The Pendragon Legend (14 page)

At the bend in the road he stopped the car and we debated whether to look for the secret entrance or go on up the usual way. In the end my view prevailed: given that people in those days built secret entrances precisely to be secret, we had little hope of
finding
it unless we stumbled on it by sheer chance. Much simpler to go up the proper way. And so we did.

The old abandoned track was the one formerly used by horsemen and was not excessively steep. The car was able to
get almost to the top. Just below the ruins we were at last forced to get out and continue up a series of broken steps, overgrown with moss.

Of the old castle, only the walls remained. The roofs and upper storeys had been stripped away by the centuries. The ground had risen above the level of the stone floor and grass had covered it with a green carpet. The walls reared up crazily, like theatrical scenery, with the sky lowering down above our heads in place of the vanished ceilings.

We made our way through echoing squares that had once been halls. Only the window apertures had retained their original
outline
, defying the bombardment of the ages. Devoid of glass and sightless, they maintained their Gothic contours, in the form of that special English variation the ogee arch, which soars upwards, thinks again, and deviates into a horizontal ridge.

We finally reached the west wing, the best preserved section of the entire castle. Here even the roof remained. We traversed rooms that were more like rocky caves, stirring up the bats as we went, before arriving, to our surprise, in a little courtyard with the ancient tower rising up before us.

The tower was perfectly intact. From all sides, at irregular intervals, narrow windows gazed down without expression. The keep had probably once been a prison, as was the old practice, and interior lighting had never been regarded as a matter of importance. The sheer, almost unbroken expanse of its bleak walls exercised a forbidding power over the viewer.

We walked all round the circular structure, examining
everything
minutely, but could find no sign of human life. Nor indeed could we find an entrance.

“What’s this, then?” asked Maloney. “Did your ancestors fly in through the air?”

“On ceremonial occasions, naturally,” said Osborne, “but I believe there should be a pedestrian entrance for working days as well. I seem to remember having been shown it once.”

He led us back to the west wing where, after a brief search, we came across some stone steps, in almost pristine condition. We made our way down them and arrived at a corridor lit by holes cut in the roof.

“It runs under the courtyard,” said Osborne. “The entrance is at the far end.”

We followed it all the way, coming to a halt before a vast oak door reinforced by ancient iron bands that made me think of the Seven Seals.

“I don’t remember this door,” said Osborne. “Either it wasn’t here when I came, or it must have been open.”

As we feared, it was locked.

“Well, so far and no further,” he went on. “This is where the interesting stuff begins—right under our noses, and it’s locked away. The story of my life.”

“We should have a go—we might be able to get it open,” Maloney suggested. “I’ve managed quite a few in my time. We Connemarans know about these things. True, this one looks pretty serious. The mechanism looks like the inside of an old clock.”

“No, don’t bother,” said Osborne. “You probably wouldn’t
succeed
, and anyway it wouldn’t have been locked if we were meant to open it. Let’s do the decent thing.”

We made our way back, somewhat downcast.

“Let’s take a look at that room next to the stairs. We might find something interesting in there.”

The room was vaulted, dimly-lit, and empty. We were just about to leave when, having adjusted to the semi-darkness, my eye fell on something familiar hanging on the wall.

“Look, it’s the Rose Cross!”

A finely-carved stone cross, with stylised stone roses at its four points, stood out in relief against the wall.

Suddenly Maloney called out: “Don’t you see?—the stone around the cross, and the cross itself, aren’t the same stone as the walls.”

“Well, of course,” I replied. “It’s a relief; it was attached at later date.”

“Yes, but what if … what if … ?” He said no more but went up to it, fiddled with it for a few moments, and behold, the cross moved. Very slowly, he rotated it.

At the same moment a section of the wall moved with it,
drawing
inwards like a door opening. The mouth of the secret entrance stood before us.

“Shall we go down?” we asked one another. In the pitch dark we could make out nothing of what lay beyond. Maloney produced a small torch.

“We absolutely must. Who knows, we might even find
treasure
. Come on, don’t worry about it. Trust my instincts as a rock climber.”

We made our way along a narrow, damp corridor to an
antiquated
spiral stairway. We began to descend, going round and round the stout stone column at its centre, for what seemed hours. Finally we reached the bottom.

We found ourselves in a vast, vaulted room, the far end of which could not be seen. From what we could make out by the light of the torch, it contained a row of elongated rectangular tables.

Approaching nearer we realised they were not tables. They were stone coffins, all bearing the Pendragon coat of arms. Rose crosses everywhere. We were in the crypt.

We did a tour around the walls. Oh, how vast that crypt was! Whoever constructed it could have had no doubt that his family would multiply down the centuries, and had provided amply for them when they returned to the womb of the castle.

“Is this crypt still used?” I asked Osborne.

“No. I didn’t even know it existed. Since the seventeenth
century
the family have been buried in the park at Llanvygan.

“I think we should go back now,” he concluded. I readily agreed. I’d had enough. The spiral stair and the crypt had exhausted me. My old misgivings had begun to return and I couldn’t wait to step into the light of day. Subterranean wanderings of this kind don’t entirely agree with me.

“Wait a second,” said Maloney. “Just now, when we were going round the walls, I noticed another of those crosses. There could be another door behind that one too. Maybe those old fellows used them for handles.”

We located the rose cross, though it was somewhat different from the first. Beneath it was an inscription. The moment I
finished
reading the inscription I staggered back, and would have fallen had Maloney not caught me.

“What is it? What did you see?” they asked, in some alarm.

