Alfie tapped the flat, white rock in front of him three times with his fingers, then jumped up and span around in mid-air so that he landed on the rock seat, looking forward, with his feet dangling over its edge. A huge limestone cliff towered up behind him, like a giant back to his rock throne, up, up, white and dazzling in the sunshine.
It was the late summer holidays and before him lay his kingdom. Sheep were strewn like fluffy, white boulders below in the lush, green fields that ran gently down to the cliff and then the sea. The air shimmered in the heat and dazzling, yellow gorse flowers lit up the mountainside, punctuating the silence with “pops” as they shot their seeds into the air; bees buzzed lazily in the purple heather. He viewed the dark outline of distant hills over the water, the deep blue glass of the sea and the fertile lands all around, farmed for thousands of years.
He had once found a small flint stone chipped and shaped to cut like a knife, under a large, flat stone boulder he and his dad had had to move in the garden. It was just lying there, clean and sharp under the stone, as if someone had only just put it down a minute or two earlier. He could hold it instinctively in the right way, like you’d hold a pen in your hand, and parts of the flint were polished by the skin of the person who had used it over many years. He wondered who it had belonged to, what it had been used for, why it had just been left under the boulder, and what sort of a life they had lived all those thousands of years ago, on the Worme.
Alfie jumped down off the rock seat, and stood tall, spreading his arms out wide, like he was hugging the view in front of him. His eyes then traced the coastline around as far as he could see and then, in his mind’s eye, he let it carry on tracing around the whole coast on and on, until he felt he could feel – actually feel – how big the island of Britain was, Britain arched on the sphere of the world.
The Grail really could be out here somewhere, he thought, I must find it!
He snatched the knowledge into himself and ran back home. He pushed open the front door and let it clonk back closed behind him. He could hear some voices in the study and thought it must be his dad on speakerphone. But as he walked past he could see, through a half-closed door, a neatly dressed woman sitting and talking with his dad.
“Ah, there you are…” his dad said, “this is Dr Lister. She’s travelled all the way from the USA, from Philadelphia, in fact, to do some tests on your mum.”
“Hey…” she said, “you must be Alfie, I’ve heard a lot about you.” She rose to shake Alfie’s hand; hers was warm. “Call me Bonnie,” she said kindly, and looked straight into his eyes. He blushed slightly and sat down clumsily. It had felt a bit like being scanned.
She was a tall, slim woman, with short, curly, brown hair, light blue eyes and wore an expensive-looking, soft, grey flannel trouser suit with white plimsolls.
“Dr Lister is here to see if the new gene therapies that are being developed at Drexel University might be tested on your mum. It seems that they’ve made some amazing headway with the therapies, even in really advanced cases.”
What… Alfie shouted in his head, Mum’s not a guinea pig!!!
Dr Lister saw the startled look in Alfie’s eyes and immediately excused herself from the room and went upstairs, saying, “I’m sure you’ll want to get Alfie up to speed, so I’ll just go up and see Mrs King.”
After the soft padding of her footsteps had faded in the distance, Alfie faced his dad and whispered in a lowered voice, “Is it safe, Dad? How much is this thing costing?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, I just had to pay for the flights, the tests are covered by the research grant,” his dad replied. But he was fidgeting with a piece of paper in his hand, that had a $ sign and some numbers on it, and Alfie couldn’t catch his eye.
“Are we going to be alright, Dad?” Alfie sighed.
“Of course we are,” said his dad, who managed to flash a smile, “of course we are.” Alfie didn’t feel very confident.
Outside, as the hot summer weeks went by, the land became brown and cracked through lack of rain. In times past the old farmers had called this time of year “summer famine”, when the mountain streams ran dry, and the new crops had yet to ripen. Any food stores from last year’s harvest had all but gone, and the sun beat down on the parched fields. From sheep to field mouse all looked for shade and the last patches of green, early ripened haw-berries or any exposed earthy roots. Buzzards spiralled in great wheels in the sky, watching and waiting, ready to swoop down on the unfortunate animals who had lost their battle for food and water.
It was two weeks later when the test results came in. Alfie heard a “ping” on his dad’s computer and an email had arrived from Drexel. He shouted to his dad who came into the study from the kitchen, cooking pinny on and still clutching a spatula in his right hand. It was bad news. A short message confirmed that the tests were negative, and therefore there was no hope of being added to the research programme.
His dad stood motionless for a few moments, staring at the screen, before crumpling slowly down into his chair, still staring at the message, as its terse finality sank in. Alfie tried to think of something to say, that might somehow make the news less hopeless, to make his dad feel better… to make himself feel better – but his mind was blank and numbed, too. Each last fresh hope uncovered by his dad had eventually slipped away through the scientific cracks, left seeping out of his skin, to be lost in the ground beneath his feet, and each time it never got any easier. After the silence, like all the other times, Alfie screwed up his eyes, shutting out the present. He had learned to parcel up the emotion, putting it away somewhere deep, to process another day.
A sudden loud knock at the door made Alfie jump and his eyes shot open. He put his hand gently on his dad’s shoulder and then wrenched himself away from the study and wandered, in a slight daze, to the door. Alfie opened it and there was the smiling face of Melanie.
“Well, helloo…” she said, head tilted slightly to one side.
Alfie stared blankly at her.
“Er… have I got the wrong day? You did invite me around to do this summer homework project. If you’ve changed your mind no worries, I’ll just walk the five hundred miles home again. Who lives this far out anyway?!”
Her arms were now set on her hips and her head, with full mop of brown hair, tilted theatrically to the other side in a quizzical look, challenging Alfie into a response.
“No… er, yes… er, come in…” he stuttered, and half-turned to point back into the house. “Sorry, we’ve just had an email and… and… I’d forgotten you were coming around…”
“Charming…” she snorted, not aware of the situation that had just unfolded, and playfully jumped into the house.
Alfie decided that he needed to explain quickly to her what had just happened. Melanie listened intently, sometimes blushing a little when the emotion of Alfie’s explanation made his voice trail to a whisper, as she reached out to touch his arm in support. She explained how so very sorry she was to hear what had just happened and wondered if she should leave, arrange another time, but Alfie insisted she stay. There was something about Melanie, her openness, her honesty, her vitality and calming air of confidence that made him feel stronger too.
“Do you still want to do this project then?” she asked. “It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything, it doesn’t count for much.”
“Yes, yes…” said Alfie quickly, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the holidays, and I think Mr Turner was interested in it, although he’d never say.”
Before Melanie had knocked on the door though, in his heart, he had wanted to run away, far from bad news and the inevitable despondency of his dad. But this time it felt different. This time there was someone he could talk to.
“Dad!” Alfie shouted. “I’ve invited Melanie for tea. We’re just going to do some work on our project first.” Alfie pointed the way to the stairs to Melanie. His dad appeared quickly at the study door, surprised into action by Alfie’s shout and the news that there was a visitor.
“Hello, Melanie, nice to meet you. I’ve not met any of Alfie’s friends from school before… or anywhere really…” he mused, and then looked sadly at Alfie.
“It’s because he hasn’t got any, Mr King,” she chirped, instantly regretting it.
“Oh…” he said, looking more concerned.
“No, I’m just teasing, Mr King!” She wished the earth would swallow her up.
“…Er, do you mind something like… pizza for tea?” Mr King added.
“Sounds good, thank you,” she said and followed Alfie upstairs, tiptoeing, as Alfie did, past his mother’s room.
Both sat around the small desk, and Alfie tapped in all the search terms they could think of into his computer – Tudllan Abbey, H144, grail, cup of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea, Bishop Anian, miracles of North Wales, Maelgwn, Deceangli, Dr Finch, crusades – pulling off screens of information on history, people, places, plans, buildings, stories, murders, deaths, healings, tales, images, carvings, tapestries, books, essays, and printing off the most interesting and sticking them up all around his room in themed clusters. They sat back on his bed and looked at what they had done.
Out of the mass of papers and images clustered in front of them, they started to see patterns – the Abbey had once been a major holy site, its chapel a place of pilgrimage, with a most sacred object which may have been a cup, or relic, which had been brought to the site and protected. The cup was a miracle-working object that could heal all wounds, so powerful that even the dragon of the Isle, Britain’s king of kings, King Maelgwn, had greedily sought it for his own glory, luckily without success. He eventually died of a curse, or more likely, the plague. Then there was Gwion’s poem, inked in the margins of the H144 manuscript, also known as the Book of Tudllan. The riddle seemed to interweave old Welsh legends and was maybe even about the Holy Grail.
Ruined was I before Britain was ruined
Chief Bard of Gwynedd
I drank from the cup that laid Maelgwn low
The high cup of Christ
Known only to me, safekeeper
There is a place with damson and apple
With spring and spiral castle
In that place there is a chapel
Two saints pray by it, a bishop sits near it
Only the true know what they hold
It made me a salmon caught in Elfin’s traps
Sweet and saltwater swimmer
Rude cup, simple cup, with carpenter’s luck
And window to the soul
After tea, they discussed the poem again. The last references to its resting place suggested that whatever “it” was, a cup or something else, had been hidden in plain sight – that it might look just like a plain carpenter’s wooden cup, in a chapel, near a place where a river, with its fresh water, feeds into the sea. Their notes told them that Elfin had been a medieval prince of Gwynedd whose ancient fish traps had only recently been uncovered on the beach below the Abbey. Winter storms had stripped away the sand and mud to reveal them. There was still a spring that gushed water above the old Abbey. They weren’t sure what the salmon reference was all about, but the layers of rock of the Worme looked like a spiral, or coiled snake, so could be the spiral castle, and the chapel could be the Abbey’s chapel.
They both fell silent, then Melanie suddenly sat up with a start. Her eyes were fixed on one of the pictures on the wall, then her head characteristically tilted to one side, and Alfie knew immediately that she had just thought of something brilliant. It was the same at school – head tilt in physics, “…It’s gravity, Sir,” head tilt in maths, “…It’s 49,” head tilt in art, looking at one of those images hidden within a blaze of different colours, “…It’s a horse, Sir.”
This time it was, “Why would the Roberts family say the bells came from the cliff, not the Abbey?”
The picture she was looking at was a 1985 study of the Abbey building plan. On it could clearly be seen the outline of a building labelled as “the chapel”, connected to the north of the Abbey, the direction that Finch’s men had been going that evening when Alfie had stumbled across them. But next to this was a Cambrian Weekly News article, from 1890, referencing folk tales passed down the many generations of the Roberts family, who’d lived in Magogarth, an old, now abandoned, village close to the Abbey. Their tales told of hearing bells of a ghostly chapel ringing in the night, when ships were foundering in storms below, and souls needed saving. But the stories suggested that the sound of the bells came from a different direction, not from the Abbey itself, but from the south of its great hall. An area right next to the clifftop that was now crumbling into the sea, now visible only by a single pillar of ancient stone masonry.
In a flash, Melanie had suddenly realised that Dr Finch was looking in the wrong place. This folk memory knew that the ancient chapel of the poem had been in a different place, an area that might now be falling into the sea. “They’ve been looking in the wrong place!” she exclaimed.
So long a ruin, could the chapel’s silent stones be hiding the greatest lost treasure of Britain, and the world, only remembered by the chance few lines scribbled in the margin of an ancient Welsh book? The poem had been written in an age when even the greatest lives of ordinary men and women would be lost, unchronicled, their greatest deeds unrecorded, amazing truths and secrets forgotten; a time when faith could heal, give superhuman strength, love drive great deeds and jealousy, too, a time when life was real, magic, fragile, passionate, strong, hard, unfair, desperate, short yet vibrant.
Melanie leant across and gently kissed Alfie on the cheek, whispering, “It might still be there, somewhere!” catching him totally by surprise. She then jumped up, headed for the door, saying quickly that she had to get home. Before he could react, she was down the stairs and out of the house.
“Bye, Mr King,” she shouted, and he heard the door slam.
Alfie, sat back, smiled and sighed. “Yes!”