The Pendragon Legend

by Antal Szerb

  He greeted His Lordship as an old acquaintance. The conversation quickly turned to the Comte St Germain, whereupon the Italian warned my companion to be wary of that gentleman. Bonaventura changed the subject with a well-timed joke, and began to question him about his various conquests.

  ‘I am no longer the man Your Lordship knew in Paris,’ he confided. ‘I feel as if I am starting to die. A man doesn’t die all at once. It’s a gradual process. The senses grow old and fail. And when I look back on my past life, I no longer know whether I was the greatest fool, or the wisest man alive.’

  At this, Bonaventura jested that anyone as famously omniscient as he should surely know St Germain’s prescription for restoring youth. The Italian turned a bright red, observed that His Lordship was no doubt alluding to the story that St Germain had promised eternal youth to Mme d’Urfé, and then cried out:

  ‘Stay where you belong, in the clutches of that man. Those who make sport of others deserve to be made sport of themselves.’

  And, without any sort of farewell, he left us.

  In answer to my question as to the name of this strange gentleman, His Lordship told me he did not know whether he was more renowned for his impostures or his countless love affairs. He called himself the Chevalier de Seingalt, but his real name was Giacomo Casanova.

  The next morning the three of us set off for the province of Wales, where His Lordship’s estates were situated, and on arrival were entertained in princely style in his castle, known as Pendragon. The following day was spent receiving the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and it was not until late that night, when we were left finally to ourselves and sitting by the fire, that we again broached the topic of the occult.

  In a voice quavering with excitement, His Lordship told us of an ancient castle that stood close by. Its name meant Dragon’s Head, and beneath its ruins was buried his ancestor Asaph Pendragon who in his day was none other than Rosacrux, the founder of the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians.

  ‘If this is so,’ St Germain exclaimed, ‘then his body will be lying uncorrupted in his tomb!’

  ‘The truth exceeds even that,’ whispered His Lordship, leaning closer towards us. ‘Rosacrux is alive, just as, even now, the wizard Merlin and the Welsh hero Bloody-Handed Owen still live. He lies there, in his tomb, waiting for the moment to rise again.’

  Family tradition, handed down from father to son, confidently claims that Rosacrux, feeling the hand of old age upon him, summoned his closest friend Robert Fludd, the physician and fellow member of the Brotherhood. It was to Fludd that he entrusted the great secret he had brought back from the Orient, the secret of preserving the life of the body. The body thus rendered immortal lies unmoving in the grave, but lives, contemplating the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.

  Rosacrux then lay down in the tomb he had prepared for himself in the image of the universe, and Fludd, having carried out the relevant magical procedures, closed it and left. Then, like a man who has fulfilled his calling, he died in the same year.

  St Germain and I listened to his tale in a paroxysm of horror and fear. We asked—in some alarm as to how he might reply—what he desired of us, and what he proposed doing. He answered that Rosacrux was still there, alive in his tomb: he knew more than any living person; he had known more when he was mortal, and had since spent a hundred and twenty years in mystical contemplation of the secrets of Heaven and Earth. If it were possible to rouse him and seek his advice, we could surely come closer to the Magnum Mysterium than anyone ever had. If St Germain, with his power of restoring lost youth, could employ the full force of his knowledge, we might manage to persuade the living dead to break silence.

  For what seemed ages, St Germain made no reply. Then, rising from his chair, he announced that he would have first to think it over, and consult his family oracle; and up he went to bed. I remained alone with Lord Bonaventura who, from that moment onwards, filled me with mounting terror. His extraordinary girth, which until then had seemed to me merely an amusing consequence of his unbounded Epicureanism, now lent him, in the glowing light of the fire, a perfectly diabolical aspect, as though he were Mammon himself, clothed in human form and calmly preparing to exhume his ancestors from their graves.

