The Hidden Treasure of Glaston

by Eleanore M Jewett

  Hugh grinned in the dark. “You’ll be hanging your cap on a sunbeam yet! As for Brother John, I can’t picture his thrashing anybody either, unless some harm came to his precious books! If ever I let anything happen to that broken Book of the Seynt Graal—!” He left his sentence unfinished, and the two continued walking in silence for a few moments.

  “Maybe we’d better tell Brother John about those pages pretty soon, all the ones we found in the chest and you have been working over.”

  Hugh stopped short in astonishment. It had always been Dickon who wanted most to keep the whole matter of their search, and the hidden passages underground, secret.

  “But that would mean telling him the whole business,” said he, “and I thought you—”

  “Yes, I know, I wanted not to let anybody into those passages till I had worked out the puzzle of how Bleheris got in there myself.”

  “Well?” said Hugh as the other paused.

  “Well—I have found out!”

  “Oh, Dickon,” cried Hugh reproachfully, “you’ve gone on hunting without me!”

  “Just while you were sick; I couldn’t put the thing out of my mind, Hugh. And you remember that day when you were getting well, I told you I had a new idea about it?”

  “That’s so; well, what was the idea?” Hugh felt distinctly hurt that his friend had pursued his exploration of the underground passageways without even telling him, but in a moment he realized that, even though he and Dickon were sworn brothers, this search must of necessity be carried on by each in his own way, separately at times, together at others. Hugh, for instance, could not include Dickon in his painstaking work over the pages of the broken book and perhaps, though he hated to admit it, Dickon could get along farther and faster without a lame companion in the caves and passages underground.

  “You—you don’t mind, do you, Hugh? I knew you would not be strong enough to go with me for some time and, anyway, the passages are empty, all of them. There just isn’t any Holy Grail.”

  “Oh, yes there is, there must be, somewhere!” Hugh caught him up eagerly. “But, anyhow, I don’t mind your going ahead without me. We’re just that much further along. Tell me about your new idea.”

  Dickon hesitated. “I can show you better,” said he.

  “Then show me the whole thing tomorrow.”

  “I will!” Dickon’s voice sounded relieved and he quickened his step.

  The marshes were lovely in the moonlight; soft and mysterious and very still, for birds and insects had flown south or sought their winter quarters by this time. The air was snappy and chill and the smell of salt tingled in the nostrils. When they had reached the old road, higher than the surrounding salt meadows, they could see the moonlight glimmering in a long golden path far off across the ocean. A pale luminousness hung over the water meadows and the dim outlines of Tor and Weary-All looked ghostly in the distance.

  At length they reached the broken causeway, crossed it single file and, stepping carefully, soon set foot on the firm ground of Beckery. They saw Master Bleheris almost at once, sitting on his customary stone outside his hut. The light of the moon shone on his white hair and beard, turning them to silver. He sat motionless, his shoulders and head drooping, and there was something on his lap that caught and reflected the light with a mirror-like brightness. So absorbed in thought was the old man that he did not hear the boys approach, and sat there so utterly still that they scarcely dared to speak to him, lest they startle him. For a long moment they stood silently, close beside him. Dickon nudged Hugh and pointed wordlessly to the object in the hermit’s lap. Hugh nodded back but said nothing. It was the crystal cross that had been given to King Arthur by Our Lady Herself.

  At length Hugh very gently touched the old man’s shoulder and slowly, without a start or sudden motion of any kind, he came out of his reverie, looked at the boy and smiled.

  “We feared for thee,” said Hugh softly.

  Bleheris drew a deep breath as if pulling himself back from far depths of slumber. “There was no cause for fear,” said he. “I have been dreaming.”

  “But thou didst not come to the grave of King Arthur. They found—”

  “I know very well what they found,” interrupted the hermit, “the dead bones of a dead king and his queen, not the living Cup. Hugh, lad, the dreaming state came upon me and I knew, past any shadow of doubt, that the Holy Grail would not be buried there and is not buried anywhere.”

