The Spoils of Avalon Read online

  The Spoils of

  Avalon

  A John Singer Sargent /

  violet Paget Mystery

  Mary F. Burns

  Copyright © 2019 by Mary F. Burns

  Word by Word Press, San Francisco, CA 94132

  Previously published 2014 by Sand Hill Review Press

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Burns, Mary F.

  Portraits of an Artist / Mary F. Burns

  ISBN: 9781792052118

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Text Font: Garamond

  Titles Font: Perpetua Titling

  And did those feet in ancient time

  Walk upon England’s mountains green:

  And was the holy Lamb of God,

  On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

  And did the Countenance Divine,

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

  And was Jerusalem builded here,

  Among these dark Satanic Mills?

  Bring me my Bow of burning gold;

  Bring me my Arrows of desire:

  Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

  Bring me my Chariot of fire!

  I will not cease from Mental Fight,

  Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:

  Till we have built Jerusalem,

  In England’s green & pleasant Land

  ―from “Milton A Poem”

  by William Blake, 1808

  This poem by Blake was inspired by the apocryphal legend that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury (also known as the Isle of Avalon) and laid the foundations of a church in the countryside that had long been a sacred site of the Celtic peoples.

   P r o l o g u e 

  Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only one who solves mysteries, you know. In our youth, I and my friend Scamps—more formally known as John Singer Sargent—engaged in a fair amount of sleuthing ourselves. A decent respect for the secret foibles and follies of the often well-known subjects of our detective work, however, has kept me from publishing any of these tales of deduction. But the principals are all dead now, including alas! my dear Scamps, buried just last year in Brookwood. So perhaps the time has come to let the larger world know there is more than one brilliant mind able to delve into the mysteries of the human heart, and bring order back from chaos and distress.

  Modesty restrains me from naming the one who wields the Sherlockian mind, but let me just say, Scamps made an excellent Watson. Nonetheless, as a detecting duo, we were extremely well-suited—he was observant with an artist’s eye for detail as well as the nuances of mood and tone, whereas I noticed things out of restless curiosity and, I must say, a suspicious nature attuned to finding fault. Between us, very little occurred without our noting and remembering it.

  I shall start with our first case, which I have titled The Spoils of Avalon. Oh, and my reference above to follies and foibles? I meant to say—murder.

  ―Violet Paget

  Villa Palmerino, Florence 1926

  1

  And so there grew great tracts of wilderness,

  Wherein the beast was ever more and more,

  But man was less and less, till Arthur came.

  –Idylls of the King

   14 July 1877 – London 

  Saturday

  John had arrived on the packet from Calais in time to catch the afternoon train up to London, and I was waiting for him, a cab at the ready, when he issued from the station, instantly recognizable amidst the flowing bustle of the herd, as he towered several inches above nearly everyone. I flung open the cab door and, leaning out precariously, called to him and waved.

  “John! John! Over here!”

  I hadn’t seen him for nearly a year, so I was startled—agreeably—to see he was now sporting a handsomely trimmed beard. He looked dashing.

  “I knew you would come, I just knew it,” I couldn’t help exclaiming as I reached out to him when he drew near. He carried a smallish leather valise in one hand and a cloth bag in the other, and was followed by a boy guiding a cart with the rest of his luggage.

  “Violet, old man, you look a treat!” He kissed me on both cheeks, then turned to oversee the disposition of his trunk and other bags. He tipped the boy handsomely and clambered into the carriage. He looked around at the cab, then out the window, grinning. He pulled at his cravat to loosen it slightly. “So good to be in London, even in July!”

  “Yes, it is the very tail end of the season,” I said. “Everyone is fleeing to the country. Settled?” When he nodded, I gave a sharp rap on the outside of the cab with my parasol, and we lurched off. The driver had already been given instructions as to our destination; I hoped he was intelligent enough to remember.

  John looked at me expectantly, and somewhat warily. “Are we about to flee to the country as well?”

  I saw no reason not to be forthright.

  “Yes,” I said, “you have indeed been summoned with that precise kind of journey in mind. Just as we always promised, so long ago—To come when called…” I started to recite our childhood pledge.

  “To fight for truth…” John took it up, and we completed it together.

  “To conquer with mercy, To die with honor.”

  The carriage jolted and bounced as it ran over a kerb, nearly throwing both of us to the floor. I rapped my parasol on the ceiling to let the driver know that was not appreciated. I turned back to John, who continued his queries.

  “Tell me, first,” he said. “How did you get away all on your own? No mother? No brother?”

  I laughed with delight. It was indeed a coup d’etat on my part, I own.

  “I’ve had a summons myself, you see,” I told him, “and we happened to be already here, in London, when the letter came—I’ll show you in a moment—but Matilda took ill over an infamously ignorant rejection of my poor brother’s poems, the third so far—and so, well, here I am—an almost emancipated woman. After all,” I added, “I will reach my majority in a matter of months.”

