Paradise Walk

by Mary Malloy

  “This is all very English,” Lizzie said to Kate, “with Kings and worthys, swans and watercress, cider and churches.”

  “Rah-ther,” Kate answered, trying her best to mimic an English accent.

  They had arrived in Jane Austen country and Lizzie recounted every episode she could remember where Austen described a walk through the countryside—and it seemed there was at least one in every novel.

  They walked along the edge of Chawton Woods, grounds inherited by Jane Austen’s brother from a wealthy childless relation who adopted him in order to have an heir. He remained close to his family, however, and set up his mother and two sisters in a comfortable house in Chawton where Jane Austen lived from 1809 until she went as an invalid to Winchester in 1817 and died. It was here that she wrote Persuasion, and here she lived when all of her books were published. She saw the first copy of Pride and Prejudice there. “I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child from London,” she wrote upon receiving it.

  Lizzie and Kate walked around Austen’s house and sat in her garden. It had been a moving experience for Lizzie to stand upon the stone under which her bones rested in Winchester Cathedral. “But this is the real relic for me,” she said to Kate as they stood in Jane Austen’s room. “She sat at that small table in front of this window and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. As powerful as it was to ponder her tomb, it is doubly so to ponder that table.”

  As there was no one nearby and no physical barrier to keep her from touching it, Lizzie stepped forward and laid her hand upon the wood and felt the power of the artifact.

  “If I were a real pilgrim, and not a hired one,” she said, “this is what I’d come for.”

  Kate gave a great sigh. “Good grief, Lizzie! Don’t be such a dramatic dope! You are here, so if this is what you would come for, simply make it what you did come for. And anyway, you have totally bought into Alison’s project. If she stopped paying you, you’d still finish it, and you know it.”

  Lizzie looked at her friend and laughed. “You’re absolutely right, of course. That was a bit too much drama.”

  “I marked something in the Belloc book that reminded me of you.” Kate took off her pack and retrieved the book. “Speaking of medieval pilgrims, he commented on the ‘peculiar association of antiquity and religion’ and the ‘mingling of the two ideas almost into one.’”

  “Are you saying that I’ve made a religion out of history?”

  “Something like that.”

  There was a sound of voices on the stairs and they were joined soon after by three women wearing saris.

  “Are there Jane Austen fans in India or Pakistan?” Lizzie whispered to Kate as they left the house.

  “You might as well ask me what women most desire,” Kate answered.

  “Is it the same in every culture and across time?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” Lizzie said, quoting the opening line of Pride and Prejudice. “The converse expectation is that all single women are in want of a husband, but that clearly was not true in Jane Austen’s case. She received an offer of marriage, accepted it, and then after thinking about it for one night, declined. Elizabeth Bennet refused the proposal of the odious Mr. Collins only to find that her friend Charlotte accepted him.”

  “And Mr. Darcy was rich, handsome and loved her more than she loved him,” said Kate. “That one was easy! Haven’t we had this conversation like a dozen times before?”

  “Yes, but each time it’s different.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “But this time we’re actually standing in Jane Austen’s house!”

  Kate agreed that there was a certain novelty in the situation, but Lizzie didn’t need to be hit on the head with a brick to know it was time to move on. She wanted to call Jackie anyway, and find out if there was more information on the chalice at Shaftesbury.

  “I’m calling from Jane Austen’s garden,” she said when Jackie answered the phone.

  “Poor Kate! I’m thinking that by now you’re in heaven and she’s in hell.”

  “Pretty much. Do you have good news?”

  “Astonishing news. The Ashmolean Museum has a chalice with the Weaver’s mark on it.”

  “Is there a provenance of where it came from?” Lizzie asked excitedly.

  “I’m still working on that,” Jackie answered, “but I think I am going to be able to make a plausible, though not necessarily positive link to Shaftesbury Abbey.”

  Lizzie could not wait to convey the news to Martin and called him immediately. “I haven’t even told Alison yet,” she told him after explaining about the chalice.

  “So this makes a stone carving, stained glass, an illuminated manuscript, and metal work. Your weaver hired an artist in every medium.”

  “And with the tapestry, she added weaving as well.”

  Martin thought about that. “Yes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she made some absolutely remarkable example of her own work to give to the most important place on the list.”

  “That would be Canterbury.”

  “That’s what I would do.” Martin asked her to remind him of her itinerary.

  “We’ll be in Guildford tomorrow, then transit to London the next day, where Kate will fly home, then four days to Canterbury.”

  “I’m sure you’ll miss Kate’s company.”

  “It has been so great to have her and Jackie along.” She lowered her voice. “I miss you. I’m really looking forward to seeing you next week in Newcastle, and I can’t wait to see the mural.”

  “I have to admit, it is looking great. I’m very pleased.”

  By the time Lizzie finished calling Martin and then Alison, Kate was standing beside her in the yard and they said their good-byes to Jane Austen’s house. They had booked a B&B in Alton, where they would spend the night and then move on to Guildford in the morning.

