by Unknown
“Tell me where I may find the sword and you will be released.”
John Aleyn and other trusted associates had been able to ferret out pieces of information about Buckingham’s cloaked pursuits. There was talk of a network of men scattered throughout Europe and Asia called the Qem, alchemists bound together not by allegiance to any crown but to a darker commonality. There was another Englishman, Ripley, who was rumored to be as deep in the muck as Buckingham. Buckingham and Ripley, it was said, owed loyalty to these other men who collectively shared a desire to find the Holy Grail, not for the sake of the glory of God but for some whispered base and demonic purposes.
So every time Buckingham appeared with the key to unlock the cell and put forward his proposition, Malory would offer the same response. “My lord, you will not have the sword and you will not have the Grail. The Grail is meant for goodness and light and you, I fear, wish to use it for evil and darkness. I will die a happy man knowing that you shall never possess it.”
While politics and war swept England into a vortex of violence, the rhythms of Malory’s life in captivity, thus shielded, were slow and repetitive. On a good day, when illness was at bay and provisions were acceptable, he might even admit to a certain enjoyment of his gentle pursuits.
After a lifetime of battle and blood, the solitude of writing and of precious books was quietly comforting. Often he would begin his day with a letter to his dear wife or a loyal friend but then he would settle into his chapter of Le Morte Darthur and lose himself in a description of a great battle, passionate love affair, or noble quest. He would write for hours upon hours and thereby transport himself to the windswept hills of Camelot and the vibrant court of Arthur, his king, his inspiration, his ancestor.
Buckingham, a thorough man, took a keen interest in what Malory wrote and had a literate man read his letters and pages of his manuscript for possible hidden messages concerning the location of the sword but they found no such thing.
For a prisoner, Malory was kept well informed and up to date by his gaolers and visitors, and within a week of the Battle of Northampton in July 1460, he had heard the news at Newgate Prison. The duke of York had scored a stunning victory against King Henry’s 10,000 men on the grounds of the Delapré Abbey. The king was captured and quickly agreed to a short-lived accord by which he would retain the throne for life though the crown would pass to York and his heirs. But more importantly for Malory, Buckingham was dead!
Buckingham, every bit the schemer and an opportunist, had played the York side when the pendulum of the War of the Roses had swung in their direction, and the Lancastrian side when the king was in ascendency. Unfortunately for him, on that day in Northampton, he was commanding the Lancaster forces for King Henry and was piked clean through by a Yorkist Kentishman.
Malory, rejoicing at the news, petitioned the crown and waited. Finally, weeks later, without the noxious interference of Buckingham, he was released to the waiting arms of his wife and his faithful man, John Aleyn. It was like a dream. Back in Newbold Revel, his meadows green and plantings ripe for harvest, he began to slowly restore his health following a bout of summer dysentery that had nearly killed him.
He ate what he could and walked his land trying to regain his strength. All the while he planned and plotted. The sword could remain a while longer in its watery resting place. He would dearly love to have it again, to treasure it, to pass it to his heir but there was no need for haste; Excalibur was safe. He sat on a bench beside the grave of his eldest son, Thomas, who had died of the pox two years earlier while Malory was rotting away at Newgate. His remaining son, Robert, was a good lad, not yet thirteen but already noble and brave; in time, Malory knew, he would be an able steward of the family lands and treasures. Yet he would not imperil Robert by informing him about the sword or the Grail, for that was dangerous knowledge. The quest was his and his alone.
The manuscript for Le Morte Darthur now lay in a box in his library, half finished. Its completion would have to wait. There was more urgent business. He knew the inscription on the sword by heart and, more importantly, its translation. When he was strong enough, perhaps in the spring, he would mount a small party of loyal men, including John Aleyn, to secure a ship and provisions. Their journey to a distant land would be arduous and the outcome uncertain but there was a chance—a glorious chance—that at journey’s end he would hold the holiest relic on earth in his trembling hands.
