The Lost Book of the Grail Read online

  She was shaking Arthur’s hand vigorously and her words almost did not register on his consciousness. How was he touching the skin—the cool, smooth, utterly relaxed skin—of this living statue? He had managed to escape the university after lunch and was on his way to a peaceful afternoon in the cathedral library and now there was this . . . this American, he guessed from her accent, shaking his hand and looking boldly into his eyes awaiting some sort of response to whatever she had just said.

  “You’re . . . I’m sorry, you’re what?”

  “Here for the manuscripts in the library. I’m going to digitize them.”

  “That sounds perfectly dreadful,” said Arthur, extricating his hand from hers and finding the world returning to focus. “What does it even mean?”

  “Oh, you must be Mr. Prescott. Gwyn said that would be your reaction. You’re exactly who I need to talk to.”

  “Whom.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Bethany.

  “I am to whom you need to talk.”

  “Right.”

  “But tell me again—what exactly are you doing to our manuscripts?”

  “It’s part of this worldwide project. It’s really exciting. The whole thing is funded by this billionaire in the Midwest who made all his money . . . well, I’m not sure how he made all his money, but anyway. He has this plan to digitize every pre-Reformation Christian manuscript in the world. He’s going to put all the images online and make them available to everybody. Can you imagine?”

  “And when you say digitize . . .”

  “I’ve got this awesome setup. Most places won’t let you do manuscripts automatically, like with books, which I can totally understand. So I have this adjustable stand that holds the volume—cradles it, really—and then this amazing digital camera that works in low light so you don’t have to risk damaging pages with flashes and stuff. And then I go over every page in this software program that lets me adjust—well, anything that needs adjusting.”

  “Sounds revolting.”

  “You’re just like Gwyn said you would be. I knew I was going to like you. How about some tea? Or if it’s too early for tea, then lunch. Unless it’s too late for lunch. What do you do then? The pub? I don’t really drink, but they have Diet Coke at the pub, right? Come on, drinks are on me.”

  Before Arthur realized what had happened she had linked her arm through his and was dragging him toward the cloister. Given no choice in the matter, he led her out of the cathedral precincts, down Magdalen Street, and through the imposing front door of the Mitre, Barchester’s poshest hotel. The bar, where they settled at a small table, had a view across the water meadows to the cathedral, but that was not why Arthur had brought Bethany here. Still not quite sure what he was doing, he allowed her to buy him a pint of bitter.

  “So, Gwyn tells me you’re a book collector,” said Bethany, when she had returned with the drinks.

  “Yes, I suppose I’m a species that won’t exist once you and your ilk have reduced the world of books to bits and bytes. But for the time being I collect physical copies of the works of the English humorists.”

  “Anybody I might have heard of?”

  “I suppose P. G. Wodehouse is the most famous. I have nearly all his books in first editions.” Bethany stared blankly at him as if she were a robot in need of rebooting. “P. G. Wodehouse? He wrote the Jeeves and Wooster stories.”

  “Oh, right. I’ve heard of those. I don’t read that much fiction these days. I watched one of the shows on YouTube.”

  “If you don’t read fiction, what do you read?”

  “Stuff for work, mostly. Lots of blogs on information management and IT, e-magazines. I mean, it’s not like I don’t read books. I have an e-reader, of course. I just read a great monograph on the postbook library from this guy I heard at ALA.”

  “I’m sorry, are you speaking English?”

  “ALA is the American Library Association.”

  “But what do you mean by the ‘postbook library’?”

  “It’s amazing. You see, technology is exploding the possibilities for libraries. Now they can exist virtually. Imagine a library that has no building, almost no expenses, and can be used by everyone on the planet.”

  “A library without books?”

  “Yeah, pretty cool, huh?”

  “You do know that library is derived from the Latin librarius, meaning ‘concerned with books.’ Not computers—books.”

  “If you want to play the etymology game,” said Bethany, “I read in this same article that the word librarius is derived from liber, meaning ‘the inner bark of trees.’ Do you really think we need to fill our libraries with the inner bark of trees?”

  “Touché,” said Arthur, thinking perhaps he had underestimated this young lady.

  “The postbook library is a little different from the cathedral library here. Gwyn took me up there this morning just to show me around. Kind of old-fashioned. Can you believe there’s no wireless? Honestly, I don’t know how you get much work done with no digital technology.”

  “The only time I employ digital technology,” said Arthur, trying his best to sound charming rather than haughty, “is when I use my fingers to turn the pages.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Bethany. “You need to get wired.”

  Really? thought Arthur. Not a chuckle or a harrumph or even a groan for his little “digital” quip? It might have been a bad joke, but she didn’t seem to understand it was a joke at all.

  “Why would a library that has served its constituents well for nearly a thousand years need to become, as you say, ‘wired’?” He was imagining the priceless books of his beloved library—the objects that soothed and stimulated and educated him, that connected him to scores of generations past and that he believed would connect him to generations yet to come—replaced by blinking lights and metal boxes and flickering screens. It was a horrific vision.

