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

by Clive S. Johnson

  15 Donkey Lane

  A loud and pervasive clatter and clank reverberated around Colin as he got back in the car, relief at last plastered across his face. By now a couple of other vehicles had also driven aboard, clearly more than enough for the ferry to make its next crossing.

  “Better?” Kate asked.

  “Much,” and Colin realised they were rocking in time to the tune of what he took to be the ferry clawing itself across the river by its chains—an oddly pleasant feeling. Then, in the wing mirror, came confirmation: the shore slowly slipping away behind.

  “What time is it, Colin? I haven’t got my watch on.”

  He checked the dash clock. “Er, nearly quarter to six.”

  Kate’s brows were furrowed when she turned to look at him. “We did set off at one, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, bang on. Not a bad time, eh? Just over four and a half hours.”

  “Christ, Colin, Dad never did it in less than six. You must’ve been motoring.”

  “No, just steady. It was the empty roads that did it; honest, Officer,” but then he couldn’t help but remember the full day it had taken Jusuf and Rodrigo just to get from Fowey to Bodmin, a mere tenth of the distance they’d just completed. Then he realised he’d not thought of them for quite a while.

  It wasn’t long before they were climbing through Torpoint, past another couple of closed petrol stations then out onto a fast, tree lined main road, heading west. Before long, they’d turned off, south between rolling fields and to what Kate said was the start of the coast road. And then there it was, before them: a glittering grey expanse of ocean.

  “Oh, I always love this first sight of the sea,” Kate enthused. “I really feel my holiday’s begun when I see that view. And what’s more, it looks like it’s going to be a nice day, as well.”

  Eventually, as they forged on along the high clifftop road, Colin spotted a speckle of pastel-coloured properties littering a blunt and rounded headland not that much further along.

  “Nearly there,” Kate said, staring that same way, her face lit with anticipation.

  They weren’t long swapping the coast road for a tarmacked track, then the grass of a field that shushed beneath the car, before finally coming to a halt in front of a rickety and overgrown picket fence. Low down behind it stood a small green hut, roofed in lichen-embossed corrugated-iron. A light-grey stone wall ran past behind, bramble-choked and timeless.

  The “Chalet” looked very old, though warm and welcoming, in a rustic kind of way. The side facing them had a single small window midway along and a door at one end. Beside the door hung a sun-bleached sign, identifying the attached abode as “Downfield”.

  “Dad said he’d leave the key under the shed,” Kate said, opening her door.

  “The shed has a shed?” Colin marvelled, then noticed it amongst a patch of nettles in the corner of the plot, its furthest end up against the wall. It had two doors. “Don’t tell me: that’s also the loo.”

  “Far door,” and she slammed the car’s own before heading through where a gate had once stood.

  Eventually, rubbing at a nettle sting, Colin at last unlocked the chalet’s door, pushing it open against a cagoule-swathed row of coat hooks and the escape of its imprisoned warmth.

  Inside, he found a close embrace of mellow light, filtering in through the pale-yellow fabric of daintily rose-printed curtains. Beneath them stood a narrow folding table, an upright chair to either side, a sofa-divan against one wall, an electric fire against another.

  “All mod-cons,” Colin said as Kate slid back the curtains, the improved light revealing an opening in the wall opposite and closed doors at either end of the room. Kate slipped through the opening, the sound of running water then disturbing the previously un-breathed air. Colin peered in after her at a galley kitchen that seemed somehow more suited to a narrowboat.

  “Cosy,” he this time said, and she pecked him on his lips.

  “Soon feel like home,” she assured him as she unplugged a kettle and swung it under the flow of the solitary tap.

  “Ah, so we do have electricity. In which case, I’ll go unpack.”

  Where everything went, he wasn’t sure. A chest of drawers in one miniature bunkbed-filled bedroom, the surplus on the bunks themselves, and some in a narrow wardrobe in the other slightly larger but double-bed-filled bedroom. Eventually, though, they both sat with their black teas on the sofa and enjoyed the balm of the chalet’s perfect peace and quiet—and its simple charm, Colin finally had to admit.

