by Mike Voyce
Chapter 26 – The Box
After channelling that last chapter with Angharad, and drinking her whisky, I don’t remember getting up, or saying goodbye.
There’s just a hazy impression of walking round in the wet, of shop lights as night fell. The next thing I do remember is sitting in my office, in the dark, tears rolling down my face.
There was emptiness at the pit of my stomach so that for days I couldn’t eat. The horror of the last chapter filled my mind, but when I did finally turn away from it, I thought of the Sword though Edward hadn’t used it at Penshurst.
Then I remembered what Father Joseph said in Cambridge,
“..The Sword has two edges... as you use it ill it will use you ill.”
In the service of King Henry, Edward had killed those Cornishmen with Duke Henry’s Sword; now Eadie, Abby, Thomas and Aletia were all dead.
Is there such a thing as coincidence? When I mentioned it to Angharad I remembered Edward left five bodies on the road, there were only four deaths at Penshurst. Angharad told me no,
“Don’t you realise?
There were five deaths, Edward died there too.”
Surely the last chapter should finish the book, yet it doesn’t. Aside from the ‘might have beens’, if Edward hadn’t used Duke Henry’s Sword, or if he’d gone home earlier; something else nagged at me.
Finding Edward reminiscing was like overcoming a barrier, something awakened; you remember, at the end of my channelling, I had a sense he was talking to me. Duke Edward reached across all these centuries and a part of him stayed with me.
Silence tolls out of emptiness, yet there was one night, when Edward did speak. It was late but I couldn’t sleep. It was a restless night, full of nameless fears and tensions. It was a night for my thoughts to run wild in fretful expectation.
It was Duke Edward who wouldn’t leave me, and the silence crackled with tension. At first there was neither sight nor sound, only shapes forming in my mind. I imagined, as it might be, Edward as I’d seen him at Thornbury. I imagined him as he was, more than forty years of age, every detail slowly clearing, even the fine stitching of his doublet and the heavy embroidery on his shirt, the white of it poking through the slashes in his sleeves, his seals, his purse, the dagger dangling at his waist, all became clear. The Duke was a big man, in his day, a giant. No room could hold him without every eye turning to him. Now I was his only audience and his presence penetrated from every side.
“Tell them about the Grail.”
Then again,
“You neglected the Cup.”
As his presence faded the words remained. These were such strange thoughts to have me scrabbling through the draws of my desk at three o’clock in the morning. Yet I did find the notes I made as the story unfolded, I poured over them, looking for what I’d missed.
You remember the Box Edward found in the Tower Room at Stafford, holding the cup and the other treasures; the box he supposed came from France with his great grandfather, Duke Humphrey? The burial I didn’t quite bring into this story? That too, was about the cup and the Box.
I looked through my notes, remembering Edward, thinking about Malory’s book and the Holy Grail. It must have made an impression, I’ve read that book and thought over Malory’s charismatic heroes, remembering that sunlit Tower Room with its hush out of Time.
I thought about the burial, telling Sarah about it even before I knew how Eadie died. It was the Box which was buried there, under those trees. I even told Mary about it, trying to engage her skills as a medium instead of a counsellor, my words came back to me,
“Also there’s buried treasure.
It isn’t gold and silver - though some of it has great money value. It’s really a sort of gateway... Or like an insurance policy, a way of passing on an inheritance.”
Talking to Mary I’d stumbled to find the right words. I didn’t know what was in the Box; there was only a sense of its purpose, a purpose that defied explanation. My meaning hadn’t been clear. Perhaps what came across to Mary was my own unsureness. Anyway, she was dismissive, as she was of all else, as Sarah had been.
Why did Edward bury the Box? I puzzled over it and meditated, asking for the Duke’s help. It was tantalizing, always just out of reach. Yet I knew the answer must lie in the death of Eadie and the others. He returned from Penshurst to the nagging pressures of his life, demands of rank and pressure to marry Alianore. Something in Edward must have rebelled, something that knew the meaning of the Cup; that would not let Margaret or Alianore get their hands on it.
Was that all there was to it? I could have gone round digging holes all over the landscape to try and find it but, despite the words I heard that night, it just didn’t seem right. Funnily enough, not long after this, I met just the man who could do it.
Terry came to me with an investment system. He showed me yards of computer printout by way of proof that it worked. Yet the system was a logical impossibility, you could never have all the information it called for. Trying not to dent his faith, I gently probed the man. I was sure, if you actually put money into it, the system would fail. We tested it. The results were mind bendingly bad. I’d more or less expected it, all the charisma and psychic power Terry put into getting impossibly good results suddenly went into getting impossibly bad ones. You see Terry wanted his system to work but he didn’t, he really didn’t want to make money.
We fell to talking and met several times. Terry’s psychic powers were amazing, so great they’d become a burden. When he was young his childish experiments led him into a confrontation. Terry met his worst fear, it still so appalled him that he couldn’t speak of it. He was a mere boy, the experience terrified him. His distracted parents sought help from doctors and psychiatrists but finally it was the Spirit World which rescued him, on condition there be no more experiments. He’s spent the many years since avoiding all psychic contact, lest he renew that confrontation.
Unfortunately all success has some measure of psychism, in it. Terry so thoroughly avoided using his powers he’s condemned himself to a life of material mediocrity.
His story moved me to sympathy, I told him some parts of my story; I told him about the Tower room and the burial. He was very interested, asking many questions.
I remember him saying,
“You know you could still find that box.”
I didn’t altogether like the idea, it might mean digging up a lot of private property.
“No, really. If it’s as powerful as you say it should be quite easy. It must stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Psychically you mean?”
Terry smiled.
“But you promised never to do that sort of thing.”
“Oh, there’s no risk. All you have to do is ask and look and there it is.
Really. I should do something, after spending your money.”
I ought to have accepted, I realise now that he offered for his own benefit as much as mine. It would have made up for decades of dreary survival and redeemed the childish misuse of his talents. But I didn’t accept; I changed the subject instead. Somehow I didn’t believe it could be possible to lay hands on the Holy Grail by digging it up.
A few days later Terry telephoned me with a compass bearing on the Box. He’d be happy to help me look for it. I told him no, I still didn’t believe it would be possible.
There was one other loose end I worried at.
The death of Eadie was such a full-stop, but I still wanted to know about the agent who provoked the mob against her; who prompted him to do it? The villagers were punished, burnt out or killed, but the Agent got away. Edward didn’t even know his name.
His name I found, by my own meditations, was Anton Fowles, yet I could take it no further. I turned to Angharad; she’s helped so much already.
I think the effect this story had on me affected Angharad more than the story itself. It’s all taken so much of my emotions.
I asked Angharad to find the Agent. I painted again the picture o
f the man, as I saw him in my mind’s eye. I invited her into a trance but my description didn’t trigger any scene at the alehouse.
