Legacy: Arthurian Saga (241 page)

After this were many years of wars,
and battles, but then came Merlin on a great black horse, and said
to Arthur, "Thou hast never done, hast thou not done enough? It is
time to say Ho! And therefore withdraw you unto your lodging and
rest you as soon as ye may, and reward your good knights with gold
and with silver, for they have well deserved it."

"It is well said," quoth Arthur, "and
as thou hast devised, so it shall be done." Then Merlin took his
leave of Arthur, and traveled to see his master Blaise, that dwelt
in Northumberland. So Blaise wrote the battles word by word, as
Merlin told him.

Then one day King Arthur said to
Merlin, "My barons will let me have no rest, but needs I must take
a wife."

"It is well done," said Merlin, "that
ye take a wife. Now is there any that ye love more than
another?"

"Yea," said King Arthur, "I love
Guinevere, the king's daughter, Leodegrance of the land of
Cameliard, the which holdeth in his house the Table Round that ye
told he had of my father Uther." Then Merlin advised the King that
Guinevere was not wholesome for him to take to wife, and warned him
that Lancelot should love her, and she him again. In spite of this
the King determined to wed Guinevere, and sent Sir Lancelot, the
chief of his knights and his trusted friend, to bring her from her
home.

On this journey Merlin's prophecy came
to pass, and Lancelot and Guinevere loved one another. But they
were helpless to realize their love, and in time Guinevere was
married to the King. Her father, King Leodegrance, sent the Round
Table to Arthur as a wedding gift.

Meanwhile Arthur's half-sister
Morgause had borne her bastard son by the King. His name was
Mordred. Merlin had prophesied that great danger should come to
Arthur and his kingdom through this child, so when the King heard
of the birth he sent for all the children born upon May-day, and
they were put into a ship and set adrift. Some were four weeks old,
some less. By chance the ship drove against a rock where stood a
castle. The ship was destroyed, and all in it died except Mordred,
who was found by a good man, and reared until he was fourteen years
of age, when he was brought to the King.

Soon after the wedding of Arthur and
Guinevere the King had to leave the court, and in his absence King
Meleagant (Melwas) carried the Queen off into his kingdom from
which, as men said, no traveler ever returned. The only way into
her moated prison was by two very perilous paths. One of these was
called "the water bridge" because the bridge lay under water,
invisible and very narrow. The other bridge was much more perilous,
and had never been crossed by a man, made as it was of a sharp
sword. No one dared go after her but Lancelot, and he made his way
through unknown country, until he came near Meleagant's lodge that
had been built for the Queen. Then he crossed the sword bridge, and
sustained grievous wounds therefrom, but he rescued the Queen, and
later, in the presence of King Arthur and the court, he fought and
killed Meleagant.

Then it befell that Merlin fell in a
dotage on one of the damosels of the Lake, whose name was Nimue,
and Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with
her. He warned King 

Arthur that he should not be long
above earth, but for all his craft he would be put alive into the
earth, and he warned him also to keep his sword and the scabbard
safely, for it would be stolen from him by a woman that he most
trusted. "Ah," said the King, "since ye know of your adventure, why
do you not put it away by your magic arts, and prevent
it?"

"That cannot be," said Merlin. "It is
ordained that ye shall die a worshipful death, and I a shameful
death." Then he left the King. Shortly after this Nimue, the
damosel of the Lake, departed, and Merlin went with her wherever
she went. They went over the sea to the land of Benwick, in
Brittany, where King Ban was king, and Elaine his wife had with her
the young child called Galahad.

Merlin prophesied that one day Galahad
should be the most man of worship in the world. Then after this
Nimue and Merlin left Benwick, and came into Cornwall. And the lady
was afraid of him because he was a devil's son, and she did not
know how to make away with him. Then it happened that Merlin showed
her a cave in a rock which could be sealed with a great stone. So
by her subtle working she made Merlin go under that stone to show
her the magic that dwelt there, but she cast a spell on him so that
he could not ever come out again. And she went away and left him
there in the cave.

