XII
THE PRIORY OF ST. EWOLDA
Though strictly speaking not a part of the cathedral, the ruins of St. Ewolda’s Priory, two miles away, are an integral part of Barchester Cathedral’s history. The monastery founded at Barchester in Saxon times moved to this new site after the Norman invasion. During the Reformation, St. Ewolda’s was suppressed, its few treasures plundered by Henry VIII. Some of the books and furnishings found their way back to Barchester, where they can still be seen in the cathedral, but St. Ewolda’s was soon stripped of its valuable lead roofs and the stonework became a quarry for local builders. Now only a few ruins mark the site where the monastery stood for nearly five hundred years.
1601, Barchester Cathedral Library
Bishop Atwater examined the mechanism that held the chains in place. Each chain was hooked at one end onto an iron bar. This bar passed through iron loops affixed to either end of the shelf. At one end the bar was shaped like a T to prevent its sliding through the loop. At the other end the bar was held in place with a lock—a lock to which only the bishop held the key.
“And all the manuscripts will fit in this case?” asked the bishop.
“They will fit perfectly,” said the blacksmith, “with just enough room left for the one additional volume you showed me.”
Bishop Atwater had seen a chained library a few months ago and had decided it could be part of his solution to a growing problem. Often canons knew the cathedral possessed certain books, but they were nearly as often uncertain about where those books might be. Bishop Atwater planned to bring together all the books belonging to the cathedral—some sitting on lecterns, some stored in wooden chests, some piled up in chapels, and some, no doubt, at the lodgings of canons or vergers. They would be gathered into a single room, a library that the bishop had had constructed on the east side of the cloister.
With the Reformation finally over, it was time to build a solid Protestant library—not just for theological reading by the cathedral clergy and those working toward ordination but for all types of study. The church had always been, as far as Bishop Atwater was concerned, an institution of teaching, and with this new renaissance of learning and publishing that was sweeping through England, the time was right to take a haphazard collection of old books strewn around the cathedral precincts and mold it into a true library. Once the volumes had been gathered together, the bishop would donate his own books to the library and begin to build the collection from his substantial private fortune. It was, he felt, the best possible mark he could leave on the cathedral.
To secure the most valuable items, those handwritten manuscripts from before the Reformation, he would use the method of chaining volumes to the shelves. The cathedral employed talented blacksmiths and carpenters, and the bishop was impressed with the case that now stood perpendicular to the west wall of the new library. It was over six feet high and had three shelves, each divided into three sections. From the lowest shelf protruded a slanted surface on which priests or scholars could study any book while the volume remained safely chained to the case.
“How will the chains attach to the books?” asked the bishop.
“The last link on each chain is a small circle,” said the blacksmith. “That will pass through a strap of iron that I will bend together and press through the binding where the front cover protrudes past the pages.”
“Then the books can be shelved standing up?” asked the bishop. The books at Barchester were traditionally stored lying on their sides.
“Yes, My Lord. It’s an ingenious plan. It means each book can be accessed without moving any other book.”
“Perfect,” said the bishop.
—
Bishop Atwater loved books. He had consulted manuscripts during his days at Oxford and had always felt a connection to the scribes and artists who had created them. Now, of course, a new type of book had swept the world—books printed on printing presses. Unlike the manuscripts he loved so much, each of which was unique, these printed books were made in hundreds or even thousands of identical copies. Already the collection at Barchester had hundreds of printed books—some purchased by previous deans and bishops, others donated by local benefactors. Reading a printed book never felt quite the same to Bishop Atwater. When he picked up a manuscript, he knew he was the only person in the world reading that particular book at that specific moment. When he read a printed book, as he seemed to do more and more often, anyone else might be reading the same book at the same time. He knew there was no point in fighting it—printed books were cheaper by far and some said the even type was easy on the eye, though the bishop had never found this so. And with the availability of inexpensive printed books, the bishop could take what had always been a rather meager collection, in comparison with many other cathedrals, and expand it into a substantial library. Still, he believed in the value of the old manuscripts; he believed that in their art and craftsmanship they told stories that could never be reproduced in a printed volume. He relished the idea that he would, in the coming days, watch as every manuscript owned by the cathedral was chained into place, so that future users of the Bishop Atwater Library would always be able to have that experience he loved so much of opening up a manuscript and falling into the past.
After a thorough search of the cathedral and its precincts, the bishop had gathered eighty-two such volumes. This did not include the book he now held—a volume whose secret he had been charged with keeping. If he placed this book in the chained library, it would be much safer from theft than it had been for the past twelve years of his guardianship, when it stayed in his bedroom in the bishop’s palace. On the other hand, the volume would be available to any member of the clergy with access to the library. But why build a chained library if not to protect the most valuable volumes in his care—and no volume was more valuable than this. Besides, the code within was unbreakable—only the Guardian knew the true content of the manuscript and only he could pass on that meaning to the next Guardian. Chained in the new cathedral library, the manuscript would be as safe as it had ever been. Safer.
