Say No Moor

by Maddy Hunter

  As we hit the Newtown roundabout and headed east on a

  narrow-shouldered road flanked by an impenetrable sweep of trees, Wally fired up his mike to do his tour director’s thing.

  “I’m sure you’ve all seen pictures of St. Michael’s Mount—the towering rock formation that sits in the middle of Mount’s Bay. It’s basically a smaller version of Normandy’s Mont Saint-Michel, but both places were originally founded as Benedictine monasteries, with St. Michael’s Mount being dependent on the larger priory in France for three hundred years. As a result of war and attrition, the bond was eventually severed, and in 1424 St. Michael’s Mount was handed over to another monastic order that oversaw the construction of both the harbor and the causeway that connects the island to the mainland. This is the same causeway you’ll be walking on today, so I hope you’ll grasp its historic significance.”

  Helen Teig waved her hand in the air. “Which one did you say we’re visiting? Mont Saint-Michel or St. Michael’s Mount?”

  “The latter,” said Wally.

  Nervous silence.

  “Which one’s the latter?” asked Dick Teig.

  Tilly raised her walking stick, volunteering an answer. “In American grammar the term latter refers to the second of two options. In the British lexicon it’s the opposite: latter refers to the first choice.”

  “So which one are we going to see?” reiterated Helen. “The first one or the second one?”

  “Can someone remind me what the first one was?” asked Osmond.

  I hung my head and heaved a sigh.

  “St. Michael’s Mount!” yelled Spencer Blunt. “If you look outside, you might realize there are a few clues indicating we’re in England, not France.”

  “Like what?” asked Lucille.

  “This is way too confusing,” fussed Helen. “They should have named this place something different because it sounds too much like the other place.”

  Wally grinned. “I believe that was intentional. Both monasteries were named in honor of St. Michael. Anyone want to take a guess what the French word for Michael is?”

  Dick Teig shot his hand into the air. “Francois?”

  Oh, God.

  “Those poor monks,” fretted Helen. “Can you imagine? St. Michael’s in England. St. Michael’s in France. I bet they spent half their time trying to figure out which country they were in.”

  “It’s too bad they didn’t have GPS,” offered Margi. “That might’ve helped.”

  “Wouldn’t have done ’em any good,” argued Dick Stolee. “Six hundred years later and the cell service still sucks.”

  If there was a smidgen of logic in their thinking, I was too mentally fatigued by the discussion to figure out what it was.

  “After Henry VIII broke ties with the Roman Papacy and disbanded the monasteries,” Wally continued, “the mount was turned into a military fortress, and for nearly a hundred years it protected the coast from would-be invaders, including the Spaniards of Armada fame.”

  Jackie waved her hand desperately over her head. “Did Henry have his spat with the Papacy before or after he installed my family at Hampton Court?”

  Wally regarded her, bemused. “Don’t know. Unfortunately, information about your family isn’t included in the official St. Michael’s Mount History and Guidebook.”

  “I’ll wager my family receives more than one encomium in the official history,” boasted Kathryn. “The Truscott-Tallons left an impressive thumbprint wherever the aristocracy gathered.”

  “What’s an encomium?” asked Nana.

  “Praise,” said Tilly. “It’s like the positive spin political hacks spew about their candidate after he’s revealed his lack of insight, knowledge, and intelligence in an electoral debate.”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Nana. “Bull.”

  “You can learn if your family is mentioned in the guidebook when we arrive on the island,” Wally assured Kathryn. “The National Trust gift shop is located a stone’s throw away from the causeway.”

  “If there’s mention of even one Truscott-Tallon in that guidebook,” Jackie whispered to me, “I’ll eat the page.”

  “Why does it matter to you?”

  “Really? You have to ask?” She shook her head. “Because I’m establishing an historical timeline between my ancestors and the British monarchy. I can’t very well sell myself as ‘the Pastry Chef to Kings’ if I can’t fill in all the blanks now, can I? You know what the media is like, Emily. One wrong detail or dubious fact and they’ll tear me apart.”

