Beyond the Ruins (I)

Didsbury Station in 1981. Photo by Keith Hayward - www.disused-stations.org.uk

*

I'm not sure, objectively speaking, how true this account is. I admit that I would like it to be true. But there is good reason, I think, to trust these words, now more than ever in this time of fear and dislocation. The story rings true today in a way that wasn't always possible under the former dispensation. It often seemed like wishful thinking then - the product of an overheated childhood imagination - too much Narnia, Weirdstone of Brisingamen, etc. But when, as now, reality bites and strips us of our worldly securities, it makes a mockery of modernity and rationalistic creeds and brings a mythic understanding of the cosmos and our place in it to the fore.

The same goes for Didsbury, the South Manchester suburb where these events unfolded in March 1981. It has become highly gentrified in recent times, with old-school locals like myself increasingly priced out. I live just south of Llandudno now and work in Bangor. There's more space here and less pretentiousness and hype. I've sensed a certain flimsiness in the air on my last few trips back home, a subservience to the ephemeral and a complete immersion in the passing moment. It's different in North Wales. Life feels more grounded here, rooted in a deep and ancient, if largely latent, tradition, with time and space to dream, imagine, and tune in to what is real and true.

Didsbury felt like this too when I was a boy. In those days, every patch of available land had not yet been built on. There were quiet places, zones of peace and freedom, such as the two sets of ruins we had at that time. The first, where this story begins, was the old railway station, just behind the clock tower. You'd never know it had been there now. The debris was cleared away decades ago and the area covered over with cafés and bars - all closed at the time of writing. The tram line to town, completed in 2013, runs behind these premises now. Before my time it had been a prominent train route to Manchester Central Station (now Manchester Convention Centre), which closed to passengers in 1967 and to freight in 1970, sacrificed, as were many lines at that time, to the tin gods of rationalisation and restructuring. When we started playing there, about seven years later, most of the station was still intact, though bricks lay pell-mell on the floor, weeds ran rampant between the flags, and ivy had colonised more than half the walls. The platform was dilapidated but still walkable. The track itself, however, was wild and overgrown, almost completely unrecognisable as a train line.

It seems incredible now, looking back, that there was no security around the site. Anyone could go in and out at any time. There was a bit of graffiti on the walls - football related stuff mainly - and the odd empty beer can and cigarette dimp, but whenever we were there, after school or during the holidays, there was never anyone else about. Sometimes I'd go on my own and walk around or just sit on the ground and think or read or write. At other times, along with my friends, we'd explore the brick-strewn interior, trying to work out which had been the waiting room, which the ticket office, and so forth. Often we'd play hide and seek, and it was during the course of this game, mid-way between my tenth and eleventh birthdays, that the coin came.

I was the seeker, I recall, facing the wall and counting to twenty. But when I turned around I didn't shout, 'coming ready or not', but remained silent, spellbound by the afternoon sunlight slanting through the gaps that had once been windows. I thought at first that the coin on the ground belonged to a sunbeam, like the bright tail at the end of a comet. It was only when the light outside dimmed for a moment, as a stray cloud hid the sun, that I saw it as a real, distinctive object. There was something insistent about it, as if it was calling me - demanding my attention - so I crouched down cautiously and picked it up. It was about the size of a £2 coin and had the same golden sheen. But this brightness wasn't uniform. Parts of the coin were dull and worn. 'Mottled' would be the best description. But I could see the images on both sides clearly enough. The one I was looking at was a man on a throne, with a book in his left hand, a crown on his head, and his right hand raised in blessing. His face was young - beardless anyway - and there were lines etched into the metal around him, arrowing out in a circle.

On the other side, set in profile, was a woman's head, gazing out from right to left. She had an ageless look, neither young nor old, but somehow both. There were many nuns in Didsbury when I was young, and I recognised her by her veil. But it was her face that commanded my attention. I sensed a certain sovereignty in her expression - something in the set of the jaw - stately, high and regal. Faith too, of course, not just in the headdress but also in the lips, slightly parted and poised to preach the Gospel. But what compelled me most was the warmth and tenderness I perceived in the one eye I could see - moist with tears and shining with a depth of feeling which the engraver had done extraordinarily well to capture. I had no idea if this charged and soulful love was intended for the world at large, a particular group of people, or just one person. That was irrelevant. The woman I was looking at was a representative of truth - an incarnation of truth - a presence and a witness. That was what mattered. I was being asked to follow her in some way. She was someone, in one sense or another, who I needed to be with.

A rustling from behind a mildewed wall disturbed my meditation. My friends were growing restless. The cloud dispersed and the light shone down again, warming my hands and face and changing the glint of the coin from gold to gleaming white. And I was happy in that moment - relieved, even as a ten year old boy, of burdens I never knew I had.

I slipped the coin into my pocket.

'Coming,' I shouted. 'Ready or not.'

And the game resumed.

The First and the Last - 'That Hideous Strength' Unveiled (III)

The fire of grace, kindled in the hearts of Christians by the Holy Spirit, makes them shine like tapers before the Son of God.

Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church

*

There was little speech between Ransom and Jane on the journey back. It seemed somehow superfluous after their meeting with the Hidden King.

