Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  I banged the file shut, and shoved it back under the newspapers. Not so much because I’m virtuous, as because if I read someone’s private diary I could never face them again without feeling guiltily conscious of what I ought not to know. And supposing I read something horrible about myself? I hate complicated secrets.

  I don’t mind Lucy being so secret, because I know not to ask, and I know where I stand: on the outside. She is adept at wrapping herself in an inscrutable reserve. I just wouldn’t know how to be so off-putting without lifting a finger. I was thinking about it while she explained to me about the corbelled ceilings in the tower, and how she’d sold the two original sixteenth-century chairs that stood against the wall opposite the great staircase.

  ‘I’d never have managed without selling things from time to time,’ she said. ‘The chairs went about twelve years ago, when I was living in New York. I had to get away, you see. Things had happened here. I didn’t have any cash; that’s how it started. I was the sole heir of a castle full of priceless historical treasures and I didn’t have fifty pounds in the bank. You know what happened to our land?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Brentness. I’ll take you there. Have you ever been into a lava field?’

  ‘No. Not a new one, I mean.’

  ‘This one happened in 1783. That was the last great eruption of Mount Prosper, the same year as Hekla in Iceland. Before that we had the richest land in Hy Brasil, and the best cattle, stolen from Spanish ships going out to stock the new farms in South America and the Caribbean. Horses, too. You might wonder why you need good Arab bloodstock on an island this size, but my ancestors were proud of their horses. My father always used to say the horses in this country are far more intelligent than the people. All that land’s gone now, under the lava. You can walk along the old channels. I’ll take you there this afternoon.’

  The lava field was the strangest place I’d ever been in my life. The melted rock had just hardened as it flowed, like a petrified tidal wave. It was sharp under my feet, even through the soles of my sandals, full of ridges and bubbles. There were winding paths through it like stream beds, following the curve of the rock. The very air seemed static and heavy, and our voices sounded flat as we walked in single file between the flows. Nothing grew except little bubbles of moss where rainwater had collected in the cracked lava, and various grey and golden lichens that had spent two centuries colonising this desert, but still only touched it with bright pockets here and there. I touched the bare rocks as we passed and grazed my palms. The whole place felt uncanny, out of the world. We scrambled out of the channel and stood on a solid waterfall, looking out to sea. There was nothing here to show that life had ever made it on to land at all.

  ‘It’s a bit scary, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Like time isn’t real here.’

  ‘A friend of mine who often used to come here wrote a book saying time isn’t real anywhere. Not his own idea, of course. Einstein’s. But Brendan used to sail a lot round Brentness, and I think maybe it was our mixture of geology and history that gave him the idea.’

  ‘Brendan?’

  ‘Brendan Hook. He grew up here but he teaches at Harvard now. It was him that talked me into going to America too. “Do it, Lucy,” he said. “Get a life. That’s what I had to do. You won’t regret it.” He was right. I haven’t. If I hadn’t gone then I’d have gone mad. Too many things had happened. It was like being caught in a web. If I hadn’t got out I’d have been petrified too. He saved my life.’

  I realised if I wasn’t tactful she’d shut up like a clam. `Was it very hard to get away?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Guilt,’ said Lucy succinctly. ‘I was the last one. Unbroken tradition, you know. That can be powerful stuff. You know Ravnscar has been lived in for fifteen centuries?’

  ‘Fifteen centuries? You mean the Irish monks? But after that there was no one here, I thought, except for the Norsemen, and they didn’t stay long, until the Portuguese discovered the islands in 1456. At least, that’s what it says in the books.’

  ‘You’re thinking of the Ruysch map, aren’t you? Insula hic in Anno Domini 1456 fuit totaliter combusta. But you know Henry the Navigator didn’t really do any navigating. He just collected a library of maps and sent other people off to do the real sailing.’ Lucy jumped off the waterfall and led the way along another winding channel. ‘Of course,’ she went on, her voice muffled because she was ahead of me, so I had to strain to catch what she was saying, ‘if the lava hadn’t taken our land the revolution would have. No one can own more than forty acres in Hy Brasil now anyway. So in the end it made no difference.’

