Summon the Bright Water

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘We must not close them up,’ the major protested.

  ‘My God, we must! How do you think that Elsa can face any of them and what lies they are going to tell the commune? Leave them here for a day or two while we think!’

  Elsa helped me. The major decided to let Arthurian chivalry go to hell and lent an efficient hand. The Grail, which had escaped with only a slight dent below the rim, sat on the grass and watched us.

  ‘But how?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, I knew they wanted that bloody bowl more than anything else, so when you didn’t turn up I thought I’d swop it for you, and for Denzil of course. You had described the place so exactly for me. I got lost all the same and was nearly going to give up when I saw the Broom Lodge van standing on the track. Then I found the old gate to the workings and followed the foot of the slope till I saw the hole wide open.’

  ‘But light?’

  ‘Piers, darling, I am grown up! I brought a torch and then chucked it away as soon as I could see down into the cavern. I thought it would spoil my entry if I didn’t use both hands to carry the bowl. Scene Three. Priestess rescues lover. Tripey plot by Verdi and music by Stravinsky.’

  She began to sob with relief and I held her close.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she cried. ‘I can’t go back to Broom Lodge, and you’re icy and shivering.’

  ‘Stick your robe on him!’ the major ordered. ‘And you can have my anorak.’

  The dark green anorak and her brown tights suited her very well. She reminded me of the principal boy in a pantomime. I did not say so. I was so glad that she belonged again to our sanctuary of the trees, and not to the altar of black waters. As for me, I tied my wet clothes up in a bundle and put on that fragrant robe. The warmth of her body and her laughter when the shoulder seams split restored me.

  ‘Where are we to go?’ she asked. ‘No hotel would take us.’

  I said that I could offer some Robin-Hood hospitality for the night and that next day we would go to London. Meanwhile she should return to Broom Lodge, pack a case of necessaries and her smartest summer frock and slip out again on foot without being noticed.

  She had boldly parked her car – snatched from the communal garage – on the track used by the ‘geologists’, and she drove us to the village of Wigpool where I picked up mine. We then made for Broom Lodge, she to the garage and her room, and I to the quiet forest road where I waited for her return.

  ‘Going to the British Museum, Piers?’ the major asked.

  ‘Yes, just as we intended before the burglary.’

  ‘May I come with you?’

  ‘Of course. Whatever Elsa’s bowl is, you are its guardian for the present.’

  He did not object to my calling it Elsa’s bowl. Since, strictly speaking, it belonged to the commune, I thought he might object and so added the bit about the guardian.

  ‘I have not been found worthy,’ he said. ‘She has.’

  I wasn’t going to tell him how the Grail had come into her possession and I doubt if he wanted any prosaic explanation of the mystery. For him it may have been the eternal destiny, or a reward for her selfless gallantry.

  Elsa returned out of the night, transformed from priestess via principal boy to neatly dressed tourist, hair now primly plaited and coiled. I drove to the glade beneath my gloomy hill where sometimes I left my car and led them up to the den.

  ‘So this is the hotel where you lived!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It is as it should be,’ the major said, reverently laying down the cauldron on the stump which I used as a table. ‘The vision of the angels and the forest hut.’

  He must have been referring to one of the Grail legends in which the seeker was led to a humble hut full of light and music. Presumably it was also full of heavenly warmth, which my den was not. As the smoke could not be seen by night I lit a fire in the ruined hearth, and when I had changed to the gent’s suiting of Personality No. 1 we sat round the blaze till the sky behind the line of the Cots-wolds, far away across the Severn and its meadows, showed the grey of dawn. My own forest angel slept with her head on my lap.

  I put out the fire and rolled the major’s blessed car rug round the cauldron, tying it up safely. Dawn and the presence of Elsa and Denzil, one representing the joyous spirit of earth and the other the mysteries of the wandering soul, brought on a moment of adoration. Suppose, I said to myself, I really have got, here rolled up in a rug, the Grail itself or that paragon of beauty which created the myth.

