The Prince and the Pilgrim (33 page)

It will be seen from the “legend” summarised here that Malory’s tale of Alisander le Orphelin and Alice la Beale Pilgrim was not easy to transpose into the “real Arthurian” or Dark Age setting. It is a mediaeval tale of action where kings, queens and knights move as conventionally as chess pieces, and, like chessmen, make the same moves over and over again. The main concern of the knights seems to be their jousting scores – the mediaeval equivalent of the batting average.

Malory’s brief reference to Duke Ansirus the Pilgrim, combined with the idea of some kind of “grail quest”, gave me the Jerusalem and Tours settings. Again, a reference from
The Wicked Day
remembered the murder of the young
Merovingian
princes, so I linked the pilgrims with the adventure of Chlodovald’s rescue.

Here we move from legend to historical fact. The necessary source for any account of the Merovingian (Merwing) kings is Gregory of Tours’
History of the Franks
. In Book III he gives a vivid account of the murder of the young princes by their uncles, and the agonised grief of Queen Clotilda at the choice of “scissors or sword” that the murderers gave her. He tells us that the youngest boy, Chlodovald, escaped, “for those who guarded him were brave men”. He cut his hair – the symbolic lion’s mane of the Frankish kings – with his own hand, and devoted himself to God. He stayed for some time in hiding, but eventually returned to his own country, where he founded a monastery, which bore his name. This was St Cloud, near Paris. For the purposes of my story I have had him taken to a hiding-place in Britain.

Gregory’s history is one of battles, murders and sudden deaths, relieved by the deeds of holy men, but with very little in the way of description or social background. For an account of the Merovingian way of life – houses, occupations, countryside – I went to Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
.

Europe under the Merovingians
. Clovis (481–511
AD
) unified Gaul, and established Paris as his capital. At his death his lands were divided between his four sons. The eldest son, the bastard Theuderic, received lands around the Rhine, Moselle, and upper Meuse. Chlodomer was established in the regions along the Loire. To Childebert went the
country
of the English Channel, with Bordeaux and Saintes. The youngest, Lothar, was settled north of the Somme and in Aquitaine. These territories were supposed to be roughly of equal value, but this was obviously disputable, and, as the boundaries of the “kingdoms” were not well defined, the result of the partition was a constant quarrelling – what one commentator calls “bloody competition” – between the brothers.

Pilgrimages
. By the first century
AD
there was a system of guest houses for pilgrims to Jerusalem, on traditional routes provided with watering-places. Pilgrimages became extremely popular. As Philo of Alexandria wrote: “It is a test of faith and an escape from everyday life.” And Chaucer made gentle fun of the fact that when the good weather arrived, “than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”. The earliest known account of a Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem was that of the so-called “pilgrim of Bordeaux” in the early fourth century.

The Legend of the Holy Grail
. The Grail was the cup or chalice traditionally used by Christ at the Last Supper. According to one legend, Joseph of Arimathea, having preserved in it a few drops of Christ’s blood, brought it to Britain, where it soon disappeared. There is a mass of literature about the quests for the lost grail, which is associated with the spear that pierced Christ’s side, and a sword. In my book
The Hollow Hills
I used the quest story, but with the sword as the object. That sword eventually came into Arthur’s possession,
as
Caliburn (Excalibur), but the spear and grail were given for safe keeping to Nimuë, Arthur’s chief adviser, who had been the pupil and then the lover of Merlin the enchanter.

Morgan and Morgause
. Morgause, according to legend, was Arthur’s half-sister, the illegitimate daughter of his father King Uther Pendragon. She married King Lot of Lothian and Orkney, and had four sons by him. She also bore a son, Mordred, to her half-brother Arthur, whom she seduced into an incestuous union. She was murdered by one of her sons, Gaheris. Morgan, Arthur’s legitimate sister, married King Urbgen of Rheged. She took a lover, Accolon, and persuaded him to steal the enchanted sword Caliburn and with it to usurp her brother’s power. The plot failed, and she was put aside by Urbgen, and imprisoned (fairly comfortably) by Arthur.

March
. This is King Mark of Cornwall, who in mediaeval Arthurian romances is uncle to Tristram (Drustan). He is usually depicted as cruel and treacherous. Mark’s queen, Iseult the Fair, and Tristram were lovers.

Some Other Brief Notes

Place Names
. I have followed a simple rule, which is to make the geography of the story as clear as possible for the reader to follow. Hence the use of some modern names alongside those of the Roman or Dark Age maps.

The Saxon Shore
. This was a stretch of the south-east and south coastal regions of Britain, roughly from Norfolk to Hampshire, where Saxon incomers were allowed to settle.

The Saracen Longships
. Malory’s tale is of course mediaeval, but since we are here in the Dark Age of the early sixth century, the invaders are Saxon, and I have reduced their numbers to something a little more likely than forty thousand.

Castle Rose
. This has nothing to do with Rose Castle, the seat of the bishops of Carlisle. It owes its name to the lovely New Red Sandstone of Cumbria (Rheged), of which it would probably have been built.

Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel,
Madam, Will You Talk?
was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.

Also by Mary Stewart

Madam, Will You Talk?

Wildfire at Midnight

Thunder on the Right

Nine Coaches Waiting

My Brother Michael

The Ivy Tree

The Moonspinners

This Rough Magic

Airs Above the Ground

The Gabriel Hounds

Touch Not the Cat

Thornyhold

Stormy Petrel

Rose Cottage

The Arthurian Novels

The Crystal Cave

The Hollow Hills

The Last Enchantment

The Wicked Day

The Prince and the Pilgrim

Poems

Frost on the Window

For Children

The Little Broomstick

Ludo and the Star Horse

A Walk in Wolf Wood

THE HOLLOW HILLS

The countryside of England and Wales in the Dark Ages forms an almost tangible background to this wonderfully and powerfully realised picture of an ancestral hero coming to manhood.
The Hollow Hills
is the brilliant portrayal of the young Arthur from his birth to his accession to the throne of Britain. And behind and around him is the strong, yet vulnerable figure of Merlin who sees and knows so much but is powerless to prevent the strife and violence of his turbulent times.

‘A considered, researched and gloriously imagined story of England and Wales in the Dark Ages’

The Sunday Times

‘Nobody can fail to find temporary enchantment here’

The Times

‘A rare gift for blending mysticism with historical accuracy. Altogether a delightful book’

The Scotsman

‘A real spell-binder’

Sunday Telegraph

HODDER AND STOUGHTON PAPERBACKS