And a knight, a cousin of the King's
called Bagdemagus, rode out from the court, to find a branch of a
holy herb for healing. It happened that he rode by the rock where
the Lady of the Lake had put Merlin under the stone, and there he
heard him lamenting. Sir Bagdemagus would have helped him, but when
he went to the stone to lift it, it was so heavy than an hundred
men could not have moved it. When Merlin knew he was there, he told
him to save his labor, for all was in vain. So Bagdemagus went, and
left him there.

Meantime it had happened as Merlin had
foretold, and Arthur's sister Morgan le Fay had stolen the sword
Excalibur and its sheath. She gave these to Sir Accolon with which
to fight the King himself. And when the King was armed for the
fight there came a maiden from Morgan le Fay, and brought to Arthur
a sword like Excalibur, with its scabbard, and he thanked her. But
she was false, for the sword and the scabbard were counterfeits,
and brittle. So there was a battle between King Arthur and Accolon.
The Lady of the Lake came to this battle, for she knew that Morgan
le Fay wished ill to the King, and she wanted to save him. King
Arthur's sword broke in his hand, and only after a grievous fight
did he get his own sword Excalibur back from Sir Accolon and defeat
him. Then Accolon confessed the treason of Morgan le Fay, King
Urien's wife, and the King granted mercy to him. And after this the
Lady of the Lake became the friend and guardian of King Arthur, in
the stead of Merlin the enchanter.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

"The wicked day of destiny," as Malory
calls it, is the day when Arthur's final battle was fought at
Camlann. In this battle, we are told, "Arthur and Medraut
fell."

This reference, from the Annales
Cambriae, which was compiled three or possibly four centuries after
Camlann, is all we know of Mordred. When he reappears some
centuries later, in the romances of Malory and the French poets, he
has taken on the role of villain necessary to the conventions of
romance. Mordred the traitor, perjurer and adulterer is as much an
invention as the lover and great knight Sir Lancelot, and the roles
played by both in the tales of "King Arthur and his Noble Knights"
are filled with the absurdities inevitable in a long-drawn series
of stories.

In the fragments of those stories that
have been used in this book, the absurdities speak for themselves.
Throughout the final debacle Arthur, that wise and experienced
ruler, shows neither sense nor moderation; worse, he is tainted
with the same treachery for which he condemns his son. If Arthur
had had any reason at all to distrust Mordred (for instance over
the murder of Lamorak or the exposure of Lancelot and the Queen) he
would hardly have left him as "ruler of all England" and guardian
of the Queen, while he himself went on an expedition from which it
was possible he might never return. Even granted that he did
appoint Mordred his regent, it is hard to see why Mordred, with
every hope of becoming his father's heir, should have forged a
letter purporting to tell of Arthur's death, and on the strength of
that seized both kingdom and Queen. Knowing that Arthur was still
alive, and with a vast army at his back, Mordred could be sure that
the King would come straight home to punish his son and repossess
kingdom and Queen. More, the final battle between King and
"traitor" was brought about by accident, in the very moment when
the King was about to seal a truce with the villainous Mordred, and
grant him lands to rule. (it is another, though minor, absurdity
that the lands are Cornwall and Kent, at opposite sides of the
country, the one already held by the Saxons, the other by Arthur's
declared heir, Constantine.)

For none of the "Mordred story," then,
is there any evidence at all. It is to be noticed that the Annales
Cambriae does not even state that he and Arthur fought on opposite
sides. It would have been possible -- and very tempting -- to have
rewritten the story completely, and set Arthur, with Mordred at his
side, against the Saxons, who (as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle) fought a battle against the Britons in A.D. 527, and
presumably won it, since the Chronicle does not emphasize Saxon
defeats. The battle, at the right date, might even have been the
battle of Camlann, the last stand of the British against the
Saxons.

