Part Two is set both in AD515, over 100 years after the last Roman soldier left Britain, and on the Irish border in 1980. The figure of Cai continues a succession of Celtic figures from Part One. He is a veteran fighter of the Saxons. He was at the siege of Mount Badon, reputed to be the last battle of King Arthur. Christian priests try to persuade Cai and his daughters, Corda and Morgana, to leave the farm. Cai views them with contempt. After the great battle, he had buried a Celtic idol in his field to watch over him. As his ancestors had done. He puts blood on the field as a blessing. He dismisses the new Christian gods, although Morgana is a convert. As news of a fresh Saxon invasion grows, the people flock to the great fort at Camulodunum (Colchester). The conflict multiplies, Celt against Christian, Briton against Saxon, daughters against father. Amongst all the panic sits one stubborn old man, refusing to leave what is his:

I’ll stay where I was born. And watch.

It all-

come-

again.

As in Part One, where the Roman arrival is created not by a massive display of arms, but by three stray soldiers, so here Saxon reality is shown by the arrival of one mortally wounded Saxon fighter: ‘Ic eom anhaga, iserne wund’. What may seem remote is made immediate. Cai, as his ancestors, kills the foreigner on his land and wants his blood as a sacrifice. He in turn is killed by Corda. Both daughters are now criminals. They become fugitives, as had Conlag and Daui before them.

As the Saxons lay waste to southern Britain, Brenton introduces a further element as a means of impacting early and contemporary history. Thomas Chichester, a British Army officer, waits in an Irish field, waits to kill O’Rourke, an IRA leader. The corn has been harvested by Chichester in his role as a labourer, and lies in sheaves. The image comments on the nature of harvest in the play. Chichester links the Celts in Ireland with his family fields near Colchester, which, he says, could be the site of King Arthur’s last battle. He remains onstage as creator of the dreams, as invader himself and as would-be killer. As he dozes, his visions of the past materialise onstage around him. His fantasies increase and his insanity grows.

Modern opinion supports the reality of Arthur, who fought against the Saxons. His resistance could not affect the march of the Saxons, but his image developed in subsequent literature and romance. It persisted. Even the elimination of the Druids by the Saxons did not extinguish the cultural integrity of the older population of Britain. Beliefs are not easily destroyed, and the legend of Arthur continued. Brenton prefers the myth of Arthur as a figure giving a voice to the aspirations of a defeated people, the once and future king. Accordingly, the fiction of Arthur is created in the play’s final scene by one of two refugee cooks. The first cook, tiring of his rapidly vanishing trade, turns poet and tells a story of a king who never was. Asked by Corda and Morgana, who are now guerrillas, the cook says: