by Unknown
“Me? I’m a dark matter person. Simone and I are on the EURECA team, an experiment to look for dark matter.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Arthur said, “but I can’t say I know what it is.”
“Actually, no one knows precisely what dark matter is but maybe I’ll have a chance to explain. It’s not a casual discussion.”
“But you haven’t found it yet, right?” he asked.
“Not yet but soon, I hope.”
“And what will you do when you succeed?”
“Probably get quite drunk. But …”
“But what?”
“This problem with Simone. It’s a complication. I don’t know how we can keep working together. I don’t even know who he is.”
“I wish I could give you advice,” Arthur said.
“I’m sure it will work out. Tonight, why weren’t the police helpful?”
“I don’t trust them. I’m in the middle of something complicated.”
“Does it involve the Grail?”
“It does.”
“That chest too?”
“Yes.”
“I told you my story,” she said. “Will you tell me yours?”
12
Back in the hotel room Arthur sat on one of the beds, Claire on the other, each nursing a Scotch from the minibar. He began telling her about his last few weeks. It all came out in a clear, linear fashion. When he gave presentations at his company and at conferences he had always owned the room and he certainly owned this one. Claire seemed rapt as he told her about the Grail Loons, the break-in at Andrew Holmes’ house, his sense of being followed and targeted, the maddening unhelpfulness of the police, his unfair dismissal for inadvertently belittling his chairman, and how he had made his discovery in Warwickshire earlier that day. In the course of telling the story he found that Claire had read Le Morte D’Arthur in school and as a girl once had a passing interest in the world of King Arthur, but that her fascination with science had left the King of Britons in the dust.
Finally, he said, “Well that’s it. That’s all there is.”
“It’s really incredible,” she said. “Our lives, well, we had nothing in common, and suddenly we have this connection around something as crazy as the Holy Grail.”
“It is pretty wild.” The minibar Scotch was finished so he moved them onto brandy.
“I have to check the train schedule,” she said. “I need to go back tomorrow.”
He ignored the comment and lifted the old chest onto his bed.
“What do you say we have a look?”
He saw her eyes light up at the prospect.
He opened the lid and carefully laid the contents on all the flat surfaces in the room. The clothes, silver objects, and bibles were banished to the chairs and end tables. The parchments got pride of place on the bed.
He found the Waynflete letter and read it out loud for Claire’s benefit. He had thought about the letter all the way back from Warwickshire.
He was more than a descendant of Sir Thomas Malory. If the letter could be believed, he was also a descendant of King Arthur himself! The chain of revelations was dizzying. No wonder Holmes had sounded so excited. Most serious scholars thought the evidence was tenuous at best for King Arthur being anything other than mythological, a character invented out of whole cloth to suit the needs of medieval popular culture. For if there was a real King Arthur living during the sixth century or thereabouts, there was no mention of him by name in the writings of the few near-contemporaneous historians: Gildas in the sixth century, Bede in the eighth century, Nennius in the ninth century. A King Arthur did not rear his head in the pages of recorded history until Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in 1136 in his Historia Regum Britanniae, “And even the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded; and being carried thence to the Isle of Avalon to be cured of his wounds, he gave up the crown of Britain to his kinsman Constantine, the son of Cador, Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and forty-second year of our Lord’s incarnation.”
He explained the implications for Claire: in one fell swoop, here was a degree of confirmation that King Arthur was indeed real, and with it came the rudiments of a genealogy that placed not only a fifteenth-century Thomas Malory in his lineage but also a twenty-first-century Arthur Malory.
If Arthur could have one wish, it would be to speak with Holmes about the letter. Holmes had sounded so confident on the phone. Yet there was nothing in the Waynflete letter to give any comfort that Arthur’s sword let alone the Grail could actually be found.
Arthur put down the letter and began paging through the unexplored part of the stack. The results were disappointing. Parchment after parchment were drab legal documents pertaining to sixteenth and seventeenth century Malorys—deeds, wills, land transfers and the like.
Then with the turn of a page everything changed.
“Well, here’s something,” he murmured.
Arthur immediately recognized Thomas Malory’s distinctive crowded scrawl from the Waynflete letter on not only the sheet in his hand but also the next.
“It’s a second document in Thomas Malory’s hand.”
He apologized for his need to remain silent as he scanned the parchment. It took only a few minutes to understand what he had discovered.
Malory’s book, Le Morte Darthur (this being the Middle French spelling he had employed), first had been published by the London printer William Caxton in 1485, some fourteen years after Malory’s death. Caxton, it was thought, had obtained a manuscript in Malory’s hand or that of a scribe—perhaps a collection of Arthurian tales—and stitched them into a single volume to which a preface had been added, presumably written by Caxton himself. The preface had long been considered an unusual document: after explaining the necessity for extolling the virtues of a great Christian such as King Arthur, Caxton then launches into a detailed and wholly unnecessary description of how many chapters are contained in each of the twenty-one books of the volume.
Since the Winchester manuscript of Le Morte Darthur—the only know copy in Malory’s hand—lacked this introduction, one could reasonably assume the preface had been authored by someone else, most likely Caxton.