  He asked me whether I had been fully ordained before I renounced the cloth, and was delighted when I told him I had. He remarked that, if nothing else served, the black arts would be resorted to, but they would require an ordained priest and a consecrated wafer. If St Germain’s nostrums failed, he said, it would fall to me to celebrate the Satanic Mass over the tomb, on the body of a naked woman, pronouncing the sacred words of the service in reverse order.

  Such was the oppressive weight of the terror that again passed over me, I dared offer no protest against this diabolical plan.

  At that moment St Germain reappeared. He had now donned the robes of a Freemason and the insignia of the Great Chosen One. His hands held a wand and a cut-glass bowl.

  ‘We must be quick,’ he said. ‘If we are to achieve anything, it must be done tonight. There is a new moon, and Venus lies in Capricorn. Such nights are auspicious for acts of magic.’

  I fell to my knees and implored them to abandon this terrifying plan, which might jeopardise their eternal salvation. But Bonaventura replied with an evil laugh that he wouldn’t give a groat for the salvation of any of us. I begged them to allow me at least to stay behind, or to go away, because I felt something unspeakable was about to take place. At this, His Lordship drew his sword and threatened to transfix me if I left them, now that I was party to their secrets. Thus he compelled me to accompany them.

  In the courtyard three horses had been prepared for us, saddled in black. His Lordship led the way as we galloped at lightning speed through the dark night. Our path led to a high mountain, on whose peak loomed the ruin of an awe-inspiring castle, the haunt of owls, ghosts and witches. We tethered our steeds to the gatepost of a dilapidated wall, His Lordship lit the torches we had brought, and we stepped into the ruin.

  Lord Bonaventura performed some sort of secret action, and a blackly-gaping spiral staircase opened at our feet. I stumbled down it, my knees shaking uncontrollably. Words cannot express my horror when I suddenly felt the step I was standing on begin to sink under me. I grasped wildly at a wooden rafter, but it soared upwards with a Satanic laugh. I screamed in terror at His Lordship, but he remained where he was, describing strange circles in the air with his flaming torch, then dashed on ahead of us, like a madman.

  We arrived in a vast hall, whose furthest corners seemed to disappear into the far distance. From them, it seemed to me, I could make out the dull roar of the sea, or some other sound very like it.

  The hall was full of coffins, whose lids slowly rose and then descended again, like so many mouths, gaping and shutting, ready to bite, warning us to go no further.

  Half-crazed with terror I stumbled into the next room, where a horror awaited us that would prove even more dreadful than anything that had gone before.

  At its centre stood an altar, which His Lordship pushed to one side. Beneath it we found the stone slab of a tomb, which, with miraculous ingenuity, St Germain managed to move from its position.

  Inside the vault stood a catafalque, and on it lay an ancient figure of gigantic height. He was gorgeously apparelled in the robes of an earlier period, and the rings on his fingers bore jewels the like of which I had never seen. He lay with his eyes open, as do the blind; he neither saw nor did he move. Bonaventura and I hid in fear behind the altar that had been pushed aside. St Germain was deathly pale. He too would doubtless have drawn back had he not been ashamed to show his fear.

  With his wand he drew a line above the figure lying in the tomb, then slowly sprinkled the contents of the vial on its forehead.

  The sleeper shook himself, and turned his head towards us. The face was that of a man who sees. Very slowly, he raised his head, leant over on one arm, and uttered the most terrible cry.

  At that moment the subterranean
sun that lit the room began to darken, and bells, which we suddenly noticed around the sides of the room, began to toll.

  Petrified with terror, we saw that the figure was slowly rising and preparing to leave his tomb.

  At that point St Germain uttered a loud shriek and fled, with His Lordship and myself hard on his heels. Clambering up the spiral stairs was almost impossible, as he could barely move his limbs for fear and needed my constant support, which, given his enormous weight, was no mean imposition. By the time we had returned to the castle he was delirious with fever.

