Reclaiming Ancient Verities - 'The Inklings and King Arthur', edited by Sørina Higgins

The Inklings and King Arthur: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain, edited by Sørina Higgins.

Apocryphile Press, Berkeley (2017) 555 pages

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'Myth is not entertainment, but rather the crystallisation of experience, and, far from being escapist, fantasy is an intensification of reality.'

Alan Garner

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This book was released in the UK on January 1st 2018 yet it took me until March 2019 to order a copy. The idea of a collection of essays on the Inklings and their relationship with the Arthurian mythos certainly appealed, but I had doubts regarding the suitability of an academic approach to such imaginatively charged literature: both the original Arthurian corpus and the Inklings' own writing. I was conscious too of what the Humanities have become in many universities today. I feared the dead hand of critical theory and the encroachment of academic jargon and progressive ideology onto books which have engaged and warmed my heart for over forty years. I was worried, in short, that The Inklings and King Arthur project would suffocate the magic.

How wrong can one be? My anxieties were groundless, and it seems extraordinary now that I gave them such credence, given what I know of the editor, Sørina Higgins. Her Charles Williams blog The Oddest Inkling has been a vital stimulus these last seven years in encouraging fresh approaches to Williams' life and work. Higgins' passion and enthusiasm for her subject shines through in everything she writes. She is aware of his faults, but seems less concerned with fending off his critics and more absorbed in exploring the depths of his poems, plays and books, and showing the world just why and how Williams was such a rare and special writer.

Higgins brings the same dedication and intellectual rigour to her editing of this volume. The 19 essays, bookended by her introduction and a conclusion from the poet and priest Malcolm Guite, are serious forays into that fertile terrain where literature meets mythology, then takes wing to inform the surrounding culture. Charles Williams - whose poetry revolves exclusively around Arthurian themes - receives proportionately the most attention, followed by Lewis, then Tolkien, then Barfield. But there is also an emphasis on how the Inklings dovetailed creatively and how the ideas of each member fed into and inspired their companions' 'works in progress'. Brenton D.G. Dickieson illustrates this brilliantly in his "Mixed Metaphors and Hyperlinked Worlds: a Study of Intertextuality in C.S. Lewis' Ransom Cycle." His paper shows how Tolkien's 'Numenor' and Williams' 'Logres' became not only dominant motifs in Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength but also 'hyperlinks' to wider literary and legendary realms:

'When we as readers click on the symbolically rich use of "Logres" in That Hideous Strength, we are drawn into the rich and complex world of Williams' Arthur, which is a subsequent evocation of the historic Arthurian legend in Layamon, Malory, Wace, the Vulgate Cycle, and the rest. In this sense, "Logres" is ... a word that contains entire symbolic universes.' (p.108)

The Inklings and King Arthur seeks throughout to situate Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and Barfield in the wider context of twentieth century culture and society. "'Lilacs out of the Dead Land': Narnia, The Waste Land, and the World Wars" by Jon Hooper is particularly illuminating in this respect. Hooper carefully picks out the Arthurian currents flowing beneath the narrative stream of the Narnia tales. Here, he says, is Lewis's riposte to T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and what he calls the 'wasteland mentality', which emerged in the aftermath of the First World War and blamed traditional, high-minded expressions of courage, chivalry and honour for 'duping a generation into sacrificing itself.' (p.280) Hooper claims that Eliot and other Modernists 'asserted that because such values had been appropriated to justify war, the values themselves must be corrupt: a lapse of logic that was fatal in the view of a stern logician like Lewis.' (p.284) In rejecting time-honoured evocations of beauty and nobility - in poetry, visual arts and prose - the Modernists had 'cut people off from the entire western tradition' (p.286) and manufactured a barren, soulless world without meaning or purpose and shorn of glory or divinity.

This is the mentality which Lewis contends against in his Narnia books. 'The Chronicles,' Hooper writes, 'are concerned with healing the disenchantment and despair that the Great War and The Waste Land had left upon the modern mindset, which not even the revived sense of chivalry that arose in the Second World War could lift. To do this, Lewis frequently uses the Arthurian symbol of the blighted land and the theme of the Grail quest.' (p.279) His stories restore and reclaim the ancient verities for the children of the 1950s onwards.

This essay highlights Higgins' central thesis - that the Inklings were in no way driven by nostalgia, wish-fulfilment or escapism, as critics often claim, but on the contrary were deeply involved and engaged in the 'hot button' issues of their time. Their focus, she argues, 'was not on a revival of the past, but on the present's need for redemption: as soldiers, office workers, and creative professionals, the Inklings wrote Arthurian works that contain incisive critiques of their own times and visions of utopian or dystopian futures evolving out of contemporary decisions.' (p.2)

This brings us to the prophetic element in the Inklings' oeuvre. It has been said of Dostoyevsky (by Nicholas Berdyaev, I think) that much that now appears obscure in his novels will become clear in the light of future events. The same, perhaps, applies to the Inklings. The intentional community formed by Taliessin (The King's Poet's Company) in Williams' poems and the little circle which gathers around Ransom in That Hideous Strength are of particular relevance, I feel. With Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option in mind, there are bold and original models here for traditional Christians caught between the Scylla of corrosive liberalism and the Charybdis of declining - collapsing even - religious institutions.

Taliessin's Company, small though it is - a mere 'remnant' - keeps the connection to the Divine that Logres loses. Williams himself attracted such a 'company' in the 1930s and '40s, and this reveals the contemporary relevance of his and his fellow-Inklings' work. In a world in which spiritual values are rapidly being lost, it might still be possible for like-minded people, here and there, to maintain the vision, weather the storm, build anew, and reclaim one day the ancient verities, as Lewis did so memorably in his Narnia stories. Arthur, after all, is a once and future king, as Guite underlines in his conclusion:

' ... Lewis imagined a succession of "Pendragons" of whom Ransom is the latest, who in some sense keep the vision of Logres alive. Whichever way one might choose to imagine a return of Arthur, the contents of this book make it clear that, for the Inklings at least, he had never really gone away ... In the story of Arthur, in both his rise and fall, in both the forming and betrayal of the Round Table, the Inklings found material not only for escape and consolation, but more profoundly, for recovery: a recovery of vision that they believed to be vital for their own generation and that has proved to be prophetically relevant for ours.' (p.504)

Free Fall - Charles I at Little Gidding

... And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled ...

