The Hidden Treasure of Glaston

by Eleanore M Jewett

  6. Who Goes There?

  “IT IS THE same script, the same sort of parchment—it has the same feel to it; there can’t be any doubt,” said Hugh positively.

  He and Dickon were standing in the ancient graveyard outside the Old Church a few days after the exciting discovery of the over-written pages in the kitchen. They had compared minutely and carefully the parchments they had brought from the underground vault with those Hugh had in his hand, the line-drawing one which Brother John had given him, and a few others which he had secretly slipt out of the growing pile of pages scraped clean of their overwriting and declared by the monk authentic parts of the torn volume in the Painted Aumbry.

  “And you say that if the missing pages of that old book are all recovered they might tell where the Holy Cup is hidden now? The very Cup that Our Lord Himself drank from?—faith it is unbelievable!”

  Dickon’s eyes were round with wonder.

  “And the stories, Dickon,” continued Hugh, “all the knightly tales of King Arthur’s day, and how they searched then for the Holy Grail! The most marvelous stories in the whole world are in those lost pages! Just think, if we could find them again, restore the book to Glaston, whole, so that they could be read now—and forever!”

  “That chest down in the vault has dozens of old yellow parchment sheets like these in it. I never thought to look a second time at them,” declared Dickon ruefully.

  “We wouldn’t have known what to look for before, but now—come on, let’s go and get a sheaf of them to work over!”

  Hugh started ahead but Dickon held back. “Wait a bit,” said he; “it would be fine to get that book all patched up and whole again, but it would be a lot more exciting if we could find the Cup itself! Let’s get hold of some extra candles and a pick and go through that hole in the wall of my treasure vault. I’ve always wanted to explore further and now it seems as if we have just got to! We might come upon other treasures, whole vaults of them for that matter, and find the lost Cup in the midst of them!”

  They stopped at the grange, found themselves a pick, and continued on toward the north gate and then out across the moor to the cleft in the ground which led into the underground passage. With little difficulty they made their way down through this to the mysterious room in which stood the three chests and the tall cupboard. Hugh wanted to begin at once to rummage in the chest which held the old, loose manuscript pages, and Dickon somewhat impatiently agreed to hold the candle while he saw what he could find. Hugh was just opening the lid of the chest when a cry of astonishment and terror broke from Dickon, making him drop it with a bang that reverberated loudly in the close walled space. He wheeled around and looked where Dickon, with an unsteady hand, was pointing. On the top of one of the other chests lay something that had not been there when the boys had left the place a few days before.

  They went close, looking with pale, astonished faces from it to each other and back again.

  It was a sword, huge, black-hilted, jeweled, and with steel blade as free of rust, as shining and polished as if it had but that moment come from the hands of a careful squire-at-arms.

  “How did it get here?” breathed Dickon. “No man could get through that opening in the ground.”

  “Another boy like us could,” suggested Hugh.

  Dickon slowly nodded. His brows darkened as he thought of the possibility of someone else being in possession of his secret. “But the villagers would not dare, and besides, they would not know about this, it’s so far out on the moorland. And the novices there isn’t a single one small enough to squeeze through.”

  Hugh put out his hands and touched the thing. “It’s a noble sword; see, there are gems in the hilt, bedded in the iron of it. And the weight of it must be great!” He grasped it more firmly, to pick it up from the chest, but he found he must take both hands and then could only lift it with the use of all his strength, and it took Dickon to help him replace it.

  “No boy would be dragging that through the passageway,” said Dickon, still concerned with how it could have gotten to this place which he considered exclusively his. “That’s a man’s sword, and I tell you, a man must have brought it here, but how, how? And who?”

  Hugh looked around him and up at the hole in the broken wall.

  “Even one of us couldn’t get through there,” declared Dickon, following his eyes and his thought.

  “It couldn’t have been here somewhere, and you overlooked it?”

  Dickon snorted in disgust. “Me, overlook a thing like that when I’ve examined every corner in this place? And even if I had been blind to such a treasure, it certainly wasn’t here on this chest before; you know that. It could not have walked in here by itself! How did it get here?”

  Panic suddenly seized him again. “I don’t like it! Let’s get out of here! Remember that bell we heard last time? I tell you, I don’t like it!” He started to move away but Hugh caught his arm and pulled him back.

  “Don’t run off now! Why, we’re right in the middle of something big! And you wanted to be a knight and seek adventure, didn’t you?”

  The words stung Dickon. His face flushed in the pale light of the candle, but he was not angry.

  “Brother, you are right,” said he. “We will see this thing through. But aren’t you scared, too?”

  “Surely I am! I don’t like the looks of it either; but we haven’t met anything yet that is dangerous. Let’s see if we can find out what is going on here. Maybe the sword itself will tell us something.”

  The two boys fell to examining the ancient weapon more carefully.

