by Mary Burns
42
16 November 1539
Glastonbury
The Feast of St. Albert the Great
A Letter from Lord Russell to Thomas Cromwell
My lord, this shall be to ascertain you, that on Thursday the 14th day of this present month the abbot of Glastonbury was arraigned, and the next day put to execution, with two other of his monks, for the robbing of Glastonbury church, on Tor Hill, next unto the town of Glastonbury, the said abbot’s body being divided into four parts, and the head stricken off; whereof one quarter standeth at Wells, another at Bath, and at Ilchester and Bridgwater the rest, and his head above the abbey gate at Glastonbury. And as concerning the rape and burglary committed, those parties are all condemned, and four of them put to execution at the place of the act done, which is called the Were, and there adjudged to hang still in chains to the example of others. Among the four is one Gwillem Moor, styled a prophesying harper and a Welshman, of whom it is known that he served as a spy and messenger between the great abbeyes, causing much frustration of His Majesty’s will, but is no longer a threat to the realm. I commit your good lordship to the keeping of the blessed Trinity.
From Wells, the 16th day of November,
Your own to command,
John Russell.
43
I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,—
Though Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more; but, let what will be, be.
--Idylls of the King
Naworth and Cottage Perilous
Thursday Afternoon
The day rushed by in a long progression of scenes both banal and extraordinary—interviews with the chief constable from Brampton and with Mr. Gravely; happy interludes viewing the new baby, a boy, and his radiant mother; the regular intervals of breakfast, luncheon and tea, only I don’t remember eating anything; and strangely incoherent attempts at conversation between the three of us who had seen—the Vision. I had no other word for it, al-though at one point, Lord Parke suggested hallucination.
“The sun was in our eyes,” he argued. “And we were all under the previous impression of thinking of legendary events, and King Arthur and Excalibur—it was nothing but the power of suggestion, coming at a time of duress and confusion.”
I shook my head.
“I had not told either you or John,” I reminded him, “about the particular passage in the book that led me to the Magna Tabula; I had not mentioned either Arthur or his sword.” I looked at the unhappy face of His Lordship, who was trying very hard to rationalize an irrational experience. “While it’s possible that your speculation might be true for me, that does not explain why you and John also saw … the Vision.”
John was much more comfortable in his own mind about the event. “It was like one of the pre-Raphaelite paintings,” he said enthusiastically. “So mythical, so saturated in color and light—and the three of us, standing, kneeling, staring in awe at an other-worldly apparition, centuries old—it was fairly like seeing the Holy Grail itself.”
His Lordship shifted uneasily in his chair. We were sitting in the small drawing room after luncheon. The initial excitement of the early morning hours had dissipated, especially under the influence of the chief constable’s skeptical questioning. Mr. Gravely had been more circumspect, and took it upon himself to explain to the chief constable the discovery of the wire stretched across the Reverend’s staircase, and the rapid discovery of clues that led to suspecting Mr. Wattendall of the murder. After some frowning, and stroking of his beard, this worthy official was amenable to accepting our declaration of Mr. Wattendall’s confession on the parapet, and was ultimately satisfied with so tidy and prompt a solution to this case—of which he had been heretofore unaware, of course, that it was actually murder, and not merely an accident.
We had made no mention of the Apparition of the Sword, as I began to refer to it in my own mind. By mutual, if unspoken, agreement, it seemed the sort of thing one could not begin to describe without being thought at the least, delirious and at the most, delusional. In truth, I wondered if I could ever speak of it to anyone besides my two friends.
“Do you think we should tell George?” Lord Parke asked, as if reading my mind. “It does, after all, belong to him…to the Castle, at any rate.”
I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “In my opinion, as we have no way of knowing how or by what means this … vision … appeared to the three of us, and therefore, in the best scientific fashion,” I said with a faint smile, “we have no idea how to reproduce the same effect, it seems a futile undertaking to attempt to describe it to your cousin.”
Both my companions looked thoughtful, then nodded their agreement.
“But I should like to see it again.” I hid my smile this time.
“What, you mean, see the vision again?” John said.
“No, not that,” I replied. “I rather doubt that one gets a second look at that sort of thing, don’t you?” I was glad to see glimpses of a smile on Lord Parke’s face. “No, I mean, I want to go up to the Tower and look at the Magna Tabula again.”
Lord Parke looked at me curiously. “What do you expect to see, or to find?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, but I let myself show a growing excitement, as if I were compelled to look again. “But nothing’s going to happen anymore, is it?”
His Lordship laughed outright at this. “My dear Miss Paget,” he said. “Where you are concerned, I can only find myself capable of predicting that anything, anything at all, may happen.”
So once again, though under much different circumstances of feeling and expectation, the three of us mounted the steep, stony stairs to Sir William’s library and chapel. The day had become bright and warm and airy, and the Tower had been transformed into a sort of antique faerie room high up in the sky. Tree branches swayed outside the windows, birds twittered and flew past, and the scent of summer flowers and early haying from the meadows permeated the air.
The Magna Tabula sat in state upon its low table near the hearth, its heavy doors open and the wooden leaves parted slightly, like an open book set upright.
