Thank you for reading Merlin's Gold! =]

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So, this is an author's note! But I'll keep it brief, honest.

While I'm sure I could bang on for a few pages about Arthurian legend and so on, I'm really not sure I'm entirely qualified to do so, or in all honesty that anyone would read it anyway.

Perhaps a little bit just to justify my existence though.

So, to anyone who has read Merlin's Gold, thank you. People have been incredibly helpful in pointing out little errors, critiquing, noting historical blips or just generally encouraging me, many just by reading.

Did King Arthur exist? Who knows.

Some undoubtedly believe; others think he is merely a legend, often credited to one Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th-century work Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain).

I personally quite like Bernard Cornwell's version, where Arthur is a talented Captain under a king, but the 5th — 6th century legend of Arthur seems indelibly ingrained in our culture. And let's face it, Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and crew certainly do make for a good story. Was he Welsh? Was he Cornish? Was he a bit of everything? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure anyone else is either.

The novels by Mary Stewart, starting with The Crystal Cave, are also well worth reading, although more centred on Merlin.

There's a heck of a lot of literature out there if you're interested in reading more and I certainly don't intend to go through it all here. The legends of Tristan and Isolde; Percival and the Grail, the treasure and weapons of the horde, The Fisher King, the Summer Country, King Mark and Tintagel castle, Gornemant, Lancelot, Uther, Merlin, and Morgause are all out there if you want to read them.

Whether Arthurian stories can correctly be called Historical Fiction is also perhaps a moot point, as I suspect there's a lot of fantasy in there, in the same way that the Robin Hood legends probably have some grains of truth in them, but tortured beyond belief by embellishment, retelling and medieval fan fiction.

I have been a little fast and loose with the history of Silbury Hill, but it does exist. It's a man-made chalk mound near Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It's roughly 40m high, but its original purpose is still highly debated. It's old, Neolithic in age and so was built way before Arthur's time. 4750 years ago to be more precise.

There are indications that the top originally had a rounded profile, but this was flattened in the medieval period to provide a base for a building, perhaps with a defensive purpose, hence the upper fort in the story.

The hill does show several phases of building, but the hollow core is very much my own invention, based loosely on several excavations of the mound. In 1776 a team of Cornish miners overseen by the Duke of Northumberland were employed to sink a vertical shaft from the top and in 1849 a tunnel was dug horizontally from the edge into the centre. The tree plug and shaft details are in there due to my own experience in the mining industry in the southwest UK. In actuality, the techniques utilised there probably weren't employed until the 1600s, but the Cornish were certainly mining a long time before that, the capping methods were only used when the Cornish started having to delve deep into the ground for their tin. Before that most of the Cornish tin was extracted through surface tin streaming rather than deep extraction.

According to legend, Silbury Hill is the last resting place of a King Sil, represented in a lifesize gold statue and sitting on a golden horse.

I hope that my little twists of history can be forgiven.

According to legend they are listed as follows :

Agravain (son of Lot) · Bagdemagus · Bedivere · Bors · Breunor (La Cote Mal Taillée) · Calogrenant · Caradoc · Dagonet · Dinadan · Gaheris · Galahad · Gareth · Gawain (Arthur's nephew, son of Lot and Morgause) · Geraint · Griflet · Kay · Lamorak · Lancelot · Leodegrance · Lionel · Lucan · Maleagant · Marhaus · Palamedes · Pelleas · Pellinore · Percival · Safir · Sagramore · Segwarides · Tor · Tristan · Uriens · Ywain · Ywain the Bastard · Elyan the White · Sir Ector

Thank you to those of you who read this. This was my first full-length novel and it's been an experience I won't forget. Thanks again for your support. Cheers, Gav

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by

Gavin Wilson

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