3

Oxford
The first of May

Tom’s pulse quickened as he turned down Catte Street, heading for what C. S. Lewis had called “the most beautiful room in all England.” It was the first of May, and Tom was going to hear Lewis’s friend Charles Williams speak on “The Meaning of the Grail” at the Bodleian Library. Tom decided to arrive early for the mid-afternoon lecture, to get a good look at the Divinity School room, and to get a good seat for the lecture.

Walking down the narrow street under a lowering sky, Tom arrived at the east entrance to the Bodleian and turned in at the gate. His first response to the Schools Quadrangle, the courtyard east of the main building, was disappointment. Having seen so many velvet lawns and spectacular flower gardens in the college quads, he was surprised to find a large enclosure with nothing but slippery flagstones. The eastern façade of the Bodleian made no better impression, a soot-stained slab with little ornamentation except for long vertical lines, almost like jail bars. How odd, Tom thought, that one of the most famous and venerated libraries in the world should look like an old prison.

Tom crossed the quad, following others through a large wooden door and into a narrow passageway that led to the Divinity School. Emerging from the dark corridor into the lecture hall, Tom instantly changed his mind about the Bodleian. Entering the Divinity School room was like moving from darkness to light, from confinement to liberation, from all that weighs down the spirit to all that makes it soar. The whole room was suffused with an amber glow, the afternoon sun warming the cream-colored walls, which seemed to radiate a light all their own.

The whole interior commanded Tom to look up. The floor was unadorned flagstone covered with rows of wooden chairs. But the lofty arched windows with delicate tracery carried his eyes upward toward the ceiling, where he saw rows of ornately carved pendants, hanging like lanterns, each one radiating fan-shaped curves, like shafts of light chiseled in stone. The plain stone floor and the portable chairs, crouching humbly under that magnificent vaulted ceiling, seemed to suggest that all the richness and gladness of life comes not from the plane on which we live and walk, but from higher planes of intellect, imagination, learning, and faith.

The chairs in the lecture hall began filling quickly, even as Tom was admiring the room. He had wondered what sort of audience a publisher’s editor would attract, and he soon had his answer. He found a seat near the center, about five rows back, before every seat was taken as the clock neared three. There were a few men who looked like dons scattered around the room, but most of the listeners were about Tom’s age, with more women in the crowd than he had seen in any one place since arriving at Oxford.

Precisely at three o’clock, Mr. Charles Williams stepped briskly to the lectern. He was a tall man in his fifties with wavy hair, wearing a black gown and gold-rimmed spectacles. Tom was not accustomed to lecturers wearing academic gowns, so his first sight of Williams made him think of a priest or wizard. Williams briefly surveyed his listeners and smiled. The furrows on his cheeks ran all the way down to his jaw, giving the impression that someone had placed his mouth in parentheses. Tom heard someone in the row behind him whisper the word “ugly,” but that was not quite accurate. There was a look of energetic intelligence in Williams’s face, the owlish eyes and simian jaw giving a sense of endearing homeliness, not mere coarseness.

Williams set down his notes and hardly glanced at them again for the next hour. “Did any of you buy a newspaper this morning?” he began. There was a hint of Cockney in his voice, an accent that certainly wouldn’t impress the person who had whispered the word “ugly.” Abandoning the lectern, Williams paced back and forth in front of the room, looking into individual faces for the answer to his question. Several nodded that they had, and Williams smiled to see his hypothesis confirmed. “You offered a coin and received a newspaper in return. A mutually satisfactory transaction. That is the life of the city. Exchange.” Williams paced briskly back toward the lectern and continued: “And thus you took one step closer to the Holy Grail.” Pausing to let this comment have its effect, Williams came out toward his listeners again and asked, “Did any of you hold a door open for someone today? Did you help someone who’d dropped an armful of books?” Seeing a few nods in the audience, Williams smiled again and continued. “Giving your effort, your labor, for someone else, perhaps a stranger. Courtesy, yes. But also substitution. Another step in your quest for the Grail.”

