by Unknown
He opened Le Morte and turned to the preface. “All right, let’s do it,” he said. “Let me see which books deal with the sword.”
After a while he made a face.
“What?”
“None of them. Malory doesn’t mention Excalibur in the preface at all.”
“But it’s talked about in the book, no?”
“All over it. Dozens of mentions, probably. But not in the preface. I can do an online search and find each book and chapter where Excalibur is mentioned if you think it’ll be helpful.”
“I don’t think so. At least not now. That would violate our principle of simplicity.”
“Okay …” He looked to her for their next move but he beat her to an idea. “We’re looking for the sword but the sword is only a means to an end. What we’re really seeking is the Grail.”
She pointed at him with a playful smile. “So, chemists can be reasonably clever too. See what the preface says about the Grail.”
In a short while he had the answer. “This is more promising. Listen to this: ‘the thirteenth book treateth how Galahad came first to King Arthur’s court and how the quest for the Sangreal was begun and containeth twenty chapters. The fourteenth book treateth of the quest of the Sangreal and containeth ten chapters. The seventeenth book treateth of the Sangreal and containeth twenty-three chapters.’”
“That’s it?” she asked. “In the preface he talks about the Grail in just three books?”
“I think it’s mentioned all over the place but it’s the main subject of these three books, yeah.”
She asked for his pen and a pad and had him repeat the relevant numbers. “Okay, assuming we’re on the correct path we’ve got three pairs of numbers to look at, three sets of book and chapter numbers. It’s thirteen and twenty, fourteen and ten, and seventeen and twenty-three.”
“But that’s too complicated, according to your hypothesis,” he said.
“Yes, so I’d ask you to tell me which pairing is the most important.”
“How can I do that?”
“For the Grail, which book is the most important one?”
“I’m going to have to read them again.”
“Okay. You read and I’ll make some calls to my parents in the lobby. Then maybe take a little walk in the garden.”
“Where do they live?”
“Toulouse. My mother and father like to hear from me. I’m an only child.”
“I was too,” Arthur said.
When she returned he shot her a thumbs-up. He’d made progress. By way of context he explained that in the Arthurian tradition multiple knights had sought the Grail. Five of them—Percival, Gawain, Bors, Lancelot, and Galahad—achieved some sort of mystical vision of the Grail. Three of them—Percival, Bors, and Galahad—actually attained true sight of the holy object.
Thomas Malory in Le Morte had highlighted Galahad’s quest. Galahad was the illegitimate son of Lancelot and by all accounts was the better of his father in valor and piousness. When he was reunited with his father, Lancelot brought him to Camelot where he was taken to the Round Table and bade to sit at the Siege Perilous, an unused chair kept vacant for the only person capable of succeeding in a Grail quest. Yet anyone who sat in the chair not worthy of the quest died instantly. Galahad survived the test and King Arthur, much impressed, gave him another test. As Arthur had become king after removing a sword from a stone, likewise Galahad became the greatest knight of the Round Table by removing a sword from a stone in a nearby river. Soon afterward Arthur set Galahad on his Grail quest.
Although Galahad set off on his own, smiting enemies along the way, he was reunited with Sir Bors and Sir Percival. Percival’s sister showed them the way to a Grail ship that took them to a distant shore. Percival, Bors, and Galahad pressed on and eventually found their way to the court of the holiest of rulers, King Pelles, who was the keeper of the Sangreal. In a room in the castle Galahad was allowed to see the Grail and was asked to take it to the holy city of Sarras. He was so overcome by the heavenly splendor of the chalice, however, that Galahad asked the holy king if he might die at the time of his choosing; and in Sarras, after an ethereal visit by Joseph of Arimathea, Galahad was overcome with rapture and there he made his request to die, and it was granted. Witnessed by Bors and Percival, Galahad was carried to heaven by angels and the Grail disappeared with him, never to be seen again by man.