  “Well then, where can it be? Or isn’t there any, really?” Dickon’s matter-of-fact voice cleared the atmosphere. Bleheris put down the crystal cross at his feet and got up, stretching and shaking himself like a great dog.

  “I know not,” said he shortly, “but this I do know, to search further is useless—without sacrifice. Lads, when they sought, the knights of the Table Round, they gave up all that was dear to them and sought in purity of heart and singleness of purpose—and to some the vision was vouchsafed at long last, to a very few.”

  He picked up the cross and took it into the hut. In a moment he came out again and stood in the doorway.

  “The moon will soon be hidden in clouds,” said he, “make haste while there is light. We three shall meet again—perhaps in an hour of sacrifice. Pray God that we may have eyes to see the vision when it stands before us.”

  It seemed to be a word of dismissal, so the two turned homeward.

  “What did the old codger mean by making haste while there is light?” said Dickon as they picked their way across the ancient causeway again. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the moon won’t go down for hours yet.”

  “Bleheris almost always means two things when he says one,” replied Hugh. “That’s one reason why I like him so much; he keeps me always guessing. I’m sure I don’t know at all what he meant just now, except that he is off on a new line of thought. ‘Sacrifice,’ he said, and ‘in an hour of sacrifice.’ Well, maybe it will come clear after awhile.”

  “Come clear!” repeated Dickon disgustedly. “How can anything come clear from such a loony?”

  “Don’t call him that!” Hugh objected. “I—I love him.”

  Brother John raised himself up on his elbow as Hugh, some time later, crept softly into the bed next to him in the hushed and sleeping dorter.

  “Where hast thou been, boy?” he demanded in a stern whisper.

  “I’ve been to Beckery, Brother John, to see Master Bleheris. I feared for him, not having seen him at the grave of King Arthur.”

  “I feared for thee, Hugh. My heart was very anxious. I am glad thou art back safe.”

  The monk settled down under his rough blanket with a sigh of relief.

  A warm feeling flooded Hugh’s heart. Brother John must be truly fond of him, else he would not have worried. It was good to be loved, even to be worried over! And good to love, and there were several now: Bleheris, Brother John, Dickon, yes, and Father Abbot in a more distant way, and Brother Symon. One could not even look at Brother Symon without loving him.

  “I am sorry I caused thee anxiety,” he said, not too sincerely.

  Brother John grunted.

  “Bleheris was all right,” Hugh continued after a few moments, still whispering. “He was just daydreaming, I guess. . . . Brother John, I think I must tell thee something the broken book in the Painted Aumbry—” He paused, raised his head and leaned closer to the little monk beside him. “Brother John, are you awake? Are you listening? I want to tell you what Dickon and I found, what I have been working over—”

  A faint, uneven little snore settled into a long, rhythmic one. Brother John had not heard him. Hugh settled back in his bed with a sigh. He must tell Brother John soon—and then he, too, drifted into sleep.

  If he could only have known! If he had only shaken Brother John broad awake and forced him to listen, then at least the responsibility would have been shared, and Hugh would not have felt that he alone held the fate of the broken book and its recovered pages in his own hands!

  12. Winter and Spri
ng

  THE NEXT DAY Hugh and Dickon met, as by agreement, at the door of St. Joseph’s Chapel. “You remember those stairs and that trap door we came up against?” said Dickon. “You know we couldn’t get the thing open, but you were quite sure from the chart that the stairs led up to the Old Church.”

  “Yes, I know. Then I began going over to Beckery by myself. But I never did learn anything from Master Bleheris that would open a trap door or clear up the puzzle.”

  “Oh, but you did!” Dickon assured him. “Don’t you remember how he drew a design on a stone, a cross just like that crystal cross he showed us later, even, and spread at the ends, instead of the usual straight plain Latin cross? He told you not to be stupid, or something like that.”

