> Merlin (though to a large extent demythologised)
> foreseeing the future in dreams
> shamanistic dreams in which animals such as bears and eagles symbolise people
> druidism, in the background
Medieval Outsiders
> surviving Romano-Britons in an increasingly un-Roman country
The Camulod Chronicles
Britain, late 5th Century
In Book 4 of the Camulod Chronicles, The Saxon Shore, after his parents, Uther and Igraine, had both been killed in the wars with Cornish King Lot, the orphaned baby Arthur was saved from certain death by Caius Merlyn Britannicus. Now, following another attempt on the boy's life, Merlyn (who is still our narrator, and is known in Book 5 mostly as Cay) leaves his brother Ambrose in charge at Camulod and flees with seven-year-old Arthur and a small band of close friends, to a place [in his own words] "high on the north-western coast of Britain, in the mountainous region known locally as Cumbria, close by the western extremity of the great wall built by the Emperor Hadrian ..." And there they live in hiding for the next seven years.
We follow Arthur's progress as he grows and learns: by the time he is a teenager, having studied logic and history and philosophy with Merlyn and the physician Lucanus, he is wise beyond his years, and is also on the way to becoming an outstanding warrior. And of course we also follow Merlyn's private life: two of the friends who went north with him are the beautiful trouser-wearing Irish warrior Shelagh and her husband Donuil, and naturally the secret (but honourable!) love between Shelagh and Merlyn pursues its course:
'What is it, Shelagh?' I asked. 'You have something to tell me, I think.'
'I do. Do you remember this?' She dropped her hands into her lap and spread the fingers of each over one of her leather-covered thighs, on either side of where the front of her tunic hung down between them. I gazed at them in confusion, my heart suddenly pounding in my breast.
'Remember what?' The tension in my voice was unmistakable - dense and sexual.
'The body beneath these clothes, the one we decided together long since, and for the very best of reasons, that you may never have ...'
For six, seven, years life goes on, and the only excitements are the minor catastrophes of country life: a great storm, a death or two, an exceptionally hard winter. Then suddenly, trouble erupts in the south west once more and it is time for Merlin to emerge from seclusion and take Arthur to war.
While not being a stand-alone (far from it - the whole series known as the Camulod Chronicles is really one long novel, a saga published as a serial, not a series at all), The Fort At River's Bend is extremely well written and, while slow, slow in the best way and immensely satisfying, like life; an excellent read on a long evening.
And always there is the feeling that something is coming soon: Arthur, and Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad
