by Gary Dolman
Atticus stared at him. “So what are you saying? That these are the Hallows; the lost Hallows of Arthur?”
“Yes, sir,” Uther said simply. “I am honoured to have been entrusted with them and I clean and polish them each day I am able.”
Lucie looked utterly mystified. “What are they, Atticus?” she asked. “What are the lost Hallows of Arthur?”
Atticus turned to his wife and his expression was unfathomable, even to her.
“The Hallows are a legendary collection of sacred objects, Lucie. Once brought together, they are said to render their possessor invincible. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table supposedly undertook a great quest to seek them all. Two of them you will have heard of already. They are the Holy Grail, the chalice used at the Last Supper of Christ, and the sword Excalibur.”
Lucie nodded, wide-eyed as she listened to his words.
“But there are also two other, rather lesser-known Hallows,” Atticus continued. “The Holy Lance, or the Spear of Destiny, supposedly the very spear that pierced Christ’s side at his crucifixion and the Holy Platter, the dish also used by Christ’s apostles at the Last Supper. Our friend here evidently believes them to be the genuine relics.”
“Oh they are, Mr Fox,” Uther said with utter conviction. “I know they are genuine because it was King Arthur himself who brought them to me.”
For probably the first time in all his thirty-six years of life, Atticus Fox was struck completely dumb. He glanced at Lucie who was regarding Uther with something akin to fascination.
“When did he bring them to you, Mr Pendragon?” she asked at last.
“Oh, all in this past twelvemonth, Mrs Fox,” Uther replied. “There are often times when I don’t sleep – when I cannot sleep, and it was during one of those times, very late one night around a year ago that I heard the sound of the bugle horn calling from somewhere close by. I immediately ran to put on the breastplate of the armour; there was no time to put on more, you see. I am careful to wear as much of my armour as I can when I leave my home and always at the very least, the breastplate. It has the Red Dragon emblem upon it so King Arthur will not mistake me for an enemy. I searched and searched all night but there was no sign of him. Eventually I returned home disappointed. He must have gone back to his vault.
“I began to feel very low. I went down and down, overwhelmed as I sometimes am by the blackness. But then, something wonderful happened; King Arthur himself came here, to my cottage accompanied by his beautiful queen, the Lady Guinevere. It was broad daylight or I’d have thought it a dream. He knocked on my door and came in, shouting my name and calling me ‘Father.’” Uther’s eyes began to glisten, suddenly wet with tears as he spoke.
“From that day on, they began calling on me regularly. Sometimes they would bring me food and sometimes physics and medicine. They seemed to sense somehow that I had an illness. Then they started to bring the Hallows to me. The Holy Grail was the first. Guinevere had it hidden in the pretty wicker basket she often carries. The Platter was next, and finally the Spear of Destiny. The Spear, I found outside my door one night after I heard the bugle call again and went out to investigate.”
“You say you had the sword already?” Atticus asked.
“Yes, I had,” Uther replied. “When I asked King Arthur about the last Hallow, the sword Excalibur, he told me it was the sword Sir Hugh Lowther had already given to me. He showed me the inscriptions etched into the blade to prove it. They were runes. On one side they said ‘Take Me Up’ and on the other ‘Cast Me Away.’ I hadn’t known those were what they were. But then he warned me that he might have to take it back from me… for my own good.”
He pointed to a pair of stout, iron pegs that had long ago been driven into the mortar of the wall next to the bedstead. A long, heavily soiled and greying cloth like a bandage hung from one of them and trailed into the lime-dust of the floor.
“It was usually hung from those hooks. When I returned home from the moors the day the Gypsy was killed, I was feeling very angry. I couldn’t bear it any longer and I came in here for Excalibur. It was then that I noticed it was gone.”
“What is the cloth?” Atticus asked.
“I use it to wrap Excalibur’s blade, Mr Fox.”
“May I see it?” Without waiting for an assent, Atticus reached down and gently lifted it from the peg.