They sat facing each other on the blue seats and communicated, when they felt the need, by gesture and glance. The circlet and orb were beside them still, but the guards had disappeared. They had accompanied them as far as the underground station near Mount Kailas. There, Ransom and Jane had handed over their winter clothes and boarded the train alone. Jane fell asleep immediately, and that was why she later wondered if it had all been a dream. She could never explain, for as long as she lived, why she could only recall departing from Tibet and not arriving there.

'It is a mystery,' said the Director. 'It is all mystery. How long have we been on this train, for instance? It only seems an hour or so since we left the King, yet we are nearer home than you might think. Almost there, in fact. Time works differently in the deep places, Mrs. Studdock. It was mid-afternoon when we met at St. Anne's-on-the-Hill, it was early morning in Tibet, and the sun is now setting on the Gwynedd coast, where we will set foot shortly. See, we are slowing down. Arthur awaits us.'

There were no signs at this station, just a stone staircase leading up from the platform, then a dim corridor, then another set of stairs. Jane saw the sunlight splashing on the steps as the smell of the sea hit her from above - bracing, tonic, revivifying. She emerged into the light between two tall rocks and, with the Director beside her, stepped out onto a sandy beach speckled with brown and white pebbles. The air was sharp and keen. The harsh cries of sea birds echoed and resounded, while the sun - a raging red ball - dropped reluctantly into the West in front of them. The beach sloped down to a green and pale-blue sea, waves bouncing and splashing against a line of big cliffs, curving away to the left. 'Let us stand and wait,' said Ransom. 'The King is at hand.'

At these words, a ship with white sails appeared from behind the cliffs, then turned and approached the bay. Two banners were draped over her side - a golden sun on a field of deep azure, and a crowned and rampant lion rearing up in a shock of red and silver.

The ship docked. Men and women in brightly coloured clothes - about twenty of them as far as Jane could see - disembarked, tied their banners to flagpoles, and walked steadily forward towards Ransom and Jane. The man standing front and centre - clearly their leader - commanded Jane's attention. He was dressed in red and blue, and his hair and beard were brown, flecked here and there with grey. He held a bronze spear in his left hand with a red tip, and the jewelled hilt of a sword flashed emerald green on his left hip.

The nerves and excitement that had struck her so hard when approaching the Chakravatin were alive in her stomach again. But now it was the other way around. This King was approaching her. Overcome by emotion and awe, she was about to bow down, but then he surprised her by not only bowing but kneeling on the sand before Ransom and herself. The setting sun behind him framed his face in a flaming halo, and his eyes were moist with tears. He looked up at Ransom, who handed him the Orb. Arthur took it in his left hand and gazed at it with love, as if it was the most precious gem on Earth. Then he turned to Jane, and their eyes met. He lowered his head and Jane knew what she had to do. She was no longer nervous. Her hands were steady and her mind crystal clear.

She crowned the King with the circlet, and sunlight glinted on gold as it fitted smoothly and naturally over his head, like it had always been there. Then Jane saw a woman she had not noticed before step slightly away from the Companions gathered behind the King. She looked very much like Jane herself - long dark hair, green eyes, oval face. In her right hand was an ivory horn, which she raised to her lips. She blew a long note, like a summons or a clarion call, and Jane felt that the natural world had ceased its round of activity and was listening intently. The gulls had fallen silent and the sun itself seemed to pause in its descent towards the underworld.

Then the King stood up, bowed to Ransom and Jane, turned, and walked back slowly with his Companions towards the ship. The world began to turn again, but Ransom and Jane stayed where they were until both the ship and the sun had vanished and the stars were shining above. Then they left that place and headed back to the rocks.

'Why did you bring me today, Sir?' asked Jane, remembering the question she had intended to ask on the way to Tibet.

'The High Powers told me to, before I even saw you. They did not tell me why. I can only imagine that you have some greater role to play, otherwise they would not have prompted me this way.'

Jane made no response. She let his words take root in her heart. Then a voice called her from behind, and she knew the voice instantly, even though she could not have said where and when she had heard it before. She spun around. Ransom did the same. And there before them, resplendent in the darkness, was a man in white and gold who burned and glowed with a light so fierce that Jane was astonished that her eyes could bear it. His hair was white as wool and his eyes and feet like molten brass. This time she did bow low, and more than that, fell down prostrate on the sand. She felt Him close by. 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' He said. 'The first and the last. Have no fear.' And He laid his hands upon her, and such a wave of goodness and power coursed through her that she knew that whatever life threw at her in the future she could never succumb to despair. The reality and strength of His presence was more solid and enduring than any evil she might encounter.

Jane thought He had finished speaking, but she was wrong. 'The horn you heard this evening,' He continued, 'has blown once before, at the awakening of Arthur and his Companions. It will sound once more on the eve of the second Battle of Britain, when Arthur will call my followers to his side. The horn will be blown by the last of the Pendragons and, if you will, you shall be the mother of that Pendragon. Do you wish it to be so? It is no easy path.'

Oddly enough, Jane was not at all astounded by this revelation. It felt like the most natural and obvious thing in the world, and her answer was unequivocal. 'I do wish it,' she said. 'Because you will be there, and wherever you are, I will be too.'

