by Ken Webster
‘Did you dream anything?’
She put the paper down and looked straight at me. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, what did he say … ?’
‘That the “leems” was brought by a man. A man who told him it was important and … you still promise you won’t tell Trinder that I spoke with him? He’ll think I’m making it up. Lukas said he loved you very much, too.’
There was silence for about half a minute. Deb looked at me. Her eyes searched my face for some sign of reaction. I shifted from one foot to another and then sat across from her, looking at the message and at her in turns. It didn’t answer my questions but that was of less concern than Peter’s possible reaction.
‘OK. We’ll keep it quiet. Peter might not mention it, but he will have to see the message.’
21 August
We took Lukas’s message to show Peter, who did not make too much of what it said because he was so intrigued by the mere fact of him writing. He threw up all sorts of questions. I said that writing in charcoal was only an extension of what had happened before, the chalk shields, etc. Peter asked, ‘Why charcoal?’ Deb chipped in that she thought a man used to writing with quills would prefer something recognizable and adaptable to his style of writing. It did smudge, however. We hurried back to the cottage and left Lukas a few questions, including one from Peter about the word ‘elyful’. Here we were trying to get Lukas’s one and only real name and Peter wants to know what ‘elyful’ means! I also asked again about the ‘wyght’. He replied once more on the paper.
myne freend tha wight beest afrom
yowr tyme methynks. elyful
be that wythoutes lyght
cherelis donne.
yea yow doe hath myne
calle in yowr boke methynks
yf nat jon put tom yow
wilt hath rekonyng for myne
calle be allso thy plas o peter
howes preye wot seyen thys boke o names
an tyme o yere aboutes myneselven
love Tomas
My friend, the person is from your time, I think.
‘Elyful’ is that without light, with brightness gone.
Yes, you have my name in your book, I think, if not ‘John’ put ‘Tom’ and I think you will understand my name, it is also the place of Peter’s house. What does this book of names and ages say about me?
Love Tomas
If not Jon then put Tom. TOMAS HAWARDEN!!! In an instant I remembered Robin Peedell had put this man forward months ago as a likely candidate. ‘Impossible,’ I had said at the time, but he had been right.
‘Real HISTORY!’ I shouted to Deb above the sound of the cassette as we drove towards Hawarden. Deb was amused by all this over-excitement. Peter was very happy to know the name – and get an answer to the ‘elyful’ question!
This is what was written about Tomas Hawarden [or Harden] in the reference which Robin Peedell had provided many months ago:
HARDEN (or HAWARDEN)* THOMAS
BRASENOSE COLLEGE FELLOW IN 1530
STILL IN COLLEGE 1538.
CHARGED WYTH EXPUNGYNG THE NAME OF THE POPE ’E QUODAM MANUALI’ DECEMBER 1538; BA ADMITTED XII DEC 1530; DETERMINED 1531; MA INCORPORATED XXII MARCH 1535.
Back after long discussion to East Green. It was only later as I walked down to the River Dee by the old swing bridge, to watch the muddy waters swirl and slide towards the sea, that I realized how exhausted I felt. Deb was already asleep when I went out. It felt as if the cottage took something out of you, physically, mentally, emotionally.
I could have fallen asleep on the riverbank. Instead I thought of Tomas Harden, of the past months, and watched the traffic lessen and the sounds from the Ferry Hotel fade away after closing time.
Tomas next wrote that the description of him and his time at Oxford made him ‘glee’ (laugh). He said that the reason given for his expulsion was wrong. Peter doubted this but checked back with care. The standard reference on the history of the college, from which Peter obtained the information I put before Tomas, should have been correct. But no! Deep in the bowels of Brasenose some weeks later Robin Peedell plucked out from an original source record that Tomas Harden was expelled for not crossing out the Pope’s name. The standard history is in error. Tomas was an ‘old faither’ and had evidently withdrawn to an obscure village in Chester to ride out the Henrician revolution.
Tomas asked that he still be addressed as Lukas, as the name had become his own and he preferred it. We agreed readily.