“Book thirteen describes the beginning of Galahad’s quest,” Arthur elaborated. “Book fourteen, despite Malory’s preface, has very little to do with the quest. Book seventeen is the other meaty one. This is where Galahad finds the Grail and dies.”
Claire retrieved the notepad and crossed out the middle pair of numbers. “So it’s two pairs of numbers to consider: thirteen and twenty, and seventeen and twenty-three.”
“Still too complicated?” he asked.
“I think so. It should be only one pair. Which is more important to a story, the beginning or the end?”
“You can’t have one without the other.”
“Here’s the way I see it,” Claire began. “One of the pairs is important, the other one is irrelevant. Either way, I think this may be a simple chain of numbers. The first number points to the second number, the second to a third. If you want to call it a code, it’s a very primitive one.”
“So let me understand what you’re suggesting. The book number leads to a chapter number and the chapter number leads … where? There’s no third number.”
She picked up the Domesday Book. “Here. This is where it has to lead. Malory says so in his letter. The sword can be found in the preface, taking into consideration the green acres of Warwickshire as written in the Domesday Book. Something like that, no?”
“Close enough.”
“So either the number twenty or the number twenty-three is our key. We don’t know which so we’ll have to follow both of them into the pages of the Domesday Book.” She opened it to the back cover and sighed. “All fourteen hundred and thirty-six pages of it.”
#
In the last light of a warm and windless day Lake Geneva looked still and purple like a sheet of Murano glass. On the second floor of a grand building on the Quai du Mont-Blanc, a group of men sat in a semicircle of club chairs positioned to take in the water view over the pollarded London Plane trees lining the avenue. It was a private room in a private club and they waited for the tuxedoed server to hand out their cocktails and leave before speaking of anything but the weather.
When the nine were alone, all eyes turned to the small man at their center. Jeremy Harp lifted a glass of wine by the stem and said, “Gentlemen, a toast.”
Their response wasn’t in unison. They weren’t a disciplined and drilled lot. But they managed a scruffy reply, “To the Khem.”
“Indeed, to the Khem,” Harp said.
Stanley Engel wasn’t a drinker. He vigorously stirred the ice in his coke with a swizzle stick and piped up, “So tell me why I had to schlep over here?”
“It was encouraged, Stanley,” Harp said. “None of this is mandatory. As you can see, some weren’t able to come.”
“I’m a team player,” Engel said, but his colleagues weren’t buying it.
“Since when?” Raj asked, his bushy eyebrows rising. “Even when you’re my bridge partner I have the feeling you’re playing against me.”
Andris Somogyi, thin in a vested suit, didn’t join in the levity. “None of us are team players. It is not in our nature as individualists. We are in this group because we believe it is important to do so and we all have a sense of purpose arising from history.”
“Well put, Andris,” Harp said. “It’s a good message for our newest member to hear.” He was looking directly at Simone Guastella, the youngest in the room by a decade. “How long did it take you to get here from Modane, Simone?”
“Only two hours by car, Dr. Harp.”
Harp laughed. “He’s so new he still calls me Dr. Harp. It’s Jeremy, okay?”
Simone gave a tight-lipped smile
and nodded. “Yes, certainly. Jeremy. I’m just happy to be here.”
Li Peng, a bespectacled man in his forties, had come farthest, from Taiwan. “I’m just glad I’m no longer the new boy.”
“Well, that makes me an old boy,” Harp said. “Simone’s been fully vetted and fully indoctrinated by myself and others in the room. Choosing a new member is always a tricky business but it’s nothing that hasn’t happened many, many times before. Khem have dealt with ensuring the organization’s perpetuity for over two thousand years. Bad choices were made in the past—men who were indiscreet and unreliable—and those men were dealt with harshly and permanently. Fortunately, there have been no transgressions in the modern era and I’m certain that given Simone’s stellar sponsorship, he will keep our traditions proudly moving forward.”
There were murmurs of assent around the semicircle.
“I’ll do my best,” Simone said soberly.
