Looking for the King. David C. Downing

it’s just human nature. War, terrible as it is, is not an infinite thing. It cannot absorb the full attention of the human soul. Soldiers read novels in the trenches. Old men propound new mathematical theories in besieged cities. Just a few months ago, I saw a student of mine right here in Oxford with a brightly colored hawk tethered to his wrist. Here is a young man who could be called into the army any day now. And yet his whole mind is focused on reviving the ancient art of falconry. I say, Blessings upon his head!”

      “I wish you’d been there when I was trying to explain this trip to my father!” exclaimed Tom. “But a moment ago,” he continued, “when I brought up my research over here, I thought I saw a skeptical look on your face.”

      “Oh, that wasn’t about the war,” answered Lewis. “I just wondered if you’d found what you were looking for. For me, the enchantment of the old romances lies in the literary artistry, not the local geography.”

      “I’m not sure I understand,” said Tom.

      “When I was about your age, I took a trip down to Tintagel—magical name!—where the old books say Arthur was born. The fierce waves tumbling against the rocky coast and the crumbling castle on the edge of a cliff were worthy of Layamon or Malory. But the old tin mines that scarred the landscape. The derelict farms with broken walls and gates off their hinges. Worst of all, right there by ‘Merlin’s Cave,’ as they call it, some blackguard, cursed by all the muses, has built a monstrosity called the King Arthur Hotel! It has cement walls, stamped to look like stonework, covered with an absurd miscellany of armor—a Highland shield next to a faux medieval breastplate, jostled by a helmet from Cromwell’s time. And right there in the main lounge you will find THE Round Table, of course, complete with all the knights’ names embossed in their proper places!”

      “Yes, I have seen some of that,” answered Tom. “I suppose it is inevitable wherever there’s a dollar—or a quid—to be made. But it can work the other way too. When I was down at Cadbury—really, it’s just a tall green mound ringed with ancient earthworks. But in my mind’s eye, I could see a stout timber palisade on the hilltop, a great gate swinging open, two hundred horsemen, with leather helmets and crosses on their shields, galloping out to fall upon a Saxon host. For me, the actual site didn’t betray my imagination. Rather the place was transfigured by it.”

      “Yes, yes,” I know exactly what you mean,” said Lewis, speaking for the first time with unfeigned enthusiasm. “When I was growing up, my family went on holiday to the Wicklow Mountains in the south of Ireland. As my brother and I were cycling around, the whole landscape seemed to me like something right out of Wagner. The entire time we were there, I kept expecting to see the fair Sieglinde just around the hill. Or I’d peer down into a crevice and wonder if I might see Fafnir the dragon guarding his horde. I loved nature for what it reminded me of before I learned to love it for itself.”

      Tom nodded in agreement. In that moment, they were not a distinguished, middle-aged professor and an eager young American sharing lunch in a pub. They were two men who knew exactly what the other was talking about. Tom leaned in a little and said, “Can I tell you something? When I was down in Cornwall, I also went to Bodmin Moor, to Dozmary Pool.”

      “Ah,” said Lewis, “the Lady of the Lake. Where Arthur received Excalibur.”

      “And where Sir Bedivere returned it, on Arthur’s strictest orders, as the king lay dying. Well, Dozmary is just a round pond on a flat heath, surrounded by reeds. You could almost throw a stone across it. I’m sure there are twenty lovelier scenes within an hour’s hike of the pool. But there is something eerie about the place, knowing what they say about it. I stood there on the edge, looking at slate-gray water under a leaden sky. And I just couldn’t help myself. I found a dead branch, about three feet long, and I heaved it into the pool, just to see what would happen. I couldn’t help but think of those lines:

      “So flash’d and fell the brand Excalibur;

      But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm

      Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful …”

      To Tom’s surprise, Lewis took up the verse, in his deep, booming voice:

      “And caught him by the hilt and brandish’d him

      Three times, and drew him under in the mere.”

      The two men looked at each other in a shock of mutual recognition. “You know Tennyson!” said Tom. “Idylls of the King. I’m afraid he’s fallen badly out of fashion.”

      “Oh, I have a pathological aversion to what is fashionable,” explained Lewis. “I think the poetry they publish nowadays will be known to literary historians as the ‘Whining and Mumbling Period.’”

      “And yet,” said Tom, looking down at his plate, “I suppose it would be a kind of compliment if later generations took any notice of you at all.”

      Lewis cocked his head slightly and kept listening, so Tom tried to explain: “I was in Blackwells this morning, all those rows and rows of books—including several of yours. I have to wonder what it would feel like to visit there again someday and see a handsome book on the shelf with my name on the spine.”

      Lewis smiled and nodded that he understood. “Oh, yes, that,” he said, “‘The House of Fame.’ When I was your age, I positively ached to take my place on Parnassus. I spent most of my twenties working on a book-length poem that I hoped would put me in the company of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Yeats.”

      “What happened?” asked Tom, leaning forward.

      “The worst possible fate!” answered Lewis, laughing to himself. “The poem was finally published, and no one took any notice!”

      “I would think that would just fuel your ambitions,” said Tom. “To try and write another book in hopes that, like Byron, you might wake up one day to find yourself famous.”

      Lewis laughed again with his great hearty laugh. “I suppose that was my first response,” he confessed. “But when I became a Christian a few years later, all that seemed to change. I ceased to want to be original, and just to do the best work I could. As for getting published, I think you’ll be surprised when your book comes out, as I have no doubt it will.”

      Tom wasn’t sure he understood, so he just kept listening.

      “There’s an itch to see your name in print,” continued Lewis. “You can hardly think of anything else. But once the book is published, you’ve scratched that itch and you find that nothing much has changed. The simple absence of an itch is not usually ranked among life’s great pleasures.”

      Tom thought about this as he sampled a bite of mushy peas, and quickly washed them down with a swallow of beer. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” he said, “until I see my book in print—if that day ever comes.” He paused a moment and then added. “Professor Lewis, can you think of any reason some Englishmen might resent this project of mine?”

      “I’m not sure what you mean,” said Lewis. “Perhaps they think Americans should be over here helping us fight the Nazis, not writing books.”

      “Yes, that topic did come up,” said Tom with a nod. “But there was something more. I was accosted by two louts down in Somerset. They seemed convinced that I was up to no good, that I had something more in mind than just looking for the historical Arthur.”

      “I wouldn’t know about that,” answered Lewis. He looked straight into Tom’s eyes, then leaned in and spoke barely above a whisper: “I do believe, though, that beyond our history, in the usual sense of the word, is another kind of history. A sort of ‘haunting,’ you might call it.”

      Tom leaned in, as if willing to hear more of the secret, and Lewis continued: “Behind the Arthurian story may be some true history, but not the kind you have in mind. Throughout the English past, there seems to be something else trying to break through—as it almost did in Arthur’s time. Something called ‘Britain’ seems forever haunted by something you might call ‘Logres.’”

      “Logres?”