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

by Clive S. Johnson

  At last, after yet another turn, the answer they’d been so desperately hoping to find dimly stared back at them. An answer that shocked them both to silence, until together they sighed “Wow”, and turned to each other with the widest of wide eyes.

  36 An Initial Discovery

  “Christ, Kate, my head must have been only feet from it!”

  “And I wasn’t much further away at the bottom of the ladder.”

  They stared at the pad, across which “St. Germanus” dimly but clearly glowed, “Rame” below it. With shaky fingers, Colin again rotated the joss stick holder; “inscrybd stone” reappeared.

  “That’s it, then; the full message,” he said.

  “Put the light back on, Colin,” and he did, snuffing out the candle before standing behind Kate. He peered over her shoulder and watched as she wrote each word out again using their modern spelling, finally rearranging them to read: “St. Germanus Rame, inscribed stone, headstock inside belfry. Make safe”.

  “When you think about it, Colin, Jusuf couldn’t have chosen better.”

  “What? Choosing Saint Germanus?”

  “Yeah. Where’s most likely to last down through the centuries? A church. And which is least likely to be changed? A small remote one that’s about as far away from being important enough to warrant alterations as you can get; unlike Bodmin’s Saint Petroc’s. Don’t forget, that was almost completely rebuilt only twenty years before Jusuf arrived.”

  “And,” Colin furthered, “somewhere to which he had legitimate access. Somewhere he could make as much noise as he needed in hiding his burden, given he was there fitting their bell’s new headstock.”

  “Well, Bingo, Colin; there we have it. Found. We just need to work out how we’re going to get at it, to make it safe for the next five hundred years.”

  Colin pointed out what Kate had said about rural churches never being locked, and that the belfry’s hatch hadn’t even had a catch. As for whatever stone it was hidden behind, he reckoned it wouldn’t take much to scrape out what little mortar he remembered the church walls having. Kate then asked if he’d thought of a secure way of resealing the bottle.

  “Araldite.”

  “Araldite?”

  “Yeah. You know, two-part epoxy resin.”

  “I know what Araldite is, Colin. It’s just I would never would have thought of using it for this.”

  “It’s the easiest and safest way I can think of. Easy to apply, takes less than an hour to cure, doesn’t shrink or expand in the process, and last for yonks.”

  “Would that ‘Yonks’ be five hundred years, though?”

  “Er, well, I reckon so. I can’t think of anything better, not that we’ll be able to do in the middle of the night by torchlight, stuck up a church tower.”

  Kate stared at Colin, her face immobile. Then she swallowed hard.

  “You all right, Kate?”

  She slowly shook her head. “No. Not really.”

  “You’ve gone white.”

  “I never, not in a million years, ever saw myself breaking into a church in the dead of night, never mind hacking into one of its walls.”

  “We won’t be breaking in; it won’t be locked.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Colin sat down at the table. “It’ll be okay. In the dead of night around there it’ll be as dead as a grave.”

  “I assume you’re trying to be funny,” but Colin stared blankly at her, which brought her to ask, “Why don’t we just explain it all to the vicar, then ask for his permission to look for it?”

  “You were the one to tell me we’d no concrete evidence. He just wouldn’t believe us, Kate.”

  “But we’ve got the joss stick holder’s message now.”

  “Which has no provenance at all. So, if we’re not convincing enough, all we’ll end up doing is revealing our hand, then we’d be stuffed. And imagine it: ‘My friend, here, has had a few dope-induced phantasms that have revealed the end of the world is nigh, so we just wondered if—”

  “Okay, Colin. I get the idea.”

  “So, we’re on our own, in which case…I can feel a list coming on.”

  As he started writing on the pad, he happened to notice how more ashen Kate now looked.

  “Don’t worry, chuck,” Colin assured her. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure it will. I’ll just finish off this list, then anything we haven’t already got we can pick up tomorrow when we go shopping. We should then be able to get it done tomorrow night.”

