The Arthuriad of Catamandus by Frederick Lees (review)

Abstract

Frederick lees, The Arthuriad of Catamandus. Hong Kong and London: Crane Books, 1996. Pp. 428. isbn: 9-6281-1003-9. £15.99. (cloth), isbn: 962-8110-02-0. £11.99. (paper). The prologue of this novel tells us that it is based upon a manuscript recently discovered in Aexandria, and ascribed to a certain Catamandus (or Cadfan), written in Greek. It precisely covers the span of Arthur's middle and later life as well as narrating Catamandus' visits to Britain between 496-518 A.D. Ah, ifonlytherewere such a manuscript! Yet the yearningAthurphile may perhaps stop and be refreshed by this work offiction, with its intriguingly different narrative standpoint. Catamandus, the narrator ofthis book, is none other than Cadfan, one ofAthur's by-blows on a Gaulish woman. Brought up in a Gaulish household and raised to take over his putative fathers business, Catamandus is the cultured, classical pagan who ranges the Mediterranean, making astute political and business alliances. Underlying his upbringing is his constant curiosity about his real father and his expolits. After his meeting with the young Merlin, doing his druidic 'GrandTour' of the Mediterranean mystery centres and fleshpots, Catamandus is fired to discover more about his father. This opportunity soon arises when the Emperor Anastasius engages Catamandus to become his envoy to Britain, ostensibly to send back word ofthe state ofthe country, but more particularly to ascertain whether Britain might still be a useful source ofsupport to the Christian Empire. In Britain, Cadfan finds himselfin a totally diffèrent world: a kind ofthird-world Empire, where individual local tyrants have their own proud sensibilities and misty loyalties, where Christian and native beliefs occupy often the same space, where one or more generations ofsouth-eastern Britons have become the slaves and sub-workers of Saxon settlers. This is the Britain described by Gildas, but in better, balanced focus. In the common memory ofthe people is the death (actually, the brave defeat) of Gerontius, the militant strategies of Ambrosius, the shame and decimation of British nobility at the Night ofthe Long Knives—from which onlyVortigern escaped. Above all these factors, as hope and palladium to the people, shines Athur, the Dux Bellorum, who alone coordinates, by his special magic, the disparate factors of Britain into a triumphant defensive ring. Whar makes rhis novel such a triumph is that we are able to contemplate the wreck of Britain without depression because of the incandescent power of Arthur to infuse the land and its co-defenders with a superabundant light that is truly radiant. Cadfan is there at all the major events, including Badon: a tour-de-force which will make readers weep with the immediacy ofthe struggle and the smashingvictory that it brings to Britain in real terms. Not since RosemarySutcliffhave I enjoyed this kind of uplift! The historical immediacy of Lees' writing of Badon is perhaps best conveyed by recalling events from the still living memory ofthe Battle ofBritain in the Second World War; a last-ditch affair in which deeds ofpersonal and corporate bravery cancel many defeats. ARTHURIANA 8.1 (1998) 2 ARTHURIANA Readers will discover in this novel the nature of the Grail and the Wasteland and the secrets ofAthur's passing, and I am not going to spoil that discovery with any further discussion here. Cadfan is a lusty, vaguely dissolute young man, but a cultured and inquisitive one, in the manner of a Greek Aexandrian. His wider focus on the state of Britain comes form an Imperial perspective which skilfully highlighrs the stubbornly entrenched, gloriously brave and foolish, mysteriouslydruidic and ideologically murky nature ofthe British temperment. Cadfan holds his father in veneration and tender love, their relationship far more straightforward than between Athur and his other sons—the doomed Amr and the ambitious Medraut. Cadfan sees the strain of maintaining the shining Camulos (Camelot) veneer which falls heaviest upon Gwenhwyfar and Athur: the royal pair emerge as real people, widi that old fashioned sense ofduty to their people, whose cost only monarchs can reckon up in the loss of personal lives. Saxon and Britain, Christian and Druid are all given their due in this fine novel: each has virtues and failings. There are courageous and...