The Forebear's Candle: A time travel mystery and love story set against the intrigue of Henry Tudor's England

by Clive S. Johnson

  Rodrigo nodded, then the captain stood and stretched. “Well, there’s much I still need to do before I can get off tomorrow. I’ll take my leave of you.” He downed the last of his ale and made his way towards the street outside.

  “So,” Rodrigo said as the captain’s figure passed their window opening, “after you’ve finished your ale, what do you say we start your first inglês lesson? We can take a wander around our new berth. See what it offers in the way of words and phrases you’ll need, whilst at the same time finding our feet. After all, we’ve nothing else to do until my ribs are mended.”

  But Jusuf thought back to the captain’s warning, then felt at the bag beside him. His fingers searched out the outline of that one thing that now demanded its own task, a task that needed doing sooner rather than later: the finding of a hidey-hole, one that would remain undiscovered by all but himself for probably the next year at least.

  10 No Time to Lose

  “So it hasn’t worked?”

  Jusuf realised he was staring blankly at a young woman, a beautiful young woman; a slowly more perplexed young woman in strange clothing. At Kate.

  “It bloody well has,” Colin almost gasped.

  “But it’s…it’s only been—”

  “Quick. Get some paper and a pen. You’ve got to get this down, whilst it’s still fresh in my mind.” He gawped at Kate’s inactivity. “Come on. Quick.”

  “All right, all right,” she scolded as she jerked upright. “No need to snap,” but she reached into the cupboard beside her, finally pulling out a pad and a pencil. Then she frowned and stared at him. “But… But it’s only been moments. You’re still holding the joss stick.” He stared down at his hand, the stick’s stem between his finger and thumb.

  “I know it can’t have been real,” he slowly said, letting go the joss stick, “it’s not possible, but it damn well felt like it. Although…” and he looked around the front room, absorbing its immediacy, “I definitely do feel straight now, and I know I was stoned before.”

  Over the next hour or so, Colin related what had happened, his urgency steadily tempered by Kate’s insistence he slow down and her repeated checks on details. Every so often she’d mutter “Interesting” or “That helps”, sometimes “We’d need to check on that”. At last, when Colin could remember no more, Kate sat back and stared at her pages of notes.

  “I just don’t see,” she carefully measured, “how so much could have happened in such a short time,” and she shook the wad of sheets at him as she stared into his eyes. When he didn’t reply, she scanned through the pages, all the while imperceptibly shaking her head.

  “Well,” she eventually said, “you’ve either done a lot of homework and are having me on, or there’s something to all this. I mean, you said Jusuf was in ‘Foy’, and that thing about the ‘Foy Gallants’, but if you’d only ever read about it somewhere, you’d have pronounced it ‘Fowey’, the way it’s now spelt.”

  “So you know the place?”

  “It’s about twenty miles down the coast from mum and dad’s place in Whitsand Bay. We used to go there occasionally when I was a kid, but I’ve not been back in years. I remember it had a nice church, though. Norman, I think, but knocked about quite a bit since; much of it these days from later periods.”

  “But it would have been there in Jusuf’s time?”

  “Oh yes, which reminds me,” and Kate looked back through her notes. “What do you know about the League of Venice?”

  “Nothing; never heard of it before.”

  “I’m sure England joined just at the end of the fifteenth century, and you said the captain told Jusuf and Rodrigo, and I quote: ‘Seeing England’s now part of it’. That makes it sound like it had only recently happened. Hang on,” and she went upstairs, returning with one of her weighty history text books.

  “There you go,” and she placed the volume on his lap, her finger indicating the sentence: “The Kingdom of England joined in 1496”. “And,” she said, flipping a ream of pages over to where she’d kept a mark, “that ties in with King Manuel the first of Portugal’s reign being between fourteen-ninety-five and fifteen-twenty-one.”

  “Hey, you’re good at this, aren’t you, chuck?”

  “History was my degree subject, Colin, though all this isn’t from any of the periods I studied, nor the ones I deal with at work.”

  “So you reckon we’re in the backend of the fourteen-nineties?”

  She gave him a Gallic shrug, then asked if he wanted a coffee.