  We drove into Gloucester and took the first train up to town. I expected the major to stay at my flat. I had only two bedrooms, but there was no need for embarrassment – by this time he knew very well what were the relations between Elsa and myself. He surprised me by saying that he would go to his club; a clothes brush was all he needed, and the valet would supply everything else. Clubs and valets seemed utterly out of character. But why should they? No doubt he wasn’t the only eccentric retired officer who turned up fresh from a religious meeting in some obscure and holy Himalayan village, or from a study of voodoo in the groves of Haiti, with nothing but an expensive suit of indestructible tweed.

  ‘No connections half as good as yours, old boy,’ he said, ‘but if Tony is there for lunch I could mention the Museum to him.’

  I asked who Tony was.

  ‘Sir Anthony Aslington. On some board or other which runs the place.’

  Aslington was only a name of power to me. There was hardly a national museum of art or antiquities in which he was not chairman of some committee. The best authority I could reach myself was the curator of the Middle Eastern Department.

  ‘And meanwhile you’d better take care of the bowl. Can’t allow it to be unpacked by anyone. Can’t leave it with the porter.’

  It was curious how the Guardian could become outwardly the ex-officer of the Horse Guards. With no apparent stress he left behind the lanced and unstirruped cavalry of Arthur and returned to a world in which the plumes and armour of everyday were real.

  ‘You do the talking when we get to the Museum,’ he added. ‘Never was any good at lies!’

  Once at home, I managed to make an appointment with my friend, the curator, for next day. Later he telephoned me to change the time as Sir Anthony wanted to be present. What the hell had I got hold of, he asked, that could interest that old sinner? I replied that I didn’t know what I’d got but hoped that one of them could tell me, and left it at that.

  Elsa refused to accompany us. To be in my flat opened up for her a present and future for which as abbess she must have longed, and she was bubbling with mischief and gaiety.

  ‘I’d be a distraction,’ she insisted. ‘You know what they’d be curious about instead of attending to the bowl. What a pretty piece! You should ask her out to lunch, Tony. Who does she belong to, Colet or Matravers-Drummond? And what would they think of you if it came out that you’d raped me?’

  There was, of course, only one answer to that piece of impertinence.

  I set out next morning with the cauldron in a case used for packing top hats and a feeling that I might be walking into trouble. The police had been informed that among objects stolen from Broom Lodge was a gold bowl. The description of it had been very imprecise, but jewellers and bullion brokers might have been advised to look out for something of the sort. It seemed possible, though very unlikely, that the British Museum had also been warned. I was happier when I called for the major at his club. He had bought a new shirt and tie and looked a personage above suspicion who might easily be lord-lieutenant of his county but could never have been a burglar, even amateur.

  We took a taxi to the Musum and were ushered in to the curator’s office. I was impressed by Sir Anthony, who struck me as an authority on art rather than archaeology, which may have been due to his neat, pointed, seventeenth-century beard and the jeweller’s loup slung from a broad black ribbon round his neck. So much the better. The bowl had authorities of two different disciplines to pronounce on it.

  Up to a p
oint I came clean. I said that Major Matravers-Drummond in the course of his investigations into esoteric religions had become involved with a strange character who claimed to have rediscovered the secrets of alchemy and had shown him the golden bowl as proof. The major pretended to believe that he had made it and managed to obtain the loan of it for a day. He had appealed to me for an opinion as I was the only expert at hand, not realising that I was a historian of ancient economies and certainly no archaeologist.

  Polite chorus of: ‘No, no. You are well known, Colet. Admirable work in your own field.’

  Well, I had ruled out transmutation of metals, I said, and when I had seen the bowl or cauldron I thought it more likely that the self-styled alchemist was trying to fake an antiquity. I had also wondered whether it might not be a genuine treasure from some undeclared discovery of a chieftain’s hoard or tomb.