28
22 August
I had thought I was coping so well. But the excitement of the previous few days must have touched off a manic reaction to the endless progress of this task. After the light, the darkness.
I was alone in the kitchen and the cottage brooded about and within me. I felt overwhelmed by the echoes of all these months. They called upon me for some resolution, some answers, but I did not have any. I was sinking, and began to cry uncontrollably.
They might be the most important events in my life but I did not understand them or why I was in tears when I should be … I just wanted to escape, to be anywhere else, but more than that – the greatest escape of all – not to be me anymore. I did not recognize myself. I was almost continually tired, anxious, insecure. I felt old, weary. Not one moment from my past could I recall to please myself. Instead I recalled an image of a dark, broad river with, from its banks, large willow branches dipping the surface and colouring the eddies. Then I imagined diving slowly into that river, which shivered as it let me in, and I spun slowly in the current, towards dissolution. And the waters showed no sign of my passing.
Lukas ‘heard’ me and an hour later wrote on the computer:
HIT COME TO MYNE REKONYNG TAT YOW DOE DYSLYK MYNE COMPANIE WY BE THIS CHAUNGE OF HEARTE ME NATHE WORNGED MYNE GGODLY FREEDN DOST YOW LYK THY POET WYAT ME CAN QUOT YOW SOM WORDES IF THYS WAL HATHE YOW MYNE FELAWE STILL
LOVE LUKAS
It seems to me that you dislike my company. Why this change of heart? I have not wronged my good friend. Do you like the poet Wyatt? I can quote you some of his verses if this will restore our friendship.
Love Lukas
And next day he gave me two beautiful verses of Wyatt’s poetry* but admonished me for my weakness:
… WEN YOW BEEST MYNE TYME O DAYE YOW WILT HATHE FEWE A TERE SHEDE FOR YOW WILT KNOWE THA LYF BE A GLORIEN THYNGE … ME WILT HEERE NAMO WOE.
… When you are my age you will shed few tears for you will know that life is a glorious thing … I will listen to no more woe.
The grief I had created for myself was private and the reply just as private. It is hard to describe how close I felt to this man and how ashamed I was of the previous night, for Lukas next wrote that he had heard a rumour among the village people that his dear young Katherine had been burnt as a witch.
I replied the next day, but Lukas did not answer. Peter told me there were no recorded burnings of young women in Chester in that year and I passed the information on to Lukas.
25 August
Lukas was still not sure what had happened to Katherine but our attention was on the computer, which was suffering from physical ‘poltergeist’ attacks. Twice in the previous few days one or other of us had found the machine twisted on the plant stand and on one other occasion the plant stand had shifted to the edge of the pillar. I was worried in case the computer was damaged. I couldn’t afford to replace it and it was another week until term started and there would be one available to borrow.
Lukas was apparently oblivious to the disruption and requested poetry from Peter, his ‘oxyan felawe’, from Debbie and myself. He said that he needed this material for his book about our time, and that it needed care as it ‘wants gaze bimanye’, i.e. must be able to be read by many. I suppose he thought that otherwise it would be taken for nonsense and would not survive. He was collecting poetry and human, intimate recollections, readable, everyday stuff. I have not heard of it. The twist is that if the book were still avail
able I could not write of our ‘communyion’, I would be merely fulfilling a prophecy with the benefit of hindsight. If this book exists and is found before I publish this account then all is undone. But paradoxically finding his book is the one sure piece of evidence that we are not crazy. Please, someone find his book at the right time.
So much happened in those last weeks that before going back to school I decided that I needed to go away on my own again for a few days. I set off for Stratford, collected my old friend Sara and then into the Cotswolds in search of a sense of the 16th century – and as fate would have it I was introduced to Snowshill Manor.
Old am I so very old
Here centuries have been
Mysteries my walls enfold
None know deeds I have seen
Snowshill Manor (Charles Wade)
It is a house with a western elevation, a house for the evening hours, as permanent and unimaginably beautiful as any I have seen.