“What is this Holy Grail we hear so much about?” asked Williams, pacing back and forth so rapidly that Tom could hear keys or coins clinking in his pocket. “Is the Grail the holy chalice used by Jesus on the night of the Last Supper? Is it a cup in which Joseph of Arimathea caught drops of Christ’s blood as he was stretched out on the cross?” Again, Williams peered into individual faces, speaking to over a hundred people, but giving each one the impression he was talking just to him or her. “Or perhaps you favor the Loomis school: the Grail is a bit of ‘faded mythology,’ a Celtic cauldron of plenty that somehow got lugged into Arthurian lore?”

Williams paced back and forth some more, throwing his hands into the air, as if to say, Who can answer all these imponderable questions? Then he plunged in again: “There is no shortage of texts on the subject. Let’s start with Chrétien de Troyes: ‘Percival, or the Story of the Grail,’ written sometime in the 1180s. This is the first known account of the Grail. The young knight Percival sits at banquet at the castle Carbonek and sees an eerie procession—a young man carrying a bleeding lance, two boys with gold candelabras, then finally a fair maid with a jeweled grail, a platter bearing the wafer of the Holy Mass. Percival doesn’t ask what it all means and thereby brings a curse upon himself and on the land.” Williams surveyed the crowd again, as if waiting for someone to stand and explain all this to him. The room was silent as a church at midnight, so Williams went on, listing all the famous medieval texts and their retellings of the Grail legend, noting how their dates clustered around the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

“So much for the literary versions,” he continued. “But what is this Grail really? What lies behind the texts? Some describe it as a cup or bowl, some as a stone, some as a platter. The word Grail, by the way, comes from Latin gradalis, more like a shallow dish, or paten, than a chalice.” After another strategic pause, Williams exclaimed, almost in a shout, “How extraordinary! Here we have what some would call the holiest relic in Christendom and no one seems to know what it looks like.”

Pacing some more, as if trying to work off an excess of agitation and intellectual energy, Williams went back to the lectern and leaned on it heavily, dangling a graceful, eloquent pair of hands over the edge. “And here’s another problem: why this sudden fascination with the Grail in the twelfth century when no one in Christendom seemed to give it a thought for the previous millennium? We hear a lot about relics in the first thousand years of the Church. Handkerchiefs from St. Paul with healing powers. Constantine’s mother in the fourth century going to Jerusalem and finding what she considered to be the true cross. Cities fighting over the cloak of St. Martin, patron saint of France. But where was the Grail all those years? And why was no one looking for it?”

Williams pulled a handkerchief out of his coat sleeve, removed his gold-rimmed glasses, wiped them, and put them back on, as if to suggest he needed the clearest possible vision to try and answer these questions. Then he strode back out into the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that there was no real Grail, no relic from the life of Christ, and certainly no Celtic cauldron of plenty lying behind the medieval texts. The Grail exists only in the texts themselves. It is an imaginative response, not to Bible archaeology or Welsh mythology, but to Church theology.”

Williams returned to the lectern, smoothed back his wavy hair that was becoming unruly, and surveyed the audience, as if expecting a rebuttal. Hearing none, he continued, speaking rapidly but never slurring his words. “What did I mean earlier when I talked about buying a newspaper or holding open a door? Exchange. Substitution. That is the way of community, the lifeblood of the city. But, more than that, in a Christian understanding, it is a part of the imago Dei within us, the image of God. It is Co-inherence.”

“Co-inherence,” said Williams again, repeating a word Tom had certainly never heard before. “Christians believe it is built into the very fabric of the universe, a reflection of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one being, eternally expressing their natures in relation to the others. At the very foundation of being is a fellowship.”

Tom wasn’t sure he followed, and he looked around the room to see if others looked as puzzled as he was. But those around him seem almost mesmerized by what they heard, so Tom turned to listen again. “Co-inherence leads to substitution,” Williams was explaining, “Christ’s dying for all humanity in order that they might be lifted up. The redeemed of the Lord co-inhere in their Maker, living in the Spirit, as he lives in them, joining in the Company of Co-inherence.”

Tom was beginning to feel that he had indeed wandered into church and was listening to a priest, albeit an obscure one. He was wondering how all this fit into the Grail stories. As if hearing Tom’s thoughts, Williams continued: “At the same time all the great Grail stories were being written, there was a great stirring in the Western Church, a quest for clarity about the great sacrament of co-inherence—the Eucharist, ‘the great Thanksgiving,’ Holy Communion, ‘The With-oneness.’ In that sacrament lay all the mysteries and miracles of Co-inherence—the Arch-natural in the Natural, a symbol that is more than a symbol, Christ giving himself to the Church as the Church gives itself to Christ. As St. Augustine explained the sacrament, ‘If you have received well, you are that which you have received.’”

