The Bones of Avalon Read Online Free PDF Page A

cluster of red-gold curls escaping from the fur hat. ‘It will
happen
. When we have sufficient funds to spare to do it properly. Meanwhile, we applaud your private efforts…
how
many books is it now?’
    ‘Nine hundred… and twelve.’
    ‘And
twelve,
’ the Queen said solemnly. ‘A goodly collection.’
    I may have blushed. It seemed ridiculous that I could remember the exact number. Most of them were scattered all over my mother’s house and my aim, when I could raise the money, was to build an extension to accommodate thousands more essential volumes.
    ‘John –’ the Queen, her moods ever mercurial, was looking into my eyes now with a sudden concern – ‘you seem tired.’
    ‘Working long hours, Your Highness, that’s all.’
    ‘To what end? May I ask?’
    The Queen had long been fascinated by matters of the hidden, and we were well out of the hearing of her company. She and I alone in my mother’s high-walled orchard, not more than twenty yards from the riverbank, the sun making pin-lights among the ice-pearled apple-tree boughs.
    Idyllic, except for the pikemen guarding its entrance. You could never lose the bloody pikemen.
    ‘John, last year we spoke of the Cabala. You gave me to think that the old mysticism of the Jews… that this would help us penetrate the innermost chambers of the heavens.’
    I hesitated. My present work did, in part, have its origins in that rich and complex Hebrew mechanism for communion with higher realms. And, yes, my aim – never a secret – was to discover the levels to which the essence of earthly things, the composition and structure of all terrestrial matter, is ordered by the heavens. I was now in search of a code, maybe a single symbol which would explain and define this relationship. But many a score of candles would burn through the night before I was ready to publish my findings and formally inscribe the mystical glyph upon the frontispiece.
    ‘Your Highness—’
    ‘Are you yet equipped to call upon the angels, John?’
    After the religious turbulence of the past two decades, it would be of prime importance to the Queen that any intercourse with a spiritual hierarchy should be firmly under
her
control. I played this one carefully.
    ‘Any of us can
call
upon them. I think, however, for the Cabala to work for us, it will be necessary to interpret it in such a way that it will be seen as part of the Christian tradition.’
    ‘Oh yes, that’s a
very
good point, but –’ the Queen had clasped her long fingers together and now shook them as if attempting to dislodge some essential thought – ‘is there not an
English
tradition, John?’
    ‘For communion with angels?’
    ‘Well –’ a quick, impatient shake of the head, a parting of the hands – ‘yes.’
    An interesting question from an educated woman, but the answer would not be a safe one.
    ‘Christianity, as Your Highness is obviously aware… is not of English origin, and so—’
    ‘Well, then, should I say
British,
rather than English, you and I being both of Welsh stock?’
    Born and bred in England, I’d never, to be honest, thought of myself as particularly Welsh, although my father would forever prate at me – and anyone else who’d listen – about our great linguistic and cultural heritage. Which, having learned some Welsh to please him, I had planned to spend some time investigating, in case he should be right. However…
    ‘All the evidence suggests, Your Highness, that the Welsh religious tradition – which is to say the bardic or Druidic tradition – was not, in its essence, a Christian one.’
    ‘But did it not change when the Christian message was brought to these shores? Or when, as it is said, Our Saviour himself came to England?’
    ‘Um… mercy?’
    ‘With Joseph the Arimathean. His uncle.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘You do
know
of this—’
    ‘Of course. That is, I’ve read of it.’
    ‘So you have books dealing with it… in your library?’
    ‘Um… it’s possible. That