Finding Camlann (18 page)

By now, the abbey grounds are almost deserted. The only other person in sight, an elderly gardener in a heavily patched tweed jacket, is wielding a set of rusty clippers on the branches of a large and ancient thorn tree. ‘Afternoon to you, sir,’ he calls out in a voice roughened with age. He goes on with his pruning, and Donald is on the point of walking past when he speaks up again. ‘There’s a tale that’s sometimes told about the Christmas Thorn of Glastonbury, if you’d like to hear it.’

‘Yes, I would, very much,’ Donald says, though he knows the story well enough.

The old man nods approvingly at him, sets aside his clippers and begins what must be a well-practised discourse. ‘They say Joseph of Arimathea came to the Isle of A cthe sets asidvalon bringing the Holy Grail with him, whereupon he climbed up Wearyall Hill, over that way.’ The gardener points vaguely to the south and west of the abbey grounds. ‘When he got to the top, he thrust his thorn staff into the ground. He was amazed when it put forth roots, sprouted and budded, then burst into a mass of white flowers.’

‘And that’s the site he chose for the first Christian church in Britain,’ said Donald.

‘Yes indeed, and I’m pleased to see you’re an educated gentleman.’ The gardener flashes a gap-toothed conspiratorial smile. ‘At that same moment, up at Chalice Well, a spring began flowing and it hasn’t ever stopped. That’s where Joseph buried the Grail, right there at the gates to the otherworld, and nobody has been able to find it since.’

‘I’m not sure it was ever worth searching for, to be honest.’ Donald says this casually enough, then regrets his ill-judged comment as the old man turns to face him, white brows beetling.

‘Some things, young man, are best left unspoken.’ The gardener stares hard at him for a moment, then his expression softens. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll set much store by the other part of this story, either.’ He takes hold of a small branch and points to the tips of the new twigs, where small buds are just beginning to show. ‘This fellow now, he still blossoms with white flowers every year on Christmas Eve. But only if you treat him right. This one and his brother in St. John’s churchyard, they’re from cuttings of the old original tree which was cut down by Cromwell’s men in the Civil War.’

‘Oliver Cromwell has a lot to answer for,’ Donald says, striving to redeem himself. ‘He tried to drive out every last vestige of the old English folklore.’

‘That’s as may be,’ the gardener says. ‘Now, you’d best be along, or they’ll close the gates on you. This is no place to be shut in after dark, as I should know.’ With this the old man turns away with a low chuckle, picks up his clippers and goes back to work.

Feeling vaguely ill at ease, Donald walks on towards the main abbey buildings, the ruins dominated by two tall, finger-like fragments that give a certain desolate symmetry to this once-majestic structure. Inside, where the nave would have been, he finds a small metal plaque, white lettering on brown.

SITE OF KING ARTHUR
’
S TOMB

IN THE YEAR 1191 THE BODIES OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS QUEEN WERE SAID TO HAVE BEEN FOUND ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE LADY CHAPEL. ON 19TH APRIL 1278 THEIR REMAINS WERE REMOVED IN THE PRESENCE OF KING EDWARD I AND QUEEN ELEANOR TO A BLACK MARBLE TOMB ON THIS SITE. THIS TOMB SURVIVED UNTIL THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ABBEY IN 1539.

Archaeologists have found convincing evidence that an excavation of this sort did indeed take place at the end of the twelfth century. But the exhumation was shown to be a fraud, one of the more infamous monkish hoaxes in English history. A dramatic discovery such as this was well suited to the purposes of the presiding Abbot of Glastonbury, Henry of Sully, who was determined to revive the fortunes of the abbey after it burned down in 1184. It was therefore decided that his resourceful monks should by chance unearth a hollow log containing the bones of a woman and a very tall man. To provide a further layer of false authenticity, Henry also arranged for the cngeall man. discovery in the grave of a lead cross with an intriguing inscription. It said,
Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia
: Here lies buried the famous King Arthur in the isle of Avalon. The cross itself was lost long ago, though it was seen and described as late as the sixteenth century by John Leland, the celebrated antiquarian to Henry VIII.

Donald cannot help thinking of Paul Healey with his bones unearthed from the Wiltshire soil, his long-limbed king and his queen found clutching her mysterious blood-filled chalice. It is not precisely the same thing, perhaps. Healey did not go quite so far as to bury his skeletons first before digging them up again, though his instinct for publicity is at least as well tuned as was Abbot Henry’s in his day. A line comes back to him, something he wrote in the preface to his book.
Every age has its plausible charlatans; and every age has its susceptible pilgrims and romantics, its seekers of the Holy Grail
.

As he walks back towards the gate, Donald pulls his jacket more closely around him against the autumnal chill that has crept into the air. The gardener has quietly disappeared into the dusk. He is anxious now to be away from this place, with its long falling shadows and the jagged remnants of the abbey like giant gravestones silhouetted against the sky.

AT DYFFRYN FARM,
time passes for Julia in a blur of soft-voiced and kind-hearted visitors, relatives and old family friends who soon absorb her into their circle. She takes it all in, keeping her composure, not letting them get too close. Far from obscuring her other, more ordinary troubles, her father’s death seems to have brought them out into the harsh daylight. Dai was always a good friend and mentor to Hugh, especially in the early days when he would often say to Julia that he saw something of his own younger self in her ardent, self-assured new boyfriend. It makes her desperately sad to think how disappointed he would be if he could see them now. She finds herself thinking often of Donald and the kiss at the Trevethey bridge, and how she abandoned him without the merest word of explanation. A few seconds longer, another sip of wine, and she might have become his lover. She would like to speak to him, to explain what has happened, but there has been no chance of making a private telephone call in the crowded farmhouse.

