The Spoils of Avalon

by Mary Burns

  “What?” John came to a standstill before me. “You’re saying that Lord Parke”—he searched for a word—“procures these young women for an evening’s pleasure?” He looked incredulous, almost amused. “You’re sure we’re talking about the same Lord Parke?”

  I stared at him in equal astonishment. “You think it impossible for him to do such a thing?”

  “I think it highly unlikely,” he said. “In fact, yes, I think it is not possible that Lord Parke would engage in that particular kind of activity.” He started to laugh. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  I continued to look up at him, completely perplexed at his positive assertion.

  “You’re giving me a crick in my neck,” I finally said, and looked away from him; I was immensely irritated. “Towering over me like that—please, John, do sit down or move away.”

  A rapid knocking commenced at the door, and John strode over to it swiftly. It was the Dodger, who came into the room in a rush, a triumphant smile on his crooked little face.

  “Beg pardin, Muss, yer ’oner, sir,” he said, nodding his head at John. “Muss Annie’s been found, she’s awright, ’er’as wif ’is Lordship, Lord Parke as is, and Muss Maisie too, wif ovver girls as ’e ’as wif ’em.”

  I looked at John with sufficiently righteous indignation, though it gave me little happiness to know the truth, other than that Annie was unharmed—at least in ways I had feared. He shook his head as if still not believing it, and continued to smile.

  “Thank you very much, Dodger,” I said, reaching for a penny from my pocketbook and handing it to the lad. “We appreciate your coming to us right away.”

  “Yes, Muss,” he said. “Anythink you want done, jus call me, Muss, anytime.” And he backed out the door, closing it softly behind him.

  A full minute passed in which my friend and I regarded each other in silence.

  And then someone knocked on the door again.

  “Ye gods and little fishes!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “What now?”

  This time I went to the door and practically wrenched it open.

  And saw Lord Parke standing before me, a little startled at the vehemence of my action, and possibly the odd way I was dressed—a coat flung round my nightclothes, my hair falling about every which way. But being a gentleman, he didn’t let on that I looked any different from before.

  “Please forgive the very late intrusion, Miss Paget,” he said, bowing. Then, catching sight of John, he gave him a friendly nod, which John returned in kind. “Mr. Sargent.”

  I said nothing. I believe I actually had no idea what to say.

  “May I come in, Miss Paget?” said His Lordship. I was suddenly affronted by what I took to be a twinkle in his eye. He continued, by way of explanation, “Mrs. Brownley, the hotel’s concierge, spoke with me just now, and told me your concern about Annie, so I offered to come up myself and apologize in person.”

  I stepped back to allow him into the room, and words finally came to me.

  “My dear Lord Parke,” I said, sounding sanctimonious and offended—quite like my mother, I was to think later—“your behavior and practices in this town are none of my business, and I pray you, do not in any case feel the slightest obligation to explain or apologize to me for your choice of entertainment or company, as believe me, I do not wish at all to know anything about it…them…you…” I floundered to a stop, and was furious to see that he was smiling broadly.

  “My dear Miss Paget,” he said, coming to a halt in the middle of the room, standing next to John, who was watching the scene with immense interest. “What on earth are you alluding to? Dear little Annie, and Maisie, and the other girls I gather around me, are only too delighted to take part in the education I offer for their betterment and productivity as they set a course for young womanhood.”

  Once again, I was speechless. John burst out laughing.

  “Tell her,” he said, addressing Lord Parke. “Don’t draw this out any longer, it’s too painful.”

  I looked in astonishment at these two men, who seemed—somehow, improbably—to be joined together in some kind of fraternal conspiracy of information and trickery against me.

  “John,” I said severely. “Tell me, now, what is going on.”

  He instantly composed himself, and spoke quickly.