Then, as if a jar of holy oil had been poured over her head, she felt the stillness, peace and joy that only the Most High can bring flow down through every atom of her being.

'It is well done,' He said. 'Urendi Maleldil, Jane.'

Just as Jane had sensed when He had come to her, so she knew when he had left. She scrambled to her feet and looked around for Ransom to tell him the good news. Then she saw him talking with Our Lord by the rocks. They looked almost like equals, for the same transfiguring light blazed forth from Ransom too. Dazzled, Jane shielded her eyes with her hand, and when she put it down again Ransom was alone and walking towards her, smiling from ear to ear. His apperance was altered. He had changed and grown - still what he was before but much more so now - so noble, lordly and royal that Jane forgot her own story and stood there speechless.

'Well,' he said. 'I see I was mistaken. I promised you two kings, and now Maleldil himself has blessed us with His presence. That makes three.'

Then the string of Jane's tongue was loosened and this is what came out, 'No, sir. Not three kings but four, for you are a monarch yourself now - not a symbolic or an archetypal ruler, but a true sovereign - a master of the inner and the outer worlds. The real thing.'

'You too, you too,' replied Ransom. 'You are a queen as well.' This time Jane was astounded, but what she could not see was that the Divine light making Ransom's face shine like the sun had enveloped her too and that they had both become living temples of that uncreated light, which shone before the beginning of the world, shines now, and will shine on after the end.

The light cast by Jane and the Director was seen all through the Field of Arbol that night and there was much rejoicing in Deep Heaven from Ransom's masters, those High Powers that sit in Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the Moon and  Sun. They celebrated the great affirmation - the Fiat - Jane had made, and gave thanks to Maleldil through a solemn liturgy for the seeds of restoration He had planted through his servants that day in the deep and hidden places of Thulcandra, the Silent Planet.

The First and the Last - 'That Hideous Strength' Unveiled (II)

Nicholas Roerich, Path to Kailas (1932)

*

The train pulled away from the platform and disappeared into a long, apparently endless tunnel. The Director and Jane sat facing each other in the brightly-lit carriage. She turned and looked out of the window, but there was nothing to see in the darkness save her own reflection - long black hair and jade-green eyes - staring back at her. The seats were long and designed for many more passengers, but as they were the only people on board there was plenty of space to stretch out and even, should they wish, recline.

The Director laid his orb gently down beside him on the seat's blue upholstery and Jane did the same with her circlet. She glanced up and saw that they were not in fact alone. Four men in brown uniforms were standing together by the doors further down the train. But they stood in watchful silence and paid no attention to the passengers. Then the Director spoke. 'Today,' he said, 'you will meet two kings and see and understand the wider frame in which our current struggle has its place.'

'Where are we going?' asked Jane.

'To Mount Kailas, the holiest mountain in Tibet, possibly the world. Let me tell you the story.'

Jane sat back, folded her arms, and listened attentively.

'My name is Elwin Ransom. I am, as I said before, the Pendragon. I have been chosen - I don't know why - by the High Powers who watch over our land, to guard the country's soul, nurture her spiritual potential, and prepare for the day when this inner essence breaks through and Britain is reborn as a light unto the nations. There are portraits of all the Pendragons, as you have seen, in the great hall beneath St. Anne's-on-the-Hill. Some were English sovereigns too - Alfred, Harold, Charles - but most have been - and are in my case - unknown to history.

'It is a lineage of great renown, stretching back to Joseph of Arimathea, who brought both Christianity and the Holy Grail to these shores. The Grail was removed to Sarras, the sacred city, fourteen hundred years ago, but the Powers have told me that, if God's will be done, it will come again in eighty years as a herald of Christ's return. But that, so far, has not been my main concern. My task, these past seven years, has been to watch and pray in the chapel of the stone beds we passed through earlier. That is where, until two October's ago, Arthur and his Companions slept their enchanted sleep. And I was the Pendragon called upon by Heaven to blow the Horn of Catraeth and break the spell.'

'Where are they now, Sir?'

'In a secret place, with the holy ones of this isle. They have much to remember, much to relearn, much to repent of. It will take a long time. Eighty years, as I say. That is why we are on this train today, just as my sister and I were twelve months ago. It is slow work, Mrs. Studdock. We cannot do it all at once, however much we might want to.'

The Director fell silent, and a solemn, brooding look came over his face like a cloud.

'But what has it to do with us?' probed Jane, leaning forward keenly, as if by coming closer to the Director she could understand him better.

'Nothing,' he replied, the cloud dispersing almost instantly. 'But it has everything to do with what we're bringing with us.' He pointed at the orb and the circlet. 'These are two of the four Royal Jewels of our island. The other two - the spear and the stone - are with Arthur now. I am - I was - their steward. I presented the spear to him on this very day - October the fourteenth - last year, while my sister, who has since departed this world, placed the stone beneath his feet.'

'Then why are we going to Tibet.'

'Because, before they can be handed to the deep King of Britain, they must first be blessed by the greatest king of all - God's vice-regent on Earth - the silent watcher, the still point, the secret overlord of the planet. He has many names. Some call him Melchizedeck, others the Chakravatin, others the King of the World. And you and I will receive his blessing too before we travel back to return the Jewels to Arthur. Then my work will be complete.'

