A Brief History of Montmaray (14 page)

‘Anyway, for some reason, Herr Rahn and his Nazi employers think they can find the Grail here,’ said Veronica.

I looked down and saw that my hands had twisted themselves into a knot. ‘What will they do when they don’t find it?’ I whispered. ‘If they think we’re hiding it from them?’

Veronica only shook her head.

‘Then shouldn’t we ... I don’t know, let them at least look through the library?’ I said.

Veronica stared at me. ‘Have you gone
mad?
Think about–’

‘Just so they can see there’s nothing here!’ I added hurriedly. ‘We could make sure Uncle John’s out of the way when they arrive, tell Rebecca so she keeps him locked in his room...’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Veronica shortly. Then she sat down at her desk with her back to me and began to sort through the papers on it with quick, sharp movements. I sat there, waiting, but she didn’t say anything further. After a while, I got up and went to the door. I could see Veronica reflected in the dark window pane, one of Daniel’s letters clenched in her hand. She didn’t look like a girl in love, I have to say. She just looked very tired.

I AWOKE THIS morning with a plan, of sorts. First, though, I went to the library and found Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King.
It had been a while since I’d read it. ‘The Holy Grail’ was in the middle, brimming with fantastic visions and mad knights and castles being torn asunder. The Grail, Sir Percivale claimed, had been carried by Joseph of Arimathea from the Holy Land to Glastonbury. I suppose Joseph’s journey could have taken him via the Bay of Biscay and Montmaray, and his ship could have sunk or its cargo been washed overboard. Except Percivale said the Grail had actually reached Glastonbury safely ‘and there awhile it bode’, until it disappeared years later due to the general wicked ness of the population. So Tennyson wasn’t much help.

Then I flipped through Edward de Quincy FitzOsborne’s
Collected Works,
but it was just as I’d remembered – one brief reference to the Grail that came out of nowhere and disappeared immediately. And one can be certain that if there’d been a shred of evidence that the Grail had come anywhere near Montmaray, Edward de Quincy would have written a hundred pages about it in bad iambic pentameter.

The awful thing was that I could well imagine Simon trying to impress the German Ambassador and making Montmaray seem more important than it actually is. Montmaray is important to
us,
of course, but not to outsiders – we have no citizens of historical note (Edward de Quincy doesn’t really count), there is no unique wildlife, no highest mountain or biggest waterfall or longest river. All we have is a lot of rocks and shipwrecks, and while some of the shipwrecks probably do contain treasure, anything down there on the sea bed is quite irretrievable. But Simon is a true patriot, no matter what Veronica says, and I must admit he seems ambitious. So why wouldn’t Simon be tempted to embroider a little, to choose to be entertaining rather than strictly accurate in what was, after all, a social gathering, not a conference for history professors. Perhaps the German Ambassador, aware of the Ahnenerbe research, had asked specifically about the Grail; perhaps Simon, wanting to please, had given a response that was not
wholly
based on the known facts...

I can just imagine what Veronica will say and do if she discovers this. Not that it’s Simon’s fault if the Germans have put two and two together and come up with fifteen, but she is just itching for an excuse to annihilate Simon. All it would require is one of her acerbic letters to Mr Grenville, asking why he permits his clerk to run around in Society impersonating a diplomat, and Simon would lose his job. I can’t allow this to happen. I am going down to explain things to Herr Rahn. Or at least find out what he’s up to.

I have put this down on paper in case I don’t come back.

Signed,
Sophia Margaret Elizabeth Jane Clementine FitzOsborne.

I was praying like mad all the way down that it would be all right and it seemed to work – perhaps Rebecca’s onto something after all, with all that kneeling and muttering in front of altars.

Not that it began very well. I needed Carlos to go with me for protection (the troll had seemed wary of him) and Carlos was in the kitchen with everyone else.

‘Just going for a walk,’ I said to them, dragging a very reluctant Carlos towards the door (he’d been drooling over the fish Rebecca was cutting up for stew).

‘Why?’ said Henry, quite sensibly. The rain was still streaming down the windows, and the wind, when I opened the door, was icy.

‘I just need some ... some fresh air,’ I said, as a blast of it threw me sideways into the doorframe.

Rebecca snorted. Veronica looked up from the scribbles on Henry’s slate and narrowed her eyes.

‘You know, I think I’ll come with you,’ Henry announced, scraping back her chair.