“Hello, Lucie,” he exclaimed after a few moments. “Aren’t these bloodstains?”
Uther coloured deeply behind his beard and began to shift uncomfortably; gripping his hands tightly together almost in prayer as they once again began to tremble.
“Those are just rust stains, Mr Fox,” he whispered. “Just rust stains.”
Atticus passed the cloth to Lucie who took it and examined the marks closely. “It does look very much like blood to me,” she said grimly.
“Very well, yes, it is blood, I admit it.” Uther grabbed fistfuls of his hair. It was flecked with silver; the dying embers of a once fiery red. “I nicked myself – just by accident, hark you – a few days ago.”
Atticus frowned. “There seems to be a very great deal of blood there to have come from an accidental nick. Nevertheless…”
He was silent and pensive for a moment.
“Mr Pendragon – and please forgive my indelicacy in asking you such a question but you will understand that we are investigating a double murder – am I correct in saying that you are… insane?”
“Atticus!” exclaimed Lucie.
“It is fine, Mrs Fox, it is fine; there is no escaping it. Yes, Mr Fox, it is true. I am mad – quite mad.”
Atticus grunted and Lucie asked, “How exactly is your… your problem manifest?”
Uther rubbed his forearm, hugging it tightly against his body.
“Well, Mrs Fox, as I think I’ve told you already, I regularly suffer from long periods of deep melancholy. I call it the blackness. But then sometimes I become alive – more alive than you can possibly imagine. It is then that I feel truly mad. It is then that I must sketch.”
“You must sketch?”
“Yes, I must. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep; all I can think of doing is to sketch, or to draw or to paint. Everything is so vivid, you see? I have to draw it. I cannot stop. I’m compelled to. It is then that I am a true artist.”
Atticus glanced between his wife and Uther. He knew he was completely out of his depth.
He said: “Well you certainly have been busy. There must be hundreds of sketches and paintings here.”
“These have been done over many years. When I see something that catches my attention I sketch it.”
Lucie picked up a roughly-torn square of butcher’s paper from the bed next to her. “But surely you can’t have seen any of these around here? This is a dragon.”
“Dragons are what I see the most. I see them everywhere. I see them in the reflections in the windows, I see them in the clouds, I see them in my dreams; I even see them when I close my eyes for just a moment. You see, Mrs Fox, a dragon follows me everywhere and one day, I know it will surely kill me.”
“Dragons are just make-believe, creatures from folklore and fairytales,” Lucie countered. “They aren’t real… at least not in England. Besides, don’t you believe yourself to be Uther Pen-dragon? You bear the name of the dragon; you have its emblem on your breastplate. Why should a dragon wish to kill you?”
Uther reached down and picked up a second square of paper. It was a charcoal sketch, depicting two vividly detailed dragons entwined as if in combat. One was lightly shaded, the other, much bigger and with an expression out of Hell itself, was not. He placed his finger on the latter and said, a little huskily, “These are the two great dragons: the white and the red. This one, the White Dragon, will torment me to my grave. I must always, always be on my guard against it.” His finger trembled against the paper and he began to breathe in short, asthmatic gasps. “But it will all be in vain. The White Dragon will kill me in the end!”
Lucie gently lif
ted the trembling paper from his hand.
“I understand. Tell me, Mr Pendragon, have you always suffered from insanity or has it onset later in life?”
Uther shrugged bleakly and hopelessly.
“It is only now, when I look back across my life, that I can see that yes, I did suffer from the same long periods of hopelessness – from the blackness – even when I was a boy. But because I knew no better, I accepted it all as normality. For years my father tried to thrash it out of me, and then, when he found he could not, he would call me pathetic and weak.
“When I grew older and finished my schooling I enrolled in the Royal Navy, mainly I admit, to escape from him and his constant beatings. The friendships and comradeships I found there, and the way I could throw myself completely into my duty helped me a very great deal. I became, dare I even say it, almost like a normal man.
“But then came 1857 and the Sepoy Rebellion – the Indian Uprising. I was with the Shannon at the time and I was detailed to be part of the naval brigade.”
