The Pendragon Legend

by Antal Szerb

  And in fact we were in just such a cave. The walls were lined with immense glass tanks, filled with water and adorned with artificial rocks, between which strange aquatic plants grew on long, ungainly, wandering stems. And among the rocks and the flowers swam creatures so horrific they are burned into my memory: they still haunt my dreams. And they are even more horrific when I wake in the dark, remembering them.

  They were shaped like lizards but were very much larger, a metre or more in length; and they had no eyes. Their soft, gelatinous bodies were palely translucent or whitish, like those of huge molluscs. From their temples sprouted fantastically shaped and coloured feelers, and two legs grew at the front of their eyeless heads. They circled slowly among the artificial rocks with a ghostly motion.

  The next room was ice-cold, like a refrigeration chamber. The walls were lined with chests of drawers made of lead. In the middle was a white operating table, with three of the same animals lying motionless on it, together with a collection of surgical instruments, scalpels, rubber gloves, glass bottles and syringes. The Earl must have been using them just minutes earlier.

  The next moment a door opened on the other side of the room and in he stepped, wearing a white operating gown.

  He stared at us in a most unfriendly way, and did not say a word.

  At last Rogers summoned up the courage to speak.

  “I beg your pardon, My Lord … we heard a gunshot.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “But that is no reason for you all to come flocking in.”

  Then, filled with embarrassment, he said, with a hint of a smile:

  “Forgive me … I’m not used to receiving visitors here. Would you mind if we went somewhere a little more congenial?”

  And he led us to the room next door, which was furnished rather more conventionally.

  “Do take a seat.”

  “What’s been happening?” asked Cynthia. “I was terrified.”

  “Well, to tell the truth, someone took a shot at me.”

  Cynthia screamed. The Earl went over to her and stroked her head.

  “As you see, I’ve come to no harm. At the precise moment I bent over to retrieve an instrument I’d dropped. I think, if I had remained upright … but no matter.”

  But by then we were all on our feet and shouting in confusion at him, forgetting the deference due to his rank.

  “Who was it? How? Where?”

  “Do please sit down. I can’t tell you anything. I’ve searched the entire floor and found no one. Was the iron door locked?”

  “Yes, My Lord,” replied Rogers.

  “I don’t understand any of it. Unless the shot was fired through the open window … But that’s impossible. How could anyone get up there—unless he could fly? But Cynthia … and the rest of you … please calm down. No harm has been done; there’s no damage, not even to the building. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to lie down.”

  “But for Heaven’s sake!” cried Osborne. “Whoever did this is clearly still here on the second floor, hiding. Please, allow us to search your apartment.”

  “No, my boy, that’s out of the question. Rogers, and perhaps Ifan, will remain here, and we’ll take another look through everything. Now go to bed, and don’t let anything trouble you. We Pendragons have nine lives … ”

  As he spoke, I had the distinct impression that he cast a meaningful glance at me and Maloney. Surely he didn’t think that we … ?

  And thus, very graciously, he dismissed us.

  That was the second night. We stayed up for hours, discussing things. Maloney in particular had some wonderful proposals for solving the mystery, and an equal number of tropical yarns. As for me, I had abandoned all hope of a good night’s sleep at Llanvygan.

  The next morning, all was revealed to me—or at least, a fair bit. Maloney and Osborne had been indulging themselves in the role of amateur detectives and had established the possibility that while the staff had been diverted by the ‘supernatural’ gramophone a door could have been left unlocked, allowing someone to slip into the house, who could then have opened the iron door with a skeleton key, and locked it behind him as he left.