Charles Wade, an extraordinary eccentric who died forty years ago, had through his care for this ancient house set himself as firmly in other centuries as I longed to do in order to become closer to Lukas. In all those months I had never really felt in my heart what an aching expanse of time lay between us until I stepped silently, reverently, into Snowshill.
I was aware, in those quiet rooms, of much more than the 439 years since 1546. I felt the stability and permanence which abounded, even in Henrician England, compared to our own more shattered times.
Time has settled at Snowshill and Charles Wade has honoured it. In an upper room is the mechanism of a large clock which, by the fall of its weights, points to the hours marked off on the wall, and in words too:
The life of time is motion, his glory perfection.
TIME Attendeth none, yet is servant to all.
Swifter than the wind, yet still as a stone.
The true man’s friend, the thief’s perdition.
The lawyer’s gain, the merchant’s hope.
He openeth the eye of the day and spreadeth the cloak of night
Agent of the living, register of the dead.
Nicholas Breton (c.1600)
Charles Wade lived for the most part the life of a medieval or at least pre-industrial man of learning. His collection grew so large that it forced him to make his home in the former stables. Here, too, reigned absolute calm; the rooms devoid of all those modern comforts which so successfully keep us from ourselves. Amidst oak and stone, rushlights, a hooded, red leather chair and kindly light through mullioned windows I felt I knew Lukas and the thoughts which surrounded him. In that instant I enfolded all those moments between 1546 and the present. I knew still more strongly that Lukas’s world, for all its misery, poverty and superstition, was not inferior to our own. We have lost so much and gained only trinkets for our amusement.
It occurred to me that Lukas asked little of our time. He relished our words and ideas, not our times. So often he had mused over the impossibility of such a thing as a car or daily newspapers. Perhaps he wondered more at the wisdom of it, the necessity that drove us to such ends, than at the phenomenon itself. Could I explain our loss?
And there I stood, a visitor, with my hand on the jute rope keeping me to the edge of this world. ‘Olde England.’ I reproached myself for the thought.
Easing back into the car, into Broadway and simultaneously into the inauthentic, the unnecessary and the inevitable we joined the slow crawl towards Chipping Camden where, eating tea and scones in a courtyard overhung with vines, I felt a headache vying for attention and became aware that my powers of conversation had dulled. I was becalmed, then weary and rather depressed.
29
I put down a hello to Lukas the day I got back. Deb said he’d been writing on and off but yesterday he’d announced he must find Katherine. I wrote and asked if he’d had any luck. I wasn’t expecting trouble but twenty minutes later:
DON’T HAVE NIGHTMARES
Just what I needed – 2109! I deleted it, and told myself to ignore them. I knew what they were hinting at. The poem long ago last winter, I had never forgotten the way it began: ‘True are the nightmares of a person that fears.’ The computer was staying where Lukas had asked for it to be put, even though it was now obvious that 2109 could write on it in its new position.
Lukas wrote after another hour. Katherine was dead.
FELAWE KEN
YEA ME HATH RETORND BOT KATHRYNE BE BRENDE YOW DIDST SEYNE THIR BEETH NE BRENNYNG IN CESTRE BUT TIS SOE NAT FOR THIR BEEST MANNYE FOR SOE CALID UNCLENSE SOWLES THAT HATH BENE TAKIN THYS WEYE BI THY PEPIL O MYNE TYME FOR THY KYNGES MEN DOE ONLIE MOPE ATTE THISE SORRIESTE HAVIOURES AN INTENDE THIR LOOSTE SYGHTES KATHRYNE WERT A GOODLIE MAYDE AN ME DIDST CAUSE THYS UPON HIRSELVES SHE WERT PRIME AN KNEWYTH NAT THY ILL WEY O MEN AND SYK HARMES FOR ME DIDST ALLE TO KEPES HIR AFROM THISE WRETCHYD JACKS MYNE SWEETYST SWEETE KATHRYNE ME WILT NVER LEEVE YOW FROM MYNE THENKYNGS
Friend Ken,
Yes, I have returned but Katherine is burnt. You said there were no burnings in Chester but it is otherwise for there are many for so-called ‘uncleansed souls’ that have been taken this way by the people of my time. The King’s men only shrug at this practice and look the other way. Katherine was a good maid and I brought this upon her. She was perfect and didn’t know the corruptness of man and such that could harm her, for I did all I could to keep her from these wretched people. My sweetest, sweet Katherine, you will never leave my thoughts …
I was so unhappy to hear this. I remember the sorrow and pain we had felt when Lukas himself had been taken, I remembered it had been my responsibility to say whether these communications should continue. Because they had continued I had helped destroy his Katherine. She was only fourteen.
