The Pendragon Legend

by Antal Szerb

  I had good reason, as the tones in which she spoke of this woman were those of love. In her naiveté, and as the person in question was a woman, Cynthia did not conceal her feelings. The relationship greatly exercised my imagination and, to tease me, she became even more secretive.

  She came on several occasions to seek me out in the library, but never for more than a short time. She was unwilling to disturb my studies, and I did not betray to what an extent they were lyrical in nature. I had a reputation to maintain.

  Once however she caught me in the act. I had piled a stack of old books in front of me and was staring in a trance-like half-dream at the coat of arms with its rose cross on the leather binding.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in alarm.

  “The Rose Cross … ” I murmured.

  “Doctor, I’ve always wanted to ask you to tell me about the Rosicrucians. All I know is that my ancestors belonged to the movement.”

  “That’s almost all anyone knows, Cynthia. Every source agrees that a secret society—the forerunners of the Freemasons—took the name, in Germany, in the seventeenth century. They wanted to make gold. The idea spread to England. Robert Fludd and your ancestor Asaph Pendragon, the sixth Earl, were their leaders. They described themselves as invisible and to this day some strange impenetrability guards their memory. Every time you think you’ve finally pinned them down you discover it’s a fabrication or a fable. Descartes, who was alive at exactly that time, scoured the length and breadth of Germany hoping to meet a live Rosicrucian, and never once succeeded … ”

  “But you, surely, know all about them, Doctor.”

  “It’s very kind of you to say so, but nothing can be known for certain. Look at this: I’ve a pile here of four books which their contemporaries considered authentic Rosicrucian documents. This massive tome is the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz.”

  “Good heavens, there’s a death’s head on the title page. What is this?”

  “It’s an allegorical novel. The writer claimed later that it was just a bit of mystification, that he only wanted to poke fun at the alchemists. All the same, he might have intended it seriously.”

  “And this one?”

  “In this, there are two short tracts bound together. They are priceless. This is a first edition, printed in Kassel. One of them, the Allgemeine Reformation, is without doubt a lampoon: the writer thoroughly ridicules the Rosicrucians and their like. But there’s the second, the Fama Fraternitatis R C—that is, Rosae Crucis—‘The Fame of the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians’. These people were in earnest, but who exactly were they? And then there’s this third tract here, the Confessio Fraternitatis R C. This was also supposed to be a serious text, but it’s all nonsense.”

  “Tell me, Doctor, who was this Rosencreutz—‘Rose Cross’? Or have you already told me?”

  “He was a miraculous healer and alchemist who, according to the Fama Fraternitatis, brought the hidden wisdom from Arabia, from the Hidden City, where the Arab scholars lived. But it’s just a legend. We don’t even know when he was alive, or if he really lived at all. Then he died, and was buried, and that’s where the story starts to become interesting.”

  “Do tell me! You know I love legends.”

  “But this isn’t a folk tale. It has a rather strange atmosphere—it makes me altogether uneasy, I can’t explain why. Listen to this: after his death, his followers took over the House of the Holy Ghost that he’d built. Several years later, the then Grand Master needed to complete some repairs to the building … But I tell you what, I’ll translate this bit of the text for you from the German:

  ‘… then he came upon the memorial tablets, which were of brass and bore the names of the entire fraternity and sundry others. These tablets he desired to take into another, more fitting, room. Where and when Brother Rose Cross had perished, and in what country he was interred, was not revealed to the ancients, nor did we know either. From one of the tablets there protruded a stout nail, and when with much strength we drew it forth it brought after it a great stone, or incrustation, in the narrow wall, over a hidden door, which it revealed to our amazement and surprise, whereupon we, with happy expectation, broke into the wall and caused the door to move. It bore the inscription, in letters of great size:

  POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO

  (After one hundred and twenty years, I shall open).

  Beneath this was the date of its construction. We did no more that night … and in the morning we opened the door. We found a large chamber, which had seven sides and seven corners; each side was the length of five feet and the height of eight feet. And though the sun was never seen in that room, it was lit from a second sun, which had learnt its radiance from the real one and which hung in the centre over a tombstone bearing a round altar covered with a copper slab, which bore the inscription:

  A C R C HOC UNIVERSI COMPENDIUM

  VIVUS MIHI SEPULCHRUM FECI

  (Living, I built this tomb for myself in the likeness of the universe.)’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The floor was divided up to represent the empires of the earth, while the ceiling represented the celestial spheres. In the chamber they found the secret books containing the ultimate wisdom of the Rosicrucians, and the instruments used in their occult trade.”

  “And?”

  “At this point the narrative breaks off and starts to talk about other things. It suggests that it could well go on to say a great deal more, but these things are not for the ears of the uninitiated … However the non-authentic Rosicrucian writings insist that they opened the tomb and found their master—he was extremely old, and immensely tall—but his body showed no sign of ageing. He was lying there as if alive and merely sleeping.”

