Dark Skies
Page 8
The forest was so creepy I half-imagined we might be strangled by some devil-possessed ivy vines and dragged into the trees, a midnight feast for a gang of carnivorous plants lurking in the dark, but instead we just fell over. A lot. The mud was so thick that, without light, we slipped and toppled with every step, and when the path started heading uphill we could do nothing but laugh at our lack of dignity on the climb. Powerless in the dark, fear and frustration turned to silly joy, and we paused often to despair and eat squares of the chocolate I had packed in my bag. We swiped at the air, hands caked in soil, clinging to branches, to each other, squinting through fragments of moonlight to see if there was an end to the claggy trench that was taking us through the forest. All the while the barn owl lingered in the trees; every few minutes we heard a shriek in the canopy, and once or twice a tawny owl echoing from the top of the hill. The two sounds half-mocked, half-motivated us to keep climbing, and it worked. Finally, we emerged from the woodland and out onto the peak of the hill – and there, at the end of a small clearing, was the first of a black cluster of yew trees, limbs unfurled, needles shining, the source of so much mystery in this shadowy place.
Unlike Butser with its soft, smooth hilltop, Kingley Vale is still sprinkled with trees all along the ridge. Although there was now less cloud and more light filtering down from the sky, if we were going to encounter a Viking ghost anywhere, it would be here. It was light enough to reveal the outlines of trees and shrubs but dark enough to hide their identities, smudging them all into ominous shapes and threats to our primitive selves so that in an instant we had tightened up, made paranoid again by what enveloped us on the hill. And there, all around the grove, the yew trees crept and crawled in the darkness.
Of all the native trees in Britain, the yew is perhaps the most closely associated with ‘sudden death’, a phrase once used by the Ministry of Agriculture to describe the effects of digesting it. Almost every part of the yew is poisonous, and its poison known as taxine – used to kill Rex Fortescue in Agatha Christie’s A Pocket Full of Rye – takes its title from the botanical name Taxus baccata. The only exception is the flesh of the fruit, which is edible to birds because the poisonous seeds inside pass through their digestive system untouched. In spring the female yew tree will bear flowers called arils, which contain one hard, toxic seed. As the season passes, these flowers encase the seed like a fleshy cone until they resemble a delicious red berry, when birds like waxwings and thrushes are enticed to eat them and help propagate the seeds elsewhere.
Gigantic and coniferous with reddish-purple bark, a yew can live for many thousands of years if left undisturbed; some of the trees here were so old they had sunk their branches into the ground to create new roots, forming endless rings of yew trees so that parts of the grove had become one cryptic, tangled hollow. The reason for this change is because as the trunk ages it becomes more hollow, and the old branches sag into the floor where they can then take root. It is for this reason that the yew tree also represents immortality and strength, resilience in the face of adversity, and the ability to renew and regrow itself. In fact, there is no reason why an undisturbed yew tree could not continue this cycle of life and regrowth forever. It is a hardwood, durable, resilient and resistant to water, which is why in 1911 a spear made of yew wood was excavated in Essex that dated back an astonishing 450,000 years. It was also under a yew tree that the Magna Carta was signed by King John of England, 600 years ago in the water meadows of Runnymede.
The yew’s reputation for holding the power of life and death continued on into early modern Britain, when Shakespeare included it as one of the Weird Sisters’ cauldron ingredients in Macbeth:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
...
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse
Yew trees have also established themselves in Britain’s old churches, the grounds of which contain some of our oldest specimens, protected among the gravestones. There is no one reason for this being the case, but historians believe some may have been traditionally planted on holy sites, while other theories suggest that, when Christianity took off in Britain, religious leaders thought it was easier to build new churches on old temple sites because people associated certain places with worship and would be more likely to transfer their beliefs over to the new religion. For this reason, many churches in Britain are built on burial mounds, tumuli and holy wells, and some historians claim that the yew trees growing in Christian graveyards may originate from an older time, when they were revered in pre-Christian belief systems. The ancient yew in the grounds of fourteenth-century St George’s church in Crowhurst, Surrey, is twice as old as the church itself, and in 1820 the villagers held tea parties in its hollow trunk. A cannonball, thought to have been fired during the English Civil War, was found embedded within the trunk.
The clouds above Kingley Vale had almost vanished and the moon shone more brightly down onto the summit. Pale and glowing, the face of the moon can sometimes be used to count migratory birds travelling overnight, although it would take a patient eye to commit to a whole night of moon-gazing. The silhouettes of flying birds pass over the surface, and a skilled observer can count thrushes and geese passing over to new places, new territories. In the seventeenth century, the English minister and scientist Charles Morton wrote a treatise entitled Birds in the Moon, claiming that birds actually migrated to the moon and back every year, a trip he estimated would take 60 days if the poor birds could maintain a flight speed of 200kmph. He suggested that birds were not affected by gravity or air resistance and that they could complete the journey in two months by sleeping for ‘most of the journey’, sustained by excess fat. Watching the birds disappear each year into the endless sky, he could see no other solution to their absence than the idea that they must be leaving earth, asking: ‘Whither should these creatures go, unless it were to the moon?’
