Pavane

CODA

From an official guide: Between Bourne Mouth and Swanage lies a wild tract of heathland. Bounded on the south by the Channel, on the east by Poole harbour, to the north by the curving River Frome, and to the west by Luckford Lakes, the Isle of Purbeck is crossed by a single line of hills. One pass, a geat or gut in the old tongue, carves through them to the sea; and in that pass once stood a massive stronghold. Nearly unapproachable, seldom invested and never reduced by arms, the castle was truly a gate; Corfe Gate, key to the entire southwest.

The castle, from which the village takes its name, or rather the shell of what was once a mighty hall, tops the steep natural mound that overlooks the clustering of houses. The sides of the hill are overgrown now with bushes and saplings and some stoutish trees, while the brook that once comprised the wet ditch is quite shadowed over. It runs grey and silent between high banks, from the sides of which ferns drop wobbling tongues of green into the water.

Access to the first of the triple baileys is by way of a stout bridge of stone, itself of considerable height and spanning the great ditch that runs round half the mound. Across the barbican once hung a single portcullis; the grooves of its passing may still be seen scored an arm’s depth in the stone. Inside, across the sloping grass of the lowest ward, is the second outwork known incorrectly as the Martyr’s Gate. Here it is claimed Elfrida stabbed Prince Edward, to secure for her own son Ethelred the throne of the land; only unfortunately for the legend neither keep nor baileys then existed, the hill being crowned at that time by a hunting lodge. The Martyr’s Gate itself is split, it is said, by the mines of Pope John; one great tower has sunk from the path some dozen feet and slid a distance bodily down the hill, but its foundations still hold it firm.

Above this inner gateway the ruins of the Great Keep rise a hundred feet and more, daunting with their massiveness and strength. Two walls only remain and a fraction of a third; a high and slender needle, worn by the rain but secure still in the splendid bonding of its stones. All the rest has fallen and lies scattered on the hill in chunks and masses, some of them twenty feet or more across and half as thick. The pathway winds between them, passing the remnants of the chapel and the great kitchens where oxen were once roasted whole for the many friends of the lords of the isle. Gaining the highest point the visitor sees the tower walls still reaching above, fretted with windows and galleries and the remnants of stairs; but no feet have walked them now for many years except the feet of birds…

He’d come on the hoverferry from Bourne Mouth, landed at Studland in a booming shower of sand and flung spray. He was tall, slim-limbed and long-jawed, with dark blond hair cropped close to the skull. He wore tan trews and shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows; over one arm he carried a light waterproof jacket, on his back was a bulky canvas pack. His eyes were striking, a deep sea blue; they scanned the road ahead as he walked, it seemed anxiously.

He saw the place suddenly, looming between the shoulders of two hills. He stopped as if startled, stood staring up at it, lips slightly parted and the breath hissing slow between his teeth. Then he walked on towards it. As he moved it seemed the shell or ruin grew, towering into the sky. He sucked his breath again, wincing against the brilliant sun. Sat on a grass bank noisy with insects, and smoked a cigarette. Nothing he’d read had quite prepared him for this.

He saw a grey village, old and rambling, wavy roofs crusted with a vivid orange lichen. The houses seemed still to watch for the approach of danger; their windows were furtive and narrow, their doors set at a height above the paths the better to resist assault. Over them, monstrous, out of scale, loomed a ravaged face; the castle, a ragged-crowned skull, a thousand-year anger of stone. Brooding out across heath and sea, ancient, unappeasable.

He walked again steadily. Somehow it seemed in spite of the shock of the huge image his mind was not wholly unprepared. As if the place fitted a niche already existing in his consciousness. But that was absurd.

He reached the great grassy prow of the mound. The road wound by it, up into the village square. He followed it. Or rather he was borne without volition on some strange earth-tide of memory. A memory not of the brain, but of the blood and bones. He shook his head, half angry at himself, half amused. He asked himself, how could a man come home, to a place he’d never seen?