  Kate was dead set against this, arguing that weekends were the busiest time for visitors around there. “Let’s leave it till Monday night. It’ll be a lot quieter.”

  “Well…all right, then, Monday night it is,” and he went back to compiling his list.

  When Monday night eventually came, they drove to the coastguard station car park at pub throwing-out time, parking in a dark corner as though two lovers in search of seclusion. Come midnight, the windows by then convincingly steamed-up, they quietly got out and locked the car.

  Aided a little by the distant amber stain of Plymouth’s streetlights lighting the clouds inland, they quietly walked back the half mile along the lane towards Saint Germanus. Colin hitched their rucksack more comfortably onto his shoulder, confident it held everything they’d likely need. But the nearer they got to the church, the more he began to worry about things unforeseen.

  “I wish you’d worn something darker, Kate,” he whispered. “I can see that jacket quite clearly.”

  “I packed for coming on holiday, not cat-burgling. This is the darkest I’ve got.”

  For once, Colin was thankful for the seclusion of the Cornish hedgebanks, even though they weren’t that high here. However, it did mean that if anyone came along the lane itself towards them, there’d be nowhere to hide. Then he noticed he could just make out the church spire ahead, black against the faintly amber-lit clouds.

  “In here,” Kate quietly said, stumbling up a short grass verge to what looked like a gap in the hedgebank.

  “Where you going?”

  “I’m sure there’s a back way into the churchyard here.”

  “You never mentioned it. I thought we were going in by the lychgate at the front,” and Colin stumbled after her.

  “Only just remembered, but it’ll mean we’re off the lane a bit sooner. Ah, yes, here we are,” and Colin could hear what sounded like a wrought iron latch being lifted.

  Beyond the gate, the starlight only just revealed a churchyard that slanted away towards the low dark mass of the church, the tower at its western end still clearly outlined against the clouds. On each side of an overgrown path rose gravestones, mourning-black against the ghostly-grey grass between, each seeming silently to watch Colin and Kate pass by.

  Once within the utter darkness beside the wall of the south aisle, they had to feel their way towards the tower, careful not to fall into the deep ditch that ran around the building. After what seemed like an eternity of groping in the darkness they found themselves beside the entrance porch on the north side. Its pitch-black interior gaped forbiddingly at them, into which they each took a step, stunned to a stop by the utter darkness within.

  “Hang on,” Colin whispered, slipping the rucksack off. He drew a torch from one of its side pockets and promptly startled them both with its intense but narrow beam. He clicked it off.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, his heart beating ten-to-the-dozen as he blindly peered out into the churchyard, listening intently.

  He felt Kate beside him. “I thought you said the insulation tape would stop it being so bright.”

  “Well, it always works in films. Maybe I didn’t make the slit quite narrow enough.”

  “Stick your hand over the lens, then, and try again.”

  The glow still proved worryingly bright, but not as intense, tinted pink by the fleshy filter of Colin’s hand. It let Kate quickly find the door latch, though, and to Colin’s immense relief, the door opened—emitting a loud and protracted creak.<
br />
  “Shit,” Kate whispered. “I don’t suppose you brought any oil.”

  “Just get in, will you?” and after a moment, he was ever so slowly and hence a little less noisily closing the door behind them.

  Inside Saint Germanus, beyond the torch’s pool of restricted light, it looked blacker than he imagined outer space to be, except for its barely amber-lit stained-glass windows. They seemed to hover about them, spectre-like in the still, musty air. Then he jumped when Kate prodded him, to prompt him to show a bit more light.

  “You’re covering the torch too much,” she told him. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  Wary of the slit opening in the far wall of the base of the tower, Colin kept the torch’s light low, illuminating the uneven stone flags at their feet.

  “Here,” he said. “Take the torch and I’ll go up and open the hatch.”

  As before, it lifted easily, clicking loudly as it swung back against a stop. It held in place.

  “Colin?” Kate hissed. “How am I going to get up with a torch in my hand?”

