“Well, when Gwen met up with you here…”
“That’s it, isn’t it? She never turned up neither. That’s why we were getting worried, like. We were going to send a party back to look for the pair of you when you came in through the door.”
“Thanks, Dilwyn.”
I turned away thoughtfully, then I turned back. “Did either of you notice anything unusual when you were up there near the standing stones?”
“Like what?”
“You know, a slightly weird feeling?”
“Don’t be bloody soft, man!”
Huw smiled. “I think that was a ‘no’, Michael. What are you driving at?”
Huw was retired now – as were most of the others – but I knew he used to be an academic. Old habits die hard: he always seemed to be well up on the history of the areas we walked through. We had an interesting little conversation before I left them.
Gwen was looking at me expectantly when I rejoined her in front of the fire. I looked at her, then said:
“Sorry, cariad. Don’t know what came over me. I must’ve been hallucinating or something.”
She smiled. Was it the fire or were her eyes really sparkling like that? She extended a hand and closed it over mine. Her voice was soft.
“You just got a little bit carried away, Michael, that’s all. Look, you’re still soaked and you’re not going to dry out here. My place is nearer. Come on back and we’ll get you comfortable.”
*
You may wonder why I didn’t say more to Gwen, but there was no need. I already knew where the evening was going to end up. You see I understood now what used to go on, centuries ago, within that circle of standing stones.
“It started off with incantations to bless the earth,” Huw had told me, “to bring forth a good harvest. That was very important in those days; people would starve if there wasn’t a good harvest. Over the years it extended to fruitfulness in general. That’s what they found when they deciphered the carvings. The ceremony held up there was a fertility ritual.”
[First published in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]
The Statue
Renata sat on the starboard diving platform making final adjustments to her face mask. The boat rocked gently. The only sounds were the lapping of the waves against the hull and the distant mewling of sea birds. She paused for a moment to gaze down into the green water. Many fathoms below her—if the team’s calculations were correct—was Venezia, or Venice, the first major city of the ancient world to be submerged when the ice-caps melted. So far as they knew, the last inhabitants had left around the year 2200, taking art objects and other portable treasures with them. This expedition was about a different sort of treasure: the history of the city, the architecture, the technology. It was also about the thrill of going where no one had been for a thousand years.
She rolled forward and slid below the waves, enjoying the silky caress of the water on her legs after the unrelenting heat up on deck. How her father would have enjoyed this moment! He would not have dived, of course; he was a terrestrial archaeologist. When she was young she would accompany him on digs and help to clean the finds. If he could see her now! But father had been killed in an accident while she was still at University. The memory still clutched at her.
The temperature dropped as she cruised into the depths. Fuel cells in the belt around her slim waist supplied the breathing mixture to her mask and generated the electrical power for the two wrist-mounted water turbines. She wore small flippers, more for balance and steering than for propulsion. Marco and Roberto would be close behind her. Soon they would disperse to the coordinates Gus had allocated.
“Gus” Gustavson was the leader of the expedition. His final instructions had been brief.
“Now remember, at this stage we’re just looking for features: straight lines, rectangles, the kind of thing that might have been left behind by open squares, buildings, canals. This is only an exploratory dive. If you find something interesting we’ll put down a virtual grid and look in more detail. Questions?”
There were none. They could almost feel the presence of the ancient city under the water and their anticipation was intense.
Marco and Roberto moved out to either side of her. Below them a green forest of weed waved slowly in the ocean currents. The weed had come from the colder waters of the South. Now it blanketed the entire floor of the Mediterranean Ocean, which was why previous attempts to locate Venice had been unsuccessful. But this expedition would be different: they had a new, far more accurate computer model to link the present coastline with the coastline ten centuries earlier. They should be right on top of the city. Marco and Roberto each lifted a hand and went their separate ways. She turned her wrist to check the locator. It was linked by ultrasonic channels to the three buoys that the yacht had put out. The buoys were constantly reading their position from Global Positioning satellites so she knew precisely where she was.
For ten minutes she cruised slowly over her target area. She could see nothing but the waving fronds of weed. Were they really in the right place? She ascended ten metres and cruised again. There was something there: a large rectangular depression in the weed, at least a hundred metres across. In the centre the weed rose to form a strange mound. Puzzled, she turned down to take a closer look. Something caught her eye and her pulse quickened. In amongst the weed she had glimpsed a different green, the telltale bright blue-green patina that copper, and copper alloys like brass and bronze, acquire when they become weathered – or are immersed in seawater. She moved in and parted the weed to reveal a spherical shape. Because of the weed she had no idea how high it was above the original ground level. Could it be an ornament on a steeple or cupola? She swam slowly around it, brushed it gently with her hands – and her eyes opened wide. She was staring into a face, the face of a handsome, determined young man. Her heart thumping, she took a deep breath, savouring the moment of discovery, then steadied her voice to speak into the underwater microphone.
“There’s something down here. Something wonderful.”