  “But who are your constituents?” said Bethany.

  “Our constituents have been everyone from monks learning how to raise sheep to priests writing sermons to students studying history—”

  “Sure, in the past, but Gwyn said almost nobody uses the library these days.”

  “I do,” said Arthur.

  “Is that really an efficient use of resources?” said Bethany. “An entire library for one reader? In the digital world, anybody on the planet could be your constituent. And it works both ways. Let me ask you this—what’s keeping you from finishing your guide to the cathedral?”

  “To be honest, it’s the dearth of information on our founder. She was a Saxon saint called Ewolda. We know she founded a monastery here and we know she was martyred sometime before the early eighth century, but that’s about all we—”

  “OK, imagine this scenario,” said Bethany, interrupting excitedly. “There is a manuscript at, say, the Huntington Library. That’s in California. And this manuscript contains information about your St. Ewolda. Now, in the old days you would first have to stumble upon the knowledge that such a manuscript existed and that there was a mention of your saint in it. Then, with no safe or cheap way to copy a medieval manuscript, you would have to fly halfway around the world and examine the manuscript in person. When this project I’m working on is done, you’ll type ‘Ewolda’ into a search engine, in two seconds it will tell you that she is mentioned in a manuscript at the Huntington and you’ll click a link and go directly to a high-resolution image of the passage in question. You can’t tell me that’s not a better way to do research.”

  Arthur could feel himself being drawn over to the dark side. “I’d love to go to the Huntington,” he said at last. “Would I rather go on an exciting journey, visit an amazing museum, work in a beautiful reading room where I might meet other scholars, and get to feel and see and smell the manuscript that holds the key to my research; or would I like to sit alone in my stud
y with a computer screen? It’s an easy choice for me.”

  “Yes, but you’re saying research should be elitist. That only people with lots of spare time who can afford to fly around the world deserve to have access to information.”

  “Point well scored,” said Arthur. He was enjoying this.

  “You asked why your library should become wired. It’s not just so you can access information; it’s so you can share information. After all, the purpose of a library is to disseminate information,” said Bethany.

  “Is it?” said Arthur. “I have always felt that the definition of a library in the Oxford English Dictionary was a rather good one. ‘A public institution or establishment, charged with the care of a collection of books, and the duty of rendering the books accessible to those who require them.’”

  “Yes, but at the moment nobody seems to require the cathedral’s books.”

  “At the moment,” said Arthur, “but let me tell you a story. When I was working on my graduate thesis, I needed to consult a copy of a catalog from an exhibit held in Paris in 1875. There was no copy in the Bodleian or the British Library, and when I rang the Bibliothèque National de France, they didn’t have a copy either. So I started making the rounds of the college libraries in Oxford, just in case one might turn up, and, to my great delight, I discovered there was a copy where I should have looked first, in my very own college library. Now, Lazarus keeps excellent circulation records, and when I checked the book out, the librarian, who was of course a friend of mine, informed me that I was the first to do so since it was acquired in 1875. I laughed and said to him, ‘Who on earth do you suppose they bought it for?’ and without pausing a second to think he said, in all seriousness, ‘Why, Arthur, they bought it for you.’ That’s the point of a library. A book that no one wants to read today may be essential for someone in the future. So we save them, we protect them.”

  “But don’t you think,” said Bethany, “that libraries should be more proactive in getting the books into the hands of . . . what did you call them, ‘those who require them’? A book shouldn’t have to wait around a hundred years for a reader to take interest and a reader shouldn’t have to stumble around from library to library hoping to find the book he needs. Libraries exist for the active sharing of information.”

  “Libraries exist to preserve culture,” said Arthur.

  “But we are preserving culture.” said Bethany. “By scanning texts, we remove the danger of fire or flood or bugs or careless readers or theft. Books are safe online.”

  “Let’s assume for a moment your statement is true, even though clearly the Internet is much more susceptible to bugs and viruses and power outages than the Barchester Cathedral Library.”

  “In other words, you’re not assuming it’s true.”

  “Right. Perhaps I should have said let’s set aside that obviously incorrect statement. Would you rather look at a work of art online or in a museum?”

  “Does the museum have a good café and a nice gift shop?”

  “Say yes, for the sake of argument.”

  “And you do love a good argument. It’s the first thing Gwyn told me about you.”

  “Guilty,” said Arthur.

  “Obviously I’d rather look at art in a museum. I’d rather see the original. In that case, there is so much you can’t discern in a reproduction—the texture of the paint and the way a sculpture changes in different light. But text is text, no matter where I read it.”

  “Yes, text is text, but that’s not the same as saying books are books whether physical or digital.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “A library is like an art museum where you’re allowed to touch the paintings and embrace the sculpture, run your fingers across every brushstroke and chisel mark.”

  “OK, I admit, I would love that museum.”

