Chapter 30
GOLDENWYCH, PRESENT DAY
‘King Lear, king of the Britons,’ she murmured as she awoke.
‘What?’ Lee’s voice was incredulous, there was also a tremble of anger, which Caitlin knew was disguising his fear.
‘King Lear, it’s why Dad wanted to call me Cordelia,’ she said, her voice slurred.
‘Lee, what’s wrong with her?’ said Sindy.
Caitlin heard the caw of the rook and saw herself bowing to the bird, who gave a nod in return before he flew away. As the bird vanished, her eyes sprang open and she was back in the stone circle with Lee and Sindy on either side of her, torches directed at her face.
‘Stop it,’ she said, holding up her hand to deflect the glare. ‘This is like being interrogated.’
‘You were talking during your trance,’ said Sindy, white-faced and terrified.
‘King Lear,’ said Caitlin again.
She was beaming and felt as though she had been imbued with a huge blast of energy.
‘Come on,’ she urged, springing to her feet and collecting the four crystals. ‘Let’s clear up and then we’ll go back to mine, I have so much to tell you.’
‘How do you feel?’ asked Lee, reaching for her arm to take her pulse.
‘Amazing,’ she said, laughing with delight as she shook him off. ‘Truly, I’ve never felt better. I want to sing, dance, shout with joy.’
‘Is this the henbane?’ she heard Sindy ask Lee as Caitlin blew out the candles.
‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know anything about the effects of henbane.’
‘Do you think it’s addictive?’
‘Will the two of you stop panicking?’ called Caitlin. ‘I feel great.’
* * *
Half an hour later, they were in Caitlin’s cottage and her euphoria had dimmed but her heart was at peace. As instructed by Lee, she was sitting in her favourite armchair while he made hot chocolate and toast. Sindy had offered to cook but he had despatched her to sit with Caitlin.
‘Shout if her breathing changes,’ he had said.
Caitlin scribbled in the notebook she had shown Sindy earlier, capturing all she could remember, hopeful the act of writing would help her to understand the things she had been shown.
Sindy sat in silence, watching her. When Lee arrived with a tray, Caitlin could sense Sindy’s relief at no longer being responsible.
Caitlin continued to make notes but Lee forced a plate of toast into her hands.
‘Eat this,’ he said.
‘I need to write it all down,’ she protested.
Not of all it made sense yet, she did not understand where the dream of the three sisters slotted into the story but she knew this knowledge would come when it was necessary.
‘Perhaps you could describe it and we could record it for you to transcribe later,’ suggested Sindy.
‘Excellent idea,’ said Lee. ‘Shall we use your phone or mine, Moon?’
Caitlin stared at the implacable faces of her friends. ‘Mine,’ she said. She placed it on the arm of her chair and opened the voice note app. ‘It’s difficult to know where to start,’ Caitlin said, biting the buttery toast. ‘Lee, you make the best toast.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but don’t change the subject. When you were coming out of the trance, you said, “King Lear, it’s why Dad wanted to call me Cordelia”.’
‘He did, but Mum didn’t like it,’ mused Caitlin. ‘She thought the name was cursed. Perhaps she was right to fear it.’
‘Tell us,’ said Lee. ‘No matter how bizarre, tell us what you saw.’
Caitlin took another bite of her toast and sipped her hot chocolate.
When she had been in the Everywhen with the rook and henbane to guide her, the images had seemed logical, normal, but trying to express the peculiarity of her experience, coupled with her utter certainty that all she had seen was true, made her realise the limitations of language; even as she framed the sentences in her own mind, they sounded odd, but she owed it to Lee and Sindy to at least try to give a coherent explanation. She took a deep breath and began.
‘For the past few months, ever since Dad had his TIA, I’ve been having strange dreams about three women on a quest,’ she said, ‘but I’ve also been seeing another woman too.
At the hospital, Lee, do you remember? You all assumed I’d fallen asleep and dreamed her but I was certain I hadn’t and then I found this. ’
She moved to her bookcase and withdrew Miranda’s sketch of the genius loci.
‘Look at the date,’ she said to Lee, whose eyes widened in surprise. ‘This was the woman I saw in the hospital, but Mum claims she saw her, too, a few days after I was born. Mum also said she saw her when we viewed the cottage for the first time.’
‘It’s certainly strange,’ admitted Lee.
‘Who do you think this woman is?’ asked Sindy.
‘I think she’s the real Cordelia from the King Lear story,’ said Caitlin, ‘and that the women of my family have a connection to the sisters in the original legend.’