‘I think
not,
’ said Veronica at once, ‘when you were confined to bed for more than a week not so long ago and still have five sums to finish.’

And during the ensuing argument, I managed to slip out unnoticed.

Carlos was quite happy to be outside once we got past the drawbridge and he remembered all the rabbits and puffins out there for the chasing. We headed for the village first, even though I suspected the men would be out exploring. I was right – we eventually came across them on the Green. The troll was wheeling a long stick with a disc on the end and calling out measurements to Herr Rahn, who was writing them down in his notebook.

‘Good morning, Your Highness!’ cried Herr Rahn when he caught sight of me. Too late, I realised I’d forgotten the English–German dictionary.

‘Morning,’ I said, because there really wasn’t much good about it. The rain was whipping back and forth, stinging my face, and my hands were frozen. ‘I was just ... er, taking the dog for a walk.’

The troll scowled at Carlos, then wheeled away towards the far end of the Green, his black oilskin flapping behind him. ‘How are you getting on?’ I continued. ‘With your ... ah, research?’

‘Oh,’ said Herr Rahn, who had a nice smile. ‘Not so bad, thank you. But I was wanting to ask – what is that?’ He pointed to the cross at South Head, shrouded today in a mist of sea spray and rain.

‘That’s the war memorial,’ I said. ‘Um,
monument aux morts.
The Great War, you know. A hundred and fifty-seven Montmaray men died in a single day.’ Massacred by Herr Rahn’s countrymen, I didn’t add. After all, it wasn’t
his
fault – he was too young to have been in the war.

‘Very sad,’ he said. ‘That must have ... er ... this is why the village is...?’ He gestured downhill at the desolate cottages.

‘Partly,’ I nodded. ‘And also the influenza epidemic in 1918.
La grippe.
’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Herr Rahn softly. ‘In Germany, too.’

It was so terribly unfair, that epidemic. The soldiers who’d managed to survive the Great War, the wives who’d waited for them, the children who’d barely known their fathers – so many of them struck down by disease just as peace was declared. Veronica once told me that across the world, twice as many people died of the influenza as were killed in the Great War. And Montmaray, isolated as it sometimes seems, was never-theless part of that world. The Great War demonstrated that to deadly effect, and so did the epidemic.

I sighed heavily. ‘So, with most of the young men dead, a lot of the villagers went back to Cornwall. To find work.’

He nodded slowly. Then the troll called out something and Herr Rahn wrote some numbers in his notebook. He saw my curious glance and gave another shy smile.

‘Geometry,’ he explained. ‘A pity there is no sun, I hoped to measure the orientation of the sun at dawn, but...’ He shrugged. ‘May I ask, how did the village folk use this ... this...?’ He swept one arm around himself.

‘The Green?’ I asked. ‘Oh, well, they used to have hurling matches once. It’s a bit like football–’

His entire face lit up. ‘Yes, I know it! The silver ball is being thrown up, like the sun rising. And to touch the ball is good luck.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, a little surprised. ‘We have the ball up in the castle now.’

‘And other celebrations?’ he asked. ‘Midsummer?’

‘Yes, the bonfire is set up there,’ I said, pointing to the middle of the Green. He gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘But what does this have to do with your research?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were studying French heretics?’

‘Ah!’ he said, eyes sparkling, and I was reminded of Veronica preparing to launch into a complicated historical explanation. ‘The Cathars – these French heretics – knew what is called Sacred Geometry. It goes back to the Druids. They worshipped the Sun, and that is why the Church, the Roman Church, was against them. I have been travelling all over France and also Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Iceland–’

‘Iceland!’ I exclaimed in wonder.

‘Yes, but mostly France, where there is ... oh, it is difficult to explain in English! I wrote a book...’

‘Crusade against the Grail,
’ I said, before I could stop myself.

He stared at me. ‘Have you read this? It is not in English.’

‘Er, no,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of it. So you
are
searching for the Grail? It isn’t here, you know.’ I peered up into his eyes, anxious to make him understand this. ‘There’s no record of it ever being seen here, nor spoken of, nor even–’

‘Ah, the Grail,’ he said, smiling. ‘What is the Grail? What do you think?’

I frowned. ‘Well, in Tennyson, Sir Percivale said it was the cup that Christ drank from.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is also, in mediaeval German,
Parsifal,
have you heard of it? And the opera by Wagner, too. But they are not right, the Grail is before Christ. There was the legend of the Grail and then the Church tried to make it their own.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘The Grail of the Cathars, the Pure Ones?’ he said. ‘Perhaps a perfect crystal to hold the sun. But I think it truly is
Sophia.
Wisdom.’

