A Novel

by Sean Pidgeon

  Taking out her thick marbled notebook, Julia finds her bearings by flicking through the pages from the beginning. This particular book, the latest in a long series, runs from the middle of the letter C to the start of D. Each page is devoted to a single word written boldly at the top: coolly, coolness, coolrife, coolth. Some of the entries are crowded with her small neat script, excerpts from sundry texts prefaced with essential bibliographic data, the word of the moment underlined in their midst, while others are almost entirely blank, signifying hours or sometimes days of fruitless searching. She keeps on turning the pages, coolung, coolweed, coolwort, cooly. Then comes a word that gave her some trouble a year or so before: coom or combe, deep hollow or valley, one of rather few loan-words that made the jump from early Welsh into Old English. In her quest to find an earlier usage of this word than any previously discovered, combe presented her with a particular challenge because (as she noted near the top of the page) a very early quotation had already been found in an Anglo-Saxon charter of the eighth century AD:

  770 in Birch Cartul. Sax. I. 290 (No. 204) Of þære brigge in cumb; of þam cumbe in ale beardes ac.

  To go back further, she decided to begin her search with the medieval Anglo-Welsh ecclesiastical materials, on the provisional hypothesis that the earliest extant uses of combe might be found in English translations of documents relating to the Welsh monasteries (which were often situated in remote valleys). Beneath the citation she wrote:

  Welsh monastic establishments, fifth to seventh century. Try Bowen’s poetry book from TF?

  Reading this last sentence, Julia’s fragile serenity is disturbed by a powerful sense of déjà vu. At the time, she did not pursue this particular lead for combe. It was in any case highly speculative, and it prompted unwelcome memories of Caradoc Bowen, Hugh’s mentor at Jesus College. She rests her head in her hands, casts her mind back to a talk of Bowen’s she once attended with Hugh. The topic of his presentation that day was a book of poetry he had discovered many years before in a manuscript collection that was then still held at the manor house of Ty Faenor. Professor Bowen described to them a particular poem he had found in this book, an extraordinary narrative depicting a series of heroic battles from the distant past. She can see him standing there at the podium, focusing all the energy of the room into his voice as he recited glowing fragments of ancient verse.

  This is the text that Hugh was quoting from the night before, Julia is quite sure of it. Something Lucy Trevelyan said about the Devil’s Barrow finds made him think of it. Caradoc Bowen’s poetry book suddenly seems of far more than academic interest. It might have something to tell her about Hugh’s intense relationship with Bowen, a part of his life she has never quite been able to come to terms with. Perhaps there is a clue to be found in this poem that so inspired Bowen and lodged so indelibly in Hugh’s memory of that time, something that might help her to understand. For now, all thoughts of lexicography are forgotten.

  The librarian on duty at the main reference desk is one of the old hands, long accustomed to such unusual enquiries. ‘That’s a tricky one,’ he says, running an earnest hand across his balding scalp. ‘We could give you special access to the entire collection, if you think that might help. But if I were you, I’d try to speak to the boss—this sounds like Dr. Rackham’s sort of thing.’

  Julia walks along the corridor to a heavy panelled door bearing the words Bodley’s Librarian embossed in gold. She knocks firmly, is invited to come in by an authoritative female voice. The door opens to a spacious interior flooded with light from a pair of tall windows that look out on a startlingly green vista of the Fellows’ Garden of Exeter College. The walls are lined with fine antiquarian maps and prints. In the centre of the room, seated at a massive desk of apparently medieval construction, is the venerable Dr. Margaret Rackham. She has thick grey hair and piercing blue eyes that make her seem, at first glance, to be somewhere in her sixties; but this initial impression is belied by an extraordinary network of deep wrinkles around the eyes and across the cheeks, evidence of a long life spent in contemplation of the written word.

  ‘It’s Julia, isn’t it, from the OED?’ she says. Despite her decidedly aristocratic accent, any lingering sense of imperiousness vanishes instantly. ‘You came to me once before, to ask if you could have a look at Junius 11, the Cædmon manuscript.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’m surprised you remembered.’

  ‘Such is the librarian’s curse. I remember a great many things, sometimes rather more than I would like. What may I do for you, my dear?’

  As Julia relates her story of Bowen’s poetry book, she judges from the growing expression of curiosity on the librarian’s face that she has come to the right place. ‘There was a time when I saw a good deal of Caradoc Bowen,’ Margaret Rackham says. ‘I was a junior postgraduate when he first became a Fellow of Jesus College, and it must be said that there was something both attractive and mysterious about him in those days. He was by far the cleverest person I had ever met, and a naturally gifted poet, too, being closely related on his mother’s side to the Powys family of literary fame. But he was also in some ways a strange and difficult man. I’m afraid I have rarely spoken to him in recent years.’

  To Julia, Margaret Rackham’s words seem imbued with a faint wistful sense of lost opportunity. She finds herself transported to another era, imagining a striking young Caradoc Bowen, the brilliant new Oxford don, and the youthful Margaret, sharp as a knife and beautiful too, admiring him from afar. ‘Did you know him very well?’ she says, then regrets her careless question.

