“Stop smiling like that, Arthur,” she said. “It’s a true story and he wrote it much better than I’m telling it and if you had been a twelve-year-old obsessed with Grail stories and were sitting up late at night in a creaking old house reading this article . . . well, just stop smiling and let me finish.”
Arthur stopped smiling, not without effort.
“So he ends up finding this old lady, who was a servant to the last member of the family to live at the house, and she tells him all about the cup. People would send handkerchiefs to be dipped in the water of the cup and people would come to the house to drink. She said the lady who owned it valued the cup more than her own life. So this ex-servant referred him to another former servant, and he gave directions to the secret home of the cup. So he goes there, and there it is, in the top drawer of a hallway bureau—the Holy Grail. I thought it was so cool that the Grail would just be in a drawer at somebody’s house instead of in some shrine or museum. And I loved how hard it was for him to find and how . . . how insignificant it seemed. It was just a gnarled piece of old wood, hardly in the shape of a cup anymore. That seemed right to me—that the Grail should be something so humble. And whether or not it was the Grail, there were all these stories of miraculous healings associated with it. People believed in the Grail and somehow that made miracles happen. Mrs. Mirylees, the lady who owned it then, said she didn’t want to submit it for scientific analysis and I’ll never forget her reason. She said history would be served but faith would be destroyed. She never had any doubt about which was more important. And that’s when I started believing in the Grail.”
The candle had burned low, but neither Bethany nor Arthur seemed inclined to move. Arthur had never read the article that had so affected Bethany, but he knew the story of that broken and worn wooden cup. He wondered if Bethany knew the whole truth and he almost hoped she didn’t. He certainly didn’t want to be the one to challenge her faith with history.
“The Nanteos Cup,” he whispered at last.
“Yes,” said Bethany. “The Nanteos Cup. The King Arthur stories were so obviously just that—stories. But this was real. This wasn’t some made-up adventure from a thousand years ago; this had just happened.”
“And you didn’t go straight to the Internet and look it up?”
“I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe. It was the first time I ever realized that belief is more important than reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Arthur, that maybe it’s more important that you believe in God than that he actually exists. So I didn’t look it up online or read anything else about it for probably five years after I read that article. I didn’t want to know.”
“And now?”
“Now I know, Arthur. You don’t have to worry.”
Arthur, whose work at the cathedral had been so much about discovering the truth of the past, as separate from myth and legend and even faith, sighed with disappointment. Somehow he felt that being in the presence of someone who believed completely not only in the idea of the Grail but in a specific relic would be like standing in the light of a candle in a cathedral of darkness. The Nanteos Cup was a medieval wooden bowl, probably no more than six or seven hundred years old. It was not associated in any way with legends of the Grail until the early twentieth century.
“But even though I finally read the truth about the cup, I had believed in the Grail for years by then and it’s not as easy to kill faith as Mrs. Mirylees thought.” Bethany leaned forward in her seat. “I still believe in the Grail, Arthur. I still think it’s out there somewhere. So when I got the opportunity to come to England and digitize ancient manuscripts, the first thing I thought was maybe one of those old manuscripts will tell me something about the Grail. And the second thing I thought was maybe they’ll let me go to Barchester and I can meet Arthur Prescott—because yes, I had sort of been stalking you since you bought those notebooks.”
“So you didn’t come here to find the Holy Grail for your employer and his museum?”
“I’m sure if Jesse Johnson thought he could get hold of the Holy Grail he would do everything in his considerable power to do so, but I hardly think he’d start looking in Barchester. This place has nothing to do with Grail legend, you know that.”
“You haven’t asked to hear my story,” said Arthur.
“It was part of my plan,” said Bethany. “Follow you into a dark cathedral in the dead of night and tell you about an old magazine just so I could get you to spill all your secrets.” She stared into the unwavering flame of the candle for a moment. “But seriously, will you tell me your story?”
“That was part of my plan,” said Arthur. He leaned back into his seat so that the woodwork completely hid Bethany from view. He wasn’t sure how to start.
“Have you left us again, Arthur?” said Bethany at last. “The candle isn’t going to last forever, you know.”
Arthur swallowed hard. He had kept his belief in the Grail a secret since childhood; not talking about it would be a hard habit to break, but if he didn’t break it he might lose . . . well, something more important than a childhood connection to his grandfather.
“This is a big deal for me,” said Arthur.
“You don’t think that was a big deal for me,” said Bethany. “I’m sitting in an empty cathedral spilling all my darkest Grail secrets.”
“Fair enough,” said Arthur. “I have some secrets, too.”
“How old were you?” said Bethany. “I mean, when you first found out about the Grail.”
“I was nine,” said Arthur, “just like you. My grandfather showed me the Stansby Morte d’Arthur, the copy you’ve been reading. And then he took me home and he read to me from his edition of Malory and then I asked him.”
“About the Grail?”
“I didn’t know what that word meant, so I asked and he told me. And he told me what he believed about the Grail and made me promise to keep it a secret.” Arthur sat in silence for a moment, measuring the night with the slow intake and exhaling of breath. Bethany matched his breathing but said nothing.
“He told me that the Grail was real.”
“And you believed him?”
“I did,” said Arthur.
“But that’s not all he told you,” said Bethany.
“No,” said Arthur. “He told me three other things. He told me that I could be the person to find the Grail; he told me I had to keep the Grail and everything I learned about it a secret; and he told me that the Grail is here in Barchester.”
“Wow,” said Bethany. “No wonder you were so worried about me.”
“When I heard about Jesse Johnson and then I found all those Grail materials in your bag—my thesis and notes about me and everything—I thought he had sent you here to look for the Grail, especially after what happened to the Nanteos Cup.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was stolen,” said Arthur. “A couple of years ago. It had been borrowed by a family member who was ill and while she was in hospital someone stole it from her house.”
“And you figured Jesse Johnson . . .”
“When I heard he was looking for the Grail, the thought did cross my mind.”
“Did they ever find it?”