Clash of Kings (61 page)

After all this time, I finally have a chance to find him, Myrddion decided, although he was a little apprehensive at the thought of the wooden ship that would take them over the Litus Saxonicum. But he comforted himself with the thought of the new scrolls he could read and the knowledge he would accumulate. His excitement gave a sparkle to his black eyes and he set Vulcan to pirouetting on the slick roadway.

He stared into the swirling whiteness that obliterated the borders between day and night. Out there, in the wilds, his destiny awaited him. Beyond a sea that he had never seen, adventure beckoned. He prayed to the Mother that she would guide his footsteps through the alien and dangerous lands that they would traverse.

‘Wait for me,’ he whispered. ‘I’m coming!’

But the wind blew Myrddion’s words away and filled his mouth with snow.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Initially, I had no intention of returning to the Arthurian legends once my trilogy on the life and times of King Arthur of Britain was completed. However, a number of people kept asking questions about my interpretation of the characters in the novel, especially about my Merlin, Myrddion Merlinus, causing me to return to my research and hunt out the obscure strands of the legends of that enigmatic figure. Prior to writing my own books, I had believed that Mary Stewart’s magnificent trilogy
The Crystal Cave
was the definitive, realistic description of Merlin’s early life.

Then, as I considered the comparisons between them, I realised that my vision was quite different from Mary Stewart’s masterly seer and prophet. My Myrddion is an erudite, driven individual, a man born to be a scientist or a medical researcher in a kinder age, but also a scholar possessing an intellect that was not content to stay within the narrow parameters of his age. Maps, engines of war, architecture, in fact all the sciences, would have appealed to a man so interested in how the world worked.

The legends gave me vital pieces of information, so I was challenged to make sense out of a series of superstitious incidents, several of them tied to Dinas Emrys. I opted for a dramatic, but physically possible, conception for Myrddion, just as I tried to construct a realistic environment for his upbringing. Branwyn became my villain, as did Vortigern, but as all the legends described him as a wicked man, his character was relatively easy to construct.

Poor Branwyn! In Myrddion’s era, children of aristocratic birth were carefully raised, because they were classed as property and had the potential to bring wealth to the family through marriage. If a wilful, rather spoiled girl should be raped and become pregnant, I reasoned that she would have tried to ignore her condition rather than face the repercussions of the physical assault. If she was unable to avoid discovery, she could be killed because she had cost the family a great deal of money. Likewise, any child of the rape would be treated as a bastard and worth nothing to the family because of its uncertain parentage.

This explanation underlines the position of women, even in the more female-friendly culture of the Celts. If they were a part of the aristocracy, girls were property and their worth was tainted if they were spoiled by the loss of their virginity and pregnancy. Branwyn was not a compliant girl. Today we would consider that she had spirit, but was unable to move past her rape, a condition that is now accepted as post-traumatic stress disorder. In short, I couldn’t paint her as black as she could have been made as a woman who attempted infanticide. Nor were Melvig or Olwyn to blame for her treatment – it was the times in which she lived that made some kind of character flaw inevitable.

The name, Myrddion, for the lord of light, or the sun god, is derived from research carried out by John Rhys. As he is also called Myrddion Emrys, the Merlin I chose owes much to Rhys’s interpretations of Welsh folk tales, for it seemed logical to me that Merlin would have been given a name that possessed the stature to counteract his illegitimacy. The name Myrddion Emrys resonates with power rather than any magical connotations.

Dinas Emrys itself is the supposed fortress where Vortigern tried to sacrifice the Demon Seed. Some versions of the legends put it at the site where Vortigern was struck by lightning, a death that seems unlikely. Whatever the legends may say, Dinas Emrys is a rather dreary and grim place, and I constructed my tale around it because Vortigern, when under attack, would have almost certainly holed up in a citadel where he felt safe.

Certainly, the sources suggest that Vortigern died by lightning or fire, close to Segontium, so I chose Dinas Emrys as the site for the events I have described. It seemed appropriate that Vortigern should die at the place where he made his most famous mistake, the attempt to sacrifice Merlin.

As for the perpetrator of Rowena’s death, it is accepted that she was murdered on the orders of Ambrosius, although Vortigern is said to have died with his wives. My version is a solution to the contradictions that exist within the legends.

As I worked on my characters, I became convinced that Rowena, Hengist and Horsa couldn’t possibly be as black as they were painted in the legends. All Saxons were demonised in the years that followed the initial migration into Britain. I took the facts that were known, and tried to show the possible motivations beneath the violence and the savagery of their reputations. I also realised that these three characters represented the best of the Saxon and northerner migratory waves into Britain. Often noble in background, the best of the northerners weren’t barbarians, simply uneducated by Celtic or Roman standards. The invaders that followed the first wave were probably of a different ilk, and would have sought plunder rather than settlement. They were almost certainly as cruel, as destructive and as ruthless as their reputations paint them.