He shuddered.
“Cawnpore, Kallee Nuddee, Lucknow, the Secundra Bagh – dear God, the Secundra Bagh; they are probably just names from a history book to you. To me, and to hundreds like me, they were Hell itself.”
“Tell me what happened at the Secundra Bagh,” Lucie invited.
Uther stared at her in horror.
“Do you really wish to know?”
Lucie nodded. “I think it might help if you told me.”
Uther wiped his mouth. “Very well, then. We were part of Sir Colin Campbell’s relief column, making our final approach to relieve the British residency at Lucknow. It was the sixteenth of November 1857. As we were passing along a sunken road through the city itself, we came under very heavy fire from Sepoy mutineers holed up in a large villa. They called it the Secundra Bagh.
“We were trapped and I admit I have never been so afraid in all my life. Even the officers thought we were done for. But then the Bengal Horse managed to bring some of their field guns to bear on the villa and we fought our way in.”
He sobbed.
“God forgive us but we slaughtered them to a man – over two thousand of them shot or bayoneted in there. They were screaming to us for mercy, Mrs Fox, screaming to us. But everyone was shouting ‘Remember Cawnpore’ and ‘Remember Delhi,’ and we gave them no quarter. We killed them all.
“I refused though. When the assault became a massacre, I threw down my rifle and I said I would have no part in it.
“The army wanted me court-marshalled for that. Cowardice in the face of the enemy, they called it. But before they could, Sir Douglas Lowther, who was one of those besieged in the residency, led a flying column out into the city to try to disrupt the Sepoys’ defence. He became separated from his men in the melee and finished up surrounded by mutineers.
“Fortunately, I managed to fight my way through to him and pull him back to safety and so he had all charges against me quashed.
“I am no coward, Mr and Mrs Fox, whatever the army might tell you. But that expedition lasted for twelve months and in that year I saw things that no civilised man should ever see.
“Shortly after we got back to the Shannon, I fell ill once again and was discharged from the service into a charitable institution. But then Sir Douglas Lowther heard about it and he allowed me to stay in this cottage where it is quiet and peaceful.
“I discovered painting here and sketching and eventually even true love. I recovered my health and I was almost well for a while. But then one day, my sweetheart, my future wife, disappeared without trace from the high moors beyond the Roman Wall and I succumbed once more.
“Now I feel that every day, I am slipping further and further down the slope to complete madness. My hands are the worst; they keep shaking so much these days. They never have before, even when I was at my maddest but now, try as I might, I can’t stop them.”
He spread his quivering fingers and stared at them in despair.
“When they first began to shake, they prevented me from being able to paint. I used to paint a great deal. It helped me with the demons in my head. The frustration almost drove me to kill myself. But now I find that if I sketch with a pencil, or with charcoal if I have no pencil, then I am able to hide the tremors in the detail.”
“Mr Pendragon, you mentioned your future wife – your fiancée. You said she disappeared from the moors?”
“Yes, Mrs Fox, she was taken by the White Dragon. Two children out collecting bracken on the moors that morning said that they heard two awful screams from the direction of Sewingshields, one after another. They were the screams of a woman.”
He rolled his eyes and his agony bled out.
“But Sir Hugh’s first wife also disappeared from those moors!” Atticus exclaimed. “She disappeared around twenty years ago, as I understand it. When was your fiancée’s disappearance?”
Uther bowed his head.
“The same time,” he said simply, his voice barely more than a sob.
Atticus glared, frowning, at Lucie and asked, “So what did the police make of it all, Mr Pendragon? Had they no idea what might have happened to her?”
Uther shook his head.
“The police twenty years ago were not what they are now,” he said and his eyes seemed to flare with bright, emerald-green fire.
Lucie found herself drawn into their gaze. “How truly awful for you,” she said. She hesitated. “Tell me, Mr Pendragon, do you see a physician?”