  “I could murder one.”

  He followed her into the kitchen, leaning against a work unit as she filled the kettle. After a while he quietly said, “So, seeing you’re so on-the-ball, what do you reckon Jusuf’s ‘Burden’ is?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “That I haven’t got a clue about, but it sounds a bit dangerous.”

  “And fragile.”

  “But small enough to fit unnoticed into his shoulder bag. You sure you didn’t see it whilst camped in Jusuf’s mind? You know, like when he was packing his bag before going off the ship.”

  She spooned coffee and sugar into two mugs.

  “Camped in his mind? It was more than that, Kate; I was him, in his own thoughts…my thoughts…our thoughts, seeing the world as we saw it.”

  “Then why don’t you know what it was?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he just didn’t visualise it whilst I was ‘Camped in his mind’, because he certainly didn’t put anything out of the ordinary in his bag; just a few items of clothing and his sebsi. Whatever it was, it must’ve already been in there.”

  “His what?” and Kate passed him his coffee.

  “Ta,” and he took a careful sip. “It’s a pipe, for smoking dope: small, narrow clay bowl, long wooden stem.”

  “Moroccan dope, no doubt.”

  “Yeah, and I think I might have been right about that. It does look like there’s some sort of dope connection between us, through your joss stick holder.”

  “You called his dope ‘Kief’.”

  “Yeah, but it looked, smelt and tasted like Moroccan. Good gear, though. Better than the stuff I got from Jimmy Wrigley.”

  “So what do you know about kief?”

  “Nothing at all. I’d never heard the term before, but it looked like the sort of stuff we used to get in the seventies. Decent gear, not cut with any old crap. I remember getting some from—”

  “Colin?”

  “Eh? What?”

  “You said Jusuf said he’d have to use his sparingly, once he realised he was going to be stuck in Cornwall.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Well, if they are connected—yours and his smoking of dope—then that probably means there’s going to be a limit to how long the joss stick holder’s going to work. Think about it: do you reckon he’s likely to be able to just nip out and visit his own fifteenth century Cornish Jimmy Wrigley?”

  “Ah, I’m with you. Obviously not.”

  “So there’ll come a time when he runs out.”

  “After which I’ll probably not be able to travel back there again.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Shit.”

  “Apposite.”

  “Eh? Oh, unintended.”

  “So, you up to doing it again?”

  “What? Tonight?”

  “No, I didn’t mean now. It’s getting late, anyway. Tomorrow maybe?”

  “Well, I suppose so. At least this last phantasm wasn’t as scary, and what can happen now they’re in Cornwall?”

  “Hmm, well…anything, really. It is Cornwall, after all: a world unto itself. It was considered a different country back then…still is today by many, especially the Cornish themselves. And anyway, time for bed, me thinks, once I’ve drunk this,” and she gave him one of her best pixie-looks before wandering off, back into the front room with her coffee.

  11 To Lostwithiel

  As it turned out, it wasn’t until the end of the week, until the Friday, that they could try th
e joss stick holder again. This time, Kate sat ready with pen and pad in hand.

  Colin took his time over rolling a spliff, then, as he lit it, suggested another coffee. Deep down, his gut swilled with dread, but then again, his thoughts seemed to fizz with their own intrigue. His head finally won out and he took a last gulp of coffee, then a final toke on his spliff before stubbing it out.

  “Jusuf definitely got the better score,” he couldn’t help but nervously giggle as he slipped a joss stick from the wrapper and once more lit his Zippo. A thin, curling thread of blue-grey smoke again coiled towards the holder, seemingly drawn there. Colin flicked a glance at Kate, then slid the stick’s thin sliver of bamboo into the first hole it came to.

  Kate must have grabbed his hand, but Rodrigo’s worried face met Colin’s confused gaze.

  “Shit, Jusuf!” the man hissed. “Do you want to end up in the water?”

  “But I…”

  Rodrigo pulled him fully into the small boat from the harbour steps where he’d been standing. Jusuf’s stomach lurched in sympathy with the sway his extra weight gave it. As he stumbled and grabbed at the boom, which only moved away from his grasp, he saw pain flash across Rodrigo’s expression, quickly veiled.