  Hugh smiled ruefully. “And I guess I went right on being stupid! That special cross is on lots of the loose pages of the broken book—and in the unbroken part too—and I thought he meant for me just to go on plugging away at salvaging pages.”

  “Yes, but that is on the chart too—don’t you remember? And it is somewhere else! Hugh, it is the sign, the key to the whole thing! Come on in and I’ll show you!”

  They opened the heavy wooden door of the Old Church and went in. Once inside, Hugh paused and looked about him. Often as he had stept into it, to hide or take out sheets of parchment from behind the loose board, he had never given the church itself much thought. The monks had not used it for generations, not since the spacious and beautiful modern edifice of St. Mary’s had been built. It was typically Anglo Saxon in form, rectangular, without transepts, instead of the cruciform Norman church architecture, and now it was bare, empty, unadorned. At the far eastern end, opposite the door by which the boys had entered, was the chancel, separated from the nave, short though that was, by a low rough stone wall with a broad arch in the middle. Through this arch the altar could be seen standing well away from the back wall, with a canopy over it, a square altar of old and darkened wood, topped with an altar stone of rich grained marble with nothing whatever on its dust covered surface. The walls of the Old Church had originally been wood, over which a lead substance had been laid, a curious alloy no longer understood. The roof was still composed of it, and one might see the edges of it around the narrow, glassless windows. But interior as well as exterior had, at some long past date, been covered again with wood which had weathered with age into a rich hue; no furniture remained in the church at all, nothing save that plain, ancient altar.

  Hugh felt suddenly and unaccountably moved, as he stood there looking around at the little empty building. A sense of its great age filled him with awe, and the thought of the countless human beings, long dead, who had knelt on the worn cold stones of that floor, turning their eyes, sad, eager, radiant, full of fear, adoring, as the case might be, toward that square altar set behind the chancel wall, and only glimpsed through the archway, impressed upon him a feeling almost as if they were still kneeling there at that moment. And there was something more; the boy could not have described it or explained it, but in that quiet, empty place, he suddenly felt as if he were in the actual presence of something holy, as if he must kneel down himself reverently and bow his head.

  Dickon nudged him impatiently and the spell broke. “What are you gaping at?” said he. While Hugh had been daydreaming he had got the chart out of its hiding place behind the loose board and now he was pointing to an indistinct mark on it. “See that?”

  Hugh looked closer. It was the even cross.

  “And now,” continued Dickon, his voice taking on the pride of a show man, “see what we have here!”

  He moved quickly down the nave, Hugh following him, in through the arch and behind the altar. There he knelt down, scanning the worn blocks of stone with which the floor was paved. Hugh leaned over him and exclaimed in surprise at what Dickon pointed out. In the corner of one of the largest stones, almost obliterated, was the indistinct outline of the same even cross. Dickon was feeling under the edge of this slab of stone. Using both hands he forced a latch of some kind, cleverly concealed.

  “Here, give me a lift,” said he. “I managed it by myself once, after I’d discovered the latch, but it’s ’most too much for me.”

  Hugh’s fingers felt around the edges of the stone slab also, and then the two of them, bringing all their strength to bear, pulled it up, displaying beneath rough-hewn stone stairs leading down into darkness.

  These they recognized as the steps in the wall behind the well that they had climbed before from the other end. When they had gone to the bottom of them Dickon paused, reached into a small recess beside the bottom step and drew out some rushes dipped in wax, and some flint.

  “Candles are hard to come by,” he said, “but I’ve still got two hidden in the cave by the moor entrance way, and these rushes will have to do for here.”

  “Then you haven’t given up searching entirely?” questioned Hugh.

  “Well,” answered the other dubiously, “there does not seem to be anything else mysterious and hidden that we can find down here, now that we’ve discovered the whole way from that cleft in the moor to the interior of the Old Church. But I like the feeling that I can come down here to a place nobody knows anything about—”

  “Except Bleheris,” interrupted Hugh. “Funny he should be the only one to have discovered all this.”

