Lies, Damned Lies, and History(30)

He squinted. ‘I knew that.’ He began to make preparations to heave himself onto his feet. ‘I might go and say hello.’

Markham pushed him back down again. ‘Yes, and find yourself looking down the wrong end of her father, three uncles, eight brothers and seventeen cousins. Stick to the sheep. They might find your lack of facial fleece oddly alluring.’

Sands twisted round to look at him. ‘He can’t possibly be from around here. Everyone’s got a beard. You could lose a small horse in the one on that bloke over there. There are six-year-olds with more facial hair than you. The goats have beards. Even some of the women have beards.’

Roberts struggled indignantly, failed to gain control of his outlying regions, and collapsed again. Seconds later he was snoring.

Markham stared at him. ‘No beard. Can’t hold his drink. No way this boy’s Welsh.’

We briefly discussed lugging him back to our campsite but no one could really be bothered and so, in line with the prevailing ‘sleep where you drop’ culture, we did the same.





Chapter Seven

We awoke at dawn, chilled and damp. Early though it was, most people were already up and moving around, stirring the fires back into life. A very wobbly Mr Roberts found us some stale bread. None of them fancied the beer. Peterson and I grinned at each other.

It’s a strange thing, but the sky was still dark and it wasn’t all smoke from the bonfires. I sat in the warm, wet wind and looked around me. Yes, Arthur would hold the Saxons for a while, but he would die at Camlann if all the legends were true, and then they would return in force and then there would be no one to hold them. I looked up. Dark clouds gathered overhead, and in the east, a dim light glimmered. For the time being.

Peterson nudged me back to the present. Something important was happening.

Arthur emerged from his hut, still wearing his good clothes. He carried a sword in his outstretched arms. Every historian present automatically reached for their recorders. Markham rolled his eyes.

At once, silence fell. I had no idea what was going on. The presence of the sword seemed to preclude this being some sort of religious ceremony. I know Christianity wasn’t yet fully established across the country – if in fact it ever was. I once read that during the Second World War a number of churches removed their altars for safe keeping and that buried beneath some of them were old pagan symbols – people hedging their bets, I suppose, just in case this new god didn’t make the grade. It would be interesting to know whether the pagan symbols were replaced under the altars after the war was ended.

This, however, was not a religious ceremony. A group of men – leaders of the community, I assumed, lined up behind him.

Behind them, in neat lines, Arthur’s own men. Behind them, a great mass of everyone else, all jostling and pushing for the best view. We grabbed our stuff and joined them, and the procession set off, out through the gates and down the hill. The ground was badly churned up and there was still the odd piece of Saxon lying around, but Arthur marched steadily onwards.

‘He’s going to the cave,’ whispered Roberts, behind me. ‘He’s going to Arthur’s Cave.’

I suppose, if you thought about it, where else would he be going? But why? Some historian sense was telling me this was important.

We wound our way down through hazel, beech, hawthorn and oak trees. There were even mighty yews here, ancient and venerable, sweeping the ground with their branches.

And there it was: a large rock formation loomed through the trees. We halted outside a double-entranced cave that opened into darkness. Other than the occasional murmur, the crowd was completely silent. I gazed about me. The rock was green with moss and ferns. Ivy scrambled everywhere. Generations of dead leaves carpeted the ground. The area in front of the cave had been cleared, but trees grew from above and their overhanging branches obscured the two entrances. Possibly because of that we didn’t see where he came from but, suddenly, he was there.

A collective gasp went up from the people – including five historians and a security guard, it should be said. Those at the front stepped back.

Arthur, however, stood firm.

‘Who is he?’ murmured Peterson. ‘Is he a Druid?’

He stood tall and straight, with a great beak of a nose protruding from the mother of all beards. Long, grey hair streamed down his back, almost to his waist.

For a few seconds, no one moved. If I close my eyes I can still see the scene today. The glowing colours of autumn. The crowd of people gathered around the cave entrance and standing amongst the trees, all still and silent and watching. Arthur, deliberately vivid in his red and blue, offering up the sword in his outstretched arms.