The Pendragon Legend

by Antal Szerb

  And there, in a strange little boat shaped like a tub, sat old Pierce Gwyn Mawr, quite motionless. With his flowing white beard draped over his folded arms, he stared straight ahead, through half-closed eyes. He might have been sleeping.

  “What’s the old chap doing?” said Maloney, restless as always.

  “I’ve no idea,” replied Osborne. “Perhaps he’s waiting for Tylwyth Teget—that’s the fairy who lives in the lake. He’s obviously waiting for something, or someone. Perhaps we should too.”

  We waited a very long time, lying at full stretch up on the rock. Maloney became increasingly impatient. Finally he suggested we should either throw something into the water to wake the old boy up, or else go home. The eeriness of the place clearly had the same sort of effect on his highly instinctive nature as a ghost would on a dog.

  But Osborne and I continued gazing, enraptured, at the fantastical scene. It was a Hans Christian Andersen illustration come to life, and my dormant child’s consciousness was stirring in me, like the soft strains of a distant violin.

  Suddenly the prophet raised his arms and began to sing. His strange, senile, whistling voice entirely failed to string the notes together into a tune: each protracted utterance seemed to be individually torn out of him, to be followed by another quite disconnected from it. The overall effect was distinctly weird, not so much song as incantation. The words, being Welsh, were incomprehensible to me.

  And then, no less suddenly, the bushes facing us on the far side of the lake parted, and someone came down to the water’s edge. The old man ended his incantation, turned towards him and, without getting up, made a profound bow.

  By this time the newcomer was standing on a small rock, every contour of his face clearly visible in the moonlight.

  He was a powerfully-built man, very old, of almost preternatural size and dressed in black, a close-fitting Spanish outfit of long ago, like those worn by the night guards at Llanvygan. Only the collar was different, an enormous white ruff the size of a millstone. And the face … was that of a statue, ancient, timeless, quite beautiful in its august dignity, without a trace of humanity: the bleak, unfeeling face of a Northern god.

  He began to speak, in a low but penetrating voice. The language was again Welsh. Pierce seized his oars and rowed his coracle swiftly to the shore. He climbed out, secured it to a tree, kissed the stranger’s hand, then vanished into the thicket. The stranger remained standing where he was for a while longer.

  Slowly but unmistakably he was turning in the direction of our rock. Then he stopped and glared pointedly in our direction, as if he could actually see us. With a face of terror, Maloney gripped my arm. The unwavering stare of those wolf-like eyes produced an unbearable tension in all of us. I was afraid I might leap up at any moment. Maloney was uttering strange, soft cries.

  The stranger turned on his heel and vanished into the gloom of the huge trees.

  “Time to go,” said Osborne.

  He let himself speedily down the rock, and we followed him. We took a short cut through the thicket, then went out through the wall and back to the main road.

  Maloney wasn’t too pleased with this.

  “I say … let’s at least try and see where they went.”

  But Osborne warned him against it.

  We almost ran towards the Delage. Though we had so carelessly abandoned it, it was waiting for us amiably enough on the road. After the Castle Lake, the wall, and the ghostly old men, there was something very reassuring about the car—the triumph of technology and the comforting familiarity of the twentieth century.

  We were driving home at considerable speed, when Osborne suddenly stopped the car on a bend.

  “Take a look at that,” he said, and pointed to Pendragon, now clearly visible from where we were.

  The old tower, without question or possibility of optical illusion, was filled with light.

  “Who’s living there?” I asked.

  “According to my information, no one has for two hundred years,” said Osborne. And he set the car moving again. He was clearly agitated, and unwilling to talk for fear of betraying the fact. We returned to Llanvygan in silence.

  “Come to my room and have a drink,” he suggested.

  After three large tumblers of strong whisky—which we reckoned we had thoroughly earned—Osborne’s tension began at last to ease.

  “Do sit down,” he began. “So, what did you make of all that?”

