Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  And besides, he pointed out, the duke had taken his family with him.

  The Duke de Cota was a Spanish grandee to his very breath, and even the cart they insisted he ride in did not diminish his bearing. He sat on the plain wood as though it were a damask-covered seat in one of his castles and rode that way to Winchester. It was not lost on the British lords that the duke himself owned more lands than their own queen, or that English castles, while grand in size and adornments, were looked upon as barbarities by the more refined Spaniards familiar with the graceful and more civilized architecture of the Muslim East.

  What looked strange for His Grace was that he carried a gray cloth bundle in hands that normally touched nothing other than gold utensils or swords. But to carry that bundle containing the rumored chalice was his one and only demand. He must bring it himself to Elizabeth.

  The Duke de Cota did not miss the fact that the walls lacked tapestry at Winchester Palace. It was true what they said about her, then. She preferred her walls bare and crude.

  The room he waited in smelled heavily of different perfumes, which obliterated the freshness that might otherwise come from the nearby Thames or gardens. A waxed sheen covered the pale wood of the room’s wainscoting, and the duke surmised this was the British oak he had heard so much about.

  There were no carpets but a woven rush covering for the feet. The fireplace was huge, ornate to distraction with grotesque circle quatrefoils and lozenges. It was the first thing he saw because it faced the door.

  A woven wool design covered the sparse trestle table. And there he waited with his bundle until Her Majesty arrived. He gave a low and courtly bow, greeting her properly in English. She was accompanied by young women who wore pure white gowns interlaced with pearls, and the duke noticed he had not seen a man.

  It occurred to him there, in shock, that this crude room was Her Majesty’s privy chamber itself. Life, he thought, is going to be hard in England, if it is life I will still retain.

  But he and his family had decided that even death was better than life with all the slaves and wealth. For man himself was far more valuable than any of the things he valued. Thus had spoken the great rabbi Maimonides, who himself more than a century before had chosen to leave Spain rather than convert to Catholicism as the duke’s ancestors had.

  “We are told, de Cota, ’tis a strange thing to witness thee without an army at thy back,” said Her Majesty. She did not sit, but allowed one of the young women to support an arm.

  “What Jew has an army, Your Highness?”

  “What grandee is a Jew?” countered the Queen.

  “There was a time in the glory years when the Empire began its growth that many were.”

  De Cota knew the Queen hesitated to use the Spanish word for those Jews who secretly remained Jews while professing Catholicism. So he used it himself.

  “Indeed, we had come to believe we were Maranos for abandoning our souls for wealth and power,” said de Cota.

  “Not a thing, Your Grace, unknown for those who worship at Canterbury. It is but one of the things that worries this prince,” said the Queen.

  It was not an unwelcome sign that she had recognized him as a duke even though he had told her he was a Jew. The reference to Canterbury was clear, for this was the seat of her father’s church that broke from Rome. But then she added the shrewdest and most pointed of questions.

  “Why does your soul suffer these pangs at this moment, my good lord?”

  De Cota knew she spoke six languages and could, it was said, conspire in every one of them. She had not grown up free of treachery against her, not the least from the Spanish throne. For she was the issue of Anne Boleyn, that woman for whom Henry VIII had put aside Catherine of Aragon and the Holy Roman Catholic Church. It had been a dangerous way for the young woman Elizabeth to succeed to the throne of England.

  De Cota chose his words carefully. But he always chose his words carefully. It was a thing in the blood of those called Maranos.

  “Deceit always weighs heavy on the soul. Perhaps when my ancestors chose this way they assumed the kingdoms of Spain would return to enlightenment. But you are right, I do choose this moment. And for a reason. I do not think Spain must win.”

  And then he asked a daring question. He asked to be alone with Her Majesty, a thing unheard of under normal circumstances and impossible under these.

  “I trust my ladies,” said Her Majesty.

  “With what you know now, Your Highness. I do not think you would wish to trust them with this, and I am clearly wagering my life on that belief.”

  “You have already bet that sum, de Cota,” said Elizabeth, but with a laugh dismissed her ladies, even when they protested that someone with a sword should stand beside her in the face of this Spaniard, if not as protection for her modesty, then at least for her life.

  The Duke de Cota offered the bundle, but Elizabeth’s painted face hardened.

  “Are we to take that in our own hands?” asked Elizabeth.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. But this is one thing that should never escape your hands.”

  And with a formal bow taking leave to move to the wool-covered table, the Duke de Cota put the bundle on the coarse covering and, himself unfamiliar with knots of cloth, managed to undrape a gold chalice with six polished diamonds at its base and one large sapphire with Poseidon enthroned set into its bosom, a strange adornment for an instrument of the Mass. For Poseidon was, as they both knew, a pagan god.

  “A handsome cup,” said Elizabeth.

  “Worth an empire. Worth a half dozen Spanish men o’ war chasing me toward Plymouth, as you must know. Worth my belief that you will harbor me and my descendants forever.”

  “Still but a handsome cup.”

  “You see only the disguise.”

  “And what does it cover? What could it cover?”