  “Four months to be exact,” John said, looking superior. “Ten months behind me, I beg to remind you.” He grinned. “So, where are we off to, and why?”

  I decided to let his remark on our relative ages go by—it was an old tale, and at this point, I really didn’t mind, as I had done when we were younger. I lifted my chin and addressed him grandly.

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, will you accompany me to the town of Brampton, in Cumberland?” At his uncertain look, I provided more geography. “It’s a little town near Carlisle, which is almost on the border with Scotland, above the Lake Country.”

  “Ah,” said John, nodding. He gave me a look that made me laugh again. “Do I have a choice?”

  “If you believe in free will, of course you have a choice,” I said. “But Mr. Darwin seems to have something to say on that issue or,” I quickly corrected myself, “so say his followers, who have misinterpreted and allegorized his scientific observations into a cauldron of anthropomorphized, naturalistic nonsense that merely encourages the war-lust with which this country seethes.”

  John stared at me, a smile slowly curving his lips. “You always use ten words—ten big words—where one or two will do, my dear Violet. What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Survival of the fittest, and all that rubbish into which people are turning perfectly understandable science! Oh, and South Africa
of course! And then there’s the Russo-Turkish War which I can tell the Cabinet are just itching to get involved in—” I broke off at the look on his face. “I beg your pardon, I know it isn’t the sort of thing to which you pay much attention.”

  The cab stopped abruptly, and John stuck his head out the window. “We’re going to White’s, aren’t we?” he called to me, and when I answered in the affirmative, he drew his head back in. “Not there yet.” He looked at me a touch impatiently, and I took the hint.

  “All right,” I said. “Here’s what our mission is all about.” I took a small, leather-bound and well-thumbed book from my reticule and handed it to John. He looked at the publication date.

  “Seventeen twenty-five! Where did you get this?” I noted with approval that he handled the little volume with great care, turning the pages with a delicate touch. “The Abbey of Glaston,” he read aloud from the title page. “Being a Speculation Upon the Whereabouts of its Ancient Library, Sacred Relicks and Arthurian Artifacts, by the Right Reverend William Crooklay Chaffee.” He looked at me inquiringly. “Have you become a devotée of the King who was once and shall come again?”

  “Do you recall,” I said, ignoring his last query, “a dear, older clergyman, an unlikely friend of my mother’s, who used to show up at our digs on odd occasions?”

  John thought a moment. “Round face, clean-shaven, shaggy eyebrows, bald spot circled by brown curls, unruly for a clergyman, I always thought—I sketched him once, didn’t I?”

  I waved my hand at him. “Whom did you not sketch, at any given moment? But yes, I believe you did. Do you recall his name?”

  “Is this a test of my memory, madame?” John glared at me, then laughed. “I’ll show you—yes, I do recall—Rev. Cricket or, no, wait, Crickley, that’s it!” He was smug.

  “Ah, but even more to the point, his full name—Reverend Thornton Chaffee Crickley, former Vicar of St. Albans in Carlisle, now retired scholar and gentleman,” I said. John glanced back at the title page and nodded his instant comprehension.

  “Yes,” I said. “My old friend is the devotée, as you say, and has long taken a scholarly as well as—how shall I put it—spiritual interest in the legends of Arthur and the great ruined Abbey of Glastonbury, where, it is said, Arthur and Guinevere were buried, their bones having been found in 1183 or thereabouts, interred at a great depth inside a massive hollow trunk of an oak tree in the Abbey graveyard.”

  “Ah,” said John. “So much for coming again. But, why is it now in your possession,” he asked, “instead of the good Reverend’s?”

  “Of that I am not quite sure,” I said, shaking my head. I took a folded bit of paper from a small note book I always carry with me, and handed it to him. “This came with the book.”

  John scanned it quickly, then read it aloud in amazement.

  Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!

  A young man will be wiser by and by;

  An old man’s wit may wander ere he die.

  Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!

  And truth is this to me, and that to thee;

  And truth or clothed or naked let it be.

  Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows:

  Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?

  From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

  Should anything happen to me, my dear girl, be sure to guard this book most carefully. Trust no one.

  Yours most fondly, Uncle Chaffee

  “Good grief!” John said. “What on earth can he mean? Is he in some kind of danger? And this verse—it sounds familiar somehow.”

  “I believe it’s from Idylls of the King—something Merlin says—but I’d have to look it up,” I said. “As for his ending lines, they are indeed very troubling.” I mused, chewing a bit on my lower lip, a very bad habit, my mother tells me, so unladylike. “It isn’t a mere allusion to growing old and dying in the course of time, clearly, and besides, my dear friend is a hale and hearty sixty-four. No,” I said, taking the note back, “it’s something very serious, and possibly imminent.”

  John paged idly through the little book again. “There seem to be a great many pencilled notes in the margins, hard to read. Latin, looks like. Have you made out any of them?”

