Kate Sedley - The Brothers of Glastonbury

‘What led you to suspect there was a cave in that part of the hills?’ Edgar inquired, holding Barnabas’s head while I mounted.

‘It’s a long story,’ I answered, then clapped a hand to my mouth as I realized just what it was that Brother Hilarion had been about to ask me.

‘Is something wrong?’ my companion enquired, noting my consternation.

‘N-no,’ I answered slowly. ‘No, nothing!’ I leaned from the saddle. ‘Once again, thank you for your good offices, Master Shapwick.’

‘It’s we, the folk of Glastonbury and the villages around, who should thank you,’ he protested. ‘You’ve done what the Sheriff’s men were unable to do and cleared up the mystery of these robberies. There will be many a home’s occupants grateful to see the return of their valuables.’ He handed up my scorched and blackened cudgel and slapped the cob’s rump. ‘God go with you, lad, and guard you safely home to Bristol.’

I accepted his good wishes and also enlisted his support for Dame Joan and Cicely. ‘They’ll need stalwart friends.’

‘They will that. You can rely on me.’ He clasped my hand and watched me ride out of the stable before turning back to resume the morning’s business.

I rode up the High Street, past the abbey and the church of Saint John, and on into Bove Town, where the pilgrims’ chapel of Saint James indicated the track leading to the Jarrolds’ cottage. To my right the strange, brooding hump of the Tor rose against the skyline, crowned by Saint Michael’s chapel, the home of Merlin, of Gwyn ap Nud, of the early Celtic gods who had been worshipped in these parts long before the coming of the first Christians.

I remembered with a smile my longing, a week ago, to be plunged into some romantic adventure, to become a part of the the mystic, mythical world of my wildest dreams. And for a few, brief hours I had thought myself to be standing on the threshhold of one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind, just as Peter Gildersleeve had done before me. But now, as I turned off along the raised causeway to Wells and the Mendip Hills, I wondered heavily whatever had possessed me to believe it possible, and felt that I had been touched by a sort of madness. I had completely forgotten about the Grail in the aftermath of what had happened in the cave, and had only recollected the object of my search just now, prompted by Edgar Shapwick’s question. I felt stupid and dull, as if I had just awakened from a long, deep sleep. Well, it was too late now. I should never be able to prove what Brother Begninus had concealed from the Saxons a thousand years ago, or where he had hidden it …

And then, suddenly, as a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds which had hung like a pall over the countryside for the past two days, my spirits rose, and I was glad that I had not found the Holy Grail. Down through the centuries it had grown to symbolize so much more than just a great Christian relic. It had come to stand for Man’s quest for everything worthwhile, for his better nature, for hope in an unfriendly world. If it could be reduced to nothing more than an object of gold and precious jewels it would lose its significance, and the world would be a poorer place because it had lost an ideal.

And as I urged Barnabas to a trot, I began to smile.