The funeral arrangements provide some sort of a distraction. Julia takes control, glad to be busy, to do something to help her mother just as the reality of their tragedy begins to break down Cath Llewellyn’s stubborn defences. Then there is the service at St. Clement’s in Rhayader, where they must look at one another, by turns resigned and desperate, as they sit huddled together with the flower-strewn coffin right there in front of them. It is Aunt Nia, her father’s younger sister, who gives the eulogy, somehow steadying her voice as she stands up in front of the congregation. She speaks not of Dai the settled farmer of later years, but of the Dai she knew as a child in Llangurig, the gifted boy with a flair for landscape sketching and wood-carving in a time and a place where such pursuits were for the amusement of idle, soft-handed men who had no lambs to slaughter nor stone walls to mend. By the age of sixteen, the frustrations of youth and the mockery of his peers had subverted his talent. He fell in with a circle of fiery young compatriots, shepherds and mechanics and quarrymen who met in back rooms full of wild-eyed talk, angry reports of new English incursions on the native soil of Wales. Then, on a cold spring day at Aberdovey, he gave his hand to young Catherine Pursey of Sussex as she stepped off the ferry-boat. C cfer his hand ath is what he insisted on calling her (pronouncing it in the Welsh way, ‘cat’), and soon enough his love for this graceful Englishwoman began to draw the bitterness out of him. In time, he was able to return to the first calling of his childhood, drawing and carving and sculpting in his old familiar style. In later years, settled and happy in the hills above Rhayader with Cath and their daughter Julia his pride and joy, he was at last content with the idea that the transcendent vision of Wales he strove to capture in his art was no more than a nostalgic landscape of the imagination.

Afterwards, the coffin is borne outside by eight men of Dai’s generation, local farmers who held him in the highest esteem as a friend and fellow Welshman. They return in the vanguard to Dyffryn and lead the party through the afternoon and evening with a boxful of cheap blended whisky driven up from town by Gareth Williams, the proprietor of the Black Lion pub. These are true-blooded patriots, though their talk is more of the recent heavy rains, the state of their winter flocks and the grievances of their long-suffering wives. Hugh is there complicit amongst them as if he were a Radnorshire man himself, down from the hills. To Julia it seems a forced camaraderie on his part, an elaborate act for which she is the intended audience.

There is one of the local men who holds himself apart from this narrow fraternity, keeping his distance, brooding in the quiet corners. He has the wiry frame of an outdoorsman, dark hair cropped short, a lean, pockmarked face creased up into a habitual expression of aloofness or perplexity. It is not until late in the evening, after what is left of the party has moved to the front room and Julia is sitting exhausted at the foot of the narrow stairs, that he finally catches her eye. She watches him as he pulls deeply on his cigarette, eyes narrowing through the smoke, then taps off the ash and walks over to her, whisky glass in his other hand. She can tell he has drunk more than his share of it.

‘Thank you for coming, Ralph. How have you been?’

‘Well enough, considering. I’m sorry about Dai, though. He was always a good friend to me.’ His meaning comes through sharply enough. Dai was a good friend, whereas Julia treated him as if he were nothing.

‘I was hoping to see your father today?’ The Reverend Stephen Barnabas, Anglican vicar of the parish of Rhayader, was once close to Dai. They fell out long ago, but still he might have been expected at the funeral.

Ralph takes another long pull on his cigarette. ‘My dad’s not been feeling well, these past weeks. I’m afraid he’s on his way out.’ He says this almost casually, as if discussing the price of last season’s lambs.

By now, Hugh has seen the two of them talking. He breaks from his circle in the front room and comes over to join them. ‘Ralph,’ he says, with what seems a friendly enough nod, though there is a constraint in his expression, something held back. Ralph Barnabas has worked at Ty Faenor for more than ten years, ever since Dai persuaded Hugh to take him on, but the old grudges have never quite worn smooth.

‘I’ll be leaving you to it, anyway,’ Ralph says, taking his jacket down from the coat-rack and heading for the front door. ‘You’ll not want me hanging around here, getting in the way.’

‘He still has a thing for you,’ Hugh says, after he has gone.

‘I’m not sure why that should be. I hardly ever see him these days.’

‘As if that makes a difference.’ On some other occasion, Hugh casiever seex2019;s rueful smile might seem charming, but now it strikes a false, jealous note. ‘I assume you’ll stay here tonight?’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?’ Before she can respond to this, he has pulled on his coat and stepped out into the night.

A PHONE CALL
at the office from Donald’s father is a rare event, and his first reaction is to suspect that some calamity has occurred. Tim Watson, with whom he has been comparing notes on the Amesbury dig, catches the look in his eye and makes a diplomatic exit.

‘I found something interesting in the attic this morning,’ James Gladstone says, with a hint of self-satisfaction in his voice. ‘I think you might want to have a look.’

‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’

‘It’s a little tricky to explain over the phone. You’ll have to see for yourself. Come over this evening, if you like.’

Donald drives straight to Chewton Mendip after he has finished work for the day. The front door of Grendel’s Lair is opened by a woman in later middle age with a plump, red-cheeked face, grey-brown hair pulled back into a bun. She takes him warmly by the hand. ‘Well, if it isn’t young Donald Gladstone,’ she says. ‘Your father said he had asked you to come, though you’re a little earlier than we expected.’