Soon, we were summoned and in the growing half-light, we walked our horses behind Myrddin, imposing in his scholar’s gown, tapping out the paces with his lignum staff, the mile or so to the Stones. My tribune Celvinus and Bishop Candless followed, our only escort, but I noted that two of Myrddin’s slaves already stood among the Stones with flutes in their hands.
We dismounted, and Myrddin led us through the outer crescent of giant sandstone sarsens, some of which were three-pieced trilithons, one slab balanced on top of two uprights. He dismissed Candless and Celvinus, gesturing them to remain with our mounts. Guinevia and I continued, humbly following the Druid down the avenue of bluestones that led to an altar slab. Above it towered the heelstone that was the focal point of the whole open air temple.
At a gesture from the sorcerer, the flutists, who were on opposite sides of the stone circle, began to play a single, continuous, monotonous note and Myrddin waved us to the altar stone, where a Roman glass flask of dark fluid was standing. He handed it first to Guinevia, indicating that she should drink, then passed it to me. I took a deep draught. It was bitter, tasting of chestnut, musky like a forest floor, I thought.
Now, the sorcerer was indicating we should follow him, and he led us several times around the lintelled circle, where my head began to play tricks on me. It seemed we were passing through walls of air, invisible battlements and barriers, and the stones were pipers’ stones that sent regular waves and rollers of music, sounds that went loud and soft in some unknowable patterns.
The first rays of Sol were shining now, and the dust from our footsteps rose to shimmer in visible standing walls of sound and pressure. I could feel a drumlike pounding on my ears, a sense of thunder and an odd sort of stillness as if I were in a bubble and dissociated from everyday life.
Myrddin led us back to the altar stone where now, placed by some unseen hand, lay the wonderful nameless sword that carried icons of both the old and the new religions, and, next to it, the gleaming golden Torc of Caratacus. I touched Exalter’s hilt and glanced to see who had put them there. Nobody was in sight.
Now Myrddin was nudging us to turn and face the rising Sol as he climbed over the horizon. I was squinting into his orange rays and noting a chill breeze that foretold to my sailor’s instinct a coming squall, when a dazzling burst of white light blinded me and involuntarily, I turned away. Through the haze I saw Guinevia two paces away, lit like a goddess in the same fierce light and Myrddin, his head turned and eyes carefully averted from the brilliance, unfolding the blood-stiffened white linen of Milo’s wedding tunic.
My mind was numbed, maybe by the drugged drink, or by the fluting sound waves or the burst of sight-stealing brilliance, but I had to wonder how the wizard had managed to appropriate the tunic from Guinevia. As I looked numbly on, he laid it on the altar stone next to the Torc and sword, and I saw him produce the crowning half-skull I had lopped from Kinadius’ head and lay that alongside.
Now Myrddin was speaking, declaiming in sonorous tones of what seemed to be Celtic, and at the words Guinevia sank to her knees. Some Druid enchantment, I supposed, and she tugged at my belt to pull me down, too. Myrddin’s voice changed to a deeper tone and he spoke in British.
“I am Myrddin, son of no father, sired by a spirit, sent here to restore your hold on your ancient lands,” he said, “I walk with kings in high places, but I am a servant of the old gods, to whom I make this offering.
“Here is the sacred Torc of Caratacus, royal father of Britain, and here we also offer a sword of two religions, old and new, symbol of the union of the past and future in this island.
“And further symbol of our dedication to the old gods is this offering of royal blood. The Lady Guinevia is willing to give her blood now, but it may be more pleasing to you if she continues her work as a Druid and priestess. Instead, we offer two tokens of blood royal: that of the prince Milo, contained here in his wedding tunic; and that of the Pictish king Kinadius, whose skull is here and whose soul wanders in torment across the Underworld.
“If these offerings are suitable, please send us some sign.”
With that, the sorcerer stepped away from the altar stone. His gown flapped as a breeze stiffened and I sensed as much as felt a hint of rain on my cheek. Then came the unexpected.
