Our man in Camelot

test in this people, the modern Israel, whether it loves Him or not; until the year of the seige of Badon Hill, almost the last and not the least slaughter of those bandits, which was forty-four years and one month ago, as I should know for it was also the year of my birth…

He was a Badon baby, and he never forgot it.'

'So when was he born?' asked Shirley.

'That's the trouble, honey—and it's also absolutely typical of the whole subject: nobody's quite sure. But round about A.D. 500, give or take ten or fifteen years.'

'So the Britons had beaten the Saxons—the Anglo-Saxons?' said Schreiner. 'I thought it was the other way round.'

'So it was—in the end. Gildas was writing in about 550, maybe a year or two earlier. At that time the Britons had been on top for the best part of half a century, since the battle of Badon. The Saxons just had Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

toe-holds on the coast in a few places. But the next really reliable account of what happened dates from two hundred years later.' Mosby nodded at Howard Morris. 'From a monk named Bede.'

He reached across the table for the orange-backed paperback. ' A History of the English Church and People.'

'Bede was like Gildas, then?' asked Shirley.

'He was a monk like Gildas. But that was about the only thing they had in common, honey. Because for a start he was one of the Anglo-Saxon bandits—by then they'd kicked out the Britons from most of the island, like Gildas had said they would. And the Anglo-Saxons had become the English and the Britons had become the Welsh, more or less.'

'My God!' said Finsterwald fervently. 'And who were the goddamn Scotch?'

'They were mostly Irish, man,' said Merriwether helpfully. 'And you can tell that because of the whisky and the bagpipes, which they both got out of the deal.'

So Merriwether was the real brains of the Finsterwald/Merriwether partnership, thought Mosby.

'That's about right, actually.' He nodded. 'But the big difference is that Bede was a real historian, not a Biblethumper like Gildas—

…Ambrosius Aurelius, a virtuous man of Roman origin, the only survivor of a disaster in which his royal parents were killed…

—and so on… Let's see… Here we are:

Thenceforth victory went first to one side, then to the other, until the Battle of Badon Hill, when the Britons made a great slaughter of the invaders. This took place forty-four years after their invasion of Britain…

You see, he'd obviously got a Gildas manuscript to work from, but not quite the same one. Only he had a lot more material as well, and he knew how to use it. Not only oral tradition and local stuff—he even sent someone to Rome to check on the Papal archives, which must have been a haify trip in those days.

As I say, he was a real historian, all the modern historians agree on that.'

'And he doesn't mention Arthur,' said Howard Morris. 'Neither does—what's his name—Gildas.'

'You got it in one.' Mosby nodded at him. 'Arthur doesn't get a mention for another hundred years nearly— about A.D. 800, at least not one that ties him in with the right things.'

'The right things?'

'Yeah. There's some early mention of an Arthur of some sort in the far north—'Artorius' was an old Roman name. But it doesn't look like our guy.' He searched through the pile again. 'Nennius is what we want now—'

'Another monk?' asked Shirley.

'Bishop of Bangor in North Wales, but it amounts to the same thing. Only the clergy could read and write in those days… Here we are: Historia Britonum—'History of the Britons'. Except it wasn't a history.'

'What was it?'

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'Just you wait and see…' He opened the book at its marker.

'Then Arthur fought against them with the kings of the Britons, but he was the war leader—

'them' being the Saxons. Then he lists all the battles Arthur fought… one at the mouth of the river Glein, four beside the river Dobglas, the sixth beside the river Bassass, the seventh in the forest of Celidon—'

'I've never heard of any of them,' said Shirley.

'Nor has anyone else, seems. The next one was at Castle Guinnion—

when Arthur bore the image of the blessed Mary, ever virgin, on his shoulders, and through the strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Mary, his maiden-mother, there was great slaughter of the heathen and they were put to flight—

—and the ninth was in the City of the Legion. That just might be either Chester or Caerleon. The tenth beside the river Tribuit; the eleventh on Agned Hill. And now we come to it—

The twelth battle was at Badon Hill, where Arthur slew 960 men in one charge, single-handed. And he was victor of all these battles.'

'Phew! Nine-hundred-and-sixty at one go!' exclaimed Shirley. 'That even beats General Ellsworth.'

'Yeah, well let's say it runs him close. But that sums up Nennius: a lot of folk-history and superstitious hot air,