The Last Enchantment (61 page)

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 traveller 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 theLake , whose name was Nimuë, 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 Nimuë, the damosel of theLake , departed, and Merlin went with her wherever she went. They went over the sea to theland ofBenwick , inBrittany , 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 Nimuë and Merlin left Benwick, and came intoCornwall . 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 anon a knight, a cousin of the King's called Bagdemagus, rode out from the court, to find a branch of an holy herb for healing. It happened that he rode by the rock where the Lady of theLake 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 labour, 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 theLake 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 theLake became the friend and guardian of King Arthur, in the stead of Merlin the enchanter.

According to legend, of which the main source is Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Merlin stayed above ground only a short while after Arthur was crowned. The period of battles and tournaments that follows the coronation can surely be taken to represent the actual battles fought by the historic Arthur. All that we know of the real war-leader, Arthur the Soldier (dux bellorum), is that he fought twelve major battles before he could count Britain safe from the Saxon enemy, and that eventually he died, and Mordred with him, at the battle of Camlann. The much-quoted account of the twelve battles occurs in the Historia Brittonum written by the Welsh monk Nennius in the ninth century.

Then Arthur fought against them in those days, with the kings of the Britons, but he himself was the leader of battles. The first battle was at the mouth of the river which is called Glein. The second, third, fourth and fifth, on another river, which is called Dubglas, and is in the region of Linnuis. The sixth battle was on the river which is called Bassas. The seventh was a battle in the wood of Celidon, that is Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth was the battle at Castellum Guinnion, in which Arthur carried the image of Saint Mary, ever Virgin, on his shoulders, and the pagans were put to flight on that day and there was a great slaughter of them through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of Saint Mary the Virgin, his mother. The ninth battle was fought at the City of the Legions. The tenth battle he fought on the river, which is called Tribuit. The eleventh occurred on the mountain, which is called Agned. The twelfth was the battle onMountBadon , in which there fell together in one day 960 men in one onset of Arthur, and no one laid them low save himself alone. And in all the battles he remained victor.

Only two of these battles can be located with any kind of certainty: that in theCaledonianForest — the Old Caledonian Forest that stretched down from Strathclyde into the modern Lake District — and the one at the City ofLegions , which could be eitherChester or Caerleon. I have contented myself with using Nennius' own place-names, and identifying only one other, the battle of the River Tribuit. It has been suggested that this is an early name of the River Ribble. There is a place where the old Roman road crosses the Ribble and heads toward the Aire Gap (the "Pennine Gap"). This is called Nappa or Nappay Ford, and local tradition remembers a battle there. The nearby camp that I have called "Tribuit" was at Long Preston; the other two in the Gap were of course Elslack and Ilkley. I also made use of a tradition that Arthur fought at High Rochester (Bremenium) in the Cheviots. Apart from these two "battle sites" I have inserted none in the map.

Blaise. According to Malory, Blaise "wrote down Arthur's battles word for word," a chronicle which, if it ever existed, has vanished utterly. I took the liberty of building in a destructive agent in the person of Gildas, the young son of Caw of Strathclyde and brother of Heuil. These are historic personages. We are told that Arthur and Heuil hated one another. Gildas the monk, writing in about A.D. 540, refers to the victory of "MountBadon," but without mentioning Arthur by name. This has been interpreted as a sign, at the least, of disapproval of a leader who had shown himself no friend to the Church.

Merlin's illness. The episode in theWildForest is taken from the story of Merlin's madness as told in the Vita Merlini, a twelfth-century Latin poem commonly ascribed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. This is in part a retelling of the older Celtic "Lailoken" tale of the madman who roamed the Caledonian Forest .

Merlin-Lailoken was present at the battle of Arfderydd (the modern Arthuret, nearCarlisle ), where his friend, the king, was killed. Driven mad by grief, he fled into the forest, where he eked out a wretched existence.

There are two poems in The Black Book of Carmarthen that are attributed to him. In one he describes the apple tree that shelters and feeds him in the forest; in the other he addresses the piglet which is his sole companion.

Guenever and Guinevere. Tradition asserts that Arthur had two wives of the same name, or even three — though this was probably only a conveniently poetic round number. The rape of Guinevere by Melwas (or Meleagant) occurs in the mediaeval romance Lancelot of Chréstien de Troyes. In Chrétien's story Lancelot has to cross a sword bridge leading to the hollow hill of faery — a version of the ancient rape fantasy that we find in the tales of Dis and Persephone, or Orpheus and Eurydice.

