Finding Camlann Read Online Free Page B

dark-green gorse. It must be four o’clock at least, no more than a couple of hours until sunset.
    ‘Is there more to the story?’ Julia says.
    ‘Yes, there is a little more.’ Donald motions for her to sit down next to him on the grass-covered bank, and she cannot help liking the bold, casual quality of this gesture, as if they were truly old friends rather than people who once spent half an afternoon together. She wonders what Hugh would think, if he could see her now. Of all the people in the world, he is the first to leap to a jealous conclusion.
    Donald takes out his hand-drawn map, flattens it across his knee to protect it from the breeze, taps a finger on the south coast of Wales. ‘Somewhere here, in about 540 AD , a monk called Gildas the Wise wrote a chronicle of the events of his time. According to Gildas, the Britons had some success in defending themselves against the Saxon invaders. They probably held the line roughly here.’ He traces an arc across the south-western corner of Britain. ‘Some time near the end of the fifth century, as Gildas tells the story, a British force defeated the Saxons at Mount Badon, and the battle led to a peace that lasted for over fifty years. The problem is, Gildas doesn’t say who actually fought in the battle, and he doesn’t mention Arthur at all, either in his description of Badon or anywhere else in his writings. This might lead us to think that no one of that name played a major role in the events of the time.’
    ‘So that’s your answer, I assume? Arthur wasn’t there—someone made that part up.’
    Donald smiles grimly, folds the sheet of paper and puts it back in his pocket. ‘That could be true. But if Arthur was not the hero of Mount Badon, I need to find out who he really was.’
    For Julia, there is a certain audacity in this challenge that Donald has set for himself, but also a flaw in his logic. ‘It doesn’t seem surprising to me that the historical Arthur is beyond our reach,’ she says. ‘My father would say he is purely a hero of the imagination. He’s sleeping somewhere in the otherworld, ready to awake in the Welshman’s hour of need.’
    Donald stands up, takes a few steps away, picks up a narrow rounded stone lying half-buried in the grass. ‘Even in Gildas’s time, I think it’s probably true that Arthur was more an idea than a real person. He was seen as a peerless mythical hero against whom contemporary warriors might be compared.’
    ‘But that still doesn’t really answer the question?’
    ‘No, you’re quite right, it doesn’t.’
    By now, the rain has gathered itself into a steady, chilling drizzle. Julia stands next to Donald, shivering faintly, watching as he hefts his stone and launches it on a long, low trajectory along the flank of the hill and into the trees beyond.
    She pushes the damp hair back from her forehead, takes gentle hold of his arm. ‘Let’s get back to the car,’ she says.

     
    DAYLIGHT IS FAILING by the time Donald pulls up in front of his rented cottage at Iffley, just above the Thames on the southern outskirts of Oxford. He can hear the telephone ringing inside. Sprinting through the soaking rain, he forces the key into the lock, shoulders open the protesting door, drops his briefcase at the foot of the stairs and grabs at the receiver as he scuffs off his muddy shoes.
    ‘Have you heard yet?’ The familiar voice sets him instantly on edge, irritated at his ex-wife’s assumption that he knows t sat he kprecisely what is on her mind. When he first met her, Lucy Trevelyan, the brash young visiting scholar from California who had invited herself to join his summer archaeological dig in Dorset, he was intrigued by her directness, her forceful, earthy brand of intelligence; but her eccentricities have long since become purely vexing to him.
    ‘Heard what, Lucy?’ Water is still dripping from his hair as he stands there in the semi-darkness with the night-time illumination of the west front of St.