  “What do you make of it?—that’s the question,” said Maloney. “I can’t believe you don’t know the old gent. He even looks a bit like you. He must be your uncle, or the ghost of your late grandfather.”

  “Call me Jack Robinson if I’ve ever seen him before.”

  “But, somehow, he knew we were there. He was looking towards us as if he really could see us. I don’t know why, but it was a pretty nasty feeling.”

  “Where could they possibly have gone?” Osborne wondered. “You can’t go anywhere from the far side of the lake. Twenty yards from the water the rock face starts, with Pendragon up on the peak. All I can think is that there must be some secret entrance to the castle. By the time we got to the bend in the road they had made it all the way to the top and put the light on in the tower.”

  “It is possible,” I remarked. “I never yet read of an old castle that didn’t have a secret entrance. And that’s not just in books, but in actual reality. It’s one of those rare situations where literature shows some sort of connection with real life.”

  “Then what we have to do is quite straightforward,” said Maloney. “Tomorrow, in daylight, we’ll take a look at the far end of the lake. Ten to one I’ll find you your secret entrance. We Connemarans are pretty good at that sort of thing.”

  “In any case, we have to go back to Pendragon,” I added, “to see who’s living up there.”

  “Well, well,” mused Osborne. “Something in me doesn’t like the idea at all. Because, you see: just suppose the man we saw is in fact living up there. Whether he’s human or a spirit, he’s obviously a gentleman. Have we the right to trouble him without an invitation?”

  “I take your point,” I replied. “An Englishman’s home is his castle. All the more, if your home is a castle. On the other hand, to some extent Pendragon belongs to you, as heir apparent to the Earldom of Gwynedd. You’ve more right than anyone to be there—not counting the Earl himself, of course.”

  “There’s something in that,” he said. “I’ll sleep on it.”

  “One further question,” I went on. “What made you decide to visit the Castle Lake yesterday? You never mentioned that midnight jaunts were a favourite pastime.”

  “I don’t go in for them at all. I like to sleep at night, however petty bourgeois that may sound. But why I went is a story in itself. Have a look at this.”

  He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a slip of paper.

  “Someone stuck this on the windscreen of the little Rover yesterday morning.”

  I studied the paper. It was covered in a strange, archaic writing, of the sort you find in seventeenth-century manuscripts in the British Museum. No one nowadays writes with such a flourish. Our hands have altered their shape since then.

  It read: ‘Pendragon, forte si vellis videre Petrum senem vade ad lacum castelli media nocte ubi et alium rerum mirabilium testis eris.’

  “It’s Spanish,” declared Maloney, “and, I’m sorry to say, it’s not a language I ever learnt.”

  “Not at all. It’s Latin,” said Osborne, and translated it: “‘Pendragon, if you wish to see old Peter (i.e. Pierce), go to the Castle Lake at midnight, where you will be witness to other miraculous things as well.’”

  “If this was actually written by the old boy himself,” said Maloney, nodding thoughtfully, “I’d say he’d be a teacher by profession, or why on earth would he write in Latin? Anyway, he’s a real show-off.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t know English?” Osborne observed.

  “Or else … ” I blurted out, then s
topped short. The stupidity of my idea surpassed even Maloney’s.

  It had occurred to me that the man who had written it—the stranger by the lake—was in fact so old, so truly ancient, that had he written in English his archaic turn of phrase would have been incomprehensible. That was why he had chosen the timeless, unchanging language of Latin. But of course I couldn’t utter this daft notion, which could have occurred only to a philologist.

  “And did you see the old gent yesterday too?” asked Maloney.

  “No,” replied Osborne, “only Habakkuk, sitting in his coracle, as he was tonight. The other chap didn’t appear. Or he might have, only I didn’t wait long enough to find out.”

  At this point we went off to bed, each nursing his own private theory about what had occurred. Maloney was no doubt wracking his brain for the most spectacular and Connemaran method of catching the old man.