  Cynthia and I went off to the library. We browsed among the books, but without the enthusiasm of the previous day. I lacked sleep; I was melancholy and restless. And I was no longer in any doubt. My forebodings had been fully justified. I was up to my neck in a dark and dangerous escapade, in the thick of a siege. My greatest desire was to get away from a situation where earls were shot at in my presence. Back to the British Museum, to the impregnable calmness of books …

  “‘Inter arma silent musae,’” I quoted. “I feel I’ve come here at a very bad moment. I’m an intruder, a reluctant witness of the trials and tribulations of this house. The Earl hasn’t honoured me with a single look since I arrived. He obviously isn’t happy about my visiting … I must go back to London. I only hope that our friendship—may I call it that?—might continue.”

  “If you truly are my friend,” said Cynthia, “don’t leave us now. If for no other reason … if you feel the atmosphere isn’t appropriate for your research … then stay a few more days for my sake.”

  I made an involuntary movement as if to caress her. She drew back in alarm.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you misunderstand me. But you are needed here. I need someone, shall we say, whom I can completely trust.”

  “Then I shall stay until you throw me out. But excuse me … I can’t think how I can possibly be of help to you. To be perfectly honest with you, I know very little about folklore.”

  “I’m not thinking of folklore. It’s another matter entirely. My uncle’s life.”

  “How do you mean? Do you think what happened yesterday will be repeated?”

  “I don’t think it. I know for sure.”

  “My dear … you’re still suffering from the shock of yesterday.”

  “Doctor, you don’t know all the facts. I wouldn’t normally have spoken about these things, but now I’ve no choice. This is the third time in a month that someone’s tried to kill my uncle.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “The first time I was there. I was nearly killed myself. My uncle and I went to the seaside—Llandudno—and we were on our way home in the Delage—it’s an open-top tourer. I was driving. Suddenly my uncle shouted at me to stop—but he didn’t wait for me to brake, he pulled the lever himself, so violently we were both nearly thrown out. We got out, and there—about ten yards ahead of us—was a wire stretched across the road at head height for someone sitting in a car. At that speed, if we hadn’t stopped, we would have both been beheaded.”

  A shudder went through me.

  “The strangest thing about it was … that my uncle saw it coming. It was dusk, I tell you, and no one, however keen their eyesight, could have spotted it. He himself can’t explain how he did it. He says it was the family fairy, Tylwyth Teg … but that’s only his little joke, teasing me about my obsession with folklore.”

  “And the second time?”

  “That I can’t tell you exactly. It wasn’t here, it was at Pendragon House in London. A few days after my uncle met you at Lady Malmsbury-Croft’s he arrived home unexpectedly—much earlier than planned. I’m the only person he’s told that someone is trying to kill him … But the whole thing is so very strange … ”

  “In what way?”

  “Well—make of this what you will—he says that poison gas was somehow pumped into his room. But … I’m not sure how to say this … gases don’t affect him. In the war … ”

  This second story I naturally did not believe. The Earl, like so many other people who suffer from nerves, seemed to be obsessed with the notion that someone was out to kill him with poison gas. It was just luck that he had a complementary delusion that he was immune to its effects.

  “Well, it certainly explains why he doesn’t feel like chatting to me about seventeenth-century mystici
sm. I think anyone else would have withdrawn the invitation.”

  “But that would have been ungentlemanly.”

  “And something else is becoming clear,”—it came to me in a flash. “Do you know that Maloney and I are under constant surveillance?”

  “You’re imagining things,” she replied.

  “Of course. I frequently do. But this time there are facts. The cartridges were taken from my revolver. My suitcases were searched. I ought in fact to have left immediately. But somehow … it was all so improbable I couldn’t believe it was really happening.”

  She gazed at me in despair.

  “My God, that’s dreadful. But please, do try to understand what an extraordinary situation we are in … and who knows what dangers the Earl has been forewarned about …

  “All the same, I beg you to stay,” she went on. “I know what a sacrifice it will be for you to remain in a place where you could be under such a horrible suspicion … but it’s for my sake. Let it be enough for you that I, a member of the family, would unhesitatingly trust my life to you. I have complete faith in my intuition. And my uncle says anyone who loves books cannot be a bad person. You’ll see—he’ll understand everything soon enough, and make it all up to you.

