David Pilling - Flame of the West

The details of my long, wearisome journey into the West need not concern these pages. I lived to find my son, to know whether he had escaped our pursuers, but encountered no word or sign of him.

I fell in with groups of travellers, merchants and pilgrims and the like, and passed through Frankia and Gaul, living off the charity of strangers. My damaged state, and claim to be a holy man travelling back from visiting Our Lord’s sepulchre in Jerusalem, melted the hearts of many.

Only once during my wanderings, in the far west of Amorica, did I pick up a faint trace of my son. I found an abbey, a small place perched on a bluff overlooking gentle seas, where the brethren were kind and offered me shelter.

The abbey was dedicated to Saint Armel, a local soldier-saint whose jawbone rested inside a jewelled casket on the altar.

“Armel is a recent saint,” explained the abbot, “when I was a boy, he came to Amorica from Britain, gravely wounded and accompanied by a few of his warriors. He was a great soldier in his time, the Bear of Britain.”

My heart thumped as I gazed upon the casket. I heard my mother’s voice, drifting across the long years, telling me how my grandsire’s body was never found after the final slaughter at Camlann.

“Arthur vanished into the mists,” Eliffer’s soft voice echoed in the vaults of memory, “borne away, some say, across the sea to the Isle of Avalon. He waits there, immortal, until Britain shall have need of him again.”

Armel is an Amorican variant on Arthur, but sufficiently different for my grandsire to shelter under it. Here, in this quiet house of God, he recovered from his wounds and spent his old age in prayer, far away from the endless treachery of men.

The uncertainty of Arthur’s demise gave rise to the legend of his return: a sleeping warlord, waiting under a cave in the mountains of Avalon, surrounded by his warriors. One day, the horn shall blow, and summon them all to their duty.

I could hardly speak as I looked upon the mortal remains of my grandsire. Taking my silence for awed reverence, the abbot continued his story.

“Some three months ago, a young man came to this abbey. He pretended to be a pilgrim, but I could tell he was a fighting man. The soldier shone through, even under his soiled and ragged garb.”

“He seemed to know all about our saint. I left him alone here to pray awhile. Then he left. He said little, and never gave his name.”

The abbot was taken by surprise as I started to weep, and kindly helped me kneel before the altar. I knew the identity of his mysterious visitor.

Arthur had come here to worship the remains of his ancestor. It seemed strangely fitting that they should come together in such a fashion. God had granted me the knowledge of their meeting.

I might have made my home there. The brethren would have welcomed me, a sinful man come to spend his last days in fasting and prayer. But I still cherished the hope of one day finding my son, and feeling his warm embrace again.

It was sheer vanity. I had been given all the mercy I deserved, and could not hope for more. I left the abbey, and wandered a little while longer, until God guided my faltering steps to the Abbey of Rhuys in the south of Amorica.

And Gildas. He took me in, the great churchman and scholar of our age, even though I was of the line of Arthur, whose memory he despised.

Here I have remained, inside these blessed walls, for the best part of twenty years. I have little hope of seeing my son again, but all my prayers go to him. Let him find peace, O Lord, and trust not in the words of princes.

As for Caledfwlch, I trust Arthur has long since thrown it into the sea. Let the Flame of the West be doused forever. Caesar’s sword was nothing but a bane, sent by the Devil to drag all the men of my blood to ruin.