May 24, 2016
COMMEMORATION OF JOHN AND CHARLES WESLEY
The only way Arthur could avoid Bethany was to avoid the library, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that for long, but he could last a day or two, and perhaps by then he would be over his foolishness. On Sunday, she hadn’t come to Evensong, so she missed a bit of unexpected drama. Halfway through the Magnificat there was a snapping sound from somewhere high above and all the electric lights flickered out. The choir continued singing in the diminished light, even as the organ, which used an electric blower to fill its bellows, wheezed into silence. When Arthur returned for Compline, there were several electricians’ vans parked outside the west door.
On Monday, Arthur arrived at Evensong at the last possible minute and took a seat on the opposite side of the quire from his usual spot and as far away from where Bethany sat as he could. Power had been restored, so the organist was able to play a postlude, during which Arthur slipped out, though not before glancing over to see her looking at him with a quizzical expression. He was half afraid to take his usual Tuesday morning walk with Gwyn. Bethany was now apparently friends with everyone in Barchester—what if she showed up as well?
Gwyn was a few minutes late, but she arrived at the gate to the water meadows alone, save for the marauding Mag and Nunc, and they set out on their usual circuit. Arthur was so anxious to keep secret his feelings for Bethany that he decided to distract himself by at least hinting to Gwyn about his other secret. It had felt good confessing his interest in the Grail to Bethany; perhaps telling Gwyn would feel the same way.
“Bethany Davis tells me you have seen the Nanteos Cup. I never told you this, but I actually have a . . . well, a fascination with Grail lore.”
“Do you believe the Nanteos Cup is the Holy Grail?” asked Gwyn.
“No,” said Arthur. “It dates from the
fourteenth century, I think, but—”
“Well, then,” interrupted Gwyn, “I guess it’s good I never mentioned it to you. My experience with that cup is a deep and intimate part of my faith. It has nothing to do with science or experts on antiquarian artifacts. It’s the reason I became a priest, and I don’t need you scoffing at it.”
Arthur knew better than to continue this line of conversation. As much as he loved debating with Gwyn, he could tell from her tone that this was not a topic for discussion. They walked for a minute or two in tense silence before he spoke again.
“Power restored, I see,” he said.
“Much more than power has been restored, Arthur,” said Gwyn. Arthur could tell by her tone that the awkwardness of the moment had passed—that both had silently agreed that neither needed to justify either faith or a lack thereof. “I should have rung you, but things were a bit hectic, as you can imagine. There’s a little gift for you and Oscar in the library—for all of us really. One of the electricians was prowling around in the gallery above the north aisle following some ancient piece of wiring and he stumbled upon a wooden crate.”
Arthur felt a quiver of excitement, and for just a moment he thought she would say, “The Holy Grail was boxed, labeled, and sitting in the rafters of the cathedral.” But the Grail, it seemed, was a topic best avoided this morning.
“Let me guess,” he said. “The bones of St. Ewolda.”
“Nothing quite that dramatic,” said Gwyn. “It was full of vellum book covers.”
“The covers that were torn off the manuscripts during the Blitz?” said Arthur.
“Oscar thinks a lot of things were stored up there during the repairs after the war and that crate got left behind.”
If there was ever a double-edged sword, thought Arthur, this was it. With the covers restored, the manuscripts would be much more attractive to Sotheby’s, and therefore more likely to disappear forever from the cathedral library. On the other hand, this was the restoration, for now at least, of a part of Barchester’s history.
“So I suppose now the idea of an auction is even more enticing to the chapter,” said Arthur.
“That brings me to the other news,” said Gwyn. “The chapter may have to decide about selling the manuscripts sooner than we thought. We’ve actually had an offer.”
“You’ve had an offer? For which one?”
“For the whole collection. Quite a generous offer when compared to the estimates given by Mr. Mangum.”
“And what is the source of this generous offer?”
“It comes from the gentleman who is financing the digitization project,” said Gwyn. “An American named Jesse Johnson. Apparently, he heard the cathedral is in financial straits and he thought this would be a way he could help out.”
This wasn’t the plan, thought Arthur, feeling a rage boiling up inside of him. Bethany wasn’t supposed to sell the manuscripts; she was just supposed to get Jesse Johnson in a generous mood. How the hell could she do this? Make him be in love with her one moment and infuriate him the next. Because of that woman, the Barchester manuscripts would probably end up in some gaudy mansion in America and he would be left with a glowing screen on which to read the ancient books that he had touched and smelled and stroked and loved for so many years. He was trying to imagine how he could even face her again, when a spasm of guilt shot through him. It wasn’t her fault, he realized—it was his. He had suggested she ask Jesse Johnson to give financial aid to the cathedral. And surely she hadn’t suggested he buy the manuscripts—he just wanted something in exchange for his twenty million dollars. Bethany had done Arthur a favor and the result had been disastrous. Arthur had never imagined that guilt and relief could be so intertwined. Bethany was restored in his esteem, but Arthur may have destroyed the very thing he so wanted to protect. And then he had another terrifying thought—what if Jesse Johnson really was looking for the Holy Grail? Maybe he had seen the Gladwyn portrait and the marginalia in the digitized version of the Barchester Breviary and suspected that the manuscripts held clues about the Grail. If Jesse Johnson, or one of his minions, found the Grail and spirited it out of Barchester, Arthur would never forgive himself
“Surely . . . ,” he said, “surely the chapter isn’t considering selling the manuscripts to America?”