  As they came back onto the main road out of Chawton they saw a lone bull on the opposite hillside. It was the snorting bullock of Lizzie’s nightmares. There was no mistake. Wainwright was right, he had a certain expression on his face that looked mad. Even from a distance, across a good-sized highway, he was scary. Lizzie thought she saw him stroke his hoof along the ground as he eyed them, like bulls do in cartoons. His eyes were fiery, smoke seemed to come from his flared nostrils. Lizzie and Kate stood rooted to the spot, the hair on their necks standing straight up.

  “Could he,” she asked Kate, “with the advantage of the hill, race down, leap the fence, and be across the road in an instant?”

  Kate said he wouldn’t dare, and even shouted at him from a distance to taunt him as they walked nervously on.

  The next day in Guildford would be their last day walking before they moved north to London and Kate returned home. Lizzie asked her friend how this adventure compared to others. Kate was a treasure trove of esoteric travel tidbits. She spoke about being in the Antarctic and seeing there a Japanese researcher who had a three-legged pair of long underwear. He first wore his legs through two holes for a day, then moved each leg over one hole and back each day. This was supposed to keep them from having to be washed as often as regular underwear, but both women were skeptical.

  Belloc’s old road had long ago been paved and become the major motorway between London and Southampton, and it was more difficult than before to find a good path. At one point they had to cross the four-lane highway by racing across it through traffic. On the far side they found themselves on a narrow path leading through a field of bright yellow flowers up to their shoulders. They had learned from the farmer in Broad Chalke that this plant was called “rape,” though he said he preferred “oil-seed rape” to lessen the impact of the word. It was oily and sweet-smelling, the basis of canola oil.

  “A terrible name for such a lovely plant,” Kate said as they walked through it, touching the plants on either side with their shoulder
s. She sometimes got far enough ahead that Lizzie could just see her head bobbing above the blossoms.

  “It is strange sometimes how powerful words are,” she said at her friend’s back. “The same word describes both this flower, and the violent act that propels the narrative of the Wife of Bath’s Tale.”

  Kate turned around and smiled at her. “I think it is just amazing that you can connect everything to either Jane Austen or your project.”

  Lizzie smiled back. “It is wonderful, isn’t it.”

  “I’m only surprised that you couldn’t get a knight of the Round Table into that thought.”

  “Oh but I did! The rapist was one of Arthur’s knights.”

  They passed through a small and pretty village called Wyck. Beyond it in marshy ground they encountered their first snake and their first nettles, which considerably dampened Lizzie’s spirits. Between Farnham and Guildford the A31 motorway ran along the ridge top known as the “Hog’s Back,” and they could find no good options for footpaths. A double decker bus happened to stop in front of them as they studied the map, so they boarded it and rode to Puttenham, a village mentioned by Belloc as having had a “pilgrim’s market” in ancient times.

  When they found the path again, there was a small house on it with a sign saying “Pilgrim’s Way Cottage.” It had a weathervane that showed a classic pilgrim with pack, hat, and staff. There was also another snake along the path, small and flat and a silvery black color.

  “I don’t think that is an adder,” Lizzie said. “But then I don’t think I would recognize one anyway.”

  “It hardly matters now,” Kate responded. “We are now on the ‘North Downs Way,’ one of the most popular long-distance walks in England. I’m pretty sure it is safe.”

  The path was hard-packed earth and well defined.

  “I fear neither snake nor bull!” Lizzie declared as she marched briskly along.

  They crossed under the A31 and looked up to see two large wooden crosses mounted on either side of the highway above them, official markers of the “Pilgrim’s Way,” and a reminder to the occupants of the trucks and cars whizzing along the motorway that an ancient path passed beneath them.

  “I like that,” Lizzie said. “Not for its religious overtones, but for its acknowledgement of history.”

  As they neared Guildford they came for the first time onto the official “Pilgrims Way” as acknowledged on the Ordnance Survey map.

  “You know those papers you showed me with the noon calculations of the sun’s declination?” Kate asked, referring to the documents Lizzie had removed from books at Alison’s house. “We are about to cross the first latitude indicated on it.”

  Lizzie stood beside her and looked at the two red lines Kate had drawn on the map as her friend checked their position on her cell phone’s GPS.

  “Fifty-one degrees, thirteen minutes north,” she said. “Of course that line of latitude goes all the way around the world; without longitude, latitude doesn’t mean much.”

  “What would you do with just latitude?” Lizzie asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that since you showed me those papers. It might be used to set up a sundial, for instance, but I can’t think why else you wouldn’t mark a place with both coordinates.”

  “We’ll be in Guildford soon, but surely that latitude alone won’t be very meaningful there.”

  “This line is slightly south of Guildford, however, and the place mentioned is 544 feet, plus twelve feet, above sea level.”

  “I hope you will be able to recognize something that is 544 feet high, because I certainly won’t.”

  Kate told her that the tallest mast on her ship was 110 feet high. “And the mainmast of the Constitution, which you can see from the window of your office in Charlestown, is twice that.”

  As they spoke, the stone tower of a square Norman castle came into view and Kate wondered aloud if that might be the place. “I don’t think that is five hundred feet high, but we are so close to the latitude mentioned.”

