He lifted his gaze to Kate, drawing her own to his. She swallowed hard, and then, in a small voice unlike her own, suggested, “Best have that look inside, then.”
The lid proved remarkably cooperative, easing away without complaint or resistance. As Colin laid it aside, they both leant over and looked inside the basket. It appeared to be full of grey matted hair.
“Urgh,” Kate said, screwing her face up. “It looks disgusting; like a dead rat,” and she leant away, as though it smelt putrid.
Colin smiled and gently ran his finger over its spongy surface.
“Men!” she dismissed.
“It’s all right, Kate. It’s just packing. Probably goat’s hair, or something like that.” He delicately dug the nails of his finger and thumb in and teased a pinch free. “See?”
“Thank God for that.”
Some minutes of removing more, pinch by painstaking pinch, and Colin felt something hard beneath his nail. The thudding of his blood in his ears may have sounded loud by then, but it became deafening when he lightly dusted away some of the loose hair and revealed a circle of thin glass. It enclosed a pale chalky substance he immediately recognised.
Definitely in for a pound now, he told himself, and set to, teasing out more of the hair from around the bottle’s neck, each layer exposing yet more of its pale and chalky seal. “Come on,” he kept saying. “Come on and turn red, you bastard.”
His nail had just felt what must have been the shoulder of the bottle when, to his immense relief, the pale colour at last gave way to a bright but narrow red ring.
“Jesus Almighty,” he stretched out on a long expelled breath, his muscles at last relaxing. “It’s still safe.” He arched back and stared up at the dark-hidden spire above them, offering a silent prayer to a god he was beginning to think might actually exist.
He then checked his watch. “Bloody ‘ell, it’s half one. Look, Kate, I’m gently going to test if it’ll slide out. Try and save us some time, eh?”
“As long as you’re really careful, Colin.”
He nodded, then lightly gripped the rim of the bottle, holding the basket steady with his other hand. As gently as he could, he tried to ease the thing out but it refused to budge. A touch more force and it jerked free, slipping mercurially from its hirsute cocoon. Disbelieving it hadn’t broken, he nervously held it up between Kate and himself in the light of the torch.
“What in God’s name’s that?” Kate whispered, staring at the small bottle’s ochre coloured contents.
“I think it’s some sort of mould, crammed with what looks like really tiny grains of discoloured rice.”
“Urgh. That’s not rice, Colin.”
He carefully rolled the bottle between his finger and thumb.
“They’re…they’re pupae of some sort,” she reckoned.
“Pupae?”
“Maggots, Colin. Tiny maggots.”
“But there must be hundreds of them. Hundreds of really tiny maggots sitting in some kind of evil-looking mould.” He gently laid the bottle on Kate’s jacket, thankful to be no longer holding it.
“They can’t still be alive, though. Surely,” Kate gasped. “Not after five hundred years.”
“Well, Jusuf believed they’d been well enough preserved. Any anyway, we just can’t risk it.”
Kate peered at the bottle, disgust written plainly across her face. “Well, I don’t suppose it’d be wise to find out, one way or the other.”
“No,” Colin barely breathed, and shivered at the thought. “But what are they maggots of?”
“Who knows? Tsetse flies? Mosquitoes? Fleas?”
“Don’t fleas have eggs?”
“Well, whatever they are, let’s damn well make sure no one ever gets to finds out, eh?”
“Right. In which case, pass me the rucksack, will you?” out of which he dug half a dozen packets of Araldite Rapid.
“You got enough there, Colin?”
“I didn’t know how big the bottle was going to be, did I?” by which time he’d begun removing an assortment of containers: a yogurt pot, a porcelain eggcup, a plastic tube he said had been full of drawing pins, a small plastic bottle with its top cut off—but then he stopped and returned to the tube.
He measured it against the plague bottle, satisfied it would do. Before long he’d mixed together some of the first packet of Araldite’s two tubes on a margarine tub lid and scraped the viscous liquid into the transparent tube. While it slowly oozed down into the bottom, he mixed some more, this time liberally and evenly coating the length of the bottle’s neck and the exposed pale wax of its seal.