  “It covers, Your Majesty, what the Spanish kingdoms seized from the Moors, who seized it from the Christians, when first they rose. From the moment one small Christian kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula owned it, the Moors did not win one battle. Christian forces swept through Spain.”

  “Magic?”

  “All life is magic, Your Majesty,” said de Cota. He knew that Her Highness, like her father, despite protesting Catholic idolatry, maintained one of the largest collections of relics in Europe, not an insignificant thing in his calculations.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “name me a drinking cup of such worth as I would wager a life that Spain having lost it would lose a war and you having gained it would win one?”

  He saw what he thought was anger in her brooding eyes. She stared at him as though trying to take the flesh off his countenance to see what was underneath. He knew this was the moment he had feared above all moments.

  She reached out her hands and took the chalice.

  “The cup is covered by gold?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it look like underneath?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “If this be it, de Cota, then why have none of us in Christendom heard of its Spanish possession?”

  “Show me a wall, no matter how mighty, that has forever protected from thieves. What a thief does not know, he cannot steal.”

  “But you claim to know,” said Elizabeth. She looked under the chalice, squinting to see if there were any special marks. There were none.

  “Yes,” said de Cota. Was that a smile on her face, or was it a crease in the heavy whitening creams she employed?

  “If you know, why not other lords, and if other lords know, we would have heard.”

  “It was not a thing confided in us by His Most Catholic Majesty Phillip II. We were there when first it came back to Christianity.”

  “And how do you know it is inside that fine chalice?”

  “It was not a chalice when it came, nor did it have those diamonds given by my family later toward that worshipful piece.”

  “But if you are a Jew you do not believe in thes
e sacred things. And neither did your family.”

  “That is why we are Jews. But you are not. And neither is Phillip.”

  “Then why do you think we would win?” She lowered the chalice and looked directly at de Cota.

  “The Armada is poorly commanded of many ungainly ships, manned by many seamen already ill.”

  “Still it is vast,” said Elizabeth.

  “They are fighting for conquest, you are fighting for your lives.”

  “Still it is vast,” said Elizabeth.

  “But you, Your Majesty, believe it and so did Phillip who sent no fewer than seven men o’ war not to bring some disguised Jew back to Spain who had left all earthly goods there.”

  And then there came the smile, and better than a smile. A quote in Latin, and its meaning lit de Cota’s heart with the sun.

  “You shall reign over all things, whatsoever the air touches. All creatures, tame and wild, shall serve you and the utmost power and riches shall be yours.”

  It was from a German work, called Parzival, one of so many romances written about the Holy Grail.

  The Grail was not just another relic. It was the most prized and powerful relic of the Christian world. This was the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper and in it some thought his blood too was caught later from the cross. This was the cup only the pure, according to legend, were supposed to obtain. Some thought he who had it would be blessed with neverending sustenance. Others claimed that to own it was to rule whatever one’s eyes set on. More had been sung and rhapsodized about this relic than any Christian object in Europe. Not even the bones of St. Peter himself were considered as holy.

  De Cota answered as only a learned man would. “Be assured that your prowess as a knight will avail you nothing unless the Holy Ghost first paves your way in all the adventures you meet with,” he said, quoting from the most famous work in the English language, the magnificent tale of Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d’Arthur. It had swept all of England with its splendor and nothing was considered its match. The quoted line referred to Galahad’s search for this Holy Grail.

  “It is heavy,” she said with a sudden vigor and joy that astonished her guest. “And only Heaven knows its truth. But better in Canterbury than Glastonbury.”

  And with the mention of those two towns, Duke de Cota understood that it had now been accepted into reformist hands. Glastonbury was the old seat of Catholic England, which, according to one Grail tradition, had held that holiest relic in Christendom brought by Joseph of Arimathea from Jerusalem, only to lose it again as the Grail always was lost. But this was the Grail not of poems or of legends, but something a monarch could hold in her hands and dedicate, grinning, to Canterbury, the seat of Protestant England. The de Cotas had found a rare home where they could practice neither faith. The next day Elizabeth, with only three lords, each ordered not to wear plumes so that her people and her soldiers could see her, rode out to Tilbury, her army, and her destiny.

  VI

  There will come a man pure all the days of his life and at the end will be marvelous in virtue above all mortal knights.

  —Grand Saint Grail (French tradition of the late twelfth century).

  “I’m certainly not Galahad, and I daresay my virtues are narrow, but you’re in luck, Sir Anthony. They are the ones you need in this modern world. Chastity and faith just won’t do.”

  Witt-Dawlings fell into a seat as though a cannonball had been shot into his midsection. His mouth opened and said nothing. He was quiet for a long while in his Belgravia study.

  Harry Rawson assumed a crystal decanter on a copper stand was port and asked if he might have a glass. Not getting an answer, he poured one for each of them and held Sir Anthony’s under his nose until the Queen’s secretary took it.

  “First, a lone knight galloping off with his virtue to regain the Holy Grail for England is fine for Sir Thomas Malory, Chrétien de Troyes, or von Eschenbach, and even later for our Alfred, Lord Tennyson. But those are the myths of the Holy Grail. We are after a real ‘poorish bowl’ in the center of the Tilbury, or what may have been the Tilbury.”

