“And where, by the saints,” Dickon interrupted, “could there have been any way in or out of that whole underground business big enough for any man—let alone Bleheris?”
“Yet he did get down there and out again. If we did not know he had done that, I’d say simply that there must have been some way down under, from the monastic grounds, and it got blocked up and forgotten long ago. But there is Bleheris.” Hugh sat back against the tree, thinking deeply.
“There just must be a hidden passage, and we’ve got to find it!” declared Dickon positively, after a pause. “Come on, let’s try again!”
Hugh hesitated. “Yes, but that hidden passage is only part of the whole thing; we want to solve the mystery of the way into the underground room, of course, but most of all we want to find some clue to the hidden Hallow, the Holy Cup. Maybe finding the lost way into the treasure vault will help us in that much greater search, and again maybe it won’t. There’s the name ‘Chalice Hill,’ that should tell us something—and the Blood Spring, with that strange deep niche in the wall. Do you suppose that might once have been the hiding place of the Holy Grail and that it was taken away somehow, by someone, long ago, and now only the names and the tradition are left?”
Dickon regarded him, round-eyed and wondering, but made no reply other than a grunt admitting that it might be so.
Hugh continued, thinking aloud, as it were, and scarcely expecting any comment. “And there’s the book, Dickon, we mustn’t forget that broken volume about the Seynt Graal in the Painted Aumbry. If we could only recover all the lost pages of that book, we might be able to read the whole story from beginning to end; how the Grail came to our Glaston, why it disappeared the first time, what happened when it was seen again and where and how one might search for it now. It seems to me those missing pages are even more important than the passages underground.”
Dickon did not look convinced. “That’s such a slow way,” said he impatiently, “reading and poring over stuffy parchments. What I want to know is how Bleheris—”
“Bleheris!” Hugh had a sudden idea. “Why not go directly to Bleheris and see what we can find out from him? If there is a different way into that treasure vault, he is the one who knows it! And what is more, he may know a lot more about the Holy Cup itself, if he wants so much to find it! Come on, let’s go to Beckery this minute!”
“But Bleheris is mad,” demurred Dickon. “He might fly at us and kill us! He could snap us in two with one twist of those big hands of his!”
Hugh was considering directions. “Where is Beckery from here?” said he. “We have two quick working brains to get away with if he begins to act dangerous. I tell you, Dickon, this is an important quest we are on, not just a play adventure. Think what it would mean to our Glaston and the brothers if we could restore to them the sacredest treasure in the whole world!”
They turned west in the direction of the sea and were soon deep in the salt marshes, floundering about among the reeds and mud, stepping from a bit of firm ground into ooze and water, and then climbing again onto tussocks or low banks. Gulls and marsh birds screamed overhead, a great heron lumbered out of the tall grasses near them and went flapping away, and something alive and frightened splashed into a pool behind them.
“Do you know just where the place is?” asked Hugh, panting in his efforts to keep his footing.
“Not exactly, from this direction, but I believe there is the remnant of an old road out here somewhere, on a ridge that is above water and dry. If we can find that and get onto it, we’ll be all right, for it leads straight to Beckery. Brother Symon said it did.”
And soon they could distinguish it, a ridge of higher land and the vague suggestion of a road, scarcely more, upon it. At one time it had probably connected the abbey grounds with the seashore, but it had long since been abandoned and fallen into ruin and decay. However, even in its broken and dilapidated state, the old road made walking much easier than cutting their way directly through the marshes, and the two boys moved on quickly and easily enough for the space of nearly a mile. Then they saw what must be the island; a plot of ground not very large, roughly circular in shape, but higher and dryer than the reedy marsh land which completely surrounded it except for a broken, half-sunken, old stone causeway which joined the ridge to it. Willow trees grew on it and as the boys approached they could make out some stone walls, evidently the ruins of some ancient building, and near that a hut made of mud and willow withies, old and small and sagging out of shape.
“There it is,” said Dickon, pointing.