  “Are you okay after your drive?” Kate asked. “Do you want me to make up the bed, so you can have a few hours’ kip?”

  “No, I’ll be fine on the sofa, thanks. Just need to stretch out for a couple of hours, then get out to stretch my legs. Somewhere that’ll have Rizlas, if possible.”

  “Well, we do need a few other things, like fresh milk, unless you’re happy with black tea and coffee until Monday. So we could go down into Millbrook after you’ve had a rest.”

  And so, later that morning, Kate showed Colin the way to the nearest large village. They went a little way along the coast road at first, then inland. “The short way,” she’d said, “through the back lanes.”

  The first, apparently, was Donkey Lane, not only a steep descent but barely wider than the Fiat, the poor car’s flanks coming in for a bit of a whipping from the roadside growth. But then Colin’s concerns for his car’s paintwork gave way to a disturbing familiarity: the high brambled and tormentil-covered hedgebanks, the overarching shade of bordering trees, the morning’s growing close-heat, the tang of salt and seaweed and dry dusty fields hanging so intimately in the bright but mellow air.

  The slide of locked tyres on gravelly tarmac and the squeal of brake discs quickly brought absolute stillness to Colin’s world. Dimly aware of a yelp of surprise and the engine’s now burbling tick-over, he could only sit and stare out through the windscreen, at the descent of the winding lane before him.

  Then came the pap of a horn, and he realised Kate had been saying “What’s wrong, Colin, are you all right?” before he noticed a car faced them. It had been up close but currently juddered slowly back down the hill in reverse. A more urgent blare of its horn finally dragged him firmly back to the here-and-now.

  “Oh. Shit. Er, hang on. Didn’t we just come past a passing place?” and he stared a little wildly into Kate’s eyes.

  “Yeah…yes, yes we did, just before the last bend,” and Colin saw confusion marring her face.

  He swivelled around, peered through the rear window and slammed the car into reverse, revving hard as he sent the Fiat whining back up the hill and niftily into a space before a field gate. After a distant grinding of gears and the over-revving of a small engine, the other car eventually wheezed past, its driver staring daggers at them both.

  “Are you sure you’re all right to drive, Colin?” Kate asked, clearly worried. Colin, though, couldn’t get his words past his memory of Brother Thomas’s reddened face, that time the man had stood toe-to-toe with the road leveller.

  “We can’t stay here, Colin. We’re in a passing place.”

  He nodded, unable to face her, but managed to find his voice. “I’m all right. It was just…just a bit of a sort of flashback. You know, to…to that business with Jusuf.” He tried to swallow, his mouth too dry, the feel of Kate’s gaze scrutinising his face, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “Is… Is Millbrook far?”

  “No. Not far at all,” she said, a little warily.

  “Okay, then. Let’s get there, get what we need, then find a pub. I reckon I could do with a drink…and…and a bit of a think.”

  Although probably no more than a mile, the rest of the way to Millbrook took them down even more disconcertingly familiar lanes. It wasn’t the places themselves as such but more their claustrophobic evocations of somewhere he’d convinced himself he’d never been. And he didn’t dare admit, not even to himself, how relieved he felt when they at last emerged into the
narrow but bright streets of the village and found somewhere to park.

  They walked back, past what looked like a nineteen-fifties film-set garage—complete with pump attendant and car repair business—through a narrow alley and out into a barely wider street of shops. There, Colin spotted a pub, already open despite it only being a little after eleven, and a Spar, towards which Kate carried on.

  He called after her, and she stopped and turned. “I need to stretch my legs. Would you mind getting me twenty Silk Cut Purple and some green Rizla?”

  “Okay,” she said, a little uncertainly. “I’ll meet you in there, then, when I’m done,” and she pointed at the pub opposite’s open door. Colin nodded and turned to note the name above its door: appropriately enough, the Devon & Cornwall. Kate had already vanished into the shop when Colin came to look around at the village, wondering where to wander first.

  A bit of peace and quiet seemed best, so he slipped down the side of the shop, away from the main street. But then he stopped and stared at the close-facing properties lining the narrow street before him. At its end lay a junction, no doubt offering yet more keenly overlooking windows. Then he realised what it was about this place that unnerved him, other than a strange feeling he’d been somewhere like it before: it felt uncomfortably like being in someone else’s living room.

