“Waterhouse wasn’t a Pre-Raphaelite,” said Arthur, “and of course The Lady of Shalott, though certainly Arthurian in nature, was a nineteenth-century invention of Tennyson.”
“Yes, I know that, Arthur,” said Bethany. “But in the same way Tennyson was influenced by Malory and that whole crowd, Waterhouse was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites—that’s all I’m trying to say.”
“So was Collier,” said Arthur.
“You can see every stitch in his vestments,” said Bethany, leaning toward the painting until her nose almost touched the canvas.
“Indeed,” said Arthur, falling quiet again while Bethany undertook a closer examination.
“OK,” she said at last, stepping back. “Now, tell me about all the iconography. I can see you’re dying to.”
“First of all, we see the bishop is wearing his red Eucharistic vestments—his chasuble but also his stole and his maniple, that’s the cloth draped over his arm. The red at that time was for the feasts of martyrs, which is one way we know the painting shows the bishop on the feast day of St. Ewolda. Then there are the four golden images stitched into the vestments.”
“They’re so small,” said Bethany, squinting at the painting. “I can hardly make them out. Is that a woman holding a cup?”
“They each show Ewolda. Nearly all we know about her is contained in those four images.”
“No wonder you don’t know much.”
“The originals are much easier to see,” said Arthur.
“The originals?”
“The images on the bishop’s vestments are based on four carved ceiling bosses in the cloister of the cathedral. I’ll show you sometime, if I can tear you away from your . . . what do you call it—your digitizing.”
“Hey, you’ll appreciate my digitizing one day. Now tell me about the cup.”
Arthur hesitated. She seemed a nice enough young woman, but all that talk of digitizing worried him. Telling her that he had strong reason to believe the cup in the painting was meant to be the Holy Grail would not exactly be breaking his promise of secrecy to his grandfather. In Barchester at least, Gladwyn’s obsession with medievalism was no great secret. But if this young woman was interested in the Grail, he had no desire to encourage her to pursue that interest on his turf. “Not the Holy Grail, I think,” he said. “Simply a Communion cup. I believe the painting is meant to show the moment in the service before the elements are distributed just after the Prayer of Consecration.”
“You don’t think that’s the Grail table?” said Bethany, pointing to the small table in the painting.
“What do you mean?”
“Malory writes about the Grail sitting on a silver table, and that’s a silver table.”
“I never thought about that,” said Arthur, who, to his great consternation, never had. It bothered him that this American knew her Morte d’Arthur so well. “A coincidence, I’m sure.” But he knew it wasn’t. Bethany had pointed out a clue he had completely missed, and that strengthened his own suspicions about the painting.
“Right,” she said, “a coincidence. What about that book on the Grail table? What’s that?”
“That book is the reason I’m having so much trouble with my cathedral guide.”
“How so?”
“That is the lost Book of Ewolda. According to legend, it was a jewel-encrusted manuscript, though that bit is rather unlikely, given Barchester’s perennial poverty. It’s supposed to contain not just her life story, but also long-lost secrets of the cathedral.”
“What happened to it?”
“We’ve no idea. Probably it was either destroyed by Vikings or destroyed by Normans or destroyed by reformers.”
“In other words, there are lots of ways a manuscript could have gone missing in the past thousand years or so.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why is it in the painting?”
“Gladwyn was a great medievalist. He was fascinated by anything to do with the early history of the cathedral. He wrote that 1890 guidebook you were reading.”
“Why didn’t he even mention Ewolda?”
“Like me, he knew almost nothing about her,” said Arthur, “but I think he believed in the lost manuscript. And he believed one day it would be found.”
—
Arthur felt no guilt about denying to Miss Davis that the cup in the painting of Gladwyn was the Holy Grail. She had been in Barchester a few hours; Arthur had been secretly researching connections between Barchester and the Grail since he was a teenager—and Gladwyn’s Grail portrait was one of his discoveries. Because the painting was not reproduced in any book, it attracted few visitors, and as far as Arthur knew, no one else had made the specific connection to the Holy Grail that he had made. Even his grandfather had never mentioned Gladwyn’s portrait to him. He didn’t like the idea of the portrait being on this Instagram, whatever that was, for anyone to see. Barchester and its Grail connections were Arthur’s private territory, unknown even to his closest friends. He had no reason to believe that Miss Davis was more than casually interested in the Grail, but if he wasn’t going to tell David and Oscar what he knew about Gladwyn’s portrait, he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. If his grandfather was right and there were ancient secrets lurking in Barchester—secrets about Ewolda or secrets about the Grail—Arthur fully intended to be the one to uncover them.
—
By the time Arthur and Bethany were back outside, it was nearly time for Evensong. He had meant to get some work done this afternoon, but instead had spent his time . . . doing what? Explaining to a child why books are important? No, that wasn’t fair. True, Miss Davis was probably not much older than his students, but she seemed considerably better at mounting a defense against his arguments. Her vision of the future depressed him, but he admired her ability to make her case. If he hadn’t gotten to the library today, at least he had engaged in a bit of a battle. As Bethany wrapped a scarf around her neck against the late afternoon chill, he turned to her and, on a whim, asked, “Why don’t you come along with me to Evensong?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Bethany. “I’m not really a churchgoer. Ironically.”
“Why ironically?” asked Arthur, as they walked back toward the cathedral.
“Well, my father is pastor of this megachurch in Florida and ever since I was a kid I was forced to go and I know I’m supposed to be moved to tears by the loud music and the flashing lights and all the preaching and witnessing, but it just never did anything for me, you know. I mean, I don’t have a problem with it—whatever works for you, right? It’s just not my kind of thing.”
“Forgive me for asking, but what exactly is a megachurch?”
“It’s a . . . well, the building is more like an auditorium than any church you’d find here in Barchester.”