The Resurrection Maker by Glenn Cooper

Author:Glenn Cooper [Cooper, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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It was curious to feel one’s existence slowly draining away like water from a bucket with a tiny hole. His manuscript was done and so perhaps was his life. King Edward, guided by Ripley, no doubt, had granted a general pardon to prisoners a few years earlier and had excluded only eleven men, Malory being one of them. Even if the king were to reverse himself and free him, it was too late now to pursue the Grail. He was frail and infirm. An overseas adventure was out of the question. All he could do was pray that an heir might pluck the battle standard from his dead hands and sally forth for the honor of the Malorys and the greatness of God.

A fierce storm dumped a foot of snow onto London. From his high window, Malory watched it accumulate on the prison grounds and smiled as the warden’s children threw snowballs at one another. How marvelous it would be to ride his horse through the drifts, to feel the cold flakes against his face. He wondered if it was snowing up in Warwickshire. Elizabeth would be rising from her bed about this time and see the snow falling through the small panes of their bedchamber. She too was old but still beautiful.

He sighed pitifully and returned to his desk to complete his legacy. The parchment quires of Le Morte Darthur were tied with a ribbon into a thick stack. He had written the preface the night before, thus fulfilling the promise he had made almost twenty years earlier in his letter to Bishop Waynflete. A worthy man, hopefully a descendant, could now marry knowledge of Le Morte Darthur with that of the Domesday Book to find the sword Excalibur and, God willing, the Grail. All that was left to do was to pen a message to the ages in the hope that a Malory would find it. Perhaps it would be his son, Robert, or perhaps his son’s son; or a more distant Malory.

He wrote,

Alas my enemies, these unholy men who call themselves the Qem, have succeeded in preventing me from making the journey to find the Graal. I am now old and too feeble. Yet by placing me in prison all these years they have given me the benefit of time and I have been blessed by God with the ability to well and fully chronicle the tales of my noble forebear the great and noble Arthur King of the Britons. I pray that a Maleoré who comes after me will find this parchment and take up the quest for the Sangreal.

He finished the letter shortly before John Aleyn arrived for what would be their final visit. As usual, Aleyn1 bribed the sentries with wine to allow him to speak to his master alone. Aleyn was himself stooped with age. He had a shuffling gait and a tremor in his hand but he managed, as always, to show his master a measure of good cheer.

“The cold has turned my balls to brass, my lord,” he said, warming his hands by Malory’s fire.

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