by Hans Holzer
Paul Johnstone had given me two sites to explore: Cadbury Hill, allegedly the true Camelot, and a point in Hampshire where he thought England was founded. If his calculations were correct, then the latter place would be the actual site of Cardic’s barrow, or grave, a spot where the first king of Wessex, precursor of modern England, was buried.
“It’s at Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire,” he wrote, “halfway between Winchester and Salisbury, but closer to Andover. But there is a drawback to this one. Nobody seems to know the exact site.”
Since Cardic was one of the local rulers Arthur fought at Badon Hill, I felt we should include the visit, especially as it was not out of our way to Camelot.
Johnstone was able, however, to give me one more clue, this one not archeological, but psychic:
In 1950 he had had a strange dream about Cardic’s grave. He saw that a nineteenth-century church had been erected over the site, on the hill where the barrow was. Cardic’s grave, called Ceardicesbeorg in the original tongue, had escaped even so renowned an archeologist as Professor O. G. S. Crawford, the founder of Antiquity, and a man whose home territory this was, as he lived in nearby Southampton.
Thus armed with a meager clue and the story of a strange dream, we set out from London on September 22, 1967. Sybil Leek was to meet us at the Andover railroad station.
I had with me an ordnance map of the area so that even the smallest piece of territory could be quickly explored. Our driver had long realized we were no ordinary tourists (by “we” I mean Catherine and myself, and now, Mrs. Leek).
We left Andover and drove three miles northeast to the little village of Hurstbourne Priors. In fact, we drove right through it, several times, actually, before we realized that we were going too fast. As we turned the car around once more, I spotted a narrow country lane, covered by the shadows of huge old trees, opening to our left. And at the bottom of the lane, a church—our church. We had found it, exactly as Paul Johnstone had dreamed it in 1950!
Johnstone had never visited Europe, nor did he have access to the fact that an early nineteenth-century-type church would stand there at the end of this country lane. But there it was, and we piled out.
Built in the traditional Church of England neo-Gothic style, this church had earlier beginnings, but its essence was indeed early nineteenth century. It stood in the middle of a romantic churchyard filled with ancient grave-stones, some still upright, but the majority leaning in various directions due to age. Farther back were a number of huge trees. Suddenly the busy country road we had just left did not intrude any longer, and we were caught up in a time warp where everything was just as it must have always been. It was close to noon now, and not a living soul around.
We entered the little church and found it the very model of a country chapel.
The driver stayed outside near the car while we started to walk around the soft green grounds.
“The church is not important here,” Sybil said right away, “it’s the ground that is.”
We stood near the biggest of the trees now.
“We should be on a hill,” she said, “a small hill, a rise in the ground that has been utilized for a practical purpose.”
I became interested and moved in closer. The funerary bowers of old were just that.
“There is some connection with a disease…people congregating here because of a disease…. I expected to find the hill here.”
Considering the changes possible in the course of fifteen centuries, I was not at all surprised that the hill no longer existed, or at least that it was no longer prominent, for there was a rise in back of the cemetery.
“Why is this hill important?” I asked.
“A long time ago…comes in in flickering movements, but I can see the hill distinctly. There is a male dominance here. This is not a local thing. I can’t quite see his legs. He dominates, though there are other people. He has a tall rod, which he is holding. There is a bird on the rod. It’s not a flag, but it’s like a flag. The hill is important to him…J…initial J. This is in connection with the flag thing. I can see his face and his head.”
“Is there anything on his head?”
“Yes, there is, a headgear—it is related to the thing he is holding. I can’t see it very clearly. The bird is also on his headgear, swept up from it. An outdoor man of great strength. He is a soldier. A very long time ago.”
Camelot today—only the earth works are left
“What period are we in with him, would you say?” I asked softly. Nothing in the appearance of the place related to a soldier. Sybil was of course getting the right “vibrations,” and I was fascinated by it.
“So far back I can’t be sure.”
“Is he an important man?”
“Yes. I’m looking at letters. C-Caius…C-a-i-s… Caius. He is very important. The hill is connected with him, yet he is foreign. But he needs the hill. He faces west. West is the road he has to go…from east to west is the journey….
“What has he done?”
“The thing in his hand is related to his position. Coins…trading…a lot of people in one spot but he dominates….”
Sybil felt at this point that we should move back farther for better “reception” of the faint waves from the past. She pointed to the two oldest trees at the extreme end of the churchyard and remarked that the strongest impression would be there.
“Kill…someone was killed between those two trees,” she now asserted, “he was chased, there is an old road beneath this cemetery. He had to go this way, make the way as he went. Not just walk over. Almost on this spot, I have the feeling of someone meeting sudden death. Violent death. And yet it was not war. More like an attack, an ambush. There is a big connection with the west. That’s what he wants to do, go west. This man was very dominant.”
We were now in the corner of the old cemetery. The silence was unbroken by anything except an occasional jet plane soaring overhead. There is an airbase situated not far away.
“There ought to be a clearing where you look out to a hill,” Sybil insisted. “This man was here before those trees. The trees are at least a thousand years old.”
I did some fast arithmetic. That would get us back to about the ninth century. It was before then, Sybil asserted.