'Are you the last Pendragon then?'

'No. There will be more - one or two maybe - but only until Arthur comes openly again. We will have served our purpose then. We prepared the way for his first coming, you see, from the time of Joseph onwards. Then we watched over the hidden springs of the land while he slept. Now Arthur has a second chance, and if he succeeds in raising up the Heavenly City in what will be a time of terror and woe, then he will take both the inner and the outer kingships unto himself. He will be sovereign over the visible and the invisible, and the stage will be set, as at his first advent, for the reappearance of the Grail and the return of Christ in glory.'

This was heady stuff, but what puzzled Jane most was her own role. Why had the Director brought her along? Why had he given her the circlet and not the stone? She was about to ask, but she felt suddenly weary and overwhelmed with it all and her head began to nod and soon she was fast asleep.

Ransom assured Jane afterwards that what followed was real and not a dream, but she could never be sure because what she remembered next was walking up a hill with the Director in a cold, mountainous country, not waking up on the train as she expected. She was wrapped in winter clothes - hat, scarf, coat, boots, gloves - none of which belonged to her. The Director was similarly clad. They were carrying their Jewels, and the men in brown uniforms were walking with them - two in front and two behind.

They pushed on, up the foothills of a snowy, powder-blue mountain towards an imposing edifice glowing pink in the first rays of the morning sun. They passed through the gates, continued across the courtyard and came to two gigantic doors, which swung open from the inside the moment the guards knocked. They were led along a wide, high-vaulted, stone-flagged corridor. The arched windows were aflame with stained glass images of angels, saints, and holy men and women, and the whole passage was bathed in a lavender glow cast by the dawn light streaming in through the glass.

It was a peaceful, soothing place. Jane wished the walk would go on forever. All stress and anxiety were banished from her mind. But the corridor ended at length and Jane gasped when she saw what it opened out onto - a vast cave of rock and stone, an indoor amphitheatre, with many people present and all eyes fastened on Jane and the Director.

The guards disappeared and melted into the crowd. Jane saw that the men and women gathered there were standing in the same watchful manner that she had observed in the guards on the train. Then she perceived that the men were standing on the left, and they were dressed in blue, and the women were standing on the right, and they were dressed in red. A path had been cleared between them for Jane and the Director to walk through and at the end, on a scarlet dais, was what Jane could only conceive of as a mighty presence sat on a throne of gold shot through with sapphire blue. She knew straightaway that this was the 'King of the World' Ransom had spoken of. She could not see his face, nor the outline of his body. He seemed to be made entirely of light - silver and white - yet there was warmth there too. As Jane came closer, she felt it more and more, until she was standing in front of him, the Director by her side.

Ransom bowed low, then placed the orb on the dais at the feet, as it were, of the great monarch. Jane, quivering with nerves and excitement, followed suit with the circlet. The King towered over both of them then, and in a swirl of light she saw tongues of silver fire hovering over the Jewels, then over Ransom's head, and then, most dreadfully and most wonderfully, over her own.

Jane closed her eyes and felt the light pour down. Peace and stillness rippled through her, but more than that, healing and redemption, and more than that again, knowledge of the pattern of the universe and her own part in it, her relationship with the planets - Mercury, Venus, Moon and Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - and beyond them the dance of the fixed stars, and past even that high point, the angelic intelligences who sustain the created order, the same Heavenly Powers, Jane realised, who hold authority over Ransom as Pendragon and the island of Britain as a land chosen by God for decisive events to unfold in.

Jane bowed her head and knew that from this moment on her true life - the life she was born to live - would begin. She was part of the pattern now, a participant in the Great Dance and a servant of the Silver Fire - a vessel and conduit for transformation and grace.

'Behold the handmaid of the Lord,' she said quietly. 'Be it done unto me according to thy word.'

The First and the Last - 'That Hideous Strength' Unveiled (I)

I heard this story from a monk who lives in a small community, whose humble house stands in the shadow of the mighty walls of Caenarfon Castle in North Wales. He didn't tell me anything about how he discovered the tale, only that what follows is 'what C.S. Lewis either forgot to include or deliberately left out.' 

The story is in three parts - Part 1 today, Part 2 on Wednesday April 1st, and Part 3 on Wednesday April 8th.

*

'The Director will see you now,' said Grace Ironwood. She held the door open as Jane walked in, then closed it softly behind her and left. Jane was alone with the Director. He stood up immediately and started to speak, but she was so taken aback by the power and grace emanating from him that she couldn't take in a word he was saying. He had a full golden beard, and shoulders and arms which looked strong enough to hold up the whole house. Then she saw that he had gone quiet and was waiting for her reply. 'I - I'm sorry, Sir,' she floundered. 'I didn't quite catch what you said.'

'I was saying, Mrs. Studdock, that these difficulties we are having with the Belbury people are not so important as we think.'

'But, Sir...'

The Director nodded. 'I know, I know. Your husband is their pawn and soon they hope to have the whole world likewise under their power. Hitler was the same. But I am the Pendragon, and I am compelled to take a longer view. As it was in the war which has just ended, so it is now, and so it will always be. Come now, let me show you.'

