In the Barchester Breviary, Arthur discovered a curious notation in the margins next to the Prayer of Consecration—the prayer during which, according to the medieval Roman Catholic beliefs of Barchester, the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The note was in Old English, not Latin, and read, as Arthur had translated: “Here I remember the great treasure of Barsyt.” The word for “treasure” in the note was “déorwyrenes,” which indicated something worthy of veneration.
But Barchester didn’t have a great treasure. It was one of the reasons the cathedral had always been relatively poor. There had been a small cult of Ewolda, a few miracles attributed to her relics, and a trickle of pilgrims hoping to be healed. But even in legend, Barchester had never housed a fragment of the True Cross or the bones of some great king or archbishop. True, the lost Book of Ewolda was rumored to have been covered in jewels, but it was in no way connected to the Prayer of Consecration. But what if, Arthur wondered, the treasure was a secret? And what if Bishop Gladwyn, the great historian of Barchester, had discovered that secret and left a hint about it in his portrait? If Barchester really was the resting place of the Holy Grail, what better place in the service to remember the Cup of Christ than during the prayer that commemorates his first passing that cup to his disciples?
Arthur kept a notebook of all his findings, carefully detailing all the evidence that Barchester was connected to the Holy Grail and legends of King Arthur from the curious marginalia in the breviary and in Stansby’s edition of Morte d’Arthur to the yew tree in the cloisters. He also recorded his memory of one of the last days he ever spent with his grandfather. They had, with permission, climbed to the top of the central tower of the cathedral, emerging onto a tiny parapet just below the spire. It was a crisp, clear, early summer day and the views in every direction were magnificent. Arthur’s grandfather pointed out villages fifteen and twenty miles away, identifiable by their church towers. Just before they headed back down, Arthur noticed a pair of sculptures, worn by centuries of rain, sitting just behind the parapet, where they could never be seen from below—two lions looking west toward the cathedral’s main door. Arthur instantly recalled a passage in The Romance of King Arthur, describing the castle in which Launcelot saw the Holy Grail: “There was a postern opened toward the sea, and was open without any keeping, save two lions kept the entry.” He excitedly recited the passage to his grandfather, pointing out the lion statues, but his grandfather only smiled, winked, and ducked back through the low doorway that led into the darkness inside the tower.
Arthur meticulously recorded all this evidence, without a thought of sharing his findings. He had promised his grandfather to keep the Grail and his search for it a secret. To Arthur, the mystery was deeply private, and deeply connected to his memories of those happy summer days with his grandfather.
Now, looking back over his notes about Collier and Rackham, Arthur added a sentence about the Grail table, which Bethany had noticed—the table on which the lost Book of Ewolda lay. What he hadn’t considered before was that two treasures featured prominently in Gladwyn’s portrait—the Holy Grail and the lost Book of Ewolda—and that the silver table connected the two. If something in the Book of Ewolda allowed Arthur to prove conclusively that Barchester was associated with the Grail, it might be time to break his promise to his grandfather and share the secret. That sort of discovery could mean grants and lottery funding and museums and a national outcry against selling off the manuscripts of the great Barchester Cathedral Library.
With an hour remaining in his consultation period, Arthur decided to call it a day. If he left now he could be back at the cathedral by three o’clock and have time to compare Bishop Gladwyn’s inventory to the eighty-two manuscripts on the library shelves.
As he was locking his office door he heard footsteps behind him. “Arthur, I’m glad I caught you,” said Miss Stanhope. “Don’t your office hours last until three thirty?”
“Miss Stanhope,” said Arthur, “what a delight.” It was anything but.
“I just wanted to discuss the last section of Mansfield Park for a few minutes.” Miss Stanhope waved not a book but a flat silver tablet in the air.
“And how are we to discuss Mansfield Park,” said Arthur, “if you have not brought Mansfield Park with you?”
“Oh, don’t be such an old grouch,” said Miss Stanhope. “I downloaded the text file from Project Gutenberg and I’m reading it on my iPad.”
Students didn’t even read books anymore, thought Arthur. They dispensed with design and layout and cover art and illustrations and reduced reading to nothing but a stream of text in whatever font and size they chose. Reading without books, thought Arthur, was like playing cricket without dressing in white. It could be done, but why?
“Miss Stanhope,” said Arthur, “may I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Arthur.”
“Do you ever go to the media center?”
“Sure, I go there all the time.”
“And what do you do when you are there?”
“Well, they have very comfortable chairs, and the coffee is good, and the Wi-Fi is superfast.”
Was that it? wondered Arthur. Were libraries now just places with good coffee and fast Internet connections? Was there no way to get students to actually interact with books even in a building once devoted to those very objects? Arthur wasn’t sure he yet understood what the media center’s purpose was in this digital age, but he hoped he might find a way to make it more than the provision of hot beverages and comfy chairs.
“I’m sorry, Miss Stanhope,” said Arthur, shoving his keys in his pocket. “I won’t be able to meet with you this afternoon. Family emergency.”
He scurried off down the hall before Miss Stanhope could reply.
—
Thirty minutes later, Arthur was walking across the close on a stunningly bright spring day. The spire of the cathedral was silhouetted against a deep blue sky lightly dusted with wisps of cloud. He stood for a moment, gazing up at the spire—that remarkable structure that had towered over Barchester for six centuries. It had no doubt been a beacon to those few pilgrims who sought out the shrine of Ewolda; sadly it had also been a beacon to Nazi bombers. But the spire had survived, and the survival of such a fragile structure gave Arthur hope that the rest of the cathedral, and the treasures it contained, would survive as well.