“Reasonably well,” said Arthur. “I learned it because of this book, because I couldn’t resist the desire to read these words.” He picked up the manuscript and read the first verse of John’s Gospel, words that priests and monks had read from its pages a millennium ago: “In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum.”
The words hung in the air for a moment as the two men stood gazing at the ancient manuscript. “You know my job is to secure pieces for auction,” said Stephen as Arthur returned the Gospel to its place on the shelf. “But I have to admit, it would be a shame for a manuscript like that, that’s been at Barchester for a thousand years, to wind up in some private collection.”
“I had a feeling we were going to be friends,” said Arthur.
“Still, I have to do my job.”
“I understand,” said Arthur, and over the next two hours he showed him another twenty or so of the finest manuscripts. Stephen was especially taken with the Barchester Breviary.
“This is extraordinarily fine musical notation. Quite rare in an English manuscript this early.”
“We had a scribe in Barchester in the thirteenth century who seemed to specialize in musical notation. His work appears in three of our manuscripts, but most of it is here in the breviary. We never had great illuminators here—the monastery was perennially poor—but we’re very proud of our nameless musical scribe. His work is really marvelous.”
“And would fetch a marvelous price,” said Stephen. “And I notice that, unlike the rest of the manuscripts, this breviary still has its front cover attached.”
“And how much of a problem is that? That the covers are missing?”
“It depends on the book. Certainly they would be more valuable to collectors with the covers intact, but the rarest and most valuable will still sell at quite high prices. For many of the others, though, finding the covers might make the difference between a strong estimate and a rather more cautious one.”
Arthur showed Stephen works on medicine, history, and theology, and was just about to pull out a manuscript that he had never examined closely, a collection of excerpts from mathematical treatises, when he remembered what Bethany had found within its pages the day before. Not even sure what he was hiding, he pushed the volume back onto the shelf. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I generally go to Evensong before dinner. Would you care to join me before catching your train?”
“I think I have enough information to advise the dean on the next step,” said Stephen. “And Evensong sounds lovely.”
Arthur crossed over to his usual table and swept a few papers into his satchel, taking care that the piece of parchment that Bethany had left there was among them. He had been dying to look at it since he arrived at the library, but part of him wanted to keep it hidden from Stephen. He would have to wait. “Right, well, the service starts in ten minutes, so we’d best be going.”
Bethany was not at Evensong, which was too bad, thought Arthur. He would have liked introducing her to Stephen and she would, he thought, have liked the Orlando Gibbons setting the choir sang. After the service, he walked Stephen to the station and bid him farewell, afraid to ask the question that had nagged at him all the way through the service: What was the “next step”?
—
When Bethany stepped out of St. Dunstan’s Chapel after Communion the next morning, Arthur was waiting for her. He had sat in the nave after Morning Prayer, just close enough to St. Dunstan’s that he could hear the rise and fall of the service—the softness of the prayers spoken by the celebrant (this morning, Canon Dale) and the marginally louder responses of the three-person congregation. Even though he avoided Communion services, he knew, from reading the Book of Common Prayer, the pattern of the service, and he made his way to the chapel just as it ended.
“Can you spare a moment?” Arthur said, smiling at Bethany.
“For you, of course,” said Bethany, winking at him.
“Since you are one of the few people who have read both Bishop Gladwyn’s guidebook and my own, I wanted to show you something that we both left out. I didn’t include it on purpose, so it would stay my little secret; I’ve no idea why he didn’t mention it. I didn’t tell you about it the other night because . . . well, it’s a visual.”
“What is it?” asked Bethany. “I can’t dawdle around all day looking for the Holy Grail, you know. I’ve got work to do.”
“Well,” said Arthur, “since you told me you go to Communion in St. Dunstan’s Chapel every day, I thought you might have noticed yourself. It’s rather curious.” Arthur led Bethany back into the small confines of the chapel. “See anything unusual?”
“I grew up in a Florida megachurch,” said Bethany. “It’s all unusual.”
“Take a look at the carvings above the altar.”
Bethany stepped toward the altar and leaned forward to examine four rows of small carvings—each barely bigger than a child’s toy. The first row of figures was a series of animals attacking men—a lion, a dragon, a serpent, and an eagle. Above those, four men were killing four beasts—another dragon, a wolf, a bear, and some sort of sea monster. The third row might well have been a lineup of King Arthur’s knights: four men in armor, the central two astride mighty steeds. At the top of the frieze hovered four angels.
“What do you think?” said Arthur when Bethany had had time to examine all the figures.
“Not exactly sacred,” she said, “other than the angels at the top, and I suppose that could be St. George slaying the dragon. But why does it seem familiar to me?”
Arthur spoke gently:
For all the sacred mount of Camelot . . .
Climbs to the mighty hall that Merlin built.
And four great zones of sculpture, set betwixt
With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:
And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
And on the fourth are men with growing wings.
“Tennyson,” said Bethany excitedly. “It’s his description of Camelot from ‘The Holy Grail.’”
“You know your Grail literature.”
“But what does Camelot have to do with Bishop Draper’s chantry chapel?”
“I’ve absolutely no idea,” said Arthur. “But Tennyson must have seen these carvings. It’s too big a coincidence; and I’ve not seen others like them anywhere else. It’s just one more curious link between Barchester and the Arthur legends.”
“Do you think Malory could have seen these carvings?” asked Bethany, once again leaning to inspect the figures.
“Who knows?” said Arthur. “The chapel was built just before the time when Malory was most likely writing Morte d’Arthur. If he ever visited Barchester, this would have been the newest work in the cathedral.”
“But he never described the sculptures of Camelot.”
“No,” said Arthur, “he didn’t.”
—