“I think it’s meant to be the face of the storm, Colin, blowing down on the ship. See? All these lines coming from its mouth.”
“Oh. Right,” but then Colin screwed his face up. “He wasn’t a very good carver, though, was he, our Rodrigo? Not much of an artist. I mean, it all looks a bit, well, a bit…”
“Primitive?” Kate suggested. “But just look at the power of it: the angry swirling of the clouds, the terror in their faces, the turbulent sea tossing beneath the ship, the horror and fear he’s managed to capture.”
“Yeah; yeah, I see what you mean.”
“And can’t you sense Rodrigo’s relief? Don’t you feel it? The joy of having come through it all alive, of being here, safe and sound, able to carve the whole thing as a statement of thanks to both God and his close friend, Jusuf. What was it he said? ‘So my gratitude can speak out to the many who’ll come its way long after I’ve left this life’. Well, there you are, Colin; I reckon he achieved that in bucket-loads, far better than a lot of the more polished stuff you’ll see. That’s got real emotion to it. It really has.” But to Colin, that now wonderful work of art had become blurred, its image swimming through a sheen of tears that had welled in his eyes.
Before he knew it, he was standing in the south porch, staring out through gentle rain. The gravestones glistened along their shoulders, the grass more vibrantly green between, the trees beyond the graveyard’s wall a touch more pastel in their rain-veiled stands.
“You all right?” Kate’s soft voice said at his back, and her arms slipped around his waist.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
They stood there for a while, watching the rain wet the world outside, feeling the air lighten as the sky grew steadily brighter. Then the shower eased off and the heavy scents of summer rose about them as the air warmed. A hint of blue sky appeared above the trees, a slash of hope for a drier day to come.
Colin drew in a ragged breath and shivered. “It’s silly, really,” he quietly said, squeezing his crossed arms against Kate’s own about his waist.
“No, it’s not, Colin. It’s understandable. Rodrigo’s become just as close a friend to you as to Jusuf; he’s bound to have. You’ve been Jusuf, after all, closer to him than to anyone else, really, so it’s hardly surprising.”
“It’s just that… Well, this has been the first real physical contact with either of them; something we’ve both handled, that Rodrigo actually made. And maybe even Jusuf got down here to see it. You never know. And he’d have certainly run his hand over it, as I just did. I’m sure he would have. It sort of took me by surprise, that’s all.”
They eventually left Saint Winnow for Lostwithiel, both in silence at first as they retraced their route to the main road. Colin, though, had been thinking hard, trying to square a circle that had been a consistent worry since that first day he’d pushed a joss stick into Kate’s holder, back in the hot summer of seventy-six. For all his science training, for all his degree had equipped him to reason rationally, he now knew that that demanding discipline fell far short of the whole truth.
By the time they’d parked up in a Pay and Display on the outskirts of Lostwithiel’s town centre, Colin had at last come to terms with the gaping hole riven through his touchstone of a rigorous scientific approach. Wasn’t this, after all, what science demanded? he thought to himself as they searched out the old riverside quay. To be tested by observation, and always open to being found wanting.
They soon found the quayside. Colin then unerringly led Kate through the streets of Lostwithiel, the familiarity he continuously experienced no longer unnerving him. The awe the beautiful parish church instilled turned out to be—he here joyfully acknowledged—a mix of his own and what he remembered of Jusuf’s. This truly warmed his heart, enough to bring an irrepressible smile to his lips long before they finally stood outside The Globe Inn.
“So, this is where the brothers took them for breakfast?” Kate said as Colin stared up at the remarkably recognisable building.
Inside, it turned out to be a little less familiar, cluttered as it was with its centuries of history and all its more modern changes. But it still had a feel Colin readily recognised, as though the stones themselves carried the memory. Once they’d bought drinks and ordered something to eat, the quiet pub meant they easily found an out-of-the-way corner table.
Kate took a sip of her gin and tonic. “You know you said the pew end was the only physical contact you’ve had with them, well, there is Jusuf’s burden, remember—our joss stick holder.” Having taken a drink of his St Austell’s Tribute pale ale, Colin opened the eyes he’d close and looked at her across the small table between them.