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

*

The King - head bowed, eyes closing - came to Little Gidding at nightfall. His horse plodded loyally on; he knew the way well - off the rough road and behind the pigsty to the dull façade and the tombstone. Charles glanced up, and through a squall of May rain caught the gladdening gleam of candles and lamps. 'It is good to be back,' he thought. John Ferrar, the master of the place, stood on the threshold and greeted the King, then led his horse to the stables, as Charles looked about him - for the last time, he was sure - at the chapel and house and the hedges surrounding the demesne, white now in spring with voluptuary sweetness.

They shared a meal of bread, cheese and wine - the King, John Ferrar, his sister Susanna, her husband and their many children. Knowing now that his dream of a ship from King's Lynn was futile and that soon he would have to surrender, Charles abandoned his schemes and told stories instead of previous visits here, long ago before impious hands rose up against him. He had high hopes for this place then, and for his Kingdom, that both might reflect and shine forth the divine light of Heaven. Nicholas Ferrar, John's brother and the founder of the community, was alive in those days, and he was a man so soaked in prayer and so nakedly holy that it seemed in his presence that all things might be possible. 'I should have been more like your brother,' the King told his hosts. Nicholas was a prodigy of the age, a businessman and parliamentarian on the highway to success in this new mercantile world. And he had thrown it away to set up home here at this remote site - like the monks of Skellig Michael of old - and establish this House of God. 'Your brother,' said the King, 'knew what was true and what false. He saw through illusion and pretence and stored up treasure in Heaven, whereas I, too often, have failed to discriminate between the two and have fallen between stools and so lost my treasure.'

*

There was time aplenty for the King to dwell on these things in the chapel that night. The community sang the Psalter, ancient songs of praise and lamentation from another king, David, who had likewise been laid low by fate, the obduracy of his enemies, and his own moral and spiritual failings:

Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low; deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name.

Charles bowed his head, buried his face in his hands, and wept. How had it come to this? What could he have done differently? Why had he been chosen, fragile vessel that he was, to take a stand for hierarchy and the things of the spirit when from one end of Europe to the other the crass commercial tide was drowning everything singular, precious and rare? Had he vowed to God, before his birth, that he would save his realm from the surging forces of Mammon? If so, then he had failed in his commission, dazzled and distracted by conflicting advice and deceived by vanity and hubris. What would God say to him now, having let spill both his own life and that of his country? What was the price of such high-stakes failure?

*

After four hours the chant was completed and the community retired to bed. But the King stayed where he was, kneeling on the ground, a halo of candlelight circling his weary head. As was the practice of Nicholas Ferrar, the King, he decided, would remain in the chapel all night and spend the hours until dawn in prayer and contemplation.

The tears flowed on - sobs of bitterness, rage, impotence and loss. They dried up, and a barren emptiness pressed down upon the King. His spirit passed aimlessly through vast, untenanted, derelict cathedrals of the mind. Then out into the desert, a parched land of drought and jagged rocks. Shattered glass. Rusty knives. A heap of broken images. The whole great world ground down like dust to nought.

Then out of the debris one image, one memory, welled up in his mind. A travelling scholar - a Welshman - whom he had met years ago while journeying through France and Spain, had told him how the Greeks of ancient times believed that at the heart of every labyrinth - physical, mental or spiritual - lay a monster who had to be faced down and slain before the return to the light of the sun could begin.

The memory itself was monstrous to the King - the realisation that after all this time and all this waste and pain he had not even arrived at the beginning. For the first time in his life he felt, saw, and heard the monster coiled twitching at the heart of his own labyrinth. He flung himself forward onto the cold stone floor and stretched out his fingers as if grasping for a handhold on a high mountain ledge.

But there was no hold. And no bottom to the King's fall. The veil between the past and the present was torn to pieces and he lived again in every awful detail the vacuity of his life and saw the truth of it as never before. It reflected badly on him, this rending pain of re-enactment of all he had been and done, the shame of hidden motives now revealed and the awareness of things ill done which once he took for exercise of virtue. And still his fall continued - sheer, vertiginous, no-man fathomed.

*

Charles knew he was no Jacob. He could not fight this thing alone. It was too strong. It would overmaster him now as it had always done, only this time he would be conscious of it and that would make the agony worse. So he called on Christ to help. 'Save me, Lord,' he cried out, and the stones rang with the sound of his plea. He had prayed to God on countless occasions before and in many different contexts, but this time was different. This time was real. It was the first time he had called on God in fear and desperation; the first time he had trusted in the Divine rather than himself; the first time he had been so pummelled and stripped and pulled into pieces. So he called on the Most High like a child or a peasant or that humble, though bold, fisherman who realised in panic and shock that walking on water was beyond his human frame. 'Save me Lord, for I am drowning.'

*

The King did not hope for an answer. He was long past hope. He had spent his whole life hoping for solutions and fixes of one kind or another. Always hoping for the wrong thing. And then, he knew not why nor how, he was somehow falling up, not down, and there was a light dawning in his mind and a music stirring his heart. He was swimming up through deep blue water from the bottom of the sea. Then the waters broke and gold and silver flooded his brain. 'Do not be afraid,' said a voice. 'It is I.' The King stood up and looked around but there was no-one there. And the chapel was transformed. It shone in innocency and joy. The stones and candles sang out in hosannas. Though it was blackest night outside, the altar sparkled with new-minted freshness, as if blessed by the dawn sun after a night of pelting rain.

Charles lit a candle and stood before the statue of St. John the Evangelist. He closed his eyes and prayed. But not for himself. He had no need, for strong hands had lifted him out of the labyrinth of self. He prayed instead for the place - for Little Gidding - the chapel, community and house - that the Holy Spirit might descend upon it as in the days of Nicholas Ferrar and light up the hearts and minds of all who came this way. He prayed for everyone connected to it these last twenty years - those in love with the life here and those repelled by it - Puritans, Royalists, poets, priests and politicians. He looked into the future, shuddered, and begged that Little Gidding might one day be a shrine - a place where motives are purified in the furnace of prayer and grace continually bestowed - a place where prayer will always be valid. He asked that pilgrims might find refuge here in dark times to come of materialism and decline, and that poets find words to convey its essence to a world almost wholly denuded of sacred sites and numinous terrain:

A legacy of images, symbols and ideas,
Flowers of restoration and renewal,
Seeds planted in the dark night of disenchantment and the exile of the gods,

A midwinter spring.

