The Lost Book of the Grail Read online

  Arthur had chosen this passage because it reminded him of his own “natural antipathy” toward the precentor. He read until the cathedral bells rang a quarter to nine. Then Arthur laid aside his book and, as always, excused himself from the party to go up to the cathedral. He slipped quietly through the west door and walked the entire length of the nave, turning left at the crossing to reach the Epiphany Chapel in the north quire aisle, where he took his usual seat for Compline. He could more easily enter through the north transept door, but Arthur loved the long, sober walk down the empty nave, surrounded by ancient stonework that lurked just out of sight in the dimness. He made a point of wearing hard-soled shoes in the evening, so his footsteps would echo in the vastness.

  The precentor had instituted the nightly singing of Compline at Barchester many years earlier, and Arthur loved the service. Unlike Evensong, sung by a full choir, Compline was rarely sung by more than three or four people, but the precentor’s rule was strict: Whosoever attends Compline sings Compline. The service was always held in the snug confines of the Epiphany Chapel and lit by only a few candles. The canons took it in turn to lead the service, and some sang better than others. Tonight, the service was led by Canon Howard, who had once been a chorister, so the congregation, of which Arthur constituted one third, stayed on key. Arthur shivered when the canon sang the words:

  Be sober, be watchful; your adversary the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.

  Arthur’s voice trembled slightly as he sang in response, “Thanks be to God.”

  In the medieval monastery of Barchester, Compline had been the last of the seven daily services, sung just before the monks retired for the night. With its emphasis on endings and its haunting chants, it always put Arthur in a somewhat melancholy mood. The service lasted only a few minutes, and even though he walked home slowly, by nine thirty, he was back in his sitting room, sipping the dregs of the Champagne and listening to David talk about what a coup it was that he had convinced the American author Melanie Stanwick to come to Barchester for a signing. Stanwick was the hottest commodity at the moment in the world of what was politely called “erotic romance.”

  “What’s her latest book called?” asked Arthur, “Sleazy Passions? Sensual Unpleasantness?”

  “I think it’s The Stultifying Sultriness of a Saucy Suburbanite,” said Oscar.

  “Oscar’s been reading the OED again,” said Arthur.

  “It happens to be called Spring Heat,” said David, “and it’s a bestseller.”

  “And have you read this bestseller?” said Arthur.

  “Of course I haven’t. It’s utter rubbish, but that doesn’t mean I won’t sell a hundred copies at the signing.”

  “And it doesn’t mean you won’t try to reenact some of the scenes from the book with the author,” said Arthur.

  “Just because a woman writes erotic fiction doesn’t mean she sleeps with every bookseller on her tour,” said David.

  “So you’re not going to try to take her to bed?” said Oscar.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said David. “Of course I’m going to try to take her to bed—but without prejudice. I’d try just as hard if she were a Nobel Prize winner.”

  “You’re such an egalitarian,” said Oscar. The great bell of the cathedral echoed out the first stroke of ten—the accepted sign that the meeting of the BBs was adjourned.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Arthur, rising from his seat, “now that we have, as always, broken our solitary rule against the discussion of affairs, and with the unsavory image of David bedding a Nobel laureate ready to haunt my dreams, I bid you good night.”

  The Champagne had made Arthur feel alert rather than groggy, and so, after the others had left, he repaired to his study and his secret collection—a case of books about King Arthur and his knights, and about the Holy Grail. These were the books that he read again and again, looking for a clue, a hint to help him solve the mystery that had intrigued him since childhood. He turned on a lamp and settled into a wing chair to spend an hour with his books searching for the Grail.

  He had kept his promise to his grandfather to keep his search a secret, though he had still not discovered the reason for that secrecy. That promise was why his Grail library was hidden away upstairs. Besides which, he liked having a secret, something that connected him and only him to his grandfather, but he also felt a slight shame and guilt that he kept a part not just of his book collection but of his life from his friends.

  Arthur’s collection of Arthurian literature was not large and contained few items of great value—this was a working collection. Thomas Malory had worked from several sources, both French and English, and Arthur had modern translations of all the earlier versions of the Grail stories—the works of Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Each of these medieval writers had his own vision of what the Grail really was. He had later works as well—all of Tennyson’s volumes of Arthurian poetry, including The Holy Grail, in their green cloth bindings, and a number of more recent academic studies on Grail lore and history.

  He had bought, and read, many of the twentieth-century adaptations of the Arthur legends—The Sword in the Stone, The Mists of Avalon, and so on, but he always preferred Malory. Those later versions, he felt, tried to impose some sort of order into a collection of legends that he loved for their disjointedness, their narrative chaos. It was odd that Arthur, who was himself almost obsessively organized, should be so drawn to such a loosely knit narrative. He supposed it was because of the very medievalness of the legends—reading them in Malory was a constant reminder that these stories were written hundreds of years before the invention of the novel, before the idea that a long narrative could be anything other than a collection of vaguely related short narratives. The one exception to his anti-twentieth-century bias was the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The cobbling together of comedy sketches that never really told a coherent story seemed to Arthur to fit the idea of the medieval original. And the movie was the perfect union of his two collecting passions—the Arthur legends and British humor. The item in his collection in which he guessed his grandfather would take most delight was a copy of the screenplay signed by every Python.

