Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  A quiver of trepidation passed through James’ gut at the thought. He did not relish the prospect of standing before a thousand hostile cameras and opening himself to cynicism, ridicule, and abuse. He could guess what kind of reception awaited him from a very pro-abolition media. Having just got rid of one rotten monarch, the last thing the nation wanted, according to the press corps, was to welcome another. James knew he would be tried, convicted, hanged, drawn, and quartered before he had even concluded his statement — and he confided as much to Embries. The old man sympathized. “I wish it could be otherwise, but the short, sharp shock is best if we are to bring the nation to its senses.”

  They began talking about how to stage-manage the announcement. James listened and tried to imagine that the discussion was in some way relevant to him, but he could not make the connection. The subject kept eluding him, and he found the casual assumptions and tacit understandings surrounding him increasingly irritating. When he could stand it no longer, he stood and announced that he was going out for a walk to clear his head and think about what he wanted to say.

  “Good idea,” said Embries. “Enjoy your anonymity a while longer.”

  The thought depressed James. He strolled with a restless, desperate aimlessness, while his emotions churned away inside him. It was his own fault, he knew, for allowing the thing to get so far down the road without calling a halt to it. Despite what he had said to Embries at Caer Lial, he had not truly believed he would actually take the throne. While he was happy enough to play along up to this point, now the game was turning serious. What if Embries was right? What if Collins’ death was directly connected to the work he had done to establish James’ claim to the throne? If so, the stakes were high, and growing higher: one man had already given his life for the cause, and it was not even a cause James was certain he was willing to pursue.

  But if James did not do his part, then poor, hapless Collins had gotten himself killed for nothing. This made James angry. Collins’ death was a needless sacrifice. What is more, it was a sacrifice that demanded a response from him, a response he was not willing to match.

  He had not asked for this; none of it was his idea. It was all happening way too fast. He needed time to think things through, but who could think while events flashed past with such blinding speed?

  Well, James decided, it was time to call a halt to the giddy, headlong rush to the throne — before anyone else got hurt. He would tell Embries that he had decided not to pursue his right to succeed to the throne. Tonight, he would tell him that, however worthy and noble the idea, it was just not going to work out.

  That decided, James turned around and retraced his steps, thinking how best to break the news to Embries.

  At dinner, he was preoccupied, only half aware of what was being said around him. The others noticed it, James could tell, but Caroline and Donald kept the table talk light and did not intrude on his thoughts. Cal made one small attempt to draw him out. “Cheer up, man,” he said from his place beside Isobel. “Day after tomorrow you’ll be King, and the naysayers will just have to lump it.”

  The evening passed, and James failed to find either the words or the time to speak up and tell Embries he wanted out. He remained awake most of the night, and rose very early. Throwing on his robe, he went downstairs to the kitchen to make some coffee. He saw the phone on the wall and decided to call Embries.

  He dialed the number and it rang. “Hello?” Embries said, picking up the receiver on the second ring. Didn’t he ever sleep? James wondered.

  “I have to talk to you right away,” James told him. “How quickly can you get here?”

  “James,” he said, his voice taking on concern, “is something wrong?”

  “How long will it take you?”

  “About fifteen minutes,” Embries said. “Why? What has happened?”

  “Nothing’s happened,” James told him. “We have to talk.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  James hung up, and busied himself searching for coffee. Isobel appeared — tousle-haired and yawning in a tartan flannel robe — to stare at him sleepily.

  “G’morning, James,” she said, switching on the lights. “I heard someone creeping around down here. I thought we had burglars.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

  “No, I wanted to get up anyway. I know today is red-letter important, so I thought I’d make everyone my famous breakfast buffet. You can all stoke up. God knows, it’ll probably be days before you have another chance to eat a proper meal.”

  “You could be right about that,” James granted. “I’d settle for a cup of coffee right now.”