Bird migration is often associated with movements of the sun, the warmth and cooling of the seasons, but many species do use the moon to shape their behavioural patterns. A study of monogamous Barau’s petrels on the volcanic Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean observed birds travelling to their mating sites over a period of time, and discovered they synchronised their journeys with the full moon, with the increase of moonlight triggering their hunting and mating instincts. In contrast, European storm petrels in Shetland use the cover of darkness to avoid being attacked by skuas and gulls, only returning to their nests in the dead of night. It’s an amazing phenomenon, and one that is best enjoyed on the uninhabited island of Mousa, where a colossal Iron Age broch stands empty except for the thousands of storm petrels that swarm into the tower every night. The island is popular among summer visitors who come to see the petrels returning to their nests by the half-light of the midnight sun.
The broch itself is mentioned in two Norse sagas as a place of defence during invasions, as well as a lovers’ hideout. By definition, a broch is a round tower with both an inner and outer drystone wall measuring around 5 metres thick in total, and this one – one of the best preserved of its kind – was built in Shetland around 400–200bc. Mousa flagstone is thought to be some of the best building stone in Shetland, and many similar brochs in the region were partially dismantled towards the end of the Iron Age, but miraculously this one remained untouched and archaeologists believe it probably stands just as tall today as it would have done 2,000 years ago. The Orkneyinga Saga tells how Erlend the Young once abducted the widowed mother of an Orkney Earl and held her hostage in Mousa broch; when the Earl tried to besiege the broch, he found it ‘an unhandy place to attack’. Today, the island is designated as a Special Protection Area and managed as a nature reserve by the RSPB.
Although just a small bird, barely larger than a sparrow, the storm petrel has gained a reputation for itself in Western culture, particularly in maritime folklore. The word ‘petrel’ is a reference to Saint Peter, as the birds are so
well adapted to ocean life that they can patter and dance over the waves, appearing almost to walk on water. The ‘stormy’ part of their name is thought to originate from their habit of hiding in the leeward side of ships to avoid the worst weather during storms. One superstition claims that storm petrels are bad omens, known as waterwitches, while in Brittany they are thought to be the spirits of captains who mistreated their crew, forever doomed to spend their days flying over the sea.
So strong an emblem is this bird that in 1901 it inspired a revolutionary poem by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, ‘The Song of the Stormy Petrel’, or ‘Pesnya o Burevestnike’ in Russian. It was one of many allegorical fables written at the time to declare support for revolutionary ideas without openly speaking out against the Tsar. In his poem, Gorky writes of a proud ‘stormy petrel’, unafraid of the turbulent storm in which it flies – the revolution – while all other birds cower in fear, as translated by Eugene M. Kayden:
The stormy petrel
Soars between
The sky and deep.
He rides the waves,
And like a flash,
A thunderbolt,
He strikes the cloud-ranks.
Joy defiant
Hear the clouds
In the petrel’s crying:
Thirst of tempest,
Flame of anger,
Might of passion,
Faith of triumph,
Hear the clouds
In the petrel’s crying!
...
Alone, sublime,
The stormy petrel
Soars free above
Wind-cloven waves
Lashed white with anger.
Lower, blacker,
Hang the storm-clouds
On the ocean;
Higher dance
The waves in frenzy,
And leap to meet
The blast of thunder.
...
Alone the proud,
The stormy petrel
Over the spouting
Savage sea,
Alone he soars
A prophet crying
Of victory:
Let the storm rage!
Fiercer,
Let the storm break!
A powerful piece, although sadly Gorky’s symbolism wasn’t quite deceptive enough; he was arrested during the short-lived 1905 Revolution, and spent a large part of his adult life in Italy, exiled from Russia and the Soviet Union until he was invited back by Joseph Stalin himself. Nevertheless, this poem captures the enchanting nature of such a small and largely unnoticed seabird, and it is no surprise that the midnight boat trip from Shetland to Mousa is fully booked every year.
Huddled in the trees in the heart of Sussex, we were a long way from the storm petrels nesting in Mousa broch, but the same Viking spirits that once inhabited Shetland were still among us nonetheless. Nobody knows for certain why Kingley Vale has become so closely associated with Vikings, but plenty of theories have been put forward. According to the ancient Anglo-Saxon Chronicle manuscript, the Vikings made their first raids on English shores towards the end of the eighth century, when they attacked both the Isle of Portland in southern England, and Lindisfarne in the north-east where they killed all the monks and looted their treasures. Their role in British society changed as the decades passed: at times they were executed as heathens, at others welcomed for their tradeable goods, and at one point they were even paid as hired thugs to protect the rest of the country. Nevertheless, their time in Britain, like most migratory shifts throughout history, came to an end with the rise of new powers and authorities, but they left their mark on town names, customs, festivals and beliefs, as well as the genetic make-up of the British people themselves. My mum has traced our family tree back to the Orkney Isles so I’m hoping we have Viking blood in our veins.