But the temptation had to be resisted.
Until I came to study in detail the fragments that make up
Mordred's story, I had accepted him without question as the villain
of the piece, an evil man who brought about the tragedy of Arthur's
final downfall. Hence, in my earlier books, I had made Merlin
foresee that doom, and warn against it. So I could not rewrite the
Camlann battle. Instead I tried to iron out the absurdities in the
old story, and add some saving greys to the portrait of a black
villain. I have not made a "hero" out of Mordred, but in my tale he
is at least a man who is consistent in his faults and virtues, and
has some kind of reason for the actions with which legend has
credited him.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about
the tale of the final years of Arthur's reign is the way which the
actual historical events can be made to fit with the legend. Arthur
most certainly existed, and so may Mordred have done, but since the
traitor of romance was a figment of the storyteller's imagination,
then I would suggest that the Mordred of my story is just as valid,
since I, too, have perhaps earned a place among those of whom
Gibbon writes with such urbane contempt: The declamations of
Gildas, the fragments and fables of Nennius, the obscure hints of
the Saxon laws and chronicles, and the ecclesiastical tales of the
venerable Bede have been illustrated by the diligence, and
sometimes embellished by the fancy, of succeeding writers, whose
works I am not ambitious either to censure or
transcribe.

Some other brief notes

Camlann. The site of Arthur's
last battle cannot be identified with any certainty. Some scholars
have suggested Birdoswald in Northumbria (the Roman Camboglanna),
others the Roman Camulodonum (Colchester). The most usually
accepted site is in Cornwall, on the River Camel; this because of
Arthur's strong connection with West Country legend. I have set the
battle beside the River Camel near South Cadbury in Wiltshire. The
hill at South Cadbury has, owing to recent excavations, a strong
claim to being an Arthurian strong point, possibly "Camelot"
itself. Hence there seemed no need to look further for the site of
the final battle. I do not know when the local stream was called
the Camel, but the long ridge nearby was in antiquity known as
"Camel Hill."

At that date, also, there would be
lake and fenland stretching right inland from the estuary of the
River Brue almost as far as South Cadbury. The hills of modem
Glastonbury would then be islands -- Ynys Witrin, or the Glass Isle
-- and Caer Camel "not far from the seaside." The barge that
carried the wounded Arthur to be healed at Avilion would have only
a brief journey to the legendary place of healing.

The date of Camlann.Scholars place the
date of the battle somewhere between A.D. 515 and -- a wide choice,
but a date somewhere about to 527 seems reasonable. One date given
for Badon Hill is A.D. 506, and we are told (in the Annales
Cambriae) that Camlann was twenty-one years later.

The following is a table of the "real"
(as opposed to guesswork) dates:

524 A.D.

526 A.D. 527 A.D.

527 A.D.

Neustria. Drustan.

Clodomir, son of Clovis and ruler of
the central part of the Frankish kingdom, was killed at Vézeronce
in battle with the Burgundians. Two of his sons, aged ten and
seven, were put in charge of Clevis' widow, Clothild, in Paris, but
were murdered by their uncles. The third son fled into a
monastery.

Theodoric, King of Rome and "emperor
of the West," died at Ravenna. Justin, ageing "emperor of the
East," abdicated in favor of his nephew Justinian.

According to the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, "in this year Cerdic and Cynric fought against the
Britons at the place which is called Cerdicesleag" (Cerdic's field
or woodland).

This was the name given to the western
portion of the Prankish empire after its division at Clovis's death
in 511.

Drust or Drystan, son of Talorc, is an
eighth-century wan who later was absorbed into the Arthurian legend
as Tristram.

In one version of the Gareth legend he
marries Linet.

Liones, in another her sister
Linet.

Arthur's sons. We have the names of
two, Amr and Llacheu. The word did not always, as now, imply a
religious house for women only. It was used interchangeably;
convent with "monastery."

Many of the foundations had
communities of both women and men. This is a free translation of an
Anglo-Saxon poem, The harper's song. "The Wanderer," which in The
Last Enchantment I attributed to Merlin. Seal Island: Selsey.
Sutthrige: Surrey. Edinburgh and Lochawe, 1980-1983