  “I never do anything in the morning without coffee,” she told him, pulling cups the size of cereal bowls out of a cupboard. Embries arrived as Isobel was pouring out the first pot of coffee. “G’morning, Mr. E.,” she said sunnily. “Come to check up on your blue-eyed boy here, to make sure he doesn’t do a runner like last time?”

  Embries regarded her shrewdly. “That is exactly why I have come.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Thank you, yes, Izzy,” he said, accepting a steaming cup from her. “Now then, James, what is on your mind this morning?”

  “I can’t do it,” James replied bluntly. He no longer cared who heard it or what they thought of him. He had lost enough sleep over it, and wanted only to get it off his chest. “I can’t play the king for you. You’ll have to get yourself another boy. I quit.”

  Twenty

  Embries leaned back in his chair and sat for a moment, drumming his long fingers on the breakfast table. When he spoke, his voice was measured and calm. “Well, let’s have some breakfast and then I want to show you something. I want you to come with me.”

  “Where?” asked James, suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “It’s here in London. Close by, in fact.”

  Embries fastened his golden eyes on James with an intensity that made him squirm; he could feel them boring into his flesh, and stiffened with resistance. “I don’t know….”

  “An hour or two is all I ask. You can spare me that much, I think.”

  “My mind is made up,” James insisted. “If you’re thinking of trying to talk me out of it, don’t bother. You’d only be wasting your time.”

  “It’s my time. Let me worry about that.”

  “All right,” James agreed, “but if I go with you, that’s the end of it.”

  “The decision, as I promised you, will be yours alone.”

  “Okay,” said James, “so where are you taking me?”

  “First, we eat,” replied Embries, the intensity relaxing somewhat. “Then, we go.”

  Cal appeared for breakfast just as they were getting ready to leave. “What’s up?”

  “James and I are going out for a little while,” Embries told him. “I would very much appreciate it if you would remain here and keep Isobel company.”

  “Sure, whatever,” replied Cal, glancing to James for confirmation. “If you don’t need me.”

  “Have some breakfast, and help Isobel with the dishes,” James told him. “We won’t be gone long.”

  Leaving the house, they turned left at the gate and walked quickly up the street. “Rhys is away on a few errands,” Embries said, “but this is better. I want you to rub shoulders with your people.”

  “I see what you’re trying to do,” James said.

  “Do you?”

  “It won’t work.”

  “We’ll see.”

  They walked to the corner and headed off in the direction of the nearest Underground station, where they joined the morning commuter crush on the platform — working men and women of the usual types: businessmen and -women, junior executives, secretaries, shop assistants, students of various nationalities — everything from City moguls to cleaning women. The rush hour was in full swing, so they had to wait for two trains before they could find a place in one of the overpacked carriages.

  Once aboard, they rode a few stop
s and disembarked at St. James Park so, as Embries put it, they might witness the passing spectacle in all its transient glory. What he meant, James discovered, was that he wanted to see the rush-hour flow of traffic whizzing around the London streets. Shoulder to shoulder with serious men in pinstriped suits and women in drop-dead skirts and smart jackets, they walked up the street towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

  The streets were slick with mist from the river and awash with city buses, black cabs, and luxury executive cars; bicycle daredevils took their chances along the curbs, and phalanxes of pedestrians moved through the high-octane exhaust fumes in synchronized lockstep along the broad pavements as far as the eye could see. James, who thought he was growing used to the big city, found the mad rush disturbing; he felt himself growing more and more annoyed by the careless, headlong race and the heedless discourtesy of the participants. He watched with mounting irritation as, stony faced, his fellow pedestrians pushed and shoved their way to their destinations.

  “How can people live like this?” he wondered aloud at one point.

  “Good question,” Embries replied. “That is a very good question.”

  They came onto Parliament Square, which was gridlocked in three directions with the fourth inching along at the speed of cold treacle. He despaired of having to make his way through the honking maelstrom, and just as he was about to abandon the chase, Embries said, “Follow me, and look lively.”