  —

  Tonight he pulled down the second volume of his prized possession—the 1816 edition of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur edited by Alexander Chalmers. It was the first edition of Malory published after the Stansby version Arthur had held so recently—a lapse of 182 years in which the Knights of the Round Table were absent from the public consciousness. With the Romantic revival came a surge of interest in all things medieval and King Arthur and the Grail returned. Arthur cringed to think that the legends might have remained buried and obscure—known only to academic medievalists—if the Romantics hadn’t dug them up. He read for an hour, words so familiar he could recite many passages from memory, then laid the book on a side table and sighed deeply.

  Although he lived quietly, suffering through his job and rarely leaving Barchester, although he had never ridden a horse across a desert, or flown in a plane, or gone on an adventure of any sort, Arthur nonetheless thought of himself as a Grail hunter. Ever since that conversation with his grandfather, he had believed in the Grail. He couldn’t help believing in it, the same way he couldn’t help not believing in God. He believed the Grail was real, he believed it could be found, and, thanks both to his grandfather and to other discoveries he had made over the years, he believed it might well be in or near Barchester. But if it was ever found, it would not be by an action hero, thought Arthur, but by a scholar. And even though the discovery would bring him neither fame nor fortune, because of his promise to his grandfather to keep the Grail a secret, Arthur intended to be that scholar.

  —

  This was the life of Arthur Prescott. It was a life of rhythms—rhythms that irritated him, like the cycle of meeti
ngs and lectures and tutorials at the university; rhythms that stimulated him, like his walks with Gwyn and his evenings with David and Oscar; rhythms that challenged him, like his perennially exciting yet dependably frustrating work in the cathedral library; rhythms that intrigued him, like his regular rereading of the Grail stories; and the rhythm that soothed him, the daily life of the cathedral: Morning Prayer, Evensong, and Compline repeating like the motion of the planets, eternal and unchanging. Arthur lived by these rhythms; he depended on them; they guaranteed the immutable truths of his life—that work would always be an annoyance, that the cathedral guide would never be completed, that he would remain forever single, that the Grail would always beckon him, and that in spite of all this, he would be reasonably happy, lulled by the ancient rhythms of the cathedral and by the timeless texts and bindings of the books in which he immersed himself, into knowing that his life was only a ripple in rhythms that would drive the world until its end.

  In such a mind-set Arthur, so he believed, did not need a stranger to arrive in Barchester; he did not need to be dragged into the twenty-first century; and he certainly did not need to fall in love.

  III

  THE CHAPTER HOUSE

  The chapter house, traditional meeting place of the cathedral canons, is one of the lightest, airiest spaces in the precincts. This octagonal room, supported by a single central pillar, boasts clear windows in the Decorated style that cover every wall from just above the stone seats to the vaulted ceiling and admit sunshine at all times of day. The stained glass in this fourteenth-century structure was destroyed during the Civil War, but the change from the dim meeting room of the Middle Ages to the bright space we see today can hardly be considered for the worse.

  A.D. 794, St. Ewolda’s Monastery

  The Monastery of St. Cuthbert

  Lindisfarne Island

  12 June 793

  Brethren,

  I send tidings of great sadness. Most of my fellow monks at Lindisfarne lie dead—victims of a fierce and savage attack from a pagan race. They came from the sea and attacked like stinging hornets, like ravening wolves; they made raids on all sides, slaying not only cattle but priests and monks. They came to the Holy church at Lindisfarne and laid all to waste, trampled the Holy places with polluted feet, dug down the altars, and bore away the treasures of the church. Some of the brethren they slew, some they carried away captive, some they drove out naked after mocking and vexing them. Some they drowned in the sea.

  Our waters run with blood, our faces with tears after this unholy desecration. The cover of our great Gospel has been rent from the Holy book, but the word of the Lord remains. Look to your treasures, look to your lives, look to the sea.

  In Christ,

  Aelfwic

  “And this is what brings you to St. Ewolda’s,” said Cyneburga, laying the letter on the table. She had been summoned from her private prayers to meet with this stranger and was not well disposed to show him sympathy.

  “Yes, Mother Abbess. We received the news at Glastonbury just a few weeks ago,” said the monk. He was dressed in a traveling cloak and had arrived on foot at the abbey that morning, along with two heavily laden servants. “Beaduwulf, our father abbot, fears a similar attack could come to Glastonbury and has instructed me to hide certain of the abbey’s treasures in foundations that are less likely to . . . interest the infidels.”

  “So our poverty has attracted you,” said the abbess. “Not because you, as one of the wealthiest monasteries in the land, wish to aid us in our need but because you find our destitution convenient.”

  “Such a small foundation, with so few brothers and sisters, might well avoid the grasp of these monsters,” said the monk, ignoring Cyneburga’s jab.

  “Six,” said the abbess.

  “Six?”

