Finding Camlann Read Online Free Page A

corrupted by the English. All the talk about round tables and magical swords was a lot of nonsense concocted as a means of legitimising the English monarchy.’
    ‘That’s not very far from the truth,’ Donald says.
    There is something vexing to Julia in the guarded way he says this. ‘I think it’s precisely the truth. The English were not content with taking our land—they had to steal our favourite stories as well.’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’ Donald puts his hands up in self-defence. ‘I didn’t steal them.’
    She laughs at him now, at the wry expression on his face. ‘You mustn’t get upset at me. I’m my father’s daughter, that’s all. How did you get to be so interested in Arththisted inur, anyway?’
    ‘I suppose it started when I went up to Bangor to do my Ph.D. My thesis advisor was a terrifying Welsh bulldog by the name of John Evans. He wanted me to write about the archaeology of the famous dark-age citadels of the Cambrian mountains, but I was much more interested in the mythical traditions connected with those sites. Before I knew it, I was making a full-blown study of the legendary heroes of Wales, including Arthur and Owain Glyn D ŵ r. Evans thought it was a frivolous topic for a student of archaeology, and told me to stop. He threatened to throw me out of his research group, which made me all the more determined.’
    ‘What happened in the end?’
    ‘We came to an agreement. I got to write what I wanted to write, but I had to put in a lot of gritty archaeology as well. I spent two years digging trenches on the top of Dinas Emrys.’
    It is a place Julia knows well, from visits with her father. She smiles at this image of a youthful Donald stranded in a ditch on the fog-bound hilltop. ‘Shall we go for our walk? You can tell me more on the way up.’
    On the far side of the church, they find a steep muddy track that takes them on a zigzag path between thick clumps of scratching gorse. The rain has backed off, though threatening to return in full force. Ahead of them, the path opens up to a long gentle upward sweep over close-cropped turf towards the summit. In the distance, to the east and south, waves of rounded hills spread out to the horizon. To the south-west, the Georgian city of Bath makes a dramatic splash of cream-coloured stone that fills the valley and spills up the surrounding slopes.
    At the brow of the hill, they find a small sign put up by the National Trust: Little Solsbury Hill, Ancient Monument . A modest earthwork rampart, all that remains of the iron-age fort that once occupied the hilltop, encloses a broad grassy space grazed by half a dozen lugubrious dairy cows.
    ‘It’s a lovely view,’ Julia says. ‘But I’m still not quite sure why we’ve come here.’
    There is something charmingly professorial in the way Donald walks away a few paces, then turns back to face her, using his hands for emphasis as he talks. ‘Do you remember the Arthurian battle-listing I told you about? It was written down in the ninth century, in a book called the Historia Brittonum . The manuscript includes a list of twelve battles in which Arthur supposedly took part, including one at a place called Mount Badon.’
    ‘Is that where we are now? On Mount Badon?’
    ‘I’d like to think it was here. This is one of several sites that have been proposed, and I think it’s a plausible location.’ Donald shrugs, defensive or perhaps dismissive, she cannot tell. ‘The archaeologist in me wants to know for sure, but the precise geography doesn’t really matter. The more interesting question is whether a warrior known as Arthur was the leader of the Britons that day.’
    The afternoon has descended into a chilly gloom, the sun now lost behind swirling cloudbanks driven from west to east by a freshening breeze. Bowing their heads into the wind, they walk on to the farther edge of the hill and stand there for a while looking down a long slope studded with small birch trees and dense thickets of the