Icon by Chad M Krause

www.walsinghamwanderings.blogspot.com

Lit By a Different Light - 'Charles Williams, The Third Inkling' by Grevel Lindop

'Saints are not typically balanced, well-rounded people,' writes Benjamin Myers in his study of Rowan Williams Christ the Stranger (T & T Clark, 2012). 'They do not necessarily possess exemplary virtues or a notable degree of psychological integration. They are, Williams says, typically "pretty uneven, not to say confused characters," whose lives have been "knocked off balance" by the strange world of God.'

Charles Williams (1886-1945) wore a host of hats - poet, novelist, theologian, dramatist, lecturer, occultist, editor, critic, friend, colleague, confidante and spiritual director. He was a husband and father too - primal, archetypal roles which, for large swathes of his life, he failed to prioritise. Herein, I feel, lies his chief - but not his only - moral failing. But could he still be considered a saint? That is the question echoing in my mind after reading Grevel Lindop's biography. In 427 pages Lindop paints a compelling portrait of a flawed, intense individual, full of blind spots, contradictions and odd compulsions, who nonetheless radiated goodness and kindness and brought hope and a touch of holiness to those he encountered.

How did he do this? Charles Williams, The Third Inkling (Oxford University Press, 2015) does not ultimately answer this question, but that is no fault of the biographer. It is a testament rather to Williams's depth and complexity. It is a biography which asks more questions than it answers, and that is as it should be given the strangeness of its subject and his many-sided, multi-layered personality.

Lindop's original title for the book was Charles Williams, The Last Magician. One can never be sure, but it is probably safe to assume that the change to The Third Inkling was instigated by the publisher (also Williams's former employers) who may have been looking to capitalise on his friendship with the better known C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The front cover suggests as much. Even so, Lindop does a fine job of establishing Williams as an artist and thinker in his own right, not just a 'third Inkling' hanging onto the coat-tails of Tolkien and Lewis. It builds on the impressive work conducted this decade by the U.S academic Sorina Higgins, particularly her blog The Oddest Inkling and the book of essays she edited in 2018 The Inklings and King Arthur (Apocryphile Press), which features Williams prominently.

One thing that book and Lindop's biography do very well is put Williams's occult involvement in perspective. His career as a practitioner of magic has unsettled many Christians over the years, who would otherwise have likely become some of his keenest admirers. As Lindop shows, Williams was a very keen magician throughout the 1920s. He was friends with the esotericist A.E Waite and a member of his Christ-orientated occult group The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. The surviving documentation is uncertain, but he may also have joined the Fellowship's famous, less Christian parent order, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

To my mind there is nothing extraordinary or alarming about Williams having such an active interest in this field. In any case he appears to have outgrown the magical worldview in his later years, though it continued to inform his poetry and fiction and also, more problematically, his relationships with the younger women in his life. It seems understandable that a questing, spiritually hungry character like Williams should have felt undernourished to a degree by the rites and teaching of the Church of England. It is natural, perhaps, that he looked elsewhere to supplement what he received from the official Church. He had a deeply ritualistic, symbolic turn of mind, and anything that enhanced those elements was grist to his creative and imaginative mill.

What is harder to accept is the way he carried this over into his personal life and the lives of his female admirers, of whom he had many due to his charisma as a lecturer and the deep attention and respect he paid to those who turned to him with private concerns. His long and turbulent liaison with his Oxford University Press colleague Phyllis Jones is well documented here. But there were others too. Joan Wallis, for instance. According to Lindop:

Joan would visit him in his office; and sometimes, after their discussion, he would ask her to go to the cupboard. There would be an umbrella or a stick - or a sword. She would bring it, and he would make her bend over and would gently spank her with it. There would be no explanation. (p.334)

In his discussion of the letters between Williams and another devotee, Lois Lang Sims, Lindop sums up the situation succinctly. His summary can be applied to all the women Williams played petty sado-masochistic games with and deserves to be quoted in full:

The correspondence shows how deeply erotic fantasy and spiritual direction were blended in Williams's mind. Much of the advice he gave was good and even traditional, and certainly well-intentioned. Yet it was framed within a fantasy of sexually charged control, and by asking Lois to reply in ritualized form Williams was ensuring that she felt psychologically committed to the relationship as he defined it. Moreover, there can be little doubt that he expected her to use the relationship as a source of energy for his creative work. From any point if view this was wrong. Yet Williams was far from being a cynical man. The fact that he could not clearly see the damage he was likely to cause indicates the depth of confusion which he had reached. (p.384)

This raises deeper questions. Why did Williams engage in such activity? What was missing in his life? Why could he only find inspiration this way? Lindop refers to how fundamentally unhappy Williams often was, but again we are left wondering why. His childhood, like that of many, was marked by poverty, but there was no great emotional or familial distress to scar him. He started attending church at the age of three and enjoyed it all his life, which leads us to ask why his faith in Christ seemingly brought him so little joy or fulfilment? It is all connected, one feels, with his workaholism, which took him away from his son Michael in his formative years when the boy needed him most. Towards the end of his life Williams made a conscious effort to reconnect with Michael and assist him in every way he could - emotionally, practically and spiritually. He also grew closer to his wife and who knows what the future might have brought had he lived, but it all feels a bit 'too little too late', especially given Michael's subsequent mental health issues and his lifelong difficulties in forming relationships.

Lindop suggests that Williams's addiction to work was driven by the need to provide for his family. Williams corroborated this in many of his letters, yet no matter how many hours he put in at the Press or how much lecturing or writing he did he was perennially short of money. Williams enjoyed his work at the OUP, but it would be interesting to know if he ever considered a different, perhaps more financially rewarding line of work - teaching, for example? It is also intriguing as to whether at any point he comtemplated becoming a priest or monk? Might a conventional religious vocation have suited his temperament better than the whirligig of family life, office work and evening lecturing?

The biggest question of all, however, is where did the spiritual light which shone around him come from? How, with all his faults and oddities, did he manage to radiate such hints of holiness? How was he able to have such a transformative effect on his students, colleagues and friends?

