Part 2
The gods smile on my quest, thought Dr Byron Book, giving thanks to his personal pantheon.
Dr Book had traced his Camelot, or more specifically the Wizards of the College of St Michael and St George, first to the ancient capital of Winchester and then to a Devon estate. He'd found his Arthur and his Lancelot. But now he had a clue to the very seat of the round table itself: the site of the college at Bardon Down. And perhaps his own Gawain to lead him there. Or perhaps his own Green Knight.
So, more prosaically, Book gave thanks to young Gareth Green, as he bundled his luggage into the back seat of the young man's BMW, abandoning his rail ticket for the convenient offer of a trip by car.
As they drove, Green asked him: "My dad, 'e told me some things. Said Grampa had… dealings with some people called Mab. Mister, do you know who they are?"
"The Mab are our friends; an older people, wise, refined…"
"Posh, like, then? Nobs?"
"You might call them a kind of nobility, helping us, protecting us, teaching us some of their secrets. Worthy of respect."
"Don't know that my Grampa would hold with bowing and scraping."
"It was a different age. People…"
"What, knew their place?"
"I was going to say we were more deferential."
"And what about… Argai… were it?"
"They're just people, Gareth," said Byron wearying of the discussion, "Foreign people, is all they are."
"Like Polish immigrants, right?"
"A little more foreign than that."
"Chinese, then?"
Byron sighed. "Yes," he conceded, "a little like the Chinese," not caring to explain more.
The college, when they came to it, was a huge grey stone building. Almost square, with four floors of tiny windows in rows, it looked more like a prison than a school. A porch and a small picket gate guarded the only entrance. There were no lights in the windows, nor was there an answer to the chain and bell in the porch, but the door was not barred against them and there was a fire in the grate when they entered the college hall.
There were paintings on the walls, mostly of old men in gowns and mortar, and a trio of leather armchairs gathered around the fire, but between those and where they stood at the door squatted a heavy oak desk like a reception with some nasty modern chairs in front.
Merriman was sat behind the desk, working on papers. He ignored them as they entered, not even raising his head.
Dr Book approached the desk, leaving Gareth trailing uncertainly in his wake. He stood for a moment, looking at the top of Merriman's head. Lank grey hair gathered at the temples in an old-fashioned cut. Impatiently, Merriman raised a hand and snapped his fingers, gesturing to a chair. Byron sat and waited as Merriman picked up another paper. Clearly he was being made to feel like a naughty child, but he remained patient.
"Are you interested in the College, Dr Book?" Merriman suddenly asked. He was looking up into Byron's face; he showed no sign of recognising him. His own visage was grey like the stone of the college, and etched with downturned lines. Not exactly a Merry Man, thought Byron, irrelevantly.
"I'd like to know about the work you do," he replied. "I've done a little research – into the history of the place – and I'd like to see your own records, if I may…"
"Our records are not open to the public. Mr Chaaruchandra maintains a small library for visiting academicals. But it is not open."
"A Mr Chaaruchandra, eh?"
"Yes. Does the name mean something to you?"
Of course it did. It was the fourth name on Book's list. Byron did not let on.
"Is it possible to open it? The library, I mean. As a member of the universities council…"
"Your academic standing is not in question, Dr Book. But the library is not open."
"I'm prepared to wait."
Merriman sighed. "Very well. I will have a room prepared for you and fetch you later when the library is open."
Byron was taken up to one of the rooms on the third floor, a tiny space like a monk's cell, with a narrow bed, a very elderly wooden desk and one wooden chair. The tiny window, when he looked, gave out over what must have been some inner courtyard; Byron could see a little of the sky and surrounding grey stone walls, more rows of windows staring back at him from across the space. The chair wobbled alarmingly when he tried it, so he settled down on the bed to wait. And he waited. And waited. Hours seemed to pass. Eventually, tired, hungry and dispirited, he drifted off to sleep.
He awoke with Merriman's hand on his shoulder. Beyond him, the window showed pitch black.
"Dear Christ! Whatever is the time?" Byron demanded.
"It is a quarter past eleven," replied Merriman. "Moonrise is late tonight."
"Moonrise…?"
Byron was led again through the wood-panelled passages of the college, down stairs this time, until they came to a door into a longer room, lined with shelves and filled with the dusty scent of books. A tiny little man was waiting for them, so small that Byron wondered if he was a dwarf or just shrunken with immense age, with skin as brown and wrinkled as a walnut and long white hair and beard bound up with ornate combs. He stood in front of a desk as miniature as he was, strewn with papers and a quill pen stood in a jar of ink. Somewhere the sonorous ticking of a cabinet clock could be heard.
Merriman introduced them and then loitered.
"Thank you," said Byron, but the man showed no sign of going.
Frustrated, Byron approached the librarian and asked, quietly: "Are you Mr B. R. S. Chaaruchandra?"
The little man gave a delighted laugh.
"Good heavens, no," he said. "However, my beloved mother always took the very greatest pleasure in being the youngest sister to that illustrious gentleman."
