Tori glowered. Amanda said nothing, which only seemed to make Tori angrier.
“Ready to go, Prof,” said Owain. “Just say when.”
Maxwell shifted slightly so that his best profile was on show, and put on his lop-sided smile and boyish enthusiasm as if they were a costume. “When I get to that tale itself, we can run a collage of men at arms and burning villages and the like behind the voice-over. Ready, Owain.” He looked down at the table as Owain said, “Recording.”
“Today,” he said to the camera, conspiratorially, “One of our researchers came across something quite – astonishing – that throws a fascinating light on the story that our other finds have been uncovering.
“A Victorian vicar in the twilight of his career was given a task to fill his last days – to decommission a church whose congregation had been whittled away by the blade of time. He had to separate wheat from chaff – documentary records of the parish that the church was duty-bound to preserve, from the flotsam and jetsam cast adrift on the tides of the centuries, and dispose of the latter.
“Among the latter, among the old sermons, diary notes and minutiae of humdrum parish life, he found an old manuscript, bearing a dramatic and ancient story, with fascinating parallels to our hunt for the elusive Barba Magna and his secret military campaign.”
He smiled into the camera, pushed his floppy brown hair behind one ear, and held up some papers.
“Miraculously, the story told by the manuscript has been preserved to this day, in the Broadleaf Folkloric Collection. Let me read it for you now. This is: ‘The Tale of Belbo and the Dragon’.”
“Many years ago, long even before the reigns of the Pendragons, the Kingdom of Gwynedd was plagued by a dragon. None knew from whence came this dragon, and none could survive its onslaught. It ravaged the country from the Afon to the sea, and eastwards as far as the Castra Romana, killing all manner of game, animals, birds, and people as it found them.
“The good people of Gwynedd were sorely beset and despaired for their lives and their lands, until the holy Bishop Coddenna proclaimed a period of fasting and prayer to beseech the intervention of the Almighty. And so the people prayed for seven days and seven nights, and upon the eighth day there appeared some knights, following the banner of one named Belbo, at the border of Gwynedd.
“The noble warrior Belbo listened to the people and their sorry tales of the persecution of the dragon, and he swore to rid the land of this monster or die in the attempt. And so, accompanied by his faithful friend Bictus and a band of knights, he rode into the land of the dragon determined to hunt it down. To Bishop Coddenna, he declared his intention of discovering its lair, establishing what kind of beast it might be – for none who encountered it lived to tell aught of it – and forming a plan to bring about its end.
“Belbo rode into the great forest in search of the beast, with more than a score of followers. He was lost to human knowledge for twice seven days and nights, and then by the grace of the Almighty emerged in company with only the faithful Bictus. The remainder of his party had fallen to the monster, and of the horrors they encountered, nor Belbo nor Bictus would tell any save the good Bishop.
“The information gleaned by Belbo on this first expedition proved to be of great value, and Coddenna advised that Belbo should travel to consult a wise and holy hermit known to live at the border with the Kingdom of Powys. This advice Belbo followed gladly. The wise hermit of Powys indeed recognised the nature of the monster and with his advice Belbo was able to devise a plan for its destruction.
“It seemed that the monster could not cross over bodies of swift flowing water. Thus Belbo directed the digging of channels so that diverse rivers were brought into one, and flowed along the valley of the Afon, and so placed a restriction on the monster’s southward range.
“It seemed also that the beast, like the peoples of the Fae, was weak in the face of cold iron. Thus Belbo directed that a castle be constructed, surrounded by swift-flowing water, and faceted with iron. He also set aside his weapons of finest Damascus steel and directed the construction of weapons of purest wrought iron.
“In this way, the dragon’s attempts to hunt southward were baulked by the swift-flowing water, and its attempts to range eastward brought it to the iron castle, which it could not penetrate, and where wrought iron weapons were brought to bear that drove it to the west.
“Belbo assembled an army that pursued the beast westward, and his followers stripped the iron from the castle and followed after, each night setting out the iron plates in the form of a wall to prevent the dragon from turning once more to the east.
“In this way, as the running river drew closer to the sea, the range of the dragon was steadily reduced, until it was brought to battle at a place thereafter named Mynydd Draig, close to the sea.
“But while the iron weapons of Belbo and his followers hurt the beast, they found that it could not be killed. After seven days and nights of hard-fought combat, there remained only Belbo and six companions; even faithful Bictus had fallen to the dragon. But the monster was hurt and weak, and Belbo managed to hurl it from a cliff into the sea.
“At this hour, the tide was slack and the sea was not swift-flowing, and the beast hauled itself to a tiny island, which became known as Ynys Anghenfil. There Belbo saw the chance to trap it for all time. He sent swift messengers to bring labourers from among the men of Gwynedd, and they dug new channels so that the swift river was diverted and met the sea opposite the island of Ynys Anghenfil, thereby making a swift flowing barrier to trap the beast upon the island.
“Crossing swiftly to the island, Belbo pursued the beast into a cave. There, he ordered the men to place the iron plates – those that had been brought all the way from the iron castle – inside the cave so as to line a chamber with cold iron from which the beast could never escape. Atop this prison, there was set and consecrated a church, thus trapping the beast with iron, with the Word of the Lord, and with water.
“In this way was the dragon of Gwynedd defeated by the knight Belbo, and trapped forever in the bowels of the earth beneath Ynys Anghenfil.”
Maxwell paused, looking into the camera, and gave a small shrug. “What does this tale mean? Well, let’s strip away the elements of the tale that are obviously later additions, and see what’s left.”
He glanced around, and then leaned forward conspiratorially into the camera. “The first thing we must shed are the Christian Bishop and the Christian God. This story pre-dates their dominance of Britain. It pre-dates King Arthur Pendragon. It says so, perfectly clearly. Now, current historical authorities believe the tales of Arthur are a conflation of the exploits of Celtic war-leaders who briefly held the Saxons at bay after the collapse of Roman Britain in the 5th century, romanticised into the Middle Ages. The tale was already old by the time Roman Britain collapsed. So, no Christianity, and so, no Bishop or holy hermits. No, in the 1st century, if I were to look for a wise old man hiding in a cave in Wales, I would expect to find a Druid.”
He sat back and grinned. “Now, perhaps slightly less controversially, or perhaps not: where did this tale take place? The answer is clear: North Wales. The tale mentions the valley of a river named Afon. Any Welsh speaker, and many others of us come to that, will have recognised that ‘Afon’ simply means ‘river’, which seems less than helpful. But perhaps not: the way language changes over the centuries means that is plausible that there was a progression from ‘Afon’ through ‘Avon’, ‘Arvon’ and ‘Arven’ to end up with ‘Arwen’. And the Riven Arwen is just a few hundred yards behind me as I speak. If the ‘Afon’ of the story were indeed the present-day ‘Arwen’, then we would expect to find Belbo’s iron castle on the river bank. And that is exactly what we’ve done. We found the iron castle, or rather, a first century hill-top fort built in the Gallic style, with evidence of iron in its walls – yes, an Iron Fort – right here, outside the modern hamlet of Arwensford, on the bank of the Arwen.