“It’s a very generous offer, Arthur. In fact, it’s almost the exact amount needed to repair the north transept and build the Lady Chapel.” Of course it was the exact amount, thought Arthur. He himself had as much as told the exact amount to that evangelical grave robber.
“And it has to be all of them?” said Arthur. “Even the breviary and the Gospel of John?”
“He said he wanted to keep the collection together. It’s all or none.”
“You know,” said Arthur, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we might make the library relevant again, give it a real purpose. I mean, what is our library anyway? Is it just a place to store old books, to try to preserve our history? Is it some old-fashioned forgotten room like the privy in the anteroom of the chapter house? Or can it be something more? Can it be an opportunity for outreach and education and the creation of new knowledge and ideas? And can it be any of that without the manuscripts? I think the library has real potential, but if you rip its heart out, it may never come back to life.”
“It’s not something I want to do,” said Gwyn, “but most of the canons feel that given the choice between a library that is rarely used and the cathedral itself, the path is clear.”
“So that’s it, then,” said Arthur. “They’re going.”
“It’s not decided,” said Gwyn. “He made the offer last night and gave us four days to respond. The chapter is holding a special meeting on Friday morning to make a decision.”
“So, I’ve got until Friday to come up with ten million pounds?”
“Suppose we talk about something else,” said Gwyn, slipping her hand through Arthur’s arm as they approached a muddy section of the path. “Bethany was looking lovely at the funeral, don’t you think?”
“Suppose we talk about something else,” said Arthur.
—
As soon as Arthur could extricate himself from work, he did. With a little help from Miss Stanhope, he managed to send an e-mail to the members of the Advisory Committee for the Library canceling their meeting that afternoon. Whether Bethany was in the cathedral library or not, whether he was shockingly, inappropriately in love with her or not, he wanted to see those covers, and he especially wanted to see the cover of the ciphered manuscript. Maybe it held a clue that would help him break the code. If the lost Book of Ewolda was headed to America, Arthur would at least like to know what it said before it disappeared forever. As he sat on the bus back into town, imagining Jesse Johnson crating up his treasures and hauling them away from Barchester, another horrible thought occurred to him. If Jesse Johnson owned the manuscripts and he owned the company that digitized them, he would only have to lock his door and flick a switch on his computer and not just the manuscripts but the texts within would become inaccessible. Arthur was certainly not prepared to trust an American billionaire who claimed he was going to make the manuscripts available online for free.
If Arthur was afraid that Bethany would want to talk about what had happened at the funeral, if he thought that she could not help but sense how he truly felt for her, he needn’t have worried. She was at her usual post, positioning a manuscript onto her stand for photographing. She wore a pair of glasses with dark blue frames that contrasted perfectly with her blond hair.
“Give me ten seconds, Arthur,” she said. Completely businesslike, he thought, not a hint of intimacy. Good.
On the largest table in the center of the library were four neat stacks of book covers. They were a bit sooty, but other than that seemed no worse for their circuitous route back to the library. Someone had sorted them by size and Arthur picked up a few to exami
ne them. Most still had a metal clasp pressed into the top right corner. It would be an interesting puzzle to match the covers with their manuscripts. He wondered if he would be part of that effort or if the books would be in America by then.
“I guess you heard,” said Bethany, turning to him.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” said Arthur.
“Jesus, Arthur, is that the most important thing here?”
“And your language is getting awfully saucy for the daughter of a preacher.”
“You’re avoiding the subject as usual, Arthur.” Here it came, he thought. Here came the conversation he was dreading—here came the talk about how it was very sweet that Arthur thought he was in love with someone fourteen years younger and grossly mismatched, but Bethany would prefer that they just be friends. But that was not the only subject, it turned out, that Arthur was avoiding.
“Listen, I am so sorry about the whole Jesse Johnson thing,” said Bethany. “It never occurred to me he would do anything like that. I just told him the cathedral needed some money for repairs and the next thing I know he’s trying to empty the library. I don’t even know why he wants the manuscripts, to be honest. I mean, I’ve been sending the images to the home office like I’m supposed to, but there’s nothing in here that would really fit in his Bible museum. A couple of old Gospel manuscripts, maybe, but why offer to buy the whole collection? I suppose he thinks he’s being nice.”
“Did you say you’ve been sending all the images to him?” said Arthur.
“Actually I don’t send them. When I save them they go straight to the cloud and then he can look at what’s been digitized.”
“Does that include the coded manuscript?” said Arthur.
“God, I never thought about that,” said Bethany. “I was just thinking of copying the coded pages so we could return the manuscript to the precentor. But everything I photograph is automatically uploaded, so yeah, he could have seen those pages.”
The Lost Book of the Grail Page 27