"He was your uncle, then?"
"Most assuredly,"
"Ah. Do you know anything about him? About the work he did?"
"My dear Dr Book, please do not think that we are foolish people. We know who you are and what it is you study. We know why you are here."
"So won't you tell me what happened?"
"It was an incredible time. The Empire was coming apart even as that terrible man was coming to power in Germany. And new kinds of magic were appearing. Those things they were doing in America: the airships; the buildings you wouldn't believe, the Empire State, the Golden Gate; and those Warner Brothers, and Mr Whale and Mr Disney. And over here too! Mr John Reith at Alexandra Palace, filling the air with sound and then pictures. Such discoveries! Kirlian Photography. Electron microscopes. The Coelacanth. The planet Pluto!"
"A great deal of nonsense," interrupted Merriman, "and look where it all ended."
"And the college?"
"The college…"
"The college got on with its studies. They played their part."
"What part?"
"They got on. With their studies," repeated Merriman. Pointedly he made a show of turning away to study the shelves.
"My uncle, Mr Green's grandfather, the others: Sir Arthur recruited them because they were the strongest, the most loyal, the best of students…"
"Was Lawrence Schuyler being loyal with Ambrose' wife?"
Chaaruchandra looked sad and shook his head. "My uncle was always very loyal to Sir Arthur. To Sir Arthur and Lady Jennifer. It was a very difficult time. But what happened, between Lawrence and Lady Jennifer, that was not the end of it. My uncle always said Mr Lawrence was the best of all of them. Except for maybe… but that was later… None of them matched him for intellectual rigour or physical bravery, not one. I heard a story that he faced down one of the Varair on one occasion, and that is bravely done. And he knew things none of the others knew; he knew more about the Argai, knew more about the Mab, even knew some of the Charm… I'm not sure even Sir Arthur's sister knew them!"
"Ambrose had a sister?"
"But of course! The evanescent Miss Vivian, the light of the college; yet she earned her place at the table by studying harder than any of them. Did you not know? Forgive a foolish question, plainly you did not!"
"Vivian? Not Vivian Redmond, surely?" Yet it had to be. The only woman on the list. And not Guinevere, then, but surely Morgan!
"Redmond? Redmond? Yes, I think it might have been Luther Redmond whom she married. That was never what the English ladies call 'a happy match'. Luther and Sir Arthur were old rivals, and for a brilliant man, he was given to fits of brooding, so I am told."
The little old Indian looked sad again. "I believe that Sir Arthur felt my uncle… took Mr Lawrence's side in the matter of Lady Jennifer. But that was not the end…"
"Oh, I think it will do as the end for tonight, don't you? I'm sure Dr Book is very tired, and we're none of us as young as we used to be, are we Mr Chaaruchandra?"
"So it has been remarked by sages down the years, Mr Merriman."
Chaaruchandra returned to his desk and appeared to slump just a little for just a moment. Then he turned back, sprightly once more, and stepped forward and reached up to clasp Byron by the hand and fleetingly Byron felt him pressing something into his palm.
"It seems it is the time for you to go. So soon! And yet, perhaps you will be able to reflect upon what has passed between us."
Concealing his surprise and curiosity, Byron palmed whatever it was Chaaruchandra had passed him.
"Thank you, yes, thank you, Mr Chaaruchandra," he said, "we haven't had nearly enough time."
Merriman, smiling thinly at this, turned back and shooed him from the room, closing the door on the tiny scholar behind him.
Green, it appeared, had gone, or at least his BMW was no longer present, so Merriman called for a taxi and had Byron driven back to Bristol, even though it was the middle of the night. The taxi driver dropped him at the station without ceremony and he was left to shiver on the platform until daybreak.
He found himself a bench to huddle on, the most out of the wind he could find, and only then dared to examine what Mr Chaaruchandra had slipped to him.
It was a small silver card, folded several times into an even smaller square. Opening it up, there was the address of a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road hastily written in quick bold letters. The ingenious Mr Chaaruchandra must have scribbled it down in the scant seconds he had when he appeared to slump at the desk. Merriman, Byron was sure, did not know.
He booked himself a train to London.
The bookshop did not go out of its way to advertise itself. A door between two other establishments with a buzzer intercom. He had to ask to be admitted. When the door buzzed open, it revealed a short corridor to a flight of narrow stairs with a hairpin turn halfway and then a little landing with a fanlight window and a second flight up stairs off at an unexpected angle, eventually carrying him to a long attic room lit by a dusty skylight. Black ash cupboards stood on either side of the room, while a similar blackwood desk was pressed against the back wall, barely visible under piles of looseleaf paper and a modern computer printer. A man in an extraordinary yellow and green suit was sat cross-legged on the floor, eating noodles from a carton. He looked up at Byron and said, without stopping eating, "Welcome to the Hedley Press."
"Is it Mr Hedley?"
"Yeah, but, no, no, actually it's Maxwell. Just Maxwell. Publisher, bookseller, literary agent. What can I do you for, man?"
"Vivian Redmond, please."