His magical training undoubtedly played a part. But the impact he had on those around him went much deeper than mere charisma or enchantment. It was a matter of a fundamental goodness allied to an ability to transcend the narrow metaphysical assumptions of mid-twentieth century England. Joan Wallis, not in the least put off by Wiliams's proclivities, put it like this:

He remains the most remarkable and good man I've ever met. I've never met anyone who honoured goodness more than Charles. He prepared me for recognising strains of goodness in people, and the strains in Charles were pure gold. (p.337)

''To listen to him,' wrote one of his most devoted disciples, Anne Renwick, 'was like finding oneself in a place where everything was a different colour and shape and size, lit by a different light. I came away from the talk quite clear that the only thing I wanted to do was listen to him again.' (p.338)

Charles Williams, The Third Inkling is peppered with such remarks and they are worth the price of the book alone. Because the world needs its Charles Williams's. Especially today. He brought depth, height, and wide, spiritually-charged horizons to those he met, and it is the absence of these dimensions which lies, I feel, at the root of the difficulties assailing the West today - alienation, confusion, loneliness, addiction, despair, and the polarised, antagonistic politics they engender.

Williams's insights into the interconnected nature of the world are exactly what we currently need as they expose the excessive individualism of social and economic liberals and also those 'One World' cheerleaders, who see humanity as an amorphous, homogenous mass and show no appreciation of cultural differences and the importance of locality and homeland.

In Williams's work, we are all dependent on each other, but this dependency is active, not passive. In his world everything we do, say and think has an impact on the web of creation and we can change our own or another person's life with just a single thought or a moment of focused attention. Human beings are actors and participants in life's great drama, not pawns or blank slates to be scrawled upon by the powers that be.

There is something intensely liberating at the heart of Williams's message and it extends beyond the restricted parameters of the here and now, embracing the living, those yet to be born, and those gone before us. We see this in his poem Taliessin on the Death of Virgil, where the lovers of Virgil's poetry, in the twenty centuries since his death, reach out through their prayers to the pre-Christian poet and lift him from his precipitous post-mortem fall:

... In that hour they came; more and faster they sped
to their dead master; they sought him to save
from the spectral grave and the endless falling,
who had heard, for their own instruction, the sound of his calling ...

Would it be heretical then to pray in a similar manner for Charles Williams? To ask that the God he served in his own idiosyncratic way may dwell less on his peccadillos and more on his thirst for the Divine and his kind and generous heart? My sense is no. Williams died in 1945, yet to him past, present and future were an instantaneous and co-inherent reality. One prayer from us, therefore, could make all the difference to him in Eternity. It is a momentous conception and a mighty responsibility and we should be grateful to Williams for reminding us of the immense spiritual dignity as sons and daughters of God which we possess. It is the kind of thing the saints remind us of. As Myers suggests:

When we speak of sanctity ... we are not talking about 'wholeness' but almost its opposite. George Herbert compared the preacher to a panel of stained glass in an English chapel; by itself the glass is dim and fragmented, but by daylight it is resplendent. In the same way, saints may be damaged and unmended, but through the 'brittle crazy glass' of their lives, the whole Church is startlingly transfigured, washed in the light and colour of the bright shining world of God. (p.78)

The Shining Ones

In Tir-na-Moe, the land of the Living Heart, Brigit was singing. And the other gods, drawn by the resonance of her voice, stood in a circle around her - Manannan the Sea Lord; Midyir the Mighty; the Dagda (who is also called the Green Harper); Gobinu the Wonder Smith; Nuada, Wielder of the White Flame; and Angus Og, the youngest and most playful of the gods.

Brigit's song was charged with depth and yearning, of pain and regret mingled with hope and the hint of a mysterious, softly approaching joy. And at the end, Angus Og said, 'Rich and strange is your song, O Brigit. I felt, as I listened, that I was falling down and down, fathom after fathom, until Tir-na-Moe itself was nothing more than the memory of a dim and distant dream. And the further I fell, the more I sensed that it was not yourself singing but someone or something else. Tell me, O Flame of the Two Eternities, who or what was it singing that song?'

'It was the Earth,' replied Brigit.

'The Earth!' cried the Dagda. 'But the Earth is in the pit of Hell. It has no beauty, shape or form. Serpents crawl on its surface and all is chaos and despair.'

'Yet the Earth has dreamed of beauty,' said Brigit. 'There is something high and pure trapped beneath the murk and gloom, and it is calling to us, the Shining Ones, to set it free so it can shine like the diadem it is and take its rightful place at the heart of God's creation.'

Angus shook his head. 'I wish I had never heard your song,' he said. 'Now that I have, I cannot take the Earth from my mind and I am unable to return to my games with a clear conscience.'

'Then come down with me,' said Brigit, turning to him, 'and help me make the Earth afresh. You are clothed in all the glories of the Sun and have nothing to fear and everything to give.' But Angus just smiled and plucked a blossom that turned into a dove and whirled six times around his head before vanishing into the sky.

Then Midyir the red-maned shook out his hair and beard, and sparks danced and blazed around him. 'I will go with you, Brigit,' he declared. 'I will strike the serpents and clear a space for you to spread out your mantle and renew the face of the Earth.'

Then all the gods, except Angus, cried out, 'We too will come with you, to end the Earth's agony and release the beauty held captive by the dark.'

Angus, however, still demurred. 'I would come indeed,' he said, 'if only we had the Sword of Light.'

Then Brigit laughed and clasped him by the shoulders. 'We will not only have the Sword of Light,' she said, 'but the Spear of Victory, and the Cauldron of Plenty, and the Stone of Destiny too.'

And all the gods, including Angus, shouted out as one, 'We will take the Four Jewels.'

So Angus set out to fetch the Jewels and bring them back to the gods. He flew first to Findrias, the wind-washed, dawn-streaked city in the East of Tir-na-Moe, which holds the Sword of Light. Then he went to Gorias, the flame-bright city of the South, where he took the Spear of Victory; then West to Murias, the city of sunsets, flowing waters, and the Cauldron of Plenty; then onto Falias, the city of adamant and stone in the far North of the world, where the Stone of Destiny is to be found.

When all was ready, the Shining Ones descended on the Earth like a rain of stars. Midyir took the Spear of Victory and cut a swathe through the serpents, thrusting them into the sea and making space for Brigit to lay down her mantle. She took it off and set it down, rolling it forward and out - a silver, billowing carpet tinged with flame. On and on it rolled, pushing the waters ever back, until the mantle appeared on the point of wrapping the whole wide world in its warm, nurturing embrace. But then Angus, his playful spirits restored, jumped down on it and called on the other gods to join him, which they gladly did.