“Can you set it up on the library table, there,” I asked, “so we might look at it more easily?”
John retrieved the artifact and brought it over to the table, where light from the windows fell upon the vellum pages, bringing the illuminated capitals to light, and revealing the old inscriptions—very hard to read—that had been penned in black and occasionally, red, ink. Lord Parke gestured toward it with one hand, and invited me to look.
“Go ahead, Miss Paget, inspect it to your heart’s desire.”
Keeping back an urge to smile broadly, I bent over the case, looking intently at the edges, touching the pages of script as I moved them back and forth. I felt along the bottom of the case, where there were slight gaps in the wood, and something hard and gem-like rolled across my finger-tips. I drew it forth with a gasp, and held it out for John and His Lordship to see.
“A ruby!” John cried. He looked at me in amazement.
“There were rubies in the hilt of the sword,” I whispered, keeping my face averted.
But I could see the look on His Lordship’s face, and it was priceless.
“It cannot be,” he said. “But what else could it be?” He looked absolutely shaken. “Can this case have held the actual sword of King Arthur?”
“Do you believe now, Lord Parke?” I said.
But I’m afraid I couldn’t help sounding smug as well as challenging, and that tipped the scales for His Lordship.
Lord Parke took the “ruby” from my hand and held it up to the window. “This is glass!” he said, then he turned to me. “You put it there yourself! Miss Paget�
��” he started to say, but I was helpless with laughter and couldn’t respond. After a moment, he grinned, tossed the “ruby” to John, and clapped me on the shoulder, half-shaking me in remonstrance. Both men were laughing now.
“Well played, Miss Paget,” His Lordship said. “You have got your revenge at last. Well played, indeed.”
We turned to leave Sir William’s tower room, and I cast another glance at the Magna Tabula, when an errant thought occurred to me.
“The Great Writing,” I said, half to myself, but my two companions stayed to hear more. I looked at them, musing. “That’s what Uncle Chaffee’s old book said, the one written by his ancestor. That the ‘Magna Tabula’ stood for the words inscribed over the cross on which Christ died, you know, I-N-R-I?”
Both men nodded, and waited.
I looked around the room, my excitement growing. “Mr. Gravely said, didn’t he, John? that there were legends about relics and ancient swords hidden in the walls of Naworth Castle?”
Lord Parke spoke up. “Very true, Miss Paget, but as you can imagine, there’s scarcely a wall in this whole castle that hasn’t been examined and knocked on and even torn up—especially after the fire thirty years ago, which revealed many hitherto unsuspected hiding places.” He looked at me curiously. “Are you thinking…?”
John interrupted him. “Yes, I do believe she is thinking…,” he said. “Where shall we look, Vi?”
I continued my scrutiny of the room. “Look for something with those letters on it,” I said, and turned my gaze upwards. Between the open beams of the canted ceiling there were faded paintings. “There!” I cried. “Look, a crucifixion scene!”
I seized the edges of the large table and started tugging at it. “Come, help me, you two,” I commanded, and they jumped to the task, pulling the table underneath that scene on the ceiling. John being slightly the taller of the two, climbed upon the table and reached up to the section—his fingers just touched it.
“I need something else,” he said, looking around. “There, the chair, put it up here.”
“Be careful, John,” said Lord Parke. “This furniture is very old.” He and I held on to the chair’s legs and seat to keep them firm, and John clambered on top.
“What should I do now?” he called down to me.
“See if you can find a seam, or a…a crack, or something that might slide sideways,” I said, straining to look beyond him to the ceiling. Moments went by—we were all driven by this sudden possibility, Lord Parke as much as either John or I.
“There! I have it!” John called. It looked like he had slid the panel with the crucifixion on it to one side.
“What? What is it?”
“Wait, here, there’s something behind this panel! I’ve almost got it.”
And he handed down a smallish leather bag, seemingly of ancient age, that held some few items inside. We helped John from the chair and removing it from the table, laid out the bag. We held our breaths, looking at it and wondering what was inside.
“Well, Miss Paget,” said Lord Parke, “you should open it first—it was your idea that found it.”
“But what about Mr. Howard? It’s his castle,” I said. “Shouldn’t he be the one?”
“Oh, we’ll show it all to him soon enough,” Lord Parke said, a trifle impatiently. “I’m his cousin, so it’s partly my castle, too,” he said, laughing at his own impudence.
I didn’t need any more encouragement.
Undoing the string that tied the bag closed wasn’t difficult—it fell to pieces as I touched it. Reaching inside the opening, I felt papers, folded and tied with a strip of leather, and a flat box. I drew them both out. The box was inscribed in Latin, and I spoke the words aloud, “Iosephus Arimatea—Joseph of Arimathea.” Inside was a reliquary of gold, bright as day, and inset in the glass was a fragment of bone.
“My goodness,” I said. “This is one of the relics named in the book—Joseph of Arimathea, the founder of Glastonbury church.”
“What about those papers?” John asked.
