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Standing a little way apart from the diplomacy, Willow had watched great Arthur walk up and down and tell those who would soon become his knights and servants all that he had in mind for the increase of his people once a settlement was in place. And although she knew she would never see her darling Willand again, still she was vastly proud of all that he had done and all he had become. And when the great lords rode away from the parlay on their warhorses Arthur came to her, mightily pleased with himself, and she felt embarrassed at the strangeness of their first kiss. It seemed almost to be a betrayal, yet not quite, for though this man looked so much like Edward, still there was Willand in his movements and in the glint of his eyes.

At last, Arthur turned to Lord Morann and winked confidentially. ‘I think she will have me.’

‘That’s good. But you must give her time.’

‘I shall.’ Arthur put armoured hands on armoured hips. ‘And what will Edward say, I wonder, when he sees my face and learns from me that I have stolen his kingdom out from under him?’

‘Before he rises from his sick-bed he will have listened to his mother and read his father’s last letter. Edward will
support you, Arthur, for if he can’t have a father to look up to, the next best thing is an elder brother.’

‘Elder by only a few moments.’

‘Aye, a few moments, but also a thousand years.’

Arthur laughed and raised his arms and they began to take off his armour. Where Will had been wounded there was only now a pink scar. Willow let go a tear at the sight of it, and Arthur raised her up, saying, ‘I’m here. My darling, I’m with you still.’

The moment ripened, as slowly, silently they came to see that in some way Willand was not gone from them forever, for he was in Arthur and in Bethe too.

‘I’ll miss Master Gwydion though,’ Morann said bleakly.

‘We all shall,’ Willow said, wiping her face.

‘But as for the lorc,’ Arthur said, rousing them, ‘there’s better news. For now we have surer knowledge of the pattern on which all the battlestones lie. I shall put all the resources of my Realm into rooting out the danger that remains. Then, as magic returns to the world, I shall have the stones lifted and bound and—’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Morann said smilingly. ‘We shan’t be having to worry about any of that.’ And he took from a fold within his robe the magic crane-skin bag, the one that had belonged to Manannan Mac Lir and to Lugh, then to Cumhal and to Fionn, and latterly to the last phantarch, Gywdion Crowmaster.

‘Ah, yes! The crane bag,’ Arthur said, his eyes gleaming. ‘And what have you in there? Something for me?’

‘A thing beyond price.’ Morann drew out a simple rolled parchment done up in ribbon. He handed it to Arthur.

‘What is it?’

‘A gift from King Hal. It was found in his cell at the White Hall, and meant for Master Gwydion, but you may as well have it. Do you recall Hal’s strange habits, his dedication to study, his days and nights spent in river-dank
cellars among that chaos of rolls and scrolls that lies under the palace? This is his copy of the last lost fragments of a very ancient work – they call it the Black Book of Tara.’

Arthur gazed upon the scroll with wonder. ‘The Black Book?’

‘Do you remember it?’ Willow said. ‘Master Gwydion spoke to me of it several times.’

‘Yes,’ Arthur said. ‘Indeed I do! Let me see it!’

He undid the ribbon and opened it. Morann smiled and brought out a bottle from the crane bag. ‘It contains a plan of the lorc. And it tells of the places in the Blessed Isle where all the sister-stones may be found, stones that will finally undo the work of the fae. Now I think that calls for a little celebration. Don’t you?’

The three books of the Language of Stones cycle are mythic history, and their setting is mythic too, but that does not mean that the setting is not rooted firmly in the real. There is not space here to list all points of interest, but those readers who wish to follow up the place names mentioned in the text will be rewarded for their detective work, since none of them are purely made up.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, the twelfth century monk who virtually single-handedly created the story of Arthur, also wrote about the great city of New Troy, or Troy Novant. Actually the name derives not from Troy, but from the Celtic people called the Trinovantes. They lived, of course, in the lands upon which my own city of London was eventually to rise.

Students of the history of London will recognize much in the detail of my imagined city of Trinovant, for its plan, streets and approaches are intact, an approximation, in fact, to the English capital as it was in the fifteenth century, just as the Realm approximates to the England of that time. There really was a many-gated wall around London and a royal palace once stood at Whitehall. The marshes of Lamb’s Hythe eventually became Lambeth,
and a great Gothic spire did once rise above the city, but fell long before Spenser wrote of his faerie queene. The Victorians placed cast-iron guardian dragons at the entry points of the City, and they still stand, supporting their red-and-white shields on which the red sword is depicted.

From London, the Great North Road ran through England by various ways up to Newcastle upon Tyne and beyond. Anyone travelling along the present Al goes for much of the way along the Great North Road. By the fifteenth century a trade in coal, hewn on Tyneside, was running in the opposite direction, except that the real wyrmstone went by sea.

Lincolnshire is the county in which Stamford, (rather than Stammerford), stands. The town lies to the east of old Rutland, England’s smallest county, now, alas, mostly submerged beneath a lake. The real ‘Duke Richard’ was Richard of York. His second son was given the title Earl of Rutland. The Cecil family, owners of Burleigh House, did rather better for themselves in. this world than their counterparts in Will’s.

Richard of York’s unsuccessful quest to become king led to the bloody battles of Wakefield and Towton, (both in Yorkshire, and the latter in the ancient kingdom called Elmet.) These battles were separated by the battle at Mortimer’s Cross (Shakespeare’s battle of three suns) at which the meteorological phenomenon known as a parhelion occurred. It was at this battle that the future king Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians under Jasper Tudor.

It is a curious fact, and one which led to the first ideas for the trilogy, that if the dozen or so biggest Wars of the Roses battle sites are plotted on a map of England and Bosworth Field is included – since it can be seen as the battle which finished that terrible war – then three concentric triangles can be drawn through all but a couple of them. I extended the lines of these triangles to create the system of ligns called in the books ‘the lorc’.

W
HITEMANTLE

Robert Carter was born exactly five hundred years after the first battle of the Wars of the Roses. He was brought up in the Midlands and later on the shores of the Irish Sea where his forebears hail from. He was variously educated in Britain, Australia and the United States, then worked for some years in the Middle East and remote parts of Africa. He travelled widely in the East before joining the BBC in London in 1982. His interests have included astronomy, pole-arm fighting, canals, collecting armour, steam engines, composing music and enjoying the English countryside, and he has always maintained a keen interest in history. Today he lives in a ‘village’ that only sounds rural – Shepherd’s Bush.

Visit Robert Carter’s website at: www.languageofstones.com

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The Language of Stones

The Giants’ Dance

Whitemantle