A booming roll of thunder reverberated among the stones, not once, but three times, distinct and spaced. The gods, I knew, were speaking to us and I stretched myself facedown and prostrate under the shadow of the heelstone. A minute passed, a cold rain started to fall and Myrddin spoke.
“It’s done,” he said, and he sounded weary. “Guinevia, my dear, please stand up. The gods accept your willingness to die, but they do not want the sacrifice yet. The blood of your son and of his murderer is sufficient. They have spoken to us, and that is what they say.”
I looked at the emotions crossing her face. She had prepared herself for death. Now she was being told to resume her life. More, the acceptance of the sacrifices meant that the old gods would again extend their protection over Britain. I took her hand. “Milo did not lose his life for no purpose,” I said gently. “He did what the Jesus god did, and paid for the redemption of Britain with his own blood.”
She shook her head. “I am not going to die today,” she said, and her pentagram ring glowed with quiet magic. I slipped my cloak over her shoulders as the rain grew heavier. “Better stay dry, then,” I said, leading her away. “You don’t want to catch a chill.”
XXIV - Thunder
Myrddin waited until Arthur and Guinevia had rejoined an awed Candless and Celvinus where they stood with the horses, outside the circle of the Stones and the four were well on their way back to camp. When they were obscured by the moving skeins of rain, he called over the two flute players and sent them to where a third slave crouched hidden beyond the megaliths with an angled array of polished bronze mirrors. “That was a close thing,” the wizard muttered. “If that rain had come a little sooner there wouldn’t have been enough sun to reflect and they wouldn’t have been dazzled.”
“Still, the thunder was good.” He waved, and the fourth slave, the dark-complected Pict, eased himself out of the opening of the burial barrow where he had been stationed for hours. He carried with him a thin sheet of bronze the size of a large shield. The man grinned at Myrddin and flexed the sheet several times, creating a booming noise like thunder. “Stop that, fool,” said the sorcerer. “They might hear! Put it back inside.”
The bronze sheet returned to the barrow’s interior, the Pict began replacing the stones and turf to cover the entrance again. “Wait, wait!” Myrddin called. “Put these inside first,” and he carried the torc and sword to the barrow. “Don’t close it up, fellow,” he said impatiently, “You have to put the mirrors in there as well.”
The sorcerer supervised the slaves’ work, watched as they carefully rebuilt the stones that blocked the barrow entrance, and brought back from its hiding place and replaced the rolled turf to conceal the disturbances. Then he stood over the mound and declaimed a long and terrible curse on anyone who defiled this sacred burial place. He gave each of the four slaves a hard stare from which they flinched, and set off striding towards the camp.
Rain flattened his long, braided hair to his skull and blackened the shoulders of his grey scholar’s robe, but he was warm and comfortable in his soul. The plague was ending, the Romans seemed to have given up on their plans to reconquer the island, and the Saxons were in retreat. Neither Guinevia nor Arthur was dead, for Myrddin intuitively knew that Arthur had intended suicide once he had killed his lover.
Things had gone very well, he thought. Arthur believed that the gods again favoured Britain, and if it had taken some sleight of magic with mirrors and artificial thunder, well, much of sorcery was about that. The rain squall was a nice bonus, he mused. Maybe the gods actually did send that…
Arthur was jolting along on his horse, badly disoriented by both the drugged drink and the powerful emotions created by Myrddin’s stagecraft.
Guinevia, pale as a wraith, rode clinging to her saddle pommel. She was equally dizzy and disoriented. Once determined on death, she was now light-headedly and delightedly alive but the world seemed a curious, dreamlike place.
She turned to Arthur. “Caros, I am glad to be alive still,” she said. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy on her mouth and it seemed as if another person was speaking the words in her place.
Arthur looked at her, his dazed mind still struggling with the concept that the gods had visited them. “Mithras is with us again,” he said wonderingly. “Britain is saved. I did not have to kill us.” He reached into the neck of his tunic and fingered the bull talisman hidden there. “Mithras is with us,” he repeated. “We have succeeded.”
