The Lady's Second Question - Part 1

The one that lingers long after the last page: not Who deserves the sword?, but Who deserves the kingdom?

Chapter I — The Summons to Dozmary Pool

I have frequently observed that governments, whether local or imperial, possess an extraordinary talent for contacting precisely the wrong man at precisely the wrong hour.

The telegram—which was in fact an email, though I persist in calling every unexpectedly urgent communication a telegram—arrived shortly after breakfast on a Tuesday that had begun with every appearance of becoming gloriously uneventful. I had just succeeded in persuading an obstinate Assam to reveal the last civilised notes of malt and cedar beneath a cloud that would have discouraged weaker leaves. A Gloucestershire scorebook lay open beside my teacup, a volume of Malory occupied the opposite chair as though waiting for me to resume our conversation, and the rain upon the Cumbrian windows had settled into that respectable drizzle which reminds one that England was never intended to resemble the Mediterranean.

Then came the message.

Sir Timothy Monday,

Your assistance is respectfully requested regarding an archaeological and folkloric matter presently attracting considerable public attention in Cornwall.

Your knowledge of Arthurian tradition has been specifically recommended.

Whenever official correspondence assures one that one's knowledge has been "specifically recommended," one may safely conclude that every genuine expert has either declined the invitation or possesses sufficient sense not to become involved.

I sighed.

The tea sighed with me.

Within two hours I was aboard a train heading south, accompanied by a leather suitcase, three books on Arthurian literature, two notebooks, an umbrella that had survived four governments, and a determination not to become entangled in another national absurdity.

Britain, however, has always regarded determination as a challenge.

Dozmary Pool is unlike the lakes imagined by painters who have never visited Cornwall.

They depict shining waters beneath theatrical sunsets, attended by maidens with conveniently flowing hair and swans that evidently have no appointments elsewhere.

Dozmary is sterner.

It lies upon Bodmin Moor with the reserved dignity of a parish churchwarden. Its waters are dark rather than black, reflective without being generous, and possessed of that unsettling quality common to ancient places where one suspects the landscape has quietly observed more history than it intends to disclose.

Mist wandered lazily across the surface when I arrived.

Not theatrical mist.

Real mist.

The sort that appears entirely indifferent to photographers.

Waiting near the shore stood Inspector Harold Penrose of Devon and Cornwall Police, a practical gentleman whose expression suggested that legends ought to have been outlawed sometime during the reign of Queen Victoria.

"Sir Timothy."

"Inspector."

"I hope you haven't come expecting magic."

"I never expect magic," I replied.

"It has an irritating habit of arriving precisely when one has forgotten to expect it."

He regarded me uncertainly.

Already we understood one another.

The famous sword rested inside an evidence tent.

It measured almost exactly four feet.

Its iron was heavily corroded.

The hilt was plainly modern in workmanship, though cleverly fashioned to resemble something considerably older.

An archaeologist from Exeter University adjusted his spectacles.

"Film prop."

"So quickly?"

"We've examined hundreds."

"I have no doubt."

He smiled politely.

"It simply isn't medieval."

"No," I agreed.

"It isn't."

He appeared relieved.

Then I added,

"That does not necessarily conclude the matter."

The smile vanished.

Archaeologists are admirable people.

Their chief weakness is believing that history concludes wherever metallurgy begins.

Folklore, meanwhile, has the inconvenient habit of wandering cheerfully around such conclusions like a sheep ignoring an expensive fence.

"May I meet the girl?"

Inspector Penrose nodded.

"They're staying nearby."

I already knew the Jones family.

Not intimately.

One does not become intimate with every pleasant family encountered during years spent wandering Britain in pursuit of forgotten churches, improbable ghost stories, and superior scones.

But we had met.

Twice.

Paul Jones possessed the infectious enthusiasm of a man who believed every ruined castle deserved another hour of exploration.

His wife possessed the invaluable gift of quietly preventing those explorations from ending in hospital.

Matilda...

Well.

Little Matilda had always asked dangerous questions.

Children generally ask why.

Matilda preferred how do we know?

There is no more troublesome question in scholarship.

Nor in theology.

Nor in politics.

She was sitting outside the cottage with a sketchbook when I arrived.

"Timothy!"

"I am delighted to discover," I said, "that fame has not prevented you from drawing dragons."

"They're wyverns."

"Excellent correction."

She frowned thoughtfully.

"I didn't find Excalibur."

"No?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because everybody keeps saying I did."

"And you disagree?"

She nodded with astonishing seriousness.