  It occurred to me for the first time that the world must appear different if one is an aristocrat. I’d never met one before, at least, not consciously. I imagined the desert of Brentness as some kind of socialist utopia, neatly criss-crossed with flourishing smallholdings, ecologically run by a liberated peasantry. ‘I would have thought it made quite a lot of difference.’

  But Lucy was not to be drawn into that sort of discussion. She was a mine of information, but remained impervious to another point of view. She took me home and made me fresh scones for tea, because, she said, I was English and therefore needed to be fed on sweet things at four o’clock. I sat at the table and leafed through my notebook while I sipped Lapsang Souchong with lemon in it. ‘I was reading about this spring festival in Dorrado,’ I told her.

  ‘You read too much. This was Baskerville’s pamphlet, I take it? My father wrote a much better account. It’s in a manuscript, upstairs. I’ll show you when your fingers aren’t so sticky. What did you read?’

  ‘That there’s a procession, and the King of the Year lies down in an open grave and everyone throws flowers in on top of him.’

  ‘And then he gets out and takes a shower and they spend the rest of the night drinking. Here,’ Lucy got up, and opened a drawer in a huge heavily carved bureau on the other side of the kitchen. She took out a floppy booklet with a photo on it and came back. ‘You were asking about the caves,’ she said. ‘And only finding the way in sometimes. They weren’t empty, you see.’

  It took me a moment to get her reference. ‘No?’

  ‘Constant temperature, constant humidity. Ideal museum conditions. Someone knew what they were doing.’ Lucy was leafing through the catalogue. ‘And then, you see, I was the last one left. I told you I was trapped. Some career: bury myself on a mountainside all my life looking after stuff that’s just been sitting there since the beginning of history. It gives people a buzz, certainly, the ones that know about it, but why should I have to encourage that? My mother was a good Catholic. She never approved of the Pirate Kings. So why should I help them out?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lucy, explain! Who are the Pirate Kings?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ she said impatiently. ‘Funny handshakes. All that. You must have passed the Pirate Kings’ Lodge in St Brandons. It’s just down the alley from Kirwan’s. With a skull and crossbones on the door.’

  It was the first time I’d seen her in any state more turbulent than flat calm. ‘I did notice that,’ I said mildly. ‘I thought it was a bit bizarre.’

  ‘Well, there you go. Would you want those guys turning up for a party in your basement every Hallow’mass Eve? I bet you wouldn’t. Well, nor did I.’

  ‘Whatever for? Some kind of ritual?’

  ‘Racist, sexist rubbish.’ Lucy got up from the table, and strode up and down with unwonted energy, between me and the window so that her shadow kept falling across me as I sat at the long, carved table. ‘So what do you think it was like for me, having all those Pirate Kings cavorting about in the cellar in fancy dress, getting up to God knows what? And that man Baskerville gives me the creeps. Remember I was all on my own by then. They even wanted me to have a ritual bath, in as hot water as I could stand. Because I was female, you understand. They never asked my father to do that.’

  ‘But why? What was it all about?’

  ‘You may well ask. Just another Great Myste
ry, ticking away down our back stairs waiting for the End of Time. But has it changed anything? Has it saved the world? Has it hell! Look at the state we’re in now. Granted, they never did get to use Hy Brasil for nuclear testing, but look at all the other things. Do you know there’s bugs on our cabbages we’ve never had before because up to five years ago this climate was too cold for them? Do you know that if anyone does catch flounders any more off our coast as likely as not they’ve got two heads? Do you know that in calm weather we can smell the pollution from factories in Baltimore and New Jersey? This isn’t an island any more, and that’s a fact. Dreams don’t save anything. I talked to Brendan about it thirteen years ago, when he was over visiting his parents. I was desperate. Too much had happened. “Brendan,” I said, “I’m not a bloody legend. I’ve read a lot of books, seen films. I subscribe to magazines. I know what’s out there. What do you think I should do?” I told you how he said, “Go for it.” He sent me the application forms for university. He put me in touch with a guy in New York who sold my great-great-grandmother’s diamonds. That paid for my first year.

