by Tom Harper
She went outside so he wouldn’t see her cry and found a gas cylinder nestled under the caravan. Water dripped from the trees; a flock of ravens perched on a power line. To her surprise, she heard a hiss of gas when she opened the valve.
By the time she went back inside she’d composed herself. There was no kettle, but she dug out a pan and a book of matches from under the sink and heated some water for coffee. Doug pored over the papers.
First, he drew an eight-by-eight grid on the graph paper and wrote out the poem in the original French, syllable by syllable. It filled the grid exactly. He drew the grid again on a sheet of tracing paper, then took the printout of the Mirabeau mosaic and used the ruler to copy the path on to the grid.
‘Did they have tracing paper in the Middle Ages?’ Ellie asked.
‘You could treat vellum with water to make it semi-transparent. Or maybe they just used a pencil. Or maybe no one’s ever done this.’
Doug laid the diagram over the poem and lined them up so that the two grids merged into one. They fit together perfectly – the syllables connected in a new order by the moves of the knight’s tour.
But something wasn’t quite right. ‘It’s an infinite loop,’ Doug realised. ‘You could start reading from anywhere – and go in either direction.’
‘Start there.’ She held up the original manuscript and pointed to the gilded E at the beginning of the fifth line. ‘That explains why he put that elaborate initial halfway through the poem. And if you look at the inside of the E there are spirals turning counter-clockwise.’
‘Most medieval church labyrinths go counter-clockwise.’
Turning back to the grid, Doug took a clean sheet of paper and wrote out the poem in its revised order, starting with the first syllable of the fifth line and ending with the third syllable of the line below. Ellie watched over his shoulder, double-checking his copy.
The stove hissed as water slopped over the edge of the pan. Ellie found a pair of chipped mugs and made coffee, trying not to spill as she poured. She put one down on the table next to Doug, who grunted his thanks. Like two little children playing tea parties in our Wendy house, she thought. His unyielding calm was crushing her.
Doug put down his pen and sipped the coffee. ‘I still can’t make sense of it. There must be some sort of secondary code.’
A wave of exhaustion broke over Ellie. She fought back a yawn and lost. Doug’s face narrowed.
‘You should get some sleep. I can work on this for a while.’
There was a rug in the back of the Land Rover. Ellie spread it over the mattress and wrapped herself in one of the caravan’s moth-eaten blankets. She pretended to close her eyes, watching Doug bent over the table. He sucked his pen; he tapped a fingernail against his coffee mug. She wished she could throw her arms around him and bring him to bed with her.
At some point her eyes stopped pretending and closed for real. Doug got up from the table and entered her dreams. Some were ecstatic and some were dreadful: afterwards, all she could remember was sadness.
Her first thought on waking was that she’d hardly slept at all – the crack of the world she could see through the curtains still looked like dawn. But when she checked her watch the dial said four o’clock. She’d slept right through to dusk.
The caravan was empty. Doug must have gone out, come back and gone again: a new grocery bag sat on the table, beside a neat stack of papers and a green book. The two coffee mugs stood next to the sink, washed and dried.
Ellie went over to the table. The top sheet of paper was covered in scribblings, random syllables ordered and reordered, letters circled, lines connecting them and crossed out. In the middle of the page, boxed in heavy lines, a single word leaped out at her.
LOQMENEZ.
The book was a Michelin guide to Brittany. A strip of paper marked a map of the western peninsula. Finisterre – the end of the world. Some distance inland from Brest, in an empty quarter of the map where the only legend was Montagnes Noires, Doug had pencilled an ‘X’.
X marks the spot. X is a kiss. X as in Ex.
She peered out of the window. The Land Rover was still there, but she couldn’t see Doug. Had he gone shopping? Gone for a walk? His coat hung over the back of a chair – he obviously meant to come back.
She knew what she had to do, though she hated it. Now you know who I really am, she told him silently. I won’t inflict any more on you.
