The Lost Book of the Grail

by Charlie Lovett

  From beneath his robe, he withdrew a cracked and soiled volume, a book that he had kept on his person for more than twenty years. More than anything, he wanted to sit in the quiet warmth of the kitchen and read this book one last time. Though he knew every word, every wonder of it by heart, he still loved to run his eyes over those mysterious Saxon words he had mastered so long ago. Now the new manuscript he had prepared and explained to Thomas would keep Ewolda’s secrets safe. Never again would there be need for a monk of St. Ewolda’s to learn ancient Saxon. Never again, he thought with renewed tears, would there be monks of St. Ewolda’s.

  Laying the book on the table, amid potato parings and mutton grease, James stepped toward the fire and threw several fresh pieces of wood on the embers. Sparks flew up and in a few seconds the fire leaped forth hungrily. James picked up the book and stood staring into the flames. As much as he longed to read the words within, words to which he had dedicated his life, he could not risk being too late. The book and its secrets could not fall into the hands of the invaders. He threw the book into the fire.

  Sparks scattered into the room, and James stepped aside to avoid lighting his robe on fire. Yet perhaps fire was what he deserved. Perhaps he should plunge headfirst into the flames to either retrieve the book before it was destroyed or to follow it into nothingness, but he had not the courage for either. He watched as the flames consumed the volume, the pages of vellum peeling back one at a time, blackening, and then dissolving into ash. From outside he heard the shouts of his brothers, as word spread that the commissioners were at the gates.

  James had loved his life at St. Ewolda’s—the rhythm of daily prayer and worship, his work with Brother Thomas copying out manuscripts, the quiet fraternity of his fellow monks. But now, he thought, as he watched the last ashes of the manuscript flutter above the fire, his life was over. With his final act, he had done the best and the worst that he could. No pain could be greater than what he now felt, he thought, as he picked up the knife from the table.

  A few minutes later, when a commissioner of King Henry VIII entered the kitchen, he saw only a dying fire and the body of Brother James lying on the floor.

  May 12, 2016

  SEVENTH THURSDAY AFTER EASTER

  Once a week, on Thursday mornings, Arthur treated himself to a full English breakfast at the Old Mill Restaurant in the High Street. He didn’t have to be on campus until ten o’clock, so he had plenty of time to go to Morning Prayer, take his walk with Gwyn, and still enjoy breakfast before his bus arrived. He always sat at the same table in the front window, so he would have a view of the bus stop. When he pushed open the door of the restaurant the next morning, he saw a familiar figure seated at his table.

  “How did you know I would be here?” said Arthur, sliding into the chair opposite Bethany.

  “Barchester’s a small town, Arthur, and, as previously established, you are a creature of habit. And since I’ve yet to try the cholesterol fest that your people call breakfast and I needed to talk, I thought I’d join you.”

  Arthur was still settling in his seat when the waiter deposited two fry-ups on the table.

  “Morning, Mr. Prescott,” he said. “First time I’ve ever seen you with a date.”

  “Not a date, John. Just showing this young American one of the best parts of British culture.”

  “Sounds like a date to me,” said the waiter as he walked away.

  “So what was it you needed to tell me?” said Arthur, tucking into his meal.

  “I found something yesterday,” said Bethany. “Maybe you know about it already. You probably do, which is why I didn’t mention it last night. And if you do know, then I have no reason to be eating this . . . is this, what do you call it, black pudding? It’s made of blood, right? I think I’ll stick to the sausage. So, anyway, I was photographing a manuscript of excerpts from different mathematicians, do you know the one? And I was in the section by Fibonacci—I looked him up and he’s the reason we use Arabic numerals. Can you imagine long division with Roman numerals? And he discovered the Fibonacci sequence. I don’t know if discovered is the right word, but . . .”

  “Bethany,” said Arthur gently between bites of egg. “My bus will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I thought I’d stopped doing that. Maybe it’s the coffee. Anyway, I found a parchment inserted into the book, just a single sheet. On one side is a fragment of Psalm Fifty-nine in Latin, but on the other is what looks like an inventory of manuscripts, headed St. Ewolda’s Priory and dated October 28, 1539.”

  “The day the king’s commissioners arrived and dissolved the monastery,” said Arthur excitedly.

  “So you know about it?”

  “No, I’ve never seen it—but it makes sense to make a list of what you have just before it’s about to be plundered. And even if the king’s commissioners didn’t take any books home with them, which is unlikely, that was when the collection of St. Ewolda’s merged with that of Barchester Cathedral.”

  “My Latin’s not great, but as far as I could tell there’s no reference to any manuscript about Ewolda.”

  “What about the mystery manuscript?” said Arthur. “The missing Psalter?”

  “There are three Psalters listed. I think two of them are still in the library; the other one could be the same as the one on Bishop Gladwyn’s list, but it’s hard to tell. The descriptions are pretty basic. There are thirty-five titles on the list. It looks to me like nineteen of those correspond with manuscripts that are still in the library.”

