Finding Camlann (36 page)

DONALD CAN HEAR
a noise in the far distance, the humming of an engine. The more closely he listens, the more it seems to fade away. By now, he is almost sure that Jut she hulia will not come. He imagines her still at home in Oxford, ashamed, confused, remorseful perhaps, his letter disregarded: Hugh Mortimer there at her side, coolly avowing his undying love for his wife. Still, he will wait for her until the last moment, just in case.

It is Julia, in the end, who had the right instincts about the Song of Lailoken. When they met at the Randolph Hotel, she suggested to him that there might be some connection between the poem and Paul Healey’s archaeological finds. At the time it seemed an impossible leap, to imagine that the remains unearthed at Devil’s Barrow, the woman with her arms wrapped around a ritual chalice decorated with the symbols of stag, boar, and raven, the three-headed serpent, were somehow what the Song of Lailoken was
about
.

And yet there is now some real evidence that can be brought to bear. The dating analysis from King’s College suggests the late second or early first millennium
BC
for the human remains in the barrow, and Margaret Rackham’s team at the Bodleian has shown that the Song of Lailoken is at least as old as the sixth century
AD
. If the poem recited to St. Cyndeyrn was derived from a long-standing Celtic oral tradition, it could be far older than this, as Lucy with her Homeric insights has shown him. Is it possible that the poem was learned by the bard Lailoken as a young apprentice, that it was a story passed on to him from some earlier generation: then captured for the first time in writing by St. Cyndeyrn, who heard it from Lailoken in the forest?

Once the new linguistic evidence is added to the mix, the convergence that Julia originally proposed becomes harder to resist. Otto Zeiss’s plausible theory suggests that the alien words in the poem,
Belak-neskato
and
Araket
and
Madarakt
, are the names of animal totems taken from a language that was spoken in Britain when the first Celtic peoples, contemporaries of the heroes of the
Iliad
, were exploring the coastal Atlantic routes to the north. The Song of Lailoken carries an echo of the forgotten time when they came into contact with the descendants of the original post-glacial settlers, the indigenous Britons whose ancestors were the builders of Stonehenge.

There is a story here that badly wants to be told, a tale of the terrifying raven-priestess dispensing death to her own people, thirteen male warriors chosen with special care to satisfy the gruesome demands of the white-winged, three-headed sky god:

Belak-neskato she was named, the death-wielder

Draining blood of men three-times slain

To slake the white serpent, three-times thirsting

Sky-devil who bore the giants’ ring from farthest west

To make this hallowed killing-place.

The remains of Belak-neskato were discovered at Devil’s Barrow, still clutching the magical chalice on which her raven totem was depicted with those of her twin protectors, the stag and the boar, Araket and Madarakt.

Painted petty-gods on earth, their strength availed them nothing

The first meeting Arthur’s blade, the second flew the field

Then our champion leaping high struck down the black enchantress

Tore her from her gruesome perch.

The warrior Araket fell at the sky-temple to the sword of the hero Arthur, and was laid to rest alongside Belak-neskato whom he had tried to save. Buried with him were the antlers of the ntl at great Irish elk, which he had worn as a symbol of his unearthly power. Beneath them in this mass grave were the bodies of the thirteen victims of the threefold death. Madarakt escaped that day, but would return to challenge Arthur in a final battle at the crooked vale.

DONALD OPENS HIS
eyes, sees Julia standing there looking down at him with her beautiful, ironical smile. ‘I hope I’m not too late,’ she says.

He climbs to his feet, disorientated, takes half a step towards her. ‘No, I’m glad you’re here,’ he says, reaching to take her hand. ‘There’s something I need to show you.’

The crossing is challenging but not perilous, a series of jumps between the broken-down footings of the bridge. The path on the other side is steep and tumbled with boulders, but they are able to find a way up, scrambling through thickets of stunted ash and birch. Soon they break out of the trees to a narrow ridge that climbs steadily up the eastern side of the valley. The slope becomes gradually more sheer, but there is a firm footing underneath and a narrow but well-defined path carved through heather now shading towards the dark brown of winter. This track can be seen curving up far ahead of them, summoning them to the higher ground.