With that, she turned around and slowly walked back to the car. We had lots more mileage to cover today, so I thought it best not to extend our visit here, especially as we had found interesting material already.
When I saw Paul Johnstone in St. Louis in February of the following year, I played the tape of our investigation for him. He listened with his eyes half-closed, then nodded. “You’ve found it, all right. Just as I saw it in my dream.”
“What exactly did you dream?”
“I was there…I was looking at the hill…there was a church on the hill, not a particularly ancient church, and there was a bronze memorial of a British soldier in it…then I was looking at a book, a book that does not exist, but it was telling of Cardic of Wessex, and that he was buried on this hill where stood this nineteenth-century church. The church had obliterated the traces of his grave, that is why it had not been found. I simply wrote this dream down, but never did anything about it until you came along.”
The reference to Cardic’s grave goes back to the tenth century, Johnstone pointed out. I questioned him about the name CAIUS which Sybil tried to spell for us.
“In his own time, Cardic would have spelled his name C-a-r-a-t-i-c-u-s…. Mrs. Leek got the principal letters of the name, all right. The long rod with the bird on it is also very interesting. For in the Sutton Hoo find of ancient British relics there was a long bronze spear with a stag atop it. This was a standard, and Cardic might well have had one with a bird on it. This founder of Wessex undoubtedly was a “dominant personality,” as Sybil put it—and again some interesting things fall into place. Cardic’s father was a Jute, as were most of his people—remember the letter, J, that Sybil used to describe him and his kind?”
Johns
tone then went on to explain the role Cardic played in history. I had not wanted to have this knowledge before, so that Sybil could not get it from my mind or unconscious.
Both Cardic and Artorius served as officers of British King Ambrose, and when Ambrose died in 485 A.D. Cardic went over to the Saxon enemy. In 495 he invaded Hampshire with his Jutes, and ruled the country as a local chieftain. In 503, when Arthur fought the Battle of Badon Hill against the Saxons and their allies, Cardic’s people were among those allies. According to Johnstone, he arrived a little late and made his escape, living on to 516, at which time he might have been ambushed at the barrow site and buried there with the honors due him. This site was very close to his western frontier, and the ambushers would have been Britons from Ambrose’s old kingdom, based at Salisbury, rather than men from the distant Camelot. Johnstone does not think Arthur could have ordered Cardic murdered: They had been friends for years, and though their kingdoms were close to one another, there was no war between them between 503 and 516, a pretty long time of peace in those days. Arthur could have crushed Cardic’s kingdom, which was based at what is now Winchester, yet be chose for some reason not to do so. But Ambrose’s heirs might not have felt as charitable about their neighbor, and it is there that we must look for the killers of Cardic.
Johnstone also suggested that the long rod with the eagle on top and the helmet might very well have been Roman, inasmuch as Roman culture was still very dominant in the area and Cardic certainly trained as an officer in that tradition.
The name Cardic itself is Welsh, and Johnstone suggested that Cardic’s father, Elesa, was of Anglo-Jute origin, his mother Welsh, and he himself a native of Britain, perhaps the reason for his divided loyalties in those turbulent times.
I questioned my expert concerning the remark, made by Mrs. Leek, that the man wanted to go west and had come from the east.
“As a Saxon commander, he naturally came from the east and wanted to extend his power westward, but he was fought to a standstill,” Johnstone replied.
It seemed fitting to me to visit the last resting place of the man who had been Arthur’s counterplayer, and yet a friend once too, before proceeding to Arthur’s lair, Camelot, some two hours’ driving time farther to the southwest.
Finding Cadbury Hill proved no easier than discovering Cardic’s bower. We passed through South Cadbury twice, and no one knew where the excavations were to be found. Evidently the fame of Cadbury Hill did not extend beyond its immediate vicinity. It was already the latter part of the afternoon when we finally came upon the steep, imposing hill that once held a succession of fortified encampments from the dawn of history onward—including, perhaps, the fabled Camelot?
A twisting road led up the hill, and we decided it best to leave the car behind. After crossing a wooded section and passing what appeared to be remnants of old stone fortifications, we finally arrived on the plateau. The sight that greeted our eyes was indeed spectacular. Windswept and chilly, a slanting plateau presented itself to our eyes: earth ramparts surrounding it on all four sides, with the remnants of stone walls here and there still in evidence. The center of the area was somewhat higher than the rest, and it was there that a team of volunteer archeologists had been digging. The sole evidence of their efforts was a crisscross network of shallow trenches and some interesting artifacts stored in a local museum, most of it of Roman or pre-Roman origin, however, which had led to the assumption that this was nothing more than a native Celtic fortress the Romans had taken over. Was this the great palace of Camelot with its splendid halls and the famed Round Table?
* * *
At the moment, a herd of cows was grazing on the land and we were the only bipeds around. The cows found us most fascinating and started to come close to look us over. Until we were sure that they were cows and that there were no bulls among them, this was somewhat of a nerve-wracking game. Then, too, my tape recording of what Sybil had to say was frequently interrupted by the ominous and obvious sound of cow droppings, some of which came awfully close for comfort. But the brave explorer that I am stood me in good stead: I survived the ordeal with at least as much courage as did Arthur’s knights of old survive the ordeal of combat. There we were, Catherine in a wine red pants suit, the driver somewhere by himself looking down into the village, and Sybil and I trying to tune in the past.