“Now as all of you know, everyone here shares two passions,” Harp said. “We are all physicists and we are all seekers of the Grail. Our knowledge of the Grail comes to us through oral history which, as you know, can be fraught with distortions and inaccuracies. But our oral historians, the Khem who came before us, were not ordinary men as we are not ordinary men. They were the clearest thinkers and greatest scientific minds of their generations in a golden chain going all the way back to Nehor. First we were alchemists. Then chemists. Now we are physicists.
“As science and mathematics have evolved so has our understanding and beliefs of the unique properties of the Grail. When—not if but when—we find it we physicists will be in the best position to study it, exploit it, and harness its potentially vast power. And after two millennia of search I believe we are the closest we have ever been to finding it. That’s why I asked you to come here in person. I want to brief you on what we know about Arthur Malory and how we intend to follow his every move. Should he succeed, as I hope he will, we will pluck the Grail away from him.”
“And then what will we do with him?” Peng asked.
“We will deal with him in the appropriate way,” Harp answered. “Then we’ll toast his memory with some good champagne.” He smiled broadly at his own thought. “Perhaps we’ll even make him a Khem, posthumously.”
15
England, 1451
On the journey back to Newbold Revel Malory carried the sword tucked in his saddle pack, slept with it under his blanket, and unwrapped it each morning before the others rose so he could study the indecipherable language on its hilt. He ran his finger over the incised letters and pronounced the strange words as if doing so would unlock their meaning. There was only one word he could understand and that was the most tantalizing of them all.
Gral.
None of his fellow travelers had a facility with ancient languages, of course, and he could hardly trust Cornish strangers. So the rest of the message remained elusive. Yet he had succeeded in the greatest part of the challenge: finding the sword. Learning the meaning of the inscription would come. Then, perhaps, so would the Grail.
He endeavored to keep his return to Newbold Revel understated, with no feasts or celebrations. He dismissed the squires with coin for their service and their silence, clapped John Aleyn on the back, permitting him to return to the solitude of his cottage, and invited Robert Malory for an intimate dinner much to the chagrin of both their waiting wives.
Over a steaming plate of lamb and turnips Malory told his cousin, “Thank you for your support, Robert. We have achieved a great prize.”
“What will you do now, coz?” Robert asked.
“I must find a man who knows the language of King Arthur. Without that I have a relic and nothing else. Without that I cannot find the Grail.”
“Any notions who this man may be?”
“I will consult some learned friends—discreetly, of course.”
“Of course.”
Malory wagged his dagger at Robert. The chunk of lamb skewered on the tip made the gesture less threatening than pointing naked steel. “And it goes without saying that I can be assured of your absolute discretion.”
“It does go without your saying, Thomas. I will refrain even from uttering a word to my good wife in our bedchamber where I intend to retire presently, having had my fill of male company. Tell me, coz, where will you keep the sword?”
Malory frowned at the question. “Somewhere safe.”
Robert lifted his ale and buried his face in the goblet. His lips wet with drink, he speared a turnip and added to his cousin’s cagey reply, “A great treasure demands a great hiding place.”
Coombe Abbey, the large Cistercian monastery in Warwickshire, possessed substantial land holdings abutting Thomas Malory’s estate. Malory had always maintained cordial relations with the abbot of Coombe, Richard Atherstone, a priest as much businessman as man of God. There was brisk commerce in livestock and produce between Newbold Revel and Coombe, and the cellars of Malory’s estate were filled with ale, wine, and mead crafted by the monks. There was a good library at the monastery and several scholarly clergymen employed in the scriptorium; and for that reason and one other, Malory rode alone through his forest and crossed the Smite Brook onto abbey land.
He was met by a young monk outside the abbot house who took the reins of his horse and offered to watch over the corded iron chest tied to the saddle.
“I will take that myself,” Malory said.
Atherstone was dressed in an ermine-trimmed cloak reading accounts at his desk. At the announcement of Malory’s arrival he sprang up and bounded over to greet his neighbor.
