Jan Siegel - The Greenstone Grail - The Sangreal Trilogy One

Maybe there’s an injunction on my talking of the cup. Not legal, but magical. Or some sort of hypnotism …

‘Who’s got – it – now?’ he inquired. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve already told Uncle Barty, but I missed that part. Or – or is that private information?’

‘Lord, no: it’s public enough. It’s some Austrian chap, father’s a count, Graf they call it, grandfather was in the SS. The Birnbaums were a Jewish family, very wealthy, major collectors, paintings, antiques, the lot. The Nazis did for them, of course, and the grandfather – Graf Von Holsten-Pils or whatever he called himself – pocketed most of the loot. After he died the next count seems to have kept a low profile, hoped the stolen goods would pass unnoticed among the rest of the ancestral heirlooms. He had a stroke last year, family fortunes on the wane, son decides to auction off some of the silver. Gets in touch with Sotheby’s – not sure why he picked on London, maybe there’s a Birnbaum who’s been sniffing around back in Germany, maybe he just thinks he’ll get more money. Apparently a lot of the stuff is originally English. Anyway, he shows them the cup with the provenance – perhaps he thinks granddad got it legally – and a chum of mine there gets hold of me. Wanted to check it out, had no idea I might have a claim. Haven’t told him, of course. Want to get my hands on that injunction first. Never fire till you can see the whites of their eyes, so my father used to say. Mind you, he was talking about stag-hunting, not warfare.’

‘Is this war, Rowena?’ Bartlemy asked mildly. ‘Do you really believe this cup is the luck of the Thorns?’

‘I’m an antique-dealer,’ she said. ‘It’s a valuable antique – could be unique – and it was the property of my family. It should be again. Don’t know about luck. My father believed-my grandfather believed. I’m a sceptic about most things, but the belief is there: it’s in my blood. It always comes down to blood, when you talk about the cup. Supposing it was the Grail – if there is such a thing …’

‘That’s the question,’ said Bartlemy. ‘The blood of Christ-whoever he was …’ His voice sounded very distant.

Nathan sat like a stock, unable to move. His tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth. He wanted to say something – anything – to cry out and break through the spell or trance, but the harder he tried, the more difficult it became.

‘You’re a sceptic, like me,’ Rowena Thorn was saying. ‘No evidence for any Grail, nothing but stories. Great-aunt Verity said Josevius could have been Joseph of Arimathea, the chap who’s supposed to have retrieved the Grail relics and brought them to England. How d’you work that out? said my father. We know Josevius died around 660 AD – forget the precise date, but it’s set down somewhere. If he was around for the Crucifixion he’d have been getting on a bit.’

‘How does family legend deal with that one?’ Bartlemy said.

‘Sold his soul to the Devil – told you the Devil came into it – lived for centuries. Even the stories are rubbish, you see. In charge of holy relics one minute, in the pay of Satan the next. None of it stands up.’

‘What did your great-aunt have to say about it?’ Bartlemy wondered. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Said the Grail was evil, not holy. King Arthur and co. got it wrong. She was a devout Christian: thought it was a pagan thing. Souvenir from the scene of the crime – most terrible crime in history. She thought we had to keep it from doing harm. Went a bit batty in her old age. Still, it made sense to her.’

‘Has the cup ever been carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy said thoughtfully.

‘Shouldn’t think so. Unless the Grafs had it done. Funnily enough, my chum at Sotheby’s was talking about that. If the cup’s two thousand years old, might really be a candidate for the Grail legend. On the other hand, if it was made in the Dark Ages …’

‘Exactly.’

‘Doesn’t make any odds to me, though. Belongs to the Thorns, whatever it is.’ An obstinate look settled about her mouth, erasing some of the humour. ‘Must get it back,’ she muttered to herself.

Nathan, finding he could move again, fidgeted in his chair, extending a hand to ruffle Hoover’s fur.

‘Still want to help me out?’ Rowena Thorn asked him. ‘Not as good as buried treasure, looking for a piece of paper, but it might mean treasure for me. There’d be a reward in it, promise you that …’

‘It’s okay,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t want a reward. I’ll look anyway.’

‘Good man. Teach you the right stuff at Ffylde, do they? Better than the comprehensive at Crowford, any day. All they seem to do there is take drugs and beat up the teachers.’ As Hazel and George were both there, Nathan knew this was an exaggeration, but he didn’t say so.

‘He gets his principles from his mother,’ Bartlemy said gently.

Rowena Thorn set down her teacup. ‘Better be off,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything, Bartlemy. You’ve always been a good friend.’

‘You don’t mind my living here, do you?’ he inquired curiously. ‘Your ancestral home …’

‘Good heavens no. Hardly a mansion, is it? The Thorns never had the money for that. Just inconvenient, hell to maintain – never dared ask you about the plumbing. It isn’t as if I ever lived here myself. No sentiment involved.’

‘You never owned the cup, either,’ Bartlemy pointed out.

‘That’s different,’ she said. ‘I told you. That’s a matter of blood.’

At supper that night, Nathan told Annie about the cup of the Thorns – it didn’t appear to be a secret – or as much as he was able to tell, without talking about his vision, or the dreams of blood. Hazel was there; George came later. They both absorbed the story with enthusiasm and determined to search for the missing injunction. ‘D’you think it will be, like, a piece of parchment?’ George said. ‘A scroll or something, yellowing and with spiky writing.’

‘It’s fifteenth century,’ Nathan said. ‘I think they had paper in the fifteenth century. When did what’s-his-name invent the printing press?’

‘Caxton,’ Annie said, ‘in the fifteenth century. There was a lot going on then. Would anyone like some ice cream?’

Not surprisingly, everyone did. ‘Have you ever had a book here as old as that?’ Hazel asked when the ice cream had been shared out.

‘No. I had a seventeenth century two-volume history once: that was the oldest. Anything from the fifteenth century would probably be in a museum. Does Rowena have any idea what this document looks like?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Nathan said. ‘We’ll just have to go through absolutely everything at Thornyhill.’

‘If your Uncle Barty doesn’t mind …’

‘It could be hidden in a book,’ Nathan pursued. ‘Secret papers very often are.’

‘But – Thornyhill is full of books!’ Hazel exclaimed, daunted. ‘It’ll take forever.’ Suddenly, the prospect of finding a missing document didn’t seem half so interesting. ‘Perhaps Mr Goodman won’t want us rooting around there. He might prefer to do it himself …’

‘Is there a reward?’ George asked.

‘Yes,’ Nathan said, looking rueful, ‘but I told Mrs Thorn we wouldn’t want it.’

‘ We didn’t,’ George and Hazel chimed simultaneously.

‘You have to find it first,’ Annie pointed out. ‘ Then you can worry about the reward. Are you sure it’s actually at Thornyhill?’

‘It must be,’ Nathan said. ‘Please don’t make things more complicated. Anyway, Mrs Thorn thought so.’

They retreated to the Den to discuss the problem further, until Hazel switched to the subject of a forthcoming party which she wanted Nathan to attend with her. ‘There’s going to be a disco,’ she said.