  St Germain’s elixirs were of no avail. We remained constantly at his bedside. He must have suffered for about a week, then passed away, having remembered us both in his will …

  At Rhyl I changed to a smaller train, which slowly wound its way through a landscape that became steadily more sombre and mysterious as it neared the heart of the North Welsh Mountains. The names of the stations became increasingly outlandish, barbaric and ancient-sounding. We were now in the Celtic Forest, the land of myth and legend, the birthplace of fairies and of Merlin the magician, the unfathered child conceived from the ashes of the dead. Today the Welsh are a sober, sardonic people, but the trees, the rocky outcrops and the lakes remain, as does the old atmosphere. Once it teemed with marvels, and even now it silently fosters the seeds of fresh mystery.

  At Corwen the Earl himself was waiting for me, with a car. I gave him the manuscript, and was about to tell him why I had tarried a day in London.

  “You must be tired and hungry,” he said. “First we’ll have dinner.”

  But he looked tired himself, and worried. We spoke little before reaching the hotel, where he was received with all the deference due to a feudal lord. We dined in a private room, but again there was little conversation. Only after coffee and cognac did he finally ask about my adventures.

  I told him everything that was directly relevant to the matter. I did not mention where I had spent the night after the manuscript was stolen, only that I had not slept in the hotel.

  What shocked him most was that the letter written to Morvin described how Maloney had wrestled with a giant before falling to his death.

  “Now I am certain! There is a spy at Llanvygan!” he exclaimed. “Someone is writing to Morvin. That’s how he knew you were going to London to fetch a manuscript. But who could it be? No one, apart from Osborne and Cynthia, knew of your trip … Could someone have been eavesdropping?”

  Then, after a pause for deep thought:

  “So you actually saw someone on the balcony?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He averted his gaze.

  For a long time nothing more was said.

  Eileen St Claire, too, had spoken of a mysterious, indefinable presence. And Lenglet du Fresnoy’s memoirs had provided a key which, however horrifying and capable of inducing insanity, could explain everything—the rider with the flaming torch, the old man beside the Castle Lake, the voice deep in the bowels of Pendragon that made Osborne stop before the open trapdoor, and Maloney’s quasi-ritual death by wringing of the neck …

  What terrifying secret did the Earl’s silence conceal? Or rather, what did it betray?

  “Perhaps you should continue,” he suddenly remarked. The spell was broken.

  I went on with my tale. Osborne’s miraculous appearance amused him greatly.

  “What is the lady’s name?”

  “Lene Kretzsch.”

  “Would you mind spelling that?”

  I spelled it.

  “Magnificent! T-z-s-c-h! Five consonants for a single sound. That’s really grand.

  “I’m glad you found Osborne with a girl,” he continued. “His horror of women has caused me some concern. One of us has to get married, and I’d rather it were he. What is she like? I’d like to know his taste.”

  “I think the only taste that could be inferred would be hers. I have the impression that Osborne plays an extremely passive role in the friendship. But Lene Kretzsch is a robust, fine-looking creature. Her figure is quite perfect, in the classical sense … ”

  “Do you mean she has large feet and hands, like a Greek statue?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hm. And her character?”

  “Very modern.”

  “That is to say, of easy virtue?”

  “Not exactly. She is sachlich. Neue Sachlichkeit. Bauhaus. Nacktkultur. The chauffeur type. Love is a psycho-physical fact. Nothing romantic or complicated about love.”

  “And this is what you call ‘modern’?”

  “Well, according to the international conventions drawn up by journalists and women-novelists, this objectivity is what characterises modern love.”

  “On the other hand, one should remember that even in our grandmothers’ time women did not limit their concerns to embroidery and fainting. They were much more active and controlling than they are today; they just did it more gracefully. Mme de Pompadour and Queen Victoria may not have smoked pipes, but they ruled the roost. It really makes me angry when I hear this myth of the modern woman. There is no modern woman. Or modern love. There have always been people so emotionally impoverished they were incapable of investing love with anything higher than ‘objectivity’, to use your term. It’s just that, in the old days, you couldn’t get away with propagating this debased form of love. There was too much intellectual rigour. Anyway, it was something a well-bred author just didn’t write about.