I carefully undid the leather thong, and opened it to the first page. “It’s parchment,” I said. “And it’s in Latin.” I peered at it closely, and found I was able to translate it fairly easily. “Here’s how it starts… The True History of the Dissolution of Glaston Abbey and the Final Disposition of the Magna Tabula and Artifacts Pertaining to King Arthur, by Brother Arthur Joseph, born William Crooklay, of Lanercost Parish, written in the Year of Our Lord 1592.”
We looked at each other in complete amazement. I carefully put the pages and reliquary box back into the leather bag, and handed them to Lord Parke. “I’m sure your cousin will be delighted to know of our discovery.”
By late that afternoon, John and I were able to return to the Cottage Perilous, the road and bridge having been fixed temporarily, and Lord Parke’s barouche once again at our disposal. We were met by a very anxious Mrs. Barnstable at the door of the Cottage, and once inside, we all repaired to the coziness of the kitchen to be refreshed with tea and scones, and tell our tale.
“May the good Lord save and protect us,” the good woman said, her eyes filling with tears, “and have mercy on the soul of that poor, deluded man.”
“You are indeed a worthy soul yourself,” John interposed, patting her arm, “to ask for mercy for one who has injured you so awfully.”
I set down my teacup.
“But, Mrs. Barnstable,” I continued, with a nod at John, with whom I had discussed this thoroughly on our carriage ride from the Castle. “There is something much more important, and in a much happier vein, that I need to discuss with you.”
I explained that we had learned about the intended marriage between her and the Reverend Crickley, and that I wanted to address the awkwardness of there being, perhaps, another will, which would be of great benefit to her, and cause me no grief at all.
During my tale, Mrs. Barnstable underwent a few changes of color, from flushed to pale, but she caught intently at my last words. She looked at John, who nodded at her reassuringly, and then at me.
“No grief to you, Miss Paget?” she repeated. “I’m not sure I apprehend what you mean.”
“I mean, quite simply, that I not only feel that I do not deserve to inherit this house, I actually do not want to inherit this house—especially when there is someone like you who both deserves and desires to live in it, and will continue to care for the late Reverend’s precious collections, where you had hoped to live a happy life for many years, with my dear Uncle Chaffee.”
Mrs. Barnstable sat silently for a long moment, then rose without a word and crossed the room, where she drew a set of papers from out of a kitchen drawer, concealed beneath some linens. She handed them to me, and I looked over them eagerly.
“This is the missing will!” I said, handing the first page to John. I looked quickly at the bottom of the last page, and saw that it was signed and witnessed by two persons, unknown to me, but whose signatures indubitably made it a legal document. I looked in amazement at Mrs. Barnstable. “You had it all along! But why,” I pressed her, “why did you not bring it forth right away?”
Mrs. Barnstable blushed and looked confused. John took her hand, and answered for her.
“I believe she felt it too awkward to put herself forward, at such a time, especially as their betrothal was not widely known, isn’t that so, Mrs. Barnstable?” He looked on her most kindly.
“Yes,” she said. “That is what I thought. Perhaps it was foolish modesty, but in truth, I felt that with Mr. Crickley gone, I had no right…and Lord knows, I had little heart to be putting myself forward at such a time, as Mr. Sargent says.”
“Well!” I said, feeling extremely virtuous and high-minded for acting as I had done. “Well! This has all turned out for the best, then, has it not?”
We all agreed heartily that it had, and finished our tea with great satisfaction.
Dusk was gathering as John and I sat in the Reverend’s library, when Lord Pa
rke was announced, and came in with a subdued air. We were happy to see him—our recent experiences together had formed a close bond of something more than friendship, I felt. He bowed before us, and I invited him to be seated.
“I can only stay a few moments,” he said. “But I came principally to let you know, my dear Miss Paget,” he said, “two things. One, my cousin is indeed over the moon about your discovery in Sir William’s Tower, and is, I believe, eager to pay you his personal thanks—if he could make you a duchess, I think he would!”
“Not at all necessary,” I murmured, delighted that Mr. Howard was grateful.
“Secondly,” Lord Parke continued, at a lower pitch, “all is in readiness for Reverend Crickley’s funeral tomorrow morning, at ten o’clock, at St. Martin’s Church in Brampton.”
“Thank you, my lord,” I said. “I can hardly express my gratitude for your great and continuing helpfulness to me, to both of us, during this extraordinary time here.”
I saw a glance of warm affection exchanged between John and His Lordship.
“It has been wonderful to make your acquaintance, James,” said my friend, causing me somewhat of surprise at his use of His Lordship’s Christian name. John turned to me, smiling. “He’s promised to visit my studio in Paris, in the autumn,” he said. “And I’ll have some new paintings to show you, I’m sure—I intend to stop at Cancale on my way back—the late summer light on the beach and the water there is beyond imagining—I know it will inspire me to new heights.”
I believe I discerned a faint blush on Lord Parke’s handsome features.
“A very strong inducement to visit the continent,” he said, then he turned those remarkable green eyes to me. “And what about you, Miss Paget? After the excitement you’ve experienced in our little hamlet, what new adventures will you embark upon?”