The Brothers of Glastonbury (23 page)

While I watched there emerged from the twelve huts, as if by a prearranged signal, twelve men, each clad in a rough, grey shift, knotted about the waist with rope, with their hair shaved back from the brow almost to the centre of the head. The recollection came to me that the monks of the old Celtic Christian Church had worn their tonsures in this fashion, instead of on the crown; and, without being told, I knew that the central building must be the very first church here, at Glastonbury, and that this was how it had looked in King Arthur’s time.

The monks advanced towards the church, every man along his own track of beaten earth and holding in his right hand a wooden cross. I knew that they were chanting, for I could see their lips moving, but I could hear no sound. All about me now was utter silence. Even the baying of the wolves had ceased. It was like being a spectator at a shadow-play, or as if I had suddenly been deprived of my ears.

When they reached the middle of the compound, which they seemed to do at exactly the same moment, the monks began walking in single file around the church. To start with they went slowly and sedately, but they gradually increased their pace until they were running as hard as they could. Then the company began to diminish, disappearing from my view and re-emerging each time one less in number until, finally, no one reappeared at all. I moved towards the church, floating weightlessly across the marshy ground, and as I did so the building grew transparent, allowing me to see through it to the other side where the monks stood in a long, straight line …

I was awake again without any sensation of arousal; no start, no snort, only a smooth re-entry into my own world and time. And yet surely there had been some slight noise which had penetrated my consciousness. I turned my head on the pillow and glanced towards the door. Someone had lifted the latch and was slowly, cautiously pushing it open.

Chapter Sixteen

I knew what I should do. I should slip quietly off the bed and stand behind the door, ready to pounce on the intruder. But I was still in a semi-trance-like state and my limbs refused to obey me. Moreover I felt no apprehension, no sense of danger, only an urgent desire to sleep until cock crow and maybe even longer. I was bone-weary, as though my vision had sapped all my strength.

In these circumstances, perhaps it was just as well that my nocturnal visitor was only Cicely.

But as the slim figure in the long linen shift closed the door softly behind her I was jolted into wakefulness, both mind and body suddenly alert and wary. I sat up abruptly, swinging my legs off the bed and planting my feet firmly on the floor. History was repeating itself. In just such a surreptitious manner Lillis had crept into my bed in the middle of the night, which was how I had become a reluctant husband (and so I might still have been had she not died in childbirth). When I married for a second time I was determined that it should be my own choice and not because, yet again, my hand had been forced.

‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed at her. ‘Go back to your room at once!’

Cicely ignored this and perched beside me on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve told you before,’ she said, ‘but I don’t mind telling you again: I wasn’t in love with Peter.’

I noticed that on this occasion she had used the past tense, seeming to have no doubt now that her cousin was dead.

‘And I’ve told
you
before,’ I retorted, ‘that you’re not in love with me either, any more than I am with you. And for both our sakes, keep your voice down! Do you want to be discovered by your aunt?’

‘Yes,’ she answered brazenly, snuggling into my side. ‘Then she’d make you marry me.’

I wriggled several feet nearer the head of the bed. ‘If you were my wife I’d beat you every day!’

She moved up close to me again. ‘No you wouldn’t. You’re not that kind of man.’

‘Yes I am!’

‘No you’re not!’

The argument was becoming childish, and I sprang to my feet, almost knocking her sideways.

‘Cicely!’ I exclaimed in a desperate whisper. ‘I don’t want to marry you, and that’s the truth!’

To my horror, instead of spitting fury at me she began to cry, tears welling up and trickling silently down her cheeks. My first instinct was to turn tail and run, but, with a sigh, I resumed my seat and put one arm around her.

‘Don’t you even like me a little bit?’ she asked pathetically, resting her head on my shoulder.

‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘I like you very much.’

‘But not enough to marry me?’

I stroked her hair. ‘My dear, you’re not the girl for me, nor am I the man for you. You’re better born than I am, for a start. What do you think your father and aunt would say if you announced that you were to wed a Chapman?’

‘But you’re not an ordinary Chapman,’ she insisted. ‘The Duke of Gloucester would find you a place in his household if you asked him. You said he would.’ She raised swimming violet eyes. ‘Was that a lie?’

