Looking for the King. David C. Downing

mouth agape and eyes wide behind those spectacles, his face a mixture of surprise, wonder, and probably envy.

      Tom pushed open the door and went out onto Broad Street, enjoying not only his well-staged exit, but also the crystalline April sky above and classic elegance of the Sheldonian Theater, just across the street. Stepping briskly through traffic of bicycles and black sedans, Tom crossed over to the Clarendon Building, originally the home of Oxford University Press. He looked up momentarily as he walked by. There were nine gigantic lead statues posted around the rim of its roof, each representing one of the muses. Rumor had it that some of them were coming loose from their base, so passersby had developed a habit of glancing up, just in case one of the immortal sisters chose that moment to come crashing to earth like a Luftwaffe bomb.

      Tom continued east down Broad Street, crossed Catte Street, “street of the mouse catchers,” and continued on to Holywell. Taking a right at Bath Place, which seemed hardly more than an alley, Tom wondered if he made a wrong turn when the lane ended abruptly after half a block. But then he saw a low door there, framed in black timbers, and the words “Turf Tavern” half hidden behind a burst of blossoms from hanging flowerboxes. Tom stepped inside and found a low-ceilinged room with rough-hewn rock walls and a scuffed wooden floor. He had no trouble believing that this was the oldest pub in Oxford, going back to Chaucer’s time. It was full of young people, though, mostly fashionably dressed men with pomaded hair.

      Tom scanned the crowded room until he saw a slender, silver-haired gentleman sitting alone at a table, reading a leather-bound book. He made his way over to the table and asked diffidently, “Excuse me. Professor Lewis?” The older man looked up with momentary bewilderment, then pointed without a word to a back corner of the room. Tom looked over and saw another man sitting alone, a portly, ruddy-cheeked man with thinning hair, wrinkled baggy pants and an ill-fitting coat. He looked more like a country farmer who’d stopped in for a ploughman’s lunch than a celebrated man of letters. Tom glanced down again at the distinguished-looking gentleman to see if there was some mistake, but the other man just offered a thin-lipped smile and nodded his head in confirmation.

      Tom worked his way past several more tables and approached the second man, who was holding a book called Diary of an Old Soul in one hand and a pint of cider in the other. “Excuse me. Professor Lewis?” he tried again. “Yes, yes,” said the other genially, rising to shake hands. “And you must be McCord,” he added in a deep resonant voice, gesturing at the empty chair across the table. Tom took a seat, stared across the table at that round, friendly face, the broad forehead and the big, liquid eyes. Suddenly Tom discovered that he had completely forgotten how to make words come out of his mouth.

      “So, you’ve come over from America, I understand?” said Lewis.

      All the words in the English language suddenly vied for Tom’s tongue, and he wanted to say, “California” and “research grant” and “Arthurian romance” and “great admirer of your work” all at once. Finally, he mustered all his verbal powers and answered, “Yes, that’s right.” He paused for several seconds, until subjects and verbs started finding each other in his brain, and then he continued: “I’m over here working on a book. I don’t know if you recall my letter, but I did my master’s thesis on Arthurian literature and now I’m doing some follow-up research.”

      “Yes,” answered Lewis, “I recall the letter. Reality and romance. From history to legend to literature. That sort of thing. I think I recommended Collingwood? And perhaps Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf?

      “Yes, sir. Both very helpful. I’m over here visiting the traditional Arthur sites. I’m looking for evidence of actual historical figure, a Romanized Celt who kept the Saxons out of the west country.”

      The two men ordered lunch, a plate of fish and chips for each, with a pint of bitter for Tom and another cider for Lewis. Lewis briefly bowed his head before taking a bite, then returned to their topic: “So you’ve been studying King Arthur at university, have you?”

      “Yes, sir. I just finished my master’s at UCLA.”

      Lewis had a puzzled look, so Tom went on: “That’s the University of California. In Los Angeles.”

      “Ah,” said Lewis, with a sudden look of recognition. “California. Where they have all the sunshine.”

      Tom nodded.

      “I’m more of a polar bear myself. I prefer a fine winter’s day to the blaze of summer.”

      “In the States, people move clear across the country for our balmy skies,” said Tom.

      Lewis pondered this a moment. “I wouldn’t think of moving somewhere just for the climate,” he said. “Unless I were a vegetable. Before I moved house to a new city, I’d want to know about the sort of people I’d meet there. And the beauty of the landscape.”

      “You’d get conflicting opinions on both those topics about California,” said Tom. “I grew up in a little town called Ventura. I just went to UCLA because it was fairly close to home.”

      “And what subjects did you choose for your examinations?” asked Lewis.

      “Well,” explained Tom, “we don’t do things the same way over in the States as you do here. Instead of tutoring and comprehensive exams, we sign up for several classes every semester. Each time you earn a passing grade in a course, you are awarded credits. Then once you’ve accumulated enough credits, you earn a bachelor’s degree.”

      “Oh, yes, that’s right,” said Lewis, nibbling on piece of fried haddock. “I believe I’ve had that explained to me before. I don’t think it’s a system that would suit me. It sounds like someone judging a horse not by its speed or strength, but by how many oats you’ve tried to feed it.”

      Tom grinned at the analogy. “Yes, that’s about how it feels from the horse’s point of view as well.”

      “And what about the master’s degree?” asked Lewis. “More provender?”

      “Well, more coursework. But I did write a master’s thesis. I called it Arthur through the Ages.’ Nothing terribly original. Just an overview of what you might call the many layers of Arthurian legend.”

      Lewis kept eating and kept listening, so Tom assumed he wanted to hear more: “At the bottom layer, a Celtic commander who kept the Saxons at bay. Then the Welsh bards and chroniclers, turning Arthur into a world conqueror and adding the wizard Merlin to his retinue. Then the French romancers, less interested in the knights as warriors than as lovers. Lancelot moves to center stage, his adventures involving less armor and more amour, you might say.”

      Tom paused, hoping to detect an appreciative smile on Lewis’s face. But the older man just kept eating, so Tom continued: “Finally, the Grail quest stories and the newest character, Galahad the Good.”

      “Yes, it’s true,” said Lewis, finishing off a chip and licking his fingers, again reminding Tom more of a country farmer than an Oxford don. “Even in a fairly late version like Malory’s, you can see Christian characters like Arthur and Galahad, mixing with the almost druidical Merlin. It looks like Britain in that twilight era between the Romans and Saxons. For me, Arthurian tradition is less like layers, and more like a cathedral—the work of many hands over many generations.”

      Not waiting for the inevitable question, Tom decided to explain: “I’m over here working on a book, a guide for visitors who want to visit the most famous Arthurian sites for themselves.” Lewis looked up quizzically, and Tom thought he saw another inevitable question coming. “I suppose you must think I’m nuts—uh, daft, I guess you would say—for coming over here to research a book when there’s a war on.”

      “On the contrary,” said Lewis, “I quite understand. And I approve. War does not create fundamentally new conditions. It simply underscores the permanent human condition. There is really no such thing as ‘normal life.’ If you’d actually lived in past eras that we think of