She gathered up the papers in the guidebook and stuffed them into her backpack, fumbling in her haste. She didn’t want him to come back and find her there. She knew he’d insist on coming with her. You’ll be safer this way, she promised him. It was the last, only good thing she could do.
She took the bag of food and hoped he didn’t mind. She left twenty euros on the table so he wouldn’t go hungry, together with a quick note scribbled on a piece of graph paper. There was no time to say everything she felt – so much gratitude, so much guilt. She simply wrote:
I’m sorry for everything.
She drove away and didn’t look back.
L
Caerleon, Wales, 1143
THE BOW IS rough and gnarled: not horn or yew, like the Normans use, but unstripped dwarf-elm. That won’t stop it from killing me. Welsh archers can hit a bat’s eye in the dark.
I drop my spear and raise my hands in surrender. It’s a wise move. More men melt out of the forest. In their green-brown smocks and muddy faces, they look like trees come alive. They bind my hands and lead me away.
We march through the night. Whatever dangers lurk by the roads, these men don’t fear them. To be a prisoner is to be trapped in a long, lightless tunnel. I stare at my feet, never looking more than a yard in front of me. I don’t think about the King, or about Malegant – I don’t care. Instead I think about Jocelin. I remember the weight of the spear in my hand and the tremor of the point as it hung over his face. I remember the flash of mercy. I wonder why I did it. The rope chafes my wrists and I ask God, ‘Is this how You repay me?’
At dawn we reach a city on a river surrounded by woods and meadows. Sea-going ships unload on wooden piers, while a lofty stone tower overlooks stout walls. But if you look closer, the picture changes. The town is like an old fur coat patched with homespun cloth. Holes in the masonry have been filled with mortared rubble, or merely barricaded with palings, while the handsome red roofs sprout straw where the tiles have fallen through. At its centre stands an enormous roundhouse, like a pavilion: stone walls topped with a cone of thatch. The stones look ancient; the thatch is still yellow.
‘Whose castle is this?’
My captors ignore me. Dredging words from the depths of memory, I repeat it in Welsh. They look surprised.
‘Morgan ap Owain, King of Morgannwg.’
They lock me in a wattle enclosure that smells of pigs and leave me to rot. An icy wind blows rain through the woven branches, though I still haven’t dried out from my plunge in the river. I curl myself in a ball and fall asleep.
Hours later – I don’t know how many – the guards return. They tie my arms behind my back and slide a rod through my elbows, then drag me like a plough along the street to the roundhouse I saw earlier. Huddled in front of the gate a wretched group of prisoners waits in the rain. I don’t recognise them without their armour, until I see Hugh.
‘Are these your friends?’ one of the guards asks. I nod; he whips the rod out from my arms and pushes me in with the other prisoners. I almost sprawl headlong into the mud, but Hugh catches me.
‘They captured me just after I crossed the river.’
‘Us too. We found the ford Malegant used. Two minutes later, we were surrounded.’
‘What are they going to do to us?’
‘Give us an audience with the King of Morgannwg.’
He says the name with scorn. I know from my childhood that the Kingdom of Morgannwg hasn’t existed for fifty years. When the Normans conquered Wales they abolished it along with all the other old kingdoms. I assume that now, in th
e anarchy of the civil war, some enterprising local lord or bandit has seized power, resurrecting an obsolete title to buttress his authority.
William’s standing just behind Hugh. ‘Don’t mention the King,’ he hisses to me as I go past.
The guards take us through a double gate into King Morgan’s hall. It’s circular and entirely open, except for a central pole supporting the roof. A round table circles the edge of the room, with knights and barons seated at it like judges in a court.
The hall is filled with kings – rather, the same king again and again, woven into the cycle of tapestries around the room. A young king, a gold circlet on his head, receiving prophecies from a white-bearded old man. The same king, crowned and older, killing a swarthy giant; defeating a Roman emperor; locked in a great battle; finally, laid in a boat tended to by women in white. And, at the head of the table opposite the door, seated in majesty on a throne carved with dragons and lions.