  “We have six brothers and sisters—as devoted to our Lord Christ as any at Glastonbury. The only difference between our foundation and yours is that while we all hunger for righteousness, we also hunger.”

  “I have not come to discuss wealth or poverty,” said the monk, throwing off his hood for the first time and rising from his somewhat stooped position to his impressive full height. “I bear relics that are beyond value and Beaduwulf has decreed that one of these shall rest with you for a time. You should show nothing but thanks and humility. You should fall on your knees before this treasure and pray to the God of your salvation, giving thanks for Beaduwulf and his generosity, giving thanks that your suffering has brought the divine into your midst. You have been chosen and yours is not to complain of poverty; yours is to say only ‘Let it be according to thy word,’ and take the blessed burden you are called to protect.”

  Cyneburga had passed sixty-two years on the earth. The daughter of a traveling merchant, she had been converted to Christianity by one of the sisters of St. Ewolda’s and had entered the monastery at seventeen. She had seen almost fifty years of daily prayer and worship and had risen to the post of abbess in this foundation that, since the death of Wigbert more than two hundred years ago, had always been ruled by women, as a way to honor St. Ewolda. In all her dealings with monks and nuns over those years, in all her interactions with servants and farmers and cooks, in her meetings with priests and bishops—never had anyone spoken to her like this young monk of Glastonbury. She rose out of her chair and was opening her mouth to berate his insolence when she felt a hand on her shoulder. There was no one else in the room, and Cyneburga knew instantly it was the same hand she had felt when she stood outside the monastery as a young woman, trying to decide whether she wished to pass through that gate and commit her life to Christ. Immediately her anger melted away and she fell to her knees.

  “Forgive me, brother,” she said. “I have allowed my worldly frustrations to cloud my vision of what God calls me to do. What protection we can give through the power of St. Ewolda we shall bestow upon whatever treasures Beaduwulf trusts to our care.”

  “One treasure only shall rest here in your keeping, good Cyneburga, one most suited to your care, for though it may appear humble and of little worth, it is nonetheless touched by God.”

  “Show me this treasure,” said Cyneburga, “and I will protect it, even with my life.”

  “Beaduwulf thanks you, Mother Abbess. By taking this charge you are serving God as few will ever have the chance to do.”

  The monk stepped out of the small hut in which he and the abbess had been speaking and summoned the two servants, who stood waiting in the yard. It took no more than a few minutes to unpack the treasure that had been sent from its home in Glastonbury and set it before the abbess.

  “This is not what I expected,” said Cyneburga.

  “The gifts of God rarely are,” replied the monk.

  April 12, 2016

  THIRD TUESDAY AFTER EASTER

  The first time he saw her, he mistook her for a statue. The dean had mentioned the idea of a sculpture show in the chapter house, and when Arthur noticed the door standing open, he glanced in and saw a figure, silhouetted in the afternoon light that streamed down from above. Not the Virgin Mary, he thought, but perhaps Helen—Helen the mother of Constantine and discoverer of the True Cross. Her face was raised to the light, and her eyes seemed fixed on the empty stone panel above the bishop’s seat. And then she moved. Arthur felt he should look away, that he had intruded on some moment of intimacy, but something about the way the sun gleamed in her loose blond hair and the puzzled expression on her face as she consulted the worn booklet in her hand held him entranced. Who was she? Not some rare tourist—the chapter house was open to the public only on Sundays. She must be someone with permission from the dean to stand immobile in beams of sunlight. Arthur was just about to back away and head toward the library when she spoke.

  “I don’t suppose you know where the painting is?” she said calmly, as if she were continuing a conversation already begun rather than turning to confront a man staring at
her from the doorway.

  “The . . . the painting?” said Arthur, stepping from the shadows of the cloister into the light of the chapter house.

  “The portrait of Bishop Gladwyn and the Holy Grail.”

  Arthur felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. How could this stranger know about Gladwyn’s portrait?

  “It’s not the Holy Grail,” he said tersely.

  “So you do know the painting. Churchgirl42 posted a picture of it on Instagram, but the only reason I found it is because I don’t just follow the hashtag Holy Grail, but I also follow a bunch of others, and she tagged it with hashtag chalice, but she didn’t say where it was except Barchester. So I went to the cathedral Web site to order a guidebook, but apparently they don’t have one. I even e-mailed and they said the guy who is writing it keeps missing deadlines, so I got this one on eBay, but it’s from the 1890s, so I guess it’s a little out of date, but it says that John Collier’s portrait of Bishop Gladwyn is supposed to hang in the chapter house, and this is the chapter house, right?”

  This speech left Arthur feeling as breathless as he imagined she must be after such a torrent of words.

  “I think I understood about a third of what you just said,” said Arthur.

  “I just wondered if you knew what happened to Bishop Gladwyn’s portrait.”

  “It’s moved,” he said at last. “It was moved in 1905.”

  “Excellent—someone who actually knows what I’m talking about,” she said, striding forward and extending her hand. “I’m Bethany. Bethany Davis. I’m here to digitize the manuscripts in the library.”