“And there is Bleheris, the hermit himself, sitting in front of his hut!” added Hugh.
They both paused, hesitating to go straight up to the old man, uninvited as they were. If his madness should suddenly make him turn ugly, getting away over the broken causeway and rough ridge road would not be altogether easy.
“What shall we say?” queried Dickon.
“Oh, just be friendly,” said Hugh with a confidence he was far from feeling. “Just tell him we were out this way and—”
“And stepped in? Yes—being a hermit who chooses to live apart from all the world, we thought he’d like us to be neighborly! Sounds natural and pleasant, doesn’t it?”
Hugh chuckled at his sarcasm. “Well, come on, anyway!” he said. “If he knows anything about that Holy Cup, I want to hear it!”
They started forward again, making their way carefully over the jagged stone remains of the old causeway, which was partly sunk and almost hidden by overgrowing willows. From this a path straggled up toward the hut and the ruins behind it.
The two boys were almost upon the hermit before he saw them. He was sitting on a large stone which had evidently once been part of the broken walls, his hands folded in his lap, his head bowed, deep in thought. The sound of their near footsteps roused him and he looked up. For a full moment he gazed at them in astonished silence while they gazed back, ready to turn and run for their lives if he proved dangerously hostile.
He rose slowly to his feet, bowed with great dignity and composure, then lifted his two hands with a motion that was both welcoming and apologetic.
“Ah,” said he, “so the young sirs have deigned at last to visit the old Master of Beckery! My lords, you are welcome indeed to my poor castle. Alas, the drawbridge is broken, the moat dry and blistering in the sun, the walls of the donjon fallen and grown over with ivy. But enter, enter, good my lords. The feet of the best knights in all God’s world have trod these stones, the noblest and the highest born among men have sat before my hearth and knelt in yon sanctified and holy oratory.”
The boys stood speechless. The hermit with another gracious, sweeping gesture indicated the door of his hut and evidently expected them to go in.
Hugh led the way, hesitantly, and. Dickon followed. The lintel was so low that even they must bow their heads to enter, and the tall hermit had to bend almost double until he had got into the middle of the hut. Inside were a bed made of willow branches partly covered with a rough blanket, a block of stone standing upright with another thinner block on top of it, thereby making a table, and a chest, a great black oak chest much like the three in the underground chamber. On the top of this chest stood two iron candlesticks with half burnt candles in them, and a plain iron cross. On the floor near it rested the bell and stone lantern the boys had seen when they had come upon the old man in the underground treasure chamber.
Bleheris noticed how their gaze rested on the chest which stood against the back of the hut, the eastern end, which was the proper place for an altar.
“Mine oratory,” said he, with a wave of his hand. Then he sighed heavily. “Since the old and sacred chapel of Beckery, the Chapel Perilous, hath fallen into decay, I do my humble best to maintain the sanctuary, to keep the light burning until such time as the ancient splendor shall come again; until that which is lost and hidden shall be found, and a glory not of this world shall shine forth once more upon all the earth.”
He seemed to forge
t his visitors for a moment; he lifted his face, his lips moved as if in silent prayer, and there was a light in his eyes as if they beheld, not the blackened walls of the low, sagging little hut, but some shining inner vision.
Suddenly all fear of the old man slipped out of Hugh’s heart. It seemed as if he himself had caught a tiny gleam of that vision, or at least of that light which illumined the hermit’s face.
“Sir,” said he humbly, in a tone he scarce recognized as his own, “Good Master Bleheris, we would see that shining glory too. Therefore are we come.”
They might have been magic words, the formula of a mystic spell, for the effect they produced. The tall hermit wheeled around and fastened his eyes upon Hugh as if he would bore holes into his inmost being and behold all that lay within.
“Dost thou know aught of it?” he whispered, his voice husky. “Hast thou seen—? But no, thou hast said as much—thou, too, art seeking—seeking—! Lad, who art thou? Whence comest thou?”