“Ten minutes should do it, Kate. It should have gone off enough by then that when I slide the bottle in it won’t eventually sink through what’s already nicely settled at the bottom of the tube.”
“Will that be it, then?” Kate said, clearly anxious yet fascinated.
“Afraid not. To be absolutely certain it’s well and truly sealed for all time, I’m going to fill the tube completely. We’ll need to hang around, though, turning it to make sure the bottle doesn’t end up touching the sides when the Araldite’s finally gone off and set solid. Then, even if the damp were to get in, which I very much doubt it would, nothing could ever crawl out.”
Kate noticeably shivered. “How long before we can put it all back, then?”
“Another hour should do it.”
It took the rest of the first packet and some of the next before Colin had the plastic tube filled with Araldite. For a good half hour he kept turning it, to keep the bottle from touching the sides or the bottom. At last, the epoxy resin felt firm if a little tacky to the touch when he cautiously tapped it with his fingertip. A wide grin of satisfaction at last spread across his face.
“Phew. Done, Kate. That’s it. And if I say it myself, that’s just about perfect,” and he turned the tube before Kate’s eyes to demonstrate. “See? No bubbles and the bottle’s dead centre; Jusuf’s plague sealed away for another five hundred years. And not before time,” he noted, staring closely through the yellow-tinged but now barely transparent epoxy at the remnant red ring of wax. A thin ring that had been all that had kept out the hot and humid air of that Cornish summer.
“Come on then,” Kate quietly said, relief clearly flushing her features, the very image of what he himself felt had flooded his own. “Let’s get it hidden away again, before someone notices we’re up here.”
Colin soon emptied the basket of its goat hair, slipped the solidly encased plague phial in and reused the hair to cushion it. With the lid back on, the basket looked no different from when they’d found it, bar the missing woodlice. Once back in place within the wall and the stone replaced, as Kate tidied up, Colin worked the old mortar back into the gap as best he could. Finally, he took out a soft paintbrush from the rucksack and used it lightly to sweep dust and cobwebs back over the stone.
For a moment they both stood back and admired their handiwork, content that to the casual observer it now all appeared much as when they’d first set eyes upon it. Colin let out a long breath, feeling Kate take his hand in hers. They turned to each other and smiled, wearily but happily. Then Kate switched off the torch, and in the darkness they softly kissed.
Colin, though, eventually noticed pre-dawn light seeping in through the louvered slits in the tower’s walls, reminding him of how much time had passed and that they’d yet to get away unnoticed.
38 Homebound
They stopped at the door to the porch and listened for movement without. Nothing but the early stirrings of seagulls and the gentle murmur of the sea came to Colin’s ears. He turned the torch off, slowly lifted the latch and cracked open the door.
The churchyard lay black beneath the new morning’s barely pale-blue tinged sky, a canopy marred only by flecks of high blood-red cloud. The door protested in jarring creaks as he slowly eased it open, enough for them to slip through.
Their footsteps in the porch came loud to Colin’s heightened senses, the dew-laden air cool
and sharp against his face. As they came around the base of the tower, he saw there was an easy path they could have taken in the dark of their arrival. How did we stray off it? he wondered as the crunch of the path’s gravel beneath their feet left its wake washing through the tiredly slanting gravestones.
They met not a soul on the short dash back to the car park, their little Fiat its only occupant. Quickly in and the engine started, Colin kept the revs down to thwart its raspy exhaust. He coasted where possible, down the lane and alongside Saint Germanus’ churchyard wall, the tower they’d come to know so well now a shadowed grey against the fast-lightening sky.
They passed only one other car along the coastal road, coming the other way, its windows still misted with dew, a hand wiping a sightline across its windscreen. Then they were outside the chalet, its tin roof glistening in the quickening light of the sun’s promised emergence from beyond Rame Head.
Neither Kate nor Colin moved when the engine fell silent. They both stared numbly at the stillness of the dawn world outside the car.