  She hadn’t prepared one dessert, yet she was already planning her strategy to market herself. While my pep talk last night had apparently worked miracles, it also might have blinded her to her blatant lack of training and unproven skill—a circumstance which made me think that maybe she should ditch the culinary gigs and, like other highly unqualified people in recent years, run for public office.

  As we reached the city limits of Marazion, where hedgerows gave way to stone walls and chimney pots sat atop whitewashed houses like tins on a shooting range fence, Wally took up the thread of his narrative again. “In 1659 the monastery-turned-fortress was purchased by a Colonel John St. Aubyn, who’d been appointed by Parliament to serve as Captain of the Mount. And long story short, the St. Aubyn family has been in continuous residence at the castle ever since.”

  “How’d a military guy earn enough money to buy an island with a castle on it?” Dick Teig called out.

  “Maybe he won the lottery,” said Nana. “That’s what I done.”

  After getting a few peek-a-boo glimpses of the coastline between hedges and houses, we let out a collective oooooh when we passed by a clearing and caught an unobstructed view of the bay.

  The mount rose like some horny beast in the middle of the harbor, all spiny rock and jagged pinnacles. The sea had receded beyond my vision, isolating the island amid tidal flats that stretched out like the heaths of Bodmin Moor. I spied the outline of a short causeway and was surprised by how close to shore the mount actually sat but happy that the gang would have less distance to walk than I’d originally thought. The tide might be out, but that didn’t preclude the possibility of twisted ankles and unintended falls on a walkway that had been constructed before Columbus set sail for America.

  “How long is the causeway out to that place?” Lucille questioned.

  “I can’t quote you an exact length,” said Wally, “but timewise you should be able to navigate it in a matter of minutes. As you might have noticed, the tide is out, so we’ll plan to hoof it out and catch a launch back.”

  “Anyplace to eat out there?” asked Osmond.

  “Two great eateries,” said Wally. “Both serve light lunches, but the Island Café boasts the added attraction of having great sea views from its garden. And there’s also two terrific shops that sell items ranging from fudge and Italian leather bags to artisan gifts and handmade jewelry. Any other questions?”

  “You bet,” said Nana. “I wanna ask that green-haired fella what kind of phone he’s got what lets him stay connected when the rest of us don’t got no service at all.”

  “Mason?” asked Wally. “Would you like to oblige?”

  “Show of hands,” announced Osmond. “How many people—”

  “Why do we have to vote?” complained Dick Stolee. “Can’t he just tell us?”

  “I second the motion,” said Dick Teig.

  “Whose motion?” asked Margi. “Osmond’s or Dick’s?”

  “Dick didn’t raise a motion,” said Alice. “He asked a question.”

  “So what are we voting on?” demanded Helen.

  Yup. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

  After passing a public square where pensioners squeezed together on wooden benches to watch the cars go by, we encountered an unexpected display of palm trees and other desert vegeta
tion outside a gallery and tea garden, then slowed to a crawl past the stately cream-colored Godolphin Arms. At a fish-and-chips shop we banged a left onto a short street that was flanked by stone walls, provided access to public parking, and dead-ended at a boat ramp that was probably submerged at high tide.

  Before us the waterfront opened up in a grand vista, with the castle dominating the background, the beach seeming to stretch to infinity, and the official car park posting prices for every kind of vehicle except tour busses.

  “Coaches aren’t allowed in the car park,” Wally informed us, “but Freddy’s going to idle at the entrance just long enough for us to hop off. So when the bus comes to a stop, get ready to move.”

  When the doors whooshed open, we piled out onto the pavement, then followed Wally onto the beach, where he provided us with final instructions. “Synchronize your watches or cell phones or whatever. We’re scheduled to be here for four hours. That should allow everyone adequate time to make the crossing, complete their tour of the castle, have a leisurely lunch, browse through the shops, and prepare to take a launch back to the mainland.”

