M. K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon (70 page)

The neckpiece worn by Germanus is real. When I was last in Glastonbury, the innkeeper was busy building new apartments behind the Market Place Inn on Magdalene Street. One day, one of the young men working on the construction site found a fossilized shell as Germanus did and I, like Arthur, soaked it in water for days, picking away at hundreds of years of mud. At the time, I was surprised that something so old was found close to ground level, until I discovered that a hole had been bored through its centre. That nice young man gave me the shell, and my friend Pauline, who lives in the artists’ community of Montville, Queensland, made it into a neck piece for me. It’s devilishly heavy, but I love it.

As for Greek Fire, most modern wisdom credits the Byzantines with its invention during the Crusades, but these claims ignore the fact that something very similar was used many times in the distant past. That the recipe for Greek Fire was a closely guarded secret is beyond doubt, but it was also considered a hellish weapon, and its infrequent use suggests that it was a weapon of last resort. Pots of an odd combustible substance were recorded as being used by the Assyrians in the ninth century
BC
, while Thucydides writes of tubed containers of a strange flammable substance in the siege of Delium in 424
BC
.

One emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Anastasius I, used Greek Fire during a naval battle. He is also reported to have used the substance in quelling a revolt in
AD
515, and claimed to have been given the recipe by an Athenian. The name Greek Fire was not in use until centuries later, so it was initially called Liquid Fire, Marine Fire or Roman Fire (a reference to the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople) in the years prior to the Muslim invasion. After visiting Constantinople in
AD
454, it is feasible that Myrddion managed to access the recipe and puzzle it out, just as it is possible that he decided never to use it. But the Bran I created as a British king is a fallible man, for all his usual honesty and his attempts to conduct himself with nobility. My Bran is capable of forcing the secret out of Nimue with suggestions of the inevitable destruction of the Britons in the south-west. The older, disillusioned Taliesin could have colluded with Bran for his own reasons.

The first rule of fiction for most writers is to create a believable set of circumstances as the plot-line. The small details that follow should be feasible and realistic, but I am ultimately a novelist, so my books are inventions rather than histories. Yet accuracy is still important to me, especially in the small details of daily life.

For me, characterisation was central to my version of the legends. Having invented an infant son who grew to manhood in the period immediately following Artor’s death, I decided to call him Arthur, because that name came into common usage within noble households during the years following the High King’s death (if the great man actually existed).

As writers often do, I wondered what it would be like to be the bastard son of such a famous and powerful father. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries are thick with examples of tragic children attempting to live up to the qualities of an extraordinary parent. The heirs of the Kennedy clan provide a number of examples, as do the late son of the actor Paul Newman and the many troubled children of actors, singers and celebrities from all levels of fame and talent. The difficulties encountered by these children are listed in such painful, intensely personal sources as
Postcards from the Edge
, by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Such relationships are frequently difficult for children, as they try to equal or surpass the achievements of their famous parents.

So my Arthur would be born with several strikes against him. Coupled with his lack of status was his difficult relationship with his kin, because no one in the same situation as Anna, Bedwyr, Bran or Ector could be comfortable with such a potentially threatening child/man, one whose very existence could fracture the political allegiances of those troubled times.

A number of correspondents have asked me why there are no clear records of this period. After all, we know all about the life of Caesar, and he died long before Arthur. There are several pertinent reasons for this lack. The fifth and sixth centuries, and the decades that followed them, were times of wanton destruction. The Christian church had inherited the task of record keeping, and the monasteries were under constant attack from the barbarians as they extended their control over the tribal lands of Britain. Most of the manuscripts, painfully created and copied by individual monks within the confines of the abbeys and monasteries, were totally destroyed by parties of Saxon and Angle raiders. In one century, they burned the accumulated knowledge of a millennium. Ironically, by the seventh century, many of the invaders had themselves become Christianised and were placed in the position of trying to re-invent the history of the people and the institutions that they had destroyed. That the Saxons resurrected the legend of Arthur is remarkable, considering that victors always portray their own versions of any conflict. The stories of Arthur were adopted and elaborated on in their totality, and were then buried deeply and permanently in the spirit of the English people, regardless of the racial backgrounds of the men and women who were essential parts of the legends.

And so the character of King Arthur’s son would be fraught with negative influences from birth. I attempted to mitigate the inevitable conflicts through the personalities of Elayne and Bedwyr, because they are honourable and loving parents. Artor, his sire, had grown without real love, but his son experiences the affection that lay at the root of his relationships with his foster-father and mother. They provide the solid base necessary for the boy’s character to grow.

