The Midsummer Crown Read Online Free

where they can still be seen, one on either side of the Guildhall entrance. Mind you, older folk will tell you that, in reality, these effigies formed a part of the street decorations when King Henry V entered his capital in triumph after the battle of Agincourt. (Of course, older people always like to air their superior knowledge in order to disillusion the young. They gain great enjoyment from it. I know because I do the same myself nowadays.)
    So how, you may ask, did I become acquainted with these myths and legends? Well, the history of Brutus and his Trojans is told in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Britonum which Brother Hilarion, our Novice Master at Glastonbury, permitted his charges to borrow now and then from the abbey library. But this interesting room also contained other delights in the shape of a locked cupboard whose contents we novices were forbidden even to touch, let alone to read. So, naturally, we were desperate to get our hands on them. Now, I think I have mentioned on more than one occasion in these chronicles my friend and fellow novice, Nicholas Fletcher, whose talent for lock-picking was unrivaled by anyone else whom I have ever met. I don’t believe the lock was invented that he was unable to open. It was therefore inevitable that, sooner or later, he would break into the forbidden cupboard and allow the rest of us a glimpse of the banned folios – which is how I first learned of the legend of the Daughters of Albion. This particular tale was lavishly illustrated with graphic depictions of the thirty-three sisters mating with the demons; drawings which made our hair stand on end. (And not just our hair, I can tell you. I believe it was that book, as much as anything else, which made me realize that the celibate life was not for me.) Of course, in the end, Brother Hilarion discovered what we were up to and we were all thoroughly whipped and set penances that seemed to last for an eternity. But it was worth it, for me at least.
    These legends came crowding back into my mind one showery morning seated on the lower slopes of Silbury Hill, that strange and eerie mound built thousands of years ago by the Celtic tribes who originally inhabited this island, although for what purpose no one has ever discovered. I have even heard it suggested that it was raised by a race of beings who came from a land beyond the stars. But that is blasphemy. Beyond the stars is Heaven, God’s paradise, which we all hope to attain some day.
    Ten days had passed since I left London; ten days of steady walking, still keeping to the side roads and woodland tracks, following the path I had mapped out for myself in my head. It brought me, eventually, to Silbury Hill and, later that same day, to Avebury village where I managed to obtain a supper of freshly-baked bread, goat’s-milk cheese and some of those little leeks which grow so profusely in spring and are eaten raw. ‘Stink-breaths’ we called them as children, not without good reason. After my meal, and in order to disperse some of the flatulence it was causing, I walked around the remains of the ancient stone circles which echoed the great Giant’s Dance to the south, on Salisbury Plain. The stones at Avebury have worn less well and are mere stumps in many places, but they are spread over a far greater area than those at Stonehenge. As far as I could tell after walking around for an hour or so – and it was not easy to discern anything with certainty – I thought I could make out two smaller henges within a larger one, and reflected how the circle, without beginning and without end, had always been a source of fascination; the serpent biting its tail, the ring that signifies fidelity.
    A butterfly hovered and settled near me on one of the stones, the pale transparency of its wings opalescent in the watery sunlight. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone in a shimmer of coruscating amber and pearl. Indeed, so brief had