The Pendragon Legend (11 page)

I confess I too felt that the Earl was as she had described him. Some people are born to be served willingly by others.

It isn’t easy to explain these unprovoked sympathies, the whole complex magic that made Llanvygan so deeply attractive to me. No doubt there was an element of snobbery in it, a degree of intellectual curiosity, and a bit of love too. And there do exist in the soul such feudal passions as service, respect and devotion.

Had I been a knight errant, I should have offered my services to
the lord of the castle, and asked the lady for a ribbon to wear on my shield. Oh to be that happy man, a knight errant!

I kissed her hand. She stood in the gothic arch of the window gazing at me, transfigured by emotion. She was the maid of the castle, I her knight. I mouthed a few incoherent words, in which there was not just a declaration of love but a blessed revival, from under the rubble of years, of my better self. What a shame that those moments when man is noble and pure and akin to the angels are so transient, so fleeting, while that complicated nonentity the Ego is always with us—of which one can speak only in terms of protective tenderness and gentle irony.

By some miracle, the next few days passed calmly and agreeably. Nothing remarkable happened, and I was able to sleep at night. There was no more talk of midnight riders.

The summer was still magnificent, the park as beautiful as parks always are when one walks in them with a girl. I played a great deal of tennis, swam and sunbathed. In short, I was spending my summer holiday in the shadow of danger every bit as calmly as the rich who disport themselves below snow-laden mountains of deadly height.

In time I even came to feel at home in the Llanvygan library, and picked up my studies where I had left off in the British Museum.

The library was particularly rich in seventeenth-century
material
. Mystical tracts which I knew of only from bibliographical references, things that were not even in the British Museum, I now held reverently in my hands.

The number of German works of the period was very striking. With singular emotion I turned the pages of Simon Studion’s unpublished
Naometria
, and first editions of Paracelsus, Weigel and Johann Valentin Andreae, volumes which Asaph Pendragon must have brought back with him after his early years in that country. Over these texts he would have mused and deliberated with his friend Robert Fludd: their cabbalistic symbols were still visible above the archaic gothic script. As I sat there in the
gathering
dusk, an insignificant mortal in the shadow of the vast ranks
of books, the centuries passed before me in procession, in reverse order. Where are the Stuarts, and where is Cromwell now? But books live on, as does man’s eternal thirst for them.

It seemed as if I had only to open a door to see directly into the era of Asaph Pendragon. Every now and then I was overwhelmed by a strange, disconcerting happiness. I felt preternaturally old, a relic from the age of folios staring out in astonishment at the mankind of today.

In short, I was in a lyrical mood. I kept breaking off to
construct
, with much labour, a sonnet in English. Let us suppose: I was in love with Cynthia. That might be one way of approaching the truth, at the expense of a double lie. I wasn’t in love, and not with Cynthia.

As a rule I don’t fall in love, though it did happen to me once when I was very young. Even if the rather pleasing solemnity I now felt pulsing in my veins could really be termed love, it was not Cynthia I was in love with, but the Lady of the Castle, the maid of Llanvygan.

A woman’s worth is furnished by her background, her
reputation
(good or bad), the lovers she has had, and the world of
otherness
she has come from. Love is like an old-fashioned landscape painting: in the foreground a diminutive figure, the woman who is loved; behind her mountains and rivers, a rich, grand scenery, charged with meaning.

Cynthia’s scenery was Llanvygan and Pendragon, Welsh
legend
and English history. Whoever married Cynthia would find himself related, however distantly, to the deathless pentameters of Shakespeare and Milton.

But the real Cynthia was simple, warm-hearted and natural, as all true aristocrats are when you get to know them. She had no interest in ‘society’, nor was she self-centred and demanding the way young girls are who have been spoilt. Because of her mother’s recent death she had ‘come out’ rather later than usual, and rarely mixed with people.

She was sincerely and unaffectedly pleased that I was at Llanvygan, where she had passed so many sad and lonely months, and our friendship grew daily more intimate. She was fond of, rather than passionate about, sport, but she was as enthusiastic a
walker as I was and enjoyed displaying her knowledge of folklore while showing me round the local places of interest.

She was extremely communicative. By degrees I got to know all about the garden parties she had attended, and all about her friends. Those who did not go in for folklore ranked rather lower in her esteem. There was only one person she really adored, an older woman, whose name she did not tell me. She surrounded this attachment with a element of romantic secretiveness, and I was instantly jealous.

I had good reason, as the tones in which she spoke of this woman were those of love. In her naiveté, and as the person in question was a woman, Cynthia did not conceal her feelings. The relationship greatly exercised my imagination and, to tease me, she became even more secretive.

She came on several occasions to seek me out in the library, but never for more than a short time. She was unwilling to disturb my studies, and I did not betray to what an extent they were lyrical in nature. I had a reputation to maintain.

Once however she caught me in the act. I had piled a stack of old books in front of me and was staring in a trance-like half-dream at the coat of arms with its rose cross on the leather binding.

“What are you doing?” she asked in alarm.

“The Rose Cross … ” I murmured.

“Doctor, I’ve always wanted to ask you to tell me about the Rosicrucians. All I know is that my ancestors belonged to the movement.”