The most popular local Viking myth is connected to the Devil’s Humps nearby, four Bronze Age barrows at the top of the Vale. Historians believe the men of Chichester once defeated a Viking war party who had taken hold of the Vale, and when all the leaders were slain they were buried beneath the Humps. (However, as the Humps have been dated back to the Bronze Age, this might be a slight historical smudge.) The rest of the Viking dead were left unburied where they had fallen under the yew trees on the slopes of the hill, and their ghosts are said to still haunt the yew groves to this day while the trees come alive and walk through the forest at night.
It became easy to imagine other people lurking ahead of us, every twig and shrub contorted into pale hands and hidden faces, every shadow enlarged in the brightening moonlight. Not only does the night conceal, it transforms things we once recognised by daylight, mutates and changes them into something unknown, unwelcome. We spotted a trig point in the distance beneath a crown of trees and stood, motionless, our minds alive with fear until we realised it was just an innocent little beacon asleep under the stars. The night frightened us in Kingley Vale, but there was something constant about it, too. Something reliable and reassuring about night always following day, something to be not conquered but admired. By the end of our walk the fear had subsided, the paranoia faded, and we were almost relaxed in the darkness, unafraid of what it was shielding.
There’s nothing like an eerie walk in the dark to bring two people together, and by the time we emerged from the forest and back onto the track, we had returned to our past selves. Being unable to see each other’s faces, we instead relied on changes in tone, movements masked by darkness, those natural, uninhibited behaviours that cannot be concealed by cleverly worded sentences or the urge to ‘play it cool’ – no matter how hard you try. Awkwardness faded to peace, and with it joy came swimming back to us, the sense of being around someone who makes you fall so in love with the world that all the loneliness of being alive on earth transforms into something new; two souls joined together with all the other atoms in the universe; an infinite, effervescent reverberation between us and the stars.
We wandered back down the Vale, leaving behind the yew trees and emerging into clearer land, scattered with young hawthorn trees, spreading out into farmland once again. I have always loved living in Hampshire, but there is something about Sussex that’s a little more charming; more wildflowers in the hedgerow, birds in the trees; fresh eggs for sale on pastel-blue doorsteps; quiet rivers and drystone walls. Sussex seems to be allowed to grow wilder. The village of Stoughton lay sleeping at the end of the track, a handful of lights fighting back the shadow; as we neared the road, our barn owl gave one last shriek, far beyond the hill, before the dark forest disappeared from view. We had survived the mud and the Viking ghosts, and hand in hand in the moonlight, we were finally going home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Greenwich
One beautiful morning in late January, I was walking through Greenwich Park on the south bank of the Thames, around that area of the Underground map where everything sounds pirate-based. Cutty Sark, Crossharbour, Pontoon Dock; the history of London is already enticing, but this place was so marine-themed it seemed to jump right out of a Joseph Conrad novel. In fact, one of Conrad’s later stories The Secret Agent takes place in the park itself, when a spy called Adolf Verloc is ordered to detonate a bomb and blow up the Greenwich Observatory – an attack on modern culture and a reminder of the dangers of underestimating anarchism.
The novel is based on a real explosion that happened in 1894, when French anarchist Martial Bourdin accidentally blew himself up when his bomb detonated too early. His motives have never been clear, but historians suggest he was trying to destroy the 24-hour gate clock that had been displaying Greenwich Mean Time to the public for over 40 years, a symbol of rebellion against government control. Once staff had finished clearing away the bits of flesh and bone, the Observatory’s chief assistant Herbert Hall wrote a simple note in his journal: ‘16.45: A dynamiter anarchist was blown up with his own bomb in Greenwich Park.’
Almost 180 years later, the Royal Observatory is still standing, a beacon of modern astronom
y and navigation now open to the public all year round, and I had come to Greenwich to see it. Over the centuries we have mapped out the stars, worked out the age of planets and even travelled into space, and for a long time I had wanted to visit one of the places where it all began. It was no longer the official working observatory for British astronomy, as high light-pollution levels had resulted in the decision to move to Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex after the Second World War, but it was still an emblem of science and heritage, and I was excited to see the antique telescopes and navigation devices that had laid the groundwork for modern astronomy.
The temperature that morning was uncomfortably low, but the sun shone like gold on the grass managed so neatly by the park authorities, and in the trees I could see the earliest buds beginning to emerge, the start of new life and a new year. One hazel tree was already speckled with catkins, the name given to the male flowers of the tree that look like dangling, olive-coloured caterpillars.
The Observatory was hidden away up a steep hill and the incline warmed me up as I walked. The building itself was developed from the ruins of Greenwich Castle, built in the 1430s and reportedly the favourite place for Henry VIII to house his mistresses as he could travel easily to see them from his other residences. As the Castle foundations had still been strong, the architect and astronomer Sir Christopher Wren suggested using the ruins as a site for the new observatory, which had been commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II and his board of royal advisers. Greenwich remained the official location of the Observatory until 1924, when some of the departments moved away to other parts of the country. The reason for this was that the electrification of the railways that year had caused some of the magnetic and meteorological readings to go askew, and in the time leading up to the relocation of the Magnetic Observatory to Surrey, they even had to insist that electric trams in the surrounding area were forbidden from using an earth return for the traction current.