Williams went on with his lecture, the audience rapt with attention, interweaving two terms, Logos and Logres. Logos was the Word made flesh. Logres was Arthur’s kingdom, the attempt by humans to embody the City of God in the city of men. Williams did not see the Grail as any kind of physical object or person. Rather it is symbol of the soul’s progress toward God. A carnal seeker like Lancelot was “the old self in the old way,” never progressing too far beyond worldly quests for bliss, such as the bed of Guinevere. Percival did a little better, “the old self in the new way,” someone who sought after the “Limitless Light,” but who only attempted self-improvement, not self-transformation. Only Galahad found the object of his quest, “the new self in the new way,” one whose quest had changed the very nature of who he was.

Williams concluded that the Grail romancers were not unusually devout men. They were simply good story-tellers who recognized the imaginative power of the theological questions of their day, the miracle of the loaf and the wine as the Bread of Life and the Cup of Heaven. Williams concluded that all attempts, in literature and in life, to fully embody the ideals we most deeply believe are ultimately doomed to failure.

As he neared the end of his lecture, Williams returned to the podium and leaned on it heavily. He asked the audience to indulge him for quoting a few lines from his own book of poems, Taliessen through Logres. Then closing his eyes and lowering his head, as in both weariness and prayer, he quoted from a scene in which Merlin the wizard looks on at Arthur’s coronation, seeing in the glorious founding of Camelot “the glory of Logres, patterns of Logos in the depth of the sun.” Williams ended by noting that, even at that glad moment, Merlin knew in advance that it would all end in chaos and ruin:

“At the door of the gloom sparks die and revive;

the spark of Logres fades, glows, fades.”

Williams’s voice sounded husky as he ended his lecture, perhaps because he had been speaking continuously for nearly an hour. But Tom sensed in those last few words not only Williams’s sadness at the fall of Camelot, but some greater sorrow, perhaps some unspoken grief of his own. Perhaps there was something too in that broken voice about this new war, perhaps the whole “turbid ebb and flow of human misery.”

When Williams had finished speaking, no one moved for several seconds. The man up front in golden spectacles almost seemed unaware that there was anyone else in the room. He seemed to gaze above and behind the sea of faces, as if the very stone walls of the Divinity School were a transparent screen through which he could see something else. Gradually, though, people began stirring and gathering up their things. Most filed quietly toward the exits, but at least a dozen listeners made their way to the front to meet Mr. Williams and ask questions. Tom himself had some questions to ask, so he too walked toward the lectern. He stood a few paces back from those who pressed close to Williams, noticing that most of them were young women. Several were carrying notebooks, with pencils out to scribble a few more notes. But Tom couldn’t help thinking of a Broadway star walking out a stage door to be greeted by a mob of autograph seekers.

Tom waited patiently as individuals asked questions, nodding their heads or taking notes, then left one by one. One young woman in a fuzzy sweater and a feathered hat wanted to know why Williams dismissed the “Celtic school” so lightly. Williams answered simply that there was no evidence that the Continental writers knew any Welsh folktales, but he was certain they knew about the debates raging in the Church on the meaning of the Eucharist. He also found the idea of noble knights leaving all behind, risking life itself, in quest of a self-refilling stewpot simply trivial. As the group of questioners thinned out, Tom noticed that Laura Hartman was among those waiting to get a word with Mr. Williams. She was wearing her hair curled in front, long in back, so that it cascaded over the fur collar of her beige coat. Tom surprised himself, as he didn’t remember names too well and he didn’t usually pay much attention to what people wore. But in this case, he didn’t seem quite his usual self.

Williams looked at Laura, as if awaiting her question, but she said, “My question is a little more involved. I can wait for the others.” Tom felt the same way, so he too hung back from the knot of inquirers. Finally, when there only Tom, Laura, and two others still gathered around the lectern, Williams said, “The Kings Arms is just up the street. I wonder if we should seek some refreshment as we continue this discussion?” The other two listeners both declined the invitation. One was a middle-aged man who wanted to challenge Williams on a question of pronunciation. The other was a young woman who simply wanted Williams’s signature on a copy of his new book, Descent of the Dove. But Tom was glad for a chance to join Mr. Williams at the Kings Arms and glad too that Laura wanted to come along.

