End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  Lady Priscilla mused for a moment before continuing.

  “Perceval has a complicated lineage, I should think. There is a measure of ‘twin confusion’ in the Mabinogion, and in particular in the story of Pryderi, also known as Peredur, later named Perceval. In Pwyll Lord of Dyved, Pryderi is originally named Gwri Golden Hair by his foster parents on account of the color of his hair. Only when he is reunited with his parents is he given the name Pryderi. In the Mabinogion story of Peredur Son of Evrawg, Peredur meets an old man with two sons, one yellow-haired and one auburn-haired. The old man proves to be his uncle, making these his cousins, but that's of little consequence. Later, in the Circular Valley, Peredur meets a great hoary-haired man in the company of two young lads, one with yellow hair and one with auburn, who carry knives with hilts of walrus ivory. Again, one yellow, one auburn. In the Annales Cambriae, of course, the later and possibly historical figures Gwrgi and Peredur are brothers. And finally, in many of the romances, Gawain's nickname is Gwalltafwyn, which means ‘hair like rain,’ and is translated as ‘Golden Hair.’ Is it possible that the chroniclers confused two figures for one, and ascribed to one figure the deeds and characteristics of two brothers?”

  Blank stepped over to an empty chair and settled himself in. It was clear that, once she got started, it was not easy to get Lady Priscilla to stop.

  “But that's another matter entirely. As to the actions of the story,” she went on, “there are many hints. In ‘Branwen, Daughter of Llyr,’ Bran goes to rescue his sister Branwen from the Irish king Matholwch, who possesses the cauldron which can raise the dead. In ‘The Spoils of Annwn,’ Arthur and his men sail to Annwn to recover the cauldron from the Lord of Annwn, who has housed it in a Caer Wydr, or Glass Fortress, where he keeps someone named Gweir prisoner, said fortress alternatively known as Caer Pedryfan, the Four-Times Revolving Fortress, and as Caer Sidi, the Faerie Fortress, among others. Glastonbury was named by the ancient Britons ‘Ynys Witrin,’ or Island of Glass, which perhaps suggests some connection between that hill in Somerset and the idea of a revolving fortress of glass, home of the Sidhe or faeries. In Caradoc's ‘Life of Gildas,’ it is reported that Arthur sails to the Isle of Glass, to recover Geunever from Melwas, the king of the Summer Country, in his Glass Castle. Here again, one is reminded of the fact that Somerset originally meant ‘Summer Lands.’ In Chretien's ‘The Knight of the Cart,’ Lancelot must go to the magical otherworld of Meleagaunt of Goirre—possibly Voire, or glass—to rescue Guinevere from a tower completely encircled by water, accessible only by a bridge made from a sword's blade. In Chretien's ‘Erec and Enide,’ itself a varient of the Welsh legends of Geraint and Enid, Maheloas is lord of L'Ile de Voire, the Island of Glass, about which is said, ‘in this island no thunder is heard, no lightning strikes, nor tempests rage, nor do toads or serpents exist there, nor is it ever too hot or too cold.’”

  Lady Priscilla sighed contentedly, looking like a barrister giving a final summation.

  “So, you can see, there must have been some original to all these stories about Arthur and a band of men sailing to an island upon which was built a glass citadel to rescue a woman kept prisoner by a magician whose name might well have begun with the consonant ‘m.’ This magician, further, was in possession of a cauldron which could raise the dead and heal the injured, remembered in later times as the Grail. A woman, either the one imprisoned or another, outfits the heroes with magical swords, and perhaps also with lances and shields, and at some point a head borne upon a shield.” She clapped her hands and gave Blank and Miss Bonaventure a broad smile. “See? As I told you, it's quite simple, and easily said.”

  Lady Priscilla finished her impromptu lecture, which left Blank and Miss Bonaventure feeling somewhat dizzy. It was clear that the Baron Carmody and Taylor had both heard this recitation many times, either whole or in parts, but on hearing it for the first time the listener was left with the principal impression of information flying past at speed, with only bits and pieces alighting in their minds long enough to make an impression.