  Retracing his steps, he soon nipped in through the Devon & Cornwall’s door, nearly falling over its bar. Beneath low ceiling beams, a small lounge opened out on one side, a taproom on the other, a table of local old ladies all sitting around their stouts, shopping bags at their feet, gabbing away unintelligibly. The lounge side stood temptingly empty.

  “Morning,” a Cockney voice greeted him, and on the other side of the bar the landlord’s practiced smile awaited Colin’s order.

  “Good morning. Er,” and Colin looked from one pump to the next. “A pint of Tribute and a gin and tonic, please.”

  “Ice and lemon?”

  “If you would.”

  “Down on holiday?” the man asked as he drew Colin’s pint, but as he was answering, Kate came in with a carrier bag full of shopping.

  They presently sat at a window table in the lounge side, Colin’s upper lip cooling beneath its borrowed beer-head moustache. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and sighed as Kate sipped her drink.

  “Oh, that’s good,” he said and twisted to look out of the window at the deep shadows slanting across the brightly sunlit street. When the rather mundane view held his gaze overly long, Kate put her drink down carefully on its beer mat and rested her hand on his.

  “So, Colin,” she quietly said, “what was all that about back at Donkey Lane? You went as white as a sheet, never mind slamming the brakes on for no good reason.”

  Finally, he looked at her, but found his lips refusing to part company, clamped to a thin line.

  “You scared the shit out of me, do you know that?”

  He nodded, then dropped his gaze to his pint. “It was weird, Kate. I can’t explain it. That view down the lane… Well, it was like…like déjà vu, but really strong. You know, more than just a feeling.” When he finally raised his gaze to her eyes, he found none of the disbelief he’d expected.

  “When we’ve drunk up,” she said, “let’s go back to the chalet the long way, on the newer, wider roads—and I’ve something to show you.”

  However much he knitted his brows and stared at her, she’d say no more. So they quietly drank up in the cool shade of the pub, before returning to the stifling heat of their car, baking under a now scorching midday Cornish sun.

  16 Proof Positive

  They drove out of Millbrook and around the south shore of a lake dotted with small boats. Its twisting shoreline took them past a few Victorian villas set within large and well-tended gardens, then beneath a wooded hill and finally onto a climb between steep-sided fields. An open stretch of road along the ridgetop above gave a wonderfully panoramic view back down to the village, and across open water beyond, to Torpoint and its ferry over to Devonport.

  Colin felt they’d already been here for ages, as though the very lie of the land had somehow found its way into his blood. Then they were down onto the edge of what looked to him like a fishing village. The tortuous road that skirted above it gave glimpses down into its small bay and onto its higgledy-piggledy press of cottages.

  It was all quickly behind them, and they were soon climbing a deep verdant valley and on to a sharp bend. Beyond it an expanse of ocean filled a startlingly broad and bright horizon, the high sun beaming down from within a cloudless blue sky, its gaze sprinkling the seemingly endless watery spread with ripples of diamonds. As Colin swung them onto a clifftop road and the curve of a long sweeping bay appeared before them, he gasped.

  “Wow! What a view,” and he slowed to take it in.

  “Whitsand Bay,” Kate told him, “and this is the other end of the coast road. And there, can you see?” and she pointed. “Dodman Point in the distance. Sometimes you can see The Lizard beyond it, but it’s a bit too hazy for that now.”

  Only later, when Colin was opening the chalet’s door, did he remember Kate’s promise, but his reminder to her only brought the offer of tea first, and with milk this time. Whilst Kate clattered around in the galley, he sat beside the table, opened the window and looked out at the gulls wheeling above.

  When she eventually placed their mugs of tea on the table, Kate wandered off into the small bedroom, clearly rummaging about. Colin slurped at his scalding tea, listening to the gulls’ raucous cries until Kate finally came and sat down opposite him, something hidden in her hand.

