Gilbert Honeyman was much shocked. ‘That poor creature!’ he exclaimed, referring to Dame Joan. He shook his head despondently. ‘But it only goes to show that even the best of women can breed a wayward son.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ I agreed. ‘But whatever Mark Gildersleeve has been up to, it isn’t whoring. Not one of the madams in Cock Lane could recollect ever seeing him, nor entertaining him, in her establishment. And he’s a familiar enough face in the town to be recognized by all of them.’
Gilbert frowned. ‘So what does that mean?’
‘It means I was right when I thought it unlikely that Mark would ride his horse, especially one so well known as Dorabella, on such an errand. First of all, it would let every passer-by know of his presence, and secondly, the animal could be stolen under cover of darkness; both of which reasons add up to taking an unnecessary risk when there was a safer alternative.’
Gilbert looked relieved. ‘Then you’ll be able to inform Dame Joan that her fears regarding her younger son’s conduct are unfounded. That at least must be of some comfort to her.’
‘Must it?’ I regarded him straitly. ‘Why, if it wasn’t true, did Mark tell the two apprentices that he had been whoring when he hadn’t? And where in fact was he during those nights when he was absent from home?’
‘Ah!’ Gilbert Honeyman grimaced. ‘I’m growing old. My wits aren’t as sharp as they used to be.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘So? What’s your explanation?’
‘I haven’t one yet,’ I answered. ‘I wish I did. It might throw some light on his and his brother’s disappearance.’
Gilbert finished his ale and bade me drink up. ‘We’ll have one more before we go. I find there’s nothing better than good ale for clearing the mind.’
I was extremely dubious about this pronouncement, my experience being that the better the ale the more muddied my thoughts were likely to become. And one thing I could be sure of, potent liquor always loosened my tongue. Now, after only two or three sips from my second cup, I found myself telling Gilbert where I had gone and what I had done yesterday evening, after he and I had parted company at the abbey gate. When I had finished, I turned to see him regarding me with much the same expression in his eyes that I had noted in Cicely’s.
‘Look here, lad,’ he said at last, patting my arm in an avuncular fashion, ‘I know we’re in Avalon and that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere lie buried in the abbey, but to tell you the truth I’ve never more than half believed those stories myself. And as for this business of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, well…!’ He broke off with an expressive shrug of his shoulders.
I answered defensively. ‘But there’s no proof that Joseph didn’t come to Britain after the Crucifixion, any more than there’s proof that he did. Perhaps we ought to respect ingrained, age-old beliefs that are part of the very air and soil of a region, legends and stories that go back into the mists of time. They had their origins somewhere, in some event or other…’ I drank the dregs of my ale. ‘Nevertheless, in this case I’m not saying that I necessarily believe the story of the Grail, or that it’s the relic referred to in the account of its concealment by Brother Begninus. But I feel sure it’s what Peter Gildersleeve thought.’
‘Why?’ Gilbert Honeyman was sceptical.
I repeated the reasons I had given to Cicely the previous night. They sounded feeble enough now as then, but I was still convinced that I was right.
Gilbert pursed his lips. ‘I’m not much of a one for reading,’ he said, ‘and I can’t make head nor tail of stories and yarns and suchlike. I know enough to keep my accounts in good order and to be sure that customers aren’t cheating me, but that’s about it. But I had my girl, my Rowena, taught her letters by the nuns at Shaftesbury. There are some who say educating girls is a waste of time, but I don’t hold with that. She’s my only chick and she’ll need all her wits about her when I die. However, that’s beside the point — which is that she knows all these tales of King Arthur and his knights, and now and again, of a winter’s evening, she’s related bits of them to me. And those knights weren’t searching around Glastonbury for the Holy Grail — leastways, not as I remember it. They went here, there and everywhere, up and down the country, but mostly overseas. And what adventures they had! Enchanted halls and castles! Angels, magicians, fairies! Wonderful things were involved. People who appeared and disappeared…’ His voice faded to an embarrassed silence as he realized what he had just said, then he coughed and went on hurriedly, ‘Yes, well … there you are. You see what I mean.’
‘Of course I do! But don’t you see that those are the legends?’ I urged excitedly. ‘As I said just now, most such tales are probably rooted in a grain of truth. With the passage of centuries they become distorted as layer upon layer of romantic invention is added bit by bit. But long ago, in the dim and distant past, something actually happened that gave birth to the original story. Have you never, as a boy, rolled a snowball down a hill and watched it getting bigger and bigger before it reached the bottom? Legends must grow like that.’
The Bee Master peered into his beaker, and finding it empty called the pot-boy. I hastily declined his offer of a third cup of ale, and was treated to a diatribe on the inability of modern youth to hold its drink. This however was mercifully brief, Gilbert being anxious to get back to the subject under discussion.
‘So, what you’re saying,’ he continued, as soon as his beaker had been replenished, ‘is that the legend of Arthur’s knights looking for the Holy Grail is based on the fact that this Brother Begninus hid some relic or other because the pagan Saxons were approaching, and afterwards people had to try to find it again?’
I reflected that there was nothing wrong with Gilbert’s understanding, and that he was quicker on the uptake than many a younger person of my acquaintance.
‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘Perhaps Brother Percival and Brother Geraldus, the two monks mentioned by Begninus as departing the following day for Ireland, never returned. Perhaps Brother Begninus himself, and the Abbot and the other inmates of the church at Ynys Witrin, were all killed by a Saxon raiding party, or died naturally, one by one, of old age and disease. If the latter, maybe the Abbot decided that it would be wiser to leave the “great relic” where it was, rather than bring it back to the church. Even though 500 AD was the year of the battle at Mount Badon, when Arthur is said to have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Saxons somewhere away to the east, there were still other bands of invaders coming ashore along the south coast and gradually making their way inland.’
‘So when the monks died, the secret of the relic’s hiding place died with them?’
‘Yes. But the relic was famous enough for other people to have heard of it, and to make them anxious to find it again. Both before and after the completion of the Saxon conquest it was searched for, probably over a period of many years. And gradually the hunt became a part of the stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The quest for the Holy Grail.’
Gilbert swallowed another draught of ale. ‘That’s all very well,’ he demurred, ‘but surely no one in their right mind could imagine that it is still possible to find it today, after almost a thousand years!’
It was the same argument advanced by Blethyn Goode and Brother Hilarion, and still as unanswerable as when they had posed the question.
I could only give the same response. ‘Peter Gildersleeve, by my reasoning, thought it possible, and we must therefore try to think as he did.’
The Bee Master grunted doubtfully. ‘What was the wording of this precious parchment of yours? Where did this Brother Begninus say that he’d hidden the relic?’
I quoted, for I knew the words now by heart: ‘“Amongst the hills, in the hollow places of the earth, on the altar by Charon’s stream.”’
‘Well, there you are then! A chapel, or a shrine maybe … But no building of that age could possibly be standing today. The idea defies all reason. And so Master Gildersleeve must have known. He doesn’t sound a fool by anything I’ve heard tell of him. No, I think you’ve been sitting on a mare’s nest, lad, and you’ve hatched out a three-legged donkey.’ He sighed. ‘But it doesn’t alter the fact that both that poor woman’s sons have disappeared and no one is any the wiser as to where they’ve gone or why. But what anyone can do about it, I don’t know. You’ve done your best, Roger, and you can’t do more. You’ll have to forget it. Even if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, you’re right about the way Peter Gildersleeve’s mind was working — but I think it’s unlikely — you can only follow his logic so far. And how did he vanish so completely within the span of just a few moments?’