by Unknown
The alarm raised, Malory organized a party of some two dozen supporters to ride out from his manor and take up positions in the forest. At dusk the keen-eyed Aleyn pointed into the gloom and alerted Malory to the approaching raiding party. Buckingham’s men crept forward on foot and when they drew closer it was clear they were carrying fatted torches on long handles, useful for tossing from afar to set ablaze just such a house as Newbold Revel.
Malory surprised them by ordering a charge from the front and both flanks. The marauders turned heel and retreated so fast that casualties were light on both sides. Yet, in the heat of pursuit, Malory swore he saw the blue-plumed coronet of Buckingham bobbing above a black stallion before horse and rider disappeared into the darkness.
The abortive attack and its aftermath absorbed much of Malory’s attentions. Without prisoners he was unable to prove that Buckingham was behind the outrage, but he worked the backrooms of Parliament where he served as MP for Great Bedwyn, recruiting wavering parties to take his side against he who was fat and full of grease.
Then another distraction prevented Malory from undertaking his quest. In his youth, Malory had served as a Knight Hospitaller in Turkey, and one of his comrades-in-arms against the Moors was a gentleman, William Weston, from a village near Newbold Revel. One day Weston came to Malory desperate for help. His sister Joan, a prosperous woman in her own right, had married Hugh Smith of Monks Kirby, an intemperate brute who beat her and forced himself upon her in a manner unsuitable for a gentleman and a husband. Malory had known Joan fondly from childhood and was persuaded by Weston to help rescue the unfortunate woman from her woeful circumstance. His desire for Excalibur was eclipsed by his moral imperative to help a damsel in distress.
The raid took some planning but went off without confrontation or violence. Joan gathered up her own marital possessions into a chest and Malory, Weston, and their party spirited her away to one of Weston’s properties in Barwell. There, Joan and Malory, flushed with the thrill of the exploit, fell into a night of passion. Malory, ever the gentleman, regretted the lapse as soon as it happened and later would come to regret it even more.
When this affair was settled and London politics had quieted, Malory finally could turn his attention to Excalibur and Tintagel.
#
The journey to Cornwall was long but not particularly arduous. The weather was mainly fair and Malory’s party of five that included his cousin, John Aleyn, and two squires, made their way west unimpeded by brigands or highwaymen. They slept under the stars, though on occasion Malory and his cousin were given a mat by a hearth in a roadside cottage. Though none of them had ever been to the Cornish coast, they learned the way from the archbishop of Taunton, who gave the gentlemen overnight accommodation in his priory house. On the last day of their journey they suspected they were close when they smelled the sea, and they knew they had arrived when they heard waves crashing against the rocky coast.
Malory, tall in his saddle, saw it first and shouted, “Look, there!”
Robert Malory, under the weather the past few days from some stomach disagreement, nodded limply; but John Aleyn shared his knight’s excitement.
“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”
Out of deference to Robert’s delicate state they chose not to end their trek in joyous gallop.
The castle was perched at the edge of the cliffs. They would not appreciate how high and steep the rock face was until they were upon it. It sat on a promontory joined to the mainland by a narrow spit of land. The cliffs below faced the full force of an unforgiving ocean. The fortress, erected in 1233 by Richard, earl of Cornwall, had been built upon earlier and ancient structures, some as early as Roman days. Richard was all too aware of the Arthurian heritage of the site. It was common knowledge passed down the generations that some seven centuries before Richard’s time a long-forgotten Cornish castle had occupied the land. That fortress was said to be the place where Uther Pendragon seduced Queen Igraine and sired a baby who was to become Arthur, King of the Britons. Richard capitalized on the Arthurian connections for his own prestige and deliberately built his castle in the style of antiquity, low and squat with thick walls. Now, three hundred years hence, Richard’s castle was itself wrecked and abandoned, the casualty of sacking by a Cornish warlord a century earlier.
The five travelers dismounted at the foot of the highest standing wall and tied the horses to scrub. The castle was a place of palpable solitude. Not a soul was to be seen nor a sheep grazing on the plain. Malory walked the sort distance to the precipice over coastal meadowland and peered hundreds of feet down to the churning surf. The sky was becoming as gray as the sea. Though anxious to proceed, Malory said, “Let us set up camp for the night. At first light we will find the way down and then we will find our cave.”
#
Buckingham was a man who felt comfortable in the dark. He had sensitive eyes that stung and watered in the sunlight so he ordered all the drapes permanently closed at his country manors and London palace. Besides, the darkness had always vitalized him more than daylight. Like a nocturnal animal his senses were more acute when the sun had set. His unhappy wife called him a bat to his face; behind his back she called him worse.
So it was with profound irritation that he emerged from his candlelit London study to meet with his colleague, George Ripley, and examine the amazing scroll laid out on his sunlit dining room table.
Ripley was even fatter than he. Buckingham squinted at the man’s huge face and said, “Does it need to be so bright?”
“I beseech you to look quickly, my lord, and then we can retire to a more comfortable room to discuss our affairs.”
