Rosemary Sutcliff - SWORD AT SUNSET

JUST as the saga of Charlemagne and his paladins is the Matter of France, so for fourteen hundred years or so, the Arthurian Legend has been the Matter of Britain. A tradition at first, then a hero-tale gathering to itself fresh detail and fresh glories and the rainbow colors of romance as it went along, until with Sir Thomas Malory it came to its fullest flowering.

But of late years historians and anthropologists have come more and more to the belief that the Matter of Britain is indeed matter and not moonshine. That behind all the numinous mist of pagan, early Christian and medieval splendors that have gathered about it, there stands the solitary figure of one great man. No knight in shining armor, no Round Table, no many-towered Camelot; but a Romano-British war leader, to whom, when the Barbarian darkness came flooding in, the last guttering lights of civilization seemed worth fighting for.

Sword at Sunset is an attempt to re-create from fragments of known facts, from likelihoods and deductions and guesswork pure and simple, the kind of man this war leader may have been, and the story of his long struggle.

Rosemary Sutcliff

Sword

at

Sunset

COWARD-McCANN, Inc. New York

Copyright 1963 by Rosemary Sutcliff

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the Publisher.

HIC JACET ARTHURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS is from Francis Brett Youngs The Island, published by William Heinemann Ltd.

Reprinted by permission.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

JUST as the saga of Charlemagne and his paladins is the Matter of France, so for fourteen hundred years or so, the Arthurian Legend has been the Matter of Britain. A tradition at first, then a hero-tale gathering to itself fresh detail and fresh glories and the rainbow colors of romance as it went along, until with Sir Thomas Malory it came to its fullest flowering.

But of late years historians and anthropologists have come more and more to the belief that the Matter of Britain is indeed matter and not moonshine. That behind all the numinous mist of pagan, early Christian and medieval splendors that have gathered about it, there stands the solitary figure of one great man. No knight in shining armor, no Round Table, no many-towered Camelot; but a Romano-British war leader, to whom, when the Barbarian darkness came flooding in, the last guttering lights of civilization seemed worth fighting for.

Sword at Sunset is an attempt to re-create from fragments of known facts, from likelihoods and deductions and guesswork pure and simple, the kind of man this war leader may have been, and the story of his long struggle.

Certain features I have retained from the traditional Arthurian fabric, because they have the atmosphere of truth. I have kept the original framework, or rather two interwrought frameworks: the Sin which carries with it its own retribution; the Brotherhood broken by the love between the leaders woman and his closest friend. These have the inevitability and pitiless purity of outline that one finds in classical tragedy, and that belong to the ancient and innermost places of man. I have kept the theme, which seems to me to be implicit in the story, of the Sacred King, the Leader whose divine right, ultimately, is to die for the life of the people.

Bedwyr, Cei and Gwalchmai are the earliest of all Arthurs companions to be noted by name, and so I have retained them, giving the friend-and-lovers part to Bedwyr, who is there both at the beginning and at the end, instead of to Lancelot, who is a later French importation. Arthurs hound and his white horse I have kept also, both for their ritual significance and because the Arthur or rather Artos I found myself coming to know so well, was the kind of man who would have set great store by his dogs and his horses. When the Roman fort of Trimontium was excavated, the bones of a perfectly formed dwarf girl were found lying in a pit under those of nine horses. An unexplained find, to which, in Artoss capture of the fortress and in the incident of The People of the Hills, I have attempted an explanation. So it goes on . . . Almost every part of the story, even to the unlikely linkup between Medraut and that mysterious Saxon with a British name, Cerdic the half-legendary founder of Wessex, has some kind of basis outside the authors imagination.

Having, as it were, stated my case, I should like to express my most warmly grateful thanks to the people who have, in one way or another, contributed to the writing of Sword at Sunset among them the Oxford University Press, for allowing me to use certain characters which have already appeared in The Lantern-Bearer. Among them also the authors of many books from Gildas in the sixth century to Geoffrey Ashe in 1960; the oddly assorted experts who returned detailed and patient answers to my letters of inquiry about horse breeding; the Canadian friend who sent me the poem Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus and the Intelligence Corps Sergeant and his young woman who found its origin for me after both I and the aforesaid Canadian friend had dismally failed to do so; the Major of the 1st East Anglian Regiment, who sacrificed three sunny afternoons of his leave from Staff College to help me plan Artoss campaign in Scotland, and to work out for me in three colors on a staff map the crowning victory of Badon.

1. The Sword 1

2. Left-Hand World 14