He walked across to a wall packed from floor to ceiling with books and pulled a pair of shelves apart, exposing an empty space lit faintly by a spark of orange light. 'Follow me,' he said, stepping forward into the half-light. Apprehensively, Jane obeyed. The Director pressed the orange light - a button, Jane saw - which turned to green as the shelves closed of their own accord and she felt the floor drop down beneath her. They were in a lift; rapidly descending. After a minute or so, it stopped. The Director punched the button with his thumb and the doors slid open.

Jane looked out onto something like a huge underground cathedral, with pillars and arches everywhere and a dazzling array of candles. The Director led her along a wide central aisle; and through these arches, as she walked, Jane saw richly-coloured mosaic portraits of crowned figures, both male and female, adorning the walls.

They came to a round chamber, its floor-space almost entirely taken up with beds fashioned out of grey stone. There were no bed-clothes as such, but each bed had its own carved pillow. Jane couldn't make head nor tail of it and stood there with her mouth open and her hands on her hips, trying to discern some kind of pattern. There was a bed in the centre, she observed, and the others seemed to radiate out from it like the spokes of a wheel. But the Director had kept on going, and had gone ahead of her into a smaller chamber. Jane caught the glimmer of candlelight on a rough stone altar and scrambled after him, ducking under the arch to catch up. Then she heard the unmistakeable sound of a train clattering past nearby. She gazed questioningly at the Director, who was heading back towards her, carrying two strange objects - a golden circlet in his left hand and a ball of green and blue crystal topped with a silver cross in his right. He stopped and looked Jane in the eye, but she could tell straightaway he had no interest in explaining the sound. His eyes were keen and bright but their focus and attention were entirely on herself, not on what was happening around them. He handed her the circlet - it was warm to the touch - then carried on walking, out of both chambers and back into the nave before turning briskly right. He paused, with Jane at his shoulder, on the threshold of a lantern-lit passageway, between two royal mosaics.

The Director gave two small bows, first to the King on his left, then to the Queen on his right. An inscription in purple italics beneath the left-hand mosaic read, 'Mark III', and under its partner, 'Thomasina of the Northern Marches.' They crossed the threshold and pressed forward along the passage. Another train hurtled by - closer now - and Jane felt a gust of cool air on her cheeks. Soon the passage widened out and they were standing in a circular ante-chamber on a floor of polished marble. Through high rectangular openings - one straight ahead, one to to left, and one to the right - Jane perceived the metallic gleam of railway lines. Directly in front of her was a tall wooden post with signs jutting off towards the three pairs of tracks. Jane managed to read four of the place-names - Tintagel, Rome, Jerusalem, Mount Kailas - before the Director whisked her away.

'This way,' he said, ushering her off to the left. Already she could hear the train, and they hadn't been on the platform more than five seconds when it appeared - sleek and silvery to look at but as noisy and rattly as an everyday Tube service. The doors opened automatically and Jane and the Director climbed on board...

A Cup, A Sword, A Tree, and A Green Hill

There is a bookshop down a cobbled street where, as a boy, I discovered Narnia, Middle Earth, and the Norse, Greek and Arthurian myths as retold by Roger Lancelyn Green. For almost forty years now, I have had a recurring dream about this shop, in which it boasts an extra room - an evocative, lamplit space with an atmosphere of calm and serenity and the faint but discernable aroma of incense.

In the dream, I am looking for the Magician's Book which Lucy encounters in The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, and in particular the story she reads about 'a cup, a sword, a tree, and a green hill.' Lewis describes it as 'the loveliest story she has ever read', and I know it's on the shelves somewhere, but just as Lucy is not allowed to turn back the pages to reread it, so I always wake up before I can find it.

Yet I never feel bereft or cast down afterwards. On the contrary, it feels immensely reassuring to know that such a book and such a room exist. But where? On what level? These are questions I have been mulling over for decades now. Until recently, I have tended to interpret the dream as either a symptom of deep nostalgia or as a shaft of insight into the Platonic reality of the bookshop - its inner form and essence.

Lately, however, I have started to suspect that the dream might be less to do with nostalgic pangs or a static Platonic order and more about a physical reality which will tangibly appear in the world at some point - what the theologian John Zizioulas calls 'a memory of the future.' Again, the level on which this will happen is open to debate, and God alone knows what turns of fortune's wheel we might have to endure or enjoy between now and then. But that the vision will be made manifest and the bookshop will one day look and feel as it does in my dream is something of which I am increasingly certain.

The Holy City, St. John says, will come down from God out of Heaven like a bride adorned for the bridegroom. So it isn't just individuals who will be redeemed and transfigured on the Last Day but the whole material creation, towns and cities very much included - streets, squares, houses, office blocks, shops, everything.

This eschatological understanding, I feel, fits better with the tone and content of my dream than either the nostalgic or the Platonic interpretations. 'Indeed,' as Aslan assures Lucy, 'I will read that story to you for years and years.' It is the dynamic Platonism we see at play in The Last Battle, where the protagonists journey 'farther up and farther in', into the heart of the Great Story we all long to read and hear, 'which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.'

And the meaning of the story is the Author of the story. The Author is the story, the Alpha and the Omega, for in the beginning, as St. John also shows us, was the Word ...

