Part 1
Our first card is the King of Swords, and what an heroic and noble figure he is.
This card depicts him as a dark-skinned warrior, bare-chested of fierce mien, a lion-skin about his shoulders and seated on a tall throne set upon the edge of a cliff. A golden crown with re-curved horns is upon his brow; a golden sword is brandished in his right hand; and the round back of his golden throne curves behind his head like a halo.
Look closer and you will see clouds gathering behind his throne: the suit of Swords is associated with the classical element of Air, and with violence and threat, and these are storm clouds, dark and louring. See also the symbols carved onto the arms of the throne: here on the right, the sigil of Mars which is also the symbol of Iron and of Man, by which I mean the male gender; but also here, on the left, the astrological symbol of Scorpio, who in the myth slew Orion the hunter.
Above our King's head: a dove clutches a rapier; and at his feet, a serpent coils around a poniard. A choice, perhaps, between the messengers of the Almighty and the Adversary.
This King is a leader, a ruler, but also a man of intellect and of decision: his crown denotes wisdom; his sword judgement. But also a warning: we see the peril of the cliff, the threat of the storm, the treachery of the scorpion; a situation where the King's judgement might fail.
As suits our suit of Swords, our four supporters are blades, four swords of legend.
On the left: first, at the foot, a sword struck through an anvil and into a stone; I don't need to tell you that this is Caliburn, the first sword of the High King which was broken in a duel with King Pellinore, made famous of the Questing Beast. See, Arthur's more famous blade here at the top: a lake is broken by a samite-clad arm where, as legend tells, the Lady of holds aloft her Excalibur.
But look on the right: the top right figure is a sword upraised surmounted by Imperial Eagle and Fleur-de-Lys and untarnished blade encircled by two crowns, the Iron Crown of Lombardy and the Diadem of the Holy Roman Emperor. This is no less than Joyeuse, sword of Charlemagne, with which he overthrew the pagan Saxons and defeated the heathen Moor. The original is said to be in the Louvre, but of course that is only a copy, substituted for the self-coronation of the Corsican Bonaparte.
This then must mean the fourth sword is Durendel, the blade of Count Roland, twin to Joyeuse, forged from the same iron, said to be of the Spear of Longinus and thus touched by the blood of the Son of Man, which made them indestructible. See, she is shown smiting a mountain. Roland sought to break the blade rather than let her fall into the hands of the infidel when he and all his companions were betrayed at the Pass of Roncevaux, but instead broke the mountain, the place the French call La Brèche de Roland in the Pyrenees.
So to the left we have the Matter of Britain, the story of Camelot, the Once and Future King; to the right the Matter of France, the legend of Charlemagne, the first Emperor since Rome. On the one hand, the last beacon of light before the fall into the age of darkness; on the other the beginning of the new age of enlightenment, the start of the fight-back against the heathen and the Saracen and the Moor. So our king is literally between dusk and dawn.
The card is edged in black.
So… who does this card represent? The good king? The failure of judgement? The fall and rise of the light?
Permit me to tell you a story…
I once had a very good friend… no, don't mock, even Monkfish can have a friend… ask Mr Sole, here; he will tell you we are the dearest of companions… and so, I had a good friend, a friend called Book, Dr Byron Book, a romantic, an adventurer. He went looking for Camelot, after a fashion, and met a dragon.
Book by name… He was – is – a man of books, never more at home than lost in his research papers; literally a reader at a… provincial university; an academic, a crypto-historian: a student of the fantastical and the strange, of the histories that never were, the might-have-beens or maybe-dids. The politics of Atlantis; the mores of the continent of Mu; where Lemuel Gulliver went next. These were his area of expertise. Naturally, he was consulted widely.
You wouldn't call him a happy man; he was driven by unpredictable petty jealousies – a loathing of campanology that only someone woken every Sunday by bell-ringing practice can understand; an abhorrence of corkscrews; a particular loathing of all Liberal politicians stemming, he said, from Lloyd George's culpability for the Somme – an affectation, one suspects, that he lifted from Bertrand Russell. You wouldn't call him happy, but he was satisfied, content even.