  “Do forgive me, Vi, I shouldn’t sport with you like that,” he said, sincerely apologetic. “It’s just that Lord Parke, along with his cousin, Mr. Howard, has set up a workshop for the tuition of deserving young women in Brampton to learn the marvellous arts and crafts so splendidly championed by William Morris and Company, and Edward Burne-Jones, don’t you know, and all that lot. Your little Maisie, and several other girls—although truly, I didn’t realize Annie was also in attendance this evening or I would have said so upon the instant of understanding your worry about her absence—at any rate, these girls regularly gather to learn tapestry and weaving, jewelry and pottery making and the painting of window glass, all under Lord Parke’s benevolent protection, as the founder and patron of the Brampton Medieval Arts School for Young Ladies.”

  For the third time this evening—and I hoped the last, ever—I had not a word to say. I looked from John’s honest but mischievous face to Lord Parke’s handsome, aristocratic mien—more sober now, as perhaps having realized the questionable taste of his little joke.

  “And how do you know all this?” I turned to John again.

  He glanced at His Lordship, and answered me promptly. “I happened to run into Lord Parke about an hour ago, as I was wandering through the streets of Brampton in search of a decent public establishment, and he was kind enough to both show one to me and to join me—and that’s when, in the midst of other conversation, he told me about his school. He had just been looking in on a session as I met him in the street.”

  “If I’d had any idea,” said His Lordship, “that there was a hue and cry raised about Annie, I would have sent her home immediately. I just assumed that she had leave to be there, and had told the proper persons. Again, I’m deeply, deeply sorry, my dear Miss Paget, for causing you any distress.” His tone was apologetic, but his eyes still held a smidgen of mischief.

  I stood there, wondering how I was ever going to survive this assault on my dignity.

  What else could I do? I fell back upon the sofa in helpless waves of mirth, laughing until I was nearly spent. John and Lord Parke, looking much relieved, joined me in the camaraderie of laughter and high spirits, and we soon grew comfortable again with one another. In truth, I was so relieved that all my fears and suppositions about Annie were groundless, that I felt truly grateful and happy.

  But I couldn’t help promising myself I would get even with these two rascals, somehow, and when they least expected it.

  22

  Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw,

  Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew,

  Field after field, up to a height, the peak

  Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king,

  Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope

  The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven,

  Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick,

  In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind,

  Streamed to the peak, and mingled with the haze

  And made it thicker.

  –Idylls of the King

   22 July 1539 

  Lanercost Priory, Cumberland

  Gwillem Moor and Arthur approached the venerable priory of the black-robed Augustinian canons an hour before dawn on the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene—an auspicious day, Arthur thought, as the Magdalene was the patron saint of the priory’s parish church. As a young boy, he remembered gazing in awe at the statue of the saint who loved the Lord so much that she was graced as the one He first appeared to after His resurrection.

  Through the thinning mist, he looked up to the niche above the main doorway to the church, straining his eyes to see the carving of the sain
t, her head high—but it was still too dark. An hour more and it would be time for Matins, a thought that comforted him; perhaps he would be allowed to enter the church for prayer. For all the excitement of their adventure, Arthur found that he missed the companionship of his brother monks, the daily prayers recited in community, the timeless flow of life in the monastery.

  The blind harper had been quite accurate in his reckoning of their travels—it was but a few days past a month since they had left Glastonbury, and the moon had been at the full the last three nights. Now it had set, and the darker gloom that overcasts the earth before the sun begins to show brought a chill to the air, though it was still the month of July.

  The two travellers stood, as they so often had in the weeks gone by, at the edge of a wood, this one the famous Ash Grove of Lanercost, along the river Irthing that ran near the monastery. As they peered into the looming shapes of buildings and workshops, Arthur became slowly aware how different it was from what he remembered five years ago—there was not a single light to be seen—not in the church nor the dormitory, nor the stables, nor even the kitchen where by this hour, the lay brothers who tended the fires and cooked for the canons would have been up and about.

  Gwillem Moor had a questioning look on his sensitive face. He raised a hand in caution, and sniffed the air.