Around the beginning of September the computer was being disturbed again. On 3 September it disappeared entirely from the kitchen – only to be found, all of it (the monitor, the plant stand, the cables) in the bathroom. No damage.
On the marble worktop there was a chalk message, angular and quite distinct. It was not from Lukas. I thought, ‘Poltergeist!’ Everything untoward was blamed on the ‘poltergeist’ or 2109. The message read:
ONE
MORE
CHANCE!
MEASURE
FREQUENCY BY+2 ENERGY
WHAT ELES OTHER
THAN SOUND AND
LIGHT?!
I hadn’t a clue. It happened to be there so I wrote it down.
There was another disturbance involving the computer on 5 September. Deb heard the crash of falling metal and found the disk drive on the floor and the computer and monitor teetering on the edge of the plant stand. The disk drive was out of action. The last incident before this attack was the creation of seventeen new files, all of them empty, all of them opened to several pages. This had last occurred in July. It looked like a childish attempt to confuse or delay our work.
Before the incident I had left a message to Lukas, returning to the subject of the person he claimed had brought the ‘leems’. Did Lukas know anything more? Since the disk drive was now malfunctioning a paper and pencil were left.
My brother Ken,
The man who came to our home when I last spoke was the man called ‘one’. I asked him if he had come to take the ‘leems boyste’ away. He spoke straight away and said that he had no want for the ‘leems’ but that it wasn’t mine to offer. I could see that he was intending to stay with both feet planted firmly here so I didn’t try to move him. He continued: ‘Any mishaps that have befallen you are your own. You have no power over this thing [poltergeist?] for it is like a child without a caring family. It doesn’t know the forces within its reaching arms. You and your brothers are in great trouble if but you put the ‘leems’ back on its own [meaning unclear]. Think well but don’t tell your fellows.’
This is why I haven’t written on the ‘leems’. What do you think? What mishaps? Can we come to ill? Answer soon.
Lukas
Poor Lukas didn’t know that even if he
wrote on the ‘leems’ we could not see it now that the computer was in for repair. However, the feeling at the cottage was that we should not give in, despite the loss of the disk drive. Even though the crucial passage in the pencil message was unclear it looked as if the ‘wyght’ [one!!] was warning us off cooperating with 2109. It was impossible to answer Lukas. We were his future and he expected so much, too much.
30
In the middle of the night of 7 September I packed up my clothes and made my way out to the car. Downstairs in the kitchen of the house in East Green was a small, black puppy whining and moaning for attention. I could not stand it. I had enough to do without some unnecessary animal. It was Debbie’s idea and Debbie could live with it. I was off. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough petrol to go beyond a mile or two so I went back in and settled for a row.
‘But he loves you.’ Deb smiled like a little girl asking for pocket money.
‘No he doesn’t.’
She fetched him into the bedroom. ‘See, he does love you, he’s wagging his tail he’s so happy.’
‘I’m still going when the petrol station’s open.’ I went back to bed while she and the puppy played games on the covers behind my back.
Deb woke me at about nine, leant over and pushed the small black bundle towards me. It had the most wonderful eyes I had ever seen, like jewels. ‘Say goodbye to us then.’
I stayed, and she called the dog Lukas, after a friend of ours. The puppy seemed pretty sensitive to what was happening in the kitchen at the cottage from the start, for he would prick his ears and offer a display of curiosity and anxiety at the kitchen door. Calling ‘Lukas’ was growing to cause confusion around the place but who would mind if they both came running?
Even with the disk drive under repair and a borrowed one in place I still refused to contact 2109. Then this appeared: