Arthur

EPILOGUE

False Kings! Power-mad dogs dressed in purple robes! Bloody-minded barbarians to a man! We are not sunk so low as to revere your names in song. When you die, as soon you must, there will be no lament, no grave-song, no weeping of heartfelt tears. The eyes of your people will be dry as the dust in your tombs, and your names will decay more swiftly than your disgusting bones!

Would that you had never lived! With both hands, like ignorant children scattering good grain from a sack, you threw away Arthur's peace. You exchanged hard-won freedom for slavery to vice and every corruption. In your greed you have wasted all the land. And what you did not destroy, you gave to the enemy to despoil!

Look at you! You sit with your fat-bellied warbands in your feud mead halls, drunk in your cups, inflamed with your small treasons. Cattle thieves! Raiding your neighbour lords and men of your own race and blood, worrying one another with unworthy conflicts, warring on your kinsmen and brothers while heathens burn and plunder!

Your legacy is death! The disgust of good men is your renown! The lowly languish; humble make curses of your names. Does this please you? Does it swell your hearts with pride?

Speak to me no longer of great lords. I will hear no more of kings and their lofty affairs. Their concerns are the concerns of the maggot in the dung-heap. I, who have soared with eagles, will not wallow with pigs!

To our everlasting shame, the very barbarians who everywhere supplant us are proving better Christians than the Britons who first taught them the Faith! Their zeal is as sharp as the spears they once raised against us, while that of our kings has grown dull, their hearts cold. Are they to show themselves better men?

Once there was a time, now all but forgotten, when the world knew what it was to be ruled by a righteous lord, when one man of faith held all realms in his strong hand, when the High King of Heaven blessed his High King on Earth.

Britain was exalted then.

Not for the tongues of mortal men is the elegy of the Pendragon. Oh, Arthur, your Matchless Creator alone chants your funeral song, the echo resounding in men's souls to the world's end. In the meantime, the knife of great longing pierces the heart. The High King of Heaven has left the nation without a roof.

Woe and grief! The ruin of Britain! For the wickedness of men endures to the end of the age! To the day of doom and judgement the plagues of iniquity and cruelty and strife beat us down! Evil thrives, good is forgotten. The usurper sits on the righteous lord's throne. The unjust man becomes judge. The liar dispenses truth. That is the way of the world. So be it!

My black book is ended. I, Gildas, write this, and I will write no more.