Stewards of the Spirit

Arthur Machen's The Secret Glory, condensed, reworked, reset, and retold for the monthly storytelling night at Yr Glas Loch (The Blue Bell), Conwy - Wednesday 19th February 2020.

*

There was a glow in the sky, as if great furnace doors were opening. That was all Mark could recall now of the magical evening he had shared with his father, shortly before his dad's sudden death and Mark's removal to his uncle's in Cheadle - two South Manchester suburbs away from his Didsbury home - a household with no interest, belief in or affection for anything otherworldly.

That, he knew, was when life had started to go downhill. He was 10 then; 45 now, stuck in a call-centre selling pointless insurance, with a failed marriage behind him and two teenage children who laughed him to scorn. His old friends were preoccupied with family and career, and he found it hard to relate to the younger, screen-fixated generation, as they doubtless found it hard to relate to him.

Mark was growing old fast in other words, increasingly at one, or more, removes from those around him. As this feeling grew, he assumed that he would follow that host of lost souls down the well-trodden path of drinking, binge-eating, trash TV, and general numbing out. On the contrary though, as winter turned to spring that year, something very different started to happen. Different, yes, but also disconcerting, alarming and unsettling. Buried memories from Mark's childhood surged up from within. At least that's what he thought they were. The more worrying possibility was that he might be cracking up - going insane.

These memories did not involve Mark's mother. That would have been impossible, for she had died not long after he was born. He had no brothers or sisters. The memories concerned his father - a grave, bearded man - and the patch of woodland, not far from the business park where he now worked, which lies between Didsbury Village and the River Mersey. But while he could remember his school days at that time (1984-85) with absolute clarity, there remained a deep sense of hiddenness about those evening walks with his dad. They had been looking for something. Maybe they had found it? But whatever it was, it stubbornly resisted his mind's strained efforts to call it back to life.

So after work, as the days lengthened, Mark took to walking in the nearby woods. He went at weekends too. But the more he explored, the more the glory receded. There were trees and paths and streams and slabs of broken stone, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special, nothing magical.

Then one afternoon, while chatting with a colleague, he remembered part of the story. It was high summer, his dad had shown him a stone well, then pointed to an avenue of poplars and a white house with a brown door. The house had something rare and wonderful inside. Mark didn't know what just yet, but he did know exactly where the house was, just to the left of one of the paths he walked up and down every day.

The next evening was clear and fresh and Mark went straight to the spot after work. His disappointment was all-consuming. The well was there alright, but three-quarters ruined and stinking with stagnant rainwater. There was no house, no poplars, just a mass of impenetrable thorns. He slumped down with his back to a giant oak, his head in his hands. The metallic roar of the M60 mocked him from the other side of the river. There was no hope for him now, no escape, no way out. He had been chasing an illusion, a will-o'-the-wisp, an insubstantial dream. He would stand up in a minute, get back on the path, cross Simon's Bridge, climb to the top of the flyover and cast himself down. But before he could even get up, his head started nodding and he was soon fast asleep. Straightaway, he began to dream.

He was standing in a barren, lifeless place - drab fields pockmarked with stunted trees. It was late afternoon, but as evening approached, a welcome breeze sprang up as the stars popped out above. Mark noticed a well close beside him. There was just enough light to read the inscription: Fons Vitae Immortalis. He drank of the water and felt instantly renewed in mind and body.

The night passed quickly, the sun rose, and Mark saw that he was in a fertile valley with wooded slopes and tinkling streams. He heard the sound of a choir like a mighty rushing wind. Gloria in Excelsis Deo they sang, and he beheld a a cathedral on top of a hill at the end of the valley. A crowd of men, women and children, all dressed in dazzling white, were streaming in from all sides. Then Mark was among them, chanting an ancient liturgy before the high altar, as the morning sun poured down on his head through the round, many-coloured Eastern window.

Then they were outside, walking side by side along time-hallowed pilgrim pathways. Mark was astonished by his fellow-travellers. Some had eyes that shone like lanterns, others golden aureoles around their hair, while one or two were borne aloft above the ground on little clouds of white and silver.

Suddenly he was alone again, following a winding path uphill through the trees. He came upon a clearing and a small stone church. He heard the choir again: Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, and without hesitation he went inside. He saw a wall in the middle of the church. The bricks were shining and translucent jewels, but their lustre was dim compared to the brilliant white light shining through the cracks from the other side.

A door opened in the wall and the light cascaded through. Mark knelt on the floor, bowed his head and covered his eyes. When he looked up, he saw an old man with a crown on his head standing in the doorway. He was holding something in his hands and the light pulsated out from it, but the object stayed hidden, wrapped around with cloths and coverings. Two young men with flaming torches stood to left and right. The trio walked forward, turned to the left, then disappeared through another door. And Mark heard a voice from behind the wall - a woman's voice - calling to him:

'Mark be secret, Mark be strange - dark, true, dissonant and ancient. Cherish your flame. The dawn is at hand.'

The dream ended. Mark sat bolt upright against the tree. It was not yet fully dark but the sky was clear and the first stars twinkled like little glow-worms. The well was still broken, the thorn bush impassible, but Mark's spirits had risen because the memory of what he had seen long ago in the house had returned to him.