  As the wind whipped up, billowing jackets and sending our hair flying around our faces, Wally’s voice grew louder. “We’re not under a tight time crunch today, so if you find the island so interesting that you’d like to spend more time exploring, we can probably arrange for that to happen. But in four hours I want you to gather at the sheltered benches at the island’s entrance so I can conduct a head count, and then we can discuss any change of plans. I’m going to run ahead of the pack to pick up our tickets, and I’ll hand them out when you arrive. I’ll caution you to watch your step on the causeway. Take your time and enjoy a stroll you’ll never experience in Iowa or anywhere else.”

  As he headed out across the beach, the gang remained anchored in place, heads bent, hands clutching their phones. “Hot damn,” yelled George. “I’ve got service!”

  “Me, too!” rang out a chorus of jubilant voices.

  “’Bout time.” Jackie thumbed through a flurry of screens until she found one that caused her breath to catch in her throat. “This is it. Omigod, Emily: chocolate seduction cake. Listen to the description: chocolate cake, chocolate Bavarian cream and ganache, topped with fudge-dipped brownies and chocolate chips.” She squinted at the screen as she read further. “Bugger. It only serves eight.”

  While the gang splintered into groups of two and four, the bloggers forged ahead in a loosely formed clump save for Kathryn, who played the role of outcast by walking nowhere near them. Buffeted by a fierce wind whose howls screamed past our ears, we followed in the bloggers’ footsteps across the rippled sand, past the seawall that fronted the sailing club, and onto the famed causeway that lay camouflaged beneath a layer of beach sand.

  It was cobbled together from stones of every size and shape, like a medieval version of the yellow brick road, only it wasn’t yellow or brick or flat. It was the gray of a battleship—an uneven plane with shallow dips and rises, each irregular stone worn smooth from centuries of footfalls. Much of the mortar between stones had disintegrated, creating deep cavities that isolated the cobbles like molars whose gums had worn away. Fractures. Fissures. Cracks and clefts. Uff-da. Picking our way through a Bosnian minefield might prove to be less challenging.

  “Watch your step, everyone,” I called into the wind. “Seriously, watch where you’re walking. Baby steps if you have to. Hold onto each other.” Then again, was advising them to hold onto each other wise? If one of them fell, they’d topple like a row of dominoes.

  “I think I’m onto something,” Jackie said, waving her cell phone, “so I’m gonna hang out at that Godolphin Arms place until I lock down a dessert for tonight. I’ll catch up to you when I’m done.”

  “But what about the castle tour? Lunch? Shopping?”

  She angled her chin in the air and placed her phone over her heart. “As a woman who takes her job probation very seriously, I’ll ask you to please refrain from asking me to choose between my present position or an opportunity to spend several carefree hours frolicking about on an island retreat. It’s simply too cruel.”

  “But the carefree hours thing is part of the tour.”

  “Even so. I’m not going to give you an excuse to fire me.”

  “I’m not going to fire you, Jack. I need you.”

  She batted her eyelashes and smiled with every professionally whitened tooth in her head. “In that case, how do I go about submitting a formal request for a raise?”

  “This way!” shouted Dick Teig, acting like a traffic cop as he rerouted the group onto an alternate walkway that angled toward a massive rock formation made tourist friendly by the addition of an inviting set of engineered stairs. “Good spot for a photo op.”

  “I gotta go,” I said as I watched them hotfoot it toward a geologic anomaly that could double as the petrified hull of an ancient shipwreck. “Detours aren’t on the itinerary.”

  Jackie followed my gaze. “Apparently, they are now. Off you go. I’ll catch up.”

  The alternate causeway was obviously less than six hundred years old because the cobbles were perfectly positioned, dead level, and showed no signs of erosion. Around us the tidal flats were littered with rocks that were scattered like ribs in a bone yard. Green algae crawled over every moist surface. Water pooled amid the fractured debris, home to gleaming rocks and broken shells. By the time I caught up to Dick and the gang, they were already up the stairs with phones in hand, staking out the best spots to pose for selfies.