The Dagda, laughing as he ran, reached into the Cauldron of Plenty and hurled chunks of green putty into the Earth's dark air. Angus, with his own hands, merrily shaped and moulded the green, but then Mannanan, the Sea Lord, saw the serpents preparing an attack from beyond the shoreline. So he stopped the mantle's rolling, bade the gods be silent, took the Sword of Light, and held it high above his head. And a great wave three times his height, of jet black flecked with green, reared up before him, poised to come crashing down on top of him and all the gods and the new world they were making. But the Sword shone in the darkness with a fierce and burning light and the great and venemous wave drew back across the sea as if in fear and trembling.

Mannanan held the Sword higher still, and a second wave rushed up - white and blue like a sea horse - the same height as the Sea Lord. And it broke and crashed before it reached him, bowing down, it seemed to the other gods watching, in submission. Then came the third wave - a quiet gentle ripple like a whisper or a breeze. And then there was silence -  stillness, peace, and a dawning, rising, spreading light, which little by little illuminated the world the Shining Ones had just created.

They looked around and beheld a fresh, fertile land of green hills, valleys and trees. And they were amazed at what they had accomplished.

Then Brigit took the Stone of Destiny and laid it down at the centre of the island. As she did so a tinkling, bell-like music resounded from the Stone and the new world started to run with the happy splash and tumble of a million rivers, streams and rivulets.

And the gods stood in a circle around Brigit as she solemnly declared, 'This land we shall call the White Island. And its other name shall be the Island of Destiny. And its other name shall be Ireland.'

Note - I told this story last Wednesday (17/06/19) at the monthly storytelling night at The Blue Bell pub in Conwy, North Wales. The above is an almost word for word transcript of my retelling. The story is based on the opening chapter of Ella Young's Celtic Wonder Tales (1910), The Earth Shapers. The illustration at the bottom of the piece is from the end of that chapter and was drawn by Maud Gonne, a classic poetic 'muse' (and an Irish revolutionary, suffragette, artist and actress) who inspired a number of W.B. Yeats's finest poems, e.g. No Second Troy. The painting at the top is The Kings of the Faery Race (c.1900) by the great poet, artist and mystic, George William Russell (1867-1935), better known today by his nom de plume, AE.

Fire in the Sky - Ambrosius Aurelianus, Last of the Romans

This piece is based around the passages which concern Ambrosius in Rosemary Sutcliff's novels, The Lantern Bearers (1959) and Sword at Sunset (1963). In neither book is he the main protagonist. That honour falls to his two companions in this story, Aquila in The Lantern Bearers and Artos (Arthur) in Sword at Sunset. But Sutcliff, in my view, saves some of her richest and most atmospheric writing for Ambrosius, and I have always suspected that he held some deep, perhaps spiritual, significance for her. Take this description from The Lantern Bearers, for instance:

'His eyes, under brows as straight as a raven's flight pinions, were not the eyes of the Little Dark People, that were black and unstable and full of dreams, but a pale, clear grey lit with gold that gave the effect of flame behind them.'

I hope I have done justice, in this foray into fan-fiction, to Sutcliff's historical imagination and also to Ambrosius himself. He stood strong against external invasion and inner disintegration and restored peace and good government to southern Britain after Rome withdrew. He paved the way for his successor, Arthur, to stabilise and expand the realm further, and more importantly to set in motion that great body of myth which has fired our national imagination since and has, I believe, its highest fulfilment ahead of it still.

* * *

I am Ambrosius, High King of Britain. Tomorrow, when the sun reaches his zenith, I shall depart from the circles of this world and cross over into the Great Light, where the God beyond the gods will welcome me home, heal my sickness, and give me rest and respite before I am called down into service again.

For it comes to me clearly, this winter's night, that I have achieved two things only in my three-score years. I have held the pass and built a bridge - rolled back the darkness and relit the Roman light - so that the next High King, Artos (I hope), has the platform and stage he requires to free us from Saxon, Pict and Scot once and for all.

Politically speaking, it has to be Artos, though due to his irregular parentage I cannot name him successor. No-one else - though some claim purer birth - is capable of binding the tribes together and banishing the enemy. I have done what I could in this matter. I have given both Roman and Celt a vision to live for and die for. We have restored the ancient Kingdom in the South, and the Saxons have fled to the eastern fringes. But they have not been expelled and reinforcements arrive every day. Picts and Scots harass us to the North and West. We have laid a foundation but nothing more. It will take one like Artos - a hero, a leader, an inspirer of men - to preserve and build on our work. And that is why I must die at once. Suddenly, with no time to plan the succession. Our survival hangs by a thread. This is no time for dynastic squabbles. An unprecedented, co-ordinated attack will fall on us this summer. All our spies say so. With the stakes so high, men will rally around Artos, our renowned Count of Britain, out of necessity. The Council will undoubtedly see that he is the only man to lead us and save us.

I am, in any case, a sick and dying man, and this is why I have returned at my end to a place dear to me in my beginning - this woodland lodge to the north of our capital, Venta Belgarum (which the Saxons call Winchester). It was here that my father, Constantine, took myself and my brother, Utha, with him on his hunting expeditions, though in truth I was old enough to come only once, when I was nine. That was the happiest month of my life, but it all turned to ashes when my father was slain that very summer and Venta set ablaze in Vortigern's coup. The chaos and agony of that burning, blood-red night - the flames, the smoke, the screams - have stayed with me always. They will be with me tomorrow when the royal stag's twelve-pointed tine rips through my groin. I had not heard the tale of the sack of Troy at that time, but when I did, I felt like a brother to young Ascanius, shepherded to safety by his father, thrice-great Aeneas, that high and noble Trojan who founded our holy city of Rome. But our father was dead. Utha and I were spirited away by a handful of loyalists to northern Cymru and our grandmother's lands in the mountains of Arfon. There, on the slopes of Yr Wyddfa, we mourned our dead and gathered our strength until that glad day fifteen years later when we marched on the South and won back our father's city.

Dinas Ffarraon, we called our mountain hideaway. The Fortress of the High Powers. It is a good name, and I miss that blessed patch of Cymric rock and earth. For I am a man of two worlds - the Roman and the Celtic - and this is my blessing and my curse. Our grandfather, Maximus, was a Spaniard by birth and lieutenant to the great Theodosius. When, a hundred and thirty four years ago, the Picts stormed the Wall and set northern and middle-Britain ablaze, it was Maximus and Theodosius who beat them back and slowly, steadily restored order. When Theodosius returned to Rome, Maximus stayed and married a princess of the northern Cymru, thereby winning the loyalty of both the Roman and the Celtic parties. Flushed with success, he made himself Emperor and set out for Italy to vanquish his rivals. And there he perished, but he left behind a son, Constantine, our father. And when the province was stripped of its Legions, Constantine swept down from Arfon and routed the Saxons, ruling in the Roman style for thirty years from Venta. And that was the world that Utha and I, the children of our father's old age, were born into.