“I’m completely knackered, Colin. Drained,” and Kate blew out her cheeks before releasing the breath they held in a long, resigned and quiet whistle.
“I could murder a cuppa, though,” Colin enthused, feeling a strange euphoria warming his chest. “How about you, Kate?” and he turned to her.
She nodded, her gaze still blindly fixed on the chalet.
Colin leant over and kissed her gently on her cheek, its coolness chilling his lips. “Well done, lass. Tha’s did well, tha knows,” to which she couldn’t help but grin.
“I think we both did, Colin, so let’s get that cup of tea, eh? Then pray we never have to do anything like that again,” and she shivered.
Colin unpacked the rucksack whilst Kate brewed up. He put everything on the table, beside the joss stick holder at which he then found himself smiling.
“You’ve led us a merry dance, Jusuf,” he told it, “but I reckon we’ve done you proud.” But then, in amongst the clutter on the table, he noticed a lone woollen sock. He stared at it for a moment, then his heart sank before he rummaged frantically in the rucksack for its partner.
“Bugger,” he softly said, then more loudly, “Kate?”
“Yes?” and she came in from the galley.
“You haven’t by any chance got my other sock in your pocket, have you?”
Her mouth dropped open as she stared at the one hanging limply from Colin’s hand. “I thought you’d removed it.”
They both slumped down on the sofa, speechless.
“I’m not going back for it, Colin,” Kate said. “I don’t think my nerves could take it.”
Slowly, Colin began laughing.
“What are they going to think, though, if we leave it there?” she worried.
“Ha, maybe that they’ve got a disgruntled neighbour who’s pig-sick of being woken early on a Sunday morning.”
“It’s not funny, Colin,” but before long, she too fell to laughing.
“I’m pretty sure,” Colin assured her, “they’ll not notice anything else amiss. We left it looking pretty much as we’d found it, and I can’t imagine they get up into the belfry that often to know any different.”
“I hope so, and I hope it wasn’t one of your good socks,” then the kettle began boiling and Kate rushed back to make the tea.
“Good ones?” he called.
“Hmm, well,” he heard her say to herself, dismissively.
“Maybe,” he offered, “we ought to go back in a few days’ time as grockles. You know, have a bit of a mooch around.”
“What,” Kate said, sticking her head through from the galley, “and return to the scene of the crime? That’d be a bit hackneyed, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm. I see what you mean.”
For the remainder of that week in Cornwall they heard no mention of any strange finds in Saint Germanus’ belfry. Kate even bought the local newspapers and comprehensively trawled through them. Colin eventually consigned it to the back of his mind, assuming the sock would actually have made little real difference to a bell in full swing.
Although the weather hadn’t been as good that second week, they still managed the odd day on the beach, and certainly plenty of invigorating walks in order to earn the refreshing drinks to which they inevitably led. Throughout it all, Colin’s thoughts never once turned to rolling any more spliffs, what little remained of the dope left untouched. Jusuf had used all his up, so there seemed little point.
The joss stick holder itself kept his interest, though, and occasionally he’d marvelled at the way Jusuf had aligned the holes just right to pass through the light of his message. He’d even speculated to Kate how he reckoned Jusuf had done it, using clay through which he must have pushed long thin sticks.
But it had all largely been put behind them by the time their little Fiat burbled its contented way through the suburbs of Manchester, come the evening of that last Friday of their holiday. Their house seemed palatial compared with the confines they’d become accustomed to over the previous two weeks. Two weeks that had seemed like a lifetime.
Having unpacked the car, Colin finally sat on the sofa in the lounge and drank his cooling tea. Kate came in from wiping down the kitchen and unpacking her bags, and sat with him.
“Well,” she eventually said, “I feel we’ve been away for ages, and a lot’s happened.”
“Sure has. I feel I’ve spent a lifetime with Jusuf. I must say, though, I do feel pretty refreshed, and…and with a sense of accomplishment I never anticipated.”
