A battle scene as depicted in the Vergilius Romanus, a probably 5-6th Century manuscript now believed on palaeographical and artistic grounds to have been written in Britain. This provides us with some idea of the late Roman military guise worn in Arthur's times - a far cry from medieval knights in shining armour.
Part II
Synopsis and Extract
The Victory at Badon
The Britain Catumandus sets foot in, is no longer an ordered Roman province. Some of that order survives; he encounters warriors and even magistrates often speaking Latin and paying lip service to Christianity while really worshipping luxury. Real control is exercised by jealous tribal tyrants vying for power not from the ruinous cities but from reoccupied hill forts dating from an ancient era. As the envoy of Anastasius Catumandus must worm himself into this violent ever shifting world and try to understand it. Above all he must discover the basis underlying the fame of Arthur, the tyrants’ Leader in War – when they can bestir themselves to oppose the invading Saxons. Can Rome rebuild its imperium using him? The task is severe but Catumandus knows how to charm, to ingratiate himself and to love diversely when it suits him. And his path might not be so difficult for it is well known that he is the son of Arthur, to whose seat, at Camulos, greatest of the Hill Forts, he finds his way.
There he becomes a player in Arthur’s mystical yet half barbaric court. Within the thrice walled heights of the fortress he forms fierce friendships and perhaps sees himself as a power broker in the interest of the Emperor, even a deviser of a strategy to defeat the Saxon advance. But outside his life redolent of martial action he falls under the spell of Arthur’s enigmatic wife Gwenhwyvar who delights in dangling him with her charm but gives hope of nothing more. She encourages him to marry yet does not deter him from a dangerous visit to the renegade Briton Ceretic who has become a Saxon leader. Of course, like everyone at Camulos Catumandus falls ever deeper under the spell of his rediscovered father, the peerless warrior, the brilliant yet enigmatic leader of them all, Arthur the only hope of the Britons.
Then, amidst the conflicts of the court and the everlasting threat of war Gwenhwyvar unexpectedly provides Catumandus with an insight into her own character and a revelation of her uneasy bond with Arthur, when she tells him of her doomed love for an Irish hero, Lasanleawg, in her eyes a man beautiful beyond measure. She speaks: