Dragon's Child (62 page)

I believe that Arthur had no choice. Circumstances made Arthur assume the role of High King of the Britons because he was a victim of his birth, his natural gifts and the dreams of others. I wanted to illustrate that he lost his own dreams because of the needs of his people. For me, that was always the tragedy at the heart of the Arthuriad, as it was for Homer’s works,
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
, or any other heroic cycle you may care to examine.

Incidentally, when I veer away from the legends, I have done so deliberately for there is no inalienable truth in the fine detail of my plot line. For instance, wouldn’t Gallia’s garden be a remarkable thing? Wouldn’t such a tribute to love be the highest art of human endeavour, perishable as it is?

I give you Morgan’s vindictiveness and Uther’s cruelty as the ultimate examples of impotence of spirit. There is very little that is built out of such petty human feelings. Only greatness of heart lasts, as was proved in the modern-day battle at Rorke’s Drift or in the stubborn courage of those few Jews who survived the concentration camps of the Third Reich. The monster, Hitler, died like Uther, frightened, hiding, haunted by his crimes and his wholly reasonable belief that all decent human beings would turn their backs on him. Who really cares where Hitler’s bones lie, or how he died, as long as he is safely dead?

Now, in the twenty-first century, Karl Marx’s grave in a London cemetery is no longer a rallying cry to the poisoned idea that the end justifies the means. We shall never know for certain where Arthur lies, or if he even lived. If he was a myth, then it was necessary for human beings to invent him.

Hail, Arthur, King of the Britons!

I wish another hero would take your place, now that the west has such a need of you.