I greatly admired, as a boy, our city's order and precision. It counterbalanced my often colourful imagination. I was on affectionate terms with every piece of granite, stone and marble in the city - columns, statues, squares, Praetorium, Basilica - so perhaps it is no wonder that it is my triumphant return there, when we took the Durobrivae Bridge nigh-on forty years ago, that stands out now. How often have I lived it again in my mind, that raw, slate-grey, sleet-spattered morning. I was shocked, I recall, by the city's appearance - weeds running riot and pavements strewn with masonry - but the people cheered and lined the streets and gave me a royal and hearty welcome.

'I knew your father, Sir,' an old man called as he tossed a branch of glowing winter berries under my horse's hooves. 'I served under him in the old days.' I rewarded him with a smile and a coin and would have given him more if I could. But that night, around the fire, with Aquila and the others, I remember how struck I was by the sadness and vulnerability in my voice. 'They remembered me for my father's and my grandfather's sakes,' I said. 'One day they may remember me for my own.'

For a moment it felt like I no longer belonged in the old, familiar Governor's Palace I had been so happy to reclaim earlier that day. I wished, to be honest, I was somewhere else - high up in the cloud-capped peaks of Arfon, close to the stars, with time and space to pray and reflect on the past, present and future of my own life and the life of this sacred isle.

*

Artos, Aquila and I spent the night gone by roasting chestnuts over the brazier, as I had done so merrily so long ago with Utha and my father. The windows glittered with frost, but I felt warm and content inside, at ease with myself, my companions, and the world. When the time for serious talk came, Artos understood at length the method in my madness and then, I'm not sure why, Aquila - my longest-serving comrade - wandered over to the window and told us there was fire in the sky beyond the hill called Ink-Pen. Artos shot up. 'Saxons!' he cried as Aquila opened the window. But swiftly they saw that this was none of their doing. It was the Crown of the North my brothers in arms were gazing upon. The famous Northern Lights.

I pushed back my chair, shuffled across the tesserae, and was astonished at what I saw. Many times, in years gone by, have I observed the Northern Lights from the flanks of Yr Wyddfa. But nothing on this scale - nothing so wide, bright and high as this - a curving, flame-red scimitar of light, arching up from behind the hill, conquering first a quarter, then a third, then half of the sky. Banners and streamers of blue, green and gold - brighter than the moon and stars combined - flared out into the night like heralds of Mithras, god of battles and victory and invincible Lord of Light.

A deep sense of peace and reassurance came down on me. Here was a sign from the Most High God that my intuitions were true and I was departing at the right time and leaving the country in safe and inspiring hands. And so, if folk do remember me in the future, it will not be for my father's sake, nor for my own, but for my successor's, and from where I am now at the the end of my life, having spent fifty years dragging Britain back from the abyss, that is a happy prospect indeed.

'Yes,' I said to my friends. 'There will be many pointing to the North and bidding each other look tonight. And later, all Britain will say that there were strange lights in the sky on the night before Ambrosius Aurelianus died.'

Artos went white. He had not, I think, realised until then that I intended to die so soon. I am, after all, the only parent he has known, for Utha, his father, perished on the tusks of a boar when he was three years old. His mother (who was not Utha's wife) died when he was born, so I took him in and he has been as a son to me ever since - an unanticipated, but receptive, diligent and exceptionally gifted son. So it is a sorrowful parting for me as well, I who gave up thought of wife and child to focus everything I had - mind, body and soul - on the salvation and resurrection of Britain.

The lights outside began to fade, but in myself I felt some measure of strength and vigour return. There was nothing more to do now. I had done what needed to be done and was blessed and fortunate enough to have done it well. I had fulfilled my fate and was now going gladly to the fulfilment. 'I think that the frost will not be hard enough to spoil the scent tomorrow,' I remarked casually.

'Ambrosius,' cried Artos. 'Don't be playing the madman! You could never last an hour's hunting!'

I walked back to the brazier, picked up a flagon of wine, turned to my comrades and smiled, holding the flagon up high. 'Brothers, I drink to tomorrow's hunt. Good hunting and a clean kill.'

And as I stood there before them, I felt a glow and a shine about me and knew that the Lords of Life would take what little strength I had left and squeeze it into the handful of hours that it will take to bring down the royal stag tomorrow.

No, I do not think the frost will be hard enough to spoil the scent. I shall mount my horse and the company will be amazed at the speed and ferocity of my riding. Some might even hope that my illness is passing - and that will be partly true - but it would be better to say that I am starting to transcend my sickness. And I will drink in everything I see, hear and feel as I ride - sun, sky, hills, trees, my horse beneath me, my dear ones around me - until we bring the noble beast to bay and I leap off my horse, brandishing the King's knife and claiming the kill as my own. We shall look each other in the eye then, the stag and I, not as hunter and hunted, but brothers and sovereigns - monarch to monarch - then as the blade plunges into his breast and his antlers tear through my innards, I will catch a glimpse for an instant of the world that awaits me, and Aquila and Artos, having sprinted through the bracken to disentangle my body, will find, I am sure, a look of surprise on my face.

Many Mansions: Charles Williams, Modernity, and the Mass

I have just had a guest post about Charles Williams published on Bruce Charlton's Inklings blog -

I hope you like it.

Thanks and best wishes,

Jf

The Birth of Galahad

Now the birth of Galahad, the Great Restorer, happened on this wise. After the Battle of Mount Badon, the Saxons were banished from the land and Arthur reigned over the holy realm of Logres from his three great cities of Canterbury, London and York. He ordered churches to be built up and down the country, from mighty cathedrals to tiny wayside chapels. Schools and colleges sprang up across the island, and Logres became known in Europe and beyond as a beacon of faith and a bastion of learning and civilisation.

Then Arthur, the High King of Logres, acceded to an even mightier throne. In a great ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral, the Archbishop declared him Ceasar Augustus in the West and crowned him with the laurel wreaths of Rome. Missives were sent to Justinian, Emperor of the East, announcing the restoration, after a fifty year interregnum, of the Roman Empire in the West. Arthur conceived a long-term plan to occupy Gaul, push on through Italy and retake Rome itself, restoring thereby the ancient Western Imperium in almost all its fullness. But for now he was content to enjoy some years of hard-won peace and transform Logres into a harbinger and forerunner of the New Jerusalem described by Saint John the Divine in his Apocalypse.

