Medieval Romantic Legends

by Kathryn Le Veque

  It was the first time he’d ever seen the place while he was awake. Myrddin noted the differences and similarities to his dream—and knew they mattered not at all. He followed the signs to a spot to the northwest of the church. The Saxons had built a bonfire, their only tinder the bodies of the men they’d killed.

  Upwards of two dozen men burned in the pyre, most marred beyond recognition. The fire hadn’t yet consumed their gear but the torn clothes and disarrayed armor told Myrddin all he needed to know about how they died. His friends lay as they’d been thrown, haphazard and in every direction. Each man wore the dragon crest on his surcoat.

  Myrddin walked around the pile in a daze, the smoke stinging his eyes, although he would have been blind from tears regardless. At the far end, he spied the headless and mutilated body of his king, fallen off the edge of the pile and stripped of its fine armor. Choking on the horror of it, he dragged the remains to one side, unable to look more closely at the other bodies for fear he’d find the faces of his friends staring up at him, lifeless and empty.

  A lament rose unbidden in his ears. Its relentless rhythm drove Myrddin’s movements as he labored to put out the fire, to throw dirt on bodies, and to provide some semblance of a decent burial for his king, although all that was decent had disappeared from the earth:

  Can you not sense the turmoil amongst the oaks?

  Do you not see the path of wind and rain?

  And that the world is ending?

  Cold my heart in a fearful breast

  For the lion of Wales, that oaken door

  our warlord, our dragon-king

  Our Arthur … is dead.

  Exhausted and spent, knowing he’d done his best, and it hadn’t been enough, Myrddin wept over the fallen body of Arthur ap Uther, his lord, and the last hope of his people.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  12 December 537 AD

  High in the mountains to the northwest of Buellt, with the snow up to Cadfarch’s knees, Myrddin stumbled towards the Welsh camp, drawn by the smoke and firelight. He’d buried King Arthur’s headless body as best he could—but with the dark and no tools, only his ragged and bleeding nails, and the clouds blotting out the stars and moon, the body was more under rock and brush than earth.

  It had taken far longer than Myrddin had wanted. Once he’d finished, he’d given Cadfarch his head, merely directing him west towards what he hoped were the remains of Arthur’s camp. Arthur’s men might face a battle tomorrow that they could easily lose, now that they had no king to lead them.

  And after that, if Myrddin survived the battle, he had to find Nell and Huw. They needed to decide what they were going to do next: if they were going to stay in Wales and live as best they could, or walk away. Or maybe die where they lay. The part of him that refused to surrender, that held onto hope amidst the desolation, died a little inside with every step that led him farther away from them. With so many dead, his family was the only thing that mattered anymore.

  Myrddin had just reached the first of the outer sentries, posted some two hundred yards from the camp, when a voice from behind hailed him. “My lord!”

  Wearily, Myrddin swung around, every muscle protesting even that slight movement. Cedric’s men, torches lighting up the forest, rode towards him. In response, the sentry beside Myrddin raised his pike. It was a brave stance, though what he thought two men could do against a company of soldiers Myrddin couldn’t guess.

  Myrddin raised a hand to Godric, the young captain, while reassuring the sentry. “They are friends.”

  Godric began speaking before he’d come to a halt. “We’ve just come from the church. I’m sorry. We were too late. We were lost for hours and ended up miles out of our way. The snow—” he broke off at Myrddin’s look, knowing as Myrddin did that excuses were merely that, when the price of failure was the loss of a king and a country. If the blizzard had not delayed them, these twenty men could have been enough to change the course of history.

  “Come,” Myrddin said. “I was too late as well.”

  Myrddin turned from Godric, gave the sentry a nod, and led the company the short distance through the woods to the camp. If he’d had the energy to think on it, the scene when they reached it was far calmer than he would have expected: men walked around the fires; they ate and drank, but their movements held no urgency. If anything, the emotion Myrddin felt from them was positive—even cheerful—without the expected drunken despair.

  And then it hit him. Could they not know?