  With the grace of a gazelle, the old man darted sideways through the crush and was off. James pounded after him and, with the help of traffic police in yellow Day-Glo macs, managed to reach the far side of the square unscathed. They continued on quickly to the entrance of Westminster Abbey. The traffic here was only slightly less fraught, the frenzy more subdued. There were scores of people milling around — bevies of foreign students with matching green backpacks, several school groups in blazers and ties, tourists in sensible shoes — and all of them waiting to visit the abbey. It was forty-five minutes to opening time, and already the winding queue covered the forecourt. James looked dismally at the line of people, and resigned himself to a lengthy wait on the damp pavement.

  “This way,” Embries said, moving off in the opposite direction. They passed the gift shop and entered the street that ran alongside the great church, passing tour groups of old-age pensioners from Leeds and Cardiff and a gaggle of French students sitting on the lawn smoking cigarettes and drinking Coca-Cola. They paused at the entrance to Church House where Embries was greeted by an elderly verger who, after a brief word, led them down a corridor, unlocked a door, and conducted them out across the tranquil abbey garden to another, much older, heavier door.

  “This is the entrance to the cloisters,” the verger explained, taking up a huge ring. Selecting one of the large iron keys, he unlocked the door, and they stepped into the columned walkway.

  The abbey was silent and still. James had only been inside the great church once before, and that was when, as a young soldier, he had taken part in a service for the Unknown Warrior. Closing the door behind them, the verger turned at once to an ancient double door set low in the wall, chose another key, and placed it in the first of six keyholes. A moment later they were standing in a low, vaulted room which seemed to be dug down into the foundations of the church.

  “This is the Pyx Chamber,” the man announced, snapping on the lights at a switch beside the door. “Very special room, this.” He gazed up at the elaborate stone vaulting with evident pride, and then said, “You won’t be long, will you, Mr. Embries? The doors open at nine o’clock sharp. You’ll have to be out by then.”

  “Don’t worry, Joseph, we will be gone by then.” Embries thanked the verger, who left, closing the door behind him.

  “Pyx?” said James.

  “This was once the storehouse for the national treasury. Every year the gold-and silversmiths of London met here to test their metal against the absolute standard in the Trial of the Pyx, named for the box in which the test plates were kept,” Embries explained. “Before that, it was a chapel for the builders who were constructing the abbey, and before that, a pilgrim chapel. This” — Embries spread his hands — “is nearly all that remains of the great monastery created by King Edward the Confessor.”

  James looked around the room; save for the elaborate vaulting work, the chamber was utterly lacking in decoration. The stonework was simple and basic, the stones themselves chipped and rough — as if the chapel had been constructed entirely of rejected materials. Taken altogether, this bare, humble room, crouching beneath the feet of its magnificent sister edifice, seemed as far removed from its surrounding finery as a rat catcher’s daughter from a queen. “I suppose,” he ventured, “you had some reason for bringing me here — besides the history lesson.”

  “The history is the reason,” Embries replied. Pointing to a window long ago blocked up with red bricks, he said, “That window once opened onto the Thames. Hard to imagine now.”

  “If stones could speak,” murmured James.

  “But they do,” Embries assured him. “They tell their secrets to those who know how to hear.” He closed his eyes and stood motionless in the chamber as if he were listening at that moment.

  James watched him, feeling more and more as if he had made a big mistake in coming here, in coming to London — in ever listening to Embries in the first place. “So what are they telling you?” he asked, his small pool of enthusiasm evaporating rapidly. He wanted nothing more than to get it over with and go home.

  “They tell me that in a former age, men believed in a kind of sympathetic magic. If someone wanted to build a chapel, for example, he would try to find the most holy stones possible.”

  “Okay…” James looked around the bare room. There was little to distinguish one block from another.

  “Stones which had been consecrated, let us say, by virtue of having come from a holy site or having been used in a holy structure.”