  “I believe I understand why this story has such a hold on you … It’s one I seem to have heard before. Don’t laugh, but it has such a Welsh flavour. The Welsh could never accept the fact that one of their great men might really be dead. There are so many stories of people living on in their graves, waiting to rise up when the destined hour comes. It’s King Arthur biding his time on the isle of Avalon, and Merlin sleeping enchanted under a bush, and Bloody-handed Owain waiting, fully armed, for the great battle … ”

  “My God,” I interrupted, “it isn’t just the Welsh … it’s hard for anyone to believe that a person simply dies.”

  “Tell me, Doctor, has it never occurred to you that, shall we say, death … or being dead … is just a transitory state, like sleep, or sickness, or youth … that if the body could be preserved, death itself might come to an end, quite naturally? Think of the clavellina.”

  “That I cannot.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’ve no idea what it is.”

  “The clavellina is a tiny, transparent water creature, not unlike the sea-lily. When conditions around it are unfavourable to life its organs become progressively atrophied. Its head, its heart, its stomach all regress, until nothing is left of it but a little heap. And when its surroundings improve again, it starts to regenerate its organs once more.”

  “That’s really interesting,” I said. “Fludd’s metaphysics have a lot in common with this little heap-creature. According to him, from time to time the soul, or life, withdraws from matter. Matter itself came about when God, who in the beginning filled the whole of space, withdrew into himself, and the emptiness left behind is matter.”

  “Really? Then isn’t it possible that life can withdraw into one part of the body while the rest lies dead … until it wakes again? You know our family motto: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body’. But I can see you don’t enjoy this subject. I’m too much of a Celt. They say the Celts are in eternal revolt against the tyranny of facts … Tell me, instead: what were these Rosicrucians really after?”

  “Well, from their books it’s actually quite hard to say. They promise all sorts of good things to those who join them. They were particularly proud of four of their branches of knowledge: changing base met
als into gold, deliberately prolonging the life of the body, the ability to see things at a distance, and a cabbalistic system for solving all mysteries.

  “Apart from that, it can’t be said they were very much liked,” I continued. “In 1623, for example, fear of them spread through Paris like a wave of mental illness. Customers would appear in the restaurants and bars of the time, and when it came to paying the bill, they simply vanished; or, if they did pay, the gold turned to mud as soon as they’d gone. Innocent French citizens would wake at night to find a mysterious stranger sitting beside them on the bed, who promptly disappeared. The people of Paris responded in the usual way to these terrors: they blamed the foreigners. I’m afraid that in many places they beat them terribly.”

  “Were you ever in France, Doctor?”

  “Of course, many times.”

  “Do you speak French as well as you speak English?”

  “About the same.”

  It was already getting dark, but I could see that Cynthia was looking at me with growing interest.

  “Doctor, you’re like the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You know everything.”

  “I do know rather a lot,” I replied nervously.

  “I believe you even speak Sanskrit.”

  “Fluently,” I replied. But she believed that too.

  “And you must surely know the Russian novelists. Tell me something about Dostoevsky or Béla Bartók. I’ve a friend who never stops talking about them.”

  “I never met Bartók,” I said, untruthfully, shocked at her ignorance. “But I knew old Dostoevsky really well. He and my father were at primary school together, and he often came for supper. He had a beard like Pierce Gwyn Mawr’s.”

  “How lucky you are, to have known such famous people as a child. I’m sure you could even tell me why Aix-la-Chapelle is called Aachen in German.”

  I didn’t tell her, partly because I didn’t know, and also because I had suddenly seen through her and become thoroughly annoyed with myself. Women take me in all the time. There are moments when they behave as if they were perfectly human. On such occasions a simple philologist like me will hold forth, launching into serious expositions, in the belief that the woman is actually interested in what he has to say. But no woman has ever yet taken an interest in an intellectual matter for its own sake. Either she wants to woo the man by a display of attention, or she is seeking to improve her mind, which is even worse. The first of these is after money; the second is in pursuit of edification, but has other motives which are no less self-interested: she wants to adopt the pose of a woman of culture, as if it were some sort of cloak to be worn at the opera.

  I got up and paced angrily back and forth. Cynthia sat staring out from her armchair, lost in reverie. Her gaze was distant, dreamy, noble. She was like the inhabitant of some Welsh fairytale land that would inspire anyone who had been there with the profoundest yearning.

  But the instant I gauged her true intellectual merit something was released inside me, and I became aware again of how young she was, and how lovely. I can never feel much attraction to a woman whom I consider clever—it feels too much like courting a man. But once I had realised she was just another sweet little gosling, I began to woo her in earnest.

  “Cynthia,” I began, “I really deplore the amount of time I’ve been spending with these books. Life passes so quickly. You see, I grew up so quickly I never even noticed, and just as suddenly I’ll be an old man. And it will all have gone. My memory will fail, and I’ll forget everything I’ve ever read. When I look back over my life I shall have to face the fact that I’ve always been alone.”

  By now it was quite dark in the room. I stood at the window. Outside an unusually atmospheric sunset was being projected onto the screen of the heavens. At such moments sentimental declarations are twice as effective, according to books and in my private experience. I proceeded to deploy arguments of a more personal nature.

  “I’ve never met anyone who understood me so completely. You are the first woman, Cynthia, with whom I can be truly myself. It’s as if you had once been my sister, or my wife.”

  Old Goethe was writhing in his grave.