  Blank was hard pressed to find a connection between the litany of myth and legends Lady Priscilla had presented them and the deaths of the three prostitutes which had initiated his investigates. Nor, for that matter, could he see a clear connection between the deaths of the prostitutes and those of the former members of the League of the Round Table, Brade and Villers. Still, something nagged at the edge of his thoughts. Lady Priscilla had, after all, made mention of decapitated heads borne on platters. And of a figure—whether Nuada, or Nudd, or Ludd, or Lugh—who lost a hand in battle and was given a new one of silver. It was almost as if someone were reenacting elements of these myths in the modern day, inflicting on streetwalkers the injuries sustained by the mythical heroes. But in none of Lady Priscilla's recitation had she mentioned anything like the more prosaic injuries sustained by Brade and Villers, who had simply been cut and allowed to bleed to death.

  “Fascinating,” Miss Bonaventure said, sounding genuinely intrigued. She always had exhibited a passion for the mythological and arcane, at least when they could be seen to hint at some forgotten historicity. Blank's companion seemed to have made careful note of much that Lady Priscilla had said.

  “Quite,” Blank said, not as charitably. “And I'm sorry to drag the discussion from matters lofty to those much more sordid, but I'm afraid I must.” He stood and began to pace slowly about the room, shifting his gaze from Lord Arthur to Lady Priscilla to Taylor. “Can you think of anyone who might hold some animus towards your group? Anyone who might bear a grudge, and who could have targeted Mr. Brade and Miss Villers for revenge?”

  The three members of the League of the Round Table exchanged glances, open faced.

  “Well…” Lady Priscilla ventured, unsure, “I suppose there could be some scholar, perhaps, who disagrees with our opinions, but I can't imagine that any of them could be quite so fervent as to contemplate violence, much less murder.”

  Taylor chuckled, ruefully. “Maybe it's somebody who read my first book of poems and wants to keep me from committing verse again.”

  The Baron Carmody puffed on his cigar, thoughtfully. “No,” he said, shaking his head in a wreath of smoke. “I can't think of a one, I'm afraid.”

  “Oh,” Lady Priscilla said, raising her eyebrows. “What about that strange man who came round asking questions the other week? What was his name again? Mervyn something?”

  Lord Arthur nodded, remembering. “Fawkes,” he said after a moment. “Mervyn Fawkes.”

  “Yes, yes.” Lady Priscilla nodded eagerly. “That was it.”

  “Odd duck, that one,” Taylor put in.

  “And what did this Mervyn…Fawkes, was it?” Miss Bonaventure folded her hands in her lap, her tone gentle. “What did this Mervyn Fawkes do, precisely?”

  Lord Arthur stuck out his lower lip, scowling. “Can't say I know what the cove did, except to pester us one night until Taylor and my manservant were forced to push him bodily out into the street. He just raved about stuff and nonsense.”

  “He was keen on the Grail, as I recall,” Lady Priscilla said. “Had all manner of questions about the Grail Cycle, and about the ancient British myths from which the romances derived.”

  “Fellah was a few bricks shy of a load, if you ask me,” Taylor said.

  “The Grail, was it?” Blank pursed his lips, nodding thoughtfully.

  “The gentleman was under the illusion that the Grail was a physical object,” Lady Priscilla said, “rather than a metaphor for the quest for the divine within each of us.”

  “Well,” Taylor drawled, “I don't know about that. The way I figure it, the Grail myth that's come down to us is a jumbled-up version of some older story, maybe a religious tale from pre-Roman Britain. Some sort of vessel of the gods, could be, like an original of the horn o'plenty.”

  “Bosh,” Lord Arthur blustered. “The Grail is both literal and symbol. It has a physical existence, but in itself represents the boundless mercy of the div
ine. That it has not been seen since ancient times is more a commentary on the quality of those who have sought the cup than it is evidence of the Grail's existence or lack thereof.” The Baron Carmody's chest swelled, proudly. “Mayhap, once our current enterprise is completed, we can mount a search for the Grail itself, and complete the restoration of the Age of Arthur with a return of the holy cup to this blessed plot.”