The awful reversal came a few months later and arrived just as the winds of winter began to blow. It was a hard, crushing blow to be arrested once again on the same tired charges and sent to Marshalsea Prison. Malory demanded to know who was behind it. The answer came like a hand from beyond the grave. A man he did not know appeared in his cell one day and bade his forgiveness for the interruption.
Malory looked up from his desk. Though bitter, he had resumed work on his manuscript and was deep in thought about Lancelot and Guinevere. The man at his door was enormously fat and, judging by his fur-lined robe and jeweled rings, also enormously wealthy.
“Who are you, sir?” Malory asked.
“I am George Ripley. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
Malory smiled. Here was another of Buckingham’s lot. “I have indeed.”
“Good, then perhaps you know why I’m here.”
“Sit yourself down, Ripley. Marshalsea does not provide the best accommodations but I daresay you won’t be here long enough to be bothered.”
Ripley grimaced as he squeezed his rump into a narrow chair.
Malory rested his quill in the inkpot. “Why don’t you tell me about the Qem?”
If Ripley had been surprised, he didn’t show it. “We are students of natural philosophy, curious men; gentlemen. That is all.”
“You are alchemists.”
“Indeed we are. I and others fervently believe that alchemy is a noble pursuit. You would agree that understanding the hand of God is a noble pursuit, would you not?”
“Why do you want the Grail?”
“Why do you, Sir Thomas?”
“For the glory of God.”
“And that also is why we want it.”
“I have heard otherwise.”
“I cannot and will not comment on the depraved and scandalous accusations of unknown men.”
Malory rose painfully, rubbing at his hip. “Yet here am I, sir, unlawfully imprisoned because of the depraved and scandalous accusations of unknown men! It was you who put me back in gaol, was it not? I thought a Kentish pikeman had finished Buckingham’s interest in my poor soul but methinks I am wrong. The Yorkists are now in charge. Does your influence extend to them?”
“Our influence extends to diverse places. Buckingham, may God rest his soul, found himself on King Henry’s side at a most inauspicious point in time. Now that the duke of York and his heir, Edward of York, are in ascendancy, my own influence is perhaps better placed. The duke has placed certain aspects of Edward’s education in my hands: if I were to whisper, for instance, that a certain knight ought again to be confined, then perhaps my will would be done. And if perchance I were to plead that just such a knight should be released, then likewise perhaps my will would also be done.”
“I encourage you to whisper away, then.”
“I will do just that. All you need do is to tell me where I may find the sword.”
Malory hobbled around to the other side of the desk and leaned hard against it. “Ah, there it is again, that infernal proposal. I will tell you what I told Buckingham many times over. I will never tell you. You may sully my name, I will not yield. You may torture me, I will not yield. You may take my land, kill my family, I will not yield. The Qem may be powerful, you may be powerful, but no man is more powerful than my iron will—fortified by the certain knowledge that what I protect I protect for God. Now, fine sir, if you are able to extract your nether parts from that chair, then I will bid you a good day.”
For the next decade Malory’s shuttle from prison to prison continued, punctuated by
brief periods of bail and pardon; but it was almost as if he could hear the whispers from Ripley’s fat lips. He heard them in his dreams. “Snare the rabbit. Yank him from his happy hole. Put him back in his cage. He’s mine. He’s mine. He’s mine.”
The War of the Roses dragged on but Ripley’s influence at court only grew. The duke of York perished at Pontefract but his nineteen-year-old son, a magnificent specimen of a man at six foot three inches, took the throne as Edward IV. Nothing could stop Ripley now. Openly serving as court alchemist, his whispering continued—directly into the ear of a king.
Once a year on New Year’s Day, Ripley visited Malory in prison to offer him a conditional release, and once a year Malory refused. That day was chosen, Malory suspected, so that he might all the more painfully reflect on his fate.
On the first day of 1471, Malory dismissed the fat man and poured himself some poor ale. The warden of Newgate Prison had sent him extra rations the night before. Malory had squirreled away a better than usual piece of venison and a nice slab of bread for his New Year’s supper. He sat at his desk, chewing slowly and reading the last page of Le Morte Darthur, completed only that morning. Here was two decades of work, a labor of love and devotion, crowned by this dolorous and personal lamentation.