Yes, there had been a house and an avenue of poplars, and his dad had led him along it to a brown mahogany door in a wall of white stone. 'This house isn't always here,' he said. 'It comes when it chooses.'

The house was choc-a-bloc with old books, and the smell of those ancient texts filled the young Mark with wonder and joy. Their host was a tall, bespectacled man, completely bald on top but with a wildness of brown frizzy hair around the back and sides. 'Ambrose the scholar,' was how Mark's father introduced him as they sat down to tea and biscuits in the study. Mark found the conversation fascinating, though difficult to follow and bewildering at times, as much of it referred directly to him.

''Tis a great blessing, as always, to be here,' said his dad. 'The occasions grow rarer as time wears on, yet whenever the house appears it renews our faith in the deeper, truer Britain behind the grey façade of getting and spending.'

'The chain will hold fast,' said Ambrose, stirring his tea. 'But it comes under strain, and it is as hard for us in Heaven as it is for you on Earth. We need each other, don't we?' And they both laughed.

'And now it is the boy's turn?' he asked, looking enquiringly at Mark.

'It is,' said his dad. 'He is of our Company. I have no doubt. The light of the Grail shines in his eyes.'

'Let it be so then,' said Ambrose. 'The house has revealed itself and the great ones have spoken. Prepare to behold, young Mark, the mystery of this island, the Holy Grail itself, which you will subsequently forget, as do we all, only to remember again at a time and place of God's choosing.'

They left the room and descended a short flight of stairs to an underground chamber. Mark's dad lit two tall candles on a table near the back wall, while Ambrose opened a cupboard high up by the door and pulled something out which glowed fiercely through its covers.

Ambrose crouched down. Mark couldn't see what he was doing, but when he stood up again he saw a goblet in his hands with a long stem and a round base. Ambrose laid it reverently between the candles, then they knelt down together - Mark in the middle, Ambrose to his left and his dad to his right.

The grown-ups began to chant in a language unknown to Mark. It was a bit like Latin, a bit like Greek and a bit like Welsh, yet it was none of these and certainly not English. But it was the goblet that compelled his attention. There were so many colours alive on its surface - red, blue green, gold, all the colours in the world - but there was a blue and white pattern that particularly drew him him; that ink-dark blue - like the sky at night - and that clear, crystalline white, brighter than the moon and stars. Instead of the chant now, he thought he could hear the sound of waves as a wind nipped at his cheeks, then lashed across his face.

The room vanished and Mark was standing on a shingly beach at night, looking up at a gigantic cliff-face. At the top was a mighty cathedral, hewn out of the rock. Golden light blazed forth from its windows as a choir of a thousand voices sang the Creed: Credo in Unum Deum, Patrem Omnipotentens ...'

Mark knew that the Grail - and more than the Grail, the meaning of his life, his heart's desire - was up there too and he prayed that he might see it, sense it, feel it, hold it.  And then he was inside, lying prostrate on the floor before a screen of gold and silver icons. But behind the screen was a greater glory still, its light streaming out between the cracks and joints. Mark stretched out his hands. Et Vitam Venturi Saeculi sang the choir, but no Amen followed, just the sound of Ambrose and his father continuing their chant.

Mark was back in the room and the Grail was in front of him again and he felt, without knowing quite why, like a mysterious blessing had come down upon him. He had never thought such a thing before, but he felt part of a long and noble lineage now - guardians of the British Mysteries - a line stretching back to Arthur and beyond, to Joseph of Arimathea, who first brought the Grail to Britain, then past him to Brutus the Trojan, who founded this land, and through him to mighty Aeneas, High Prince of Troy, who Virgil sang of and who established the city of Rome.

Mark told all this to his father later as they walked back through the avenue of trees. 'Yes,' said his dad. 'That is the way of it. We - Ambrose, myself, a handful of others, and now you, Mark - we are the stewards of the spirit of this land, all called to different forms of service and none of us knowing where the Powers will direct us. Some, like Ambrose, work mainly in the other world, others, like myself, more in this world. We all, as he said, forget our first experience of the Grail, but the memory grows like a seed within us, until the heavenly ones bring it back at the right time.'

Leaning into the oak, with the canopy of stars above him, Mark felt the tears rolling down his cheeks as something hard, knotty and gnarled dissolved and melted away in his chest. He had looked forward so much, after that miraculous day, to many more talks and trips to the woods with his dad, but it wasn't to be, for his father left this earth shortly afterwards and in the practical, money-driven milieu of his uncle's house, his vision of the Grail was choked with thorns and squeezed into irrelevance like the seed in the parable.

Mark stood up, said a prayer for his dad and walked to the right, away from the thorn bush and the broken well, and into his future. And then in the starlight he saw to his left an avenue of poplars and a white house with a brown door and the moon shining full upon it. And a woman's voice called to him on the night air:

'Walk on now, Mark. Step into your father's house. Take the Grail and hold it up for the whole world to see. The night is over. This is the morning.'

And Mark saw a glow above the house, as if great furnace doors were opening in the sky.