Arthur suddenly said, “I need a copy of Le Morte.” He pictured his own book as a small pile of ashes.
“Maybe they have a computer downstairs,” she said. “You can get it online, I’m sure.”
“I’ve got my laptop in my bag.”
He sprung from the bed and sputtered when he found the laptop out of power. He plugged it in and purchased a day of Wi-Fi access from the hotel.
Arthur clicked on the first full-text copy of Le Morte in his search and went straight to the preface.
He read it aloud. “I have divided it into twenty-one Books, and every book chaptered, as hereafter shall by God's grace follow. The First Book shall treat how Uther Pendragon gat the noble conqueror King Arthur, and containeth twenty-eight chapters. The Second Book treateth of Balin the noble knight, and containeth nineteen chapters.” And on and on until the last sentence: “The sum is twenty-one books, which contain the sum of five hundred and seven chapters, as more plainly shall follow hereafter.”
He turned to the parchment again. Here, in an undated block of script, was the peculiar book and chapter enumeration in Malory’s own Middle English penmanship.
And for to vnderstonde bryefly the contente of thys volume I haue deuyded it in to xxj bookes and euery book chapytred as here after shal by goddes grace folowe. The fyrst book shal treate how Vtherpendragon gate the noble conquerour kyng Arthur and conteyneth xxviij chappytres. The second book treateth of Balyn the noble knyght and conteyneth xix chapytres.
Arthur scanned back and forth, comparing the first parchment to the Caxton preface. “It’s virtually word-for-word identical. This means that it’s likely that Malory, not his publisher, wrote the preface.”
“Is this important?” Claire asked.
“I’m not sure. At a minimum it’s historically interesting.”
He read the letter out loud for Claire but he imagined that Holmes was listening too.
“Alas my enemies, these unholy men who call themselves the Qem have succeeded in preventing me from making the journey to find the Graal. I am now old and too feeble. Yet by placing me in prison all these years they have given me the benefit of time and I have been blessed by God with the ability to well and fully chronicle the tales of my noble forebearer the great and noble Arthur King of the Britons. I pray that a Maleoré who comes after me will find this parchment and take up the quest for the Sangreal. To find the Graal that man must first find the sword of Arthur which I myself have found and which I myself have well hid to keep it from evil hands. The finder of the Sangreal must be keen of intellect virtuous and pure of heart. The hiding place of the sword can be found within the preface to Le Morte Darthur in companionship with the tale itself provided one is as mindful as priests who mind the Sacraments of the green acres of Warwickshire which were chronicled in the Domesday Book written during the realm of King William I. I have conceived this puzzle to make the quest indeed real for an heir who comes to possess this very tract and who has the temperament and the grace of God to find the holiest of holies to wit the Graal of our Christ.”
Arthur placed the pages onto the bed and stared into space.
This was what Holmes had meant.
“It’s almost like he’s speaking directly to you,” Claire said softly.
He saw it clearly. This was his quest now. It had been from the moment he fought back against the intruder with a gun.
“I need to make a call,” Arthur said.
He rang Tony Ferro at home, apologizing for the lateness of the hour.
“Tony, you won’t believe what I’ve stumbled upon up in Warwickshire—or rather, what we stumbled upon.”
“We?”
“Holmes was there first.”
Tony was a serious academic who clearly would be reserving judgment until he examined the documents personally. He drifted into a story about an elaborate medieval manuscript fake that had cost a trusting and gullible colleague her job. Yet two Tonys were on the line: one, an eager boy who wanted to jump at the news, the other, a credible historian with a reputation to protect. By the end of the conversation, the boy won out.
“Can you come down to UCL tomorrow? I mean, for God’s sake, Arthur, can you imagine what this means if it’s authentic? Not only a stiffer measure of confirmation than has ever previously existed for the existence of King Arthur, but a concrete nexus—not a mythological one—to two vital elements of the Arthurian tales: Excalibur and the Grail itself. I need a stiff drink to calm myself.”
While Arthur had been on the phone, Claire had been lying on her side, watching him from her bed. She looked sleepy. After he hung up, he took a moment to consider something.
“Can you get a later train tomorrow?”
“Why?”
“I’d like you to meet Tony Ferro. Come with me to the university first. It’s near St. Pancras station.”
“Okay … why not?”
Her answer made him feel lighter.
His cell phone rang. It wasn’t a number he recognized. The call was short and tense and when he was finished she asked who it was.
“It was the fire brigade. They want to speak with me. I’m not sure how they got my number. I’m not keen to go back but apparently I don’t have a choice.”
“Shall I go with you?”
“No, stay here and get some sleep. I’ll be back.”
#
Arthur knew perfectly well what he’d find when he returned. The fire services were still there, hosing down the blackened, collapsed walls. Still, it was surreal and profoundly mournful seeing the artifacts of his life in cinders and ashes.
Arthur made himself known to the deputy brigade manager, who berated him for leaving the scene. He made up a cock-and-bull story about fleeing in a state of panic, having a few drinks and some food at a friend’s house to calm down.