‘No. It was the truth. But I don’t want that sort of life. I hate being confined between four walls. I want to be my own master. And even if you could cozen your father into letting you marry a pedlar, you wouldn’t be happy. I’d be off at the very first hint of fine weather, leaving you behind at home. My wife won’t have to care about that. I know it’s selfish, but I’m not going to change, not while I have my health and strength. Also, I have a little girl. Would you be willing to bring up another woman’s child?’

There was a protracted silence while she reviewed the picture I had painted. I could feel the warmth of her body, the swell of her young breasts beneath the thin linen shift, and I was sorely tempted to take her at her word and leave the future to look after itself. But common sense prevailed, for which I thank God every night on my knees, for we should have been an ill-assorted couple. And in order to be worthy of her, I should, in the end, have been coerced into respectability and servitude. Cicely, like Lillis, was not a woman who would have been content to be on her own for long.

After a while she sniffed loudly and lifted her head, wiping her nose with her fingers.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she conceded to my great relief, adding tartly, ‘I daresay I’ll meet a man one day who I
really
want to marry.’

I smiled to myself. She had recovered her spirit and her tears had ceased.

‘I’m sure you will,’ I told her. ‘But you’ll need one who can put up with that cursed sharp tongue of yours.’

She laughed tremulously and wiped her nose again, this time in the sheet. Then she sobered, biting her lip.

‘I’m talking as though Peter’s dead,’ she said. Once more the violet eyes lifted to mine. ‘Do you think he is?’

I nodded. ‘I think it likely. But until we find him we can’t be sure.’

Cicely squared her shoulders. ‘Even if he isn’t, I shan’t wed him now. I don’t think Father would make me if he knew I had truly set my heart against the marriage. At least you’ve done that for me. You’ve made me see what it is I want – or rather don’t want! Aunt Joan will be upset, but I can’t help that.’

‘I’m glad to have been of some assistance,’ I answered gravely, pressing her hand. ‘Now, it really is time you returned to your room.’

‘Oh, no!’ she said, sitting bolt upright. ‘I’ll not be fobbed off again. I want you to tell me everything you know.’ She saw denial written in my face. ‘If you don’t,’ she continued softly, ‘I’ll scream so loudly that I shall wake the entire household. Then you’ll have no choice but to marry me.’

‘You’re a scheming, unprincipled hussy!’ I exclaimed bitterly, and she grinned.

‘I know. Most women are. It’s the only way we can survive.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘I’m waiting.’

I realized that the strange lethargy which had possessed me had now passed. I was still tired, but it was a natural weariness, engendered by the fatigues of a long, hard day. And even that was beginning to vanish as I decided I had no option but to take Cicely into my confidence.

*   *   *

Her eyes were as round as saucers, her voice hushed in wonder. ‘The Holy Grail,’ she whispered. ‘But … but I didn’t think it really existed.’

‘I’m not sure I do even now,’ I admitted, ‘but that isn’t the point. The point is that I feel almost certain your cousin thought he might be on its trail.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he told Maud Jarrold that the parchment was “valuable beyond price”. Also, the Grail was reputedly brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and then, if we believe the stories of King Arthur, lost. The Knights of the Round Table spent a lot of time searching for it.’

‘What about this oss … ossie … oh, whatever it was – containing the bones of Saint Patrick?’

‘I don’t think such a notion would have crossed Peter’s mind for an instant. Brother Librarian has a bee buzzing around in his head on the subject of Patrick. He believes he died in Somerset and was buried in or near Glastonbury. It probably reflects an idea of Abbot Selwood’s. Abbots get these odd notions. Glastonbury spent years arguing with Canterbury that it had the bones of its former abbot Saint Dunstan, while Canterbury just as vigorously denied that the Archbishop’s remains had ever been removed from the cathedral precincts.’ I added cynically, ‘It’s all to do with prestige, pilgrims and money.’

I saw the blank look on my companion’s face and returned to the subject in hand. ‘No, I’m positive that only one relic would have occurred to Peter as being of importance to the Church here in the year 500
AD.
And that’s the Grail.’

‘Why?’ she asked again with the persistence of an obstinate child.