  If it was possible for him to feel more despairing, the emotion would have overtaken him then. He faced the truth: the Saxons had killed everyone else who could have reported back, and it was he who would bring the news. Only he had survived and that by chance.

  Myrddin dismounted in front of the pickets. “My lord Myrddin,” the guard protecting the entrance said, “we’ve missed you.”

  It took a moment for Myrddin to recognize the man as one of Cai’s—and then his already cold heart collapsed in on itself. Of course. Cai had come. It would be just like him. Perhaps it was he who’d convinced Arthur to meet Edgar, setting up his brother to die as he’d plotted with Agravaine back in the belfry at Bangor, and now he would get to act the grieving brother and take up the mantle of Wales in his stead.

  Myrddin’s stomach churned in a foul pit, and he felt like puking. Instead, he looked for Deiniol among the men at the fire pits for he was sure to be here too, but he didn’t see him.

  Myrddin and Cedric’s soldiers left their horses with the boys whose job it was to tend them and trudged through the camp to what had been Arthur’s tent. When they reached it, voices inside rose and fell. Myrddin hesitated at the entrance, gripping the hilt of his sword. He speculated if it would be better to run the traitor through now, or see Nell and Huw safe first and then return to finish him. While he was deliberating, a man spoke from behind him:

  “You’re late, but I forgive you since you’ve brought so many friends.”

  Myrddin spun around at the familiar voice. Gawain smiled his greeting, leaving Myrddin unable to speak. He should be dead! Why isn’t he dead like in my dreams? Oblivious to Myrddin’s shock, Gawain leaned across Myrddin and held out a hand to Godric, who took it. He remained mute, but Myrddin managed to stutter, “You—but I saw—how can you—the king—?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Gawain said. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “The church—”

  “The king didn’t go to the church.” Gawain looked from Myrddin to Godric whose mouth was opening and closing like a landed fish.

  “Didn’t go?” Myrddin was unable to think coherently. “Then who—?”

  Gawain shook his head at Myrddin’s evident stupidity and gave up on him. He gestured towards the entrance to the tent. “Go on. The king is waiting.”

  “He’s dead!”

  The shout came from the entrance to the camp, and Myrddin turned to see Deiniol riding towards them, threading his horse between fire pits. He was bent over his horse’s neck, haggard of face and worn to exhaustion. He pulled up and dismounted.

  Once on the ground, he staggered towards Myrddin, wrapped his arms around his neck, and to Myrddin’s combined horror and astonishment, wept into his cloak.

  “Who’s dead, Deiniol?” Myrddin grasped him by the arms and pushed him away so he could see his face. “Who’s dead?”

  “Lord Cai,” Deiniol said. “At the church by the Cam River.”

  “Cai is dead?” Gawain’s voice held disbelief.

  Deiniol nodded. “When Lord Cai learned that his brother had passed up the chance to ally himself with his nephew, Edgar, he went in his stead. It was his right.”

  Gawain stared at Deiniol. “Sweet Mary, mother of Christ!”

  Deiniol continued, caught in his own misery yet still defending his lost lord. “Lord Cai had arranged to meet with Edgar in the nave of St. Cannen’s church, or so we thought. But shortly after we arrived, Saxon soldiers set upon us. Everyone is dead! Every
one but me.”

  Myrddin gazed into Deiniol’s smoke-blackened face. Ordinarily he would have found some illicit pleasure, even triumph, at seeing Deiniol so unmanned by grief. Now, Myrddin stopped to take in a breath and refocus on the part of Deiniol’s story that mattered most to him. “Then King Arthur—”

  “What’s this I hear about my brother?” The door to the tent swept open, and a dark head ducked through the doorway.

  The sight of his king walking toward him, with Gareth and Geraint behind him, had Myrddin weaving on his feet, his hollowed limbs barely holding him upright. “I thought you’d gone to the church.”

  “Of course I didn’t go,” Arthur said.

  “Of course—” Lost, Myrddin swallowed the rest of his sentence.

