Warriors of Camlann (35 page)

Rhonwen nodded. It seemed as if Taliesin and Rhonwen understood each other very well, in spite of their differences.

‘You are right – there is no one left here I would trust to boil water. Cerdic cannot even make the battlefield on time. Tell Macsen I will make sure that the Combrogi are remembered here. I made a mistake, I see that now. I have hastened our end.' She sighed, a sorrowful sound. ‘The Aenglisc have a word for fate,
wyrd
. It is my
wyrd
to put right what I have helped make wrong. That is what you want isn't it? Isn't that what you said this world needs?'

Taliesin nodded. ‘
The Bear
must be remembered too,
the Bear
of the prophecy – that's important. He must be remembered as a good man. Maybe the memory is as important as the deeds.
The Bear
must be a beacon, bright in the dark chaos of this new Aenglisc world.'

Rhonwen was ashen faced, but more sincere than Dan had ever heard her. ‘I will see to it. Though it seems to me that this Ursula is as much
the Bear
as your Arturus Ursus. She is all that the Combrogi crave in a hero – and more, she leaves the field still breathing – maybe we can call on her again, when next we stand on the brink.'
She spoke with the strange cadences of a prophesying Heahrune, then stopped abruptly. ‘Do not worry, Taliesin, I have heard of the prophecy and I will ensure that the Celtic Bear is remembered. You have my triple oath.'

Taliesin nodded again, his eyes misty. ‘I will tell Macsen, if I should see him again, that he yet has a sister to be proud of.'

Dan was not interested in Rhonwen's reputation; he only wanted to get Ursula home.

She seemed better, touched by the mist, but even so they had no time to waste.

‘We haven't time for this, Taliesin. Can you direct the Veil to get me home?' Dan no longer cared about anything but returning Ursula to their own world.

‘Goodbye, Rhonwen, my dear Brother Frontalis, Bryn.' Taliesin sounded sad, chastened.

Dan grabbed Braveheart's collar with one hand while, with the other, he helped support Ursula's weight. The sadness was oppressive. Dan's eyes were wet with tears. He would have liked to embrace Bryn and Frontalis, but there was not time. Dan placed his hand on Taliesin's shoulder and thus joined, he allowed Taliesin to lead them all, Ursula, Dan and Braveheart, forward, through the yellow Veil, to home?

I would like to thank: my test readers, William Browne and Jessica Liebmann, for their helpful comments, Dan Shadrake of Britannia, the Arthurian Society, for his insight into the military and other details of the period, and my agent Mic Cheetham for her ever sound advice. Thanks are also due to my husband Paul for his boundless support and enthusiasm and, of course, my editors at Bloomsbury. All mistakes are, as ever, entirely my own.

No one knows for sure what kind of a man might lie behind the legend of Arthur but if there really was one great leader who turned the tide of the Saxon settlement of Britain in the fifth century he may well have been a War Duke (
Dux Bellorum
) of Britain struggling to maintain the remnants of Roman civilisation after the departure of the legions and much of the Roman hierarchy. It is a period of British history in which hard facts are few and far between. Though
Warriors of Camlann
is definitely fiction, I have tried to re-create the time as realistically as I can and have included historical figures in the story. Hengist and his sons Aelle and Aesc actually existed, as did Cerdic, though he is generally thought to have been a Saxon of Celtic descent and not, as in my story, Arturus's half-brother. He did, however, settle in Gewisse (Southampton). Ambrosius Aurelianus who ‘wore the purple' (i.e. was an Emperor) and Vortigern (the British leader who invited the Saxons to
Britain as allies to fight the Picts) are both mentioned by Gildas in
Of the Fall and Destruction of Britain
, a near-contemporary history.

I have tried to make the weapons, armour and strategy of the time as accurate as I can and I'm grateful to Dan Shadrake for his help, though he is not in any way responsible for any of my errors! There is a tradition of Arthur being a cavalry leader and from the late Roman
Notitia Digitatum
it is known that Sarmatian armoured cataphracts were stationed at Ribchester in the ancient Kingdom of Rheged in the late Roman period. They carried a dragon standard and brought their own myth of a sacred sword pulled from a stone. They were descendants of the 5,500 cataphracts brought from their native Hungary in
AD
175. I like to think of them as Arthur's most powerful weapon.

There are many competing theories concerning almost everything about the Arthur story and not least the location of Camelot, but two favourite contenders are Camulodunum and Cadbury Castle, the site of my Fort Cado. No one knows the location of the decisive battle at Mount Baddon either, though it ended the Saxon advance for a generation and is supposed to have lasted three days. There is evidence to suggest that it may have happened where I place the battle site, just outside Bath (Aquae Sulis). I also place the last battle at Camlann (crooked valley), one of the many possible
sites, and according to the
Annales Cambriae
, it is where both Medraut and Arthur died.
King Arthur, A Military History
by Michael Homes inspired my ideas on the military campaign, though the battles and tactics in the story are my own invention. Arthur's burial site has, of course, never been found.

N. M. Browne

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York

This electronic edition published in September 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

Copyright © N.M. Browne 2003
The moral right of the author has been asserted

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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 4088 2628 7

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