Our man in Camelot

plus one or two facts. It could be all true and it could be all hooey.'

'Except Badon Hill,' said Schreiner from the depths of the armchair into which he had sunk.

'That's right, exactly right. And Badon also turns up in the Annales Cambriae, which is a sort of calendar of important dates in Welsh history compiled by a bunch of monks in the eleventh century. It says in that for 'Year 72', which is somewhere about A.D. 500: Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victorious.'

'Sounds like they had it mixed up with one of Nennius's battles,' said Shirley.

'Honey, when you start digging into the Dark Ages, and especially into Arthur, most everyone seems to have everything mixed up. But when you come down to it out of this lot—' he waved his hand over the table '—apart from the serious modern history books, the only two worth a damn are Gildas and Bede.

Gildas because he actually lived in the period, and Bede because he was way ahead of his time as a historian. All the rest is strictly 'maybe'.'

'But what about the Knights of the Round Table and Lancelot—and Camelot?' said Schreiner. 'Is that all pure invention then?'

'Not quite pure, but damn nearly, so far as I can make out. I haven't read all the stuff—the further it gets away from the actual historical time, the more there is of it. Seems a lot was made up by a man named Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century—a lot of the traditional 'King Arthur' bits. It even had a political angle then, because the Kings of England wanted to keep up with the French kings—'

Harry Finsterwald stirred. 'For God's sake, we have to have the history of France too?'

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Howard Morris started to speak, but Schreiner overrode him. 'Until we know the exact specification of Operation Bear—and why Panin took the Novgorod Bede back to Dzerzhinsky Street with him—you're damn right, Captain. The history of France and the history of Britain, and the history of ancient Peru, if need be. Plus how many archangels can dance on the point of a needle too.'

Mosby hurriedly revised his estimate of Schreiner: not just State Department Intelligence, but pure State Department. And not just State Department holding a watching brief if he was ready to slap down a CIA operative in the presence of UK Control—to do that required National Security Council authorisation for sure.

Another tiger?

Well, maybe he could find that out by giving the beast a gentle prod—

'I don't know, maybe Harry's right,' he said doubtfully. 'It's getting kind of way out, where we could end up.'

Schreiner looked at him sharply. 'You let me be the judge of that, Captain Sheldon.'

'But—'

Howard Morris raised a finger. 'Tell the man, Doc. Just tell him.'

That made Schreiner a tiger for sure, right down to the last whisker. And a tiger in a hurry, too.

'Okay. It's like the English Joneses had to keep up with the French Joneses—the French had the Emperor Charlemagne as their royal ancestor. All the English had was a bunch of Norman pirates. But after Geoffrey of Monmouth had got through with Arthur they could trace themselves right back to Troy. And it made such a darn good story—the Arthurian part—that all the story-tellers of the time got into the act. So after that it just snowballed, all the way to Malory in the fifteenth century and Tennyson in the nineteenth—and Walt Disney and Broadway in the 20th. Plus any number of other guys—in fact Milton nearly wrote about King Arthur instead of Paradise Lost.'

'All of which was just invented?' persisted Schreiner.

'Well… not quite all. This is where the thing gets kind of—strange. Like there's something deep down in it that's not invented. A sort of racial folk-memory.'

'For example?'

'Okay, an example… Yes, well take the Knights of the Round Table, which is a load of crap. One guy added the knights and another added the Table, and they built the whole story up from that. Because mediaeval knights wanted to read about mediaeval knights… But if you actually go back to A.D. 500, that's the time when the heavy cavalryman is the big new secret weapon. And just before the Romans got to hell out of Britain they set up a mobile strike command. So if you add those two facts together, you've just maybe got something that isn't a load of crap. No knights rescuing damsels in distress and slaying dragons, but a disciplined cavalry force… the Saxons fought on foot, remember, so they'd have been at a disadvantage… And no 'King' Arthur, but just a first-rate cavalry commander—'

'A war leader,' said Shirley.

For a moment Mosby thought she was making fun of his brand-new academic pretensions. But when he looked into her eyes there was nothing to confirm the suspicion; rather, she seemed on the edge of being interested.

He nodded cautiously. 'A war leader, yes.'

'Very good,' Schreiner made no attempt to hide his approval. 'That fits very well.'

'Fits very well with what?'

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'Never mind. It'll keep. So where does Badon Hill figure in this folk-memory?'

Mosby rubbed his chin, the hastily-acquired facts suddenly blurring in his memory. He was so used to Shirley cutting him down to size that she had diminished him now without even intending to, reducing him to what he knew himself to be: an instant expert whose shallow understanding was impressive only in the company of those more ignorant than himself. Up against Audley it would be very different.

'It doesn't really figure at all,' he said finally.

'But you said there was such a place?'