"If it was Excalibur, why was it still there?"

Children occasionally produce questions that scholars spend centuries avoiding.

Paul emerged carrying tea.

"I told them exactly what happened."

"I believe you."

"They think it was probably thrown into the lake thirty years ago."

"Entirely possible."

"You agree?"

"I agree that someone threw a sword into the lake."

He looked puzzled.

"And the rest?"

"The rest," I said, accepting the tea, "is what interests me."

That evening we returned to the pool.

Only Matilda and his mum accompanied me.

Little Matild skipped over damp grass while I walked with the increasing caution of a gentleman whose knees had begun entering into constitutional negotiations with time.

"Are you frightened?" she asked.

"Constantly."

"Really?"

"Of course."

"I thought brave people weren't frightened."

"My dear Matilda, bravery is merely fear that has been persuaded to continue walking."

She seemed satisfied.

Children generally are, provided one answers honestly.

We reached the water.

The sun had almost disappeared.

Mist gathered once more.

Matilda looked across the pool.

"I don't think she liked everybody talking."

I followed her gaze.

"Who?"

"The lady."

I waited.

Children frequently continue speaking if adults display sufficient patience.

A curious expression crossed Matilda's mum's face: part embarrassment, part quiet alarm, as though she had suddenly realised that children possess an unnerving talent for saying exactly what adults wish they would not.

"She wasn't angry", Matilda went on.

"No?"

"Just..."

She searched for the word.

"...disappointed."

"Did you see her?"

"No."

"Then how do you know?"

"I don't."

She smiled.

"I just know."

Now, there are several categories of statement that a lifelong student of Arthurian tradition learns never to dismiss.

One is the testimony of shepherds.

Another is the testimony of old fishermen.

A third is the testimony of very young children.

Adults possess imagination disciplined by embarrassment.

Children possess imagination untroubled by reputation.

That does not make them correct.

It merely makes them witnesses of a different sort.

I knelt beside the shoreline.

The mud bore dozens of footprints from investigators, journalists, tourists and enthusiasts.

Yet beneath them—

Almost erased.

Almost invisible.

A narrow sequence of impressions.

Bare feet.

Exceptionally slender.

They emerged from the water.

Crossed perhaps twenty yards.

Stopped.

Turned.

Returned to the pool.

Inspector Penrose would later assure me they belonged to one of the forensic officers.

The forensic officer would assure me they did not.

I measured them.

No heel marks.

No sliding.

Perfectly balanced.

As though whoever had walked there scarcely weighed more than the evening breeze.

That night I opened Malory before bed.

Then Geoffrey.

Then Chrétien.

Then the Welsh Triads.

Each told the story differently.

Each contradicted the others.

Curiously, they all agreed upon one thing.

The sword belonged to no king.

Arthur merely kept it for a while.

Ownership had always rested elsewhere.

That, I realised shortly after midnight, was the detail modern readers consistently overlooked.

The Lady never gave Excalibur away.

She lent it.

And anything merely borrowed must eventually be returned.

I extinguished the lamp.

Outside, rain tapped gently upon the windows.

Then came three soft knocks at the cottage door.

Not loud.

Not urgent.

Merely courteous.

I opened it.

No one stood there.

Only a single object rested upon the threshold.

It was dripping wet.

A white water-lily.

Fresh.

Dozmary Pool had not produced water-lilies for decades.

And tucked neatly beneath its stem was a fragment of parchment bearing seven words, written in an elegant hand that no modern calligrapher could comfortably imitate.

You have begun asking the correct questions.

The signature was simply a tiny drawing of an open hand emerging from water.

And at that moment, for the first time in many years, I ceased investigating merely a sword.

I realised that I had instead become a participant in a conversation that Britain herself had been trying to continue for nearly fifteen hundred years.

Chapter II — The Sword That Refused to Be Evidence

I slept remarkably well.

This invariably alarms me.

Whenever I find myself in the vicinity of something that ought to disturb a reasonable gentleman, and yet I sleep with the tranquillity of a cathedral verger after Evensong, experience has taught me that the true difficulty has not yet introduced itself.

The white water-lily remained exactly where I had placed it upon the writing desk. It had not wilted. More curiously still, there was no moisture upon the polished oak beneath it. One would have expected at least a modest puddle after spending the night upon dry wood. Instead, it rested there with the composure of a thing that had never known decay.

I examined the parchment again.

Only seven words.

You have begun asking the correct questions.

No signature, save for the tiny ink drawing of a hand emerging from the surface of water.

I considered every sensible explanation before breakfast.

Some mischievous local.

An overenthusiastic folklorist.

A journalist with theatrical inclinations.

An exceptionally eccentric botanist.

By the second cup of tea I had rejected them all.

The parchment was not modern.

Not merely because of its texture, which possessed that peculiar suppleness of genuine vellum, but because of its smell.

Old books have smells.

Old churches have smells.

Old armour has smells.

So does vellum.

One acquires these memories almost by accident over the course of decades, and once acquired they are exceedingly difficult to deceive.

This parchment smelled of age.

Not dampness.

Age.

There is a difference.

At nine o'clock precisely, Inspector Penrose arrived with all the enthusiasm of a tax collector attending a garden party.

"The museum has agreed to let you examine the sword."

"Splendid."

"They're humouring us."

"They're humouring you," I corrected gently. "I am merely attending."

He frowned.

"I don't understand the distinction."

"I should be disappointed if you did."

The sword had been transferred overnight to a secure conservation laboratory in Cornwall.

It rested upon padded supports beneath bright white lamps that rendered every imperfection painfully visible.

Several specialists surrounded it.

A metallurgist.

A conservator.

An archaeologist.

A photographer.

A gentleman whose purpose remained obscure but whose clipboard suggested immense authority.

Everyone looked extremely busy.

Nobody appeared to be looking at the sword.

I have long maintained that committees are perfectly capable of obscuring objects merely by surrounding them.

Dr Eleanor Graves greeted me warmly.

Unlike many archaeologists, she possessed the enviable ability to entertain uncertainty without feeling professionally threatened by it.

"Sir Timothy."

"Doctor."

"You've brought books."

"I rarely travel without them."

"I've brought microscopes."

"Excellent. Between us we may eventually discover something."

She smiled.

"I've already discovered several things."

"So have I."

She raised an eyebrow.

"You first."

"The blade is approximately thirty years old."

She looked surprised.

"I wasn't expecting agreement."

"I have no objection to facts."

"The steel is modern."

"Yes."

"The corrosion is genuine."

"Naturally."

"The leather grip isn't medieval."

"I should hope not."

"The entire object appears to have been manufactured during the late twentieth century."

"Quite possibly."

She folded her arms.

"Then why are you here?"

"Because the wrong sword may still be the right question."

I asked permission to hold it.

There was hesitation.

Forms were consulted.

Gloves were produced.

Further hesitation occurred.

Eventually bureaucracy surrendered to curiosity.

The sword felt unexpectedly warm.

Not hot.

Merely... warmer than steel ought to feel after an entire night inside a climate-controlled laboratory.

Its balance surprised me.

It was not the balance of a ceremonial replica.

Someone had intended this weapon to be swung.

Not elegantly.

Effectively.

Along the fuller of the blade ran tiny scratches almost invisible beneath the corrosion.

Not letters.

Not decoration.

Marks.

Dozens of them.

Almost deliberate.

Almost...

"Could I have a magnifying lens?"

Dr Graves handed me one.

The scratches were arranged in groups.

Three.

Five.

Two.

Seven.

Three again.

Not random.

Never random.

I frowned.

Inspector Penrose noticed.

"What is it?"

"I've seen this before."

"Where?"

"I don't yet remember."

"There you scholars go again."

"What?"

"You never know anything immediately."

"My dear Inspector," I replied, "immediate certainty is the privilege of politicians. Scholarship generally arrives several years later."

Dr Graves laughed rather more loudly than professional decorum strictly required.

The laboratory door opened.

Paul Jones entered with Little Matilda.

The authorities had invited them for photographs before returning the family to Yorkshire.

Journalists waited outside.

Flashbulbs prepared themselves.

Matilda ignored them all.

Instead, she walked directly towards the sword.

Not quickly.

Not dramatically.

Simply as though greeting someone she recognised from a railway platform.

She stopped beside me.

"May I?"

Everyone exchanged nervous glances.

Dr Graves looked at me.

I nodded.

The child placed one finger gently upon the crossguard.

Nothing happened.

Which, I confess, was faintly disappointing.

Then she tilted her head.

"He's gone."

The room became very quiet.

"Who?" I asked.

"The man."

"What man?"

"The frightened one."

Paul looked apologetic.

"She's been saying odd things since yesterday."

"I gathered."

Matilda continued staring at the blade.

"He carried it because he was afraid."

"When?"

"A long time ago."

"How long?"

She shrugged.

"I don't know."

"He wasn't a knight."

"No?"

