Chapter 15
Gwen
Two nights ago, we’d had easy chatter in the kitchen. Last night, when he’d made soup and sandwiches, everything came naturally.
But on the two-hour drive to Glastonbury, something felt off between us. Every conversation fizzled out after a few exchanges. Arthur asked what I’d found online about Dr. Hopkins’s colleague. I answered him. He nodded. Silence. I asked about the route. He answered me. More silence.
It wasn’t hostile. It was just flat. As though we’d used up whatever ease we’d built at dinner in Brenton and at the cottage, and we couldn’t find it again. Or maybe Lance had been the thing that made us click?
Not wanting to revisit thoughts of Lance any longer than necessary, I’d napped for a while, curled into the giant leather seat with it reclined and the heat on.
When I woke, we were on the M5 coming around Exeter.
For the rest of the way, I read on my phone about Fergus McConnell, the man I was going to meet.
He maintained a blog called The Matter of Glastonbury, and he’d been writing it for over a decade. It included hundreds of posts on oral histories, local legends, and unpublished records of Arthurian-connected locations in South West England.
“What’s that?” said Arthur.
“Hmm?” I looked up from my phone.
“You said something was interesting.”
“Did I?” I held up my phone to show him a website he couldn’t read anyway because he was driving.
“Fergus’s work is impressive. He’s not a formal academic—not even a college degree according to Dr. Hopkins’s email—but his work is meticulous.
He has pages and pages of sources and photographed documents, and he flat-out acknowledges his limitations. ”
“That is interesting.” Rain started as we entered Glastonbury proper, light at first, then steady enough to require the wipers on low. Arthur pointed through the glass at a brown heritage sign. “Have you heard of the Chalice Well?”
“No.”
“It’s where they say Joseph of Arimathea buried the Holy Grail.” He slowed for a pedestrian crossing. “It’s a local attraction.”
“Interesting.” Interesting? Is that all you’ve got, Gwen? Since when was I this awkward?
“The water has very high iron content, so it runs red.”
“So… blood-colored Grail water?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “We could stop on the way out, if you want.”
“I think I’ll pass on drinking from the bloody well, thanks.”
“They also sell it all over town.” He smiled at me, briefly, and some of the tightness in my chest eased.
“You’ve been here before, I assume?”
He nodded as he slowed behind another car. “My father used to bring me when I was younger. I think I’ve been to the top of the Tor itself fifty times.”
“Have you tried the well water?”
“Once, when I was thirteen.” He made a final turn onto the road where our destination lay. “It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever drunk.”
“But not good?”
“Not good.” Arthur pulled to the curb a few doors down from Fergus’s shop and pointed across the street. “There’s a hotel right here, if we need it.”
I glanced at the building. Three stories tall, it looked more like a compact cathedral than a hotel. It had two brown signs and a few sandwich boards outside, proclaiming it had originally been built in the mid-fifteenth century.
Part of me hoped Fergus would have so much material we’d need a second or a third day. The other part of my brain snagged on the hotel itself, and on the sleeping arrangements. One room or two? Would Arthur’s protective instincts allow him to sleep in a different room from me? From his job?
The hotel might not have multiple-bedroom suites. Although it might have adjoining rooms? Or would we be sleeping in the same room? They’d have rooms with more than one bed, at least, right?
“It’s getting worse,” Arthur said, checking the sky through the windshield. He patted the center console. “Hold tight for a sec.”
I nodded.
He got out, opened the trunk, and came around to my side, umbrella already open. He pulled open my door, and I got out. In his other hand? The sword case.
I reached for it.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
I tossed my messenger bag onto my shoulder. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own research materials.”
“I’m not questioning your capability. It’s heavy, it’s raining, and I’ve got it.”
My hand was out, waiting for the case. The moment you let someone else handle your work, they get to decide what happens to it. “Give me the case, Arthur.”
His brow furrowed, but he finally relented. “Let’s get inside.”
We walked along the sidewalk, him holding the umbrella over us while I lugged my equipment.
From the outside, McConnell’s of Glastonbury looked like every other tourist shop on the street.
The front window displayed rows of small glass vials, polished stones in little mesh bags, and a shelf of replica swords that made me wince.
A wooden sign hung above the door, its gold lettering in need of a fresh coat.