  The librarian fixes her with a cool gaze. ‘Before I answer that, I should like to know why you are so interested in this book of his.’

  Julia feels entirely unready to confess her vague presentiments and intuitions to such an august authority. ‘My main interest is in Welsh loan-words that found their way into Old English,’ she says. ‘I’m looking for new materials that might help me with my research.’

  ‘Which makes it seem rather a large effort to hunt down such an obscure manuscript, unless you already have an idea of what you hope to find?’

  Something in Margaret Rackham’s candid expression seems to invite the sharing of confidences, but Julia is careful not to say too much. ‘There was an old battle-poem—Professor Bowen gave a talk on it once, a long time ago. I was hoping to track down the original.’

  Julia is made to feel the full weight of disbelief in the long, contemplative look the librarian gives her. ‘I do wonder if there’s something you’re not telling me, my dear. Be that as it may, I believe I know precisely what you are looking for. Give me just a moment, would you?’

  The Bodley’s Librarian turns to her card catalogue, throwing up faint clouds of old library dust as she opens and closes the small wooden drawers. Some minutes pass as she follows an apparently complex bibliographic trail. Eventually, a faded manila file emerges from a massive filing cabinet. ‘Why don’t you start with this?’ she says. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll see about having the original brought up for you to look at. Won’t be a tick.’ To Julia’s surprise, rather than pick up the telephone, she gets up from her desk and walks briskly out of her office, closing the door firmly behind her.

  The room falls into a near-silence filled with the resonant ticking of a carriage clock, previously unnoticed on a corner shelf. Julia opens the file, takes out a hand-written letter and its original envelope bearing a postmark from nearly fifty years in the past.

  My dear Margaret,

  I write to you today from Ty Faenor House, where I find that my amiable host, Sir Charles Mortimer, has inherited his due share of the antiquarian sensibility that has run so strongly in his family for the past three hundred years. Sir Charles has allowed me to remain as his guest for a week longer than I had planned, with the happy result that my research in the medieval manuscript collection held in the library here has at last borne sudden and unexpected fruit in the shape of a previously unknown manuscript dating from the fifteenth cent
ury.

  I do not propose to dwell here on the manner of its discovery, save to say that it was experienced as something closer to fate than to happenstance. I had been searching for early sources relating to my main subject of study, the poet Siôn Cent, when my eye was drawn inexorably, as it seemed, to an outwardly unremarkable volume in a plain monastic binding of the kind often produced in the Welsh scriptoria. Upon taking this volume down from the shelf, I was disappointed to find the earliest parchment folios, twelve quires of eight leaves each, destroyed beyond repair or restoration by a penicillium mould whose inexorable progression had erased all immediate evidence of the title, authorship, and provenance of the manuscript. The later pages had fortunately for the most part been spared, and there I was able to read a series of previously unknown poems written unmistakably in his customary meter of cywydd deuair hirion by the bard whom I have come to know almost as a companion and friend, Master Siôn Cent. This was precisely what I had been seeking, the earliest poems of Siôn Cent whose work had previously been known only from the austere religious pieces composed in his later years at Kentchurch Court.

  Though this was perhaps a sufficient revelation in itself, there was more to follow. It was almost that I heard a siren voice in my head, urging me to turn the leaf, turn the leaf, until I came upon a remarkable text presented under a title, the Song of Lailoken, that will not be entirely unfamiliar to you from your knowledge of the Welsh mythical canon (Lailoken, as you may recall, was the original Welsh model for the prophet Merlin), though the lines written beneath it most assuredly will.

  One other observation may be of interest. At the head of the first folio of this poem, our bard adds a short and stirring preamble, informing us as follows: ‘I relate here the true story of Arthur’s return, that all Welshmen may know of him, and his rise to glory, and his fall to earth, and that hidden place where he entered the gates of the otherworld. Let none doubt the veracity of this tale, for I have taken it from the words of Merlin found in Cyndeyrn’s book which fate has brought to my hand.’

  It is better, in any case, that the poet be allowed to speak for himself. I therefore enclose herewith my free translation from the curiously archaic Welsh of the original text. I ask merely that you study it very carefully, and in due course do me the kindness of sharing with me your observations upon this most unusual text.

  Yours sincerely,

  C. H. R. BOWEN

  Attached to Bowen’s letter with a rusty paperclip are two further hand-written sheets on which he has presented his English translation of Siôn Cent’s original Welsh text.

  THE SONG OF LAILOKEN

  The crab I am called, safe-keeper of wisdom

  Guardian of ancient songs, voice of the red dragon

  Whose beating wings are heard in mortal hearts

  Soaring far above the three-tongued serpent

  Gorged on its own children’s flesh.

  Fiercely we battled them in those days, red against white

  Fire scorched the mountainsides

  Rivers turned black with blood

  Winds alone scattered the pleading death-moans

  Of their pale-winged god.

