Chapter 6: A Great Deal of Exposition
As chapter five ended, Mother told the
children that Great-Uncle Merry wanted to take them out for the
afternoon, and Barney proposed to the others that they tell him about
the map. For the first time, no one (read: Simon) argued that
telling an adult would ruin everything.
Chapter six opens with the three
children and their uncle heading out for a walk, with all three
children requesting that they go “somewhere lonely”, “somewhere
miles from anywhere” and “somewhere we can talk”. It's
anyone's guess who said what.
The group climbs the headland opposite
Kemare Head (which, Jane learned, is labelled “King Mark's Head”
on the map), once again in silence, with the children “trotting”
to keep up with Great-Uncle Merry. He's really not good at all about
being friendly or accommodating other people. Maybe I'm weird, but
going on a fun outing, it feels much more natural to make
conversation with one's companions, and walk at a speed comfortable
for the slowest members of the group.
Reaching the top, Merry gives us a
Latin reference to King Arthur (“Hic incipit regnum Logri...”/“Here
begins the realm of Logres...”) and asks the kids what's wrong.
Inexplicably, Barney and Jane look to Simon to explain—perhaps he's
supposed to be the 'leader' as the eldest, but he's also the
designated useless party thus far, not to mention the last hold-out
against telling adults. So, naturally, the two who have proposed seeking help, advanced useful hypotheses about
the manuscript and found information about it, defer to him. In a moment, they're all three talking anyway, but the seemingly-out-of-character deference is apparently a theme in this chapter--which also explicitly confirms that Simon is a whole eleven months older than Jane, and thus see himself as the trio's rightful spokesman.
Anyway, they show Great-Uncle Merry the scroll
and explain about finding it, then start asking him their questions
regarding it's age and purpose. Most of the dialogue is not
attributed, though I expect Barney's behind the “Is it important?
Is it buried treasure?” line.
Merry promptly goes into
wise-old-plot-dispenser mode, explaining via Socratic questions that
all fairy stories are true, give or take some slight magical
embellishments. Simon reasserts his role as skeptic (in contrast to
Barney's fantastic beliefs) by initially asserting that “once upon
a time stories” aren't true; Jane takes the middle path
by proposing that “perhaps they were true once, but nobody could
remember when”. She is, of course, right, according to Merry.
Barney gets to info-dump his favorite
subject of King Arthur, and Merry confirms that he was, in fact real.
And then he really gets back into exposition mode. The short version, is
that the light and the dark are constantly fighting and neither side
can permanently win, because everyone's at least a little good and
bad. King Arthur was apparently one of the people working for the
light, and even though he failed, people of the future need his inspiration for their own fight... You know, I love reading
stories in which the protagonist struggles against the inevitable
because it's the right thing to do. I see that that's where this
light versus dark conflict is trying to go (which is perhaps why I
liked the series so much when I was a kid). Nonetheless, it feels rather contrived and inconsistent, like it's trying to shoe-horn high and dramatic ideals into a plot which doesn't quite fit; I think the whole concept would have
come across better if less attempt was made to explain it.
And then there's the bit that just has
to be quoted, it's right after Great-Uncle Merry explains that the
light and dark are constantly struggling and neither side can win:
“Sometimes, over the centuries, this
ancient battle comes to a peak. The evil grows very strong and
nearly wins. But always at the same time there is some leader in the
world, a great man who sometimes seems to be more than a man, who
leads the forces of good to win back the ground and the men they seem
to have lost.”
I wonder how the other side's version
goes. Do they also need a great leader when their enemies appear to
have the upper hand? Or is it just that some jerk show up to rally
the opposition every time they're about to win?
On a more practical note, how can one
side grow and 'nearly win' when the previous paragraph states that
“...sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the
other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will
[Uncle Merry said] for there is something of each in every man.”
That “nor ever will” seems to be
key point in making the whole effort futile. I could see it working
if the point of the struggle was to improve the world by keeping the
good side in ascendancy as much as possible (in which case, doing
good in the world would make more sense as a strategy than speaking
of battle and searching for lost artifacts.)
Anyway, we get another long info dump
with Merry reading the manuscript. There's the Latin introduction,
from a 14th century monk explaining that he found and
copied this earlier manuscript. It, according to Merry, was an 11th
century piece written in early English. And it makes No. Sense. At. All. That is, we get nearly three pages of translation, and 80% of
it is the writer, a Cornish knight, discussing how the information (a
grail engraved with King Arthur's deeds and a “promise and proof”
of him coming again) came to him and why he doesn't have anyone else
to pass it on to. It's an interesting outline and suggestion of its
own story, but much of it makes no sense for the guy writing it to
have written it. The
last paragraph is a cryptic remark to certain 'signs' that will lead
one to the grail, though it's more of a statement that such signs exist than,
say, even a coded reference to what to look for. Standard fantasy
tropes are invoked: the riddles leading to a need relic from the
past, the hereditary stewardship of the relic, the fading of the good
old power (new kings aren't as good as the old ones, etc.).
The kids and Merry catch each other up
on the Withers situation (they're looking for the manuscript, they're
on the other side, Merry knows that they are not, in fact, brother
and sister). Merry mentions that he has been looking for the
manuscript (not knowing what, exactly, it was); Barney guesses, and
get Merry to admit, that he brought the Drews to Trewissick for them
to stumble on it, and that he's been away so often in order to
mislead their enemies.
I suppose that explains why Merry keeps
disappearing without notice, but it really confuses his relationship
with the kids. He knows them well enough to guess that they'll find
an unknown artifact, lost for centuries, which he hasn't been able to
uncover, and that they won't tell their parents or other authority
figures (the police, Capt. Tom, Mrs. Palk); they, however, don't know
him well enough to confide in him until the robbery forces their
hands.
On the topic of the robbery, we waste
two whole pages with the kids and Merry discussing why they didn't
tell the cops about the manuscript and the Withers' connection to the
break-in. It basically re-hashes a lot of the kids' tell-or-not arguments from before, and comes down to assuming that the police would
be condescending to the kids, or would decide it was an irrelevant,
private quarrel between Merry and Mr. Withers, or would conclude that
Merry was imagining things. I suppose this conversation does resolve
all the previous 'should we tell or not?' discussions, but as it's
the third time the topic's been addressed in 60-odd pages, and the
same viewpoint prevails each time, it feels a bit repetitive.
The four of them look at the map again,
and Barney points out that it looks like one of the mother's
“perspective sketches” (knowing very little of art history, isn't perspective handled quite differently in the 9th century than it is in the 20th?). They decide it's actually a picture, the
viewpoint from the very headland they're on, but draw no further
conclusions for how to proceed; Merry suggests that they sleep on the
matter. The plan, such as it is, is for the kids to try to locate
the grail, while Merry continues to play the decoy. As far as fantasy tropes go, I'll give them credit that it's a plausible reason for the wise-old-dispenser-of-plot-points to leave vital
matters in the sole hands of the people infinitely less qualified.
Sexism watch: Simon does credit Jane
with the coastline research she did last chapter. Yay! Perhaps he can
learn. Nothing else egregious popped out at me, though at one point Jane declares that she doesn't trust Mrs. Palk, and that pronouncement seemed to
come out of nowhere. I'm putting that here, because Jane and Mrs.
Palk make up 50% of the named female characters, and their interactions thus far have been cordial,
so making one suddenly dislike the other feels like an attempt to shove
in some cattiness. Perhaps, however, Jane is speaking as Hermione-of-the-great-deductive-power rather than as the-only-female-lead and it's actually foreshadowing that Mrs. Palk is in league with The Dark. We'll see.
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