By now they are walking in single file, distracted by the difficulty of the final pitch across the top of the valley wall. They come around a broad shoulder of the hillside to a place where the track splits in two. Above and to their left, a short, steep climb will take them to the very top of the cliff. Ahead of them, the full sweep of the valley at last comes into view, the river cutting and weaving its way past smooth-faced rocks the colour of blood, its jagged course making the shape of a wolf’s-head smile as it finds its way down from the rim of the valley to the top of the uppermost waterfall, where Caradoc Bowen fell. The path in front of them opens up to a rocky ledge, a broad, tapering space shaped like an axe’s blade beneath tall cliffs rising to great rounded sandstone crags glowing bright red in the light of the setting sun.

‘Does it look familiar to you?’ Donald says.

Julia comes to stand next to him, takes hold of his arm. ‘It’s like a scene from a fairy tale.’

He would not have thought to say it this way, but she has captured it perfectly. This is a view that has remained unchanged across the centuries, the same rugged landscape that was once described in a heroic tale of the red dragon pitted against the white, crossing stone circles and rivers and mountainsides to a last battle beneath the blood-tinged cliff where Arthur felled the giant Madarakt even as he was himself struck down.

‘I think that’s exactly what it is,’ Donald says. ‘But there’s something missing from the story.’ He points to the narrow path that branches away from the main track, leading sharply up the hillside. ‘We need to climb up to the top.’

DONALD STEPS UP
at last to a broad slab laid by human hand at the edge of the cliff. In front of him now are the three great stones, a tall upright on either side with a huge curved capstone raised on top. Together they form the entrance to a grass-covered burial mound, a doorway to a dimly lit tunnel disappearing into blackness. On another day, in another place, he would be studying this tomdyie entrancb as a scientific archaeologist, examining the details of its construction, wondering at the possibilities of excavation. But he finds himself in a far different frame of mind as he stands there staring into the portal, shivering with a chill that has nothing to do with the coolness of the mountain air, the fast-approaching sunset. It is not a sense of fear, but a disorientating awareness of the scale of human time, the centuries that have gone by since anyone passed this
way
, into the darkness.

He takes out his father’s map, to settle himself, to be sure he is not mistaken. The name of this place is clearly written there,
Drws-Arthur
, Arthur’s Door, a throwback to a far-distant event described in the closing lines of the Song of Lailoken.

  We bore him up to the highest cliff-top, gate of the otherworld

  Laid him beneath a linden tree, the shield-wood powerless now

  The words unspoken on his lips, the life we saw still behind his eyes

  No more than the trick of light and shadow on the rock.

Donald conjures up the scene, allows himself to believe that it might be true: that this remote and rugged place, unchanged across the centuries, is where the warrior
Arto-uiros
, the bear-man, fought his last fight and was carried off to the otherworld where his wounds might be healed. There is an entry in the
Annales Cambriae
, the fragmentary tale of Arthur’s final battle written there by Welsh monks whose grandparents’ grandparents had heard the story whispered to them as children.

  
Gueith Camlann, in qua Arthur et Medraut corruere.

  The strife of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell.

As he stands at the windswept edge, looking along the valley to the tall sandstone crags raised like bloodied fists in the declining sun, the real Arthur feels almost within reach.

Julia comes up beside him now, stands there quietly with a charming curious expression on her face. He takes her by the hand, and together they walk past the staring entrance to the tomb, then on around the burial mound. On the northern side, a small grove of trees has somehow found enough shelter to survive on the exposed cliff-top. The trunks are stunted and twisted, scarred with deep entwining furrows, and amongst them stand the hollowed remains of some earlier generation. Donald pulls Julia close to him, feels the physical presence of her, the warmth of her body against his, the rightness of being here with her. He looks up at the knotted black branches against the orange sky with the buds of next year’s leaves almost ready for life. Though he cannot quite be sure, he thinks they might be linden trees.

Chronology

*approximate or tentative date