  Dickon had been leading the way across the Cave of the Well as they talked, and now he paused before the wall opposite the well and scanned the flat stones that lined it. Again the faint carved outline of the even cross showed him which one covered the hidden doorway, though the stones themselves were so skillfully set in the wall that no one could possibly have guessed any single one was any different from any other.

  Together the boys pulled at the slab of limestone which was held in place by a hidden latch like the one above, and when it finally swung in on creaking, rusty hinges, a large, apparently straight passageway opened up before them, leading off into the darkness. It was in good repair and high and wide enough for the big chests in the treasure vault to have been dragged through it, and every few yards there were niches in the walls where treasure might have been stored. But they were completely empty.

  “Here are two passageways,” said Dickon a moment later, moving on. “The right hand one goes straight to the aumbry doors, this one bearing off to the left ends shortly, blocked by a cave-in.”

  “Let’s see it,” said Hugh, taking the one indicated. It did not extend far and, as Dickon said, ended abruptly in a pile of loose earth and stones. “Maybe this once led on to the sea. Here it is on the chart extending a long ways.”

  Dickon merely grunted. They returned to the place where the two passageways had come together and followed the right-hand one to the doors of the aumbry. The bolts stuck badly but were finally drawn, and the two boys stepped out into the treasure vault they had originally found.

  “So that is the end,” said Dickon with finality. “No mystery any more to unearth, but a wonderful hideout from Viking pirates, if there were any Vikings left these, days. But there aren’t. I kind of wish there were.”

  Hugh sighed and, lighting a fresh rush candle from the stump of the one he was holding, turned back toward the aumbry doors and the way they had come.

  When they emerged into the Old Church again and had managed to close the heavy trap door, they heard footsteps moving down the nave toward the chancel. Hurrying through the stone archway to see who it might be, they were surprised to see Bleheris, carrying Excalibur. His face was alight, his eyes shining, and he greeted the boys as if he had fully expected to see them there.

  “Ah, my friends,” said he, “well met! You have reached this sacred spot before me. You have been underground, but you have found the hidden chambers and passageways empty—empty. All that was left in them I took to Beckery. I wanted them—and I wanted more, that Other Thing. But all is as it should be. It is not hidden in the dull earth, that we shall find the Shining Wonder. Lads! Lads! After bitter disappointment and long wonderi
ng, this old heart of mine is full of joy! There are forces at work, great forces, good forces! And I know beyond question that I shall see my heart’s desire before I die. But first, I have a duty to perform, a great sacrifice to make.”

  He moved past the boys and, with quick, determined step, went through the archway and to the foot of the altar. There he knelt and, taking the great heavy sword in both hands, he raised it aloft, his lips muttering a prayer, then laid it before the altar and bowed so low that his forehead nearly touched the ground. Then he rose and turned to the boys again, leaving the sword behind him.

  “And now, Hugh, lad, the book! The Book of the Seynt Graal. Where is it? Show it to me!”

  “The book is in the Painted Aumbry,” said Hugh, “the main part of it. The pages I found in the chest and have been working over, are here.”

  “It should all be here,” said Bleheris decidedly, “the book, the whole of it, and the sword. Also the crystal cross, all my relics and yours; St. David’s altar and those other things down yonder! This is the spot most hallowed in all England. They should be here, all of them; they are not yours or mine to keep and hold.”

  There was an undertone of excitement in his voice, a certainty and conviction. Hugh warmed to it.

  The three moved to the front of the Old Church, and Hugh took out his pile of manuscript pages, showing Bleheris the ones he had worked out and those still to be done. The old man looked at them keenly, then drew a deep sigh.

  “I cannot read the script any more,” said he shortly, “my eyes are grown too dim. Dost thou say truly this is part of The Book of the Seynt Graal?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “And when thou hast read it all and got it all in shape, what then?”