Our Man in Camelot (8 page)

“Right,” said Finsterwald. “And apart from the fact that he’s 78 years old.”

“So what did he give you?”

Merriwether glanced at Howard Morris. “Okay I tell Doc, then?”

Mosby frowned. “What the hell? Shirley and I are supposed to have been friends of Davies, according to the cover story.”

“Which ‘ud make you about the only friends he had,” said Merriwether. “Only person we can trace he ever spoke to was the bookseller. He was a real loner.”

Morris nodded. “Go ahead, Cal. Not that there’s much of it.”

“Well, there is and there isn’t according to how you look at it… but seems he first went to Barkham’s four-five months back—Barkham being the bookseller. Old-fashioned firm. Talk to you about books as soon as sell you one, and rather you bought nothing than something you wouldn’t like.” Merriwether smiled reminiscently. “Took him quite a time deciding I was a fit and proper customer for him to do business with—I had to sweet-talk him round.”

Shirley laughed. “What did you buy?”

“What did I buy?” Merriwether pointed to the table, grinning. “Most of those books your husband’s been reading, that’s what I bought. I told Barkham I was a friend of his Major Davies, who’d been posted back to the States suddenly and I’d come to settle his bill—“

“Yes?”

Merriwether held up a small black tape-recorder. “You want to hear the real thing?” He glanced towards Morris. “We got time?”

“When’s Audley coming here?” Morris asked Mosby.

“Not till nine. We got all the time in the world.”

“But we haven’t… Keep it short, Cal.”

“’Tisn’t long anyway. But I’ll give you the bit that counts…”

“—thirty-eight pence, Sir. Thank you—“

Sharp ‘ting’ and slither of cash drawer.

Clink.

“—and sixty-two pence change… fifty—“

Clink.

“—and ten and two… and your receipt, sir—“

Merriwether cut off the tape. “Not quite far enough. You don’t want to hear about how interested I am in ancient history. I’ll just run it some more.”

“He owed only thirty-eight pence?” asked Shirley.

“Always paid cash money except the last time. Which was lucky for us, we’d never have got on to Barkham otherwise. Here we go—“

“—depends where your particular interest lies, sir. There is the formal history of the period, as represented by Collingwood and Myres, and by Stenton for example… and what might be termed the Arthurian history, by—ah—by those who take his historical existence for granted… which is a literature in itself.”

Dry chuckle.

“Some might say more literature than history, a good deal of it… Malory and Spenser, for example, and the early French writers… But I don’t think they would be your taste, sir… very specialised… And there’s the modern literature of fiction—Miss Sutcliffe’s
Sword at Sunset
and T. H. White’s
The Sword in the Stone
are the superior representatives of that, I would say.”

“Isn’t that a kid’s book—
The Sword in the Stone
!”

“Indeed it is, sir. And Miss Sutcliffe’s book is also popular with the younger readers. But they are both a great deal more—ah—adult than much of the fiction their elders ask me for—“

“Get that,” said Merriwether. “They ask for, but they don’t receive, not from old Jim Barkham they don’t. He’d sooner sell canned beans than books he doesn’t like.”

“—may find them rewarding.”

“I don’t seem to remember Major Davies talking about them.”

“Ah, no sir. The Major is strictly inclined towards the history. He is acquainted with the literature… indeed, he is remarkably well-acquainted with it. But history is his first love, I would agree.”

“Mine too, Mr Barkham. I was thinking of starting with, say, Bede?”

“Bede? Well, that really would be starting at the beginning… I take it you do not read Latin?”

“I’m afraid not. They didn’t teach that at my school.”

“Nor do they teach it at many of our English schools now, I fear, sir… They maintain there is no call for it—a very short-sighted view, but there it is… However, there is Mr Sherley-Price’s translation in the Penguin Classics, which is both excellent and inexpensive—a rare conjunction these days.”

“You don’t have a Novgorod Bede by any chance?”

Pause, then the same dry chuckle, this time more prolonged
—

“I can see you’ve been talking to the Major, sir—Mr—?”

“Merriwether, Mr Barkham. I understood you were getting him a copy, huh?”

“Oh, no sir. I think you must have misunderstood him there, Mr Merriwether. Indeed, I’m now tolerably certain that no translation or facsimile has ever been made of the Novgorod manuscript… and I don’t expect there ever will be now.”

