The Black Chalice

The Salisbury Manuscript

June, 2006. The vestry of the nine-hundred-year-old parish church of St. Barbara and St. Christopher in Salisbury has been in need of a new roof for years; swathes of irreplacable parish records have been destroyed by leaking rainwater, not to mention mould and the various pests which enter through the cracks to nest in the room. A collection, several church fetes and a fundraiser thrown by the local school have finally raised the?16,000 needed to carry out the repairs, and work starts in the beginning of August.

Before work can begin, the countless documents lying stacked and boxed at the rear of the room need to be removed, which has turned out to be a more complicated task than expected. Students from Salisbury University, working side by side with Church volunteers, need to open and inspect every box in situ, identify, index and catalogue every document, and transfer them to new, more secure archive boxes before removing them from the building. Many of the boxes haven't been opened in decades — some, according to Canon Arthur Drake, since before World War I — and few of Drake's forerunners made any attempt at organising them.

On the third or fourth day, a remarkable find is uncovered by one of the students.

"I remember Lily [Evanson, the Church secretary] had just come back with about the seventh tea run of the day, and I had my back turned to the kids while I selected a biscuit," says Drake. "Suddenly, one of the girls from the university — I honestly can't remember which — started shouting and carrying on."

What the unnamed student had discovered was a large bound manuscript, purporting to be a second book of Arthurian tales by the writer of Le Morte D'Arthur.

"Work more or less stopped for the day," reminisces the canon. "Who am I kidding?" he laughs. "For the week. I just about managed to keep the kids from just running out of there until they'd logged it and cleared everything up for the night, and it was rushed off to the university."

At the university's Middle English department the next day, the job of identifying and analysing the extraordinary book is begun, and The Second Book of King Arthur is set to sweep the academic world.