If I hadn’t spent the last hour reading Fergus’s blog, I would have considered calling Dr. Hopkins to confirm the address.
Arthur held the umbrella over me until we reached the door, shook it off, and collapsed it. He scanned the interior before stepping aside.
Inside, the shop was bigger than I expected.
Tourist merchandise filled the front half: more vials, crystals, books on Arthurian legend, and a rack of keychains shaped like swords.
But a large worktable dominated a corner in the back half of the shop, covered in document boxes, folders, and archive sleeves, with a microfilm reader on the floor beside it.
A woman sat behind a register near the door, sorting receipts.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m here for Fergus McConnell. Dr. Theodore Hopkins sent me.”
“Fergus!” the woman behind the register shouted without looking up. “Theo’s woman’s here.”
Theo’s woman?
A man in his late fifties or so appeared from a doorway near the worktable, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a knitted sweater with a hole near the shoulder. “Aye, what’s that?”
“Dr. Lyons,” I said, joining him at the back of the shop. “Dr. Hopkins gave me your contact information this morning.”
“Oh, brilliant! I’d been hoping you’d come.” He engulfed my offered hand in both of his and shook hard, making his excitement obvious. “Theo rang me after your visit. I pulled most of my files before lunch.”
That was encouraging.
His gaze dropped to the sword case. “Is that… is that the actual sword?”
“It is.”
“Michty me,” he breathed. He cleared a space on the worktable, piling items precariously on the edge and some on the floor.
“I spend my days selling Holy Grail keychains and telling tourists the stones in the window are from the abbey, and now someone walks in with a genuine seventh-century weapon.”
Maybe genuine.
He rubbed his hands together. “Set it here. Please.”
Arthur settled ten or so feet from the table, close enough to intervene, far enough to pretend we had privacy.
I set the case on the table, unlatched the clasps, and opened the lid to show him the side with the inscription.
“Theo said I wouldn’t be able to touch her.” Fergus leaned forward, and his glasses slid down his nose. “May I move the case around?”
“Go ahead.”
He turned the case gently, tilting it so the golden pommel glinted in the overhead light. “Now, he also mentioned the inscription. Where is it?”
“It’s hard to read, but I have some photos that may help.” I retrieved my laptop to show him the enhanced photographs. Once they were on-screen, I continued, “This one on the pommel seems to match the one on the tower wall at St. Catherine’s in Temple.”
For the next twenty minutes, I walked him through everything.
From how the sword had been recovered at a black-market auction in Detroit to how I’d started my research, followed the clues, and flown to Cornwall.
I left out the unimportant details like the private jet and gazillionaire’s son acting as my bodyguard.
He disappeared through the back doorway twice to grab folders, then spread photocopies across the table.
“I’ve collected over thirty references to a ‘New Avalon’ in local oral histories,” he said, flipping through pages.
“Most are from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It’s mostly drunk men’s tales, nothing you can pin down.
But a few records are older, like this parish clerk’s diary from 1743 that uses the phrase, and a land dispute from 1681 that names the New Avalon tract as a boundary marker. ”
“A boundary marker?” I pulled my notebook from my bag. This was the kind of research I’d missed. I shouldn’t have focused on academic registers. “That would suggest it was a recognized place name, not only folklore.”
“Exactly my thinking. And here, look at this.” He was practically bouncing as he slid a photocopy toward me.
“This is from a churchwarden’s report in 1802, before the Victorian restoration of St. Catherine’s.
It describes ‘ancient lettering in the tower, much degraded.’ That predates the restoration by roughly eighty years. ”
I stopped writing. If the lettering was documented in the church before the Victorian reconstruction, Dr. Hopkins’s theory about a Victorian addition was wrong.
“Can I photograph all of this?”
“Please.”
I worked through dozens of sheets, snapping them with my phone. When we were settled in one spot—the hotel tonight?—I’d transfer them to the laptop and study everything properly. It was valuable research. It wouldn’t prove the sword’s age, but it was important, nonetheless.
The front door opened, and a woman came through, shaking rain from an umbrella. “It’s always fucking raining here.”
“That would be my sister,” Fergus said as he waved to her. “The sword’s here, Bridget. Come and see.”
She set her umbrella in the stand by the door, hung her jacket on a hook, and crossed to the worktable. She surveyed the mess of photocopies. “What have you done to my filing system?”