“Why not?”

“Well, frankly, I don’t think the Russians are much interested in such things these days. The man at their embassy to whom I spoke—although he was alleged to be concerned with cultural matters—was singularly unforthcoming at first.”

Pause.

“At first?” Merriwether’s voice was casual. “You mean he came back to you?”

“That is correct. Yesterday in fact, and he was most discouraging… though I suppose we should be grateful that he followed up my enquiry in the first place, which I did not expect him to do.”

“So what did he say?”

“Yes… well, it appears that many of the manuscripts from the old monastery there were severely damaged in a German air raid, and—though now I’m reading between the lines of what he said, as it were—and no attempt was made to repair any of them until quite recently. Which means, of course, that many of them will have been allowed to decay irreparably, because you cannot leave a damaged parchment to its own devices for thirty years and expect it to improve… it is unpardonably careless of them, really…”

“Uh-huh?”
Merriwether
’
s voice was distant now rather than casual
.

“Well, now it seems they have at last got round to it, and repairs are in progress. Which means, of course, that the manuscript will be totally unavailable for study for months, possibly years. Restoration is a very slow process, Mr Merriwether.”

“Yeah, I guess it must be… So I’m not going to be atfle to write the Major that you’ve had any success, huh? We’re never going to know what was in it?”

“Oh, no, Mr Merriwether, that’s not quite true. There is Bishop Harper’s description of it, don’t forget that.”

“Bishop Harper?”

Pause.

“There now! I was forgetting that I haven’t seen the Major for a fortnight or so… And I didn’t even learn about the good Bishop until this Monday, after I had written to him.”

Pause.

“Uh-huh?”

“He was Suffragan Bishop of Walthamstow in the later 1850s and far ahead of his time in ecumenical matters, so it would seem. At any rate, he was particularly concerned to re-establish relations with the Russian Orthodox Church after the Crimean War… the war with the charge of the Light Brigade, Mr Merriwether… and he travelled extensively in Russia during the late 1850s and 1860s, visiting many of the monasteries there, including that at Nijni Novgorod. So he was very probably the first Englishman to see the Novgorod Bede since it was sent with the English missionaries to Germany in the eighth century… Did you know that the early English Christians played a notable part—one might even say a heroic part, since so many of them were martyred— in the conversion of the heathen Germans?”

Pause.

“Can’t say that I did, no.”
Merriwether
’
s voice was now not so much distant as hollow
.

“Not many people do know, it’s true. Yet it was one of the most glorious periods in our whole history. Bede wasn’t unique, he was one of a generation of great English churchmen… But there it is: the manuscript probably went to a German monastery like Fulda, and thence to somewhere like Wismar or Stralsund on the Baltic, and from there in a Hanseatic ship to the lands of the Teutonic Knights who were invading Russia in the middle of the Middle Ages—the ‘Drang nach Osten’, Mr Merriwether:

Russian, Russian,
Wake yourself up!
The German is coming,
The uninvited guest—

“That’s not a 20th century poem, it was written in the fourteenth century… and so to some German-Lithuanian monastery, at least according to Bishop Harper’s theory— somewhere like Dorpat—where it was captured by a Prince of Novgorod. And from Novgorod finally to Nijni Novgorod, five hundred miles further east and fifteen-hundred miles from Jarrow, where it was written. Always travelling with the missionaries of God, English and German and finally Russian —isn’t that fascinating, eh? Only to be threatened in the 20th century by another ‘Drang nach Osten’—Hitler’s bombers! There’s the pattern of European history for you—twelve hundred years of it. And now two American gentlemen like the Major and yourself want to find out about it—even more remarkable!”

Pause.

“So what did the Bishop say, then, Mr Barkham?”

“Oh, I don’t know yet, sir. I haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy of his collected letters. It was privately printed, you see—I’ve never even seen a copy, much less sold one. What I’ve been telling you comes from a colleague of mine in Cambridge, who once had a copy many years ago. But we’ll both continue looking for one, if that is your wish, Mr Merriwether.”

“Well, I’d sure like to see it—after that story you’ve told, Mr Barkham.”

