Tom said, “So, we need to locate Merlin’s SPELL book to forge a new weapon to defeat Excalibur! Something that can pierce his skin, and kill him once and for all.”
Elise nodded. “Or, you find one of the original swords.”
“Excalibur and Caliburn?” Tom said, “Where would we even start a search for the two legendary weapons? People have researched their existence for more than a thousand years, and with the exception of what we’ve found on that USB flash drive, no one has been able to prove that the story of King Arthur belongs in the history books instead of mythology.”
Sam thought back to the hidden messages for Guinevere inside the 830AD book, Historia Brittonum. He grinned. “We need to rejoin both shards of a fractured Caliburn. That’s the weapon we’ll use to kill Excalibur!”
Elise exchanged a slight glance with him, her eyes startled by his confidence. “How do you expect to find not just one, but both pieces of the ancient sword?”
Sam said, “Guinevere’s brother, Patrick, who was involved in the program at Camelot Weapons Industries, left a cipher for her to use on the ninth century book, Historia Brittonum in the event that he died. What that secret message showed was a need to find Caliburn and have it forged back into one sword.”
Tom asked, “Did he happen to mention where to find it?”
“Yeah, the cipher listed three locations. GLASTONBURY ABBEY, ENGLAND. JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, and the DRAGON BREATH CAVE — MAJORCA.”
Elise thought about that for a moment, before she said, “King Arthur was said to have been buried in Glastonbury Abbey. Mordred was a Saxon King who was said to have beaten him in battle. What remained of King Arthur’s sword was meant to have been buried with him. The other half… nobody knows, but if I was Mordred, I would have taken it.”
Guinevere said, “According to legend, the mythical sword was broken in two during the battle of Camlann. Its supernatural powers were lost and King Arthur returned to Camelot with just one shard of the sword. It was assumed that King Arthur and King Mordred both died on that battlefield. But some accounts of the legend show that both kings survived. In King Arthur’s case, he was taken to the Island of Avalon to be healed, and Merlin forged him a new sword, Excalibur.”
Sam asked, “What about Mordred? Did he survive? And where did the other shard of Caliburn end up?”
“No one really knows. It was lost on the battlefield.”
Sam said, “You mean, it might lay buried beneath a long since forgotten battlefield?”
Guinevere said, “It might. But I seriously doubt it.”
Sam steepled his fingers. “Why?”
“King Arthur’s sword was the source of all his power.” Guinevere stared at the image of Caliburn that Elise had put up on the digital round table. It was a holographic projection. The sword itself looked more like a dagger than a broadsword. Her eyes idly stared at it. “Not just because of what it allowed him to do on the battlefield, but by the near mythical legends that surrounded it, each one seemingly more preposterous than the previous, all culminating in an enigmatic aura that placed Arthur on an insurmountable pedestal as a battlefield king.”
A wry smile of understanding crossed Sam’s lips. “You think Mordred, the Saxon king kept the remaining shard of the sword?”
Guinevere’s eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Sam said. “Propaganda didn’t just start during the second world war. People have been practicing the art of propaganda for centuries. And what’s better than a sword with legendary powers? Mordred would have flaunted the fractured shard of Arthur’s legendary sword to prove his own might in battle. So now, all we need to do now is locate Mordred’s resting place to find his half of the sword?”
“Which we know ended up in Jerusalem,” Guinevere pointed out. “Of course, how a sixth century legendary sword, stolen by a Saxon king should find its way into the heart of the Jewish Kingdom, I have no idea.”
Elise said, “I think I can explain that.”
“Really?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got a wild theory. You want to hear it?”
They all nodded, their eyes wide with interest.
Elise said, “I believe Mordred used the other half of Caliburn to help Justinian the Great reclaim much of the Roman Empire.”
Chapter Sixty
Sam turned his gaze to the holographic image of sixth century Europe.
Elise identified some of the important history to be taken from the 3D map, which showed a very different world than present day Europe. “When the Western Roman Empire ended in 476AD, it lost most of its land to various Germanic tribes. The Franks settled in Northern Gaul, The Visigoths in Hispania, and the Vandals in Africa. Only the Eastern Roman Empire survived. Then, in 527AD when Justinian the Great inherited the Byzantine Empire, he sought to revive the empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the historical Roman Empire.”
Sam, Guinevere, and Tom studied the map, trying to find out how a Welsh sword could become lost in a Byzantine Emperor’s struggle to reclaim the Roman Empire.
“Are you with me?” Elise asked.
Sam nodded. “Not really… but do go on, I’ll catch up.”
“Good,” Elise said, as she continued… “Justinian's rule constituted a distinct epoch in the history of the Later Roman Empire, and his reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized Renovatio Imperii, or ‘Restoration of the Empire.’”
Elise swiped the holographic image of the sixth century European landscape to the left, and a new image came up, identifying the areas that the Byzantine Empire had reclaimed and now ruled.
She said, “Justinian had sweeping success with his restoration activities, making him known as the last Roman. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius, Narses, and his other generals conquered the Ostrogothic kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths. Justinian made a uniform rewriting of Roman Law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many modern states around the world. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and the Nea in Jerusalem.”
Sam’s ears pricked up at the reference to Jerusalem. “What was the Nea in Jerusalem?”
Elise pulled the entire holographic European world map down from the Round Table and in its place retrieved an image of a massive church. “Justinian attempted to leave his imperial mark on Jerusalem by situating a building of unprecedented size and splendor, the Nea, within the context of Jerusalem's oldest and most sacred monuments. In Procopius’s panegyric — that’s a Roman word for a public record or speech — it can be seen that the architect developed a masterful work of propaganda. He was less concerned with extolling the greatness of the buildings that were constructed, and more so with celebrating the man who built them.
“So, in order to situate Justinian within the tradition of grand builders in Jerusalem, the architect modeled his account after the biblical narrative of Solomon's Temple. There are several literary parallels between the two accounts, the foremost being that, according to Procopius, both of the building projects were blessed by God. Furthermore, it seems beyond coincidence that the measurements of the Nea are roughly twice the size of the Temple. Like Herod’s engineers, who had to extend the southern end of the Temple platform, so too did Justinian’s architects; and just as Solomon imported cedars from Hiram of Tyre for the Temple’s roofing, Justinian had cedars brought in from Lebanon.”