  “Here are letters up near the hilt,” said Hugh, bending closer. “Hold the candle so I can read. ‘Take me’ it says in Latin.” He turned the sword over. “And here is something on the other side. It isn’t Latin; it’s a queer language. I think it is in runes, the secret language the Britons used long ago. Dickon!” He seized the boy’s arm in his excitement. “Dickon! I’ve a notion this is part of the whole mystery; the broken book with the missing pages, the writing beneath the writing, the story of the lost Cup—and now a sword sprung, as if by magic, from nowhere.”

  The candle flickered in the damp draft coming from the hole in the wall. “Let’s find out what’s beyond this room,” said Dickon uneasily, after an impressive pause. They climbed the rubble and broken stones in the corner and began to pick away loosened rock and cement around the hole, making it gradually larger. They had to work slowly and carefully, fearful lest they dislodge too much earth and the whole wall cave in on them. It would have been close and heavy with candle smoke, beyond endurance, in that low-ceiled room if it had not been for the damp current of air blowing in from beyond the hole where they were working. Hugh wondered where that could come from. Dickon’s mind was evidently still figuring on how the great sword could have got onto the chest, for he kept looking back at it in puzzled wonder and uneasiness.

  At last they had the opening big enough to crawl through. Hugh went first, then Dickon handed in the candle and followed him. The wall on the other side was rough and offered something in the way of a foothold, which was fortunate as the level of the floor was evidently much lower. As it was, Hugh, unable to trust his full weight on his lame foot, all but fell. Dickon took the candle again, as soon as he had got through the hole himself, and tried to help the other along. His admiration for Hugh was growing by the moment. That boy had courage! He could not run fast to get away if he were caught in a dangerous situation, yet he never let his lameness stop him—or his fear, if he had any.

  When they had got down safely to the lower level they held the candle high and looked about curiously. They were in what appeared to be a long, low, natural cave at the bottom of which ran a little stream. The walls and roof were uneven and seemed to close in closer at the opposite end. They gazed at the wall of the room down which they had climbed; it was rough but sheer and unbroken except for the hole which looked as if somebody had once tried to break through and then had abandoned it. The surface of
the wall was covered with unevenly cut slabs of limestone from much of which the cement had worn away. The two ends of the wall were built flush with the earth on either side, and the underground stream which had evidently formed the cave, cutting through a softer stratum of rock, dropt out of sight in a narrow crevasse not far from where the two boys were standing.

  “It’s an old stream bed,” said Dickon, after a long look around. “Up in the Mendip Hills to the north of Glaston, there are lots of these caves made by underground rivers.”

  “Whoever built that storage room must have made use of this cave,” said Hugh, feeling along the rough wall, “or did they? I can’t think the thing through. To bring those big oak chests and especially that tall aumbry in there must have meant a good sized entrance to that room. But where is such an entrance? One could not possibly have dragged those in through the passage from the moor that we came in by, nor through this cave. How did they get in?”

  “Maybe those things were brought in through some entrance that was walled up afterward,” suggested Dickon.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” objected Hugh. “If that storeroom was used to hide treasures in, when there was danger of attack by enemies, the folk that hid them would want to get the things out again sometime, wouldn’t they?”

  To this Dickon could find no direct answer. “Well, one thing is certain,” he said, “nobody could bring those big chests and things down this stream bed and up into that hole! Look how the cave narrows. Come on, let’s explore that other end.”

  There appeared to be only one inlet to the cave and that was so narrow that the boys must needs climb along single file on hands and knees through the wet of the stream. It was hard going, at a slight incline upward, and it seemed endless, but it was fairly straight and had no branches or side caves to confuse them.

  “If it goes on up,” panted Hugh, close at Dickon’s heels, “it ought to come out above ground sometime—or somewhere.”

  “Well, here’s your somewhere,” said Dickon, pushing his candle and then himself with a mighty wiggle through a particularly cramped spot. “But it certainly isn’t above ground!”

  He stood up straight and shook himself. In a moment Hugh was beside him. They found themselves in another cave, larger than the first. The stream still lay at their feet in a shallow depression of the floor, and it was flowing from a low, broken, circular stone wall which was built out from the side of the cave not far from where they stood. In silent amazement they approached it.

  “Why, it’s a well!” said Hugh, “an old, old well! Somebody made it by digging down and then damming up the stream, and then the water must have got away through this break in the wall, whenever there was an overflow, and gone on carving that passage through the earth down the way we came in. But why a well here?”

  “And how did folk ever get to it?” added Dickon. This cave was not only larger in size than the other, it also gave evidence of having been fashioned by the hand of man as well as by the action of water. Slowly the two boys inspected the four walls of it. Three of them were lined with large irregular slabs of stone very much like the walls of the treasure chamber. The fourth, behind the semicircular well, was of natural cave-bed material. It was uneven and sloped back and, when Dickon held his candle high, the light did not penetrate far enough to see where the roof closed in to meet it.

  “Maybe this is where the cave opens up entirely, and if we could climb up here we’d come to daylight,” suggested Dickon.

  “You can’t see any daylight, can you?” said Hugh, peering up.

  “No, but there’s a draught of wind—and bats—They must come in from here.”