  “But until that time,” she continued, holding out her hand to me, “please, please, don’t leave me alone. I have no one. My uncle has gone back into his shell. Osborne is completely unreliable. Doctor … this place frightens me.”

  I stroked her hand, and promised to stay by her side.

  I knew I was not in the least like the young heroes of American movies, who would take on and destroy the entire New York underworld if the girl of their heart were in danger … but this was primarily a matter of moral support. Cynthia could not be left to face her fears alone, and she needed help in solving the mystery.

  “Cynthia,” I asked. “Do you have any idea who could possibly want him dead?”

  “None at all, absolutely none.”

  “What about the Roscoe heirs?” I asked, in another flash of inspiration. I had remembered the murky tales I’d heard from Maloney, during that evening full of suspicion in the London night club.

  “Who?” she asked, in surprise.

  “What, haven’t you heard of William Roscoe?”

  “Of course I have. He was a friend of my grandfather’s—a very wealthy man. Wait a minute—now I remember—my aunt, the Duchess of Warwick, once warned me never to mention the name in my uncle’s presence … but I don’t recall why. What do you know, Doctor? Tell me at once.”

  “I know nothing for certain, just a few words dropped by an unreliable source.”

  “Still, you must tell me everything.”

  “Apparently this Roscoe stipulated in his will that his fortune, which would otherwise go to his wife, should pass to the Earl of Gwynedd in the event of his dying an unnatural death. He believed his wife wanted to kill him.”

  “And?”

  “Some time later, he died of a tropical disease—the same one that killed your grandfather, the seventeenth Earl. So the money went to his wife, and I don’t know who else. Now the heirs have the notion that your uncle wants to prove that the disease that killed Roscoe was artificially induced by them. If he succeeded, the entire fortune would be his. They imagine that his secret laboratory experiments are directed to this end. And that fear could be behind their attempts on his life.”

  Cynthia weighed this up.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said at last. “His biological work is purely theoretical. He’s explained it all to me. He’s grappling with the fundamental questions of biology—the nature of life, the difference between what lives and what doesn’t, and what transitional stages might possibly exist between the two.”

  “But that isn’t enough to reassure the Roscoe heirs.”

  “True. But I really can’t imagine … I cannot think of a single possible reason why he would want to lay hands on all that money. I mean, we’re not exactly paupers. It would be quite out of keeping for an Earl of Gwynedd to take active steps to increase his personal wealth. It’s simply not in his character. Wealth can only be inherited, and then only from family.”

  “There may of course be other motives … revenge, retribution … or God knows what.”

  “That’s totally improbable. There’s some other secret business here, Doctor. Who knows what ancient blood-feud? … It’s as if every single one of our ancestors has been gathering here, these last few days … Pierce Gwyn Mawr is prophesying death and destruction, and the midnight rider has been seen … ”

  “Does the Earl have any enemies?”

  “I’ve no idea. The fact is, I don’t know very much about him. Osborne and I have only lived here for three years, since our mother died. Before that, I hardly ever saw him. All I know is that he’s the most magnificent being on earth. The great aristocrats of the past must have been like him. They didn’t have to do or say anything remarkable: their mere existence revealed a finer form of life, above and beyond this one. It’s impossible to say why everyone holds him in such high esteem. But if noble blood does stand for anything, he’s the living incarnation of it. I just can’t believe he could have enemies. He’s too far above everyone else for there to be any serious differences; though of course, by the same token, he hasn’t any friends.”

  I confess I too felt that the Earl was as she had described him. Some people are born to be served willingly by others.

  It isn’t easy to explain these unprovoked sympathies, the whole complex magic that made Llanvygan so deeply attractive to me. No doubt there was an element of snobbery in it, a degree of intellectual curiosity, and a bit of love too. And there do exist in the soul such feudal passions as service, respect and devotion.

  Had I been a knight errant, I should have offered my services to the lord of the castle, and asked the lady for a ribbon to wear on my shield. Oh to be that happy man, a knight errant!