Somewhere, the Fates that spin our destinies were howling with laughter.
Historical Notes:
This ‘Lord of the Narrow Sea’ series was inspired by the real third century emperor Carausius, who seized power in northern Gaul and declared himself ruler of that territory and of Britain. See more about his reign (286 – 293 AD) in the Carausian Notes which follow.
The first book of the series, ‘Arthur Britannicus’ attempts to follow the historical Carausius’ imperial career; subsequent books cannot do so, given that he was assassinated (or betrayed in battle) in 293 AD and they are set in later years.
‘Arthur Imperator,’ ‘Arthur Invictus,’ and ‘The King’s Cavalry’ precede this fifth book, ‘King Arthur’s Plague,’ which is set against the backdrop of one of the great bubonic epidemics which killed as many as a quarter of the population of Europe. The emperor Gothicus himself died of the plague in 270 AD, only a few decades before this fictional outbreak.
In this latest of Arthur’s adventures, there are other references to real events and places. For example, the Trapain Treasure was a hoard of silver plate recovered in 1919 within the boundary of the ancient hillfort now known as Trapain Law (formerly Dunpendyrlaw). This fort, near Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland was a place of burial in 1500 BC and was occupied almost continuously from 40 AD until about 400 AD, when a magnificent new rampart was built.
Bishop Candless’ fictional treasure is based upon the Roman table silver, early Christian objects and a Roman officer’s uniform found there in 1919. The finds had been hacked to pieces or crushed, ready either for melting as bullion, or for division as loot.
The hoard, mostly repaired and restored, can be seen at the National Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh, and is regarded as one of the finest finds to date of Roman treasure.
Another example of my incorporation of actual events in the narratives comes in the description of ‘magical’ auditory illusions created by Myrddin at Stonehenge. Modern researchers have found that the positioning of the standing stones cause flutes playing the same continuous note to set up patterns of interference, or standing sound waves which create the effect that invisible objects stand between a listener and the musical instruments.
To the ancients, such effects would have been considered magical, and it is no stretch of credulity to consider that the stones may have been placed with these properties in mind.
Equally, Myrddin might well have investigated the possibilities raised by Archimedes in 212 BC, to create thermal weapons by focusing the sun’s rays. ‘Burning mirrors’ of polished bronze could have been used to reflect the sun’s rays and blind Arthur, as he was dazzled during his sorcerer’s performance at Stonehenge.
King Kinadius, too, is a character from life, and was the first ruler of all Pictland. His reign from 843 -858 AD, was somewhat later than this Arthur’s, but this IS a work of fiction… Interestingly, Kinadius mac Ailpin was born on Iona, which was a centre of learning for Druids long before it became a Christian seat and could well have been the hiding place for Caratacus’ torc. As for the sacred sword that bound two religions, there is evidence that some Druids converted and became monks of an early Celtic Christian order called Culdees.
Carausius: The Legend of Arthur
Britain’s forgotten emperor Carausius and his triumphs may well be the true foundation of the legend of King Arthur, the mythic warrior who became a symbol of courage, chivalry and Christianity.
Late in the third century of the Common Era, the Belgic-born Mauseus Carausius was commander of Rome’s English Channel fleet and was quietly building both his treasury and his military forces. Ordered to report for court martial by superiors nervous of his power, the burly, bear-like soldier instead declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul, suborned several legions and the flotilla that controlled the Narrow Sea between the two countries and began a decade of defiance against the might of Rome.
In that time, the rebel emperor quieted the quarrelsome British tribes, unified the country and, as its first ruler (286 – 293 CE) used his navy to create and sustain the nation’s independence. However, Carausius’ significance in history was forgotten for centuries despite his achievements in driving off the Romans and quieting the Picts. He may also have defeated Germanic invaders, as his Saxon Shore fortifications prove that he was more than prepared to meet them. Today, his known and acclaimed triumphs are closely echoed in the stories of King Arthur.