Joy had been flooding Hugh, joy and a deep thrill of wonder and expectancy, as if he were on the very brink of something that he had been waiting for all his life, and that would mean to him more than all else in the world. And now, with that old question he so dreaded to hear, about himself, who he was, whence he had come, all the joy vanished and he hesitated, stumbled, dropt his eyes miserably as though he had done wrong and were ashamed.
Dickon came to the rescue. “This is Hugh,” said he, “he is of our Glaston. He can read and is learning to be a scribe and a maker of books.”
“Ah,” said the hermit, nodding his head slowly and approvingly. “Books; there is a Book, lost also—but no matter now. You shall hear of that anon—if you prove worthy. And who are you, young sir?”
“I am Dickon, the oblate. We came here to see you because—because—” It was his turn this time to stumble and hesitate.
But, astonishingly enough, the hermit seemed to need no further explanation for their presence.
“I know why you have come,” said he, nodding wisely. “The word has been spoken, the secret word; we are one, all three; Hugh the young master, Dickon the oblate, and—” Here he paused and straightened to his full height, so tall his head barely escaped the thatched roofing. “And,” he repeated impressively, “Bleheris, now hermit and seeker for that which is lost—once Master of Beckery, minstrel and teller of the noblest and loveliest tales in the world.”
A little smile, not of complacency but of wistfulness, played across his face. “But come! I must entertain my young guests fittingly. Beckery is so old, it is nigh forgotten of men; years upon years and there comes no knightly visitor riding to the Chapel Perilous upon adventure bent. And now two young sirs—so young, so untried. . . . Messires, I crave your pardon for an old man’s garrulousness. I will fetch my lute directly. Sit you down before my hearth and I will tell you of brave deeds and men-at-arms.”
There was, of course, no hearth whatever in the bare cell-like hut, but Bleheris was off on a new trend of thought, picturing, no doubt, his surroundings as they used to be in his minstrel youth; a tapestry-decked hall with a huge fireplace under a projecting canopy, and many knights and ladies sitting and standing about, eager to hear his minstrelsy. He began to hum like a great droning bee, ran to the black chest and, after carefully laying the candles and cross on the floor beside it, he lifted the lid and took out a minstrel’s lute of antique design.
The boys had a glimpse of the contents of the chest which was apparently filled with all sorts of metal objects and bulky looking bundles wrapt in white linen. The hermit closed the chest at once, replaced the cross and candles on the top of it and, running his fingers over the strings of his instrument as if all impatience to begin, he motioned the two to follow him and stept out of the dingy hut into the sunshine.
With a wide, gracious gesture he bade them be seated, bowed to right and left as if in the midst of an audience of people, moved toward the bole of a big willow tree and took his stand. He drew his hand, large, old, wrinkled, but perfectly steady, across the strings of his lute in a fine ringing chord and began:
“Listen, lords and lordlings,
Give ear for a little stond—”
There was nothing for it but to settle themselves at his feet. At first the boys looked at each other uneasily, wondering how long they would have to stay and listen, but in a few moments they were entranced, their eyes fastened upon the hermit’s face, their ears attentive to every word as he chanted in a sing-song minstrel voice, clear and strong as any young teller of tales, a story, which he called—
SIR GAWAIN AT THE CASTLE OF THE GRAIL
8. The Hermit’s Story
“NOW IN THE days of King Arthur, in the times called adventurous, many a good knight and true rode forth upon a strange quest. Only the best knight in all the world might accomplish that quest, and many there were that sought it and failed, and some few others who traveled far and achieved much, coming at long last upon the outer fringes of success. Even they, beholding for a moment that which their hearts longed for, found blessing beyond all that they had dreamed.
“For the quest was a Sacred Hallow, the sacredest in all the world, even the Holy Grail, the Vessel wherefrom the Lord Christ drank at the Last Supper and into which the water and blood fell from His riven side what time He hung upon the Cross on Calvary.”