Rowena, in particular, suffers demonising in the legends, which is hardly consistent with her enforced marriage when she was little more than a child. Many sources refer to her as the daughter of Hengist, but I rejected this version, although I make them kin. Basically, I wanted to rehabilitate her, and I can’t believe that Hengist would leave a daughter to die without taking immediate revenge. Strangely, one early version claims that she was of Jute descent rather than Saxon.

Many versions fail to mention the children that resulted from her marriage, yet her son is reputed to have poisoned Ambrosius out of revenge at a later date. I used the name of Catigern/ Katigern twice, to solve the persistent problem of the repeated use of this name in the legends and to try to sort out the latter Saxon thanes and kings who would claim legitimacy in the wars against King Arthur. A son or grandson of King Vortigern would be able to make a legitimate claim of a dual right to the British throne.

The entire invasion of Britain must be seen in the context of the European situation. All the old boundaries, alliances and kingdoms were in states of flux, but the great void left by the departure of the Romans was filled by the tribes who poured out of northern and central Europe in search of a secure homeland. Every wave of migratory tribes created groups of dispossessed and refugee peoples who must have longed for land, security and the peace necessary to raise their families.

According to the legends, Myrddion was in a position to judge both Vortigern and the shadowy figure of Ambrosius, who might be seen as representatives of the old ways. I have deliberately concentrated on the pragmatism and use of power of these men, who are involved in their own struggle with each other and a rejection of the changes occurring in Europe. Vortigern stole a throne held by Roman aristocrats; Ambrosius and Uther tried to recreate the days of their father and grandfather, so the behaviours of these kings were blurred by personal desires for revenge. The fact that, in my version of the legends, innocent people were the primary victims of this tug-of-war over a crown is my reading of human nature and the motives that impelled these great men.

In time, Uther’s son, Arthur, would rise as a new man who attempts to preserve the old ways, a feat that was manifestly impossible. That challenge was his curse and his nemesis, and is one of the themes I used when writing the three volumes of the Arthurian trilogy.

Ultimately, I have chosen to follow the strands of the legends that separate the Merlin figure into two distinct personalities. The Merlin who is the confidant of kings has always seemed at odds with Merlin Sylvestris, the hermit who is driven mad by the death of his family. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his
Vita Merlini
about this prophet and madman, while the adviser of kings in
The History of the Kings of Britain
seems to be a completely different man in motivation, power and dignitas. Merlin as seer and dweller in the wild places is not my Myrddion. I have chosen to utilise the Merlin who becomes a statesman.

As for Merlin’s reputed sorcery, shape-changing skills and almost god-like ability to create, as his reputed building of Stonehenge attests, I accept the importance of the belief in magic in Celtic society, but acknowledge that I didn’t create a Merlin who is fantastical. I am prepared to believe in the possibility that some people have extra-sensory perception, such as the ability to prophesy. Merlin is acknowledged as having this skill, so I used this talent as a part of my Myrddion’s special nature. The fact that this skill comes and goes is my testament to the complex nature of Myrddion, who I believe would have disliked losing his senses and making rambling statements about the future. The war between the seer and the scientist is one of the features of my Myrddion Merlinus’s character.

Because of his childhood experiences of shunning, being rejected by his mother and almost being sacrificed by the High King, Merlin is not a perfect person and sometimes he throws his sense of justice away, if it suits him. My Merlin is no saint. But he adheres to the Healer’s Code as his governing morality, and his character trait makes him a rarity in his world.

Because he is literate in a society that is predominantly composed of uneducated persons, Myrddion would have possessed significant status, given the reverence attached to written documents. It is entirely possible that the female healer, Annwynn, would have kept her old master’s scrolls when he died, even though she was unable to read them. Similarly, since Myrddion could read, it is logical that she would give the scrolls to her apprentice with the proviso that he imparted the contents of the scrolls to her. However, his thirst for knowledge sometimes causes Myrddion to seem cold and unemotional, because
things
can be more important to him than people.

Incidentally, the practice of beheading after death was an ancient Celtic practice tied to their worship of the head, and Myrddion would have certainly obliged his great-grandfather, if asked, by carrying out this gruesome task.

In an age of some ignorance caused by rapid social change, Myrddion is both an anachronism and a new man because of his curiosity. I would like to think that intellectual innovation is not confined to any age and that the description of Myrddion’s time as the
Dark Ages
is a misnomer. In fact, I sometimes fear that we are far more barbaric in our miraculous cities of glass and steel than the great enemy, the Saxons.

I wonder what Myrddion would have made of the present-day health system in western countries, or the political institutions of our time. I believe he would have teetered between disgust and humour, and would have decried our ignorance and our superstition.

GLOSSERY OF PLACE NAMES

The following is a list of place names in post-Roman Britain with their present-day equivalents.