“But that’s still only conjecture, Kate. We’ve no proof that that’s what it is. And I’m beginning to wonder if we’re wrong. It seems Jusuf’s dead set on getting his burden to… Where was it, again?”
“Castilla y León, which I’m pretty sure was the bulk of what’s now Spain; two once separate kingdoms united through marriage; the usual historical manoeuvrings.”
“Indeed, set on getting his burden there to use somehow against the Christian infidels, the ones who’d nicked his own people’s country.”
“Amongst which infidels he ended up living, albeit the ones here in Cornwall, one of whom he seems to have got the hots for,” and Kate grinned.
“Eh?”
“Mistress Trewin?” and she shook her head at his perplexed look. “Surely you’ve twigged that one?”
“What? Jusuf and…Gwenna, wasn’t it?”
“Bloody ‘ell, Colin. You can be as slow as Jusuf sometimes; do you know that? Yeah, Gwenna.”
“Well, yeah; she is beautiful. I know Jusuf sees that. He couldn’t not, now could he? I mean, you’ve got the same blood as her, so she’s bound to be stunning,” at which Kate’s pixie look rapidly bloomed across her quickly down-tipped face, her dainty ears suffusing coral-pink.
“Well, be that as it may,” she managed, avoiding his grinning eyes, “but from what you’ve described, I’d say it’s pretty mutual.”
“But he’s no chance…has he?”
“What? Because he’s a black man?” and she gave him a snooty laugh. “There wasn’t the same cultural racism then, Colin. Everyone beyond your own village was foreign in those days, and so not to be trusted, regardless of their colour. No less so than the English if you were Cornish.”
“I was actually referring to his religion.”
“Oh. That. Right. Well, yes and no.” She took a longer sip of her drink. “Depends if they wanted to get married or not. But even then, they could just plight their troth to each other, which in Canon Law was enough to make them wed, whether it was in a church before a priest or not. It was usual, though, to have it witnessed, I must admit, to avoid later dispute…and to ensure the community’s approval.”
“Which wouldn’t have been a problem for Jusuf, given how valued he was as a blacksmith.”
“Maybe, but then, the smithy was owned by the priory, remember? Where much of his work came from. So they’d probably have frowned on such simple handfasting. On the other hand, if it meant their retaining a brilliant blacksmith, well, they could always have turned a blind eye, I suppose. Business was business, even back then.”
“Right,” Colin mused, staring absently across the bar’s lounge for a moment before returning his gaze to Kate. “But coming back to Jusuf’s burden: I’d say he ended up taking it to Santander, that it didn’t end up staying here at all. He was obviously dead set on finishing off his task, which would then make our joss stick holder something else, and a far safer something else, thank God. Although that would leave unanswered what the damned thing really is.”
He pushed himself back into his seat and sighed. “This is all doing my head in. Do you know that, Kate? And I can’t help thinking it’s Jusuf who’s driving it all, that he had a purpose in mind. That he wanted us to do something for him. But I’m blowed if I can think what.”
�
�Maybe that’s yet to come, Colin. After all, until the fat lady sings, and all that.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Or until Jusuf shows me what the hell he wants from me.”
“And lets you know before his dope runs out. Don’t forget that. After all, when we’re back in Manchester, you can always go to Jimmy Wrigley’s and buy some more.”
26 Fingers Crossed
“So, did you manage to get hold of Louise?” Colin asked Kate when she eventually came back into the chalet.
“Finally, yes. There were two young teenage girls jammed in the phone box, obviously giggling away to boys on the other end, but I got through to her in the end, before she’d left work.”
“And?”
“There isn’t any tea going, is there?”
“I’ll make us one.”
Colin went into the galley as Kate sat down on the sofa and told him: “She assured me that nothing of the sort happened in Castille and Leon anywhere around that date. Nothing to threaten the country, anyway. In fourteen-ninety-nine there was a Moorish uprising in the recently conquered Granada that was soon put down, but that was far away in the south. The other end of the country from Santander. Otherwise, Spain has remained a pretty stable country all the way through to the present.”