“Of course, of course… But I think you’ll be disappointed. Most likely the Novgorod Bede was transcribed from one of our early English copies, possibly from the same one used for the Leningrad Bede. So it is more unlikely to contain any additional material about Mons Badonicus… not that that matters now.”

Pause.

“No?”

Pause
.

“Hah! I can see the Major didn’t favour you with his absolute confidence… And I was rather hoping that he had. What a pity!”

Pause.

“You mean about—M—about Badon?”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah… well, he was kind of close about it just recently.”

“Close?”

“He didn’t talk much. He just kind of hinted.”

Chuckle.

“Exactly. In fact, I said to him: ‘If you think you’ve found it, then you must prove it.’ And all he would say was ‘When I’m ready’.”

“That’s just what he said to me—‘When I’m good and ready’. Is that all he said to you, Mr Barkham?”

“Those were his very words. And when I told him if it was true it was a very great discovery he said ‘And a very great deal of trouble too’. And not one more word would he say.

Which was really rather provoking in the circumstances.”

“After all the work you’d done for him, huh?”

“Not so much that, Mr Merriwether… but I was more afraid he might start digging. And he isn’t an archaeologist —whatever happens it must be left to them. The only testimony now can be the testimony of the spade, I told him.”

Door opening
—
door closing
.

“Absolutely right, Mr Barkham.”

“I’m glad you think so, sir. Though my personal view is that his enthusiasm was, shall we say, premature. In fact, if he hadn’t been so confident I would have said it was impossible… But you must excuse me while I deal with this customer… If you would care to look over those shelves beyond the desk at the back—on the right—the ones marked ‘History’… start at the very top. You’ll need the library steps—“

Merriwether cut off the tape.

“Wow!” exclaimed Shirley.

“He’s a great old guy,” said Merriwether, smiling. “I had to prise those books out of him one by one, like they were his own flesh and blood.”

“He thought you were after Badon too,” said Howard Morris.

“That’s it, man. I had to promise I wasn’t going to start digging up the English countryside.”

Mosby looked towards Morris. “The book the Bishop wrote—have we got it?”

“Not yet. But we’re looking. And the one thing you mustn’t do on any account, Captain, is start asking for the Novgorod Bede. Don’t even mention it—leave it to us.”

“Okay. But suppose Audley starts asking?”

“He won’t.”

“Why not?” said Shirley.

“Because he’s not an expert on the period.”

She frowned. “For God’s sake—he’s writing a book on it!”

“He’s writing a book on a man who lived in the twelfth century—not the sixth.”

“But it’s all—what’s the word—mediaeval.”

“So it is. And George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt are all modern. But you wouldn’t expect an expert on the Second World War to be an expert on the War of Independence, would you, Mrs Sheldon?” Morris looked at her expectantly for a moment. “He knows what any Cambridge history graduate—any good graduate, that is—ought to know. Which for our purposes is enough, but not too much.”

“He knows enough not to believe in King Arthur—isn’t that too much?”

Morris turned towards Mosby. “I think you had something to say about that, Captain?”

“Huh?” Mosby tore himself away from the contemplation of the Novgorod Bede. “I—what?”

“You said you knew why Audley doesn’t believe in King Arthur.”

“Oh, sure. He’s just not romantic.”

“What do you mean—just not romantic?” snapped Shirley.

“Just exactly that. Remember when you twitted him with the Old South being romantic, and he looked like he’d smelt a nasty smell—like an accountant looking at a bum set of figures? Old Jeb Stuart wasn’t a knight in shining armour to him, he was just a ‘competent cavalry commander’.”

“But that’s what you said King Arthur might be, Doc,” murmured Merriwether. “In fact it’s
exactly
what you said.”

Mosby was unabashed. “Sure I did. Only I can show you a photograph of Jeb Stuart, and you can’t show me one of King Arthur.

“With Jeb Stuart there’s proof and with Arthur there isn’t—which is what I’ve been saying all along. But Audley, he lives by facts, like any good historian
and
any good intelligence man should; lives with them, eats them and sleeps with them. And the facts on Arthur are mighty thin on the ground.”

For a moment no one said anything. Then Shirley shook her head.

“So—okay. But then what makes anyone think he’s going to help us find Badon Hill?”