  The next morning a boy from the village called on me. He had been sent by the Rev Dafyd Jones. He handed me a letter, the gist of which was that the vicar desired to speak with me urgently and in the strictest confidence. He asked me to meet him in the little graveyard behind the church at ten, adding, with a profusion of apologies, that it was a matter of extreme importance.

  I had absolutely no idea what it might be. Against what species of non-existent horror could this excitable visionary be seeking my help? Then I recalled the previous night’s events at the lake, and I hastened off, in some agitation, down to the village.

  I had no problem finding the little graveyard behind the church, with its lovely trees beckoning to eternal rest. The parson was already there, pacing back and forth, and gesticulating to himself in the restrained manner imposed by his ecclesiastical dignity and by British reserve. I thought he might be rehearsing his Sunday sermon.

  When I called out to him he gave such a start that I became alarmed myself.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” he gabbled. “You, sir, are a well-known physician.”

  “Sir, I am not a well-known physician,” I replied in astonishment. These people had obviously conspired to make me a medical doctor.

  “I see,” said the priest, “it’s a secret. The Earl keeps his activities secret. But in vain. All in vain. Because, you see, it has come to the light of day. What never could bear the light of day. Do you know, sir, what was caught in the Castle Lake this morning?”

  “In the Castle Lake? What was?”

  He gazed at me in triumph, as at a man exposed.

  “Come.”

  He led me with quick, short steps to a small hut, where the macabre tools of the grave-digger leant against a wall. It was a dark, damp, unfriendly place. In a corner stood a table with something lying on it. Though I couldn’t make out what it was, in the darkness it filled me with a most unpleasant feeling.

  “This is what was caught,” he announced, bringing his torch to bear on it.

  One of the Earl’s monsters lay there, lifeless.

  It was no longer transparent but a shapeless lump of jelly, in the early stages of decomposition. It was revolting.

  “Do you recognise it?” the vicar asked.

  “I do. It’s one of the Earl’s miraculous animals. How did it get into the Castle Lake?”

  “That’s something you ought to know.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I implore you, as an immortal soul, to do something about it. This sort of thing cannot carry on. I can’t remonstrate with him—I depend on him for everything. You, sir, must take action. He cannot pollute God’s pure lakes with these unspeakable monsters.”

  “How was this one found?”

  “I shall tell you. Do you know that Pierce Gwyn Mawr has disappeared? Someone—a half-crazed peasant—told me he’d seen Pierce’s ghost rowing on the Castle Lake one moonlit night. He wasn’t alone … ”

  The vicar seized my arm, glanced furtively around, and continued in a whisper:

  “He wasn’t alone. There was someone with him. A giant, he said, in strange black garments like the ones worn by the night watchmen of the Castle. My first thought was … yes, there was no other conclusion … it was the midnight rider. But now I know who it really was. The monster has betrayed him.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Who else could it be but the Earl of Gwynedd? He was hiding the monster in the Castle Lake. We went there at sunrise. The waves washed it ashore … ”

  But it was not the Earl of Gwynedd, I said to myself. He might have looked like the Earl, but it was someone quite different. Or, who knows … ?

  But I said not a word about my own nocturnal adventures. Stay out of this, don’t get yourself involved … Janos Bátky from Budapest. It’s no business of yours … Mere scientific curiosity …

  “You are a famous doctor,” the vicar suddenly began, in a rather different parsonical tone. “The Hippocratic oath requires you to do no harm, but to serve mankind in its suffering. As a physician of the soul I appeal to you, I implore you, I require you with the full weight of my authority, to abandon your horrible experiments forthwith.”

  “Sir, you are mistaken … ”

  “I am not mistaken. I know everything. The creature is an axolotl; it comes from Mexico. The Earl brought it back from his travels in America. There it is much smaller. By some secret and unnatural means the Earl has grown it to ten times the size God made it. With an extract of cow’s thyroid. It’s an abomination.”