"Oh, man, she's really rare. It's going to be five hundred…"
Byron just looked at him.
"Yeah, okay, fifty," said the colourful publisher, unblushingly.
Byron was sure he could have haggled, got the price down further, but he liked Maxwell instinctively and cut him a break. Besides, for a book the university was paying.
Setting down his noodles, Maxwell rose to his feet in an unexpected fluid movement like a contortionist or a yogi. For a moment, Byron wondered if Maxwell was "foreign", but dismissed the idea. He was just a skinny hippy. Crossing to one of the ash cupboards, he unlocked it with a stubby key from his waistcoat pocket and drew out a crudely reproduced book. "My Life in Magic Circles, by Vivian Redmond" was inscribed on the rather lurid cover. It was a slim volume.
Byron paid Maxwell and withdrew. He made his way to New Oxford Street to find a coffee shop and settled in with a Café Grande to read his acquisition.
There were six chapters, written in a brisk, chatty style, illustrated by black and white photographs in two groups of four pages. The first chapter concerned her childhood as a prodigy and induction into the college at the age of fourteen; the second concerned her marriage to Luther Redmond; the affairs of the college were mostly covered in the third; while the later chapters concerned their travels abroad and, it would seem, in "foreign" parts, and the events leading up to the Second World War. That last chapter saw the college, somewhat reluctantly, come together again, older, more bitter, in the conflict with the so-called Coven of Drakenberg, one of the National Socialists' ritualist societies.
So that was the story, then. Ambrose, recruited to the college after the First World War, gathered a team of expert agents from around the Empire and set about putting the World to rights. For King and Country. For a decade they fought the good fight until Ambrose discovered the affair between his wife and his best officer and it all went to pieces. Then, at the end, they get back together for a last hurrah and Hitler goes and drops a bomb on them.
"Was Coventry your Camlann, then?" he mused.
Dissatisfied, Byron found himself leafing through the book again, skipping from chapter to chapter. Something was nagging at him. One passage towards the end of the third chapter caught his eye:
I never blamed Jennifer Grant for marrying my brother. She was young, her father was so ambitious, and he was so dazzling. The man who broke the Azzarine hold on Wall Street; who defeated the Dark Wizard of Salford; and who unmasked the second Phantom. Who wouldn't love my brother's legend? He certainly did!
Leo, the old man, Jennifer's father, had known my brother during the Great War, when they dogged the Kaiser's agents together. Even then, Leo nicknamed him 'The Great Art'. I think he thought of my brother as some kind of magician's apprentice, that he was the great sage taking some callow youth under his wing; and I've no doubt my brother would have led him well along that garden path!
Jennifer, and I'm sure Leo encouraged her in this, only ever saw my brother the legend, not the man. And for that crime she was, I can tell you, thoroughly punished and the sentence was marriage. Loveless and childless. Poor Jennifer, she was never able to have children with my brother, to provide him with the heir that he so craved. And I'm sure my beautiful baby boy was a reminder to her every day that I had had everything that she wanted.
To give her her due, she stuck with him for years, even after Lawrence Schuyler had turned up. Lawrence of the flashing eyes was garnering even more of a legend than my brother, you can see why she would notice him, but he – unlike the Great Art – had eyes for comely Jennifer in return. Well, of course, I never saw the harm! You could see it at once, the change in her was immediate after how unhappy she'd been all those year. And Lawrence's devotion to her only bound him closer to the college.
In those days, before it all came out, there was nothing we couldn't do, cutting a swathe across the world. None of us really thought it could last, but I think we all, well most of us, were anticipating going out in some kind of blaze of glory. We certainly never expected anything so tawdry. After all our battles with Russian mystic gangsters and American robot rustlers – or those frightful Turkish people smugglers – that night at Tristan's place in Bath was shocking for being so mundane, so ordinary.
If only my brother had been more willing to share…
For a moment he let himself wonder whether the Americans had been rustling robots or robots who rustled, and whether the image wasn't ludicrous either way. But only for a moment.
Quickly he leafed back to the first pages of photographs. There, there was a formal frame of two women and six men in white tie eveningwear, raising a glass in toast.
Byron guessed that the man and woman together in the centre would be Ambrose and his wife; the man on her left had to be Schuyler, with those mesmeric eyes, and the little Indian stood next to him was Mr Chaaruchandra's uncle. On the other side of Sir Arthur was his sister, with a striking family resemblance; a stooped figure was stood protective beside her, presumably her husband Luther, though he looked a lot older. Beside them was a short, dark, intense man who could only have been Gareth Green's grampa. Meaning the fey, you might even say effete, man on the end was almost certainly their host.
The photograph was captioned: "1929: the College celebrates the Feast of St Michael at the Home of Mr Tristan Bedford, Royal Crescent, Bath."
Byron had no need to check; Tristan Bedford was the sixth name on his list.
He could have given up. He thought he knew everything now. Thought. But for that one doubt that would not go away.
The story, he knew in his every academic instinct, was not over yet.
Richard Flowers
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