  “The rest of them were hauled off by the commissioners,” said Arthur. “The libraries of Oxford and Cambridge are filled with manuscripts stolen from monasteries during the Reformation. If we have a list of the St. Ewolda’s collection prior to the dissolution, we might be able to identify some of those missing manuscripts. Bethany, this is a brilliant find.”

  Bethany beamed as Arthur took a bite of toast, but he had a thought as he swallowed. “Of course,” he said, “if the descriptions are, as you say, pretty basic, it may be difficult to tie them to specific manuscripts.”

  “That’s the best part,” said Bethany. “There are two columns of Roman numerals on the inventory. One, to the right of the titles, I haven’t figured out yet. But the numbers to the left are each followed by a single word. I started comparing manuscripts in the library to the list. I thought at first these might be page numbers, but it turns out they’re leaf numbers. I go to the leaf that corresponds to the left-hand number and see if the first word on that leaf matches the word next to the number. And it works. That’s how I found out we still have nineteen of the manuscripts. And it should make it easy to identify the St. Ewolda manuscripts in other collections.”

  “Where did you come from?” said Arthur in amazement.

  “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Pretty cool? Bethany, knowing what was in the St. Ewolda’s collection before it was broken up—that’s tremendous. I can’t believe I never found that inventory.”

  “Be honest, Arthur,” said Bethany, “have you ever been even slightly interested in mathematics?”

  “Point well taken. Ah, here comes my bus.”

  “I’ll put the inventory on your table,” said Bethany as Arthur rose to go.

  “This business with the missing Psalter and thinking we’re on the trail of the lost Book of Ewolda, or even the Holy Grail—” said Arthur, “sometimes I’m afraid that’s all just chasing shadows. But an inventory of the St. Ewolda library—that’s a brilliant discovery. It could give us a much clearer view of life and scholarship at the priory. Well done, Bethany.”

  He stood awkwardly for a moment as the bus eased into its stop. He wondered if he ought to lean down and kiss her on the cheek. Was that now the . . . what was the expression . . . the new normal for good-byes? But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He simply nodded, smiled, and left her prodding her blood p
udding with a fork.

  “Put Miss Davis’s breakfast on my tab,” he said to the waiter as he headed for the door.

  —

  Arthur’s afternoon with Stephen Mangum from Sotheby’s turned out to be quite pleasant. How could it be otherwise? thought Arthur afterward. Sifting through a collection of medieval manuscripts with a fellow booklover was Arthur’s idea of the perfect way to spend a few hours. From the moment they met in the cloister, the two men connected over their mutual love of books. When Stephen stepped into the library, he gasped audibly—the only proper reaction, as far as Arthur was concerned. Soon Arthur was pulling one manuscript after another off the shelves to show Stephen.

  “How is the library used?” asked Stephen as Arthur was setting a manuscript onto one of the wide oak tables.

  “Sadly, it’s not used much,” said Arthur. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately—how this resource can become important again. I’ll be honest, I’d like it to become important enough to render your job superfluous.”

  “There must be ways to bring researchers and students here,” said Stephen, “even in a place as remote as Barchester. There’s a stately home near where my family lives in Gloucestershire that works with schools and even the local university to do programs for students. I think the university teaches a course on the history of the book in the library.”

  “That’s a rather brilliant idea,” said Arthur. “I had thought about seeing if the library could loan some things to the university—set up a display to get students interested in books. But why not bring Muhammad to the mountain?”

  “Do you know anyone at the university?” said Stephen.

  “I have a few connections,” said Arthur, smiling.

  It was impossible to closely examine eighty-two manuscripts in three hours, so Arthur had concentrated on what he saw as the greatest treasures of Barchester. Stephen’s job that day was simply to write a short description of the collection and come up with estimated prices for a dozen or so of the most valuable pieces. Arthur could have shown off only the least interesting of the Barchester manuscripts—late medieval works of theology with no illuminations. But Bethany had been right; he did not have it in him to disparage the collection. In the excitement of sharing the manuscripts with a fellow bibliophile, he soon forgot the underlying purpose of the afternoon and simply reveled in exploring treasures with Stephen.

  “This is our oldest manuscript,” said Arthur, setting a small, browning volume on the table. Like most of the manuscripts, it lacked its front cover and the text began on the first page. There were almost no margins, many of the leaves were chipped, and the ink was faded to illegibility in places. “A Latin Gospel of John. Not much to look at,” he said with a smile.

  “Fantastic,” whispered Stephen reverently. “What do you reckon? Late tenth century?”

  “We think so,” said Arthur.

  Stephen gently ran a finger across the first few lines of text. “Feeling that vellum and touching those words that have been there for a thousand years—that never gets old.”

  “Sometimes I pull it out and read a page or two and I feel like it just . . . pulls me back through time,” said Arthur.

  “You read medieval Latin?”

  “Reasonably well,” said Arthur. “I learned it because of this book, because I couldn’t resist the desire to read these words.” He picked up the manuscript and read the first verse of John’s Gospel, words that priests and monks had read from its pages a millennium ago: “In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum.”