There was an uneasy silence and Caitlin realised how ludicrous it sounded. Nevertheless, in her soul, she knew it to be true.
‘How is that possible?’ said Sindy. ‘It’s a story written by William Shakespeare.’
‘I know,’ said Caitlin, ‘but it’s based on what I now know is a real story.’
She explained to Sindy all she had told Lee about her research into the origins of the Lear story.
‘Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed his information about the early history of Britain had been supplied by his friend Walter, who was the archdeacon of Oxford,’ she finished.
‘He said Walter had given him “a certain very ancient book written in the British language”. It had been brought to him from outside the country and Geoffrey translated it into Latin. It’s thought this book originated in Brittany.
Unfortunately, other scholars have dismissed the idea of the manuscript because it isn’t cited by any other writer of this period. ’
‘You mean Geoffrey made it up?’ said Lee.
‘This is the assumption but I know differently,’ she replied.
‘How?’ asked Sindy.
‘I saw the book while I was in what Cordelia called the Everywhen,’ Caitlin answered.
‘The where?’ said Sindy.
‘It’s a plane between worlds,’ said Lee. ‘Many ancient people believe shamans can access the Everywhen. It’s the place where healing occurs. I read about it when I was at university. Healing takes place on many levels and I wanted to learn as much as I could about how to cure people.’
Caitlin and Sindy gave him a surprised look but he shrugged and crunched his toast noisily in defiant response. Caitlin and Sindy grinned.
‘The henbane tea took me to the Everywhen tonight,’ Caitlin continued, ‘and as I travelled, I saw the book of history being given to Cordelia by her teacher, Spaden the Gaul. She commissioned a scribe to write the tale of her family when she helped her father retake his throne.’
‘When would this have been?’ asked Lee.
‘The late Iron Age, the 800s BCE,’ said Caitlin. ‘I looked it all up a while ago.’
‘But there was no writing back then,’ said Sindy. ‘How could there be books?’
‘We don’t have any remaining records of scrolls or words but there must have been some form of written communication. There are runes carved on stones from not much later and remember, Lee, what we saw at the Heraklion Museum last year?’
‘When we went to stay with your friends Eloise and Claud in Crete for baby Alice’s christening?’ said Lee. ‘You were godmother.’
‘Yes, and in the museum, there’s information and examples of two distinct styles of writing from the Minoan period – Linear A and Linear B. It isn’t writing as we recognise it but it was a written form of record keeping.’
‘Were the Minoans earlier than the Iron Age?’ asked Sindy.
‘Yes, they were Bronze Age, which is before the Iron Age,’ said Caitlin.
‘Egyptian hieroglyphics go back millennia and, despite the fact the Romans have always portrayed the ancient Britons as savages, there have been so many archaeological finds that dismiss the idea. In the Iron Age, people lived in organised homesteads, hill forts or oppida. They farmed, they were a structured society with religion and burial customs. There must have been some form of written word for all that to be possible. Who’s to say the carvings on the stone circle aren’t some form of ancient language? ’
Sindy and Lee were quiet as they absorbed these ideas.
‘When you put it like that, it’s logical,’ said Lee. ‘Arthur Evans, the man who excavated in Crete and discovered the lost palace at Knossos, was of the same mind, remember? He didn’t believe it was possible for the Minoans to achieve such success without some form of writing.’
‘Yes, and it was his belief that led him to discover Linear A and Linear B,’ Caitlin recalled. ‘It’s probable there was a similar writing system in Britain, too, which is how Spaden was able to give Cordelia the history book.’
Caitlin finished her toast and placed the plate on the coffee table. Lee held up the jug of hot chocolate and she passed her mug to be refilled, Sindy did the same, with Lee draining the final drops from the jug into his own cup.
‘Caity, I’m not doubting you,’ said Sindy, as she settled back into the cushions on the sofa, ‘but why do you think the woman is the real Cordelia?’
‘She told me her name,’ replied Caitlin, ‘and I saw her sisters, Goneril and Regan.’
‘What?’ said Lee. ‘Where were they?’
‘At the hill fort, which was near here in Goldenwych.’
‘How can you possibly know?’ asked Sindy.
‘I recognised the stone circle with the Three Sister stones,’ replied Caitlin and her excitement buzzed through her again. ‘Even more eerie, Cordelia looks like me, Goneril is Gillian’s double and Regan is like Rachel.’
‘Did you know the “wych” part of Goldenwych is the Old English word for settlement?’ mused Sindy.
‘Really?’ said Caitlin.
‘Yes, Gran told me, so the village name means Golden Settlement,’ said Sindy.
An astonished silence fell between the three friends.