  I then took the lid off the hat box and placed my beauty upon the table. They were both fascinated by it, but the curator ruled out my buried hoard immediately.

  ‘The gold is thin and unless very solidly protected from falling material it would have been squashed flat or at least dented by earth or pebbles. But there is only one small dent below the rim which looks recent. My dear Piers, it resembles nothing I have ever seen – Scythian, Scandinavian, Persian, Egyptian. I don’t care for the handles, and my personal opinion is that two years old is more likely than two thousand.’

  Sir Anthony praised to the skies the craftsman who had made it, but added that as an antiquity it would not take in a … he was about to say ‘child’ but substituted ‘competent archaeologist’.

  ‘We must ask ourselves first what it was for. A cooking pot? Well, you wouldn’t dare put it on a hot fire. A mixing vessel? But that would be a bowl without neck or rim. A burial urn? Wrong shape. The vessel depends for its astonishing beauty on its form. No decoration at all, which is exceptional. A bed-ridden emperor’s urinal. That’s the best I can suggest. And what’s your opinion, Denzil? You sit there saying nothing and looking guilty. How about that second sight of yours?’

  ‘I can only tell you that in some way it is not of our world at all,’ the major said.

  ‘Made at the full moon by a cabalist, eh? But there is something odd about the glorious colour…’ he fixed the loup in his eye and carried the cauldron to the window. ‘I have my suspicions. May I send it down to the lab, Denzil? You can trust them, they won’t need filings. And meanwhile shall we have a small decanter of the Museum manzanilla?’

  The verdict did not take long to come back – the time for two leisurely glasses of sherry and some learned conversation on the techniques of Cretan and Mycenaean goldsmiths to which I contributed little and the major nothing – beyond saying that his alchemist friend was a recluse, worked to his own taste and didn’t know whom he was imitating if he was.

  The bowl was brought back and a note handed to Sir Anthony.

  ‘As I suspected might be the case,’ he pronounced, ‘your cauldron or amphora is of pure gold. 24 carats. Pure. No ancient craftsman would ever have worked in pure gold without any alloy. It’s too malleable for any practical purpose. With strong arms you could squash this vessel fairly flat between your palms. Off-hand I can think of only one explanation. Your alchemist was hoarding gold as a speculation. He possibly got hold of it illegally. So, being as we all agree a fine goldsmith, he decided to keep it in the form of this vessel rather than ingots of which the origin could be traced.’

  That was running close to my early conjecture before I decided on the burial hoard. I said that it seemed an expensive hobby.

  The curator, who was probably worried by the rising cost of insuring and guarding his own collection of near-eastern gold, and kept a close eye on the value of priceless objects if stolen and melted down, at once replied to that.

  ‘It only cost him his time. Weight of your bowl is about 180 ounces. At the beginning of the year the gold price was £600 an ounce. So we can say its value was £108,000.1 don’t know whether the rarity of pure gold would make it more or less. Gold price now is £670 an ounce. Value of bowl something over £120,000. Profit just by sitting still for six months £12,000.’

  Then Marrin’s profit on gold, so long as the price continued to rise, would alone account for the prosperity of his commune without any need for the pretence of alchemy. But what started him off when Broom Lodge was bust and he rescued it? He had not the capital to speculate in gold; and even if he could somehow raise enough to buy, perhaps on margin, what would have happened to his precious commune if the price fell?

  No, somewhere there was still a mystery. Marrin had suddenly changed from futile and contemplative salmon fishing to working in gold. That, as Elsa had said, brought prosperity. What then was the object in impressing his public by a skeleton glyptodont and a vessel reputed by the inner circle to be sacred? Answer, as Sir Anthony had acutely observed: to hide the source of the gold. Was it fraud in South Africa or a dig in the Severn meadows or dredging the Wigpool lake or some method of transmutation more scientific than alchemy? We were free to choose which impossibility was the least impossible.