The Golden Age That Never Quite Was

The Anglo-Saxon era in English history is usually taken to run from the departure of the Roman legions in 410 AD to King Harold's defeat at Hastings in 1066. That seems like a very long time, yet there is a sense, I feel, in which Anglo-Saxon civilisation, despite its longevity, never really got going. It failed to fully blossom. It was cut short, in other words, not once, nor twice, but three times.

To begin with, it took the Angles, Saxons and Jutes almost two hundred years to quell the British resistance and pen the natives back into Wales and Cornwall. There then followed what we might call the first Anglo-Saxon golden age, the epoch of the 'heptarchy', the seven kingdoms (illustrated below) of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex, and East Anglia. 

From the mid-seventh-century to the mid-ninth century power shifted progressively southwards from Northumbria to Mercia to Wessex. Stable leadership, allied to the saintly witness of holy men and women such as Wilfrid of York, Hilda of Whitby, and the Venerable Bede, transformed seventh-century Northumbria into a standard-bearer and standard-setter for Christian and European civilisation. Mercia took up the mantle in the eighth-century. Offa's reign (757-796) saw strong links forged with Charlemagne, the great Frankish king and first Holy Roman Emperor, and the first suggestion or 'showing forth' of what would, in time, become a unified English realm.

It was the pressures of war and the existential threat of conquest which made such unity a necessity. In the 870s, under Alfred the Great, Wessex alone proved durable enough to withstand and repel the waves of Viking incursions which had brought such a brutal and bloody end to the first Anglo-Saxon golden age. After Alfred (871-899), his son Edward (899-924), and his grandson Athelstan (924-939) extended English rule further north and east until by the time of Edgar the Peaceable (959-975), the Anglo-Saxon king - sitting in Winchester, the ancient capital of Wessex - was regarded by all, albeit grudgingly in some quarters, as sovereign and overlord of the whole island of Britain.

Military success was only part of Alfred's gift to his country, however. Once peace had been established, he switched his focus towards scholarship and church-building, and we see this trend continuing right up to the time of Edgar and the wide-ranging monastic reforms carried out on his behalf by St. Dunstan. This whole era, from Alfred to Edgar, can be seen as the second Anglo-Saxon golden age.

Edgar's England, in the year 975, seemed set fair for greatness, but the King died suddenly, aged just 32, and his realm descended into internecine strife and foreign occupation all too swiftly. Edgar had two sons - Edward, who was possibly illegitimate, and Ethelred, the child of his queen, Elfrida. Edward, as the elder son, acceeded to the throne, aged about 13, and was murdered three years later at Corfe Castle in Dorset, either by supporters of Ethelred or on the orders of the Queen. As the picture above indicates, he was very soon held up as a saint and a martyr in the popular imagination.

Ethelred replaced him as king, as his mother had intended, but was soon exposed as wholly unfit for the role. Viking attacks resumed and grew in intensity year upon year. The net result was a succession of four Danish kings and a chronic dynastic instability which was only resolved with the death of Harold and the annihilation of the Anglo-Saxon state in a single day at Hastings.

We see in 1066, therefore, the same pattern repeating itself of collapse and surrender
after a strong king's death. This was typical of the times in many ways. Monarchs died young, often before they were forty, with their sons still in boyhood and the land at the mercy of squabbling, vindictive nobles. The other misfortune to beset Anglo-Saxon England was the constant threat of piracy and invasion from the coasts of Scandinavia. Harold himself, just nineteen days before his demise, had successfully fought off a colossal Viking army at Stamford Bridge in North Yorkshire.

We do not know what would have happened if Harold had prevailed against the Normans. His battlefield triumphs might have given him the kudos and the breathing space required to establish a dynasty of his own and inaugurate the enduring golden age which up to that point Anglo-Saxon England had never quite had. Or, given that his claim to the throne was far from ironclad, he may have had to deal with a string of rival claimants and could  thereby have been deprived of the time needed to turn his mind towards long-term civilisational tasks à la Alfred.

I hasten to add at this point that I would not want to over-romanticise the Anglo-Saxons. They could be as barbaric as anyone when they put their minds to it. Yet it is clear that rule by Harold, or someone like him, would have been infinitely preferable to the ordinary man and woman than the rod of iron thrown down by William the Conqueror. It would have maintained the close bond between the king and his people that was sundered by the Conquest and steered the body politic away from from the needless expansionism and mercantilism which was so often the Norman hallmark. A third Anglo-Saxon golden age would, I believe, have concentrated on the things that truly matter - religion, learning and art - after the example of King Alfred and his understanding that temporal exigencies, while they have their place, are in reality just steps on the way towards an appreciation and understanding of the eternal verities.

Maybe one day it will happen. Perhaps the golden age that never quite was is stored up somewhere in the the national collective psyche - a 'memory of the future', as the theologian John Zizioulas writes of the Eucharist - a potent archetype which will manifest on the physical plane at the time and point of history of God's own choosing. If we ever see turbulence again on the level of those Viking invasions, let us pray in that day for a second Alfred to emerge from the destruction and lay once more the foundations of a peaceful and unified 'Isle of the Blessed', which will enjoy better luck than its Anglo-Saxon predecessor, and shine out to a world in sore need of political and social models which take the City of God as a template to build up and bring the best out of the City of Man.