“That’s true. Same here. Though I could’ve done without the cat-burgling. But I think we did well, all told.” Kate downed the last of her tea. “Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m knackered after that long journey. I’m going to go up a bit early, maybe get to finish off my Thackeray. You coming up?”
“I’ll just have a last fag and a wind-down, then I’ll be right up with you. In fact, I think I’ll toast our success and finally say goodbye to Jusuf and the others with a last spliff. You going to join me?” but Kate said she’d skip on this one.
“Probably the last we’ll get from what’s left, Kate,” but she still couldn’t be tempted.
It wasn’t long before Colin went up and found Kate still with her book propped up before her on the duvet. Beside her, on the bedside table, stood the joss stick holder. It reminded Colin of their nights in her student accommodation, back in nineteen-seventy-six, which brought a warm smile to his face.
“Have you seen the joss sticks?” he asked, to which she told him she’d put them in the cupboard downstairs. “Be right back,” and he nipped down, soon returning with a lit one in his hand.
“Thought it only fitting we mark our farewell to your ancestors not only with a spliff but also a token joss stick.”
“Yes, that seems appropriate,” she agreed, “now it’s all behind us at last.”
Colin went around to her side, strangely fond memories of his times occupying Jusuf’s mind pleasantly drifting around in his own. There, he slipped the joss stick, with seeming impunity, securely into the holder.
39 A Thousand Years
Colin was about to say something suitably final when the imposing porch of Saint Petroc’s church appeared before his startled gaze, bright under a warm summer’s morning sky. People in their fifteenth-century Sunday best were spilling from its doorway, Gwenna in amongst them, ushering out a small girl of about four years of age.
Behind her came Jusuf, deep in conversation with a man Colin vaguely remembered having seen before about Bodmyn. They laughed, easily, the man patting as high as he could reach on Jusuf’s shoulders before bidding him a farewell.
Now together, Jusuf and Gwenna and the young girl broke apart from the rest of the worshippers, who were intent on the churchyard’s gate, and wandered onto the grass.
“Off you go, Kayna,” Jusuf encouraged the girl “and pick yourself a handful of buttercups and daisies,” and he pointed at the dense swa
thes that laced the churchyard’s open grass. Like a loosed sprite, she almost flew across the gay carpet of white and yellow flowers, before dropping to her knees and single-mindedly setting to, plucking up one after another into the tight grasp of her small hand.
When Colin turned back to Jusuf and Gwenna, Jusuf had wrapped his arm about his wife, she leaning her head against his chest, their eyes only for the girl. Then Jusuf said, “I wonder if it will be another girl,” and Colin noticed him stroke Gwenna’s belly as she smiled back at him. After a while he called, “That be more than enough, Kayna,” and waved her over.
As the mite approached, hands hidden beneath her bunch of blooms, Colin realised how much of Gwenna he could see in her features: the slightly pointed ears, the wide set eyes, the taper of her chin, and a trusting wonder in the gaze she directed up at Jusuf.
“This be enough, da?” she beamed as she held out her offering, one or two slipping from her grasp. Jusuf slid his arm out from around Gwenna and squatted to Kayna’s level, picking up the rogue flowers.
“They be more than enough, my little ray of sunshine,” and his wide white grin opened up across his dark-skinned face.
Colin then noticed Kayna’s own skin, a beautiful dusky complexion that couldn’t as yet be likened in her own world to coffee. Her father carefully pushed the stems of the two dropped flowers back in amongst those in her hands, then reached into his pocket.
“I have a gift for thee. Would ‘e like that, Kayna?” and the girl nodded, vigorously, dropping another couple of flowers.
Sitting on the palm of the huge hand he shot before her eyes was the brightly polished joss stick holder, and Colin’s eyes lit up, like her own.
“For me?” she squealed, jiggling on the spot, hugging her momentarily forgotten blooms to her chest. Gwenna now stood beside her, clearly infused with the same excitement her daughter so freely spilled about her.
The Forebear's Candle: A time travel mystery and love story set against the intrigue of Henry Tudor's England Page 22