Everything seemed set fair for the future. It looked that way, on the surface, to Merlin, the King's Enchanter, too, yet doubts and anxieties nagged at his mind. He sat on the rocks on the Gwynned coast one late-spring evening, meditating on these things and gazing out onto the Irish Sea. He knew that the Great Restorer - the redeemer of the Wasteland, the healer of King Pelles, and the next Grail Priest and King - must soon be born, but how, where and when he had no idea, nor if it would happen of its own accord or whether he, as Logres' spiritual guardian, needed to take steps to ensure that it did.

There was also a wasteland at the heart of Logres that worried Merlin more and more each passing day. For after seven years of marriage, Arthur and Gwenevere were still childless, and it seemed to Merlin that the Queen increasingly preferred the company of the King's right-hand man, Lancelot of Brittany, than that of her husband. Lancelot, Merlin had noticed, clearly enjoyed the attention. He had seen the look in his eyes and the flush on his cheeks whenever Gwenevere came close. He began to wonder, nonetheless, if it was to avoid temptation that Lancelot had started to absent himself from the Royal Cities and disappear into the mountains and woods for sometimes weeks on end, whether in prayer or on some obscure quest of arms no-one knew. But Merlin thought he knew. He threw a stone into the waters, turned his back on the sea, then walked back to his ivy-clad tower. He spent the night polishing his Stone of Vision, in which he could catch glimpses, from time to time, of anything or anyone he focused his attention on.

Two weeks later, around the middle of May, Merlin caught sight of what he was looking for - Lancelot, walking alone through a rocky, barren land of ash-grey trees and blackened soil. Somehow, by judgment or chance, he had discovered the Wasteland. The vision in the Stone faded, but Merlin knew what Lancelot, sooner or later, would find there.

And so it was that Lancelot came one evening to what must at one time have been a mighty castle but which lay now half in ruins. He was given a hearty welcome, however, and invited to dine that night with King Pelles and his household. And as they were sat at meat a strange and wondrous thing occurred. The Royal Doors slammed shut and a deep and grace-filled silence descended on the Hall, filling Lancelot's heart with peace and joy. Three women in white appeared from nowhere and walked slowly and purposefully around the Hall. The first carried a tall, thick candlestick, marked with a red cross. Its quivering flame shone upon the faces of the men and women in the Hall, so that everyone, to Lancelot's eyes, looked radiant and saint-like. The second woman bore a spear with a bronze shaft and blood-red tip. She held it point down and drops of blood fell from the tip onto the marble floor as she walked. And behind her came a light like Lancelot had never seen or imagined before - so warm, bright and cleansing that he thought for a moment that the Sun had somehow squeezed itself into a ball and dropped down into the room. Certainly what the third woman held was as dazzlingly golden as the Sun, so much so that Lancelot struggled to make out what the object was - some kind of cup or bowl, he thought.

The procession arrived at the High Table, where Lancelot was sat with Helayne, the King's daughter, to his left, and Pelles himself, stretched out on his litter, to his right. He bowed his head, closed his eyes and wept, aware of holy things and holy people close by, but feeling in his heart again, as so often in those days, the dark, compulsive power of his infatuation with Queen Gwenevere. Yet there was hope in his heart as well, and the hope, at least for now, was stronger - a bracing, refreshing, invigorating hope that blew away the choking clouds of addiction and made him feel like a little Breton hunting-boy with all the world before him again.

The procession passed by and the guests resumed the feast. Pelles turned and said to Lancelot, 'You must know, Sir, that I too was brought face to face with my blackened heart on the day when Balyn of Tyneside took the Sacred Spear you have just seen and struck me through the side with the Dolourous Stroke. And he was right, in many ways, to do so. For I had grown idle and corrupt and had first neglected, then forgotten my priestly vocation as steward of these holy and venerable objects. So now my Kingdom lies in waste and ruin, while I writhe in agony here, waiting for the advent of the Great Restorer.'

'Who is the Great Restorer, my Lord?' asked Lancelot.

But Pelles shook his head. 'He is not yet born,' he replied. 'Perhaps he never will be.'

*

And Lancelot stayed at Carbonek one whole month. He poured out his heart each day to Nasciens, the Hermit of the Grail, who lived in a little stone chapel half a mile from the castle. Nasciens gave him guidance and instruction, and Lancelot vowed not to think of Gwenevere again but to keep what he had seen and felt in the Royal Hall uppermost in his mind.

Nasciens told him the story of Carbonek too - how it had been built by Jospeh of Arimathea, the first Grail Priest and King, and how his successors had guarded the chalice and spear for almost five hundred years until Pelles, two decades before, turned his back on his holy calling. Then came Balyn of Tyneside, the Dolorous Stroke, the half-ruined castle, the three wasted counties, and a wounded but once more penitent and prayerful Grail Priest and King.

Lancelot was astonished by all that Nasciens said. He did not see the Grail procession again but felt happy and renewed in mind and body - at peace with himself and the world around him. He was attended to daily by the Princess Helayne, who read to him, played chess with him, went out riding with him, and bit by bit, day by day, fell gradually and perilously in love with him. And when Merlin caught sight of this in his Stone of Vision he knew that the time for action had come. He called to his sister, Brisen, with his mind, and she came to him from her tower on the banks of the Humber and they spoke together about what Merlin felt now needed to take place.

So one afternoon Brisen appeared in Helayne's chamber and declared to her who she was - Brisen, the sister of Merlin, the King's Enchanter. She told her that no-one on Earth, however skilled in magic, could make Lancelot love her for life but that she did know how to make him love her for one night. Helayne replied that just one night with Lancelot would be more than she ever could have dreamed or hoped for. So Brisen took her to Case Castle, seven miles from Carbonek, just outside the Wasteland. And there, by her art, she gave Helayne the likeness of Gwenevere and fashioned a ring that was the very image of the Royal Ring of Logres that Gwenevere wore on the middle finger of her right hand.

Brisen disguised herself as a wizened servant woman and called at Carbonek, showing Lancelot the ring and saying, 'Sir, the Queen resides for one night only at Case Castle and desires your company.' And Lancelot, forgetting all had happened in the Royal Hall and everything Nasciens had said, left Carbonek straightaway and came to Case Castle at nightfall. When he saw Gwenevere waiting for him it was like an enormous black power shook him all over and gave him no choice but to embrace her and spend the night with her But when he awoke next morning and saw Helayne beside him, he was overcome with remorse and flung himself out of the window, clad only in a shirt. He landed in a bed of thorns and ran out of the castle grounds, foaming at the mouth and beating himself about the head and chest.