  I kissed her hand. She stood in the gothic arch of the window gazing at me, transfigured by emotion. She was the maid of the castle, I her knight. I mouthed a few incoherent words, in which there was not just a declaration of love but a blessed revival, from under the rubble of years, of my better self. What a shame that those moments when man is noble and pure and akin to the angels are so transient, so fleeting, while that complicated nonentity the Ego is always with us—of which one can speak only in terms of protective tenderness and gentle irony.

  By some miracle, the next few days passed calmly and agreeably. Nothing remarkable happened, and I was able to sleep at night. There was no more talk of midnight riders.

  The summer was still magnificent, the park as beautiful as parks always are when one walks in them with a girl. I played a great deal of tennis, swam and sunbathed. In short, I was spending my summer holiday in the shadow of danger every bit as calmly as the rich who disport themselves below snow-laden mountains of deadly height.

  In time I even came to feel at home in the Llanvygan library, and picked up my studies where I had left off in the British Museum.

  The library was particularly rich in seventeenth-century material. Mystical tracts which I knew of only from bibliographical references, things that were not even in the British Museum, I now held reverently in my hands.

  The number of German works of the period was very striking. With singular emotion I turned the pages of Simon Studion’s unpublished Naometria, and first editions of Paracelsus, Weigel and Johann Valentin Andreae, volumes which Asaph Pendragon must have brought back with him after his early years in that country. Over these texts he would have mused and deliberated with his friend Robert Fludd: their cabbalistic symbols were still visible above the archaic gothic script. As I sat there in the gathering dusk, an insignificant mortal in the shadow of the vast ranks of books, the centuries passed before me in procession, in reverse order. Where are the Stuarts, and where is Cromwell now? But books live on, as does man’s eternal thirst for them.

  It seemed as if I had onl
y to open a door to see directly into the era of Asaph Pendragon. Every now and then I was overwhelmed by a strange, disconcerting happiness. I felt preternaturally old, a relic from the age of folios staring out in astonishment at the mankind of today.

  In short, I was in a lyrical mood. I kept breaking off to construct, with much labour, a sonnet in English. Let us suppose: I was in love with Cynthia. That might be one way of approaching the truth, at the expense of a double lie. I wasn’t in love, and not with Cynthia.

  As a rule I don’t fall in love, though it did happen to me once when I was very young. Even if the rather pleasing solemnity I now felt pulsing in my veins could really be termed love, it was not Cynthia I was in love with, but the Lady of the Castle, the maid of Llanvygan.

  A woman’s worth is furnished by her background, her reputation (good or bad), the lovers she has had, and the world of otherness she has come from. Love is like an old-fashioned landscape painting: in the foreground a diminutive figure, the woman who is loved; behind her mountains and rivers, a rich, grand scenery, charged with meaning.

  Cynthia’s scenery was Llanvygan and Pendragon, Welsh legend and English history. Whoever married Cynthia would find himself related, however distantly, to the deathless pentameters of Shakespeare and Milton.

  But the real Cynthia was simple, warm-hearted and natural, as all true aristocrats are when you get to know them. She had no interest in ‘society’, nor was she self-centred and demanding the way young girls are who have been spoilt. Because of her mother’s recent death she had ‘come out’ rather later than usual, and rarely mixed with people.

  She was sincerely and unaffectedly pleased that I was at Llanvygan, where she had passed so many sad and lonely months, and our friendship grew daily more intimate. She was fond of, rather than passionate about, sport, but she was as enthusiastic a walker as I was and enjoyed displaying her knowledge of folklore while showing me round the local places of interest.

  She was extremely communicative. By degrees I got to know all about the garden parties she had attended, and all about her friends. Those who did not go in for folklore ranked rather lower in her esteem. There was only one person she really adored, an older woman, whose name she did not tell me. She surrounded this attachment with a element of romantic secretiveness, and I was instantly jealous.