‘Because among his folios and quartos and octavos are books by Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury. Peter read a lot. He knew about the Grail. And it was what first occurred to me: that here, in this ancient parchment –’ I drew it out from under my pillow where I had placed it for safekeeping – ‘is the true story of how it was originally lost.’

Cicely’s mouth was set in a mulish line. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said.

Of course she couldn’t. She was a woman, and women deal in practicalities. They have to; who else do we men look to for succour and assistance when things go wrong? It’s only my sex who are free to pursue impossible dreams, form secret societies, read and write books. Women are too busy mending, cooking and sweeping. And there are always the children.

‘I’m not asking you to believe it,’ I sighed. ‘As I told you, what’s important is what your cousin believed.’

She furrowed her brow. ‘You think then that he was looking for the Grail when he disappeared?’ I inclined my head and the frown deepened. ‘But what about Mark? You haven’t mentioned him. He’s vanished too, but he didn’t know what the parchment contained. No one had translated it for him, unless he also went to see this Blethyn Goode.’

‘I feel sure he didn’t. Blethyn would have told me. Besides, Mark wouldn’t have visited him without being directed there by Father Elwyn.’

‘Perhaps he was.’

‘No. I only went to the Tor because of information I had gleaned from Brother Hilarion. The path is far too tortuous for Mark to have followed in the few hours between his discovery of this parchment and his going to Beckery. And nobody seems to have seen him after that. His disappearance puts me in an even greater quandary than his brother’s. Where did he go, and why, after leaving the island?’

‘You don’t think Father Boniface was lying, and he did know what the parchment said?’

‘Again, no. If he had done he would have told Peter, who would then have had no cause to visit either Father Elwyn or Blethyn Goode. And it would mean that he not only has a knowledge of the ancient Ogham alphabet, but also of the old Welsh tongue. And I think that unlikely, don’t you?’

Cicely shrugged despondently. ‘In that case, I don’t understand it. Nothing makes sense. Peter wasn’t dabbling in the Black Arts, so why should he have been snatched the way he was? Abel Fairchild said he vanished into thin air. What could cause that except the hand of the Devil?’

‘I’m not sure.’ It was my turn to frown. ‘A night or two ago we were all talking in the kitchen – you, your aunt, Lydia, me, Rob and John. I think it was after you and I had returned from seeing Father Boniface. Later, during the night, I woke up with the conviction that I had said something of importance during that conversation, but I had no idea what it was. I still haven’t. Can you recollect anything which struck you as significant?’

But she could remember nothing, and I suspected that for her, as for me, the days since our arrival in Glastonbury were beginning to run together in one continuous blur, aggravated by the fact that all our talks had a sameness about them, a single topic inevitably dominating our thoughts and utterances. How could I possibly expect her to recall something which I was unable to pinpoint myself?

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I lied. ‘It will come back to me.’

Cicely was suddenly yawning and her eyes looked heavy with sleep. She was young and healthy, and neither blighted love nor the strange disappearance of her two cousins could keep her awake for long. I smiled and gave her shoulders another squeeze. ‘Go to bed. We’ll talk again in the morning. Perhaps by that time inspiration will have struck.’

I had anticipated an argument, but to my surprise she slid obediently to her feet and began to move towards the door. Halfway there, however, she stopped and turned.

‘Just one kiss, Roger,’ she pleaded, ‘and after that, I promise to be good.’

I stood up and gently took her face between my hands. ‘Just one then,’ I agreed, and pressed my lips full on her soft, warm mouth.

I had been half afraid that it was a trick, but she only pouted.

‘That’s not much of a kiss,’ she protested, adding in her usual outrageous fashion, ‘I’m sure even Rob Undershaft or John Longbones could do better than that. I must ask them.’

I unlatched the bedchamber door and propelled her through it. ‘What you could do with, my girl,’ I whispered in my best elder brother tones, ‘is some discipline. It will be a very good thing if you are returned to the care of your father and Duchess Isabel for a little while longer.’

She made a face at me, then crossed the narrow landing to her own room, closing the door softly behind her. I heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief and went back to bed, pausing long enough to undress before clambering between the sheets. And this time, I really did sleep until cock crow.