“And she’s the Rylands’ expert for that period?”
“If she says ‘Nothing happened’, then nothing happened.”
“Well, I know the Moors never returned to Spain—even I know that—so whatever Jusuf’s burden was meant to do clearly couldn’t have worked. But I was hoping there’d have been at least a record of his attempt.”
“Maybe his burden didn’t quite remain ‘Efficacious for a thousand years’, eh? Maybe not even one.”
Colin left the tea to brew and went back in to join Kate, sitting down beside her. “Or maybe it did but stayed here in Cornwall—unused.”
“Maybe.”
“And then found its way to you in Manchester,” and they both stared at the joss stick holder, still sitting innocently on the table opposite.
“We need to know more, Colin.”
“All right. After tea this evening, then; speaking of which…” and he got up to pour their brews.
After they’d eaten that evening, washed up and put away, Colin settled down beside Kate in their deckchairs in the garden, to roll a spliff.
The day had indeed turned out to be dry and sunny, and pleasantly warm after the morning rain in Saint Winnow. Now at its waning, its dark-blue sky to the west had taken to it a fiery red blaze. Shafts of golden light speared through a vestige of cloud along the horizon as the sun sank behind the dark mass of land that rose beyond Portwrinkle. Overhead, the brightest stars already pricked through the inky blue sky, leaving Colin feeling it couldn’t get much better.
“Still a fair bit left,” he told Kate as he applied the flame of his Zippo to the lump of dope, softening it so it could be crumbled into the waiting line of tobacco. Before long, he rested back in his chair and stared up at the expansive but rapidly darkening heavens.
For a while he waited, watching the sky darken to velvet black, the perfect cloth from which the myriad stars could blaze. He lit the spliff and took a long toke, staring out at the seemingly unending ocean, one that rightly took the name of the greatest of great Greek gods. Atlas held all that majesty upon his shoulders, and it took Colin’s breath away.
Arching across it all, pointing at far off South America, swept what Colin knew to be the spiral arms of their own great galaxy: the Milky Way. So vast and open did the sky seem that he could almost see a depth to it, almost felt dizzy at the panoply of stars that studded their own small view of this, their vast and truly awe inspiring universe.
A short streak of white trailed briefly high up above his gaze and he gasped “Wow, a shooting star” before crossing his fingers and making a wish.
“Aw, I missed it,” Kate said, putting her cup of coffee down on the grass and staring up. “You’d better—”
“I already have,” and Colin smiled, hoping it would presently come true.
When he’d finished his smoke, they went back in to the warmly-lit welcome of the chalet. There, they sat either side of the table, the joss stick holder between them. Colin removed a stick from its pack, finding it only a little more difficult with his fingers still crossed.
Before long, he was hanging up his leather apron on its hook and wiping sweat from his bare arms and chest with a towel. He glanced around the forge, satisfied he’d left everything safe, then picked up his shirt from where he’d left it and went through to the cottage.
The small table against the wall beside the door was already set for their meal, Gwenna at the trough under the unshuttered window opening, straining vegetables from a pan. Even with the fire set for the hearth’s oven, the cottage still felt refreshingly cooler than the stiflingly close forge.
Gwenna glanced over her shoulder. “I won’t be long, then ‘e can get here to wash thee self off. There be an already hot kettle above the fire, and you can take your time. The food won’t spoil.”
Jusuf became entranced by her shadowed shape, slight against the opening: her narrow waist and broad back, her fluid but strong arms, the awry tangle of hair at the nape of her neck that had escaped her kerchief.
“I’m glad you be a-cooking while Rodrigo’s away, Gwenna. I don’t think we’d have lasted long on my fare,” but the distraction of his words didn’t work, and still he gazed at her industrious figure.
“It’s helped keep me busy, Jusuf, and you’ve been so busy yourself, what with your work for the Saint Germanus bell, so it’s only fair. Especially as I’ve not had much sewing in. Here,” and she stepped aside from the trough, half turning to face him, pan in one hand, colander in the other.