  Witt-Dawlings stared blankly at his glass of port.

  “Look, I am delighted to be on this quest for the Holy Grail, and I have good news for you. I am not looking for the unattainable myth. We have a splendid go at getting her back. I’m going to use the Foreign Office and Intelligence in very discreet ways. What is the matter, Sir Anthony? Drink your port.”

  Sir Anthony grunted weakly.

  “Take a sip of the port. It will activate your intestines. Good for you,” said Rawson.

  Sir Anthony shook his head. He closed his mouth and put down the crystal goblet on the edge of an elegant small Chippendale lamp table by his left elbow. Rawson leaned toward him to center the glass, which at any moment might otherwise end up in the Queen’s secretary’s lap. Sir Anthony looked as though half of London’s electrical current had just been diverted to his brain.

  “I know it’s the Holy Grail, Sir Anthony, or at least Elizabeth believed it, as did her successors. So please, let’s get on with it. There is a real poorish bowl out in the world that bloody well may be in some garbage heap somewhere already if professionals have gotten hold of the Tilbury.”

  Sir Anthony raised a hand and took several deep lungfuls of air. Blood came back to his face and he swallowed. Steadied, he accepted the crystal wine glass and finished off the port as if it were a gulp of medicine. Rawson refilled the glass.

  “How did you find out?” asked Sir Anthony.

  “We’ll get to that later. Don’t worry about that,” said Rawson. He kept his left hand in his jacket pocket. It was bandaged, and the many sharp little cuts on the fingers and palm still ached.

  “That’s all I worry about. It is better that we never regain it than that the world find out we had it and lost it, especially at the time we did.”

  “I understand,” said Rawson. “We had the Grail when our greatness began and when we lost the Grail we lost our empire and seem to be losing more every day. I do understand your concern for secrecy about the Grail.”

  “Please don’t even refer to it by name again. If it became known when we had the Grail, I am sure there would be those who would say England is through.”

  “They’re saying it already, Sir Anthony. Don’t you pass the bookstalls?”

  “Yes, but this would be even further and greater proof. Those last of us who are truly England may lose hope. The very best of us may despair. We can’t afford that wound to the great British heritage. It was bad enough when it was stolen in 1945. We were still an empire.”

  “Is that why they stopped looking?”

  “It was the end of the war. We had lost so much. The Crown reasoned that if we couldn’t get it back right away, then what harm to just pretend we had it and forget about it. There was so much else to do after all. And it was gone, probably to pieces, they believed, and after all who would know it was gone? But then no one foresaw what would happen, that from the end of the war it would be a constant slide. You would have thought we had lost the war. Maybe we should have. Look at Germany and Japan. But when it reappeared whole, we had the hindsight to know we should get it back and to make bloody well sure no one, anyone would ever suspect we had it for those dates and lost it.”

  “I can see your concern, Sir Anthony.”

  “You understand now that it is more important that no one finds out what we lost and when we lost it than even your regaining it?”

  “I understood,” said Rawson, his left hand still aching. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “But you found out.”

  “No one else will,” said Rawson. “There is nothing for them to find out with.”

  “But how did you find out without being told?”

  “I read an inscription beneath a basalt block, Sir Anthony,” said Rawson, taking his left hand out of his pocket and with it chips of quartz-white heathstone.

  “Your hand, what happened?” asked Sir Anthon
y, wincing. Many small cuts, some shredding the skin, had ground into the palm as though some rodent had gnawed on it. It was bloated.

  “Had to hold the hand close to the penknife blade to catch the stone as I chipped enough of the inscription away. Undoubtedly, it was Elizabeth who had that line put there, but to anyone familiar with that body of literature about our—possession, it was an advertisement for what rested above it,” said Rawson. He was sure he knew why Elizabeth had done it.

  The cellar disguised the bowl, with the gems being a proper honor for such a relic. But it was ordered crafted before England’s victory over the Spanish. Afterward she probably had little doubt it was of some immense power. But what to do? Melt it down again? Take away the jewels? Not for her Grail. She placed it in the safest place in England, and then so successors of this childless monarch would know what it was, she had the inscription cut into the stone. Who covered it with the basalt pedestal? Who knew? It could have been Elizabeth I. But she had indeed entrusted it to her nation for the future. That was what it was doing hidden in Windsor for four centuries.

  “Thought you might like to have the chips if for some reason in the future our Sovereign wishes to restore that inscription with the original stone,” said Rawson. “Be painstaking, but I am sure it can be done by some stonemason who wouldn’t recognize what he was trying to restore. Stonemasons are not notoriously literate. More useful, perhaps, than an Oxford don, but most certainly less literate. Her Majesty’s secret is safe.”

  “I must have your pledge on that. That is absolutely first priority.”

  “You do.”

  “You’ll make sure of that.”

  “There is no way now that anyone can find out. I chipped out the last physical evidence. It was four hundred years old, hidden in the bowels of the Round Tower in a locked passageway with only one entrance, and now even that stone message, which I daresay few would understand, is gone.”