  ‘I asked him about the other things. Not the stuff in the house, the other place. I’d not mentioned it to anyone before. He didn’t believe me at first. I mean, of course he knew the story, but no one thought it was real. So he came over, and we went down and had a look.’

  ‘To the caves?’

  ‘That’s right. He’d heard, of course, but he was a rationalist at that time. It’s interesting to observe a man who can’t believe what he’s seeing. Pathetic, in a way. But I respect Brendan. Anyway, afterwards we had a council of war. I didn’t want to sell. I’m not superstitious, not in the slightest, but I didn’t feel right about that. So Brendan said, “What about permanent loan? To a museum? It’ll do more good than here, and you’ve not done anything irrevocable.” I was so relieved. It was him that suggested the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “They’ve got everything in there,” he said. “Absolutely bloody everything. And money. It’ll be safe there, and you’ll be free of it.” So that’s what we did.’

  ‘And what was it? The treasure, I mean? What was it?’

  ‘Here.’ She picked up the booklet again and tossed it to me.

  ‘Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin,’ I read, and a date almost ten years ago. The photograph on the front was of a golden chalice studded with jewels, apparently floating through the air against a pale grey background. I flipped through pages of lavish photographs and shiny text, which pleased me. So many pretty-looking pamphlets turn out to be disappointingly black and white inside. I found the chalice again. This time it had landed on a white cloth. There was a description opposite the photo:

  One of the finest examples of metalwork of the early Christian period, this solid gold Romano-British chalice is apparently unique. The simplicity of style and design suggests a much earlier date than the silver or bronze Celtic chalices of the eighth century (e.g. Trewhiddle, Cornwall, Hexham, Northumberland, Derrybaflan, Co. Tipperary), but there is no corresponding primitivism in craftsmanship. Indeed, it exhibits a sophisticated workmanship perhaps only rivalled in the eighth-century silver chalice found at Ardagh, Co. Limerick, in 1868.

  The Hy Brasil chalice is composed of two parallel bowls of beaten gold, one inverted against the other, joined by a decorated gold collar. Most of the external surface area is unadorned gold, which serves to emphasise the splendour of the nine jewelled panels which constitute the band just below the rim …

  I skipped over the description of the panels for the moment and turned the page. The next glossy picture was of an ornately decorated spearhead, set against a blue background like a summer sky. The paragraph underneath said:

  The complete state of preservation of this lance from the late Celtic period must be regarded as little short of miraculous. No other example exists of a lancehead still attached to its wooden shaft. Carbon dating of the ash shaft suggests a replacement of the original wood in the twelfth century; the reason for the renewal of an archaic weapon at this date can only remain a matter of speculation. The extraordinary state of preservation of wood now seven hundred years old must be attributed to the perfect museum conditions of the underground chapel in Hy Brasil which housed these treasures for a prolonged period, until their removal to the museum. The ash has been treated at one time with linseed oil, and was originally, presumably, white in colour. The iron head of the lance is adorned with four decorated bands of chased gold. The weapon could hardly have been intended for use in battle, although chemical analysis revealed traces of carbon, possibly dried blood, at the tip of the lancehead; however, it seems likely that the weapon was specifically designed for ceremonial purposes.

  There was more about the lance, but first I turned over the rest of the pages. Apparently there were thirteen treasures in all. There was a gold cauldron with a dent in one side. Next came a couple of magnificent golden candelabra, each holding ten candles, and a solid gold cross inlaid with rubies and emeralds. There was a thin gold crown, and a chessboard of ebony and ivory, and a decorated Celtic sword which had been mended about halfway along the blade. All the treasure together, even just printed on paper in a shiny brochure, was nothing short of dazzling. I looked at Lucy in bewilderment.

  ‘Are you telling me that all these things were here at Ravnscar?’

  ‘Read the Introduction.’

  I turned to the beginning obediently.