  “But then what? Do you think that we will see something that will make sense in some context that we aren’t yet expecting?”

  “I don’t know. We may never understand it. It might just be someone’s doodling through a problem solved long ago.”

  The castle was surrounded by a park and they made their way through it to the base of the tower, but could find no way in. Kate took out her binoculars and walked around the structure, scanning the top of all four sides.

  “I just don’t see anything there,” she said. “And I don’t know what we might observe if came back at noon on December 29.”

  “So should we go to Guildford? Or continue along this line of latitude?”

  “I’d just as soon push on,” Kate said.

  The path climbed and became more woodsy, with a dry piney smell. At the top of the hill a vista opened to the south. Several villages were visible, as well as a patchwork of farmland, hedges and roads, and small groves of trees. A stream broadened into a lake where it had been dammed between two mills.

  “This valley is called ‘The Vale of the Chilworth,’” Kate said, looking at the map.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lizzie said. “It brings to mind all those words that English poets used to describe their countryside: wold and copse and weald and grange.”

  There was a chapel at the crest of the hill, St. Martha’s, and they went inside. A map for sale in the vestibule described the “Probable Course Near Guildford” of the “Pilgrims Way, 1171-1538,” which they took, along with a history of the church.

  A talkative old gent greeted them. He was a volunteer and would be happy, he said, to give them a tour of the church, the only one in the world known to be dedicated to St. Martha.

  “In the corner is a statue carved by a girl of nineteen in the 1940s, which just shows you what youth can accomplish when they put their minds to it,” he started. There was little in the church that was more than a few hundred years old, though the guide said that it had been an important pilgrimage site for many centuries. The Norman church that was on the site was destroyed in the explosion of a nearby gunpowder factory.

  When another couple arrived at the door of the chapel, the guide left to greet them and Lizzie and Kate sat down in one of the pews.

  “I think Belloc might have said something about this place,” Kate said, retrieving the book. She found the passage, one of many she had marked with a sticky tab. “Belloc says that the original dedication of this church was not to St. Martha but to the Saint and Martyr, meaning Thomas Becket.

  “I saw right away that there is a Becket window,” Lizzie said in response, “though it is not as well done as the one designed by the Weaver.”

  As they spoke, Lizzie’s gaze moved around the chapel from one window to the next. She couldn’t believe her eyes when they landed on the familiar AW monogram of the Weaver, set prominently into a leaded glass window.

  “What the hell?” she exclaimed. “That is not possible.”

  “What?” Kate asked.

  “Look at that,” Lizzie said, rising from her seat and pointing. She walked over to the window. “How is this possible? This window can’t be more than a hundred years old. It certainly isn’t from the fourteenth century.”

  “It was installed in 1948,” Kate said. “It says so right on the glass.”

  Lizzie read the inscription: “In loving memory of Stephen Buckland, who died in London on 26 January 1941, and John Hockwold, who died at Antwerp on 21 December 1944, by their friend William Kent. 29 December 1948.” She thought about this before she spoke again. These names were all on the list they had found in Alison’s house. She turned to look at Kate. “Alison’s father gave this window to the church,” she said. “But why? ”

  Kate was looking at the GPS on her cell phone. “We are now at the exact latitude written on that sheet of paper. Is it possible that he wrote it?”

  “Absolutely,” Lizzie answered. “It was in his library.”

&nbs
p; “The hill we are on could certainly be 544 feet above sea level. Is there anything in that window that is twelve feet above the floor of the church?”

  They stood side by side and looked up at the window.

  “The Weaver’s monogram is about that height, but what does it mean?” Lizzie asked.

  “What happens at noon on December 29?” Kate said softly, mentally working through the possibilities. “The sun is due south, the direction this window faces, we are just past the winter solstice . . . the angle of the rays is . . . at noon it would come . . . right through that hole!” She pointed to a hole in the wall of the stone window casing, which went upward at an oblique angle. “It’s a pointer of some sort,” Kate said excitedly.

  “Is there any way to know what it points at?”

  Kate looked around her at the floor of the church, which was set with dozens of memorial stones. “I want to go outside and see what is on the exterior of the wall at that point.”

  While Kate was outside, Lizzie was approached again by the volunteer guide. “Can I answer any questions?” he asked. The other couple had wandered away.

  “Do you know anything about this window?” she asked.

  “I know that it was installed just after the war, when some repairs were made to the church. The first man mentioned on it was, I think, killed in one of the German bombing raids on London, the other fellow was killed at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. ”

  When Kate returned, she asked the man about the hole in the window casing.

  “It is designed to catch the sun on the winter solstice,” he said.

  “And do what with it?” Kate asked.

  He didn’t understand her question.

  “Does it illuminate some spot in the church?”

  “Some specific spot?” he mused. “No, it just casts a sort of glow.”

  Kate pulled Lizzie outside and showed her the exterior end of the long hole that had been bored through the stone of the window casing. “There is a piece of glass there,” she said. “If that is a lens, and you could put another lens at the other end of the hole, and if the focal length was calculated correctly between them, you could aim the beam onto a specific spot.”