  “The true artists and champions of love,” he went on, “have never been ‘objective’. For Casanova, every woman he encountered in the street was a goddess, and every one more beautiful than all her predecessors. That was his secret. ‘Objectivity’ … it’s man’s ability to see more in things than meets the eye that distinguishes him from the animals. ‘Objectivity’ … is there any such thing? Every one of us constructs a private universe out of his personal obsessions, and then tries to communicate with other people with hopeless little flashes of light. But enough of this … So, like St Anthony in the desert, you underwent temptation. Satan appeared at the Café Royal and promised you a journal. I just wonder what Morvin would have done if you’d taken up his offers. Where would he have got the money?”

  “Well, from Mrs Roscoe’s fortune … ”

  It had slipped from my tongue. I was furious with myself. I’m sure that for years no one had dared mention her name in his presence. He must have felt like a man who had been stabbed. He clutched his collar and went deathly pale.

  “What’s that? … Where do you get that from?”

  And now I saw that he had turned pale with anger; it was fury that was choking him. But it was too late to turn back.

  “It’s what Morvin said. He used the royal ‘we’. ‘We’ll buy you a yacht … we’ll be much obliged to you’ … ”

  The Earl stared at me. The expression on his face was horrifying. Then he lowered his head, rang for the waiter and ordered whisky.

  After a long, long silence, he said, very calmly:

  “St Anthony, you were tempted by the Devil. But never forget that the Devil is the father of lies. Every word Morvin utters is a lie. That’s his real crime, not the murder. To protect himself … to protect himself from me, he manages to make it all look as if Eileen St Claire is his partner in crime. He’s taken everyone in. Even Seton, the canniest Scot on the planet. But not me. I … I know her too well.”

  I thought of what he had said earlier: “Each of us constructs a private universe out of his personal obsessions … ” The Earl had erected a myth about Eileen St Claire and remained attached to that myth, even though estranged from the woman herself. But I did not say this.

  After another pause, he continued:

  “Eileen St Claire … Mrs Roscoe … has an unfortunate nature, in several respects. There is something in her of the automaton, something not quite human, something … as if she were permanently locked in some sort of hypnotic trance. To say she is susceptible to influence doesn’t go far enough. She has never done what, accordin
g to her own standards, she should: she’s always surrendered to the will of others. And if anyone ever tried to snap her out of her somnambulism, she immediately hated them. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this … I never speak about these things … Perhaps because you’re a foreigner, here today, gone tomorrow … Like writing in sand … Anyway, it’s an easy game for Morvin to turn appearances against her.”

  “My Lord, those appearances could have a strong basis in fact.”

  “In what way?” he demanded, somewhat irritably.

  “In what way? You, My Lord, are not a great friend of Morvin. Surely, with the evidence you have against him, you would have handed him over to the police, unless you felt that perhaps Mrs Roscoe herself … ”

  “That isn’t true!” he yelled, finally losing control. “How dare you speak of things you know nothing about? How can you possibly think you understand the motives behind what I do … ?”

  At that moment, in that spontaneous outburst of unguarded arrogance, I suddenly understood him. Just minutes before, he had said that what distinguished man from the animals was the capacity to see beyond appearances. The animal sees his mate as simply another animal, but man views his as more than human.

  And for a proud man no error can be more painful than to admit that in this regard he has blundered: that the woman he has chosen is not what he thought her. For a truly proud man the worst horror of disappointment in love is not the slight he has received: far, far worse is the failure of judgement that led him to construct a myth with no basis in reality. And a man as supremely proud as the Earl of Gwynedd has thereafter to maintain the illusion, in the face of every contradictory circumstance, lest he be forced to admit to himself that he has blundered.