'This country has lost nothing but its honour, and having lost that has lost everything. Fifty million people, the people who stood alone against Hitler. The people who broke the German Army in the '14-'18 War, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Philip of Spain, who produced Shakespeare, Newton, Penicillin, Radar—'
He looked up at Audley again.
'You must go on reading,' said Audley flatly.
'Radar, the Hovercraft. Not that we are a super-race, far from it. We are a mongrel race.
Nor because we have coal and oil if we had the courage to win it. A mongrel race, as I said: an amalgam of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans—imagination, staying power, restlessness, pragmatism—and the waves of refugees and immigrants, French Protestants, German Jews—and Africans and Asiatics too. I am no racist, as some foolish young people want to think—I'd as soon see a daughter of mine, if I had one, married to the best of my Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
Arab levies than to the worst of the young fools I saw at Oxford. But we have no honour left.
No honour. Perhaps it comes from losing the best in the two wars. And the loss of empire.
But we won the wars, perhaps that is the trouble, for it has happened before—Gildas told the same story, of course. And I have watched this happening for thirty years, but for most of the time without understanding. That it's not the winning that matters, but the fighting for something. Strange that I fought for so many causes— other people's causes—and never understood that until quite recently, in Arabia. It was there I began to under-stand, and I remembered my childhood, here in Camelot. My grandfather understood, he glimpsed it—
Rex quondam rexque futurus—what it has always meant. It is no accident that the British have endlessly pursued Rex quondam rexque futurus, the Present and Future King.
However vague the understanding, the instinct was true. And the Grail legend is never truer than now: the Fisher-king lies wounded unto death in the magic castle in the wasteland. The Grail-knight reaches the castle and asks a certain question. The king is healed and the wasteland blossoms…'
'The Fisher-king and the Grail-knight—for God's sake!' Mosby scowled at Audley. 'Does it really go on like that?'
'For five or six pages.'
'More than that,' said Frances. 'There's a page on what he calls 'the historicity of Arthur', and another on the influence of Arthur on British history—plus why Henry II had a grandson named Arthur and Henry VII's eldest son was named Arthur. And the Korean War and the TSR-2 get mixed up in it too at one point. And it all adds ug to how finding Mons Badonicus and proving Arthur won it will give Britain back her honour.'
'Well, then…' Mosby looked to Audley for confirmation. '… He's crazy.'
'Of course. Not certifiable—but crazy.' Audley nodded. 'But up until a few days ago he was also harmless, and now he's most definitely not. Thanks to the CIA… So what page do we turn to, Frances?'
'Halfway down page eight. It's marked with a pencil cross.'
A pencil cross—
'I first met Major David 'Dai' Davies at Woodhenge, which I was visiting in connection with other studies I was making at the time. He was measuring a burial mound. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained he was looking for Mons Badonicus. I told him that he was almost certainly far to the south of the most promising search area, that I myself had explored the Chilterns and the general line of the Icknield Way north-eastwards of the Thames as being a strong possibility, and that I had only recently returned to the belief that the western end of the Berkshire Downs was the likeliest site. To my surprise he disagreed firmly, though courteously. It soon became clear to me not only that he believed Badon to be in the Salisbury region, but that he was in possession of some information or evidence to confirm this belief—'
Mosby looked up at Frances. 'Either this is not verbatim, or he's taken a turn for the better.'
'It's word for word, Captain.'
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
'Well, it reads like an official statement.'
'There's a reason for that,' said Audley. 'This wasn't the first time he dictated this part of the statement.
Go on and you'll find out.'
'confirm this belief. This intrigued me a great deal, the more so after I had discovered that he was extremely well-informed about all aspects of Arthurian studies. I accordingly invited him to Camelot for dinner.'
'Not so crazy after all, maybe,' said Mosby. 'Being crazy doesn't mean not being shrewd,' agreed Audley. 'He's all of that, Billy Bullitt is.'
'It was during this first evening that I learnt he was a USAF pilot, flying PR Phantoms in the NATO Order of Battle. In fact, our combat experience overlapped, and although of different front-line generations we had much in common. And not only as concerned flying, for although a third generation American, he was also the grandson of a Welsh coal miner who had emigrated over 50 years earlier. Hence his Christian name and its Welsh diminutive 'Dai'—'
'So it's 'Dai' with an 'a', not D-I,' said Mosby.
'Of course. 'Dai Davies' is as Welsh as 'Paddy O'Reilly' is Irish. Which could account for his interest in Arthur, of