It was drizzling outside when Tom, Laura, and Mr. Williams left the Bodleian and walked up the street toward the King’s Arms. Williams had removed his academic gown and was wearing a navy blue suit, gray silk tie, and flawlessly polished shoes. He and Laura brought out their umbrellas, but Tom just pulled up the collar on his jacket and followed closely behind. When they reached the Kings Arms on Holywell Street, they went inside, found a cozy table near the fireplace, and ordered drinks. Taking off his misty spectacles and wiping them with a handkerchief, Williams looked at the two young people across the table from him as if he were just seeing them for the first time.

“So, you are both Americans, yes?”

“That’s right,” answered Tom. “But I’m from the left margin of the continent, California, and she’s from the right margin, Pennsylvania.”

“And did you come over together?” Williams asked.

“No, we did not,” said Laura quickly. “We just met tonight after your lecture.” Tom thought her answer was more emphatic than it needed to be, and he wondered if Laura didn’t remember him as the one she had talked to in Blackwells the previous week. But he decided to let it pass.

“We’re getting ready to send evacuees to North America, in case the war takes a bad turn,” said Williams. “I wonder what brings you two expatriates in the other direction?” Even in asking this simple question, Williams’s hands did half the talking. When he mentioned evacuees, his arms reached out, as if pushing a rowboat away from shore. But when he used the word expatriates, he pulled his hands back in toward his chest with fluttering fingers.

Tom looked at Laura, remembering the Ladies First policy she had proclaimed at Blackwells. Laura looked back at him, as if she preferred to waive her rights in this instance, but Tom just kept waiting politely. Finally, she looked back at Mr. Williams. “Actually, it’s the war that brought me in this direction,” she explained. “My Aunt Vivian lives here in Oxford. She came over in the Great War as a volunteer nurse and married an Englishman. But he was called up for war work in Scotland, and there are no children, so she’s been alone all winter. My parents thought it would be good if I came over to keep Aunt Viv company, at least until her husband can get reassigned closer to home.”

“That’s a lovely thing to do,” said Williams.

“Oh, I really don’t mind,” said Laura. “I finished college last year, and I’ve been living at home, working part-time at a library. So I was ready for an adventure.” Laura paused a moment, as if deciding whether she’d said enough or not, then continued: “And I also have some personal things I’m looking into. Somehow I feel the answers are over here somewhere.”

Both Williams and Tom kept looking at Laura and listening, as if they were expecting to hear more. “But we can talk about that later,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “Tom, why don’t you tell Mr. Williams what you’re doing over here?”

Tom was gratified that Laura remembered his name, so he acknowledged her cue and took his turn: “Well, I did my master’s thesis on Arthurian romance. I came over to research a book on the historical sites associated with King Arthur. I’m putting together a guidebook.” Tom usually liked to talk about himself and his projects, but he recognized what Laura had been feeling a moment ago. There was something slightly unnerving about Mr. Williams’s earnest gaze, the big eyes behind those shiny glasses that seemed to peer into your soul. Tom thought about volleying the conversation back in Laura’s direction, but then he remembered the question he wanted to ask. “I asked Professor Lewis a question last week and he referred me to you. I was wondering why somebody over here might take exception to my poking around Arthurian sites.”

“Is that what happened?” asked Williams.

“Yes it did. I ran into a couple of ruffians down in Somerset who tried to scare me off. They seemed worried about my finding an underground chamber somewhere.”

“Professional jealousy perhaps,” said Williams. “They may think any important new finds should be reserved for Englishmen. There’s still a lot out there, you know. A few years ago, they were digging around in Cornwall and found the ancient tomb of ‘Drustanus,’ most likely the famous Tristran, lover of Isolt in Arthurian legends. And just last summer, before this Nazi rudeness, they uncovered a buried ship at Sutton Hoo, complete with silver and gold, helmet and shield, everything fit for a great Saxon lord.”

Tom nodded his head and smiled, clearly aware of both discoveries. “And in your novel War in Heaven you have the Holy Grail itself turn up in Hertfordshire, of all places! Who would have looked for it just north of London?”