  “Why an ‘abomination’?”

  “I also know what the Earl does with these animals. He suspends their vital functions. He freezes them. He poisons them. Then he revives them again. Some of his axolotls have died as many as ten times, and are still living.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “And I know why the Earl is doing this.”

  “Why?” I demanded, seizing his arm.

  “The Pendragons’ motto—or rather their curse! ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body.’ This heresy has led to the ruin of the greatest sons of the house—Asaph Pendragon, Bonaventura Pendragon, and now the present Earl.”

  “How can a belief bring a man to ruin?”

  “The Earl has brooded over it so long it has clouded his understanding. Can you not see the connection? He wants the power for himself to raise the dead … the dead Earls at rest in the vaults of Pendragon.”

  Now I felt certain I was talking to a lunatic. As Osborne had said: a degree of mild abnormality is essential for anyone who crosses the threshold of Llanvygan.

  “Excuse my interrupting, Reverend, but does the Earl ever discuss his experiments with you?”

  “The Earl? How could you think it? The Earl considers me an idiot. I owe my parish to that fact. He would never tolerate an intelligent priest in the neighbourhood.”

  “Then how do you know all these details?”

  “From Dr McGregor, poor man.”

  “From whom?”

  “From Dr McGregor.”

  McGregor … where had I heard the name? Of course, the mysterious telephone caller …

  “Who was this Dr McGregor?”

  “You don’t know? He was the young doctor who was here a few months ago to help the Earl with his experiments. A decent, upright Scotsman, a very good man—apart from his experiments. But … he came to a bad end. A motoring accident. He’s dead. He was your predecessor. Think about it, before it’s too late. Think, sir, of your immortal soul. I’m sure I can count on you. I see in your eyes that beneath your hardened exterior a human heart is beating, one that is capable of understanding … Give me your word.”

  Good Heavens, get this madman out of here. What has any of this to do with me—this Castle Lake, these glutinous corpses? … I’m leaving this afternoon.

  “Reverend, on my word of honour, I am not a medical doctor. As I live and breathe. My father and mother and all my aunts wanted me to be a doctor, but I had no talent for it whatsoever.”

  “You aren’t a doctor?” he asked, in deep amazement. “Then what are you?”

  “Er … it’s
not easy to define. Let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, a historico-sociographer. Or something like it. But by no means a doctor. Upon my word, I’ve never witnessed a dissection in my life.”

  The parson clutched his head.

  “More complication … Historico-whatever … then why did you let me say so much? About such dreadful secrets? Excuse me … delighted to make your acquaintance, quite delighted … ”

  “The pleasure is mine.”

  I took a deep breath and made off rapidly.

  That same afternoon we all set off for Pendragon.

  Passing through the village, we met the Rev Jones. Etiquette required that we stop for a little chat.

  “Tell me, vicar,” said Osborne, “when were you last up at Pendragon?”

  “Not for ages. Five months ago, when some archaeologists came and I took them up.”

  “Have you heard any talk of someone living up there now, in the ruins?”

  “I have indeed,” he replied after some hesitation, and rather nervously. “Several people have noticed lights in the tower.”

  “Who do they think it might be?”

  “We’d prefer not to say, if you don’t mind. Lately the Earl has been going up there rather more often. It could be him, spending the night up there. Possibly he has a guest up there. It’s not for us to enquire.”

  He stared straight ahead, clearly embarrassed.

  “All the same,” continued Osborne, “it seems unlikely that such a strange event wouldn’t be discussed in the village. Tell me candidly what people are saying.”

  “Osborne, please don’t think that I pay attention to the foolish gossip of peasants,” he replied, colouring deeply. “Besides, the Earl owns the castle, he can do what he likes up there. I for one can’t imagine a gentleman such as himself entertaining his lady friends in so bleak a place as the tower.”