  Cynthia got to her feet, dreamily, and came up to me in the bay of the window. It was the sign I had been waiting for. This time I knew she would not slap my face. But as I stood there summoning up my courage to manage the business in hand, she asked me, in a voice choking with emotion:

  “Oh, Doctor … do you even know algorithms?”

  “By heart,” I replied, and drew her to me.

  I kissed her. She clung to me for quite some time, with no sign of resistance. Visions of sunlit springtime days, of dazzling lakes and azure skies flashed by inside me: as if I were sitting in a train. Life was wonderful, after all.

  At last she broke free. She stared at me for a moment, deeply embarrassed, then declared:

  “You still haven’t told me why Aix-la-Chapelle is called Aachen in German.”

  It was ten-thirty in the evening. I was seated in my room, in the much-celebrated comfort of an English armchair. In fact I wasn’t so much sitting as sprawled out almost supine. I felt too idle to go to bed, and in too much of a daydream to read.

  The events of the last few days had fused into a sort of golden haze, from which every so often random flashes leapt out, filling me with alarm. Blended into this haze were the centuries-old atmosphere of Llanvygan Castle, the Earl’s aquatic monsters, the Rosicrucians, and Cynthia … Cynthia, I mused—goddess of the moon, Queen of the Night, my latest dalliance, perhaps my future love. Poets had bestowed her celestial name on the great Elizabeth. Cynthia, in whose veins flowed the blood of the line of Gwynedd and with it the secrets of centuries, the accumulated nobility of an ancient race of lords of the mountains, the aurora borealis itself. I congratulated myself on having actually kissed the aurora borealis, Queen Elizabeth and the whole tradition of the English sonnet.

  There was a knock at the door. Osborne stepped in. I felt the same fondness for him too.

  “Forgive me, but I noticed your light was still on.”

  “Have a seat,” I replied. “Is something the matter? You look so serious.”

  “Well, my uncle hasn’t shown himself for several days … but there’s something else. If it goes on like this I’ll become superstitious myself. Are you aware, Doctor, that old Habakkuk the Prophet disappeared the day after his attack of Revelations?”

  “Yes, I heard about that. The Reverend’s account of the episode verged on the miraculous.”

  “Well, I’ve found the old boy … But why all this talk? What would you say to a little outing? I just can’t make head or tail of the whole business.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  “I’ll have a word with Maloney, if he’s still up. This is just the thing for him.”

  The light seemed to be on in his room. We knocked and, hearing his positive reply, pushed the door open.

  The light was indeed on, but Maloney was nowhere to be seen. I instantly thought of the Rosicrucians’ power to make themselves invisible.

  “Where is the fellow?” asked Osborne. “He’s just told us to come in.”

  “Coming,” said Maloney’s voice, from some indefinable place that was clearly not in the room.

  Seconds later a pair of legs appeared in the window frame, dangling from above. Then their owner, dressed entirely in black, leapt lightly down onto the floor.

  “Training,” he explained, nonchalantly.

  “But why at night?” I asked.

  “We Connemarans always climb at night. When it’s too dark to see you have to trust your instincts, and they never let you down. If there aren’t any rocks, a good wall will do, or the trees down in the park.”

  “Right. Well, come and see what old Habakkuk is up to. Bring your rope.”

  We got in the Delage and drove for about twenty minutes down the main road, under a brilliant moon.

  “From here we proceed on foot—don’t want to disturb him. He needn’t b
e aware of us. He didn’t notice me here yesterday.”

  For some time we continued along the road. No one spoke. The profound silence, the dark, distant mountains in all their immensity and the silver moonlight held us in their grip. Above us, at a terrifying height, towered the rock on whose peak stood the ruins of Pendragon Castle.

  Osborne turned off the road and we made our way through the dense thicket. For some fifteen minutes we struggled on through the trees, slithered down precipitous slopes, and at last found ourselves before a high stone wall.

  “These are the remains of the old wall that used to surround the whole of Pendragon,” said Osborne. “Now, where’s the gap? To the left, or right?”

  After some time we found it.

  “Look,” said Osborne. “You can see this gap has been made quite recently. You used to have to go round the entire wall to get to Llyn-y Castle—the Castle Lake. Who on earth would have made this way through? And why? On we go now: quiet as you can.”

  Maloney crept ahead soundlessly, and at great speed. Under my feet, however, the brushwood crackled and snapped, and I kept getting murderous glances from the others.

  We arrived at an almost sheer rockface.

  “We have to climb it,” said Osborne. “From up there we’ll have a brilliant view of the entire lake, and no one will see us.”

  Before I had even begun to consider how we might make the ascent, Maloney had reached the top. He undid the rope he had around his waist and promptly pulled us up. Osborne went first, with no problem. I followed, with great difficulty.

  “You’d make a pretty feeble monkey,” Maloney observed, contemptuously.

  From the other side of the rock we looked down on to a small lake, glittering in the moonlight. I had never before seen anything quite so unearthly. Across the water, huge trees ringed the shore, watching over the stillness under the soaring peak of Pendragon. It was a lake from a fairytale, with the fairy’s coral castle sunk in its depths.