His greatest love, his greatest weakness, was for a treasure map. What a one he was for the thrill of the chase! Any excuse to drop his studies and set out to discover. He once, how well I remember, disappeared in Myanmar for three years, convinced he was on the trail of the last redoubt of the original Fu Manchu. To be fair, he returned with a small fortune in Oriental gold, not to mention a rather exotic form of malaria that had him taking some Chinese medicine derived from the annual wormwood until, well, to this day as far as I know!
At the time of my story, Dr Book's particular fixation had turned to the College of St Michael and St George, known colloquially as British Council of Wizards, a mythical, semi-legendary order of knights and scholars who had survived from, or at least so the story went, the Arthurian Age itself as self-styled "Guardians of the Kingdom". These legends would often speak of the group as led by or represented by the, presumably, immortal Merlin, or Myrddin Gwydion to give him his name in the ancient British tongue; or the notorious rogue Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician-cum-alchemist and Lord of the Royal Mint; or the fat old Squire of Norfolk, Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister, scourge of the Hellfire Club.
What is known is that some such council may actually have existed, meeting around a round table – not the Round Table, of course, but one symbolic of the equality and chivalry for which it stood. Their motto was "vox non vires" and their foremost allegiance was always to the people, setting them at odds with the Garter Knights of the Star Chamber sworn to uphold the King and State.
The last ever meeting of this supposed society possibly took place on Thursday 14th November 1940 in a private room under the tower of Coventry's medieval cathedral. The meeting, if it happened, might have begun at six. Shortly after seven, it would have been interrupted by the air raid sirens. At seven-twenty started the devastating German air raid that was to destroy much of the city. The cathedral was struck by incendiary bombs as early as eight o'clock. Volunteer fire fighters – speculatively assisted by the members of the council – managed to extinguish the flames, but in vain, for a further wave of bombing and the surrounding firestorm soon saw the ancient church ablaze once again. Churchill – himself considered a likely member of the College, although, of course, also a Knight of the Garter – toured the ruins of Coventry in person. But no survivors of the meeting were found.
Byron had, no one ever knew how, gained access to a repository of the Service's more… esoteric papers. Among these he had found reference to the College and, perhaps, a list of names, seven names, maybe even the names of members at that fabled fateful final congregation.
To Byron, it was another of his beloved treasure maps, an irresistible trail, a call to adventure. Seven names: six gentlemen and one lady – ah, forgive them they lived and died in less enlightened times – one name was Indian, one Afrikaans; but top of the list, at least as Byron saw it, was a knight, Sir Arthur Ambrose.
Already – in his fancy – he was composing a story, a modern Morte d'Arthur, with Sir Arthur as his king, and the college his round table; Vivian Redmond, the lady of the list, could be his Guinevere and, Schuler, Green, Chaaruchandra and Bedford his knights, and Godson Roimort also.
An afternoon's research in the library was enough to track him down in the usual literature – Walford's County Families, Burke's Landed Gentry, and so on; cross-referenced for completeness with the common works on those in… unusual fields: Blaise's Biographicus and the more accessible Morrison's Almanac. Ambrose eventually turned up in Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, the 98th Edition, published in 1940, not a knight after all but a baronet.
Burke's listed him as married to Lady Jennifer; no children; and his address as Roundhouse, in Winchester. His lineage, it went on, was a pre-Norman family with lands going back to the Kingdom of Wessex, who had nevertheless found favour with the Conqueror for their "moyste genius cleverness". The current family lived off a much reduced estate left to them from the 1580s; reading between the lines, they fell foul of Cardinal Wolsey and had most of their land confiscated.
The Almanac had a brief passage describing him as a leading sage of pre-War circles and, typically of its gossipy style, a cuckold.
