel for what promises to be one of the highlights of our archaeological year.’ He continues for several minutes in similar vein, dispensing gratitude and appreciation to right and left as if he were accepting some exalted award: for best actor, this is the thought that comes to Donald as he listens with a growing sense of dismay. Healey is in his element, in full manipulative flow as he hastens to bolster his credibility in front of an apparently receptive crowd.

During the small ovation that follows this speech, Donald feels a touch on his shoulder, turns to find Julia sitting down next to him. She whispers a single word,
sorry
, but there is no chance for them to talk. The applause for Paul Healey dies away to an expectant near-silence broken by sporadic outbreaks of coughing, a restrained turning of pages, the shifting of weight in creaky wooden seats.

The opening presenter is duly introduced as Dr. Roderic Wilson, a thin, mousy forensic anthropologist from King’s College, London. He takes a sip of water, steps up to the microphone to deliver his sententious opening lines. ‘I surely do not need to remind this audience,’ he says, ‘that a careful posthumous examination of the human skeleton can tell us a great many things about the cause of death, especially if the individual’s demise happens to have been brought about by a pathological condition, or by some form of excessive violence.’

Wilson continues for some considerable time in this mannered style, describing in meticulous detail the results of his examination of the skeletons discovered at Devil’s Barrow. His findings, as it turns out, are remarkably consistent. Thirteen of the fifteen victims, identified as males in their twenties and thirties, appear to have died by the same combination of a sharp blow to the skull (delivered by some kind of blunt instrument, perhaps a stone axe, not large but wielded with force) followed by impalement through the abdomen and up into the ribs by a long sharp weapon, probably a spear. Whether or not they were all dead by the time they were thrown into the water-filled pit, he cannot say for sure, though he rather hopes that they were.

Donald is sitting close enough to Julia that he can detect the faint scent of lavender, the fragrance returning him with a painful immediacy to the Trevethey bridge. He has no choice but to keep his attention firmly fixed on Roderic Wilson, to try to follow the details of the talk [s oidth.

‘The last two sets of remains,’ Wilson is saying, ‘those of the apparently high-status individuals found at the very top of the pile and in close proximity, respectively, to a decorative ceramic chalice and an antler headpiece, present a rather different case. I can confirm Professor Healey’s preliminary finding that they were each killed by a single thrust from a sharp weapon. Though not the same weapon,’ Wilson adds, looking up at his audience to emphasise the importance of this point, ‘not the same weapon that was used on the thirteen males who were buried beneath them.’

Now there is a stir at the front of the room as someone stands up to ask a question. Recognising Lucy’s unmistakable profile, Donald feels a tight knot forming in the pit of his stomach. She turns in such a way that she is addressing not just the speaker, but the entire group.

‘It seems to me, Dr. Wilson, that you have failed entirely to recognise the significance of these finds. Is this not precisely the method of threefold sacrificial killing that has been noted elsewhere in the Celtic world at sites dating from the first millennium
BC
?’

The unfortunate Roderic Wilson, finding his most telling rhetorical moment fatally compromised by Lucy’s interruption, makes an unconvincing open-handed gesture to the closest members of the audience. ‘Well, I should say that was a question for my archaeological colleagues—’

‘Is this not,’ Lucy continues, raising her voice above the murmuring that has begun in the room, ‘is this not the clearest evidence yet of the practice of ritual slaughter perpetrated by the incoming patriarchal Celts? Can we not see, in the well-documented pattern of these cruel woundings, a deliberate, calculated profaning of the triune mother goddess of Old Europe?’ She leaves this question hanging in the air, scans the rows of watchful, apprehensive faces, daring someone to respond.

It is Donald, propelled by an unstoppable rush of irritation, who gets to his feet to answer her. ‘I would like to take issue with Dr. Trevelyan’s remarks,’ he says, speaking loudly enough to cut across the renewed whisperings of the audience. He is intensely aware of Julia’s curious eyes on him as he begins to formulate his argument. ‘It is important for us to remember that Devil’s Barrow has so far provided no firm evidence at all to suggest a specific aggressor. Indeed, the site is lacking artefacts of any kind that might suggest a Celtic presence. To suggest otherwise is nothing more than unfounded speculation.’

Lucy, still standing up at the front of the room, is for once left momentarily at a loss for words, while Donald’s interjection is greeted by noises of assent and approval from all sides.

‘If we take the evidence at face value,’ he continues, ‘it appears just as likely that the solitary female was not so much a victim of this sacrificial rite as its chief arbiter. The traces of blood found in her chalice would seem to suggest as much—and, as we have seen, she was one of only two individuals who escaped the full savagery of the threefold death. Perhaps Dr. Trevelyan would like to comment on this possibility?’

The ingratiating Paul Healey chooses this moment to step back up to the microphone. ‘If I may,’ he says, ‘I would like to propose that our distinguished colleagues continue their discussion during the coffee break. I’m quite sure it’s a valuable debate, but meanwhile we must allow our presenter to finish his talk.’

Donald [tiftsits back down in his chair, does his best to avoid Julia’s gaze, though now he feels the warm pressure of her hand resting on his. ‘Well done,’ she whispers, leaning in close.

Roderic Wilson has meanwhile taken Healey’s cue. ‘In closing,’ he says, ‘I would like to share with you our preliminary results from the dating of the organic materials found at the site. Our goal has been to validate, or otherwise, Professor Healey’s proposed assignment of the skeletal remains to the fifth century
AD
.’ Wilson pauses, takes a sip of water, determined perhaps to deliver a final flourish. ‘Unfortunately, no such verification is possible at this stage. Carbon dating of several bone samples has provided wildly varying date estimates, with discrepancies of up to two thousand years for the outliers. This suggests that there has been some degree of sample contamination, a not uncommon problem at inhumation sites such as this, where intrusions by plants or animals or later humans very often cause difficulties of this kind. A new analysis with a larger and more diverse sample set is now under way, and will hopefully lay these ambiguities to rest.’

As he steps down from the podium, Roderic Wilson acknowledges his polite applause, his face expressing a mixture of relief and frustration. Lucy has meanwhile walked over to the right-hand edge of the room, where she is standing in the semi-darkness beneath a tapestry depicting Uther Pendragon’s magical infiltration of Tintagel Castle. Donald is acutely aware of her glances in his direction, and of Julia’s very physical presence immediately to his left. It is an intolerable situation. He resorts to a fiercely concentrated study of the conference programme. There are two more presentations before the morning coffee break.