Templecombe was seized and stripped of all its possessions, turned into a veritable ruin, but the King found nothing there. Years later, when he launched his great attack on the abbeys and monasteries, Glastonbury was singled out for special attention. Abbot Bere died in 1524 and was succeeded by Richard Whitting. Fat Henry sent special agents to seize Glastonbury's most precious treasures but Whitting was cunning and spirited these away and, for that, paid the supreme penalty. He was brought to London and tortured but would say nothing. Accordingly, he was taken back to Somerset and, after a mock trial, he and two of his monks, one of them being the scholarly Eadred, were dragged through Glastonbury on hurdles and then hanged on the summit of the Tor in November 1539. The secrets of Glastonbury died with them and only the good Lord knows the whereabouts of the Grail.
So this bloody tale is done. I stare through the window and watch the moon's silver light bathing the hard-packed snow in a shimmering light. All have gone. Sometimes I dream of Rachel, cool and serene in her cellar prison; Mandeville and Southgate, arrogant in their power, and those two sombre mutes, Cosmas and Damien, who served them so well and suffered so barbarously. The circle is complete. Mathilda's son has come back to return the ring I gave his mother an eternity ago in the dark shadows round Templecombe. Oh, for a cup of claret to warm the heart and hold back the tears about the past! Even my little clerk is sniffing.
I know he wants to stay, to lust after Phoebe's generous tits. He shakes his head, stands by the window and looks out at the winter sky.
'Do you think, sir,' he whines, 'that there really is a supreme intelligence above us? A wisdom guiding our affairs?'
'I sincerely hope so, because there's bugger all down here!'