  “They took stones from other churches,” James said indifferently. “So?”

  “Edward the Confessor was determined to build a great monastery, so he put out a call to all the holiest places in Britain and gathered stones from far and wide — including Iona and St. David’s. He found some a little closer to home, as well,” Embries said, stepping towards a crude altar set in an arched niche. The altar was made of unshaped stones, many of which were in very poor condition.

  “See here,” he said, squatting down at the base of the altar. “Look at the shape of that stone and tell me what you think it is.” He pointed to a large, squarish block on the right-hand side which formed a sort of cornerstone for the rest of the altar.

  James looked as directed. “Fairly unremarkable,” he replied. “More or less like all the others.”

  “The shape,” Embries said. “Think.”

  James knelt down beside Embries for a closer look. “It’s more or less wedge-shaped,” he said, “other than that, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Does that suggest anything to you?”

  James shrugged; he felt like a slow-witted schoolboy trying to guess the answer to a dauntingly obvious mathematics problem. Embries turned his eyes to the arch above the altar. “A keystone?” said James.

  “A keystone,” confirmed Embries. “By including this particular stone in this position, it is as if the master mason was saying that this chapel, which was to be the keystone of the English church, was itself founded on the keystone of an earlier church.”

  James nodded. It was mildly interesting, but he did not see what it had to do with him.

  “That stone,” Embries continued, “came from the doorway of London’s first genuine cathedral, founded inside the original city walls no great distance from here.”

  As Embries spoke, James saw in his mind’s eye a narrow, cobblestoned street close crowded by buildings of Roman brick. The end of the street opened out into a small courtyard filled with heaps of quarried stone, where workmen wearing little more than dus
ty rags dragged sledges of rock towards a veritable forest of timber scaffolding.

  “Well, Uther Pendragon had died, and Britain was rapidly descending into chaos. Each year the Saecsen, Picti, and Scoti grew increasingly bold and ruthless, and if that weren’t bad enough, the petty kings were at one another’s throats, laying waste the land. Bishop Urbanus called a council of kings to decide once and for all who should replace Uther and lead the war host of Britain against the barbarian invaders.”

  At these words, James saw the torch-lit interior of the church and a room full of angry men wrapped in their long cloaks against a cold winter wind that gusted through the unfinished building. Each, with his own noblemen for support, faced another belligerently across the ring, while the Bishop stood in the center, hands out-thrust in supplication, ardently beseeching them to put aside their animosity.

  The small kings paid him no attention; frustration was mounting, and tempers were boiling over; there were shouts and threats of violence. And then, there was Myrddin in their midst. Quiet, triumphant, towering in his confidence, hand upraised, clutching a sword — the great battle sword of Emperor Maximus, the Sword of Britain.

  With the end of their shouts ringing in his ears, James looked at the keystone, and he saw the deep-cut cleft. It might have been made by the blow of a chisel, only this cut struck into the heart of the stone, far deeper than any mason’s tool. He saw the narrow crevice and knew what had caused it.

  “The Sword of Macsen Wledig,” murmured James. “Myrddin did that.”

  “He did indeed,” Embries replied with satisfaction. “I told you these old stones could talk.”

  All at once the image shifted to another winter’s day, years later. As before, the kings were gathered in the church to debate who among them might ascend to the High King’s throne. As before, it was the evening before the Christ Mass; this time, however, a stranger had come to join the proceedings. A young man approached the altar uncertainly while Bishop Urbanus read out his long-winded prayer in a desperate attempt to forestall the acrimony and bitterness to which this council would soon descend. For years, the insane arrogance and absurd posturing had made a mockery of his good intentions. Still, he hoped, and so he prayed, and praying heard the soft footfall approaching. Urbanus glanced across the backs of the kneeling kings, first in annoyance at the interruption and then in amazement: the youth carried the Sword of Britain in his hands!