Gold chalice of unknown Celtic workmanship, believed sixth century. Found in Trewissick, South Cornwall, and presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew.
They moved round the case, looking at the grail. Its curved, engraved sides had been meticulously cleaned; and now that the beaten gold was free of the dirt left by centuries in the cave under Kemare Head, every line of the engraving was clear.
They saw that it was divided into five panels, and that four of the five were covered with pictures of men fighting: brandishing swords and spears, crouching behind shields, dressed not in armour but in strange tunics ending above their knees. They wore helmets on their heads; but the helmets, curving down over the backs of their necks, were like no shape the children had ever seen before. Between the figures, interweaving like pictures on a tapestry, words and letters were closely engraved. The last panel, the fifth, was completely covered in words, as close-written as the scrawled black lines had been on the manuscript. But all these words on the golden grail, the children knew, were in a language nobody, from Great-Uncle Merry to the museum experts, had been able to understand.
Behind them, they heard two men from the crowd come up deep in discussion, looking down into the glass case.
“. . . quite unique. Of course the significance of the inscription is difficult to estimate. Clearly runic, I think—strange, in a Roman ambiance . . .”
“But my dear fellow—” The second man’s voice was loud and jolly; glancing round, Barney saw that he was redfaced, enormous beside his small bespectacled companion. “Emphasising the runic element surely presupposes some Saxon connection, and the whole essence of this thing is Celtic. Romano-Celtic if you like, but consider the Arthurian evidence—”
“Arthurian?” said the first voice in nasal disbelief. “I should have to have greater proof for that than Professor Lyon’s imaginative surmise. Loomis, I think, would have grave doubts . . . but indeed a remarkable find none the less, remarkable. . . .”
They moved away again into the crowd.
“What on earth did all that mean?” said Jane.
“Doesn’t he believe it’s about King Arthur?” Barney glared resentfully after the little man. Then they heard voices from another group passing the show-case.
“Surely all the theories will have to be revised now; it throws a new light on the entire Arthurian canon.” The voice was as solemn as the rest, but younger; and then it chuckled. “Poor old Battersby—all his vapourings about Scandinavian analogues, and now here’s the first evidence since Nennius of a Celtic Arthur—a real king—”
“The Times asked me for a piece, you know,” said a deeper voice.
“Oh really, did you do that? Bit strong, wasn’t it?—’a find to shake the whole field of English scholarship—’”
“Not at all,” said the deeper voice. “It’s undoubtedly genuine, and it undoubtedly gives clues to the identity of Arthur. And as such it can’t be overpraised. I’m only sorry about that last panel.”
“Yes, the mysterious inscription. A cipher, I think. It must be. Those strange Old English characters—runic, old Battersby claims, absurd of course—personally I’m sure there was once a key to them. Lost long since, of course, so we shall never know. . . .”
The voices faded like the rest.
“Well, that sounds better,” Simon said.
“They all seem to treat it as a kind of relic,” Jane said sadly. “I suppose it’s what Gumerry said, that the real meaning of it wouldn’t have been known unless the enemy had got hold of it, and then it would have been too late.”
“Well, the enemy can come and look at it as much as they like now,” said Simon, “but it won’t mean anything to them without the manuscript. I suppose that was the key to the ciphers in the last panel, that the man was talking about just now.”
Jane sighed. “And it won’t mean anything to us either. So we shan’t know the real truth about King Arthur, about the—what did the manuscript call him?—the Pendragon.”
“No. We shan’t know exactly who he was, or what happened to him.”
“We shan’t know what his secret was, that Gumerry talked about and the enemy wanted.”
“We shan’t know about that other odd thing the manuscript said—the day when the Pendragon shall come again.”
Barney, listening to them, looked again at the mysterious words engraved on the gleaming side of the grail. And he raised his head to stare across the room at Great-Uncle Merry’s tall figure, with the great white head and fierce, secret face.
“I think we shall know,” he said slowly, “one day.”
SUSAN COOPER is best known for her acclaimed sequence of fantasy novels known as The Dark Is Rising which includes OVER SEA, UNDER STONE; THE DARK IS RISING (1974 Newbery Honor book); GREENWITCH; THE GREY KING (1976 Newbery Award book); and SILVER ON THE TREE. Her novels for young readers also include SEAWARD and DAWN OF FEAR. She has written three books for younger children as well: THE SILVER COW, THE SELKIE GIRL, and TAM LIN, all illustrated by Warwick Hutton. In collaboration with actor Hume Cronyn, she wrote the Broadway play Foxfire and—for Jane Fonda—the television film The Dollmaker, for which they received the Humanitas Prize in 1985. Born in Buckinghamshire, England, Susan Cooper moved to the United States in 1963 and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Susan Cooper, Over Sea, Under Stone
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