“Ah, Sir Thomas! You’ve returned home, hale and hearty I see.”
“It was neither a long trip nor an arduous one—at least not compared to my last campaign in Normandy.”
“Come, sit. Drink with me. I’ve a new wine I’d have you sample. If you like it, I can give you a very good price on a barrel or two. Or three!”
Atherstone was portly with a fine head of hair for a man of his age and a neatly tonsured circle of pink scalp at the crown. He personally poured the wine from a fine silver decanter and watched for Malory’s reaction.
“I will have a barrel,” Malory said, approvingly.
“Excellent! Tell me how I can assist you, Sir Thomas.”
“Are there any monks in your service who can read the ancient Cornish writings?”
“Cornish, you say?”
“Aye.”
The abbot closed his eyes and mumbled various names, dismissing each with a no or a grunt. “No. I’m quite certain no one here possesses this facility. Why do you ask?”
“I have a brief passage whose meaning I need to know.”
“What is this passage? Can you show me?”
Malory shook his head. “No, but I’ll speak it.” He said the words that he had committed to memory by uttering them so many times.
Atherstone shrugged. “Means nothing to me. A guttural tongue if ever I heard one. If it were Latin or Greek or Hebrew—or even Gaelic, as we have Brother Bruno from Ireland—then we could assist you. Alas …”
“I’ll look elsewhere then,” Malory said. “Could you do something else for me?”
Atherstone opened his arms in a gesture of yes.
Malory pointed to the chest at his feet, which the abbot had been glancing at throughout their conversation. “Could you take this chest and keep it safe?”
“May I ask what it contains?”
Malory smiled diplomatically. “One day I hope to tell you.”
“I’ve heard a rumor, Sir Thomas. One must always discount the value of a rumor but it comes from a man close to Buckingham.”
Malory bristled. “Which man? What did he say?”
“I cannot in good conscience reveal him but he suggested he had heard that on your travels of late you recovered a relic of old. Something which may have belonged to a king.”
Malory rose and spat vehemently, “I have nothing to say on this but the hearing of it redoubles my notion of
keeping my valuables at a distance from Newbold Revel. Will you take my chest into your possession for safekeeping or will you not?”
Atherstone rose too and waved his hands in conciliation. “Of course, Sir Thomas, of course! I will place it in my privy chamber inside my own chest of valuables. I see there is a lock.”
“And I have the only key,” Malory said. “You must tell no one of this.”
“I swear to you before God that I will not. You can trust me absolutely to do your bidding.”
Malory bowed his head. “Thank you, your grace. On reflection, perhaps I will take three barrels of your wine.”
#
Malory returned to his estate riding slowly through the verdant forest, the sound of humming insects in his ears and venom in his mind.
Who is the traitor?
It certainly could not be John Aleyn—as loyal a man as could be, he’d stake his life on it. Likewise, his squire was the son of a comrade-in-arms from the old Normandy campaigns and he implicitly trusted the lad’s innocence. What of his cousin’s squire? A possibility, he supposed, but what access would such a youth have to Buckingham’s camp? And would he risk his life for a traitorous act? He thought not.
That left Robert.
His cousin was not Malory’s sort of man. He was wanting in courage and valor and fortitude, traits which any knight would value more than any other in one’s estimation of character. But he was blood. And blood didn’t sell out blood. He had trusted him enough to bring him on the expedition. Had his trust been misplaced?
The answer came soon enough.
That night, while Malory sat drinking by the fire, his sleek dogs lounging at his chair, John Aleyn came to the manor house.
“Sorry to bother you at the late hour, my lord.”
Malory poured him some strong ale. “I have not seen you of late.”
“Been to Coventry.”
“Oh yes?”
“Whoring and drinking for the best part of the week. At the Blue Boar.”
“Well-deserved after our journey, I would say. Absent obligations I reckon I would have done the same.”