  “Ah. Er, well, hang on a sec’,” and he climbed back down. “You go on up ahead whilst I light your way,” and he took the torch from her. “Once you’re in the belfry, I can feel my own way up in the dark.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Go on, then,” but she only looked down at her feet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Kate cast him the glint of a sheepish look. “I’m… I’m not that good with ladders. Sorry.”

  “But… But why didn’t you say so before?” She didn’t answer. “Look, I tell you what, seeing I can’t do everything on my own and so need you with me, what if I climb up behind you, so you can’t fall?”

  “In the pitch-black?”

  “No. Look,” and Colin placed the torch on the ground, facing close into a corner, shedding enough light to see the ladder by. “I’ll get you up safely then come back down for the torch. You okay with that?”

  She slowly nodded.

  Kate’s progress proved slow and stiff, but eventually she climbed up into the belfry, the sound of her feeling for a place away from the hole in which to wait coming loudly to Colin’s ears as he retrieved the torch. Once safely back with her, he took the torch from his pocket and turned it on. He quickly covered it with his hand, though, at the sight of narrow louvered slit-openings, one in each of the tower’s four walls.

  “Shit. I never thought about those. We’re going to have to be really careful with the light, Kate, being so high up here.” He gave the torch into Kate’s care, then took his first proper look at the sizeable bell, suspended at waist height within its square frame at the centre of the floor. “Right. Just the one,” and he reached into the rucksack and took out a woollen sock.

  “What’s that for?” Kate whispered, but Colin was already on his stomach, reaching under the bell with both hands, despite its rim being barely a foot off the floor. He carefully grasped the bell’s tongue, over which he slid the sock with a bit of difficulty.

  “There we are; safe from us accidentally ringing out our presence.”

  “Wow. You’ve thought of everything, Colin…except that another torch might have come in handy,” which comment he deigned to ignore. “So,” Kate said, “which bit’s the headstock?”

  Colin got to his feet and leant over the bell. “This is it,” he said, running his hand along a thick metal beam from whose cranked centre the bell hung. At one end was a large metal wheel, from which the bell rope vanished through a hole in the floor.

  “Bring the light over here, Kate, if you would,” and he peered at the rough slate wall a foot or so beyond the wheel. “Can you see any marks?” and when she said she couldn’t, he lightly dusted the wall of cobwebs with his hand, revealing nothing.

  “Let’s have a look at the other side, then,” and there they found a few slightly larger stones. “Bring the light a bit nearer, Kate.”

  Colin’s mind froze as a shiver ran up his back, for cut into one of them, beneath a wispy layer of cobwebs, he could definitely make out the letter “J”. Beside it, after running his hand over the stone, an “H” appeared.

  At first he felt numb, unable to grasp that he had before him that very solid evidence that had for so long eluded them. An indisputable testament to Jusuf’s hand in history. Colin nearly whooped in excitement but managed to rein it in, hard pressed to keep his reaction to a broad grin he cast Kate’s way. It was a grin, though, that teetered on the edge of unrestrained jubilance.

  “We’ve… We’ve found it, Kate,” he finally managed to say, his voice quavering as he fought to keep it in check. “The inscribed stone. Jusuf’s inscribed stone,” and his grin now ached across his face.

  Kate pushed in nearer, staring at the letters. “JH: Jusuf al-Haddad,” but her own wide grin only looked menacing in the low angle of the torchlight. “All we have to do now, Colin, is get behind it,” she said, and his near delirium fizzled out as his grin wavered and finally collapsed.

  “Right,” he said, rather flatly, and at last pulled himself together.

  He’d soon removed an old wooden-handled screwdriver from the rucksack, placing the broad blade of its long shaft into the gap around the stone. Then he stopped, abruptly, leaving the screwdriver sticking out, and bent to pull some newspapers from the bag.

  “Here, I nearly forgot. Help me lay these out beneath it. We have to be really tidy, and I want to use the debris as packing once we’re finished; to make it look undisturbed.”