“It’s a good job you agreed to return, Mr. Malory, or you would have had to face some serious inquiries. Did you smell gas before the explosion?”
“No.”
“Any problems with your gas cooker?”
“None.”
“I see. A passerby called in a report of the strong smell of gas coming from your house.”
“So the police told me.”
“So you’ve spoken to them?”
“Yes, I rang them.”
The fireman pulled out a card and handed it to him. “A DI Hobbs was here earlier. He had your mobile number. He said he wishes to interview you.”
“As I said, we’ve already talked.”
“My investigator found preliminary evidence of a kerosenelike residue in the area of your front room. Can you shed any light on this?”
“Did Hobbs say anything about it?”
“As a matter of fact he did. Seems he’s been here before. He said you had a kerosene lamp.”
So Hobbs hadn’t mentioned the Molotov cocktail; he wouldn’t, either. Arthur didn’t want anything more to do with the police. How had Hobbs known he was with someone? There could be only one way: Hobbs had been there watching. Interested parties had gotten to him. The lackluster investigation into the Holmeses’ murders now made sense.
“I did have a lamp,” Arthur said dully.
“It wasn’t in use tonight, was it?”
“No.”
“Well then, thank you for making yourself available. We may wish to ask you additional questions. And I’d suggest you call the emergency number of your home insurer to get the ball rolling there. You’re a lucky man, Mr. Malory. This could have ended much, much worse.”
Partway down the street, Griggs started his car and drove away. He had Harp on speed dial.
“Well?”
“He came back. He’s with the fire brigade.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“He looked scared.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. I’d say the plan worked. He’s been firebombed and shot at tonight. He’s lost his job and now his house. He’s motivated as hell and free of distractions.”
“I agree,” Harp said. “Now all he has to do is find the Grail.”
#
When Arthur returned to the hotel the room was dark. Claire was asleep on her bed. By the light of his mobile phone he saw every stitch of her clothes in a neat pile. He undressed to his boxers and climbed into his bed, and for the few moments before sleep overtook him he preferred to think about the naked woman a few feet away rather than the ruins of his blackened house.
#
Tony Ferro’s office at the Department of English Language and Literature was located within the labyrinthine complex of University College London in Bloomsbury. In size it was more of a closet than an office and the ample man looked comically shoehorned behind his desk.
Arthur introduced Claire and in typical Tony fashion, the large man asked, “Why don’t I ever get attractive French women falling from the sky onto my doorstep? The world is simply not a fair place. Well, let’s see the parchments”—he began clearing things off his desk—“I hardly slept.”
Arthur and Claire watched in silence for a full ten minutes while Tony read each and every line, eyeballing the documents through a magnifying glass. When he was done, Tony looked up and stared at Arthur gravely.
“Well?” Arthur asked.
Tony tapped his folded reading glasses on the desk and exhaled deeply. Arthur hadn’t noticed he’d been holding his breath for a good while.
“This is the greatest moment in my life,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I should have said in my academic life to be politically correct, but between you and me, it’s better than the birth of my children, which were messy affairs. I think these documents are absolutely authentic—without question. The paper is correct, the ink is correct, the grammar and sy
ntax are correct. I’ve had the occasion to study Thomas Malory’s signature on the Winchester manuscript and this signature on the Waynflete letter is identical. My only regret is that Holmes isn’t here to share this with us.”
Arthur nodded. “I feel the same way.”
Tony choked back a tear. “I had no idea you were a mutant.”
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
“An extra rib? Stand up and let me have a feel.”
“Oh, that. Really?”
“Absolutely. Consider it primary research. Pull up your shirt. You may avert your gaze, Ms. Pontier,”
Ferro said with a twinkle.
Exposing his flank, Arthur joked, “What if someone comes in?”
“I’ll tell them I love you.”
“Other side.” Arthur pointed. “Still a bit tender.”
Tony reached over his desk and palpated on the left over Arthur’s liver. “It’s a little stubby affair. Rare, is it?”
Arthur sat back down. “So I’m told.”
After a pregnant pause, Tony told him, “We’ve got to publish this, you know. It’s imperative. The journal Sandy edits would be the most logical place. We’ll need to bring her and Aaron into this ASAP and the rest of the Loons, of course.”
Arthur shook his head. “Slow down. We’ll publish—rather, you’ll publish—in good time. This is your career, not mine. You can have the limelight to yourself, Tony. I just want to have the time to look for the sword and the Grail in peace.”
“Of course!” Tony exulted. “You’ll have all the time you need. The academic wheels, they do turn slow. When the time comes to write the paper I’m putting Holmes down as the first author. This should have been his coup. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that you’ll be able to scurry off into the shadows, my boy. You’re already a media darling just for being a good bloke. Can you imagine what’s going to happen when the world finds out that King Arthur was likely real and that you’re a descendant, complete with a royal rib? You’ll be canonized, mate. We’ll probably live to see your mug on postage stamps and tea towels!”