The life purpose and the legend of Arthur, the battle leader of the British, came together when he led his nation successfully to repel invaders. That victorious ‘lord of battles’ was described by the monk Gildas, (circa 500 - 570 CE) who created the island’s earliest written history when he penned an admonition of usurper kings, corrupt judges and foolish priests. In his sermon, Gildas described the siege of Mount Badon as the great conflict in which Anglo-Saxon invaders were routed decisively to bring peace after a long period of strife.
The north British monk’s ‘De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae’ (‘On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain’) speaks of an unnamed ‘outstanding ruler’ (‘superbus tyrannus’) who brought the British a series of victories that culminated at Badon. That event was so celebrated that Gildas did not bother to identify the location of Badon or even to name the victor, noting only that ‘Arth’ – Celtic for ‘The Bear’ – was such a great overlord that the king of Powys, Cuneglasus The Red, humbly acted as his master’s charioteer. After that triumph, the very name ‘Arthur’ became a powerful symbol and was adopted by later rulers who wished to assume some of the glory of the legendary British champion.
Gildas’ writings are valued as the earliest known recorded history of Britain, although his calendar was muddled. He wrongly dates the construction of the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus to the late fourth century, when they actually were created two centuries earlier. By his account, the ramparts were built in the years before invaders from the west and north devastated the island. In turn, the incomers were defeated in a series of battles, of which the siege at Mount Badon was among the last, and the victor of that siege united Britain.
Gildas, who was writing a century or two after the events, might have confused the dates, but he likely got the sequence right: the walls were built, the invaders came, a leader arose to drive them away. It means that Arthur may have lived considerably earlier than generally believed, at a date contemporaneous with the late third century reign of Carausius.
The vast poverty of evidence from the time means that the other histories we have are not contemporary, some being written as long as 800 years after the events they report, but they agree to the general theme: that an ‘Arthur’ or ‘Caros’ led his country against invaders in the earliest days of the nation, bringing peace. Some accounts are not written, but come from folklore, like the strong Celtic tradition which holds that the Pict Oscar, son of Ossian, was killed when he attacked the emperor Caros while he was rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall.
The Welsh storyteller Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing his ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (‘The History of the Kings of Britain’) circa 1136 CE, also relayed a good deal of long-established folklore and described Arthur as a Briton, although some suggest the king was actually a Celt.
Carausius, the hi
storical ruler at the heart of the legend, may well have been Celtic. Roman panegyrists who denigrated the man who seized a throne from their patrons sneeringly described him as a ‘Menapian of the lowest birth,’ but their views were coloured. Menapia was the River Meuse region of modern Belgium, an area settled by Celts. Some sources suggest that Carausius was recorded as the son of a ranking official from the region.
What we do know is that his rise through the Roman military to become admiral of the Channel fleet attests to his abilities, and the evidence of the literary slogans on his coinage suggests he was well-educated.
His image on those coins shows a bearded, bear-like, bull-necked soldier, and all the evidence points to his being a bold and outstanding leader of men with great personal courage and charisma. Another clue to his standing is that at his life’s end he was buried in the heart of Britain as a king, and his headstone shows he was a Christian. The Carausius grave marker in Wales with its looped Chi-Ro cross is especially rare, and it and a tall milestone found in 1894 not far from Hadrian’s Wall carry the only two known inscriptions to him in the nation he once ruled, because the Romans expurgated his memorials after they recaptured Britain.
The milestone, which was found on Gallows Hill, Carlisle, was saved only by chance as it was re-used, reversed in the ground. The buried portion preserved for us the glory of the redacted emperor’s full name and title: ‘Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, Dutiful, Fortunate, the Unconquered Augustus.’ It was recorded thus:
IMP C M AVR MAVS CARAVSIO PF INVICTO AVG
Correlations between places important in the lives of Arthur and Carausius provide other links between the mythic and the historical men. The Arthur of legend has numerous claimed resting places, but some of the most persuasive tales link him to north Wales, where Carausius was buried.
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