  She sipped her own tea before saying: “Some time ago, I remembered mum once telling me about someone in her family from way back when. It struck me it might be relevant. So, before they came down here, I asked if she’d search out a photo I knew she had. I think the last time I saw this, before she gave it to me in June, must’ve been when I was fourteen,” and she placed a small, rather battered sepia coloured photograph on the table between them, facing Colin.

  He leant forward and peered at it. “Bloody ‘ell, Kate, but that’s you,” and he carefully lifted it closer to his eyes, flicking them between the sharp image and Kate’s own face. The name within the broad white base of its frame said “John Hawke”. Although in a florid script, he realised it had been printed, alongside an address in Plymouth.

  He turned the photograph over to find a large ornate crest overarched by “PATRONIZED BY H.R.H. THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH”, it’s rather appropriate motto beneath reading: “LIGHT AND TRUTH”. Under this was again printed: “J. Hawke. 8, George Street, PLYMOUTH.”. Other than some information at the very bottom about negatives always being kept and future copies possible, the only other mark was an ink written number scratched in an upper corner.

  “I can’t believe how alike you are,” he again marvelled, then the look on Kate’s face brought him up short. Before he could say anything, she reached across and touched the photograph, where it still rested in his hand.

  “I thought of this again when we were on our way through Devonport this morning. You see, when Mum found it for me and read the back, she got all nostalgic. She knew where George Street was. We passed the end of it not long before turning off for the ferry.” Kate stroked the photograph before withdrawing her hand.

  “Her name was Eleanor, although mum couldn’t remember her surname. She thought it might have been Menhenick but wasn’t sure; there were so many in her family. We reckoned it was taken sometime in the eighteen-nineties.”

  She took a longer swig of her tea. “Mum laughed that they always knew I was hers because of that photo, that there hadn’t been a mix up at the hospital, seeing I don’t look much like either her or my dad.”

  Colin again looked out at the seagulls wheeling past the window, then quietly said, “But remarkably like Mistress Trewin, eh, Kate?”

  “I’m obviously a throwback to Eleanor, so… So, yes, why not to Mistress Trewin before her.”
>
  “But…” Colin began, then swigged down the last of his own now almost cold tea. “But that would mean—”

  “That your conclusive proof is not necessarily conclusive.” She smiled at him. “I couldn’t be both here and back then in Jusuf’s time, no, but my family line could. And I reckon it was, certainly from the look on your face this morning on Donkey Lane, then later in Millbrook. This, Colin, is not really your first visit to Cornwall…now, is it?”

  “It would seem not,” he quietly allowed as she rummaged in her bag beside her. She straightened and placed a couple of packets of green Rizla cigarette papers on the table before him. He stared at them as he finally lowered Eleanor’s photograph, placing it neatly beside the Rizlas.

  “Pity we don’t have the joss sticks and the holder, then, otherwise…” but Kate got up and went back into the small bedroom. When those two very items appeared beside the photograph and cigarette papers, Colin sighed before turning Kate a lopsided grin.

  “Let’s take a walk on the beach,” she said, brightly, “seeing the tide’s still on its way out,” and she tossed a tide table booklet onto the table as well, beside the other items. “Then we can come back up and have an early tea before you go find out what Jusuf’s been up to since your last visit. How’s that sound?” and he nodded, resignedly, looking forward more to the beach than anything else.

  Kate smiled as she regarded him, then she leant across and kissed him sweetly on his lips, her evocative scent mingling with the warm summer breeze drifting in so temptingly through the open window.

  17 Of Service to the Priory

  “I be finished wi’ them there tats o’ the Tremethyk’s,” Mistress Trewin announced as she bustled in to the hot smithy barn from her cottage, a bundle of clothes under one arm. “They be more rags than dillas,” and she humphed, as though the task had sullied her hands.

  At first, Colin stared uncomprehendingly at her as he lowered the cooling metal he’d been working, resting it carefully on the anvil before hefting his hammer to a looser grip in his other hand. Their gazes met for a moment, Jusuf again seeing what Rodrigo had meant about Mistress Trewin’s elvish looks. But he then turned back to his work, picking up the dull red iron again in his tongs. As he carried it over to the raised brick hearth at the centre of the dimly lit forge, he marshalled an answer, as best he could.