“I did, and please call me Uther. Dr Hickson used to call upon me very frequently, if only to say his greetings and then to go again. But then he stopped. It was just before my love disappeared. There was, and to my mind there still is, little point in him wasting his valuable time on me because there’s truly nothing that can be done. This is what I am and I stand condemned to be like this always.”
He paused and his eyes dropped.
“Dr Hickson does occasionally call on me again these days. Sir Hugh Lowther insists on it by all accounts, but I don’t know why. He keeps trying to persuade me to go into one of the lunatic asylums at Morpeth or Gosforth. He is just trying to get rid of me of course; I’m incurable don’t you see? I’m just a drain on his precious time.”
He sighed bitterly.
“In any event, I have no time for him. He called regularly when I was well but then stopped when I was at my lowest, when I really needed his help. Now it is all too late.”
“But couldn’t treatment at an asylum still help you, Uther?” Lucie asked softly. “They have doctors who are experts at helping people like you. It must be worth trying at least?”
Uther shook his head and began to rock to and fro once again.
“Dr Hickson tells me that. He says that they are especially kind at Gosforth. They don’t beat the inmates there; they only bind them, plunge them in ice-water and electrify them. No, Mrs Fox, I never want to leave Sewingshields, except perhaps to go to Heaven and be reunited there with my love and with my God. The wild crags and the moors will provide me with some solace in the meantime.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he murmured, “And I do want to die, Mrs Fox, I always have. Sometimes, I imagine myself stepping off the high crags at Sewingshields. I see myself floating gently down to my death. I would have time then to properly feel the sense of relief, to know that it is all finally at an end.”
He smiled bleakly.
“Don’t worry though; I know I cannot take my life. I’m denied even that. It wouldn’t be fair, you see, either to Arthur or to Guinevere. But that doesn’t stop me praying for a natural death to release me from my struggles, for the one day that I might not wake up at all.
“Before that day comes I also pray that I might see the restored kingdom of Arthur. I beg the Lord that I might see King Arthur on the throne of Britain once again with Lady Guinevere as his queen. I pray that I might see the Red Dragon finally prevail as Merlin promised it surely would.”
He looked directly at Atticus with his
clear, green eyes.
“Arthur grows strong again, Mr Fox. Can you feel it? Can you feel it, Mrs Fox?”
“What do you mean, Uther?” Atticus felt discomforted by the sudden intensity in Uther’s voice. He fingered his cane.
“Arthur calls regularly upon me now. He tells me that although he cannot speak of it, a great event will shortly take place and our lineage will be secured. I hear the call of the bugle too, again and again and it’s getting louder.
“I heard it distinctly on Saturday. The same day a man was found butchered with a sword. I heard it yesterday too and Sir Douglas, God rest his soul, was killed. Perhaps, and please, please God it is so, Arthur has risen once again. Please God it is for good this time, and he has at last started to destroy his enemies.”
Uther’s hands began to shake violently and he held them tight against his chest. His eyes filled with angst and tears dropped from his cheeks as he began to rock frantically to and fro.
“Please leave me alone,” he begged.
Atticus nodded. They silently took their leave and left him to his madness.
Chapter 13
“So what do you make of that?” Atticus whispered after he had pulled the door of the cottage shut behind him and let the latch drop back into place.
Lucie’s eyes were moist and glistening as she glanced back at the shabby cottage.
“I had forgotten that I always did get far too involved in the troubles of the patients, Atticus. Close enough to care; far enough not to care.”
She shook her head as she struggled to compose herself. “It is very unforgiving sometimes though. He’s in a living hell, poor soul. He can’t leave his hovel unless it’s to go out alone onto the moors, chasing a delusion, weighed down with his fake armour, or to go and get his filthy orange water from the draw pump. And he can’t leave the torments of his mind ever. They are always there: the anxiety, the despair and the memories of his lost sweetheart.”
“And his morbid dread of a dragon,” Atticus added.
“Yes, that too, Atticus, you’re right; he has a particular fear of a white dragon. I don’t understand that part at all.”