  “Take your money shot right here,” declared Dick Stolee, indicating his choice for best photographic site in an optional setting. A manmade path composed of a hardened substance that resembled pebbled concrete cut through the formation, but the space was impossibly narrow, forcing the gang to walk in single file. “I give you the quintessential flat rock where you can park your keister and take a selfie with the mount in the background.” With his toupee standing on end from wind shear, he plopped himself down, smiled into his phone, and tapped the screen. “Like this.” He assessed the results. “I might have to photoshop the hair, but it looks good otherwise. Who’s next?”

  While they went through their typical deliberations of whether they should line up by age or height, I seated myself on a slab of rock near the stairs where I could continue my internet search while I waited for them.

  I accessed Spencer Blunt’s Ten-Dollar-a-Day Traveler website and, out of curiosity, scanned the blog he’d posted for day three of the tour, thrilled that his comments were so positive. He complimented the inn’s amenities, raving about the luxurious spa whose hot tub he was hoping to enjoy, and mentioned that the absence of housekeeping staff not only allowed guests to save money on tips but prevented them from being ousted from their suites at inopportune times. He then devoted the rest of his blog to the cuisine, employing such adjectives as “spectacular” and “unparalleled.” “The grandmother from Iowa has turned simple meals into such exciting feasts that many guests, myself included, would prefer to do nothing more on this tour than remain at the inn and eat. I’ll regret having to leave the Stand and Deliver Inn with nothing better to look forward to than merely excellent fare prepared by professional chefs. Marion Sippel makes the title of chef seem highly overrated. However, as a sidebar, we’re dealing with Agatha Christie intrigue at the Stand and Deliver because it appears our original chef, who purportedly died in a tragic accident the day we arrived, didn’t die accidentally: he was murdered. Cue the organ music.”

  Even though Spencer’s revelation about Lance seemed both insensitive and cavalier to me, I couldn’t help but be wowed by the rest of his post. With press like this, Nana could become as well known as some of the competing chefs on the Food Network’s reality TV challenges.

  I read the tabs on Spencer’s website and saw that they were divided into numerous geographical labels from New England and the Pacific Northwest t
o Tornado Alley and the Southwest Desert. The Sunshine State, the Lone Star State, and the Golden State were all big enough to boast individual tabs. Clicking on the Farmbelt tab, I arrived at a page that allowed me to access his archived blogs by either city, town, lake, zip code, oldest, or newest. I hit oldest, which shunted me to a blog Spencer had written five years ago with recommendations about how to get the most bang for your buck in the Swiss village of New Glarus, Wisconsin. Five years ago?

  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I scrolled through his posts. He’d written a blog about some travel location on a daily basis for five years. That meant 365 posts a year for five years, for a grand total of—I made a mental calculation and rounded off a few numbers—over 1,800 blog posts. So if I hoped to prove that Spencer and August had known each other before the tour, I was going to have to view all 1,800 of Spencer’s venues and cross-reference them with August’s blogs to see if both men might have had occasion to visit the same town on the same date. Ugh.

  I left Spencer’s website to access August’s Knife and Fork, Will Travel blog, horrified to learn that the only way to retrieve posts in his archived material was by year, month, and word search, which meant I was going to have to type each location Spencer had written about into August’s search field to find a match.

  The voice inside my head groaned.

  The voice was right. There had to be a better way.

  And then it struck me.

  Maybe I could do it in reverse, especially if August blogged with less frequency than Spencer. I could skim August’s posts, categorize them into a few regions, and cross-check them against Spencer’s lists. It’d be pretty labor intensive, but it could work, couldn’t it?

  With ever-increasing excitement I retrieved the oldest post on August’s website and continued scrolling down, noting the frequency of his blog activity.