  The words hung in the air for a moment as the two men stood gazing at the ancient manuscript. “You know my job is to secure pieces for auction,” said Stephen as Arthur returned the Gospel to its place on the shelf. “But I have to admit, it would be a shame for a manuscript like that, that’s been at Barchester for a thousand years, to wind up in some private collection.”

  “I had a feeling we were going to be friends,” said Arthur.

  “Still, I have to do my job.”

  “I understand,” said Arthur, and over the next two hours he showed him another twenty or so of the finest manuscripts. Stephen was especially taken with the Barchester Breviary.

  “This is extraordinarily fine musical notation. Quite rare in an English manuscript this early.”

  “We had a scribe in Barchester in the thirteenth century who seemed to specialize in musical notation. His work appears in three of our manuscripts, but most of it is here in the breviary. We never had great illuminators here—the monastery was perennially poor—but we’re very proud of our nameless musical scribe. His work is really marvelous.”

  “And would fetch a marvelous price,” said Stephen. “And I notice that, unlike the rest of the manuscripts, this breviary still has its front cover attached.”

  “And how much of a problem is that? That the covers are missing?”

  “It depends on the book. Certainly they would be more valuable to collectors with the covers intact, but the rarest and most valuable will still sell at quite high prices. For many of the others, though, finding the covers might make the difference between a strong estimate and a rather more cautious one.”

  Arthur showed Stephen works on medicine, history, and theology, and was just about to pull out a manuscript that he had never examined closely, a collection of excerpts from mathematical treatises, when he remembered what Bethany had found within its pages the day before. Not even sure what he was hiding, he pushed the volume back onto the shelf. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I generally go to Evensong before dinner. Would you care to join me before catching your train?”

  “I think I have enough information to advise the dean on the next step,” said Stephen. “And Evensong sounds lovely.”

  Arthur crossed over to his usual table and swept a few papers into his satchel, taking care that the piece of parchment that Bethany had left there was among them. He had been dying to look at it since he arrived at the library, but part of him wanted to keep it hidden from Stephen. He would have to wait. “Right, well, the service starts in ten minutes, so we’d best be going.”

  Bethany was not at Evensong, which was too bad, thought Arthur. He would have liked introducing her to Stephen and she would, he thought, have liked the Orlando Gibbons setting the choir sang. After the service, he walked Stephen to the station and bid him farewell, afraid to ask the question that had nagged at him all the way through the service: What was the “next step”?

  —

  When Bethany stepped out of St. Dunstan’s Chapel after Communion the next morning, Arthur was waiting for her. He had sat in the nave after Morning Prayer, just close enough to St. Dunstan’s that he could hear the rise and fall of the service—the softness of the prayers spoken by the celebrant (this morning, Canon Dale) and the marginally louder responses of the three-person congregation. Even though he avoided Communion services, he knew, from reading the Book of Common Prayer, the pattern of the service, and he made his way to the chapel just as it ended.

  “Can you spare a moment?” Arthur said, smiling at Bethany.

  “For you, of course,” said Bethany, winking at him.

  “Since you are one of the few people who have read both Bishop Gladwyn’s guidebook and my own, I wanted to show you something that we both left out. I didn’t include it on purpose, so it would stay my little secret; I’ve no idea why he didn’t mention it. I didn’t tell you about it the other night because . . . well, it’s a visual.”

  “What is it?” asked Bethany. “I can’t dawdle around all day looking for the Holy Grail, you know. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Well,” said Arthur, “since you told me you go to Communion in St. Dunstan’s Chapel every day, I thought you might have noticed yourself. It’s rather curious.” Arthur led Bethany back into the small confines of the chapel. “See anything unusual?”

/>   “I grew up in a Florida megachurch,” said Bethany. “It’s all unusual.”

  “Take a look at the carvings above the altar.”

  Bethany stepped toward the altar and leaned forward to examine four rows of small carvings—each barely bigger than a child’s toy. The first row of figures was a series of animals attacking men—a lion, a dragon, a serpent, and an eagle. Above those, four men were killing four beasts—another dragon, a wolf, a bear, and some sort of sea monster. The third row might well have been a lineup of King Arthur’s knights: four men in armor, the central two astride mighty steeds. At the top of the frieze hovered four angels.

  “What do you think?” said Arthur when Bethany had had time to examine all the figures.

  “Not exactly sacred,” she said, “other than the angels at the top, and I suppose that could be St. George slaying the dragon. But why does it seem familiar to me?”

  Arthur spoke gently:

  For all the sacred mount of Camelot . . .

  Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin built.

  And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt

  With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:

  And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,

  And in the second men are slaying beasts,

  And on the third are warriors, perfect men,

  And on the fourth are men with growing wings.

  “Tennyson,” said Bethany excitedly. “It’s his description of Camelot from ‘The Holy Grail.’”

  “You know your Grail literature.”

  “But what does Camelot have to do with Bishop Draper’s chantry chapel?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea,” said Arthur. “But Tennyson must have seen these carvings. It’s too big a coincidence; and I’ve not seen others like them anywhere else. It’s just one more curious link between Barchester and the Arthur legends.”