  Arthur shook his head at him. “How could I go to that meeting when you made it so clear I shouldn’t? You who have served me unswervingly for twenty years. You who had the courage to speak the truth.”

  “But you didn’t listen to me. I failed.”

  Geraint, coming to stand beside the king, smirked. “Only if failure means saving King Arthur’s life—and Wales.”

  “What do you mean?” Myrddin said. “What has any of this to do with me?”

  “My dear boy,” Arthur said. “It has everything to do with you. Cai’s increasingly desperate attempts to unseat me resulted from your continual interference in his plans. Who escaped from Rhuddlan to warn me that Edgar’s letter might not be what it seemed? Who thwarted the attack on Garth Celyn? Who told me of Cai’s treachery when no one else dared speak of it? Who related to Geraint your fears of my death? Who is possessed of the sight?”

  This struck Myrddin speechless, but Geraint nodded. Arthur glanced from one to the other before continuing. “Yes. You have a friend in Geraint. If more of my men had your courage, Modred would not have been able to constrain us as he has.” Now his eyes narrowed. “I have underestimated—and you have downplayed—your abilities until now. We will not allow that error to continue another day.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe me!” Myrddin recalled his desperation and the hours he and Nell had agonized over their choices, or lack thereof. “I feared for twenty years that I couldn’t avert your death. Until just now, I believed I had failed.”

  “And that is my fault,” Arthur said. “That is my lapse for not seeing that one of my staunchest defenders and counselors had gone unacknowledged all these years.”

  “What changed your mind?” Myrddin said.

  “The evening after you left for Brecon, I dined with my brother. It was as if I saw him for the first time. Noting my attention, he turned to me with a smile that never reached his eyes. I recalled your parting words when you spoke to me of his treachery.”

  “Thou practice deceit through confidence; Alas! my brother, must that be?” Myrddin said. “From a poem by St. Llywelyn.”

  “I’d refused to listen to you. But you were right. Cai opposed me at every turn, even as he professed his support. My brother was the same man he’d always been, just as you were the same as you’d always been. In that moment I knew it, knew that I should be listening to you and not to my brother.”

  Arthur sighed. “I informed Cai that I would not be going to meet Edgar—though not why.”

  Gareth moved into the circle of men. “Cai was angry but he acquiesced, lest he reveal his duplicity. With that, I came forward to confess my part in all this—that I also knew of Cai’s treachery—that he had been working with the Saxons, specifically with Agravaine, for many months.”

  “But how did Cai end up at the church when he knew it was a trap?” Myrddin said.

  “It is as I told you,” Deiniol said in a loud voice, speaking for the first time since Arthur had appeared. “He sought Edgar’s support for our cause.”

  “More like he thought to concoct a new plan to overthrow King Arthur,” Geraint said, “and wanted Agravaine’s help with it.”

  “You have the truth of it,” Gawain said, with a half-laugh.

  Myrddin was filled with a sudden compassion for the wayward lord. “Except that neither Edgar nor Agravaine went to the church to meet Cai, and instead Agravaine sent men to kill him. Cai went to the church thinking he was among friends, only to find he’d outlived his usefulness. It was an opportunity to get rid of a rival, and Agravaine took it.”

  Myrddin had dreamt his own death at that church, lived again and again the moment when he realized he was going to die. Cai must have known that feeling, there at the end. Myrddin hoped that as he died, he’d repented, and that he’d understood he couldn’t trust these Saxons and should have remained loyal to his brother.

  “Edgar betrayed him,” Geraint said.

  “Mmmm,” Myrddin said. “Not Edgar, in truth.”

  “What did you say?” Arthur peered into Myrddin’s face.

  “Edgar’s initial letter to you was genuine, my lord,” Myrddin said. “Agravaine imprisoned him in Buellt Castle because of it. We released him. Nell and Huw are accompanying him north even now. Agravaine, however, is dead.”

  Myrddin’s companions openly gaped at him at that.

  Myrddin shrugged. “It needed doing.”

