Chapter 14 #2
Kingston’s voice is even, flat. He stares at Emrys. “Nequaquam illorum, quos deis putant, nostris sanctis martyribus comparare praesumat quisquam. Let no one presume to compare those gods you celebrate with our holy martyrs.”
Emrys’s arms are folded, his expression quizzical. “Your point?”
“Augustine is saying,” Kingston goes on, “that the rites and rituals of the pagan Gods—and specifically the harvest goddesses Isis and Ceres”—he points, on the facsimile, to the names in question—“can be in no way equivocated to Christian worship.” He exhales sharply through his nose.
I sit, a bit stunned. Kingston isn’t angry, per se, but he’s…dogged.
He’s not wrong, either. De Civitate Dei, chapter 27. St. Augustine is pretty unequivocal about slamming down even the possibility of pagan and magical practices having any plausible place in Christian worship.
This is what we’ve been doing, all class period.
Rereading, cross-comparing, analyzing. Emrys gave us analogies to search for—Celtic myths, pagan practices, a hodgepodge of tradition and motif that he’d studied in his capacity as a so-called theoretical mage.
If there was a connection, somewhere, in any of these Christian texts, the theory might bear out.
That the Grail isn’t a grail—that it’s something more. A hidden power subsumed by the Church.
But if that’s wrong, if there’s no connection…
…then we’re at a dead end.
“Or this.” Kingston flips through sheets to another, different text facsimile. “Aquinas.” He traces with his finger as he reads aloud. “Mali angeli non possunt facere vera miracula, sed tantum aliqua quae mirabilia videntur hominibus.”
“Evil spirits cannot perform true miracles, but only things which seem wonderful to men,” Emrys translates out loud, a bit wearily.
My heart sinks.
“I know you want this to make sense,” Kingston goes on. “I know you want there to be this connection and…syncretism. But what you’re suggesting is explicitly ruled out by the writings of the Church Fathers.”
“Oh, and we couldn’t dream of questioning the Church Fathers.”
I surprise myself by speaking up.
Kingston stares at me. Half-surprised, half…chastened, almost. I meet his eyes as long as I can stand it.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…”
“Are you saying St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are wrong?” He frowns. “I’m sorry, I interrupted.”
Dear God, with the manners. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “No. I’m just saying that we might need to think more broadly. Or deeper.”
Kingston stares at me. Not angry. But not like he agrees with me, either.
He sets down his pen.
“Dr. Emrys,” he begins. “I appreciate your theory that the Grail might somehow connect to all the”—he hesitates just a fraction of a second—“magic in the world. I know what you think you’ve seen.
I know you believe you can perceive things that exist outside of…
linear time. But even you admit that what you saw was unclear, correct? ”
“Yes,” Emrys acknowledges. “In some aspects.”
“Exactly,” Kingston says. “And based on that, and that alone, you're asking me to believe that not only is there some magical connection we can't prove, but that the Holy Grail is somehow—that it’s—”
He stops. Looks at me. Looks away. And clears his throat.
“In a little under thirty minutes, I will be welcoming a delegation from the White Brothers of St. Vincent to Caliburn.” Kingston tidies the stacks of facsimiles on his desk.
“And I am not going to go around making wild accusations based on nonsense that actively contradicts the teachings of the Church.” He gets to his feet, puts his coat over his arm and the strap of his bag over his shoulder.
“The Grail is what they say it is. And I suggest we proceed accordingly.”
“But—”
“Gwenna, Lanz is outside to see you back when you’re finished here. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He leaves. When the door clicks shut, Emrys looks at me, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t think you’re wrong, Ms. Vale,” he remarks slowly. “But Mr. Pendragon is not the type to be content with being told he’s wrong.”
“It’s not…I don’t think he’s wrong wrong.” I slump in my seat slightly. “Just that there’s maybe more of a gray area.”
“Ah, well, I don’t think Mr. Pendragon is the type to be content with gray areas, either.”
Especially not with the Consistory on the way, I think. That’s surely why he’s on edge, isn’t it. Why he’s out of class for the rest of the week, up until Candlemas.
To meet with them.
To do…I don’t know what.
I drum my pencil against the desk, unable to focus on whatever I was midway through translating. I look back up at Emrys.
“What do you know about the Consistory?”
“Ah.” His eyes flash. “The White Brothers of St. Vincent. You mean the official story, I suppose?”
“We can start there.”
Emrys laughs softly. “They are an order of cloistered monastics, headquartered near Avignon, France. Founded around the time of the First Crusade. Extraordinarily ascetic. They rarely speak, and hide their faces even from each other.” He smiles. “Do a bit of beekeeping as well.”
I shiver in spite of myself. “And…unofficially?”
“They exist, solely and exclusively, to train and instruct the seekers of the Holy Grail.”
Will a sentence like that never not strike me as bizarre? I wonder. The words just sound fake. Like something out of The Michelangelo Matrix.
Outwardly, I just nod.
“So Kingston…all of them,” I say. “They just…signed on?”
“Recruited, I believe,” Emrys says. “First as oblates. Then consecrated at age 18. I first came to know the Pendragons a few years before that—as a tutor, of sorts, for Kingston. The expectations for scholarship were…rigorous.”
I try to imagine Kingston at a younger age. Think back to the photos I saw of him in his father’s office. Serious, even as a kid.
But there’s serious, and then there’s…devote your entire life to a near-impossible quest serious.
“I guess I just…don’t get why,” I say. “I don’t get why it matters so much. To him,” I clarify.
Emrys tips his head. “How so?”
“Well…look at all this.” I spread my hands over the mess of facsimiles.
“We’re supposed to be discovering something, getting at a truth that, by definition, no one has quite uncovered yet.
But he’s here mining all of these texts for evidence that he’s already right.
” I shake my head slowly. “What’s the point?
Why read at all if all you’re doing is trying to find out what you already know? ”
A smile plays at Emrys’s lips behind his beard.
“A question for the ages,” he says softly.
He pauses, lost in thought. “If I were to hazard a guess? For some, it is better that what is true and what is right are one and the same. And if what is right has already been defined—by some higher authority, say, a Church, or what have you…”
“Then everything they say is right also has to be true,” I finish for him. “And everything outside of it is…false. Necessarily.”
Emrys nods. “An intellectually inquisitive mindset, perhaps it is not. But such thinking is a way to make sense of a senseless world. And for someone whose entry into this world was itself a senseless loss…”
He trails off. I stare at him, not following.
“His mother,” Emrys says simply. “When he was born.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known that. I’d known Kingston’s mother was…gone, I suppose, given that Luther had remarried and brought Morgan and her mom into the picture. But that particular detail…
It doesn’t excuse anything. But maybe it explains something.
The smallest, slightest part of something.
“Yes,” Emrys says. “For someone like that, one could understand the appeal. That it will, at some point, all make sense.”
I stare down at the texts.
“Where do we go from here?” I ask.
“I haven’t the faintest.” Emrys shrugs. “What do your instincts say? You’re a scholar of taste. What would you prefer?”
I think about it for a minute.
“Women,” I say.
Emrys laughs. “Ah. Brilliant. Yes, yes of course—”
“The mystics,” I go on. “Julian. Hildegard…” The names are escaping me, even though there truly aren’t that many recorded women writers. “If you give me more time I can look them up.”
Emrys is all but beaming.
“Yes. Excellent.” He nods. “Since we’ll be absent Mr. Pendragon next class, why don’t you take the period to investigate expanding the corpus—see what our library still holds.”