  “I smell the char of old fire, and the dirt of ancient rocks dislodged,” he said. He turned to the donkey, patted its rough neck and whispered something into its long ear, then he tied the reins to a tree.

  “Come,” he said to Arthur. “Lanercost is not what it once was.”

  They crept closer to the high walls of the Priory, built some four hundred years earlier, partly from stone taken from the Emperor Hadrian’s great wall, long sections of which still stood only a half-mile away at the start of their march across the land to the narrow channel. As the dark gave way to dawn, Arthur saw a few stars still bright as he looked up to the soaring walls of the nave of the church—he could see stars through the gaps where the roof had been.

  “They’ve plundered the lead from the roof, and tried to burn away the beams,” he said. He darted over a low, now broken wall into the back garden, and stood gaping at the destruction. “The doors are gone,” he told Gwillem Moor, “and most of the windows, but some are still there.” It was far worse than he had imagined, despite knowing the Priory had been abandoned.

  “Hush!” The harper enjoined Arthur to silence. The boy tensed, expecting the worst, then saw what Gwillem Moor had already sensed—a rush light at the edge of the meadow—held by a man slowly wending his way toward them, leaning lightly on a shepherd’s staff. Arthur moved closer to the bard, to whisper. “I see one light, I think that’s all, just one person, a man…” He looked hard into the gloom, and felt a burst of joy at his heart. “It’s my father! My father!” And before the bard could put a hand out to stop him, Arthur was running toward the figure taking shape from across the field.

  “Da! It’s me, William!” Arthur called in as low a voice as he could manage in his excitement, and using his family name. The man’s head came up at the sound, and even from forty feet away, Arthur could see the smile break out on his father’s face. The two rushed together and Arthur felt himself caught up in his father’s strong arms, an embrace he hadn’t realized he’d missed so much until now he was safe inside it.

  “William! You’re a man grown, then, are ye not?” were his father’s first words. “Lord bless you, but you’re near as tall as your father!”

  Arthur caught his breath after the fierce hug, and stepped back. “You don’t seem surprised, Da, were you expecting us?”

  His father nodded. “Aye, lad, been looking out for ye the last three days. We had word.” He gestured with his staff to Gwillem Moor, who stood where Arthur had left him. “Yon merlin, then, seems to have got you here safe—and your baggage?”

  “Yes, Da, all is safe—it’s been a wonder, such travels—but we’ll talk later,” Arthur said, motioning to his father to follow him over to the blind harper. He glanced again at the gaping holes in the roof of the church, and the bare, broken ground where the refectory and the dormitory once stood. “When did this happen?”

  “Not long since,” his father said, shaking his head in dismay. “About three months ago. All the canons but one are gone, and he lives on the farm over yonder. One other went into Brampton, to the parish church there, others—God only knows.”

  They came up to where the harper stood patiently, his face lifted to the sky.

  “Good morrow, Wil Crooklay,” said Gwillem Moor. “The peace of all good folk and the saints be with you.”

  “And grateful blessings on you, Gwillem Moor, for bringing my son home safe, and doing the Lord’s work as you are.” Wil reached over to clasp the singer’s hand in a firm grip.

  “But come,” he said, looking around. “It’s nair good to stand about jawing in open air. What’s to be done while we still have some cover before the sun rises?”

  Gwillem Moor led them back to where Alaric was munching peacefully on some wild grass. He put his hand on the canvas-covered items in the cart, and drew Wil and Arthur close with a swift gesture.

  “Tell me, Wil,” he said. “Have the King’s men—and everyone else—taken all they want from the Priory?”

  “That they have,” said Wil. “There’s nor a bannock on a plate nor a candle in a stick.” He shifted around to look back at the church. “They left the roof on part of the church, and there’s some as use it for services—” he snorted in indignation “—never call it a Mass, I wouldn’t—but for now, there’s naught but ghosts to roam the bare fields—and believe me,” he said as he crossed himself vigorously, “I can assure you the ghosts are very real. Old Sir Thomas, he’s not at rest in his great tomb, I’ll warrant.” He shuddered as he looked at the black darkness inside the ancient halls. “Folk’s are keeping away, on their souls.”