“It’s exactly what was in the book!” I cried out—in Hungarian—and was surprised they failed to understand me.

The very words as on the entrance to the grave of Rosacrux.

Maloney had started to loosen my necktie.

“No, no, leave me alone, there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said, as I came to. “I’ve read about this place, I know all about it. There must be a door here. And behind it is something really amazing.”

A closer look at the wall revealed the faint outline of a door. Maloney manipulated the rose cross for a while, and it swung open. The three of us leapt back in fright, struck by the light that poured through the opening, brighter than any light bulb.

And then … it was just as in the book.

We entered a seven-sided room. The floor was engraved with mystical figures representing the nations of the world; the
ceiling
likewise, representing the heavenly spheres. And at the centre of the room floated the indefinable white glow of the luminous body, the other, the subterranean sun, that the old volumes had described.

As if I had been there before, I boldly led my companions deeper into the room, and pointed out to them the altar and the inscription:

We were standing over the grave of the legendary Rosacrux. The story that had been derided for centuries was in fact true. We had come to the House of the Holy Ghost. There stood the altar, inscribed exactly as the
Fama
had recorded it. And over it, the ever-burning flame.

But then … perhaps the rest was also true? If so, under the altar we would certainly find … the body of Rosacrux—or the man
who had called himself Rosacrux—perfectly preserved despite the passing of centuries.

Could I possibly dare?

But intellectual curiosity, the strongest of all my passions, began to master my superstitious fears.

“Give me a hand,” I said to the others. “Let’s raise the altar and take a look at the grave itself.”

Maloney crossed himself and drew back. Osborne and I applied ourselves to the weight. But it moved as easily as if it had been expecting us. Beneath it lay a stone slab of the sort you see on tombs. Engraved on it was the Rose Cross of the Pendragons, and around it, the family motto:

and, a little lower down, the inscription:

I stood there, deep in intense thought, over the tomb of the
midnight
rider. What could explain this mystery? It was the tomb of Rosacrux, as described in the ancient books, and it was also the tomb of Asaph Pendragon. There was only one possible
explanation
. Rosacrux and Asaph were one and the same person. The four letters of the inscription reinforced my conclusion.
ACRC
could only mean Asaph Christian Rosae Crucis.

This discovery was greater than any I could ever have made had I read my way through the entire Pendragon library. I had found the historical basis of the legend of the Rose Cross. For a brief moment I saw, in my mind’s eye, the volume unfolding in which I laid the foundations of my international reputation as a scholar.

Then I remembered the tomb and the body. The real wonder was still to come.

“What do you think: could we manage to lift this stone?”

“I don’t think we have the right,” said Osborne. “We can’t
disturb
my ancestor’s rest out of idle curiosity.”

“But, Osborne, you must understand. This isn’t idle curiosity; it’s curiosity of quite a different kind. If everything else is true to
the description, under this stone slab we shall find the body of Asaph Pendragon, uncorrupted and intact.”

Maloney interposed:

“Let’s just get out of here. I don’t like any of this. A grave is a grave and the dead are dead. Better to let them be. The whole place is so creepy I just wish to God I’d never come.”

“Now listen, Doctor,” Osborne added. “We’ll either succeed in opening it, or not. If we do, we’ll have two alternatives. Either we’ll find a skeleton—which is the more probable—or else everything in your book is true and we’ll find Asaph Pendragon’s body … lying there, perfectly intact, with his arms folded on his breast and his finger bearing the magic rings described in the family tradition … Well, Doctor, forgive me, but I have no wish to see it. Something in me protests against prying into the secrets of the dead.”

He was deathly pale, staring at me with eyes of terror.

I realised nothing could be done. I had come up against the timidity, the discretion, the sheer lack of curiosity of this island race. Had I in any way insisted, they would have thought me utterly cynical, or something worse.

While I was locked in argument with Osborne, Maloney was studying the altar. A sudden movement caught my eye, as the slab covering the tomb began to move back, just as the two doors had done. Maloney had found another rose cross and, half-
unconsciously
, had been manipulating it in the same way that he had before.

The stone slab revealed an opening through which we could see a large, four-sided pit, in the centre of which stood a catafalque, like a bed pillowed with old damask cushions: a bed from which the sleeper had already risen. There was no trace of the body, no bones to be seen, no legendary rings.

“If nothing else, the rings at least ought to be there,” I stated. “But in an enclosed space like this bones should also have lasted three hundred years. As you see, the pillows are as new.”

“The tomb’s been robbed and the bones removed,” Maloney said.

“Or, his earthly remains were reinterred somewhere else, in some previous age,” Osborne conjectured. “We’ll have to ask my uncle: he’ll know.”

Once more, I took a good look at everything in the vault, closely examining the body of light. But I could form no idea of what it might consist. We turned to go.

We closed the door carefully behind us. I had a moment’s
concern
that I hadn’t put out the light as we went; then I reflected that this particular light had been burning for three hundred years, and continued on my way.

We passed through the crypt and laboured up the spiral stairs. Reaching the top, we noticed that the corridor along which we had first come to it led in two different directions. No one could remember whether the entrance lay to the left or the right. We eventually decided it must be to the right, and set off.

But in fact we should have gone to the left, as we discovered only after passing through several underground rooms. In the total darkness, barely penetrated by Maloney’s torch, it was hard to find any bearings at all. Finally, with considerable unease, we admitted to one another that we had no idea how to get back. From each of the pitch-black rooms several other rooms would open out, and they were all identical.

“Trust my instinct,” Maloney repeated. “Connemarans have good eyes for the dark. I don’t say this always applies to me, but I do have my days.”