The hermit paused and looked keenly at the two boys who had exchanged glances of understanding at the mention of the Holy Grail.
“Do you know whereof I speak?” he asked sharply.
“Somewhat we know, Master Bleheris,” answered Hugh. “Of Joseph of Arimathaea and of the coming of the Sacred Vessel to our Glaston and how it vanished—or was hidden away.”
“Who told you?” The great hands of the hermit were clenched upon the lute as if he would break it.
“Brother John,” replied Hugh quietly. “But go on, good master minstrel, we know only of that first hiding. Tell us of its coming again among men, in the days of King Arthur.”
Bleheris relaxed a little and drew his fingers over his instrument again, playing chords that were strong, vibrant, exciting at first and then quiet and dreamy.
“Listen, lords and lordlings,” he repeated the conventional minstrel chant, “ye who love a true tale and adventurous, give ear to the strange story of Sir Gawain, nephew to the king.” He seemed to sink himself deep down into the well of his memory as he swung into the rhythm of his telling.
“Now Guenevere, King Arthur’s queen, would make a tryst with her lord, one summer’s day, out in the meadows where the air blew sweet and the field daisies blossomed and the sun lay glad and warm and bright. For Arthur, coming back from the wars, would pass that way. So she let pitch pavilions of silk, heavy and rich and gay, out in the fields. And all the court folk gathered about her to play at games, and feast and make merry, aye, and to laugh and chatter the long hours away until their liege lord should ride into their midst. There were highborn ladies and young damsels and brave and courteous knights more than I can tell, and they all wandered to and fro about the meadow or else stood or sat hard by the queen as she played at chess. In the crimson silk pavilion which stood nigh upon the road she sat, playing her ivory chessmen, with her ear attuned so that she might be the first to greet her lord, King Arthur, when he should come pricking along the way.
“Suddenly men heard the thud of hoof beats and a knight came riding down the road. Armed was he to the full, with visor down, and he rode in haste, looking neither to the left hand nor to the right. Squires ran to hail him, knights stood astonished, and the queen raised up her eyes and queried:
“‘Pray, who is yon discourteous knight who doth not pause to pay his devoirs unto me? Of a surety ’tis an act most unmannerly that any knight should so pass me by ungreeted and ignored.’
“Then spoke Sir Gawain, most truly courteous of all King Arthur’s noble knights. ‘Liege Lady,’ said he, ‘I know not either the name nor the station of yon knight but, if thou wilt give me le
ave to do so, I am minded to follow him instantly and bring him back, willy-nilly, to ask thy pardon for his rude folly and to pay thee the greeting he doth owe.’
“So Sir Gawain, after he had got leave of his lady, bade a squire fetch him a horse and armor, and set forth with all the speed that he might, in the direction taken by the stranger. But so great had been the haste of that other that Gawain did not overtake him for some hours. At last, however, he drew near enough to hail him.
“‘Sir Knight,’ he cried, ‘draw rein and hear what I would say to thee, else will I ride against thee to slay thee in combat for a most ungentle caitiff.’
“At that the knight stayed him and, turning his steed, awaited Sir Gawain’s approach, showing neither fear nor anger. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘what would you?’
“‘I am a knight of King Arthur’s court,’ said Sir Gawain, raising his visor, ‘and I come even now from the queen whose pavilion, set nigh unto the road, thou hast most discourteously passed by, without so much as a greeting to her nor a word to pay thy devoirs. Nor will I countenance such disrespect unto my lady; wherefore I bid thee come with me now, upon the instant, and kneel before her, asking her pardon for thine offence.’
“‘Of a truth,’ declared the knight gently enough, ‘I was never minded to do offence to any lady. I would indeed have paused, save that I ride upon a quest which brooks no delay. Already I am awaited long and I may not tarry.’
“‘But, Sir, there is no quest nor no adventure so demanding that a knight may not pause even so long as to give reverence to his rightful queen.’
The Hidden Treasure of Glaston Page 10