He moved on slowly. Through broken archways, past spurs and shattered groins of stone, up to where he could feel again the fresh wind from the heath. Sat in the shadow of the Great Keep, feeling the stone cool against his flesh. From that height the reactors of Poole Power Station were visible, gleaming silver in the sun. Far out in the purplish haze of the sea white dots showed where the hovercraft boomed over the waters of the Channel.

He became aware, by slow degrees, of the Mark. It hung there frozen on the stone, deep-carved, level nearly with his face. The voices of the tourists below seemed momentarily to fade; he moved forward to it in a cold dream. Touched the carving, fingers tracing over and again its smoothness. Big it was, a full yard across; the symbol, enigmatic and proud, the circle enclosing a crab-network of triangles and crossing lines. Over it the cloud shadows moved, birds flapped and cawed in the sky above; its outline echoed the shapes of the reactors, its configuration stirred deepest roots of memory. His lips moved, soundless; one hand went unconsciously to his throat, touched the thin gold chain, the medallion beneath his shirt. The symbol he had always worn, the tiny copy of the thing here on the wall.

He climbed back slowly. Crossed the baileys to the lower gate, turned to see the castle watching down. He held the strangeness to himself. The symbol like a time-charm stirred depths of Self and memory, started strange vast images that shadowed away and were lost quicker than the mind could grasp. Brought coldness in their wake and a sadness, a sorrowing for things lost and unknown, gone beyond recalling.

A group of local girls passed staring, eyes appraising and frank. He was unaware of them. He shivered slightly in the bright, hot sun.

There was a churchyard. He eased aside the old gate that swung and creaked behind him. The place was overgrown, shaded by yews long since run to such a riot of branch and foliage he had to force his way beneath. There was an open space of tall grass; through it the shafts of crosses gleamed grey and smooth. Over it, above the housetops, the face of the castle loomed; the monorailers whispered by it through their cutting in the chalk, on their way to Studland and the sea. He sat a long while and smoked and watched. The voices of children came to him insect-small, half lost in the rustling as the wind swayed the great grasses with their tasselled purple heads. He gripped the medallion; the pulse thumped in his fingers till it seemed the thing throbbed there like a second tiny heart.

Before he left the place he had seen again the Mark, peering like a chiselled eye from the pale square of a headstone.

He drank beer in the big white inn built across the castle approach. Ate sandwiches and cheese and watched the tourists thronging the bars. He left when the place closed. The castle still waited, warm and vast in the sun.

A little path ran down beside the mound. It led beneath arching bushes and trees, the coolness from the wet ditch rising alongside. Beyond the branches the flank of the motte was a tilted plain of sun-dried grass. He chose a path and began to climb. There were goats tethered; their bleating came to him softly, underlaid by the husky voices of the monorail.

High on the mound, below the broken outer wall, was a hollow shaded by a clump of trees. Stonework jutted massively from the grass; he leaned his back against it, looking up through the dancing of the leaves. The great face peered above the hillside. This was the place, and this the time.

He undid the pack he carried. Carefully, with lean, grass-coloured fingers. Hefted the thick packet, staring at the old seals. The Mark was stamped in the wax. He cracked the seals, smoothed out the stiff pages. He already half knew what he would see; the line on line of close-packed, neatly sloping writing, the hand he knew and remembered very well. He began to read. The pack of cigarettes lay unnoticed on the grass.

From far off, along the Wareham Road, came the bumbling of traffic; endless and quiet, like the noise of bees. The new midsummer hum. The sun moved in the sky; the shadows of trees swayed and shifted, lengthening. Folk passed laughing on the path below; red-faced men and children, white-shirted boys, girls in bright frail dresses. He turned the pages slowly, pausing now and again to worry out an archaic spelling. The noise from the village, the bustling and voices, rose and fell and quietened; the tea-lawns emptied, pubs propped open their doors. He seemed poised outside of Time; for him ancient winds blew, ruffling the grass. The noise of old guns mumbled in the hills. The western sky became a burning copper shield. The ruins seemed now bird-tall, ghosts half lost in a harsh sandy-red pouring of light. The shadows crept in the valley, darkening with dusk, and the road was quiet.