Their affairs, as Ripley put it, were Buckingham’s most private ones—and well hidden from public view, though it was whispered in gossip and rumor that Buckingham was a disciple of the alchemical arts. While not an avid practitioner like Ripley, Buckingham’s vast wealth put him in position to be the leading patron of the dark science. As such, his influence stretched across the channel, throughout the continent and into Asia.
Even within the secretive and rarefied world of alchemy Buckingham’s interests were rather more rarefied. While most alchemists devoted themselves to finding the secret of manipulating cheap base metals into gold, Buckingham had a loftier goal. He was a member, indeed the leader, of a loosely affiliated group of worthies who followed in the footsteps of the great alchemists of the past, tracing their lineage to the greatest of them all, Nehor, son of Jebedee, cast-off disciple of Christ.
Ripley was the newest member, recruited to take the place of a Spanish alchemist who had died from inhaling mercury vapors. Ripley, a Yorkshireman, had inherited a considerable fortune and used it to indulge his passion for the natural sciences. When tapped by Buckingham to join the secretive Khem he was midway through his twenty-five-volume alchemical treatise, Liber Duodecim, which already had brought him fame for his progress in finding the Philosopher’s Stone.
Ripley recently had concluded the production of an elaborately illustrated scroll cryptically and enigmatically laying out in Latin the steps necessary for the acquisition of the Philosopher’s Stone and there it was, all eighteen feet of it, unrolled on the long banqueting table. Buckingham walked its length, shielding his eyes with one hand, gesticulating with the other.
“These illustrations are by your own hand, Ripley?”
“They are, my lord.”
“I had no idea you possessed this talent. And who might this be?” He was pointing at the image of a large bearded man in a robe and headdress clutching an egg-shaped vessel to his chest.
“Why it is Nehor, of course.”
Buckingham was about to order a servant to close the curtains when he remembered he had shooed the butler away. He angrily performed the chore himself.
“I do hope that among all this nonsense you’ve made no mention of the Grail.”
Ripley looked crestfallen. “I did no such thing! I would never venture into forbidden topics. And I would hardly re
fer to my text as nonsense.”
“Not nonsense, eh? Tell me, Ripley, have you or have you not actually found the Philosopher’s Stone?”
Buckingham’s eyes were adjusting to the low light. He saw beads of sweat forming on Ripley’s forehead.
“I would say that I have made great strides, my lord.”
Buckingham laughed and made for the door. “Just as I said, Ripley, nonsense. Now come with me to talk of more substantive matters.”
Ripley joined him in his windowless lair, which was strewn with books, quires, and maps. The fire had gone to embers and the only light came from a few candles.
The men sat and drank a port wine.
“Sir Thomas Malory,” Buckingham said. “Have you ever heard of him?”
Ripley had not.
“He is a small player on a large stage, a Warwick toady and member of Parliament who has been a thorn in my flank from time to time. But his politics are not what concerns me today.”
“I see.”
“I have a man close to him who is my spy. I have learned of late that Malory is not altogether as ordinary as I had thought. Indeed he well may be a descendant of King Arthur, as incredible as that might sound. It seems he is on a journey to Cornwall to find Arthur’s sword and from there the Grail itself.”
Ripley’s eyes, already wide from the darkness, grew larger.
“If he is successful, Ripley, then we must seize the sword and find its secret before Malory is able to do so himself. Your Philosopher’s Stone is but a child’s plaything. The Grail is the one true object of our desire. With it, kings and queens and popes will be as insignificant to us as flies to be swatted and swept away.”
#
Malory awoke to the sound of surging waves striking the cliffs. Aleyn had already managed a small fire and was roasting the last of the rabbits he had snared the previous night. The others gathered around and they ate just enough meat to quiet their bellies. A sea mist dampened their clothes but not their spirits as they made their way to the cliffs to find a way down to the beach.
The cliffs directly below the castle were sheer. Only a madman would attempt a descent at that point. Malory led the group away from the mainland over an expanse of meadowland that inclined sharply toward the sea and before long he identified a more favorable approach. Though treacherous, the climb down, he reckoned, would be safe enough.
His cousin rubbed at his hip as he looked over the edge. “I would hate to impede your progress, coz. Better I should wait here and guard the horses.”
Malory grunted and took the first step toward the sea.
The four men made easy enough work of their descent. The two squires were youngest and fittest and were the ones with heavy picks and shovels slung over their backs. Halfway down they paused on a narrow ledge and debated whether the tide was coming in or out. Malory hoped the waters were ebbing since a flooded cave would be a danger but the men concluded that the tide was against them.
“Let us make haste,” Malory said. “We are almost there and I will not wait another minute to fulfill my destiny.”
“Come hell or high water,” one of the squires said to the other.
Malory was the first to step on the beach, a narrow strip of wet sand that he figured would be under water before very long. The sea was dark and roiling. Swooping gulls seemed to mock their efforts with their cries. Malory made heavy footsteps in the sand and pointed with excitement. There were two caves, one with a huge mouth, the other smaller by half.
