A random thought struck Ellie. ‘What do you call it? Can you tell me that?’
To her surprise, the old man actually blushed. ‘Even we can’t completely escape Chrétien’s spell. We call it the Grail.’
They hiked back to the car in silence. At first Doug walked ahead, alone and stiff-backed, but gradually he slowed enough for Ellie to catch up. She slipped her arm in his and tilted her head against his shoulder. They walked up the hill together, parting only to cross the stile.
They reached the car, but didn’t get in. They lingered on the roadside, unwilling to go. Doug leaned against the side of the car, and she hugged herself to him, burying her head against his chest.
‘Do you feel it too?’ she asked. ‘That we’ll never be able to come back to this place?’
Doug nodded slowly. ‘In Chrétien’s stories you have the staid world of the court, full of laws and customs and protocols; and the wild world of the forest, where the quests and battles and magic happen. I think we’re about to leave that place. The story’s over.’
‘Some stories end,’ she said firmly. ‘Ours isn’t finishing any time soon.’
But something still troubled her. She wanted to say it now, before the enchantment broke irrevocably. She pushed back so she could look Doug in the eye.
‘About what Blanchard said — that night, in Annelise Stirt’s basement …’
Doug silenced her with a kiss.
‘I don’t want to know.’
The candle has burned low. I sit in a room in a high tower, scribbling myself blind. Over the years I’ve told many tales of men and women trapped in their towers. In the stories it’s a challenge, an obstacle to be escaped. The reality is different.
I have outlived myself. My story finished forty years ago, but I’ve lingered on, a singer on the stage long after his audience has left. I served the Count of Blois, and his son the Count of Champagne — both are dead. The man I serve now, Philip of Flanders, wasn’t even born when my story happened. He pays my stipend and I flatter him: I write that he is more worthy than Alexander the Great. He pretends to be embarrassed, but secretly he wants to believe me. I praise his wisdom, his love of truth, justice and loyalty. I praise his generosity, particularly when my pay is due.
Bruges is a strange place. The men here are dour and humourless and care for nothing except commerce. Instead of roads they have canals — harder for walking, but easier for transporting their goods. The city exists because of sheep, but you never hear the bleat of lambs, or screams from the slaughterhouse. The sheep live elsewhere, beyond the walls, beyond the sea. Here they only exist in ledgers. They come here as sacks of raw wool; as bales of cloth, dyed and fulled; as skins for the tanners and hides scraped clean for vellum. All the Flemings shepherd here is money.
I’m no different. I stay in my tower, keeping the world at bay; I keep up with life through gossip and hearsay. I write secondhand accounts of second-hand lives, when Count Philip insists, but mostly I write my own story. Written and rewritten — for forty years. I don’t know any other. Not one hour goes by that I don’t think of the stone, and of the spear that makes wounds that never heal. I thought if I surrendered it I could be free of its power. Instead, it haunts my imagination.
I’ve taken some of those vellum pages and written my story, but the last pages are blank. When you’re the storyteller, you can choose the ending. But I don’t know how to finish it. I write and rewrite, but the final page remains incomplete.
A woman on the balcony heard the lamentations and ran down to the hall. She went straight to the Queen and asked her what was wrong.
What is wrong?
The story doesn’t end. The quest isn’t finished. All I can do is tell the tale, as far as I know it.
I put down my pen. A blot of ink spreads darkness across the parchment, but it doesn’t touch the words.
I pinch out the candle.
NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chrétien de Troyes is arguably the perfect artist: unknowable, except through his work. All that survives of him are the five Arthurian poems he wrote in the second half of the twelfth century, which laid the foundation for the entire genre of Arthurian romance. Without Chrétien’s imagination there would be no Camelot, no Lancelot and his illicit love for Queen Guinevere — and no Holy Grail.
It’s almost impossible, now, to imagine a world where the Holy Grail didn’t exist. Such was the power and mystery of Chrétien’s elusive vision that within a generation his readers had begun a process of expanding, adapting and confusing it that continues to this day. Looking backwards, scholars have expended huge energy and ingenuity in trying to trace the Grail’s mythic antecedents. For all their efforts, it’s clear that while the life-giving vessel is a recurring archetype in human mythology, the specific instance of the Holy Grail belongs to Chrétien alone.
All the businesses featured in this novel are entirely fictitious and any similarities to actual companies or their employees are either wholly coincidental, or the result of a far deeper conspiracy than I can fathom.
Like Chrétien, I’ve drawn together my story from a mass of pre-existing material. I’m very grateful to everyone who gave me insights into the workings of the City of London, especially Mark Kleinman, Sophie and Marcus Green, Nick, Edward Sawyer, Don Simon Wapping and Mark Hallam. I’ve also benefited hugely from resources in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Library, the York Minster Library and the University of York library. The Tristan und Isolde described in chapter fifteen is based on an actual production at the Royal Opera directed by Christof Loy and designed by Johannes Leiacker.
At Random House, I’d like to thank the three editors who worked on this book — Oliver Johnson, who commissioned it; and Kate Elton and Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, who saw it through — as well as all the people who’ve helped design, produce and promote the book. In changing times one of the constants has been my agent, Jane Conway-Gordon, who continued her indomitable tradition of good cake and good advice.
Like my fictional Chrétien, I began writing to impress the woman I was in love with. My stories might not measure up to his, but my romance has been happier: my wife Emma is still the cornerstone of everything I do. Our son Owen accompanied me on a long, tiring research trip with astonishing good humour, and only the occasional croissant and moules frites by way of compensation.