  A faint smile flitted across the blind harper’s face. “Then it’s likely the safest place to hide things—for now.”

  The father and son saw the wisdom of it, and Wil thought hard for a moment. “The undercroft, by the warming rooms, there’s a place—no one will ever think to look there now.” He made a face fierce with disdain. “Townsfolk took every bit of goods—first place they went—potatoes, onions, wine, sack, chests, bags of grain—every last morsel.”

  Quietly they led the donkey along the edges of the buildings, keeping in shadow as much as possible. The dormitory building that had rested on top of the undercroft was gone—burned down to the stone floors that formed the ceiling of the storage area below. The crossed vaults of stone were a hushed arcade in the early morning light. At the west end was a fireplace set in the wall, and near it three bays, the only places where the canons were allowed to keep warm in front of a fire. Near one of the bays was a door to the root cellar, set in the floor in a corner; it gaped open, but was undamaged. Enough daylight was creeping in now to show the stone steps leading to the cellar, but all was darkness below.

  “Best not to show a light until we’re far down in it,” Wil said.

  Gwillem Moor set himself as guard at the door that led to the cloister garden—his ears would pick up a sound that only dogs could hear—while Arthur and his father unloaded the cart and carried the precious things into the cellar. Peeling away the thin layers of wax, and shifting the covers of cloth, Arthur could now see what he had helped guard and guide to this northern county from Glastonbury—he recognized most of them—glass reliquaries of saints trimmed in gold and silver, some with precious gems embedded on the feet and lids—Patrick, Brigid, Benignus, Columculla and Gilda, blessed David, Paul the Apostle, Dunstan, John the Baptist, and some dozen more. One larger box of hard wood, which he knew he had never seen, was edged and cornered in gold, and was inscribed on the lid: Iosephus Arimatea. Had the Abbot actually removed the bones of Saint Joseph, the founder of the holy site of Glastonbury in the early years after the death of the Lord? He stood at th
e bottom of the steps, gazing at it in wonder, until his father nudged him from behind.

  “No time to gape, boy,” he said. “Sun’s well on the rise, and we mun go.”

  Arthur nodded, and quickly retrieved more boxes and cloth bags from the cart, feeling through the fabric the shapes of chalices, monstrances and plates used in the Holy Mass. He longed to look through all the sacred things, but knew that was an indulgence they couldn’t afford. Saying a prayer to the holy Magdalene to keep these precious objects hidden from the eyes of the world, he ran up and down the cold stone steps several more times, then helped his father close the cellar door and scuff it over with dirt and dirty straw that lay in the corners of the undercroft. Then the three departed the woeful priory, and made for Wil Crooklay’s snug house at the far edge of the wood.

  23

  Man am I grown, a man’s work must I do.

  Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the King,

  Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King—

  Else, wherefore born?

  –Idylls of the King

   18 July 1877 

  Brampton, Cumberland

  Wednesday Morning

  I woke the next morning feeling refreshed and invigorated—although I had thought my eyes would never close in sleep, after all the excitement, distress and hilarity of such a long day and such an evening. Especially when I remembered, snuggled in the warm cocoon of the blankets, that it was still a fact that someone had entered my room—that someone had most probably murdered Uncle Chaffee—and the reality was that there was a person sneaking about trying to get at my precious book.

  John and I had agreed to have our breakfasts separately—it was impossible to manage times and tastes last night before we parted—and to simply meet at ten o’clock in the lobby with our baggage ready to be transported to the Cottage Perilous in Lord Parke’s lovely barouche. I had barely unpacked anything so it was a simple task to get ready—and I had little Maisie’s help again, as she knocked at my door just as I was finishing my coffee.