  I shook my head. “There hasn’t been time—and I thought to ask him first.”

  “It isn’t exactly a summons, that note,” John said. “I mean, he doesn’t ask you to come, now does he?”

  “True,” I replied. “But with such a menacing conditional, I could hardly not get myself up there as soon as possible. I’ve sent him a note—he’ll be expecting us.”

  “Us! So sure of me, were you, that you said I’d come too?”

  “Of course, my dear twin!” I rejoined, smiling, and received an affectionate glance in return. John and I had called each other “twin” since childhood, much to the amusement of our respective families, so dissimilar were our looks—but there was so much resemblance of quick feeling and understanding between us, that it just seemed natural to us to be intimately connected, as from birth.

  “But that ‘Trust no one’,” John said, frowning. “What do you suppose he means by that?”

  “I don’t know—it’s not as if I even know anyone in Brampton—and I presume he could hardly mean I shouldn’t trust anyone here, for instance, or elsewhere in the world, so it must refer to someone we’re likely to encounter up there—someone I expect he’ll enlighten us about when we get to Brampton.”

  “Brampton it is, then!” John said. The carriage jerked to a halt, and he looked out the window. “And here we are at White’s! A good meal, a lovely sleep, then off we’ll go, at first light!”

  I always loved his prompt enthusiasm for an adventure—and my intuition told me that we would have need of all the energy and optimism we could muster between us for this one.

  2

  For many a petty king ere Arthur came

  Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war

  Each upon other, wasted all the land;

  And still from time to time the heathen host

  Swarmed overseas, and harried what was left.

  –Idylls of the King

   18 March 1539 

  Glastonbury abbey

  Feast of St. Edward King and Martyr

  The cold rains and harsh winds of March did little to soothe the heart of Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury, during these last few weeks before Easter, the holiest time of the year, and he felt in sore need of soothing. He pushed aside a pile of curling parchment on his desk—missives from other abbots, the ink itself dark with gloom and the threat of dissolution. The very word was ominous—how could centuries of prayer and scholarship, of healing and miracles—be dissolved?

  Henry! How could he, he that had been Defender of the Faith? And after all, after all, the Abbot had signed the deed of Parliament, to his shame, acknowledging Henry’s supremacy as Lord of the Land and Supreme Head of the Church in England. What more did the man want?

  Abbot Whiting rose from the wooden board that served as both desk and dining table, hoping that physical movement would calm the ceaseless drumming in his head. It had been three years since the regulation had passed requiring all religious superiors to remain “strictly enclosed,” cutting him off from the world outside the monastery, and even from the daily life of his brethren. He’d warned the brothers and priests to lay low, be humble, act nothing untoward, say nothing but blessings for the king. But now, even as the aweful Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter morn drew near, the greater monasteries of Holy Mother Church were being destroyed, as had the lesser ones in the past few years—the nuns and monks dispersed through the realm, penniless and homeless or worse, executed as traitors if they resisted.

  He walked heavily to the window that faced the graveyard, with its soft, swelling mounds of grass, some more ancient than any building on the land, as old as the trees and the water in the meadows. Oh, to lie at rest, at last, to h
ave no more of this worldly argument, this vanity of power. He had reached his seventy-eighth year, and thought that, perhaps, his Creator would have let him go in peace before now. Thy will be done—his heart sounded the refrain to counter the weariness of his flesh. He sighed deeply, and the walls of the great church, visible through the spring mist, wavered before his gaze. This holy and beloved place, this sacred Avalon that housed the bones of Arthur and Edmund, Patrick, Dunstan—kings and saints of Wales and England and Ireland—how long would it stand?

  Would Henry dare raise his arm against Glastonbury Abbey, second only in wealth and scholarship to Westminster, first in ancient holiness? Would not the stones themselves shout in protest, and rain down vengeance upon this king, this Tudor brute, who put himself above the Lord?

  The Abbot’s fists clenched, and he brought his right hand down hard on the stone of the windowsill. No! Henry’s greed and madness—yes, madness—would not be triumphant in the sacred halls of Glastonbury, neither over the gold and silver of chalice and cross, nor the precious knowledge of the ancients inscribed on vellum and parchment. Nor those other, still secret and sacred objects … These he shall not have.

  The Abbot sagged against the wall of stone, and dropped to his knees. He whispered into his clasped hands, and swore a great oath.

  He knew it would cost him his life.

  As he knelt in prayer and anguish, a soft stirring beside him brought him back to himself. A young monk of the Abbey, who had taken the name Arthur Joseph after the two greatest legends of the place, had come to kneel beside him, his head bent in prayer over his clasped hands. Arthur had been assigned by the Prior to keep company with the aging Abbot, and slept in a little alcove in a far corner of the chamber. He was a small lad for his sixteen years, but strong, and had lived with the monks for the last four.