Now, the clouds around the hill have solidified to a leaden presence, closing off the views. I head down to town for the warmth of a cup of tea by way of a deep green wood where I would be no less surprised to encounter Merlin than an aged World War II veteran carrying a gnarled wooden cane with a burnished burl at its top. 

I join up with High Street and come across a statue the Veteran told me about—but it is not King Arthur, as he suggested. It is a statue of King Aelfred, the great Anglo-Saxon king! 

Aelfred reigned from 871 to 899, renowned for his love of education and law. He made Winchester his capital. Had our Veteran meant Aelfred or Arthur? Was it a matter of confusion between our American and British accents? I look around for my otherworldly guide, but he has disappeared into the labyrinth of wooded pathways.

Well, this is how the Arthurian legend seems to develop: fragments of the historical become interwoven with the mythical and the personal, becoming the story of a place. 

Cathedral, College, Round Table, traces of Rome—Winchester forms a potent starting place for Malory’s tale of Arthur’s Roman War. And something of the journey has coalesced for me, as well. 

At home, my marriage is frayed and fragile. My husband and our high school sons will be meeting me in France, but just before I left for this trip my husband told me that when we returned home, he would be moving out. It is not the first time he has expressed this, but we have been married 23 years and are Catholics so despite the increasing feeling of despair, we simultaneously love our family life, and soldier on—a duality of our domestic space.

What began in the morning as a wild idea has now taken hold in my imagination, creating the emotional potency of saying yes to something unplanned. As I head to the train to return to London, I think, “Could I be any happier?” Walking this landscape, momentarily unfettered, releases emotion. The geography is generative to me as a reader of Malory and restorative to me personally. I might tentatively call it joy.

Winchester is in southern England, about 70 miles southwest of London. From here, Malory’s Arthur announces he will hold a parlement in York, over 200 hundred miles north, to determine his strategy in contesting Rome. Why set Arthur on this inexplicable route toward York? It’s hardly on the way to Rome. I’m already checking the train schedule from London to York.