There was a final envelope. Again sealed. He opened it slowly, angling the paper to read.

He set the letter down slowly on the grass. Sat seeming hardly to breathe, the medallion still between his fingers. Above him, over the crest of the hill, the castle watched, aloof and huge now in the growing night. There was no help for him there. He felt freshly born; a stranger in a very strange land.

She had come quietly across the slope, squatted waiting so long it seemed he must be aware of her. She waited still, a dark-haired girl in bright frock and sandals, frowning, toying with a grass stem she held between her teeth.

‘You shouldn’t be up here,’ she said. ‘Not to rights. Shouldn’t be on the castle after dark. There’s notices.’

He turned, too suddenly; she saw the quick sheen on his cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean… Are you all right?’ Hands on the grass tensing, half ready to push her back and away.

He was still startled. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Didn’t… see you, is all. Bug got in my eye…’ And she caught her breath at the great burr in his voice.

‘Can I see?’ Quickly. ‘Here, let me…’ A handkerchief magicking itself from her dress.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘ He got washed away…’ Rubbing at his cheek with his palm.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m OK. You put a scare in me. Didn’t see you there…’

She was talking to a silhouette, unable to see his face.

‘I’m sorry…’ She dropped the grass, pulled another stem. Sitting back on her heels. ‘You’re Newworld,’ she said. ‘Are you staying here?’

‘No, guess not…’ He shrugged. ‘No room at the inn, I asked all over. Reckon I’ll be moving on.’

‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘Have you got a car?’

‘No. No, I haven’t…’

She sat pushing one heel in and out of her sandal strap, staring down at the path. ‘I’m always like this,’ she said. ‘Sort of impulsive. Do you mind?’

‘No, ma’am…’

He felt an urgent need to keep her with him. Sit and talk and watch the moon rise over the silent hill.

‘I come up here a lot,’ she said. ‘It’s best when the visitors have gone. There’s a secret way into the castle. I found it when I was small. I used to sit up there and imagine it was all mine. And there were people again and soldiers, like there used to be. You’ve been up here a terrible time, I saw you hours ago. What were you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Sitting. Just thinking I guess.’

‘What about?’

‘The people,’ he said simply. ‘And the soldiers.’

‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘Are you shy?’

‘No, ma’am. Well, maybe a little. Haven’t been here too long. Don’t know my way around.’

‘Are you on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve never met a Newworlder,’ she said. ‘Not properly, to talk to. Does that sound funny too?’

‘No, ma’am…’

She pulled at her lip with her teeth. ‘I know where you can stop,’ she said, ‘if you haven’t anywhere to go. Would you like to stay?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I would. Very much.’

‘My father runs the pub just down the street,’ she said. ‘We’ve got loads of room really.’ She stood up and flicked at her hair. ‘I’ll go and see,’ she said. ‘I think it will be all right. Then I’ll come back. Will you be ready then?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll be ready.’

She moved away lightly, surefooted on the grass. He saw the flash of her legs in the shadows, heard the little scuff as she jumped down to the path.

She called up to him softly. ‘When I come-back,’ she said, ‘you’ll have gone away.’ He had to strain to make out the last words of the letter.

He stood up. Slowly rolled the papers together, stowed them in the pack and fastened it. Swung the strap onto his shoulder, brushed at the grass that clung to his knees. It was nearly full now on the mound; the shadows of the trees were velvet black. Above him the ruins showed ragged against a turquoise afterglow.

He saw something he hadn’t noticed before. Everywhere round him, on the grass, in the bushes and trees, the glow-worms were alight, pulsing like cool green lamps. He took one in his hand. It shone there steadily, distant and mysterious as a star. The stones were still and huge on the slope, and the Normans had been dead a long time. A little wind rose, stirring the grass. He started to climb down, feet skidding on the roughness.

She was waiting for him by the brook, a scented shadow in the night. As she moved forward he saw her cupped palm gleam. She’d collected glow-worms on the walk back down the path, carried them ‘along of her’ as the locals would have said.