  Blank and Miss Bonaventure exchanged a meaningful glance. It was clear they were both thinking the same thing.

  “Thank you all,” Blank said, offering Miss Bonaventure his elbow. “You've all been most generous with your time.”

  “Are you going?” Lady Priscilla asked, sounding vaguely wounded. “I'd not yet even had a chance to discuss the meaning of the crewless ship.”

  “Oh,” Miss Bonaventure said with a smile, “we've taken up too much of your time as it is.”

  The Baron Carmody remained in his seat, his eyes on the middle distance, his thoughts somewhere far away. “Perhaps,” he continued, his voice low, his manner almost dreamlike, “we can even recover Excalibur itself. Think of it! The nation restored by sword and cup, and with us to thank.”

  Taylor gave them a weary smile and a ghost of a shrug. Blank did not fail to notice, though, the way the cowboy poet's hand never strayed far from the LeMat pistol at his hip. While the Baron Carmody escaped the grim reality of his circumstances—widowed, childless, and alone—in increasingly ethereal flights of fancy, and the Lady Priscilla lost herself in a maze of theory and erudition, it was clear that the former Knight of the Texas Plains was all too aware of the possible danger they faced from the Jubilee Killer.

  “We'll see ourselves out,” Blank said, inclining his head to the Baron Carmody in his chair and then to the Lady Priscilla. Then, with a nod to Taylor, he and Miss Bonaventure left the room the way they came in, leaving the League of the Round Table to its own devices.

  The next morning, when Miss Bonaventure arrived at his house in York Place, Blank was hustling out the door to meet her before she'd even climbed down from the cab.

  “Baker Street Station,” Blank called out to the driver, climbing in beside her.

  “Going on a journey, are we, Blank?” Miss Bonaventure asked.

  “Just a brief excursion, my dear,” Blank said with a smile. “Do you fancy a trip south to Crystal Palace?”

  “Lawks!” Miss Bonaventure mimed fanning herself with her hand. “In this heat?”

  “Ah, you're a delicate flower, Miss Bonaventure. Console yourself, though, my dear. Perhaps when our business is concluded you can cool yourself by the waters of the Boating and Fishing Lake.”

  At Baker Street, they boarded an Underground train on the Inner Circle line, and as they rumbled through the stifling heat of the tunnels, Blank told Miss Bonaventure what he'd been about since last they'd parted.

  “I was up half the night,” he explained, “digging up what information I could about the Mervyn Fawkes whom the members of the league remembered.”

  “What did you find?” Miss Bonaventure asked, now fanning herself in earnest, raising her voice to be heard over the rattle of the train's wheels over the tracks.

  Flashing her a smile, Blank pulled a notebook from an inner pocket of his suit jacket and in the dim light consulted his notes.

  “Mervyn Fawkes. Born 1858, London, the son of a mathematician. Studied geography, cartography, and mathematics at Oxford, where he received an MA in geography and cartography. Later appointed as a lecturer at Cambridge. Fawkes was a junior representative to the Royal Geographical Society on Joseph Thompson's later expeditions through eastern Africa, and his contributions to the effort were later noted by the society's president.”

  “Not quite the raving loon of the league's remembrances, I shouldn't think,” Miss Bonaventure observed.

  “Give him time, my dear, give him time.” Blank returned his attentions to his notes. “Fawkes wrote a monograph entitled ‘On the problem of accurately sounding the depths of the continental shelf and the mid-Atlantic reaches,’ which was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1883. It appears that there was some sort of incident on an expedition for the RGS in 1885, after which Fawkes was briefly a voluntary patient at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. A short while later he left the institution against his doctor's wishes. He seemed then to develop an interest in philology, of all things. The May 1888 edition of the Modern Language Notes journal contained a letter from Fawkes in the Correspondence section, in response to an essay on the subject of ‘The Old French Merlin’ which ran in the March edition of that year, while the December 1888 edition of Modern Language Notes carried a review by Fawkes on James M. Garnett's Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Poem.”