Byron booked himself a train ticket to Winchester.
Roundhouse turned out to be a moderate sized redbrick Georgian home with views towards the Cathedral, one of those rusticated townhouses dressed up to look like a farm. Few Georgian architects, though, would have used an Argai ceramic for their façade. Byron noticed at a glance the way the ivy shunned the walls, however much someone had tried to hide it behind trellises heavy with clematis and climbing rose. The current occupiers clearly had no clue; they had bought the house when they made their money in the 1980s and knew nothing of its history. But they were able to direct him to the estate agent from whom they purchased the house.
After taking the time to check the parish records, which were unenlightening, and visit the Cathedral, which at least was pleasant, Byron went by Messrs Avebury & Sons to make inquiries of the sale of Roundhouse a decade or so ago.
Fortunately, old Mr Avebury remembered the transaction. It was all handled by some firm of lawyers acting, he seemed to recall, for distant relatives abroad. The family line had all died out in England, either during the War or sometime after, something about a scandal involved. Anyway, the house had been left in trust or some such until this émigré branch had been discovered. Could he remember the law firm? No, but hold on because the paperwork will all be kept in the back. Just a moment. Here we are. Merriman's, those were the lawyers. No, up in London.
Byron thanked Mr Avebury and made his way back to the station.
Mr Merriman of Merriman's, a gaunt and grey individual more suited to the graveyard than the court, proved to be extremely forbidding and very unhelpful. Certainly, they had acted for the Ambrose family, but they had not kept any of Sir Arthur's personal papers; those had all been taken away. A "private collector" was all he would reveal of by whom. Nor did they have anything of Lady Jennifer's. After the divorce, she was supposed to have taken Holy Orders; any personal effects would have been left to the Church.
Oh yes, thought Byron to himself, there was an actual divorce, was there?
The record of the court case could be traced and he discovered that Ambrose divorced his wife on grounds of adultery, citing a Mr Lawrence Schuyler.
Byron glowed with pleasure. Mr Lawrence Schuyler was another one of the names on his list. And he had found the Lancelot for his tale.
So Dr Book began his research again: embassies were contacted, immigration records combed, passenger lists cross-referenced. After days spent at the National Archive in Kew, pouring over the Aliens Entry Books of the Aliens' Office and Home Office, Byron found him. From there, he could trace further documents and gradually tease out a life story.
Mr Lawrence Adriaan Schuyler: born in 1897 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State which would later be annexed by the British Empire to form part of the Union of South Africa; the family's business affairs were recorded in the ledgers of the Bank of Africa by Mr Arthur Tolkien, father of the famous Professor, although the infant John Ronald Reuel had gone away to England before Lawrence was born. He grew up as a physical and sporting young man, an expert pistol shot and horseman, but supported by his family's substantial land interests, particularly once gold had been discovered, he was also able to dedicate much of his time to academic studies of natural philosophy in both the European and African traditions. He seemed devoted to Africa but when, in 1931, the Statute of Westminster effectively made South Africa independent, Schuyler, a British Subject from the age of 13, chose to return to the mother country he'd never known; he brought with him most of his family wealth and a small casket containing an ancient stone cup allegedly presented to him by his native nanny. In England, he dabbled in property and getting himself a nice English wife. It was just unfortunate that the nice English wife he got happened to be someone else's. And two years into the World War, he disappeared.
A crumbling country pile, somewhere in Devon apparently, remained of his estate and Byron's next step was to go there.
He had expected it to be in some disrepair, but in fact it was moderately maintained, its upkeep managed by a department of government which occasionally needed a place to put ambassadors or ministers while they "dried out". The Service may have used it as a safe house from time to time, as well. An armed guard, unconvincingly disguised as a doorman, politely but firmly turned away his enquiries. Byron was never one to be frustrated in his investigations, however, and from his thorough study of the estate he recalled there was an entailed cottage attached, and so he circumnavigated the fenced-off grounds until he found it.