  At the Museum there was nothing more to be said beyond our expressions of respect and gratitude. The cauldron was restored to its hat box – with even more care than before – and we went back to the major’s club for lunch. In the taxi we laid off the whole subject except once when I exploded:

  ‘So bang goes your Grail and my Nodens’ treasure! You do agree, Denzil?’

  ‘With reservations, yes.’

  ‘You said once that the Grail could be remade.’

  ‘I said the druidicals thought so.’

  ‘But you accepted it.’

  ‘Pure gold. Inspiration. Wasn’t wrong in a way. Give it a rest till after lunch, old boy!’

  He was right. The club dining-room was no place for discussion of subtleties apart from those of the wine list. And we needed to be fortified against so much disappointment. Afterwards, in a quiet, cool corner with brandy in front of us, he said:

  ‘Going on with the search, Piers?’

  ‘Is it worth it?’

  ‘Very strong position you’re in. You’re just a friend of Simeon who stayed at the commune and came to the funeral. They don’t know the wolfs den, don’t know he has been watching, don’t know who did the damage at Wigpool.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Got to let ’em loose, haven’t we? Badly want the bowl, and can be sure that Elsa has it.’

  ‘She’s safe with me, and they don’t know about us. You didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe. But wiser to give it up. Police and lawyers likely to be a nuisance too. I’d find another dowry for that splendid girl if I were you. Where did Simeon get his gold?’

  ‘But I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Severn, old boy. Bright water and the shadow.’

  Chapter Three

  Again I must write an exact account of my operations while memory is fresh, in case I am ever compelled to justify them. I feel that I am guilty of a betrayal, yet must admit that the offence lies on me as lightly as do the deaths of Marrin and Evans. I intended neither, but perhaps did not care as much as I should have if my actions were to bring about a highly probable result. A sentence of one year for Marrin would, I think, be ample. My intervention was only culpable negligence. In the case of Evans I could plead self-defence unless witnesses agreed with each other in some outrageous lie, which, thanks to Denzil’s mission to the heathen, is now most unlikely.

  On the whole I see the betrayal of my professional standards as worse than dubious manslaughter. On the other hand I am convinced that it is pointless to publish a discovery which in the absence of date and identity adds nothing material to history.

  I return to my confession. The fact that I have just written ‘confession’ shows that my conscience is still uneasy, but to hell with it! If I published I should undoubtedly lose my reputation rather than advance it, and at the same time be forced to throw more light than is convenien
t on matters which could still, I fear, be of interest to the police.

  After the indisputable verdict of Authority on the golden cauldron, I repacked it and consigned it to the safe deposit at my bank. The next urgent duties were to recover the major’s car before it was found and reported, and to release the prisoners at Wigpool. Meanwhile I left Elsa at my flat, where it was best she should remain until we had dealt with the parishioners of Gwyn ap Nudd and concocted some story to account for her sudden disappearance from Broom Lodge.

  In the evening the major and I drove down to the Forest. After dark we found his old Humber undisturbed and extracted it from the thicket where it had been hidden. I was growing weary of darkness and straining eyes along the beam of a torch, and wished I had been gifted with night sight: a werecat rather than a werewolf. When we were out in the open we mended the wire, leaving the fence in better condition than before. As soon as wheel tracks had become barely distinguishable under growing grass the farmer to whom the derelict copse belonged would never notice that the wire had been cut and repaired.

  No lodging was more discreet than the den, so there we remained till morning. I noticed that the major slept where he dropped as easily as any old soldier. That accounted for his patience underground as champion of the imagined Grail. He was divisible by three: one part the wandering friar, one part clubman, one part veteran of the Queen’s – or Arthur’s – bodyguard.

  We were in no hurry to release the druidicals. They had now been buried for three nights and two days, and they could well endure another without food. Excellent fresh water they had in plenty. Before we unearthed them we had to know what their saner companions were doing or had done at Broom Lodge, so in the morning the major, as friend of Simeon Marrin and always welcome visitor, drove over to the commune for a casual call.