Williams chuckled to himself, as if enjoying his own literary audacity. Then he explained: “If you’ve followed recent theories, the Grail has been turning up everywhere—in Wales and Scotland, even in Eastern Europe. So why shouldn’t humble Hertfordshire put in its claim?” Williams took a sip of his rum and hot water, then continued: “I grew up in Hertfordshire and found the county brimming with Grail legends. Not from Celtic sources, but from the Crusades. In the twelfth century, Hertfordshire was an important hub for the Knights Templar. They had castles and lands in Royston, St. Albans, Baldock, and a half dozen other places within a day’s ride of London. They claimed to have brought back all manner of sacred treasures from Jerusalem—splinters from Christ’s cross, fragments from the crown of thorns, and, of course, the Grail itself.”

“They would have benefited from your lecture,” said Tom. “You seem to say that the Grail is just a literary device, a religious symbol, not an actual relic one might go questing after.”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” replied Williams. “I would say that Grail is all the more sacred, all the more worth questing after, because it means so much more than any relic ever could.”

Tom took in these words for a while and then replied. “And yet your novel suggests that the Grail has some sort of stored-up power or supernatural energy, so that it could be used as a vessel of great evil as well as great good.”

“Keep in mind it is a novel,” said Williams, “not one of my books on doctrine. And yet, surely you know, such a notion is not original with me. The whole premise of the Dark Arts—baptisms of blood, the Black Mass, crucifixes turned upside down—is that holy vessels can be put to other uses, that power meant for good can be turned to evil by cunning and depraved minds.”

“I can’t say I’m a believer,” said Tom. “It all seems like wish-fulfillment and hocus-pocus to me.”

Laura winced, but Williams didn’t seem to mind the comment at all. “Fair enough,” he said. “It is only the arrogant or the insecure who claim to know about such things, unless perhaps you are a genuine mystic. For the rest of us, all we can do is choose what to believe.

This sort of topic made Tom uncomfortable, so he quickly returned to their earlier discussion: “The Knights Templar and their relics—I wonder if that is something I should include in my book?”

“I would think so,” answered Williams. “The Templars certainly saw themselves as a company of Galahads, chivalric knights sent out to protect pilgrims and liberate Jerusalem.”

Tom took out a little notebook and jotted down a few words. “Hertfordshire isn’t too far from here. Maybe I’ll go over and have a look around.”

“Yes, it might be worth your while,” said Williams, “if only for the Knights Templar sites. Such treasures they claim to have brought back to England! Be sure to visit their hideaway at Royston Cave and see if you can decipher the writing on its walls.”

Laura had been listening intently and almost motionlessly as the two men talked. But she leaned forward and almost spilled her cup of coffee at the mention of Royston Cave. “A secret cave?” she asked. “With writing on the walls? Is that what you said?”

Williams and Tom were both somewhat taken aback by her sudden outburst. Tom smiled, but Williams looked at her sympathetically. “Yes, that’s correct, Miss Hartman. Royston Cave. It’s right beneath the streets of town. And the walls are covered with arcane symbols that seem to have been etched there by some Templars in hiding.”

“Has anyone ever deciphered the hieroglyphs?” Laura asked.

“There are a number of theories,” said Williams. “Are you a student of the Knights?”

“No, nothing like that,” said Laura, retreating into her habitual reserve. “But that is what I was hoping to talk to you about.”

Williams kept listening, so Laura continued: “I want to ask you about another of your novels, Descent into Hell. You show a young woman in the here and now who has visions of the distant past. She sees one of her ancestors in the sixteenth century being martyred for his faith. And when she prays for this man, who has been dead for five hundred years, he is strengthened in his time of suffering, and goes bravely to his death proclaiming, ‘I have seen the salvation of my God.’”

“Yes, I recall that part of the novel,” said Williams, blinking his eyes several times.

“Do you believe in that sort of thing?” asked Laura, tilting her head to one side.

“Believe in which sort of thing?”

“The part of about someone having visions of the past.”

“Well, again, please remember you are quoting from a novel,” answered Williams. “But I would say I certainly believe in the principles behind that novel. For one thing, I don’t think God experiences time the same way we do. We are like characters in a play who must act out our scenes in their proper order, not knowing what comes next. But God is like the author, who can see all the pages at once.”

“You said principles—plural,” noted Laura.