  Arthur met the gazes of each of the men in his circle in turn: Geraint, Gawain, Gareth, and Myrddin, Godric, with his men crowded up close to hear the conversation better, and Deiniol, who stood a little behind Myrddin, listening but not one of them. “In one day, Modred has lost four allies: Cai, Cedric, Agravaine, and Edgar. In the morning, we will seal his loss by taking Buellt Castle from him too.” He stepped back and gestured towards his tent, indicating that the men should enter. “We have much to do before dawn.”

  Myrddin, for his part, hung back to the last, coming to a halt in front of King Arthur after everyone else had entered the tent. The two men studied each other for a long moment, and then Arthur stuck out his hand to Myrddin. For the first time in his life, Myrddin clasped forearms with his king, one man to another, before they turned together into the tent.

  For once, despair was in abeyance. A potent mix of joy, awe, and relief flooded Myrddin. Arthur ap Uther … lived.

  The End

  Historical Background

  Historians are not in agreement as to whether or not the ‘real’ Arthur—the living, breathing, fighting human being—ever existed. The original sources for the legend of King Arthur come from a few Welsh texts. These are:

  1) Y Goddodin—a Welsh poem by the 7th century poet, Aneirin, with its passing mention of Arthur. The author refers to the battle of Catraeth, fought around AD 600 and describes a warrior who “fed black ravens on the ramparts of a fortress, though he was no Arthur”.

  www.missgien.net/celtic/gododdin/poem.html

  2) Gildas, a 6th century British cleric who wrote De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain). He never mentions Arthur, although he states that his own birth was in the year of the siege of Mount Badon. The fact that he does not mention Arthur, and yet is our only historian of the 6th century, is an example of why many historians suspect that King Arthur never existed.

  www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/gildas.html

  3) Taliesin, a 6th century poet, who wrote several poems about Arthur. Including the lines: “…before the door of the gate of hell the lamp was burning. And when we went with Arthur, a splendid labour, Except seven, none returned from Caer Vedwyd.”

  www.maryjones.us/ctexts/t30.html

  4) Nennius – “History of the Britons” (Historia Brittonum, c. 829-30) “Then it was, that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. And though there were many more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times chosen their commander, and was as often conqueror.”

  www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/nennius-full.html

  5) Native Welsh Tales: These connected works of Welsh mythology were named the Mabinogion in the 19th century by their first translator, Lady Charlotte Guest. These include the story of Culhwch and Olwen, in
which Arthur and his men track down the thirteen treasures of Britain, and The Dream of Rhonabwy, a tale of Arthur that takes place after the Battle of Camlann (thus indicating that he survived it) and includes directions to ‘Mount Badon’ or Caer Faddon, as the Welsh call it. These stories are found in the Red Book of Hergest and/or the White Book of Rhydderch, both copied in the mid-14th century.

  www.maryjones.us/ctexts/index_welsh.html

  6) The Annales Cambriae. This book is a Welsh chronicle compiled no later than the 10th century AD. It consists of a series of dates, two of which mention Arthur: “Year 72, The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victors. Year 93, The Strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut fell.” The early dates of the above works indicate little or no relation to the later English/French embellishments of Arthur, which Geoffrey of Monmouth popularized.

  www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/annalescambriae.html

  Later texts that are built on the above works, in chronological order, are:

  1) William, Chaplain to Bishop Eudo of Leon – “Legend of St. Goeznovius, preface” (c. 1019)

  2) William of Malmesbury – “The Deeds of the Kings of England (De Gestis Regum Anglorum)” (c. 1125)

  3) Henry of Huntingdon – “History of the English” (Historia Anglorum, c. 1130)

  4) The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, dating to the middle 12th century. This is the beginning of the King Arthur legend as we know it. Geoffrey was born in Wales, but worked for his patron, Robert of Gloucester, who was particularly interested in legitimizing the claim of his sister (Matilda) to the English crown. Thus, the confusion of landmarks which moved Arthur from Wales to England proper, and the romanticizing of the tale, including the notion that Britain was originally conquered by Brutus, the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas, and thus Britain was ‘classical’ in origin.