  “Fascinating reading, I'm sure.”

  Blank offered a sly grin. “Given my struggles to remain awake and cogent in the early morning hours as I reviewed the text, I might be forced to disagree. In any event, in the autumn of 1889 there is a record of Fawkes booking passage on a tramp steamer bound for Reykjavik but no indication that he returned. Not, that is, until he appeared on the employment rolls of the Crystal Palace in early May of this year, just some six weeks ago.”

  Miss Bonaventure cocked an eyebrow. “Where, one assumes, he works still?”

  Blank's grin broadened. “So it would appear.”

  She nodded, appreciatively. “Fair enough. I think a brief foray is justified to see what our Mr. Fawkes has to tell us.”

  “My thinking exactly, Miss Bonaventure.”

  At Victoria Station, they transferred, purchasing tickets on the Crystal Palace Railway and boarding the next train heading south. From there, it was a brief journey of twenty minutes or so over the Thames and down towards Sydenham. Once they'd reached Sydenham Hill and the Lower Level of the Crystal Palace Railway Station, it was just a short walk to the Crystal Palace itself, relocated to south London from Hyde Park after the closing of the Great Exhibition of 1851. They passed the pools and fountains glittering in the midmorning sun and headed down the pathways lined with the imposing figures of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's life-sized dinosaur replicas.

  The Crystal Palace rose before them like a castle made of glass, and Blank could not help recalling the recurrent imagery in Lady Priscilla's recitation. Had Joseph Paxton read those sorts of stories as a child, perhaps, or had he merely dreamed up the folly while plagued by an undigested bit of cheese?

  Blank remembered seeing Blondin performing at the Crystal Palace, years before. It had been only a handful of months since he'd read about the acrobat's death in Ealing. Blondin had assisted him in an investigation shortly after Blank had taken up the role of the consulting detective, and he'd been indebted to Blondin ever since. They'd dined together, from time to time, when Blondin's travels brought him back to London. To see the once agile and virile tumbler wither with age, his vaunted strength gradually failing him as health and vision faded, was an uncomfortable and unpleasant reminder of mortality. Other people's mortality, of course, not Blank's own. Still, he knew that there was an end to his own road, as well, a terminus towards which he traveled, however slowly; if it had not been for Omega and the lacuna Michel Void, though, he'd have reached the end of that journey long years before, at the many hands of Croatoan.

  As he and Miss Bonaventure mounted the steps to the Crystal Palace's main entrance, Blank shook his head, trying to knock loose the ancient memories which crowded his thoughts and focusing his mind on the task at hand. Their first-class tickets on the Crystal Palace Railway, at a cost of two shillings and six, included admission to the Crystal Palace itself, so they had only to wave their stubs at the porter to be admitted without need for persuasion.

  The museum housed within the glass and steel walls of the Crystal Palace was surprisingly vacant for such a lovely June day, apparently as there were few new exhibits at the moment to attract fresh custom. The few museumgoers were ushered around by docents, who led them from one item of note to another, while maids dissolutely pu
shed broom and pan across the floors, mooning. A subcurator, when plied with a bit of suggestion and one of Blank's featureless white calling cards, was only too happy to direct them through the north transept and to the Alhambra Court, where Fawkes had been set the task of dismantling an exhibit of textiles from Moorish Spain. Unfortunately, on arriving in the indicated section of the museum, they found Fawkes not in evidence, and they had to prevail on another museum employ to escort them through the various courts, halls, and vestibules of the building until Fawkes could be spotted.

  They passed collections of tropical plants and ferns; cages full of live tropical birds and reptiles; objects of curiosity from the Orient; the so-called Mammoth Tree of California, standing some four hundred feet and at an age of four thousand years old—having achieved such an age just before being cut down and shipped overseas, Blank imagined ruefully; examples of British manufacture, including ceramics and glass, basket-carriages and broughams, locomotives, pumps, and washing-machines; fountains; picture galleries; photographical collections; objects of art and vertu, the utilities and luxuries of modern social life.