  First at the sky-temple, giant-wrought circle

  Our foe standing proud upon her charnel-stone

  Belak-neskato she was named, the death-wielder

  Draining blood of men three-times slain

  To slake the white serpent, three-times thirsting

  Sky-devil who bore the giants’ ring from farthest west

  To make this hallowed killing-place.

  It was Arthur gave life to our courage

  Strove with her twin protectors, Araket and Madarakt

  Painted petty-gods on earth, their strength availed them nothing

  The first meeting Arthur’s blade, the second flew the field

  Then our champion leaping high struck down the black enchantress

  Tore her from her gruesome perch.

  I did not heed her last-breath’s screeching

  Threefold life she promised me, and threefold death

  My doom the venom on her tongue.

  Thence to the black water we came softly at dawn

  Strong in battle, we slew eagerly with silent blade

  Swift was the fate that felled our enemy that day

  Awoken from sleep, their morning feast was bitter

  Sent by bright sword’s edge to the dark river water.

  On a green hilltop we made our stand, spear-tips trapping gold of sunset

  Bold herald of darkness and the dread that ensnared us

  Arthur alone bore our courage on his shield

  His ardour undiminished, our grim-blooded scourge

  Nine times our number cut down in that terrible charge

  At nightfall we fell like thunder down the slope.

  Then at the last, to the crooked vale where the three rivers fall

  We strove for the heights but they held us there

  Caught us at sun’s falling, trapped at axe’s edge

  Grimly we gathered, in close rank, certain of death

  Crags raised red like bloodied fists above us

  The distant water rushing, whispering, sighing

  The river, a wolf’s-head smile carved far below.

  In purest air we heard it in the thudding of our hearts

  Great wingbeats in the eastern sky, our foe was upon us

  White serpent circling, thirsting for the certain feast

  Our champion Arthur stepping forward

  The giant Madarakt beckoned him to his doom.

  To the crooked vale we came, in fleeting joy beheld

  The beast cast down by Arthur’s sword

  All saw him do it, heard the sighing of the wind

  Watched the dying of the evening light

  As he too was felled by this creature’s mortal strike.

  We bore him up to the highest cliff-top, gate of the otherworld

  Laid him beneath a linden tree, the shield-wood powerless now

  The words unspoken on his lips, the life we saw still behind his eyes

  No more than the trick of light and shadow on the rock.

  Thus our champion fell to earth, not dead but deeply sleeping

  Listening for red dragon’s song, faint echoes from the valley

  Breaking earthly chains, three times we rise to dragon’s cry

  Twice more to greatness, twice more cut down

  Fire glows dim in dragon’s failing gasp.

  Have we the strength, we carry the last flame

  Our blaze burns bright in mountain fastness

  Rage moves winds to howl and seas to rise

  Hope brings warriors to the call

  We strike the loathsome white beast coiling

  Rend its scaly claws from our sacred soil.

  As Julia reads these remarkable verses, she has the uncanny impression that someone is speaking the lines out loud to her. She imagines it is Caradoc Bowen whose voice she hears, his refined Welsh tones roughened with age or emotion as he recites the poem with an almost disturbing dramatic intensity. She has another reaction, too, as she reads about the warrior Arthur and his battles across this landscape of rivers and mountains. These lines make her think of Donald and his lost battle-sites. It is all no more than a coincidence, perhaps, but she feels a frisson of real excitement; above all else, she must share this discovery with him.

  She walks over to the window and looks out across the garden towards the familiar, enduring stonework of Exeter College. At the centre of the scene is the ancient mulberry tree that reputedly once inspired Tolkien to create a race of timeless creatures to inhabit the great forests of Middle Earth. Two groundsmen are at work on it, gently cutting away the dead wood with a long-handled pruning saw. As the words of the Song of Lailoken continue to play in her head, Julia watches them load the last of the cut branches into a hand-cart. In her mind’s eye, she sees flames dancing around the edges, lapping up the sides of the funeral pyre.

/>   The spell is broken soon enough by the return of Margaret Rackham, who comes back into the room wheeling a scarred old leather-bound volume on a wooden cart. ‘To answer your earlier question,’ she says, abruptly, ‘I am not at all sure whether Cranc Bowen—I always called him by his childhood nickname—whether Cranc would ever have allowed me into a close friendship with him. What I can say for certain is that his discovery of this manuscript, and the effect it had on him, made such a relationship entirely impossible.’ She lifts the book reverentially to a velvet pad on her desk, then hands a pair of white cotton gloves to Julia. ‘The official designation of this manuscript is TF 97B. Its original title, if ever there was one, has been lost, and in lieu of this it has informally been referred to as the poetry book of Siôn Cent. You may have a look for yourself. Please take the utmost care, especially with the early folios where the damage is the worst.’

  Julia slides a gloved finger under the fractured front cover and lifts it gently. The opening page is a map of a post-apocalyptic world: a dwindling archipelago of faded brown parchment surrounded by spreading oceans of greenish blue. As she cautiously turns the pages, she finds that many of the leaves are so firmly stuck together that they cannot be opened without risk of damaging them further; and those that can have not escaped the insidious mould.