  “Come on,” Rodrigo said when Jusuf had at last steadied himself, “sit down before you capsize us,” and he shuffled to one side of the bench to make room.

  Facing them at the stern sat a gnarled old man, his weather-beaten hand on the tiller, his distrustful eyes firmly fixed on Jusuf, who unsteadily sat down beside Rodrigo. Jusuf kept telling himself it was only a river trip, but unnerving memories of the storm still flashed before his mind’s eye.

  “And keep your head low, clear of the boom, unless you want to lose it,” Rodrigo then said, before nodding at the man at the stern as Jusuf carefully settled his shoulder bag down beside himself. Shivering at the cold air coming in off the water, he drew his new coat closer about him and watched the ferryman let slip a line.

  The boat’s impatiently straining sails pushed it out into the flow of the estuary’s inbound tide, where it rolled onto a larboard keel as the boom whipped across their smartly dipped heads. Jusuf looked beyond their ferryman and watched Foy’s overcast harbour slip steadily faster astern as the sails caught the stronger wind out of its lee.

  Rodrigo stared up at the grey clouds racing across the louring sky above Foy and said to the man—in his best English, “Good sou’west-by-south for our course this morning, Ferryman.”

  “Aar, so it be,” the man seemed to say from the back of his throat, before taking his gaze from Jusuf and off upstream. He pressed more firmly against the tiller and let slip some of the mainsheet. The bow slowly nosed around towards the northeast, more upstream, until the boom again swung across Jusuf and Rodrigo’s head. The wind now in the sails quickly pushed the boat over onto a starboard keel and the bow sank lower in the water as it turned to point inland. They were brought abeam of the estuary’s western shore, not far off the larboard side.

  Foy’s dwindling northern reach slipped dully by, its whitewashed buildings seeming ashen in the grey light. But then Rodrigo pointed out the Nao Providência, sitting high and dry in its boatyard berth, where Foy’s last few properties dotted the shoreline.

  “Looks like they’re well on with refitting her,” Rodrigo said, somewhat bitterly. Jusuf stared at the reminder of that terrifying storm, at how forlorn the Nao Providência looked, seemingly afloat upon the morning’s dank Cornish air. He turned away and looked across at the more distant opposite bank.

  There lay a wooded shoreline, beyond which gently rose a patchwork of long, thin fields dotted with toiling figures. A narrow combe soon directed the fields’ hemming trees into a sharp curve away from the estuary, giving way to a small cove. A landing ramp dipped down into the water’s edge, from a lane bordered by buildings that snaked their way up the climb of the narrow valley.

  Jusuf steeled himself to gather what little English he’d so far learnt, and finally pointed it out as he said to the ferryman: “What be…er, be that…piece?” to which the old man only looked baffled.

  “What is the name of that place?” Rodrigo clarified.

  The ferryman ran his gaze across the water. “Ah, well, ‘im be Bodinnick, as fer we’m be goin’ ‘cross be ferry,” to which even Rodrigo furrowed his brow. But by now the cove had fallen astern, the estuary narrowing more to a river as its course curved towards a bend ahead.

  “You know, Rodrigo,” Jusuf quietly said, “I don’t think I’ll ever find an ear for this infuriating language.”

  “Be fair to yourself, Jusuf; we’re not in the best part of Inglaterra to learn it. As I’ve already said, it’s not the mother tongue for most in Cornwall, especially the further west you go. Although most in Foy speak inglês well enough, it being a trading port and what have you. But that won’t be the case the further inland we go, I’m afraid. Once we’ve disembarked and passed through Lostwithiel, I expect we’ll likely both be equally adrift.”

  “How can we expect to get by in Bodmyn if neither of us understands a word they’re saying? I’m beginning to wonder if Captain Treffry’s idea was at all wise, or whether he was just looking to cut his expenditure on both our accounts. After all, he’s already had to pay out nearly four weeks for our board and lodgings.”