  THE ROMANO-BRITISH TREASURES

  OF HY BRASIL

  It is seldom that myth becomes tangible in quite so satisfactory a form as in the Romano-Celtic treasures from Ravnscar in the archipelago of Hy Brasil. The setting alone (Plates 1– 3), from which the treasures were removed this spring, might seem to the imaginative like the embodiment of that archetype explored in detail by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, in their seminal study …

  I skipped the psychoanalytical bit, and looked instead at an aerial photograph of Ravnscar taken, I guessed, from somewhere just above Ferdy’s Landing. There was a picture next to it of the thorn tree in the castle yard all covered with white blossom. I wish I’d seen it like that; when I arrived the tree was green, although there were still drifts of fallen petals across the lawn. While I looked at it I said to Lucy, ‘So you’ve seen them in the Museum where they are now?’

  ‘Of course. They’re all together in a case specially made for them. It had to be thirteen feet long because of the lance. They’re at the end of the corridor to the left of the main staircase, just before you get to Medieval Art. I’d imagined them better displayed, actually, like in the middle of one of those great halls. But even in that passage they look pretty good. Smaller, somehow, than they did here, but they seem to be kind of sharper-edged, because of the good lighting I suppose. I had this weird feeling they’d got more real.’

  ‘I suppose museums are rather authoritative places.’

  ‘I like buying postcards though,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Where’s this one taken, then? I can see the lance and the chalice, and the candelabra, and the cross … Is it a chapel? It’s not the museum, certainly. Plate 3.’

  She looked over my shoulder. ‘Oh yes, that’s the chapel here. They took that just before they packed them all up.’

  ‘But surely it isn’t! You showed me the chapel, with all those romanesque windows. This looks more like a cellar.’

  ‘No, no.’ Lucy got up. ‘We have two chapels. St Joseph’s chapel is underneath the other one. If you like I’ll take you there now.’

  She led me, not upstairs to the Portuguese chapel opposite the Great Hal, but down the back stairs from the kitchen. I’d been in the cellar before, because that’s where the firewood is stored, as well as tools and fishing tackle. Apparently old Morgan had been a keen fisherman. Lucy led me past all that, and down into the wine cellar, where I’d only been once, when she’d sent me to fetch some burgundy. We crossed the wine cellar to another studded oak door at the back. There was a ledge inside with a torch and a skein of stri
ng. Lucy switched on the torch.

  ‘If you ever go exploring down here,’ she warned me, ‘take the string to guide you. We don’t need it now. We’re only just going to the bottom of the stairs.’

  I followed her down a flight of steps so worn in the middle I could barely keep my footing, even though she shone the torch backwards so I could see where to put my feet. At the bottom three oval passageways went off in different directions. Lucy turned left, and opened another door. I had to duck under the lintel. It was very quiet inside. A little flame burned overheard, refracted through red glass. I could tell we were in a small closed space, but there was nothing claustrophobic about it. Quite the contrary: the air smelt fresh and surprisingly sweet. There must be a conduit from somewhere. It smelt as if it came straight from the herb garden. I breathed in, and followed the beam of the torch as Lucy slowly swung it round.

  We were in a corbelled cell, shaped like an old-fashioned beehive. It was oval, barely fifteen feet long, I would guess, and half that wide. There was a rectangular stone altar at one end. Once there had been a window above it, looking out to God knows what, but it was filled in now with stone. The floor was solid rock, cleanly swept. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. The place was quite empty.

  Lucy shone the torch on to the stone wall over the altar. I could see the shape of a crucifix where the stone was paler. But there was no ornament now of any kind except for the little flame burning in the red glass. I could see now that it hung from a plain metal chain attached to the curved roof above. ‘So you still keep something here?’ I asked her.

  ‘That, yes. The gold chain went, and the pyx with the ruby panels. But you can hang a light from any old chain really, and a bit of bread – it wouldn’t make any difference if you kept it in a matchbox. Father Segato celebrates Mass upstairs in the Portuguese chapel on the first Sunday of every month, and he attends to this place too while he’s here.’