The King moves. I blink. The smoky hall’s deceived me: the last hanging isn’t a tapestry, but cloth-of-gold, hung in the space where the eighth tapestry should be. The King sitting in front of it is entirely real: a flesh-and-blood man about my age, with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold crown on his head that looks very much like the one in the tapestries.
I don’t know how he claimed his title, but I have to admit he looks more the part than King Stephen did. He lounges back in his chair and studies the prisoners. William has slipped back into the middle of the group, keeping his face down to avoid being recognised. Hugh stands at the front and meets the King’s gaze.
‘Who are you?’
‘Knights from England. An enemy stole something from us. We followed him here to get it back.’
The King presses his fingertips together. ‘You should have appealed to me for help. What was it he stole?’
Hugh stays silent. That doesn’t impress the King.
‘If the king of England wants to invade my kingdom, I’ll give him a fight. I’ll push him all the way back to the sea, reclaim all of Britain as it was in Arthur’s time.’
He’s exaggerating. It’s a fine castle, but Stephen’s army could reduce it in a week. If Stephen hasn’t crushed this pretender already, it’s only because he’s had more urgent concerns. But Morgan’s men love it. They’re on their feet, shouting and clapping. Some of them pelt us with scraps from their plates. I duck a crust of bread and listen to what they’re saying. One name, chanted over and again.
Arthur. Arthur. Arthur.
At last I understand the tapestries, the crown and the throne. Morgan’s an opportunist, a usurper papering over his theft with a grandiose title that’s fallen out of use. But the title he’s claiming is more ancient and profound than the dilapidated kingdom of Morgannwg.
Morgan raises his hand and the hall goes quiet. Hugh’s about to say something, but before he can speak I step forward, feeling for where the different torches overlap to make the brightest place. It’s a trick I learned as a troubadour – no one listens to a man in shadow.
‘I can tell you a tale.’
The King’s gaze switches on to me. ‘I want answers. The truth. I have the best minstrels and harpers in Wales to tell me stories.’
‘Not like mine. I have the greatest story that was ever told in a royal court.’
Another troubador’s conceit. No one pays to hear about the moderately interesting.
‘My story is the story of Perceval the Welshman. A story no one has ever heard before. A story of secrets.’
Our eyes meet; he’s intrigued. He nods.
‘Tell me your tale, and I’ll see how I like it.’
I lift my shoulders, tugging against the rope. ‘It’s easier to tell with my hands unbound.’
A guard cuts the rope. I rub my wrists, then walk over to the table and take a cup of wine to wet my throat.
‘Long ago, when Arthur was king …’
I make it up as I go along. Sometimes I catch myself digressing, or repeating too much, but each time some instinct draws me back to the story, like a blind man feeling the edge of the path with his stick. I watch the King’s face the same way I watched Ada’s when we sat by the river at Hautfort, catching the things that please him, amplifying them where I can. Some of it comes from the stories my mother told me; other pieces from scraps I’ve heard in other halls, or half-remember from the books I studied as a child. For the rest, I take the coarse threads of my life, dye them vivid colours and weave my own tapestry to hang in the hall.
I tell the king how Perceval was born in the waste forest of Wales. How his father and his brothers were Arthur’s knights, all killed on the same day. How his mother raised him with no knowledge of knights or chivalry, to protect him from the same fate – but how the moment he saw a company of knights riding through the forest, he knew it was his destiny.
I tell how Perceval went to Caerleon where Arthur kept his court. I make great play of looking around the hall.
‘It wasn’t a particularly great or magnificent court …’
Morgan flushes, sensitive to any insult.
‘… only three thousand knights or so.’
They all laugh. Morgan thumps the arm of his chair and nods his approval. The energy in the room lifts and channels into me.
I tell them more. How Arthur dubbed Perceval a knight, and how Perceval set out to find adventures. How he met the Lady Blancheflor, saved her castle from the wicked Clamadeu and made her his sweetheart, though not his wife. In my story, there’s no husband to get in the way.