Here is the end of the book of King Arthur, and of his noble knights of the Round Table, and when they were whole together there was ever an hundred and forty. And here is the end of the death of Arthur. I pray you all, gentlemen and gentlewomen that readeth this book of Arthur and his knights, from the beginning to the ending, pray for me while I am on live, that God send me good deliverance, and when I am dead, I pray you all pray for my soul. For this book was ended the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth, by Sir Thomas Maleoré, knight, as Jesu help him for his great might, as he is the servant of Jesu both day and night.
Pray for me while I am on live.
He wiped away a tear and finished his crust of bread.
#
It was curious to feel one’s existence slowly draining away like water from a bucket with a tiny hole. His manuscript was done and so perhaps was his life. King Edward, guided by Ripley, no doubt, had granted a general pardon to prisoners a few years earlier and had excluded only eleven men, Malory being one of them. Even if the king were to reverse himself and free him, it was too late now to pursue the Grail. He was frail and infirm. An overseas adventure was out of the question. All he could do was pray that an heir might pluck the battle standard from his dead hands and sally forth for the honor of the Malorys and the greatness of God.
A fierce storm dumped a foot of snow onto London. From his high window, Malory watched it accumulate on the prison grounds and smiled as the warden’s children threw snowballs at one another. How marvelous it would be to ride his horse through the drifts, to feel the cold flakes against his face. He wondered if it was snowing up in Warwickshire. Elizabeth would be rising from her bed about this time and see the snow falling through the small panes of their bedchamber. She too was old but still beautiful.
He sighed pitifully and returned to his desk to complete his legacy. The parchment quires of Le Morte Darthur were tied with a ribbon into a thick stack. He had written the preface the night before, thus fulfilling the promise he had made almost twenty years earlier in his letter to Bishop Waynflete. A worthy man, hopefully a descendant, could now marry knowledge of Le Morte Darthur with that of the Domesday Book to find the sword Excalibur and, God willing, the Grail. All that was left to do was to pen a message to the ages in the hope that a Malory would find it. Perhaps it would be his son, Robert, or perhaps his son’s son; or a more distant Malory.
He wrote,
Alas my enemies, these unholy men who call themselves the Qem, have succeeded in preventing me from making the journey to find the Graal. I am now old and too feeble. Yet by placing me in prison all these years they have given me the benefit of time and I have been blessed by God with the ability to well and fully chronicle the tales of my noble forebear the great and noble Arthur King of the Britons. I pray that a Maleoré who comes after me will find this parchment and take up the quest for the Sangreal.
He finished the letter shortly before John Aleyn arrived for what would be their final visit. As usual, Aleyn1 bribed the sentries with wine to allow him to speak to his master alone. Aleyn was himself stooped with age. He had a shuffling gait and a tremor in his hand but he managed, as always, to show his master a measure of good cheer.
“The cold has turned my balls to brass, my lord,” he said, warming his hands by Malory’s fire.
“What need have you for balls, old man?”
“Little need, my lord, though I pray my wenching days are not completely done for.”
“How is Elizabeth? And Robert?”
“She is well. No ailments of which I am aware. Robert is north, heading to St. Albans with a company of King Edward’s men to fight the last of the Lancasters. Queen Margaret and her son are making their last stand, I reckon.”
“I pray he survives. John, I would ask you one last favor.”
Aleyn grimaced at the words but stayed silent.
“Carry this book of mine to Bishop Waynflete in Winchester and ask him to set a scribe to copy it. The gaolers will let you take it. They have read it and care not what I do with it. Bid Waynflete to have the copy delivered to William Caxton, the London printer. I know Caxton from years past. From Calais.”
“I remember him, my lord. A wool merchant in those days. Turned to printing, has he?”
“Apparently with great success. And one more thing: this letter.” He slipped it deep inside the pages of the book for safekeeping. “Bring it back to Newbold Revel and place it inside a locked chest with various and sundry documents and belongings of mine. I would have Robert find it, or his son or some future Malory. It is made of words but it is surely a treasure map. Keep it safe. I will say no more.”
