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But I couldn’t be angry with her, as we rode out of Rome through a sickly drizzle, that faded away when we got away from the river, and turned into sun when we were barely past the Vatican hill. She rode easily, as if she’d been born to it, and you only knew how stiff her body was when she had to be lifted up to mount and dismount. All the time we were on the road she looked about her with eyes that had suddenly become bright again, and quite mischievous. She wore no veil, and naturally that attracted attention from passers-by. Men thought she’d be young, you see, from the way she rode alone, and that made them turn their heads, and when they saw she was old, they shrugged and sometimes spat, but usually they went on without a word. Sometimes they shouted after her, and I blushed, but if she knew what kind of things they were saying she gave no sign of it. They meant nothing to her, but she was interested in everything else: in the vineyards, the orchards, the grazing cattle, the hills ahead, and the sea away to the west. She asked me the kind of questions a farmer would ask, about growing seasons, and breeds and crops, but I couldn’t answer her at all. I left my father’s farm when I was ten years old, and I’d talked very little with peasants in any of the countries that I’d been in since. But we travelled together in great harmony. When the day grew hot we stopped at a tavern to eat, then sat over our wine until the shadows began to lengthen, and then we rode on again through the white dust, until our clothes were coated with it, and we could feel dust in our hair, and gritty dust between our teeth, and dust sore around our eyes. Then the sun sank in glorious clouds of red out to the west where the sea was, and we talked about Hati the wolf who chases the sun across the sky every day, and about the Bifrost, the rainbow that links our world to the gods’, and many other tales that I remembered from my earliest days, from before the time when Rome was even the shadow of a name to me.
We parted on the shores of Bracciano. She didn’t weep when we said goodbye. I watched the little party of men and horses until they were just a dark patch moving along the white road. It was I that shed tears then, which I certainly hadn’t expected to do. Then, reluctantly, I turned my horse south again, and set my face to Rome.
‘If I don’t see you before, we’ll meet in Iceland.’ Why did she say that? Does she know? Was it a figure of speech, or simply a blind wish? She looked so fragile, surrounded by her escort. Will she see Iceland again? Will I? Suddenly my world is full of questions, in a way that it hasn’t been since I read the forbidden works of the Infidel, out of the locked cabinet in the library at Reims. But the questions I ask now are different from that. Now, I seem to see myself at the centre of them. Is that a sin? I don’t know where I stand any more, and I miss her. That was three months ago. I have made the transcript into something suitable for the Cardinal, who I suspect no longer wants it. No doubt it will be catalogued and filed in the library at the Lateran, and perhaps it will sit on a shelf there and gather dust until the end of time. I am left with my original manuscript. It is shamefully untidy, but she talked so much, and I had to write so fast. I still have a pain in my right arm from it, from the wrist to the elbow. For some weeks after she left I kept my arm in a sling, except, of course, when I was working. The Infirmarian says now I must rest it properly, if I wish to have full use of it again, and I am forbidden to write until the end of Lent. So that puts paid to my translation of Gregory for the time being. I ought to feel more frustrated than I do. As it is, I feel almost glad that I shall have some time to think.
Last night I had a dream. I was in a place I did not recognise. I think I was searching for something. There was a compulsion, anyway. I am not sure that I can describe it.
The beach is white sand, and the land lies colourless under a white moon. The darkness under the trees huddles thick as cloth. The sea shines like melted silver. The forest makes no sound, as if there were nothing in it, no life there at all. The little boat leaves deep cuts in the surface of the sea, V-shaped like a flight of geese in an autumn sky. The man sees them stretching behind, and knows that his mark is made so far, and can never be melted away. The boat touches the sand without a sound, and he steps ashore. The sand feels cool under his feet. At the top of the beach wild wheat scratches his legs, and the vines tangle themselves around his ankles. There is no path. There has never been a path. Trees stand in his way. He tries to push through but the forest is closed against him. He takes the knife from his belt and cuts into the tree before him. If once his mark is made, his hold is certain. The bark of the tree is soft as moss, and resinous. He forces the knife in. His arm aches with the effort. The knife touches hard wood, and he pushes it in with all his might, and carves the necessary letters. The pain in his arm is like fire. The letters are vanishing into the bark as the tree absorbs them. There is no sound. He tries to write, but the letters disappear under his hand, and he cannot see to hold the quill. The moon is round and white as a drop of melted wax, but there is no light in the forest, and no way in.
I woke up feeling that I had trespassed, or even violated something. I have lived with her story for a long time now, and I begin to fear that it is taking over my own. I thought about burning the original script. Certainly I’m not proud of the penmanship, and I don’t particularly want anyone to see it. I like things to be neat, and I pride myself on my fair copying. This was not exactly a copy, of course, but then a casual reader might not realise that.
I won’t burn it. Life is long, and I don’t know what I shall want to refer to again by the time I reach the end of it. I shall put it in a safe place. I keep thinking of her certainty that we would meet in Iceland. I would like to think it were true. If you write down a person’s story, there is a way in which it becomes yours. That’s a dangerous statement; I seem to be talking of a kind of possession, but it isn’t that, or if it is, I possess her as much as she me. She lived it, but I wrote it down. Doesn’t that make it in some sense mine?
Her two sons are alive and in Iceland. I am not her child. Next spring she’ll go back to her family and forget me. She is a woman, after all, and so her own people must be more to her than a chance-met stranger. But that’s wrong. I know more of her than anyone else, more of her now than her own sons do. One thing I should have learned by now is that she doesn’t forget. Anything that’s part of being alive she’ll remember, and she won’t care if it’s the correct thing to do or not. She sees things her own way, and I think she has taught me something about how to do that too. I have grown to love her. It seems dangerous to admit that, almost a heresy. But isn’t it a greater heresy even to imagine that an attachment to a mortal woman could come close to being heretical? Rome feels very foreign to me today. Did Peter feel that too, when he came here? Was this the end of the world to him, or its centre? Both, I suppose, just as it is for me. Perhaps when he knew he must die here he began to think about the place where he was born. The land he came from is beyond Chistendom now, the country of the Infidel. But for him it was home. There are times now when I begin to think I should like to go home myself.
About the Author
Margaret Elphinstone is the author of three novels: The Incomer (1987), A Sparrow’s Flight (1989) and Islanders (1994). She also writes short stories, including the collection An Apple From a Tree (1990) and poetry, including one collection, Outside Eden (1991). She has published two books on organic gardening. She lives in Glasgow, and teaches in the Department of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2000
by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2010
by Canongate Books
Copyright © Margaret Elphinstone, 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The author gratefully acknowledges subsidy from
the Scottish Arts Council while writing this book
The publishers gratefully acknowledge subsidy from the
Scottish Arts Council towards the publication
of this volume
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is
available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 057 6
Typeset by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh
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