“So I did,” replied Williams. “I also wanted to make it clear we are sometimes called to bear one another’s burdens—quite literally.

“Do you mean moral support, financial help, that sort of thing?” asked Tom, knowing even as he spoke that Williams had something more in mind.

“That much, at least,” said Williams. “But also the principle I discussed in my lecture—Co-inherence.”

Tom groaned inwardly when he heard that strange word, and he wanted to find his way to some more common ground. Rather than following Mr. Williams back into those mystical mists, he broke in and asked Laura, “Does that answer your question? Is that what you wanted to know about Descent into Hell?”

Laura gave Tom a little frown, as if she knew exactly what he was up to, but she went ahead and answered. “Actually, my question was simpler than that. I just wanted to ask about the possibility of people having visions of the past—not memories from their own lives, or imagined re-creations from things they’d read in books. Direct viewings of long-past events.” Laura picked up a spoon and stirred her coffee as she said this, even though the cup was almost empty by now.

“Do you feel this has been happening to you?” asked Williams gently.

“Something has been happening. I don’t know what it means. That is part of why I wanted to come to England. It seems to me somehow the answers must be over here.”

Tom was feeling uncomfortable again and was wondering if they could go back to the topic of Co-inherence. He touched Laura lightly on the arm and asked, “Would this be a good time for me to excuse myself?”

Laura thought a moment and then said, “No, that’s all right. You can stay if you want to. You have more right to be here than I do. You’re writing a book. I’m just having dreams.”

“Could you tell me something about these dreams?” asked Williams. He studied Laura’s face intently as he spoke, as if all his learning and wisdom were entirely hers for the asking. Laura paused to collect her thoughts and then explained: “There are certain dreams I’ve been having since I was a little girl. I have the usual dreams, the kind you forget two minutes after you wake up. But other dreams of mine come over and over, and they don’t even feel like dreams. They feel more like visions.”

“Can you describe what makes them feel that way?” asked Williams in the same quiet, earnest tone.

“It’s hard to say,” said Laura. She thought some more and then gave it a try: “I’m not much for movies, but perhaps this might help. When I watch a film, I’m looking at pictures on a screen. I’m always aware that I’m in the real world looking at something make-believe. But in my vision dreams, it is as if they are what is real and it’s me that’s make-believe.”

“And you remember the dreams?” asked Williams.

“Every single detail,” said Laura, “as far as I can make them out. They’re always just the same. A sleeping king with a lion at his feet. Some sort of crypt with strange writing on the wall. A Celtic cross as tall as a lamppost. An old village church with animals going in and out.”

“Do you have lots of these dreams?” asked Williams.

“No,” said Laura, “there are exactly five. Always the same ones. Some still, like a picture, others moving, like a film or a play. That’s why I wanted to come over here. It seems to me the answers are here somewhere.” Without waiting for what seemed to be the obvious next question, Laura continued: “The sleeping king with a lion at his feet. He never moves. Is he dead? Lying in state? But the crown and the flowing robes. I can’t imagine such a thing in America. And the village church. It’s not like anything from home.”

“But why cross the sea?” asked Williams. “Do you find the dreams disturbing? What do you hope to find?”

“I don’t find them disturbing—except for one,” answered Laura. “But they seem like parts of a puzzle that demands to be solved. Do these images say something about me? About my past? My own ancestors are from England, Quakers who were driven out by the Puritans. I hope this doesn’t sound too grandiose, but maybe what I hope to find here is a part of myself.”

“I get it,” said Tom, not quite getting it. “So when you read that passage in Descent into Hell about the young woman, it made you think of yourself.”

“More than you know!” answered Laura, pressing her hands together. “There’s one other dream I haven’t mentioned yet. But it’s something like the one in the novel.” Laura paused for several seconds and stared into the nearby fire as if waiting for the scene to appear before her eyes. Then she began speaking, softly and slowly in low even tones: “There has been a great battle. The dead and wounded are still lying on the trampled earth. Armed men on horseback are gathering up shaggy-headed warriors who have thrown down their weapons. One of the prisoners, a man with braided hair and beard, is dragged before the victorious general, who’s wearing a golden wreath and a silk tunic. The prisoner clasps his hands and pleads for mercy, but the general orders one of his captains to strike the prisoner down, right then and there. The captain steps forward and unsheathes his sword, but then sadly shakes his head. The leader raises his fist and screams out another order, but the officer refuses him again, taking off his own helmet and kneeling beside the shaggy-haired man. He sets his spear on the ground, crossing it with his sword. The two men bow their heads together, side by side, as the general shouts out one more time. The other soldiers close in on the two kneeling men and raise their swords for slaughter….”

Laura closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to watch and held them closed a long time. Then she opened her eyes, blinked, and looked around the room, as if awaking from a trance. Tom felt mesmerized himself and had nothing to say. But Williams was nodding his head, as if he had seen the vision too. Can you describe the surrounding terrain?” he asked.

“It’s in the mountains,” answered Laura. “Rugged country, with tall dark trees and patches of snow.”

“And the captain who disobeys?” asked Williams. “I wonder if he has darker skin than most of the other soldiers?”

“Yes, he does!” said Laura, her eyes widening. “How would you know that?”

“The whole scene sounds like the martyrdom of St. Maurice in the third century,” explained Williams. “He was a Roman general from north Africa, but also a Christian. He was executed by the Emperor Maximian because he refused to kill some Gaulish rebels who were fellow Christians. Some say his whole command, the Theban Legion, was martyred by the hundreds, or even thousands, because they wouldn’t bow to Roman gods or execute fellow Christians.”

“And where did all this supposedly take place?” asked Tom.

“In present-day Switzerland,” explained Williams. “The town of Saint Moritz is named in honor of Maurice.”

Laura’s eyes glowed, and she had a look of profound relief on her face. “I always had the feeling I was seeing something real,” she said, “not just my imagination. Maybe I’m not crazy after all.”

“Or maybe you read about it in a book,” said Tom, “and it just stuck in your unconscious.”

Laura tilted her head and considered this. “I suppose that’s possible,” she said. “But I would think I’d remember. I’ve read plenty of books in my time, and I’ve never had dreams about them like my vision-dreams.” Then her look of relief disappeared, as some new problem came into her mind. “But even if it all really happened once, why would I keep dreaming about it?”

Laura addressed this question directly to Charles Williams, almost as if she had forgotten Tom were there. Williams pondered the question, tapping his fingers on the table. “I wouldn’t know,” he said finally. “I wonder if you’re meant to pray for him, to help carry his burden?”

Tom had been perplexed at Williams’s lecture, but now he was simply astounded. He thought he simply must interject some sardonic remark, but the look on both Williams’s and Laura’s faces bade him keep silent.

There was a long pause in which no one seemed to have anything more to say. Finally, Williams glanced at his watch and stood up from his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve lost track of the time. I actually have a dinner engagement this evening with one of our authors at the University Press.” Turning to shake Tom’s hand, he said, “It was splendid meeting you. If I can be of any service in your research, don’t hesitate to call.” Tom nodded and offered his thanks. Laura lifted up her hand and, for a moment, Tom thought Mr. Williams was going to kiss it. But he simply gave her a firm shake and thanked her for coming to hear his lecture. “The privilege was all mine,” answered Laura enthusiastically. “And thank you for coming to talk with us. I simply can’t tell you how much this time has meant to me!” As Laura looked up at Mr. Williams, there was a softness in her eyes and a warmth in her smile that gave Tom a twinge inside, something akin to jealousy. Mr. Williams made a slight bow with his head, grabbed his overcoat from a nearby rack, and walked briskly out of the pub.

Laura began to rise as well. “I should be going too,” she said. “I’m glad we got to talk some more,” she added with a politeness that seemed perfunctory. “My Aunt Viv is going to wonder what’s become of me.”

“Could you stay just a minute?” asked Tom. Laura sat back down, on the edge of the chair, not really settling back into it.

“Listen, I realize we just met,” said Tom. “But I’ve decided to go over to Hertfordshire next week and have a look around.”

Laura gave a little nod, waiting to see where this was going.

“I get the impression you might want to come too. Have a look at Royston Cave perhaps.”

Laura nodded again noncommittally, but her nostrils flared involuntarily at the mention of that secret crypt.

“Listen, I’m going to be in Oxford for a few months,” explained Tom. “I’m also going to make some excursions out to some places I want to cover in my book. I could really use a research assistant.” Tom half expected a long string of excuses why Laura couldn’t do this, but she sat back further in the chair and thought about it.