“That’s almost all anyone knows, Cynthia. Every source agrees that a secret society—the forerunners of the Freemasons—took the name, in Germany, in the seventeenth century. They wanted to make gold. The idea spread to England. Robert Fludd and your ancestor Asaph Pendragon, the sixth Earl, were their
leaders
. They described themselves as invisible and to this day some strange impenetrability guards their memory. Every time you think you’ve finally pinned them down you discover it’s a
fabrication
or a fable. Descartes, who was alive at exactly that time, scoured the length and breadth of Germany hoping to meet a live Rosicrucian, and never once succeeded … ”

“But you, surely, know all about them, Doctor.”

“It’s very kind of you to say so, but nothing can be known for certain. Look at this: I’ve a pile here of four books which their
contemporaries
considered authentic Rosicrucian documents. This massive tome is the
Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz.
”

“Good heavens, there’s a death’s head on the title page. What is this?”

“It’s an allegorical novel. The writer claimed later that it was just a bit of mystification, that he only wanted to poke fun at the alchemists. All the same, he might have intended it seriously.”

“And this one?”

“In this, there are two short tracts bound together. They are priceless. This is a first edition, printed in Kassel. One of them, the
Allgemeine Reformation
, is without doubt a lampoon: the writer thoroughly ridicules the Rosicrucians and their like. But there’s the second, the
Fama Fraternitatis R C
—that is,
Rosae Crucis
—‘The Fame of the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians’. These people were in earnest, but who exactly were they? And then there’s this third tract here, the
Confessio Fraternitatis R C
. This was also supposed to be a serious text, but it’s all nonsense.”

“Tell me, Doctor, who was this Rosencreutz—‘Rose Cross’? Or have you already told me?”

“He was a miraculous healer and alchemist who, according to the
Fama Fraternitatis
, brought the hidden wisdom from Arabia, from the Hidden City, where the Arab scholars lived. But it’s just a legend. We don’t even know when he was alive, or if he really lived at all. Then he died, and was buried, and that’s where the story starts to become interesting.”

“Do tell me! You know I love legends.”

“But this isn’t a folk tale. It has a rather strange atmosphere—it makes me altogether uneasy, I can’t explain why. Listen to this: after his death, his followers took over the House of the Holy Ghost that he’d built. Several years later, the then Grand Master needed to complete some repairs to the building … But I tell you what, I’ll translate this bit of the text for you from the German:

“What does that mean?”

“The floor was divided up to represent the empires of the earth, while the ceiling represented the celestial spheres. In the chamber they found the secret books containing the ultimate wisdom of the Rosicrucians, and the instruments used in their occult trade.”

“And?”

“At this point the narrative breaks off and starts to talk about other things. It suggests that it could well go on to say a great deal more, but these things are not for the ears of the uninitiated … However the non-authentic Rosicrucian writings insist that they opened the tomb and found their master—he was extremely old, and immensely tall—but his body showed no sign of ageing. He was lying there as if alive and merely sleeping.”

“I believe I understand why this story has such a hold on you … It’s one I seem to have heard before. Don’t laugh, but it has
such a Welsh flavour. The Welsh could never accept the fact that one of their great men might really be dead. There are so many stories of people living on in their graves, waiting to rise up when the destined hour comes. It’s King Arthur biding his time on the isle of Avalon, and Merlin sleeping enchanted under a bush, and Bloody-handed Owain waiting, fully armed, for the great battle … ”

“My God,” I interrupted, “it isn’t just the Welsh … it’s hard for anyone to believe that a person simply dies.”

“Tell me, Doctor, has it never occurred to you that, shall we say, death … or being dead … is just a transitory state, like sleep, or
sickness
, or youth … that if the body could be preserved, death itself might come to an end, quite naturally? Think of the clavellina.”

“That I cannot.”

“Why ever not?”

“I’ve no idea what it is.”

“The clavellina is a tiny, transparent water creature, not unlike the sea-lily. When conditions around it are unfavourable to life its organs become progressively atrophied. Its head, its heart, its stomach all regress, until nothing is left of it but a little heap. And when its surroundings improve again, it starts to regenerate its organs once more.”

“That’s really interesting,” I said. “Fludd’s metaphysics have a lot in common with this little heap-creature. According to him, from time to time the soul, or life, withdraws from matter. Matter itself came about when God, who in the beginning filled the whole of space, withdrew into himself, and the emptiness left behind is matter.”

“Really? Then isn’t it possible that life can withdraw into one part of the body while the rest lies dead … until it wakes again? You know our family motto: ‘
I believe in the resurrection of the body
’. But I can see you don’t enjoy this subject. I’m too much of a Celt. They say the Celts are in eternal revolt against the tyranny of facts … Tell me, instead: what were these Rosicrucians really after?”

“Well, from their books it’s actually quite hard to say. They promise all sorts of good things to those who join them. They were particularly proud of four of their branches of knowledge: changing base metals into gold, deliberately prolonging the life of
the body, the ability to see things at a distance, and a cabbalistic system for solving all mysteries.

“Apart from that, it can’t be said they were very much liked,” I continued. “In 1623, for example, fear of them spread through Paris like a wave of mental illness. Customers would appear in the restaurants and bars of the time, and when it came to paying the bill, they simply vanished; or, if they did pay, the gold turned to mud as soon as they’d gone. Innocent French citizens would wake at night to find a mysterious stranger sitting beside them on the bed, who promptly disappeared. The people of Paris responded in the usual way to these terrors: they blamed the foreigners. I’m afraid that in many places they beat them terribly.”