  There didn’t seem to be much mortar when Colin came to scrape the screwdriver blade back and forth. What little did come out clattered noisily onto the newspaper. When he worked the blade along the top of the stone, though, it jammed. As he tried to prise it loose, an odd thing happened: the stone angled out a touch, as though hinged along its bottom edge.

  They stared at each other in the gloom.

  “Well,” Kate whispered, “as you’ve already pointed out, he was a born engineer.”

  Colin returned his attention to the stone, gently prising at it with the screwdriver, his free hand against its face. It came loose, its weight lighter than expected, leaning out against Colin’s palm.

  “Here, take the screwdriver,” he said, then used both hands to ease the stone further out. Only a couple of inches thick, it came free, its tenon-cut lower face lifting out of a mortice groove in the stone below.

  He lowered it to the newspaper, and as he straightened, their eyes met, each like a rabbit’s caught in headlights. Neither he nor Kate dared move.

  “You look,” she said and handed him the torch.

  “Me?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, if you insist,” and Colin drew in a long breath before slowly turning back to where the stone had been. He leant nearer and peered in, hoping above hope that his would prove to be the first eyes ever to have done so since Jusuf had sealed it shut all those centuries before.

  37 Loathsome Contents

  “Well?” Kate demanded, but Colin didn’t quite know what to say. “Come on, Colin. Put me out of my misery. Is it there or isn’t it?”

  “Something is, but what exactly is anyone’s guess. Looks like a five-inch-high wickerwork washing basket to me. You know, like a miniature version of the plastic one we have in our bedroom for dirty clothes,” then Kate’s head came beside his own.

  “Ooh, you’re right, it does. A pretty dirty one, mind.”

  “Not what I expected.”

  “No. What did you expect?”

  “Well, a small glass bottle, for one thing.” Colin found his mind reeling at seeing something of Jusuf’s that so clearly vindicated his phantasms—well, almost. “It’s got to be inside.”

  “Stands to reason.”

  “What does?”

  “Glass is fragile, even thick glass, so they’d never have sent it so far without some packaging around it.”

  “Yeah. Obvious, really. Fifteenth century polystyrene, eh? In which case, I suppose
we’d best get it out and look inside.”

  “Yeah,” but they both just stared at the thing, as though mesmerised.

  “Go on then, Colin.”

  “How durable’s wickerwork?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest, but there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Shit. But what if it just falls apart? We don’t want whatever’s in it coming loose and dropping to the floor.”

  Kate took off her jacket and held it below the hole. “Right, off you go, then, and for Christ’s sake, be careful.”

  Having put the torch down, Colin ever so slowly reached in with both hands, his fingers shaking the more as they inched nearer, then he stopped.

  “What if the seal’s already leaked and contaminated the basket?” but Kate said nothing, although he was sure, out of the corner of his eye, he caught her shrug. “Oh well, in for a penny, I suppose,” and he delicately touched his fingertips to each side of the miniature basket.

  It felt hard and resilient—reassuring. He finally let out the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and steadied his hands against the stone on which the basket stood.

  “Right,” he said. “As I draw it out and lower it to the floor, you keep your jacket right beneath it at all times. Okay? So this thing ends up standing on it.” Kate nodded, mumbling something about always being able to buy a new one. Another deep breath and Colin gritted his teeth as he took a firmer hold of the basket. It didn’t budge, not until he’d applied a little more force when it then snapped free, tottering from his fingers’ grasp and against the restraint of his thumbs.

  “Shit,” he drew out, long and heartfelt, before grasping the basket a little more firmly and drawing it into the open. Together, they lowered the coat and the basket to the newspaper, and when the basket finally stood safe and secure, both knelt back and expelled long sighs of almost tangible relief.

  Colin stared at the thing, at its curved and coarsely woven walls, at its deep round lid thickly layered with centuries of dust and muck and debris, in addition to a dead spider and two wriggling woodlice.