‘Wisdom?’

‘Do you not know what your name means?’ he asked. ‘Wisdom.
Sophia.
What so many have searched for, so many years.’

‘Well, I should have been named something else then,’ I said. ‘I haven’t any wisdom.’

‘Are you sure?’ he said, smiling. At that moment, the clouds above us cracked open and rain began to pelt down. The troll turned and squelched towards us, looking mutinous, and Herr Rahn regretfully folded up his notebook.

‘We must go ... but you will join us? For tea?’ he said.

‘Oh, no, no, I should be getting back,’ I said, suddenly recalling the black gun Henry had seen. I tried unsuccessfully to hold back a shudder.

‘You are cold,’ said Herr Rahn, observing this with a look of concern. ‘Are you sure you would not like hot tea or–’

‘No, no, I’m fine, thank you!’ I cried. ‘Come on, Carlos!’ And I ran all the way back to the castle, not even stopping to worry about the sea surging below my feet as I flew across the gaps in the drawbridge.

Veronica had the big kettle boiling when I burst into the kitchen, and she sent me straight up to the bathroom with it.

‘You
are
an idiot,’ she sighed, coming in ten minutes later with another jug of hot water. ‘I thought Henry was the one I had to worry about. What on Earth were you thinking, going out in this weather?’

I sneezed and wondered that myself. Veronica sat down on the wooden lid of the loo and gave me an expectant, exasperated look. I opened my mouth to recount my conversation with Herr Rahn, then closed it again. After all, she’d just called me an idiot. Besides, I wanted to prove I could keep secrets just as well as she could.

‘Could you please pass me the towel,’ I said instead.

She tossed the towel at me and then folded her arms. Peering through damp clumps of my hair, I realised that she was prepared to sit there for as long as it took. This
was
Veronica, after all.

‘We talked about the war,’ I said.

‘Really?’ said Veronica, blinking. ‘Which one?’

‘Which ... the Great War!’ I said. ‘What else? Herr Rahn was wondering about the memorial cross.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘And did you tell him what happened?’

‘I told him a hundred and fifty-seven Montmaray men died in a single day.’

‘A hundred and fifty-eight,’ said Veronica.

‘A hundred and fifty-
seven,
’ I said. ‘Don’t you recall Toby and I counted all the names on the stone one summer?’

‘Don’t you recall Aunt Charlotte refused to pay the engraver’s bill because Edwin Davy’s name was left off?’

‘Does it
matter?
’ I burst out, tossing the towel back at her.

‘I expect it mattered a great deal to Edwin Davy’s widow,’ said Veronica, hanging the towel neatly on its hook. ‘But as you point out, it’s doubtful a couple of Nazis would care much about a single dead enemy soldier. What matters to them is having access to the library. You
did
stress that they mustn’t come anywhere near here, didn’t you?’

I pressed my lips together, grabbed my comb and began to yank it through my hair, realising only then that I’d failed to find out whether Simon had played any role in the Germans’ arrival. What if he
had?
And oh, I hadn’t asked Herr Rahn not to mention Simon to Veronica...

Veronica crossed her arms again. ‘Because I would have thought that any talk of the war would lead quite naturally to you explaining that Germans could never be welcome here.’

I worked away at a stubborn knot, thoughts whirling furiously.
Had
I emphasised they mustn’t come near the castle? Well, I’d
implied
it. Herr Rahn seemed an intelligent and sensitive man. How
else
would he think we’d feel about Germany, given the long shadow cast by the memorial cross?

‘At least, I
assume
that was your purpose in wandering through a freezing downpour to converse with a couple of Nazis,’ continued Veronica relentlessly. ‘To
warn them away.
’

I threw my comb down. ‘Herr Rahn is not a Nazi!’ I shouted. ‘And it’s none of your damned business what the purpose of my conversation was!’

Veronica raised nothing more than her eyebrows, and those only a fraction of an inch. ‘Really, Sophie. When we’re trying to encourage Henry to use more ladylike language.’ She stood, straightened the bath mat with one foot, then strolled towards the door. ‘And if you insist on having rendezvous with Herr Rahn,’ she said coolly over her shoulder, ‘at least try to conceal your departures from Henry. I spent the remainder of her lesson extracting another promise from her to stay away from those men.’