  “In my nondigital world I can feel the smoothness of vellum, the softness of well-worn rag paper, the crispness of a new novel printed on acid-free stock so fresh the pages still stick together at the edges until I wet my thumb to turn the leaf over. What about that thrill of taking a new trade paperback and fanning out the pages—seeing the entire book at once. Can you do that with a digital file? And the smell. Blindfold me and I’ll tell you more about a book from its smell than you could ever tell from a computer. How old it is, where it’s spent those years, how often it’s been read—the smell of a book can tell you more than you think.”

  This speech left Bethany silent for a change, staring at her empty glass. Arthur hoped she was thinking about what he said, not envisioning some fresh digital hell. Computers smelled so . . . lifeless.

  “You make some good points,” said Bethany at last. “But still, why not let the two technologies live side by side, each doing what it does best? What happened to make you hate the digital world so much?”

  “Why did something have to happen?”

  “But something did, didn’t it?”

  Her insight was annoying, but Arthur saw no reason not to be honest. “When I was a child,” he said, “I went to the library every Saturday morning. It was the highlight of my week. Our local city library was in this beautiful nineteenth-century building that used to be the Mechanics Institute. I would push through those oak doors every Saturday and head straight for the card catalog. I loved those little drawers so full of mystery and potential. Most weeks I would just pick a drawer at random and flip through the cards, maybe looking for one that was brand-new or one that had been thumbed ten thousand times. And I always found something amazing. Bookish kids who don’t enjoy football or video games don’t have a lot of friends, but I always thought of that card catalog as my best friend. Then one Saturday, when I was a teenager, I walked into the central room, with its beamed ceiling and its huge stone fireplace at one end, and the card catalog was gone. There was this great empty space and a little table with two computers on it. They took away my best friend, and the library never felt the same after that. The computer made it easy to find what you were looking for, but I never knew what I was looking for. The card catalog had given me serendipity.” Arthur paused for a moment, almost misty-eyed as he remembered that awful day. “I suppose that’s one thing I like about the cathedral library and its lack of wires. We still have a card catalog.”

  “Wow,” said Bethany. “OK, I understand. That must have sucked.” She sat quietly for a moment, her hand next to his on the table. “Can I ask you a question that has nothing to do with books or computers?”

  “I suppose.”

  “This isn’t even a proper pub; just a hotel bar. And we passed at least three nice-looking pubs on the way here. The Green Man, right outside the cathedral—which should be perfect given that I saw a green man carving in the cloister; then there was the George and Vulture, which sounds royal and you seem like a royalist to me, being old-fashioned about everything; and then the Swan, next to the river.”

  “I’m sorry, was there a question buried somewhere in that geography lesson?”

  “Yeah. Why did you bring me here? Why the Mitre?”

  “And so at last we come full circle. The Mitre is so named because, from about 1570 until after the last war, it was the bishop’s palace. The chapter sold it in the 1950s to raise money to repair some of the damage done by German bombers in 1941.”

  “So this is part of your unpublished guidebook?”

  “It might be. But more important, it is the answer to your question.”

  “Which question?”

  “The first one. When I first saw you standing in the chapter house . . .” Arthur paused for a moment. He had been about to say, with your hair glowing in the sun like a halo, but he checked himself. “When I first saw you, you asked me about the portrait of Bishop Gladwyn.”

  “The one with him holding the Holy Grail.”

  “The one with him holding a Communion chalice,” said Arthur slowly and distin
ctly. This girl was interesting to debate with, but he didn’t want her getting any ideas about the Grail’s being connected to Barchester. “After the bishop died, a member of the chapter thought it an inappropriate adornment for the chapter house.”

  “Because of pagan connections to the Grail?”

  “It’s not the Grail,” he said, trying to temper his anger. “It was moved because of the artist, John Collier, and his second wife.”

  “Oh, this is sounding better all the time. Do tell.”

  “You see, in 1879 Collier married Marian Huxley—whose father had argued on the side of science in the great evolution debate with Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860.”

  “And the canons didn’t want that Darwinian bloodline in their chapter house.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. Two years after Marian’s death in 1887, Collier decided to marry her younger sister Ethel. Because both the church and English law forbade such a union, the couple married in Norway.”

  “Wait, why would there be a law against . . . what was the law against?”

  “Against marrying your wife’s sister. It was considered incest until . . . I would have to check, but I think the law was changed in 1907.”

  “So the second marriage was . . .”

  “In the eyes of the law, it was incestuous.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Apparently one of the Barchester canons didn’t care for the scandal, and before Gladwyn was cold in his tomb in the Epiphany Chapel, the portrait was removed from the cathedral precincts.”

  “How delicious. But what does all that have to do with my question?”

  “When they took the portrait out of the chapter house, they hung it at the top of the main stairwell in the bishop’s palace.”

  “And it’s still there, isn’t it?”

  “Would you like to see it?”

  “You bet I would.”

  Arthur pushed back his chair and called out to the barman. “Robert, I’m going to take this young lady to visit Bishop Gladwyn, if you don’t mind.”