Page 41 of Under Arthur’s Protection

“True, but it’s primarily filigree in the Staffordshire gold items, rather than granulation.” He traced a finger a half-inch above the pommel, not touching. “May I see the underside?”

I closed the case, flipped it over gently, and reopened it to reveal the side with the inscription.

“Extraordinary.” Dr. Hopkins brought the magnifying lens closer, and his breath slowed. “And you said yesterday there’s a particular symbol?”

“Yes, if you move the ring on the pommel, you’ll see it.”

He tilted the ring gently. Beneath it was the circle with the cross inside and the wavy lines below.

“That was the first thing I found matching the church,” I said. “The same symbol is carved into the tower wall, near the Latin inscription.”

I opened my laptop and placed it beside the case, its screen showing the original tower inscription and symbol, plus the contrast-adjusted images of the letters on the stone. “Both inscriptions include Novae Avallonis, and I haven’t been able to find the term in any of the published sources I’ve checked.”

Dr. Hopkins studied the screen, the sword, then the screen again. “Have you tried the Boydell corpus?”

“First thing I searched.”

“The Monumenta Germaniae Historica?”

“Nothing.”

He listed off the next four archives I’d searched.

“Nothing in any of them. Lots of references to the Isle of Avalon, but not New Avalon, in any epigraphic database, medieval Latin lexicon, or any Arthurian studies bibliography I’ve gone through.”

“That’s either very significant or very explainable.”

Across the room, Arthur shifted his weight and a floorboard squeaked. He hadn’t interrupted, hadn’t left his post by the door, but the movement caught my attention. And I was suddenly, ridiculously aware he was hearing all of this. Me, in my element, trying to hold my own with a senior researcher.

You’re not trying to impress anyone. You’re presenting evidence.

“You’ve clearly done thorough work,” Dr. Hopkins said. “But I want to raise a few potential complications to your reading.”

“Please do.” Proper scientific method demanded critique. That was the whole point.

“I’ve lived in Cornwall for almost thirty years. ‘New Avalon’ isn’t as novel a concept as it may seem.” He slid his glasses down and sat in his old leather desk chair. “It floats around local legend. You won’t find it in published scholarship, which is probably why your database searches came up empty. But in parish halls, history groups, or pub conversations, it’s practically the same as calling King Arthur the once-and-future king. People have been connecting Avalon to sites in the West Country for generations. A visitor sees an inscription and thinks she’s found something new. A local hears ‘New Avalon’ and thinks, ‘That old story?’”

I leaned against his desk, angling myself so Arthur couldn’t see my face. “You’re saying it’s folklore?”

“I don’t mean to invalidate your interpretation. I’m simply putting the words in context.” He pointed at the image on the laptop. “The Victorians were besotted with all things Arthur, so it’s possible the inscription was added during the nineteenth-century restoration.”

“And the pommel might have been modified at the same time?”

“That would make sense.”

My gaze dropped to my laptop, to the enhanced photographs I’d spent hours checking against documents and databases since we left the church. Yesterday, those letters had made my hands shake with excitement. But I had been focused on scientific sources.

Last night, Arthur had told me to trust my instincts.

But this morning, instincts were all I had. No data. No facts. Only a little feeling deep inside, begging me not to give up on it.

“Let me see if I can help. If the inscription is pre-Victorian…” Dr. Hopkins stood and went to his bookshelves. He ran a finger along the spines, stopped, and returned with a volume. “When the Templar order was suppressed, most of their properties and records were handed over to the Knights Hospitaller, which was eventually headquartered in Malta. If the inscription existed at St. Catherine’s in the 1300s, it should appear somewhere in the National Archive of Malta. It’s a shot in the dark, but their records are impeccable.”

It wouldn’t prove anything, but it would narrow the timeframe. “What about the folklore angle? Is anyone tracking these ‘New Avalon’ references in an organized way?”

He smiled and nodded. “A colleague of mine in Glastonbury has spent years collecting unpublished materials on Arthurian-connected sites in the West Country. One conversation with him could point you straight to verified sources.”

“How far is Glastonbury from here?”