‘God knows.’
‘He does. You’re right. Solidarity, that’s why. I’m showing sympathy with the opposition. Beats them! They’re as curious as cats. Look here! All those decent chaps at Broom Lodge haven’t any religion. A pity, but there it is! I’d call ’em well-meaning agnostics. All that reincarnation stuff just makes them feel good. The only truly pious are the druidicals and myself. Their religion is sincere but their rites are degrading. How do you think the missionaries converted the Saxons? Started with a pagan priest of course. Converted him, and the other fellows followed.’
‘Elsa!’ I appealed. ‘Will you please tell me what the hell Denzil is talking about?’
‘But it’s simple, darling. You haven’t a business mind. We’ve solved the problem of getting rid of the gold without certificates and all sorts of papers we can’t get. Half for Broom Lodge. Half for us.’
‘But what has it got to do with goldsmiths?’
‘I’ll take ’em off wrought iron and give ’em six months training,’ Denzil explained. ‘Elsa supplies the gold. When we sell the gew-gaws, half the proceeds to Broom Lodge. Half to her. Have to work it out.’
‘Suppose what they make isn’t saleable?’
‘Who cares? It’s bought for the gold. For all I know, the buyers throw the rest away.’
Now that was close to what Marrin had actually told me.
‘But it all depends on your mission to the pagans.’
‘That’s where solidarity comes in.’
‘You’ll fetch up on the altar at Wigpool.’
‘Not if I can work a miracle.’
‘I don’t wonder a theological college threw you out. In the Middle Ages you’d have been flayed alive for blasphemy.’
‘It’s not blasphemy at all,’ he answered indignantly. ‘To convert the heathen a miracle is permissible. At least two saints crossed the Irish Sea on stones that floated.’
‘And if you can pull it off, are you going to be abbot of Broom Lodge?’
‘Not me. Raeburn has the makings of an abbot. He’s deeply religious and the sort of chap I’d go into the jungle with.’
‘And not come out.’
‘I think that if I returned the cauldron…’ Elsa began.
‘Good girl!’
‘And if I could return it in such a way that you had your miracle…’
‘Better and better!’
‘Pity it won’t float,’ I said, ‘but we might send it over the river in a toy boat.’
He was really angry with me now.
‘Not a game! It’s not a game at all. There must be true reverence.’
‘For a fraud?’
‘For what it creates. Simeon knew that.’
‘Don’t fuss, Piers!’ Elsa ordered me. ‘You aren’t the bloody inquisition. Dear Denzil, are you sure you can make them start training to be goldsmiths?’
‘No. But you can.’
‘How long must I stay?’
‘A week should do it. What do they call that thing which turns one stuff into another? A catalyst, that’s it. Well, you’re the catalyst.’
I was frankly shocked, but realised that with St Elsa’s help our fifth-century Paladin might be able to pull off his revolution. The druidicals were in disarray. Their high priest had died; his successor had been drowned; the gods were angry. While the rest of the commune was indifferent to any nonsense they might get up to, the major at least showed a sign of sympathy by his shaven head.
Denzil no longer believed that the cauldron was the Grail, but he did in some sense believe that its shape and its strange gold partook of the ancient myth. That was what the druidicals, encouraged by Marrin, had believed. So the violently heretical Christian and the pious pagan could agree on its sanctity so long as neither insisted on exact definitions.
Take my old friend Nodens as a half-absurd example. Whether I call him Nodens or an angel makes no difference to anybody. The essential is that I do not wholly deny a Something Else able to influence me. On that Something Else a fifth-century missionary could build, whereas he would have been helpless before a pure materialist – who didn’t exist anyway.
This attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible major by way of Nodens brought the god to mind. Spirit of land and river, healer, restorer of lost property and in his relations with me undoubtedly a god of mischief, he should find a miracle within his powers. Summoned by my thought of him, he remarked – as always through my imagination – that druids were not likely to be familiar with diving and it might be possible to stage a marvel more convincing than a toy boat – or a stone one if it came to that.
The major hurried back to his secular duties, which he was taking very seriously. He only knew a little about agriculture and nothing whatever about the crafts, but his military life had taught him that discipline can be imperceptible. He made no attempt to replace that benevolent dictator, Marrin. He merely organised committees and stood back.
‘You shouldn’t have been so rough with him,’ Elsa said. ‘You know he’s crackers.’
‘He’s not crackers. You just have to decide which century his memory is in while the rest of him is here and now. One half sees pets. The other half commits burglary.’
‘Anyway he saw how we could get rid of our gold before you did.’
‘If he can get his amateur alchemists to work. And that depends on the miracle.’
‘But I’ve made our fortune, Piers! And you aren’t excited, just dreaming.’
‘I am wondering what can give me the exact time when half the blasted Severn is going uphill to Gloucester and the other half going downhill to the Shoots and it’s high water at the Box Rock. Nodens and I will then produce a miracle while you, sweet St Catalyst, do your vestal-virgin stuff on the bank. So back to London and get the Grail out of pawn!’
I have an old friend whose hobby is vintage cars. By day he is an archaeologist, at night a motor mechanic. It seems to be a point of honour that one must rebuild every part as it originally was. To put in a new engine, new gearbox or anything new is as disgraceful as to salt a dig with bones which don’t belong to it. Consequently his workshop is a museum of bits and pieces.
I called on him with Elsa. It was the first time she had appeared to a normal friend in my normal life. She was looking as innocently alluring as an advertisement in a Sunday supplement and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
‘I want a thin steel rod,’ I told him, ‘painted black and about ten feet long, firmly fixed to a plate at one end with a quick release clamp at the other.’
‘What has the clamp got to take?’
‘The bottom rim of this, and it had better be padded.’
I took the cauldron out of its hat box and showed it to him.
‘What an exquisite thing!’ he exclaimed. ‘Persian and about sixth century B.C., I would say.’
I was glad of that. It showed that a better authority than I could be taken in. I had been feeling a litle humiliated since the verdict of the British Museum.
‘It’s only a modern replica. Gold-plated lead.’
‘But what for?’
I was momentarily stuck for a lie, but Elsa was not.
‘My cousin’s birthday,’ she said. ‘They’re filthy rich, jet set and all that. So I had to have something original.’
He looked at me ironically as if wondering how a serious economist could have got mixed up with a crazy bunch of conspicuous consumers.
‘I’ve got a bit of just the right rod. Strong as a Toledo blade. Come and have a look at it, Piers!’
He led me through a pool of oil round the back of a vast landaulette.
‘So you’ve been out baby-snatching! What a stunner! She looks like the Dea Roma on holiday.’
‘I’m the baby more often than not.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Salmon fishing.’
‘Not your style unless you were trying to find how much Julius Caesar paid for a pound. When does she want this device of hers?’