To add to the difficulties inherent in kinship, I also gave Arthur similar physical characteristics to those of his birth father, making him dissimilar to his foster-father in both appearance and character. Because very few men still lived who had known Artor in his youth, Arthur’s physical likeness would only be a minor distraction, but his likeness to Artor would none the less feed the rumour mill.

As for the characters of Cissa, Cerdic and his son, we know little of their personalities, except for the fact that they must have been superior warriors and leaders. I invented Cissa’s sterility, but the many years of civil war in the south actually happened after his death. I chose sterility as an explanation for the absence of a clear line of succession in an age where men married many times and fathered huge numbers of children.

The rise to power of the state of Mercia effectively crushed the Brigante tribe forever. Although the Otadini lands seemed safe from invasion, they were the basis of the Northumbrian state that would become enormously powerful during the Saxon years. In the southern parts of Northumbria, the Venerable Bede was a part of a great concentration of science, literature and history. This twist of history was ironic, because Eburacum, which would become York, was one of the prime cities of the north, and yet its history is scarcely Saxon.

I have tried to imagine the uncertainty of this century and the violence of the culture clash. Even considering the chaos that occurred during World War I and World War II, the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries were arguably more destructive in the displacement and movement of tribes and races throughout Western Europe, although our current methods of transportation and mechanisation are far superior to those available during the Dark Ages.

I hope you have enjoyed my tale of what could have happened after the death of the Dux Bellorum. I enjoyed writing it, and I adored having the opportunity to research the early and fragmented Saxon kingdoms and the men who wrested power from the old tribal lords. Perhaps, with the current European fluidity of movement, the English people are experiencing a totally new form of culture clash. Only time will tell.

GLOSSARY OF
PLACE NAMES

Abone
Sea Mills, Bristol

Aquae Sulis
Bath and North-East Somerset

Arden (Forest of Arden)
Warwickshire

Bannaventa
Norton, Northamptonshire

Bravoniacum
Kirkby Thore, Cumbria

Bremenium
High Rochester, Northumberland

Bremetennacum
Ribchester, Lancashire

Cadbury
South Cadbury, Somerset (site of Cadbury Tor)

Caer Gai
Llanuwchllyn, Gwynedd

Calcaria
Tadcaster, Yorkshire

Calleva Atrebatum
Silchester, Hampshire

Camulodunum
Colchester, Essex

Canovium
Caerhun, Conwy

Cataractonium
Catterick, Yorkshire

Caussenae
Ancaster, Lincolnshire

Corinium
Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Cunetio
Mildenhall, Wiltshire

Danum
Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Deva
Chester

Durnovaria
Dorchester, Dorset

Durovernum
Canterbury, Kent

Eburacum
York

Glastonbury
Glastonbury, Somerset

Glevum
Gloucester

Isca Dumnoniorum
Exeter, Devon

Isurium
Aldborough, North Yorkshire

Lavatrae
Bowes, Durham

Letocetum
Wall, Staffordshire

Lindinis
Ilchester, Somerset

Lindum
Lincoln

Londinium
London

Magnus Portus
Portsmouth, Hampshire

Margidunum
East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire

Mona
The Isle of Anglesey

Morgidunum
Bridgford, Nottinghamshire

Moridunum
Carmarthen

Noviomagus
Chichester, West Sussex

Onnum
Halton, Northumberland

Petrianae
Stanwix, Cumbria

Petuaria
Brough-on-Humber, East Yorkshire

Pons Aelius
Newcastle Upon Tyne

Pontes
Staines, Middlesex

Portus Adurni
Portchester, Hampshire

Ratae
Leicester

Rheged
Eden Valley, Cumbria

Sorviodunum
Salisbury, Wiltshire

Spinis
Newbury, Berkshire

Tamesis
River Thames

Temple
Templebrough, Yorkshire

Tintagel
Tintagel, Cornwall

Vallum Antonini
Antonine Wall

Vallum Hadriani
Hadrian’s Wall

Vectis
The Isle of Wight

Venonae
High Cross, Leicestershire

Venta Belgarum
Winchester, Hampshire

Venta Icenorum
Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk

Verlucio
Sandy Lane, Wiltshire

Vernemetum
Willoughly-on-the-Wolds, Nottinghamshire

Verterae
Brough, Cumbria

Verulamium
St Albans, Hertfordshire

Vinovia
Bishop Auckland, Durham

Viroconium
Wroxeter, Shropshire

GLOSSARY OF
TRIBAL NAMES USED

Atrebates

Brigante

Catuvellauni

Coritani

Deceangli

Demetae

Dumnonii

Dobunni

Iceni

Otadini

Ordovice

Selgovae

Trinovantes