“Which one, my lord?” Aleyn asked.
“A great king would favor a great cave,” Malory reasoned. “This one I say.”
The large cave beckoned; stepping in felt like entering the gaping mouth of a sea monster. The floor was the same soft sand as the beach but strewn with smooth rocks washed in by the tide. The black walls of the cave rose high above their heads, forming a massive arched gallery that dwarfed them.
Malory looked out into the sea. The mouth of the cave was the shape of a great clasped fist. The tide would not be their ally. “Make fire and light the torches,” he commanded. “Quickly.”
His squire took a pouch from his belt and went to work sparking flint onto a heap of dry cotton threads and brittle wood chips. When a spark caught, the other page held a greased torch to the flame until it was lit then used that to light another. Malory took one and led the way, casting light onto the wall, looking for the symbol and praying it was there. A few hundred paces in he once again saw daylight and exclaimed that the cave went all the way through the head of land to the other side.
John Aleyn was marking Malory pace for pace on the opposite wall of the cave when he soon cried out, “Here, my lord!”
Malory ran to his side and saw what John pointed to, etched into the rock face at chest level. Only the size of a man’s hand, a simple cross—the cross of Christ. Aleyn looked down and stepped away as though he were treading on forbidden ground.
“Dig there,” Malory ordered his squire, “in the marks made by John Aleyn’s feet.”
There was no need for the pick so the young squire used only the long-handled shovel to scoop at the heavy sand. As the squire dug, Malory crouched and held the torch above. As the hole grew deeper, Malory prayed that something might be found before the water rushed in from the bottom. He had sent the other squire back to the mouth of the cave and now the young man was calling out, “The tide is at the entrance. We don’t have long, my lord!”
The hole was knee deep and nothing thus far but sand and stones. Then the iron of the shovel made a satisfying clunk on something hard. Malory shooed the squire out of the hole and stepped in himself, using his dagger and free hand to probe deeper.
“Hand down the torch!” he called, planting the flambeau in the corner. “I am certain there is something here, something made of metal.”
“Hurry!” Aleyn said. “The tide is rising, my lord. It will be upon us soon.”
Malory would not be rushed. He dug and probed, scraped and threw handful after handful of sand over his shoulder. Finally, with the sound of the surging sea in his ears he rose from his haunches cradling something between his palms.
Aleyn held up the other torch. There was no mistaking it. It was a sword. The blade was long, thin, and irregularly scalloped, corroded by black masses of rust, a shadow of its former glory. But the guard, hilt, and pommel were as pristine as the day they had been fashioned.
Malory stepped from the hole and told his squire to wet a cloth in seawater. The squire ran toward the mouth of the cave and returned with the washcloth he always kept in his tunic. Malory washed the grit from the sword handle. The gilded silver gleamed in the torchlight.
“Behold! Excalibur!” he exclaimed.
Malory strained his eyes to inspect the heavy guard, a slab of silver forming a cross with the corroded blade.
“What is it, my lord?” Aleyn asked.
“It is some sort of writing, though I cannot make sense of it. But this much I do vouch. I believe it to be a message sent to me o’er the ages from the great and mighty Arthur, King of the Britons.”
14
Over breakfast Claire put down her coffee and said, “I was thinking in the shower.”
Arthur put down his newspaper, smiling at the image.
“It seems to me that one should always start with the simple and progress to the complex,” she continued. “It’s a good approach for math, it’s a good approach for physics; it’s probably a good approach for this too. The simpler of the two documents is the preface. The book is a bit like a nightmare.”
“All right, I’ll go with that,” he said. “Let’s start with the basic facts. We have every indication that the printer, William Caxton, wrote the bits about putting King Arthur into a grand historical perspective. The part we know Thomas Malory wrote relates to the peculiar laundry list of books and chapters.” He referred to his notes. “The last sentence of the preface says, ‘The sum is twenty-one books which contain the sum of five hundred and seve
n chapters, as more plainly shall follow hereafter.’ So if there’s a clue that links to something in the Domesday Book, we have twenty-one books and five hundred and seven chapters to sift through. How the hell do we know where to start?”
Claire stood up and began pacing, sending a drift of perfume through the room. “Once again I’d come back to the principle of simplicity. Instead of dealing with this entire book maybe we should see which of the twenty-one books concern themselves with King Arthur’s sword. Then, which is the most important book—and when we think we know this we have a number. Then we see which chapter is the most important in the book, and we have another number. Then maybe we can take these numbers and apply them to the Domesday Book, which is a book of numbers.” She opened the Domesday Book to a random page, “Like here, this village has twenty plows and thirteen villans and eight bordars, whatever these things are.”
Arthur nodded in agreement. “I think you’re onto something. It’s always been a sore point at my company but maybe physicists are smarter than chemists.”
She delivered an insouciant Gallic shrug. “Of course. This isn’t in question.”
It was pointless to wait for a declaration that she was joking because clearly she wasn’t. He let it pass. He’d dealt with physicists for years.