"He wanted people to think he was."

The archaeologists shifted awkwardly.

Children have an unfortunate tendency to disrupt carefully organised scepticism.

I asked everyone except Dr Graves and Inspector Penrose to leave.

Not because I believed Matilda possessed supernatural gifts.

Quite the contrary.

I wished to remove the pressure that adults unconsciously place upon children whenever mystery appears.

The room became quieter.

Sunlight entered through a high window.

Dust drifted lazily above the sword.

"Tell me, Millie" I said.

"What does he look like?"

Matilda closed her eyes.

"He keeps apologising."

"To whom?"

"The lady."

"What lady?"

She gave me an expression usually reserved for adults who fail to understand very obvious matters.

"The lake lady."

"What does he say?"

Again she listened—not with her ears, but with that peculiar attentiveness children occasionally possess.

"He says..."

She frowned.

"...he missed."

I looked immediately at Dr Graves.

She looked immediately at me.

Neither of us spoke.

Missed.

The word refused to leave my thoughts.

Not returned.

Not threw.

Not lost.

Missed.

I remembered, then, a detail from Sir Thomas Malory that has always fascinated me.

When the dying Arthur instructed Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the mere, Bedivere failed twice. Each time he concealed the sword instead of obeying the king. Only upon the third attempt did he truly throw it into the lake, where the mysterious hand rose to receive it.

Every child knows the ending.

Very few pause to consider the mechanics.

Suppose Bedivere had missed.

Not morally.

Literally.

Suppose the sword had struck the bank.

Or another man had found it.

Or another hand had carried it elsewhere.

How many centuries of legend depended upon one exhausted knight possessing reasonably good aim?

The thought was absurd.

Which is precisely why it deserved investigation.

That afternoon I drove alone to the old parish church at Altarnun.

Most tourists hurry through ancient churches.

I have always preferred allowing churches sufficient time to decide whether they wish to reveal anything.

The sexton recognised me.

"Looking into the sword business?"

"I appear to be."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"My grandfather warned us."

"About what?"

"People always think the story's finished."

"And?"

"It never is."

The parish archive occupied a small stone room smelling agreeably of dust, beeswax and damp paper.

The vicar produced several local manuscripts.

Most were nineteenth-century copies of earlier traditions.

One notebook, however, caught my attention.

Its leather binding had nearly disintegrated.

Inside appeared the observations of a local schoolmaster dated 1838.

Nothing remarkable.

Weather.

Harvests.

Church repairs.

Then a curious entry.

Old Mrs Tregowan insists there were once two swords associated with the Pool. One belonged to the King. The other belonged to the man who failed him. None now remember the second story.

I read it again.

Twice.

Three times.

The second sword.

The man who failed him.

No explanation followed.

Only ordinary remarks about sheep.

History possesses an infuriating habit of placing extraordinary revelations immediately beside discussions of livestock.

As evening approached I returned to Dozmary Pool.

The reporters had gone.

The tourists had gone.

Even the wind seemed reluctant to disturb the water.

I walked to the precise place where Matilda had found the blade.

There, upon the soft mud revealed by the unusually low water level, I noticed something I had entirely overlooked the previous evening.

Not footprints.

Not this time.

A line.

Perfectly straight.

Extending from the shore into the centre of the Pool.

As though something impossibly heavy had once been dragged across the bottom.

Or...

No.

That was ridiculous.

I knelt.

The groove was too narrow for a boat.

Too clean for a fallen tree.

Too deliberate for nature.

I followed it with my eyes until the fading light swallowed it beneath the dark surface.

Then, from somewhere out in the mist, came the unmistakable sound of a woman laughing.

Not mockingly.

Not kindly.

Merely... knowingly.

When I looked up, I saw no face.

Only the briefest ripple upon otherwise motionless water.

And standing exactly where the ripple ended was a second white water-lily.

This one bore no parchment.

Only a single silver hair, impossibly long, lying across its petals as though placed there for someone—perhaps only me—to find.

At that instant, I realised my investigation had taken an unexpected turn.

I had come to Cornwall believing I was asking whether the sword was genuine.

I was beginning to suspect that the lake was asking a far more uncomfortable question:

Was the legend itself incomplete?

Chapter III — The Library of Camelot

It has often been asserted, generally by people who have never entered either, that libraries are merely cemeteries for books.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Churchyards are full of the dead.

Libraries are full of arguments.

Every volume upon every shelf is attempting to persuade the next that history occurred in a slightly different fashion. Some are courteous about it. Others conduct themselves like Members of Parliament.