“I might be interested,” she said. “I’d have to talk to Aunt Viv,” she added.

“I suppose she needs you around to look after her?” Tom asked.

Laura relaxed a little and shook her head. “That’s just the thing,” she explained. “Vivian is my mother’s younger sister. She’s barely over forty. And she’s got plenty to do here in Oxford, especially with the war on. She’s a trained nurse, so she already has a part-time job. And she has her Victory Garden, and her friends, and she’s very involved in her little church over here. My parents sent me over here to look over my ‘poor Aunt Viv,’ but poor Aunt Viv seems to think it’s her job to look after me!”

Laura laughed a little, and Tom laughed to see Laura laugh. “Do think about my offer,” he said. “I could really use the help. There are a lot more sites to explore than I expected. You could come with me if you wanted, travel around and see more of the country.”

Laura leaned forward, not quite fully in her seat again. “That’s a possibility,” she answered. “I really would like to see more over here than just Oxfordshire. And I know it sounds silly to you, but I do want to find out some more about these dreams of mine. You simply don’t know how much it means to me to find out that someone could make some sense of them!”

Tom nodded, though he still had no idea what to make of that earlier conversation.

“But just so we understand each other,” added Laura, lowering her voice. “I’d be happy to help with you with your research and maybe even do some traveling. But this is strictly a business arrangement.”

“Of course, I understand that,” said Tom, feeling both slightly disappointed and slightly insulted. “I really do need some help with my research. But if you wouldn’t feel comfortable….”

“Oh, I’d be comfortable, as long as everything is clear.” Laura hesitated a moment, then decided to add, “I have someone waiting for me back in the States.” She picked up her spoon again and started stirring it in her empty coffee cup.

“I’m glad to hear you’re not an orphan,” said Tom, trying to keep the conversation light.

Laura gave a quick smile and went on. “I have a young man waiting for me. Timothy Higgins. He’s in seminary.”

“I notice you don’t have an engagement ring,” said Tom matter of factly. Laura glanced at her left hand, as if checking to confirm Tom’s observation. “No, we’re not quite that far along. But we have an ‘understanding.’ We grew up in the same church back home in Pennsylvania. His parents have known my parents since before we both were born.”

“So, you’re saying it is an arranged marriage? Something to bring peace to warring factions perhaps?’

Laura laughed out loud and covered her mouth with her hand. “No, nothing like that. Nothing’s been arranged. Not a marriage. Not even an engagement. Just an understanding. I’m waiting for Timothy to finish seminary at Princeton. And he’s waiting for me to come back from England. Then we’ll see where things go from there.”

“Well, if I were Tim—”

“You are definitely not Tim!” Laura exclaimed. “And he goes by Timothy, not Tim.”

“Timothy. More biblical I suppose,” said Tom. After a pause, he added, “Now you made me forget what I was going to say.”

“Sorry for interrupting,” said Laura. “I don’t usually do that.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tom. “My friends back home tell me I am eminently interruptible.”

“In any case,” said Laura, “I’ll talk to my Aunt Viv about your offer. I might even drop in on Mr. Williams and get his advice too.”

“Really?” said Tom. “He’s very stimulating to listen to. But I wouldn’t count on him for any practical advice. He seems a bit airy to me.”

Laura’s lips tightened. “That wasn’t my impression at all. I can’t remember the last time I met someone who sees so deeply into things,” she said.

“Did you gather all that in?” said Tom. “Co-inherence or in-coherence or whatever that was?”

“Now you’re simply being unkind,” said Laura coolly.

Tom wished his mouth didn’t so often run ahead of his brain, and he tried to backtrack a few steps. “I don’t mean to offend,” he explained. “That was very nice of him to come share a drink with us. But I’ve just never met anyone like him before. All those weird notions of his. I don’t mean to judge, I guess I just don’t quite understand. Didn’t he seem the least bit odd to you? So wound up, so herky-jerky when he lectured, like a man-sized marionette.”

“I found him charming,” said Laura firmly. “Singular in his mannerisms, I agree. But I take him seriously if for no other reason than for the rare privilege of seeing that he takes me seriously.”

Tom nodded in silent acknowledgment, congratulating himself inwardly that for once his brain was one step ahead of his mouth.