Tuesday, January 7, 2020

The Sacred City


The New Jerusalem by Aidan Hart

*

Then, when the moment had come, the doors opened of their own accord, and in a beam of clear and crystal light the Grail procession entered the hall for the last time. The same white-clad women led the way, bearing the silver dish, the bleeding spear and the seven-branched candlestick. Behind them came the Grail Maiden herself, holding aloft the sacred vessel so that the faces of all those present were transfigured and made holy in its paradisal light.

The procession passed beneath the royal dais, where Galahad, Percivale and Bors were sitting with Pelles, the wounded king, and Nasciens, the Grail hermit. 'In the name of God, stay a moment,' cried Galahad, springing to his feet and jumping down the steps. He stood in front of the woman with the dish and held up his sword by the scabbard. The hilt, reflected in the light of the Grail, formed a cross of blazing, golden light. He began to walk forward. Nasciens, seeing this, signalled to Percivale and Bors, and they picked up the litter which bore the wounded king, one at each end, and followed the procession behind the Grail Maiden and the salvific light shining between her hands.

They wound their way through Castle Corbenek's corridors, chambers and moonlit spiral staircases. At the top of the topmost tower was the plain wooden door which led to the chapel of the Grail. Someone was waiting for them there at the altar, a tall man with short dark hair, dressed as a priest in a chasuble of blue and gold and swinging a thurifer of incense in wide circles around the sanctuary. He seemed familiar to them somehow, yet neither Bors nor Galahad nor Percivale could recall when and where they had met him.

'I am Prester John,' he told them. 'I am the voice of the Grail, the touch and sight and scent of the Grail, and the Grail itself.' And it was Prester John who said the Mass of the Grail that night and unveiled the lesser mysteries to the three Companions of Arthur who drank from the chalice.

After Galahad had healed King Pelles with a touch of the bleeding spear, Prester John said to him, 'You must go now to the sacred city of Sarras and lay down the Grail in the tabernacle of the Cathedral where it belongs. Leave before dawn. The ship and the Grail and the table of the Grail will be waiting for you.'

Next morning, while it was still dark, Galahad, Percivale and Bors set off from Corbenek. At the moment when Pelles was made whole the night before, the Wasteland surrounding the castle was renewed as well. As they walked, they heard the sound of running water all around and could literally feel the grass growing beneath their feet. Galahad rejoiced at the great restoration taking place, but part of him was downcast too, for he knew that the redemption of the Wasteland meant the dissolution of Logres, the fall of Arthur's kingdom and the postponement of the Parousia.

They beheld a ship with five white sails awaiting them at the quayside. In a little room below deck they beheld the Grail again, standing on top of a small, silver table. The ship set sail of its own volition, westward for seven days and nights, around the coast of Ireland and over the trenched waters of Broceliande. Galahad, Percivale and Bors needed neither food nor drink all this time, not even sleep. Simply standing in front of the Grail gave them all the replenishment they required and more.

The sun was warm and the wind fresh. A raucous colony of gulls, numberless as the stars in the sky, followed the ship on its voyage from east to west. Galahad stood in the prow, with Percivale and Bors close behind him on either side. He prayed in a long, melodious chant for all those soon to die in the deep schismatic war to come. He implored the Most High to forgive Lancelot and Guinevere their illicit love and to have mercy on King Arthur for his vanity and self-conceit. He asked that the black heart of Mordred might be softened and lightened and turned back towards the Divine. He prayed especially for Dindrane, the sister of Percivale, who had raised Galahad as a boy in the convent at Almesbury. She had poured out her blood, earlier in the Quest, to save the life of another, a lady who now, in the last candles of Logres, danced in the fading light to bring joy to her family and friends. Above all else, Galahad prayed for Logres itself - soon to be subsumed into Britain - that the country might be given a second chance, that in the fullness of time the Grail might come again, and that Albion's sacred precinct might fulfill its high calling as the site and cradle of Our Lord and Saviour's second coming.

Just after sunrise on the morning of the eighth day the ship drew in to the holy city of Sarras. The buildings shone like sapphire and topaz. Percivale, Galahad and Bors lifted up the table of the Grail and carried it through the golden-paved streets which led up to the Cathedral of All the Angels, overlooking the city from on high.

As they ascended, they saw a ship with a blue sail enter the harbour below. On the deck lay the body of Dindrane, arrayed with summer flowers, just as they had left her when they had pushed the boat out to sea after her dying promise to meet them once more in Sarras.

'See,' said Galahad to Percivale, 'she has kept her vow.'

Percivale nodded but made no reply. He was out of breath and struggling with the weight of the table. It had four legs and there were only three of them and it seemed to be getting heavier all the time.

They came at length upon a man with a withered leg begging beneath an archway. 'Friend,' said Galahd. 'Lend us your strength, for as you can see we are a man short.'

'Sir,' the beggar replied. 'I have no strength, for I am lame and halt and have not walked these past twenty years.'

'Look now upon the Grail,' commanded Galahad, 'and be strong again at once.'

And the beggar lifted up his eyes and looked upon the Grail, and in that moment his leg was straightened and he felt himself able to walk again and even to run. He took the fourth corner and bore the table with them into the great nave of the Cathedral, up to the high altar and the tabernacle, where Galahad lay the Grail down with reverence and solemnity.

Then Galahad, Percivale and Bors returned to the harbour and brought the body of Dindrane back up through the streets to the Cathedral and the Grail. By this time a large crowd of onlookers had gathered in the nave. There were bishops and priests there too, and they were happy to assist Galahad at the altar as he sung the funeral Mass for Dindrane, before committing her to burial in the crypt.

When the King of Sarras, Escorant, heard of these things, he was furious with the strangers for stealing the limelight and putting him in the shade. He accused them of spying and flung them into jail, where they remained for a year and a day, nourished once again by the Grail, which came to them every night in their cell, just as it had done for Joseph of Arimathea long ago when he was cast into prison after the Resurrection.

At the end of this time, Escorant began to feel his death draw near. His mind was opened and he saw clearly that these were three good men and that he had imprisoned them unjustly. So he released them and called them into his presence and begged their forgiveness, which Galahad, Percivale and Bors gladly gave.

Not long afterwards, Escorant died, and the people of Sarras asked Galahad to become king in his place. 'For Escorant was a usurper,' they said, 'and had no royal blood in him, while you are of the high lineage of Joseph of Arimathea.'

Galahad did not want to be king, but he accepted their offer as he was convinced that this was God's will for him. The morning after his coronation, in the small hours while men and women still slept, he made his way to the Cathedral as usual with Percivale and Bors for the offices of Vigils and Lauds. And Prester John was waiting for him there, standing at the high altar with the Holy Grail in his hands.

'Come, Galahad,' he said. 'At Carbonek you all three drank from the Grail but now, as King of Sarras and Priest of the Grail, the time has come for you to look into the sacred chalice and gaze upon the greater mysteries.'

Percivale and Bors knelt down at the foot of the altar, while Galahad walked up the steps to the tabernacle, where Prester John held out the Grail. Galahad genuflected, and Percivale and Bors saw him look inside the Grail. He turned to them then, and his face was like the sun, but in that instant he fell down headlong and tumbled down the steps.

Percivale cradled him in his arms and exchanged glances with Bors who shook his head sadly. He understood that no man, not even one so exalted as Galahad, could look into the white-hot core of living mystery and survive.

Galahad rested his eyes on Bors. 'Commend me to my father, Lancelot,' he said, 'when you return to the Island of the Mighty.' Then he laid back his head on Percivale's shoulder and closed his eyes. And at once the Cathedral was filled with a mighty rushing wind, and when Percivale and Bors looked up again, Prester John and the Grail had vanished and there was no-one there at all except themselves and the lifeless body of Galahad.

After these things, Percivale became a hermit and remained in Sarras for a year until he too met Prester John in the Cathedral one morning and accepted his invitation to look into the Grail. Out of friendship and loyalty, Bors had stayed with Percivale while he lived but he knew in his heart, as Galahad also had done, that the lines of his destiny would draw him eventually back to Britain. One afternoon he was walking along the quayside when he saw Prester John by the harbour wall. 'There is your ship,' he said. Bors turned to look and saw the same ship with five white sails which had brought them to Sarras two years previously. He wanted to ask Prester John if Logres had fallen yet but when he looked again he was gone.

So Bors boarded the ship, which carried him over Broceliande and around the coast of Ireland to Britain. And when he arrived at Portsmouth he met the king's poet, Taliessin, who told him of the death of King Arthur and the subsequent overthrow of Mordred. Constantine, Duke of Cornwall, ruled over Britain now, though there was little he could preserve of it from the marauding bands of Angles and Saxons pillaging the land at will.

So Bors and Taliessin took counsel in the upper room of an inn and talked of saving the things worth saving and sowing the seeds of a future national rebirth. Then they went to the church of Saint Martin and prayed, as Galahad had done before them, that the country might be given a second chance, that Logres might one day be restored, that the Grail might come again, and that those holy feet might walk once more on the rocks, cliff-faces and pilgrim pathways of Albion's sacred precinct.


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