She froze, but against the glare of the daylight behind her, Jusuf couldn’t quite read her face to say why.
“Er,” she managed to get out, then, “I’ll…I’ll just put this to keep warm, then I…then I need to check the meat,” and she hurried past him to the hearth.
Jusuf soon scrubbed up, drying himself off before slipping his shirt back on and tucking it into his breeches. Gwenna was by then no longer in the room, although he heard her coming back through the barn. She carried in a full bucket of water and placed it down by the hearth, all the while keeping her eyes averted.
“Can I help,” Jusuf offered, but she said not, only that he’d to sit at the table and she’d bring him his dish. They finally sat facing one another, Gwenna hurriedly saying her own form of grace, to include Allah, before they both tucked in.
After a while, keeping her gaze to her food, she quietly said, “Has thee heard the tidings yet: about my husband’s cousin?”
Jusuf said he hadn’t.
“Seems he were hanged as a traitor a few days after Blackheath, along with that lawyer and some peer of the realm who’d joined them along the way, their heads then gibbeted on pikestaffs on London Bridge.”
Jusuf stopped eating and stared across at her.
It drew her gaze from her dish. “Oh, sorry, Jusuf. I didn’t mean to spoil your eating.”
“No, that’s all right. It was just that it made me wonder if…”
Gwenna slipped her hand onto his, pale against his bark-brown skin. “I know Rodrigo being down in Saint Winnow,” she said, “means we don’t get to hear his tavern-talk, but I still see what I need to in the eyes of some of the returned men I pass in the street. I see what I know they saw, but what they’re kindly keeping close to their chests for the sake of my tenancy, for which I’m grateful. Although I must admit, I do sometimes think, just for a moment, that the noises you make are Maeloc’s, your hammering and your working the bellows. But I’m already finding my peace, Jusuf, so thee need not tread so softly.”
All the while, her hand had remained warm upon the back of his, her voice softer when she then said, “Your labours here, Jusuf, are bringing new memories to replace old, and for that alone I’m grateful.” Her hand slippe
d from his, back across the table and into her lap. “But I cannot deny my fears, Jusuf. The prospect… Well, the prospect of having to leave this smithy fills my heart with dread.”
For the first time since those fateful tidings had come upon Master Wilfred’s lips, Jusuf felt able to ask, “Have you not got family who’ll take you in?” Gwenna stared at him, her mind clearly elsewhere, then she hurriedly ate another mouthful before taking a large drink of the fresh spring water and swallowing hard.
“Father was taken by the sweating sickness a year afore I wed. Mother nearly went herself but for God’s good grace; an ague I was for some reason spared.”
She began to lift another spoonful to her lips but paused, gazing deep into Jusuf’s eyes. “Not long after Maeloc and me moved here, my mother met a trader from Falmouth whose wife had recently died. It wasn’t long before she’d moved in with him down there, with him and all his brood.”
“But, wouldn’t they have room for you?”
“It’s eight years now, Jusuf, and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of her. I don’t even know if she be alive still,” and Gwenna finally took a mouthful from her waiting spoon.
“Your husband’s family?”
She laughed, bitterly, and shook her head. “They blame me for stealing away their only son, of tricking him into marriage. So, what of them, eh? Now their son’s run away from a regretted marriage. And by it, met his end. And those I know well enough don’t have the room, Jusuf. Meg’s only got the one, though she’s offered to share her pallet, bless her. But it wouldn’t be fair, nor likely last our friendship long. I’m afeared, Jusuf, that for such as me, only the…only the streets or…or worse now stare me in the…”
She lowered her head, her shoulders rounded as silent sobs trembled through them. “I’ve tried hard not to…” she attempted, but her downcast words were swept away by her tears.
Jusuf quickly went to kneel at her side, slowly slipping an arm around her shoulders, tentatively offering comfort. She sniffed and slanted a wary look into his eyes, hers glistening and seeming so large in their nearness.
The Forebear's Candle: A time travel mystery and love story set against the intrigue of Henry Tudor's England Page 15