When it was time for his visitor to leave they clasped each other hard.
“Take care, my lord,” Aleyn said. “I have heard that Ripley intends to do you harm.”
“What harm can he do beyond what has been done? I am ready to accept my fate, eternally hopeful that one who follows me will fulfill the destiny which has eluded me.”
Aleyn departed with letter and manuscript in his cloth satchel. He would go to Winchester and place the book into the bishop’s own hands. And the bishop would give Aleyn for safekeeping the letter Malory had written him twenty years earlier. Aleyn would return to Newbold Revel and place the old letter and the new one into a sturdy locked box for safekeeping for his master’s heirs. Robert Malory would emerge from the Battle of St. Albans with a head wound that left him incompetent. He would die in 1479, a year before his mother, never to open the locked chest. The map of words Malory had produced would be ignored and overlooked for the next 543 years.
#
On a cold day in March, Ripley appeared in Malory’s cell with some rough men and a bag of implements. He announced the end of his patience. He would test this old knight’s assertion that he would not reveal the hiding place of the sword even under torture. After all, what had he to lose? Reports from Newgate had reached him that Malory was losing the last of his strength and that he would likely not live to see the flowers of May.
Malory’s hands were crushed by their vises, then his feet. Hot irons were pressed against his chest and thighs and finally his privy parts.
Though he screamed like any man would, he ignored Ripley’s exhortations and uttered not a word. As he took his last breaths he was blessed with a vision, not unlike the visions of Arthur’s knights—Percival and Gawain, Bors and Lancelot, Galahad. The stone walls of his prison cell gave way to a bright blue sky and there in the heavens was the Grail, a glowing chalice radiating beams of light, as beautiful a sight as he had ever seen.
His quest was over.
18
The Stoneleigh Park Lodge was only a few minutes’ drive from the river island in the Avon. Art
hur and Claire checked into the hotel and climbed back into the Land Rover. The back of the vehicle was packed with his last possessions, metal-hunting gear, some good flashlights, and a pair of army surplus night-vision goggles that he had purchased years earlier but had rarely used.
Venturing from the cocoonlike safety of Cantley House was weighing on him. Arthur obsessively checked for any signs of being followed. He was reasonably sure they were in the clear.
As Jim Mawby had pointed out, the island lay on the grounds of Stoneleigh Abbey, which had settled into a modern purpose far removed from its ecclesiastical roots. Henry II had founded it in 1154 and it thrived as a Cistercian monastery for four centuries until Henry VIII swept the bricks and mortars of Catholicism from his realm. The buildings and land were handed over as a plum to Henry’s chum, Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and the old abbey stayed in private hands, undergoing waves of renovations and additions until 1996, when it passed to a charitable trust. Along the way it was the country seat of the Leighs, Jane Austen’s ancestors, and the house served as inspiration for her novels Persuasion and Mansfield Park. It was now a museum and banqueting hall and when Arthur and Claire pulled into the sunny car park a catering firm was offloading a large tent for a wedding. At the visitor’s center they bought two tickets for a garden tour and Arthur chatted up the ticket girl to learn about the wedding. It was an evening affair, 350 guests, a fairly big one.
At the garden entrance, Arthur asked Claire, “Do you want to be friends of the bride or the groom?”
He heard a “Mon Dieu!” under her breath before she said, “I don’t have the right clothes.”
“Plenty of time to go shopping later.”
The abbey grounds were 700 acres of parkland and formal gardens laid out along the Avon but Arthur was only interested in the river island, accessible via a footbridge from the manicured lawn adjacent to the abbey’s orangery. The island was flat and grassy with only a few trees, crisscrossed by a couple of brown, worn walking paths. Arthur’s heart sank. There were at least two acres of ground to cover; and judging by the grade of the banks and what Mawby had told them about the depth of the Avon, an object thrown into the ancient river could be up to two or three meters below the surface. Even if the sword were here—a very substantial if—finding it would be exceedingly difficult.