If this was indeed the true Camelot, I felt that Mrs. Leek should pick up something relating to it. She had no conscious notion as to where we were or why I had caused her to walk up a steep hill in the late afternoon, a hill evidently given over to cows. But she saw the trenches and diggings and may have assumed we were looking at some ancient Roman site. Beyond that I honestly don’t think she knew or cared why we were here: She has always trusted me and assumed that there is a jolly good reason.
After walking around for few moments, I cornered her near the diggings and begin my questioning.
“What do you think this place is?” I began.
“I think it’s a sanctuary,” came the odd reply, “a retreat. A spiritual retreat.”
“Can you visualize what stood here?”
“As I was coming up the hill I had the feeling of a monastery, but I am not thinking in terms of pure religion—more like a place where people come to contemplate, a spiritual feeling. I see more the end of the period than the buildings.”
“How did it end?”
“The breaking up of a clan…a number of people, not in a family, but tied by friendship….”
“How far back?”
“I’ll try to get some letters….” She closed her eyes and swayed a little in the strong wind, while I waited. “G-w-a-i-n-e-l-o-d….”
My God, I thought, is she trying to say “Camelot”?
“A meeting place,” Sybil continued, gradually falling more and more into trance, “not a war place, a good place, friendship…this place has had for many years a religious association. A very special one.”
“Is there some leader?” I asked.
“Abbot Erlaile…not of necessity in the same period.”
“When were these people here?”
“A long, long time ago. Not much power behind it, very diffuse. I can only catch it from time to time. There are many Gwaine letters, a lot of those.”
“You mean people whose names sound like that or start with Gwaine?”
“Yes.”
“Are they male?”
“Not all male. But the friendship is male. Coming up from the sea. This was their sanctuary.”
“Who were these men?”
“Gwaine is one.”
“Who ruled over them?”
“It’s a very mixed thing…not easy to catch…thirteen people…tied together by friendship….”
“Do they have any name as a group?”
“Templars.”
Later, when I examined the evidence, it became clear to me that Sybil was getting more than one layer of history when she made contact with the imprint left upon these storied rocks.
Paul Johnstone, my Arthurian expert friend, assured me later that Camelot was derived from the Welsh Camallt, meaning crooked slope, which is a pretty good description of the place at that.
In his psychic contact with the historical Arthur, Johnstone, using his dowsing board, established the name as Cambalta, which is pretty close to the modern Welsh form. But on earlier occasion, again using the board, Johnstone questioned his communicator (as he described it in an article, “News from Camelot,” in Search magazine, March 1968) about the ancient name of the hill at South Cadbury. This time the answer differs.
“Dinas Catui,” Johnstone quotes his informant, and explains that it means Fort of Cado. But he also gives an alternate name: Cantimailoc. Thus, even the “horse’s mouth” wasn’t always sure what the name was, it would seem. Unless, of course, there was more than one name. This is precisely what I think. As its owners changed, so the name might have changed: When Cado was king, perhaps it was Dinas Catui, which would be the post-Latin for
m, or Cantimailoc, the local Welsh form. Then when Arthur succeeded his erstwhile colleague, the name might have left out the reference to King Cado and become Cambalta, referring to the geographical peculiarity of the place, rather than incorporating Arthur’s name, a modesty quite consistent with the character of the historical Artorius. But when Gwaine became prominent in the area, he might not have held such modest views as Arthur, and thus the fortified hill might have become known as Gwaine’s slope or Gwainelot.
Mrs. Leek, getting her impressions at the same time and with varying degrees of intensity, could not possibly distinguish between the various layers that cling to the place. Certainly, from what I heard, there were at least two sixth-century layers, that of Artorius himself and that of Gwaine, and a third layer not directly connected either in time or relationship with the two earlier ones, but somehow also concerned with the overall aspects of the site. This strange discrepancy would require some sorting out, I thought immediately, but surely there must be a connection. I knew enough of Mrs. Leek’s work to take nothing lightly or dismiss any bit of information obtained through her as unimportant.
After our return, I went over the tapes very carefully to try to make sense out of what had come through. To begin with, the sanctuary and Abbot Erlaile and the Templars would certainly have to be much later than the thirteen men tied together in friendship, and the man she called Gwaine, and yet there might have been a strong link.
Gwainelod—was that a contemporary name for Camelot? Gwaine himself was the son of a northern chieftain whom Arthur had taken under his wing. Sometimes styled Gawain, this historical knight with the Welsh name actually lived in the early sixth century, and shows up also as a fictional hero in the medieval Arthur legend, where he is called Sir Gawain. The many people with names beginning with Gwaine to which the medium referred might very well have included Queen Gwainewere, better known as Guinevere, Arthur’s first wife. According to Johnstone, the one who did most of the things the medieval Guinevere was supposed to have done was not this queen, who died after a short time, but her successor, Arthur’s second queen named Creirwy.