  Several of the eerie little creatures darted close to them, fascinated by the candlelight, and then swooped about the cave, gibbering and confused.

  “Look here,” continued Hugh, “the stream that feeds this well comes in from this direction. Let’s follow it as far as we can.”

  The water ran, a thin trickle, scarcely more, from a break in the wall behind the well on the opposite side from where it ran out. Once again the boys followed the line of water, climbing up a steeper grade this time, through a rounded aperture and then a passageway that was so relatively even and smooth that it quickly became evident to them just what it was.

  “This is no natural water course,” said Dickon to Hugh’s heels, for Hugh and the candle had gone first this time. “This is a drain, man-made.”

  “Must be,” said the other shortly. He was getting very tired and, though he would not have admitted it to anybody, least of all Dickon, this climbing down walls and through caves and jagged underground water courses was much more difficult for him than it would have been for another, on account of his feeble leg. He was secretly glad this course was smoother.

  After they had scrambled on in silence for awhile, Hugh exclaimed in delight and put out his candle. A square of gray daylight pierced the darkness through which they were progressing and the sight lent speed to the aching bodies of both of them.

  “We’ll be on top of the earth again instead of under it in a minute now!” cried Dickon. “Where do you suppose we will come out?”

  Hugh had not an idea and saved his breath and energies for the final climb.

  In another few moments they were out of the underground stream bed, but not entirely above the earth.

  Once again they stared in stupefied astonishment, first at their surroundings, and then back at each other. They were standing on a ledge, in a niche or recess of the wall of a round open well. The water lapped over their feet a little, running down in the gentle trickle through the drain which they had been climbing. The back of the recess in which they were standing was the opening for the overflow; at their feet the well water stood reaching down deep and still. When the well was fuller, water would rush through the back of the recess, perhaps filling it, then down the drain to the well below ground whence the overflow would tumble through the broken wall, over the floor of that curious man-made cave and down its own naturally made bed, past the wall of the treasure chamber, and finally lose itself in the deep crevasse beside it. So much for the story of the stream, which was perfectly evident. But the boys at that moment were wondering how they were ever going to climb up the smooth inside surface of that well wall in the niche of which they stood, and get to level surface ground again.

  “Think we can make it?” asked Dickon, looking uneasily at Hugh.

  “We could go back the way we came, of course,” he continued as the other hesitated.

  “Seems as if we had come miles and miles,” Hugh admitted with a weary sigh.

  “If you could stand on my shoulders, maybe you could reach the top and pull yourself over.”

  “Then how would you get out?”

  “I wouldn’t like for either of us to fall into the water; it looks plenty deep,” continued Dickon, looking down into it.

  “And how red it is!” said Hugh. “Looks almost like blood.”

  They peered down into the silent depths, then up again at the blue sky above them.

  Dickon suddenly began to laugh. “Here we stand between heaven and earth,” said he, “and what have we got for our pains? Not a sign of a place where any treasure could be hid did I see.”

  “Nor I,” admitted Hugh; “and what is more, we haven’t got what we came in for! You know we planned to take a lot of those parchment sheets in the chest away with us to study more carefully and they are still in the chest! Looks like we can’t get up to heaven, whether we want to or not, so we might as well go back into the earth and fetch them.”

  Without another word they began to retrace their way down the long, wet, slippery drain into the cave of the broken well. It did not seem so long or hard returning as it had coming up and the strange underground room with its semicircular, low walled well gave them almost a feeling of familiarity as they came out into it again.

  “There is just no place here where anything could be hidden, is there?” said Hugh, pausing a moment to res
t and look about again.

  “If this was ever a secret vault for treasure like that other room—my room,” said Dickon decidedly, “the treasure is certainly all gone now. What I want to know is why is this here at all? Whatever could have been the use of it and, once again, how on earth could anybody bigger than us have got in or got out of here?”

  “It’s all part of the same mystery, I am sure it is,” said Hugh impressively, “and some day we’ll find the clue that makes everything fit together, the lost Grail and the broken book, the sword and—all this—” He waved his hand expressively, indicating the whole underground warren. “But now I want to get hold of those pages! Maybe we’ll find the solution to the whole thing right there.”

  They were silent again as they made their way into the cramped stream bed that took them back to the little natural cave flanked by the wall of the treasure chamber Dickon thought of as his own.

  When they got to the more open part, they stood upright with relief, stretching their aching arms and legs. Their second candle, which Dickon had managed to light again before they started back through the drain, was burning down all too fast; he looked at it uneasily and was just about to comment on it when a sound broke the underground stillness and fairly froze the words on his lips. It was a curious sound, a little like the drone of a gigantic bee, a humming, deep and throaty, then thin or muffled, and again rising until the echoes and reverberations rolled and thundered in the narrow confinement of the cave walls.

  The two boys listened with hearts hammering in their throats. Dickon crushed out his candle. A dim light issued from the hole in the wall beneath which they were standing. Someone was in that treasure chamber—singing. For the hum had changed abruptly to a sort of chant in a man’s voice, rich and full and clear.