Lancelot ran wild through the country for months upon end, eating nuts and berries and drinking from rivers and streams. Summer gave way to autumn, All Souls came and went, and by Christmas there had been neither sight nor sound of him in any of the towns and cities of Logres. When, by Ash Wednesday, he had still not appeared, King Arthur sent search parties out to scour the land, but still they did not find him.

So Lancelot's cousin, Bors - the Count of the Saxon Shore - set out alone in search of him, trusting only to his intuition and his deep-rooted knowledge of his cousin's ways. So it was, three weeks later, that Bors found himself traversing the Wasteland, and after six days and nights of feeling he was going round in circles, the semi-ruined husk of Castle Carbonek reared up above him, and Bors entered and was welcomed royally, as Lancelot had been before him, by Pelles and his household. And there was a baby at the breast of the Princess Helayne, a boy-child with jet black hair and skin that shone like beaten gold. And as they were sat at meat, behold, the Royal Doors slammed shut once more, silence descended, and the three women in white appeared again and processed slowly around the Hall, bearing aloft the Sacred Spear and Holy Grail that Joseph of Arimathea had brought to these lands five centuries before.

And after the procession had passed by, Pelles told Bors that Lancelot had come to Carbonek ten months previously and that he was the father of Helayne's child. Bors was shocked and astounded and pressed the King to tell him more, but Pelles just smiled and said that he knew no more.

Bors stayed at Carbonek for ten more days. Though Pelles had told him remarkable news, he was still no nearer to finding Lancelot, and with the great feast of Easter just two weeks away, he knew he had to be on his way again soon.

On Bors' last afternoon, as he was walking along the balustrade with Helayne, a serving girl came running up and said that she had seen a strange man lying fast asleep on the rocks and stones in the ruined part of the castle. All three ran to look and as soon as Bors and Helayne saw him they recognised him as Lancelot. But he was greatly changed, clad in tattered rags and bony like a skeleton, with long, matted hair - part brown, part grey - and a wild, bushy beard.

Helayne cried out when she saw him and would have ran to him to hold him in her arms, but just then Nasciens appeared, held her back and urged her not to wake him. 'The madness might still be on him,' he said. 'And he may run wild again and attack us.'

So Bors, Helayne, and the serving girl - whose name was Annabel - carried Lancelot to Nasciens' chapel, where they laid him on the altar, lit all the candles they could find and knelt down to pray that Lancelot's mind might be restored. Nasciens went before them and lay face down in prayer on the stone floor just in front of the altar.

It had grown dark when Bors, Helayne and Annabel heard the chapel door click shut behind them. Stillness filled the air and straight ahead of them they saw the Holy Grail, hovering in the air above Lancelot's sleeping form. Rays of golden light poured out from it and none of them could hold their gaze for long. But as they bowed their heads and closed their eyes it felt to one and all like the Sun was shining in their hearts, radiating a raw, uncut beauty of pure depth and clarity from top to toe through every inch and fibre of their being.

And when they looked up again the Grail was gone and Lancelot was sitting upright on the altar while Nasciens clasped his hand. Then they came forward and took Lancelot down and sat him in their midst, as Nasciens sang a Mass for them in Latin, Greek and Cymric. As he began three women in white appeared from nowhere to assist him at the altar. The first offered him the Holy Book to read the Gospel and Epistle from; the second brought him malted bread and a beaker of wine; while the third rang a round bronze bell carved with sacred images as Nasciens lifted the Host and Chalice. And at that moment Annabel vowed silently to ask King Pelles to release her from his service and - if he agreed - to join the community of monks and nuns at Aberconwy and live a life of unobtrusive, watchful service to the greater good of God and the poor and sick of Arthur's realm.

*

After these things Bors sped back to London to tell King Arthur that Lancelot was safe, whole and on the mend. And there was great rejoicing in Logres as Bors' news spread. Lancelot himself remained at Carbonek for eight more weeks until he felt strong enough to return to Arthur's court at Pentecost. He tried his hardest for a while to avoid Queen Gwenevere and also, as Nasciens had advised him, not to picture her in his imagination. But whether he was in London, Canterbury, York or elsewhere he found it hard to remember what had gone on at Carbonek and why, both before and after his madness, he had felt so buoyant and rejuvenated. The Grail, especially when Gwenevere was close by, did not feel real to him. His insatiable and seemingly bottomless lust for her blotted all else out. His resolution faltered and his old ways possessed him again. But Lancelot's meetings with Gwenevere, while he felt powerless to stop them, left a bitter taste now. He began once more to take himself away from the three Royal cities, searching far and wide for the Wasteland's blackened soil and blasted trees. But no matter how far he roamed or how hard he tried he never could find again the rocks and stones of the Wasteland, still less the half-ruined castle, where so much of high import - for himself, for others, and for the realm of Logres and beyond - had so recently taken place. And Lancelot was sick again in heart and mind, bound to a wheel of addiction and desire and barred from the Paradise of new life and redemption, as Adam and Eve were before him, by an Angel with a Flaming Sword.

But while Lancelot languished, Annabel, Helayne, and the new-born child, whose name was Galahad, flourished like spring flowers. Brisen came to Carbonek again shortly after Bors' departure and told Helayne that it was the will of the Most High God that Galahad should be taken into the care of Dindrane, the sister of Percival and Abbess of the Aberconwy monastery and convent. As this was where, two days before, Annabel had taken the veil, Helayne decided to take the holy vows herself and it was there, through prayer, meditation, and the guidance and good counsel of Dindrane, that she was healed at length of her infatuation with Lancelot.

And Galahad, the son of Lancelot and Helayne, grew from a babe to a boy and a boy to a man, and in everything he did and said the monks and nuns were inspired and impressed by the stillness of his bearing and the calm attentiveness of his eyes. Galahad listened when people spoke to him, and he left those he came into contact with feeling better about themselves than before, as if their lives carried a greater depth of meaning than they had previously believed. And Galahad himself, from time to time, appeared to shine with a warm and golden light - generous and king-like - that lit up the faces of those he shared his life with and made it look like he had been born and raised not in Carbonek and Aberconwy but in the hills and valleys of the Sun itself.