The hall’s growing dim – the servants have forgotten to replace the candles. I shift position; I crouch to keep my face in the light. I tell how Perceval set out again and came to a broad river and met a fisherman. How the fisherman directed him to a castle in a hidden valley, and how that night at supper he witnessed marvels he did not understand.
As Perceval and his host were talking, a squire entered the hall carrying a lance. He walked in front of the fire, so that everyone there saw the wood and the iron point. A single drop of blood rolled down from its tip and touched the squire’s hand.
Then two more squires entered carrying golden candle-holders, each with a dozen candles glittering off the enamel inlay. A girl came behind them – beautiful and nobly dressed – and in her hands she carried a grail. The dish was made of purest gold, studded with the most precious jewels in earth and sea, and the light from within it was so bright that the candles were swallowed up in its radiance, like the stars at sunrise.
The grail passed by like the lance and disappeared into another chamber. The knight watched them go, but didn’t dare ask who or what purpose it served.
*
Afterwards, I couldn’t tell you how it came to me that way. All I know is that at that moment there isn’t a man in the hall who would not stay there until dawn to find out what the grail and spear mean.
I tell them how Perceval woke the next morning and found the castle deserted. How as he was riding over the drawbridge it closed behind him. How he never found the castle again – how the quest drove him mad. How he lost his memory so totally that he no longer even remembered God. He wandered for five years, forgetting everything, until on Good Friday a hermit took him in and restored him to sanity. How he vowed he would not spend two consecutive nights under the same roof as long as he lived, until he had found out why the spear bled, and what the grail contained.
How –
I break off suddenly. Morgan thinks it’s a dramatic effect; he waits a moment for me to continue. When he realises I’m not going to, he rises forward like a man woken from a dream.
‘And?’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘I don’t know the ending. The story hasn’t finished yet.’
LI
London
BLANCHARD SAT IN his office and stared at the chessboard on his desk. It was late in the game: the only surviving pieces were two kings and a white knight. He toyed with the knight, testing possible moves.
Which way now?
<
br /> He was a good chess player – not formally brilliant, no automaton, but hard to beat. He knew that you had to read play not just from your perspective, or even as a textbook might judge it, but as your opponent understood it. Where does he see his strengths? His vulnerabilities? What will he do next? On the rare occasions he played against computers, he did badly: he needed a man sitting across the table to dissect, to worm into and ultimately to defeat.
Take Ellie. The moment she’d walked into his office, even in her frumpy clothes and wide-eyed innocence, he’d known she’d be a formidable adversary. Saint-Lazare had called her a pawn: Blanchard saw she was a pawn who could become a queen. For all he respected her, he’d still underestimated her. He’d failed to block her path. Now she was almost home.
He had one chance left, a single shot. The engineers at Mirabeau said that the chapel was beyond repair: whatever secrets had once adorned it had been blown to pieces by the helicopter. Ellie might resurface, but after their run-in at Annelise Stirt’s she’d be careful about showing herself.
Which way would she go? Which way should he go?
He pushed the chessboard aside, toppling over the king with the sudden motion. He took out his computer. His white finger hovered over a button, then stabbed down.
In twenty-four hours, he’d know.
Caerleon, Wales
Thirty-five knights crammed in a stockade makes for an uncomfortable night. There’s not even space to relieve ourselves, except by pissing through the palings. At least we stay warm.
Around midnight the King’s seneschal unlocks the door and brings us back to the hall. The fire’s smouldering, the guards have gone. The King sits alone, wreathed in smoke, as if the dragons on his throne have started to stir.
‘You can have your horses, your arms, and safe conduct out of my kingdom.’
Hugh starts to speak, but Morgan cuts him off.
‘I’ll also give you some news. The men you want left Morgannwg this afternoon, heading north-west. They stopped at an inn to feed their horses – the stable boy heard them talking about a place called Cwm Bychan. It’s in Gwynedd, near the sea. Three days’ hard riding through the mountains.