Living there were two extremely elderly sisters, maybe even twins: Martha and Edith. Senility had made them childlike and they played in their cottage like an overgrown dollshouse, dressed in gingham with their hair in plaits. They invited Byron to take tea with them and he agreed, though they made his very skin crawl. From their age and their chattering childish conversation he drew the conclusion that they might actually be Schuyler's children, but if so, there was nothing to be learned from them. Their memories were quite gone.
But he asked them if they managed here, all alone, and – simpering – they said that no, Mr Green "did" for them.
"Green? Gavin Green?" he asked, because it was the third name on his list.
This, however, provoked a quarrel between the ancient sisters, with Martha agreeing that their benefactor was Mister Gavin while Edith insisted that no it was young Master James. Eventually, Byron was able to calm the agitated old ladies and afterwards steered the conversation away from the subject.
He took a room in a local bed and breakfast and resolved to visit the sisters every day until he could meet this Master Green, whoever he was. This proved slightly harder to do than he anticipated as the old women would usually forget him each time, necessitating tedious reintroductions, sometimes they were fearful of him, sometimes actively hostile, either cowering in their cottage pretending not to be there or on one occasion threatening him with a poker, an implement it took both of them to lift. There was also the time when he saw one of the sisters, Edith he thought, "gardening", that is playing as a child might dig little holes or pull up flowers and weeds alike, but with a device, like a wand or rod, with which she – to quote Dr Book – would smite the shrubs and bushes and small birds, leaving them shrivelled and dead. As you can imagine, the thought of what the mad old hags might do with this toy, what they might do to him, did nothing to improve his nerves.
A week passed, and another. He noticed that the "doorman" from the house was watching his bed and breakfast. Eventually, however, Mr Green arrived, a young man turning up in an aging BMW with a hamper of food and a laundry basket. Byron was taking tea with the sisters and saw the car pull into the drive – it was nine or ten in the morning, but they seemed to take tea at any hour, sometimes several times a day, like a pair of Miss Havershams who had descended on the Hatter's Tea Party. Green wasn't surprised to see Byron there; he'd been tipped off, you see, by the Service staff up at the house.
"And are you Mr Gavin or Mr James?" Byron asked once they'd left the two ladies to coo over the contents of the hamper.
"Neither. I'm Gareth. James were my dad," he said, "and I guess your Mr Gavin was my Grampa Green."
"So what brings you away down here, delivering hampers to two batty old spinsters in the back end of Devon?"
"It's my job, right. For the Professor. And 'cos of Grampa, I guess. He always said it weren't their fault their da were a wrong un. He hated them up at the house, my Grampa; fierce loyal 'e was to old Mr Ambrose who they done wrong. But he wouldn't hold it agin' the lassies. And anyway they ain't batty; they've just gone a bit soft, like. Happen to all of us in th'end."
"You're right. I'm sorry. I was unkind."
"S'okay."
"And who is this 'Professor'?"
"S'Professor Merriman. He's from London, in't he. "
Merriman again, thought Byron. Merriman was not one of the names on the list; he thought, perhaps, he had come to a dead end. Until Gareth Green added:
"'E agrees wi' Grampa. 'E says college should look aft' its own, leastways."
"College, did you say? Do you… what college? Where?" and then less sharply, "Forgive, me, where is it, do you know?"
"Nahh, it's all shut up, these days. It's just 'im… well, 'im and the old librarian."
"But it exists? There is an actual place?"
"Oh yeah. Big ol' place. At Bardon Down. On the A38 out of Bristol."
Byron persuaded the young man to give him directions.
The next day he packed, checked out of his bed and breakfast, gave a cheeky wave of farewell to the watching Service surveillance and set off for Bristol. As he waited at the station for the morning train, Gareth Green's BMW pulled up.
He rolled down the window and called: "Reckon you could do with a lift, mate."
Richard Flowers
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