*
Over the next few days they surveyed the site systematically. They used high-pressure water cutters and vacuum hoses to remove the weed and gradually the muddy outlines of a square emerged. In its centre was the statue of a man on a horse, raised on a stone podium, the statue that Renata had discovered. He fascinated her. She would go down early to look at him, before the water was clouded by their activities. The statue itself was quite clean, because the metal had inhibited the usual growth of weed, barnacles, and other marine opportunists. The podium, on the other hand, was heavily encrusted. There was some sort of inscription cut into the stone but all she could make out were the letters ‘I, O, V, A.... O, N, I…’ She photographed the inscription, hoping to use some form of image enhancement to penetrate the secret.
That morning the divers started their work as usual, and mud spiralled up like smoke wherever their flippers made contact. The heavier equipment raised yet more mud, and visibility started to decline. Then the sun came out and she looked up to see a halo of light and sunbeams all around the statue, so that it seemed to her as if he were riding his horse through the dawn mists into some glorious future. It filled her with a heavy mixture of emotion, and a longing to know this man and to share his world.
Gus recognized the slender figure in the electric blue wetsuit jacket emerging from the water and went to help her. She fixed him with eyes the same colour as the wet suit.
“Who is he, Gus? Who is he, and what did he do to have a statue erected in his honour?”
“We will find out, Renata.”
“Couldn’t we raise the statue, Gus? Bring it to the surface? Take it back for further study?”
“In time, maybe. But you must to be patient, Renata. First we have to examine the statue in its proper context. Try to picture the square and the statue as it was a thousand years ago, before the waters rose…”
*
Beryl shivered and tighten
ed the fingers pinning the lapels of her short coat. “Do you know where we are, Annie?” she demanded.
Annie continued to consult the map. “We’re in some sort of square – maybe this one.” And, tracing a finger, “I think we should have continued along the canal instead of crossing the bridge.”
Her friend sighed. “Whose idea was it to come to Venice at this time of year?”
Annie looked up in surprise. “We both thought it was a good idea, Beryl. You were the one who heard the fares were going up in 2004. And we got off-season rates at the hotel.”
“Yes, but who knew it would be so cold in November? I’m flipping freezing.”
“I can’t see any sign to say what this campo is. Hang on, I’ll have a look at the statue. It might be named after him. They often are.”
Reluctantly Beryl accompanied her to a podium in the middle of the square, on which there was the statue of a man on a horse, a bronze statue showing the bright green patina of age. A cold fog was blowing in from the lagoon and rolling across the square. Unexpectedly the sun peeped through the clouds and as Beryl and Anne looked up they were transfixed by the ghostly effect of the light illuminating the mist swirling around the statue.
Anne’s voice was hushed in wonder. “Who is he?”
“And why is there a statue to him?” added Beryl.
For the moment she’d quite forgotten how chilled she was.
*
The square was crowded and everyone was on the move but nobody was in a hurry. They milled past the stalls selling ribbons, lace, wool and linen, leatherwork and glassware, cheeses, hams, live chickens, and brightly coloured spices. The stall-holders called out even as they were serving other customers. Over the noise of conversation, the shouts of the vendors, and the squawking of the chickens could be heard the sound of a small band. The air assaulted the nostrils, the stench of sewage from the canals almost obscured by smells of cooking and wood smoke, and by the odour of many bodies on a hot Easter Day.
A pretty girl stopped at a booth to have her fortune told. She was in love, and hoping secretly to learn that her happiness would be crowned by a proposal.
“What is your birth-date, my dear?” asked the fortune-teller.
“The eleventh day of June, 1443, if it please you, signora,” the girl replied anxiously.
The fortune-teller began to consult her almanac, but her mutterings were drowned by the approaching beat of a drum as a group of travelling players wound cheerfully through the crowd, announcing their next performance.
In a pool of shade by the statue in the middle of the square Claudio and his sister Annalise shared a colomba pasquale, a piece of bread shaped like a dove. The children were excited and turned their heads this way and that, taking in all the sights and sounds. Near to them an old soldier sat on a barrel, resting his legs. Claudio smiled at him, and the old man smiled back. Suddenly he lifted his head and both the children looked up to see what had attracted his attention. On the other side of the statue a man was grilling sausages over a portable stove. The smoke was rising all around the statue and the sun shone through it, breaking into sunbeams, reflecting from the burnished surface and giving the bronze man on the horse a strange illusion of movement.
“Who is he?” asked Claudio.
“You mean who was he, you silly chicken,” Annalise corrected him. “They only put up statues to people who are dead. Everyone knows that.”
“All right, then, clever, who was he?” Claudio persisted.
Annalise, who had no idea, was trying to think of something to say when the old soldier answered for her.
“He was a very great man, a soldier,” he said gently.
“Did you know him, signor?” asked Claudio innocently.