Arthurian literature is particularly quarrelsome.

If one were to invite Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes, the anonymous Welsh poets, the compilers of the Vulgate Cycle, the author of the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Tennyson and T. H. White to afternoon tea, one would almost certainly witness a civil war before the scones appeared.

It was therefore to a library that I turned.

Not because books always contain answers.

They do not.

But because they faithfully preserve humanity's disagreements.

The Royal Library at Windsor had very kindly—and after several telephone conversations of an increasingly apologetic character—agreed to permit me temporary access to a number of manuscripts and facsimiles not ordinarily handled by visiting eccentrics.

I suspect my letter of introduction, together with the phrase "Please indulge Sir Timothy; it may prevent him from investigating on his own," had done most of the work.

The librarian, Mr. Archibald Fenwick, greeted me with the solemnity one reserves for bishops and people carrying fountain pens.

"I understand you're pursuing the Cornish sword."

"I am."

"You believe it to be Excalibur?"

"No."

He relaxed.

"I believe," I continued, "that it is considerably more inconvenient."

He stiffened again.

Librarians appreciate precision.

They distrust suspense.

We began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

Geoffrey, magnificent rascal that he was, had transformed scattered traditions into something approaching a national epic.

Historians complain about him.

Poets adore him.

Britain has probably owed more of its imagination to Geoffrey than to many considerably more truthful men.

"Notice," I said, turning the page carefully, "that Geoffrey tells us remarkably little about Arthur's sword."

Fenwick nodded.

"The emphasis is upon Arthur himself."

"Precisely."

"Not the weapon."

"Which suggests that the sword acquired significance later."

He smiled.

"You sound pleased."

"I am always pleased when legends grow instead of merely surviving."

Next came Chrétien de Troyes.

France, I reflected, has always possessed the enviable talent of borrowing British legends and returning them dressed rather more elegantly.

Here appeared knights who contemplated love with exhausting seriousness.

Ladies who spoke in symbols.

Forests that behaved like moral examinations.

The Grail.

Lancelot.

The flowering of Camelot into something approaching civilisation.

Curiously, however, Excalibur remained almost incidental.

Arthur's greatness never depended entirely upon possessing a miraculous sword.

That notion belonged more to later storytellers than to earlier ones.

How strange, I thought.

Modern audiences remember the sword.

Medieval audiences remembered the king.

Then came Malory.

Always Malory.

Whenever one reaches a dead end in Arthurian study, one eventually finds oneself returning to Malory, rather as English rivers eventually discover the sea.

I opened the familiar chapter describing Bedivere's final journey to the lake.

I had read it perhaps fifty times.

Perhaps more.

Yet one sentence, which had previously drifted past almost unnoticed, suddenly arrested my attention.

Bedivere throws the sword.

The hand appears.

The Lady catches it.

The sword is shaken three times.

Then—

It vanishes beneath the water.

Vanishes.

Not sinks.

Not disappears into the depths.

Vanishes.

Words matter.

Especially in legends.

"Fenwick."

"Yes?"

"Has anyone ever calculated how many different bodies of water have claimed to be the lake?"

He adjusted his spectacles.

"Oh, dozens."

"Name them."

He disappeared between the shelves with the speed peculiar to librarians who have unexpectedly discovered an interesting question.

He returned carrying three volumes.

Dozmary Pool.

Llyn Llydaw.

Llyn Ogwen.

Pomparles Bridge.

The River Dee.

Several Scottish lochs.

Even a French spring.

Each locality insisted that its waters possessed the true memory.

Each tradition dismissed the others with remarkable confidence.

I smiled.

There it was again.

History arguing with geography.

By late afternoon my notebook had become an alarming collection of arrows, quotations, circles and exclamation marks.

Patterns emerged.

Not historical patterns.

Narrative patterns.

The Lady of the Lake was astonishingly inconsistent.

Sometimes one woman.

Sometimes several.

Sometimes a sorceress.

Sometimes a guardian.

Occasionally mortal.

At times immortal.

Occasionally benevolent.

Once in a while terrifying.

Never ordinary.

Yet every tradition agreed upon one remarkable characteristic.

She was a keeper.

Not a giver.

She guarded.

She entrusted.

She reclaimed.

The sword never truly ceased belonging to her.

I remembered Matilda's question.

"If it was Excalibur, why was it still there?"

An excellent objection.

As I packed my notes, Fenwick hesitated.

"There is... one manuscript."

"There is always one manuscript."

"It isn't catalogued."

"Even better."

"It has never been translated."

"Splendid."

"I'm not entirely convinced anyone should read it."

I looked at him.

"My dear Fenwick, those are among the most encouraging words ever spoken inside a library."

He unlocked a small cabinet.

From it emerged a narrow bundle wrapped in faded green cloth.

No title.

No catalogue number.

Only a faded label.

MS. A-39.

"It was acquired in the 1890s."

"Origin?"

"Unknown."

"Language?"

"Mostly Latin."

"Mostly?"

"A little Welsh."

"A little Cornish."

"And something else."

"What something else?"

"We don't know."

Now he had my complete attention.

The manuscript consisted of barely twenty leaves.

Its script belonged, I estimated, somewhere around the late twelfth century.

The Latin was straightforward enough.

It described no battles.

No miracles.

No genealogy.

Instead, it claimed to preserve fragments of conversations held among monks who had collected older British traditions before they vanished.

One paragraph froze me where I stood.

I translated aloud.

The King returned the King's sword.

Odd.

Not his sword.

The King's sword.

Then another sentence.

But the Companion returned another.

Another.

I turned the page.

A gap.

Missing leaves.

The next surviving fragment continued:

The Lake accepted both, but remembered only one.

I read it again.

Then a third time.

Fenwick watched silently.

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know."

"Is it authentic?"

"I believe the manuscript is."

"The story?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

He looked disappointed.

"You scholars really don't know much."

"We know enough to remain uncertain."

The final page contained something entirely unexpected.

Not text.

A drawing.

Crude.

Almost childish.

Two swords.

One longer than the other.

Between them stood a little girl holding neither.

Above her appeared a crown.

Not upon her head.

Floating.

Suspended.

Waiting.

Below the drawing ran a single sentence in medieval Latin.

I translated it slowly.

The child who refuses the sword shall judge the kings.

I stopped breathing for several seconds.

Fenwick read my face.

"What is it?"

"I rather wish I hadn't found this."

"Why?"

"Because yesterday morning I was investigating a piece of modern steel."

"And now?"

"Now," I replied quietly, "I appear to be investigating a prophecy."

That evening I drove back across Bodmin Moor beneath lowering clouds.

The manuscript lay locked inside my briefcase.

Its words echoed unpleasantly.

The child who refuses the sword shall judge the kings.

Matilda had refused the entire premise from the beginning.

"I didn't find Excalibur."

Not modesty.

Refusal.

She had declined the legend everyone else had eagerly thrust upon her.

Could that possibly matter?

No.

Surely not.

Legends do not arrange themselves around seven-year-old Yorkshire schoolgirls.

They arrange themselves around kings.

Then again, Arthur himself had once been merely a boy whose identity almost everyone had overlooked.

History has an incurable weakness for underestimating children.

Night had already settled over Dozmary Pool when I arrived.

No police.

No tourists.

No journalists.

Only mist.

I walked alone to the water's edge.

The silver hair from the lily remained carefully folded inside my notebook.

Without quite knowing why, I removed it and held it above the dark water.

The wind ceased.

Utterly.

Even the reeds stood motionless.

Then the surface of the Pool began to change.

Not violently.

Not dramatically.

It simply became... clearer.

Like glass.

For the first time, I could see the bottom.

Not everywhere.

Only along that strange groove leading into the depths.

Following it with my eyes, I saw something impossible.

The groove did not end.

It descended.

Not into deeper water.

Into stone.

As though the lake concealed the entrance to an ancient road disappearing beneath the earth.

At the far end of that submerged passage stood what I first took to be a standing stone.

Then it moved.

It was not a stone.

It was a woman.

She wore no crown.

Her pale hair floated around her although there was no current.

She did not beckon.

She did not smile.

She merely inclined her head with impeccable courtesy, as though acknowledging the arrival of a guest expected rather later than planned.

Then, without the slightest ripple, she raised one finger and pointed—not at me—

—but towards the old church of Altarnun.

When I looked back to the water, she had vanished.

Only then did I notice that someone was standing beside me on the shore.

It was Matilda.

Barefoot.

Still wearing her yellow autumn dress.

She looked at the lake for a long moment before taking my hand.

"I know where she wants us to go."

"To the church?"

She shook her head.

"No."

"Further."

"Where?"

She looked up at me with the calm certainty that only children and saints occasionally possess.

"To where Camelot went when everybody forgot where to look."

I confess that, despite a lifetime devoted to history, philology and Arthurian lore, I had absolutely no idea how to answer her.

To be continued...