Guinevere, according to the mediaeval legends, suffered abduction from time to time as a matter of course, and equally as a matter of course was rescued by Lancelot. A modern reader can see how the stories rose around "the much-abducted queen." Mediaeval singers found in "King Arthur and his Court" a rich source of story-telling, and in time a long series of tales came to be hung around the central figures, much as the television series-writers hang their scripts today. Gradually, in the legends, Arthur himself fades into the background, and various new "heroes" take the center of the stage: Lancelot, Tristram, Gawain, Gereint. Lancelot, being purely fictional (and an invention some centuries later than the "Arthurian fact"), is made to fill the role of the Queen's lover so essential to the mediaeval romancers and their convention of courtly love.

But it is tempting to believe that the first of the "rape stories," the Queen's abduction by Melwas, was founded on fact. Certainly Melwas existed, and remains have been found of the right period that indicate strongholds on and near Glastonbury Tor. In my tale Bedwyr, whose name is linked with Arthur's long before "Lancelot" ever appears, takes the Lancelot role. In the character of Guinevere, as here drawn, I believe I was influenced by Chaucer's treatment of the "false" Criseyde.

Nimuë (Niniane, Vivien). Nor is there any necessity to attribute the same sort of "falseness" to Merlin's lover, Nimuë. The "betrayal" theme of this legend springs from the need to explain the death or disappearance of an all-powerful enchanter. My version of Merlin's end is based on a tradition which obtains still in parts of the "Summer Country." It was sent me many years ago by a Wiltshire correspondent. This version of the tale is that Merlin, with age drawing on, desired to hand on his magic powers to someone who could be Arthur's adviser after his death. For this he chose his pupil Nimuë, who showed herself adept. This tale not only allows the great enchanter his dignity, and a measure of common sense, but also explains Nimuë's subsequent influence over Arthur. The King would hardly otherwise have kept her near him, or accepted her help against his enemies.

Ninian. The "boy Ninian" episode was suggested by another incident found in the Vita Merlini. Here Merlin sees a youth buying shoes, and pieces of leather to repair them with to make them last longer.

Merlin knows that the youth will have no need of the new shoes, as he will be drowned the same day.

Cerdic Elesing. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Cerdic and Cynric his son landed at Cerdices-ora with five ships. Cerdic was Elesing (the son of Elesa, or Eosa). The date given is A.D. 494.

Whatever doubt there may be about the dates of Cerdic's battles, or the locations of his first conquests (Cerdices-ora is thought to be Netley, near Southampton), all the chroniclers seem to agree that he was the founder of the first West Saxon monarchy from which Alfred was to claim descent. For Cerdic, and for the changing of the burial customs that Gereint suggests on page 105, see Hodgkin's History of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. 1, Section IV. Llud-Nuatha, or Nodens. The shrine of Nodens is still to be seen, at Lydney in Gloucestershire.

Merlin's song "He who is companionless," is based on the Anglo-Saxon poem The Wanderer.

Finally, for the many gaps in my knowledge of this enormous subject I can only beg forgiveness, and paraphrase what H. M. and N. K. Chadwick wrote in the preface to their Growth of English Literature:

"If I had read more widely I should never have completed this book." More: if I had even known how much there was to read, I would never have dared to start to write at all. By the same token I cannot list all the authorities I have followed. But I can hope, in all humility, that my Merlin trilogy may be, for some new enthusiast, a beginning.

M.S.

Edinburgh, 1975-1979

Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists writing today, was born in Sunderland,County Durham,England . After boarding-school, she received a B.A. with first class honours in English Language and Literature fromDurhamUniversity and went on for her M.A. Later she returned to her own University as a Lecturer in English. She married in 1945. Her husband is Sir Frederick Stewart, who is Chairman of the Geology Department atEdinburghUniversity , and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils.

Lady Stewart's career as a novelist began in 1954 with the publication of "Madam, Will You Talk?"

Since then she has published fifteen successful novels, including "The Last Enchantment", the third book of her magical trilogy about the legendary enchanter Merlin and young Arthur. Her books for young readers, "The Little Broomstick" (1971) and "Ludo and the Star Horse"(1974), quickly met with the same success as her other novels. In 1968, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. In 1971, the Scottish Chapter of the International PEN Association awarded her the Frederick Niven prize for "The Crystal Cave". In 1974, the Scottish Arts Council Award went to "Ludo and the Star Horse".