  “I must admit, he did seem a bit evasive when he suggested it, and there’s definitely been an air of something going on these past couple of weeks: lots of toing and froing, all manner of gatherings and heated arguments. I just wish I’d been able to understand some of it, but I think their Kernowek tongue will always defeat me.”

  The ferryman drew in the mainsheet and they tacked toward larboard as they approached a sharper bend in the river, one that took them westwards. The boom swung back over Jusuf and Rodrigo as water splashed in, wetting Jusuf and bringing a curse from under his breath.

  Another bend shortly took them north again, between low wooded rises. A small hamlet, one they agreed the old man had called Golant, presently slipped by on the western bank, more slowly now they’d lost the freshness of the coastal wind. But on they steadily pushed, chivvied by the urgency of the high tide’s pressing midday turn, as the river narrowed yet further still.

  Eventually, their passage now no more than upon a broad river, and after tacking through a series of sharp meanders, they sailed on between a lower spread of woods and occasional patchwork fields. Dotted about them were more figures, and here and there low, tree-shrouded buildings, but little else. Before long knots of buildings appeared, some looking like storehouses, others workshops, and small cottages like those in Foy.

  Then more properties came into sight, jostled yet closer still, one to another, often shoulder-to-shoulder. Finally there were workmanlike frontages along both banks ahead. Stacked in front of them were barrels and boxes, and what looked like rolls of cloth. Thronged in amongst it all, men and wagons, and donkeys, horses, carts and boys all laboured back and forth, to and from lines of boats moored along each quay.

  Their ferryman found a gap close by some steps and brought their boat with a thump against the western quay. Rodrigo grabbed at a wooden pile, to heave them to. He grimaced as he turned to take a line from the ferryman, then jumped across to the steps. There, he stumbled and swore before running the line through a loop in the wall beside him.

  Once secured and the boat held fast, Jusuf shouldered his bag and clambered across onto the steps himself. Rodrigo continued to look pained as he drew his purse from his pouch and squeezed past Jusuf, pressing their fare into the ferryman’s hand. With a “Thank ‘e” the man touched his cap, bit each coin and signalled Rodrigo to let go the line. Then he pushed himself off and lowered the mainsail, as his boat drifted out into the current and slowly slid off downstream, back towards Foy.

  “We should have left it a couple of weeks more at least,” Jusuf said as he halted Rodrigo’s climb up to the quayside. The man seemed to look through Jusuf for a moment, then his shoulders sa
gged and he dropped his gaze to the steps at his feet.

  “Stop worrying like an old hen, Jusuf,” he finally said, lifting his gaze. “My ribs are already less painful, and Capitão Treffry was right: another blacksmith could well step in before you. And from the sound of it, Senhora Trewin would snap up the first to turn up on her doorstep.”

  “Even a blackamoor?”

  “If she truly is in straitened times, then yes, even a blackamoor as big and as ugly as you, Jusuf.” A grin cracked his strained features as he slapped Jusuf on the arm. Jusuf, though, just hoped he was right.

  As they stepped up onto the quayside, he noticed an arc of blue sky away to the southwest. The air felt chill to Jusuf, but the lightening sky lifted his spirits as they stood and surveyed the bustle of commerce before them.

  It reminded Jusuf somewhat of the quayside not far from his smithy in Ceuta, where his favourite taberna would look out onto a similar but undoubtedly hotter scene. He imagined himself drinking a refreshing cup of chá de menta, whilst watching out for Safira taking her family’s washing down to the washhouse.

  Then he noticed Rodrigo no longer stood beside him, finally spotting him with a group of men further down the quayside. They looked as though they too had recently disembarked, trunks and satchels piled around them. Rodrigo, though, appeared deferential, often nodding, his shoulders rounded.

  It took a moment for Jusuf to recognise the cloak worn by the man he was talking to. Although no doubt sullied from the man’s travels, Jusuf knew the undyed woollen cloak of a Cistercian monk when he saw one, the hem of a dark habit hanging below.

  The monk was nodding, pointing out others of his party, to whom Rodrigo once more nodded. Then he looked around, finally setting eyes on Jusuf. A quick word with the monk, and he threaded his way back through the activity between them until he came alongside and took Jusuf’s arm.