Annalise made a spluttering noise, but to her surprise the old man nodded his head. “Ay,” he said. “I had the privilege of fighting in all his campaigns.” Seeing that he now had both the children’s attention, he continued. “Look at the statue, my dears. Imagine the man on the horse as he was in life, thirty years ago, before this time of peace…”
*
Giovanni Battista Contarini guided his horse up to the high ground and sat there, gazing at the horizon, seeing the thin spirals of smoke rising from the enemy’s camp fires. A small smile quivered for a moment on his handsome features. They did not deceive him. They had abandoned the camp some hours ago and were on their way towards him, ready to halt his advance to Brescia. He had sent a detachment to meet their much larger force, with instructions to fall back as if the surprise attack had been successful.
His men waited patiently, glancing from time to time at the now familiar figure on the horse. When first they had been placed under his command there were many who muttered about the privileges of being the only son of one of the richest mercantile families in Venice. Even the rumour that he had read every major work on military history and strategy by the age of twenty did not inspire their confidence. Now, after four successful campaigns, not a man among them questioned his abilities. They knew full well they were fortunate to have their young commander. Not for him the vainglorious set-pieces that left thousands dead on the battlefield and grieving widows and fatherless children at home. His victories had been achieved by tactical brilliance, with minimal losses on their own side.
The sound of gunfire came closer and soon his men were sighted, retreating down the valley, regrouping to fire at the enemy and then retreating further, just as he had instructed. He watched the Milanese troops follow them in, estimated their numbers, and decided that they must have committed their full force, confident that their opponents were on the retreat. He smiled again. They were travelling much too fast for their artillery. His own forces were concealed on the hillside, divided into three groups, ready to attack on both flanks and at the rear, with a fourth detachment to descend on the artillery before it could be deployed. He waited patiently for the right moment and then gave the signal.
The battle was over quickly, the defeat crushing and final. He rode down into the valley. As his horse picked its way carefully between the bodies of men and horses, among the groans of the wounded and dying, he estimated the numbers and looked out for any of his own men who needed help or words of comfort. He did not notice the wounded Milanese officer who rolled over behind him, did not see the man raise his pistol, and with his dying breath pull the trigger.
The ball struck the commander in the spine. Shards of bone sliced through vital vessels and he collapsed to the ground. Two of his soldiers shouted and ran up, then stopped short. His eyes, gazing so recently at the horizon, now gazed sightlessly at the sky, yet his face, grey with the pallor of death, seemed to be in complete repose. Heavy with grief, they carried his body back, and comrades parted to either side to line their route. Tears streaked weary faces, cutting clean channels through the caked blood, sweat, and grime of battle.
*
One week later the body was laid to rest in the church of San Giovanni in Bragora. The cathedral was packed with mourners, and crowds filled the square outside. The Doge himself gave the funeral oration.
“We mourn today the beloved only son of our respected Signor Paolo Contarini and his excellent family.” He nodded to the heartbroken Signor, who was struggling to maintain his composure. “But we mourn also Giovanni Battista Contarini, beloved son of Venice, a great leader who gave his life for the glory of the Republic. It is fitting that we should honour his memory. Accordingly I wish to announce that I have commissioned a statue, to stand in a square that will be known henceforth as Campo Contarini. Generations to come, and generations that we may not know, will gaze upon the statue and ask ‘Who was this man, and why was he so honoured?’ And with God’s grace, there will be, in every generation, those who have the wisdom to answer.”
[First published in Alexei’s Tree and Other Stories, Matador, 2005]
Molly
“Do I ’ave to go to Lady Bebington’s party?”
“Edward Henstall! If you knew the trouble
I’ve taken to secure this invitation you wouldn’t ask me such a thing!”
He grimaced, got up and went to the side table, where he lifted the silver dome on the serving dish and heaped another portion of bacon, ham, and eggs onto his plate. His wife watched him. Her husband had small eyes and a snub nose, and a pink complexion that made him look permanently overheated.
No-one would call him a handsome man, she reflected, but he is, of course, substantial. Why else would I have married someone twenty years my senior?
“It’s just that I never know what to say to these people,” he continued, in a whinging tone that signified to her that he had already capitulated. “They’re all old money. I’m a self-made man.”
“You’re not so different. Your family’s lived in Yorkshire for generations, and you inherited the mills at Macclesfield from your father.”
“One mill,” he corrected. “Rest were my own doing, I might remind you.”
“All right, all right. Well, talk to them about hunting or shooting. Or how we’re restoring the garden. Or the problems of getting good staff. I’m sure you can find plenty of common ground if you put your mind to it.”
He sat down with the plate and lifted his knife and fork, holding them upright for a moment with the handles resting on the tablecloth.
“I could talk to them about the work I’ve had to do to bring this ’ouse up to snuff. Cost me a bloody fortune, it has. I don’t know why we couldn’t ’ave stayed in Macclesfield.”
“Edward, we’ve been over this before. It’s all right for you to stay at Macclesfield Hall during the week but you simply cannot mix with the right stratum of society up there. Whoever is going to notice you if you stay tucked away in Macclesfield? That’s the whole point of establishing ourselves down here. You deserve recognition. You should have been knighted before now.”
Mrs. Lucinda Henstall made little secret of the fact that she wished to be Lady Henstall, and at the earliest possible opportunity.
The Tomb and Other Stories Page 6