Castle Rushen, Isle of Man, Summer 1446
Castle Rushen, Isle of Man, Summer
AS WE COME into port, I can see Castle Rushen standing on its own, on a little promontory of rock surrounded by water, the unwearying rolling waves on one side and a salt marsh and creek on the others.
There is a little fishing port further inland at the head of the muddy creek, with a few boats drawn up on the beach.
The shanties that I mistake for drying sheds are the homes of the people of Castletown: built of rough stone, their thatches tied down with fishing nets weighted with boulders against the wild onshore wind.
I pull my hood over my head and turn up the collar of my robe; but the moment I step out on deck, the wind rips at my cloak so that I billow like a loose sail.
It wrenches at my hood; it buffets my gown.
I am tormented by the wind, pulled and torn, pinched and bullied, as if it is a new penance and the winds of Heaven themselves are tearing me to pieces.
I gasp as a wave breaks against the boat and the spray slaps me in the face with salt water.
‘You need a Manx cloak,’ Captain Glegg says, and throws a rough brown woollen hood over my head and the heavy cloak over my shoulders.
He ties it around my waist ungently, as if I am a sack of barley.
The oiled wool repels the water, and though it stinks as bad as tallow, the rough texture keeps out the wind.
‘I can’t wear this, it’s dirty,’ I complain; but he has turned away to oversee the docking of the ship.
It is moored against the rocky outcrop that serves as a pier before the castle entrance.
They are standing by on the ropes as the ship rises and falls on the waves and groans as it rubs against the netted fleeces strapped to the rocks.
As soon as they have unloaded me, like a cursed piece of cargo, they will rope stocky ponies and men to the ship and heave it upriver, into a quieter anchorage in the creek.
Everyone resents me making them dock here so I can get off, as grand as a Stanley.
I try to cross the unsteady gangplank with a long, graceful stride, as Jacqueline went ashore at Calais, but it shifts and heaves with every wave, and my rough cloak weighs me down, and I can barely see for the spume and the mist. I am afraid, like a child, of being blown off the gangway and into the heaving seas.
I bend nearly double, and I cling to each outstretched dirty hand.
Somehow, I get inside the castle door: a double portcullis with vicious murder holes cut in the ceiling for pouring boiling oil on attackers.
When I look up, I see half a dozen pale faces, half-hidden in shadows, staring down at me.
We pass through the inner portcullis, and suddenly the wind is silenced; suddenly, there is no rain.
I put back the soaking hood of my Manx cloak and untie it.
Someone takes it from me, and I push back the hood of my own cloak.
It is wet with salt, and I am cold and damp.
They show me into the inner courtyard and up the stone stairs that climb, without any grace, the side of the hall to the dining room above.
Here, there is a fire in the grate and the smell of roasting lamb from the kitchen below.
This is exile, but it could be worse; it could be a lot worse.
It could be an abbey with jealous women, like Sterborough Abbey near my shamed family, or Barking Abbey with my unloving sister.
‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ John Glegg says coolly, coming into the room without invitation. ‘This is not our destination. This is a safe port until the storm blows through. Tomorrow, or the next day, we’re going on to Peel Castle.’
‘Another Stanley castle?’ I confirm. The Stanley family are very great in the north-west and hold the kingship of the Isle of Man. All their castles are grand and comfortable. This may not even be the least of them. I may be going somewhere better.
‘Another Stanley castle,’ he agrees. ‘His Grace is ordered to keep you safe till the king orders your release.’
‘D’you know when that’ll be?’ I am confident it cannot be for much longer. Queen Joan was held for three years, and this is my fourth. She was freed on the death of the king, as I will be.
‘Soon, I am sure,’ he says, and shows me the table where I will eat, and the little room where I will sleep behind it.
THEY DON’T LET me unpack, not even my missal nor my Bible.
And now Glegg the captain says that they won’t wait for the storm to pass.
It might rage on, around this wind-blasted island for days, but the weather is so bad that we cannot take ship.
We will ride overland to Peel Castle, rather than trying to sail around the southernmost point of the island.
‘I don’t want to ride in this weather,’ I say.
‘You’d prefer it to sailing around the Calf,’ John Glegg tells me.
I try to smile. ‘I’m not afraid,’ I lie. ‘Don’t change your plans for me; I am not fearful.’
‘Nobody sails through the Sound that runs between the Calf – a rocky outcrop – and the Isle. There are whirlpools and hidden rocks, and the waves run north to south and south to north and crash in the middle in a plume of foam that goes down below the water as high as the spume into the sky. And if you go further out to sea, to avoid the Calf, you get swept out to Ireland, or beyond to the western seas. Not even a Manx crew would set sail into this storm, never to go west. We’ll go overland. You will ride.’
‘I can’t ride far,’ I say, trying out the old lie. ‘I can’t really ride at all.’
‘You can ride these,’ he says. ‘Manx ponies. They’re smaller than mules; they breed them here. They’re the only thing that can bear the hard paths and the windy weather.’
‘I don’t think I can ride them,’ I persist.
‘Then you’ll have to walk behind as I ride,’ he says simply. ‘If you’d rather? D’you have good enough boots for sheep tracks of mud and stone?’
‘I’ll ride,’ I say sulkily. ‘How long will it take to get to Peel?’
‘All day,’ he says. ‘We’ll start at dawn tomorrow. Lucky you are that it’s summer.’
IT DOES NOT feel like any summer that I have ever known.
I attend Prime, and then we break our fast and I go down the stone stairs to the outer yard.
There are half a dozen ponies, rough coated and harnessed with wool rugs strapped on their backs and bridles of twine instead of leather.
The Stanley woman, who is supposed to be serving me, makes a sulky face and helps me to go astride, ties the disgusting Manx cape over my own cape and then laboriously mounts her own beast. My household – resentful servants and Stanley guards – are waiting outside the castle walls.
They drag open one side of the gate, and the pony drops its head and plods forward.
I pull my hood over my head and hold it on with one hand against the billowing wind.
The guard waiting outside falls in before and behind.
Any thought I had of galloping off and going into hiding is blown away by the storm.
The little pony won’t go faster than a sulky walk, and I can’t see where I am going, with my head bowed down and my hood over my face.
I glance to my right to John Glegg.
He nods. ‘Best stay with me,’ he says, as if he knows what I am thinking. ‘You’d die out here on your own. And I am not ordered to look for you.’
We ride out through half a dozen poor houses, little more than beachside shacks, and take the single file track that winds northward across the island.
Behind the cottages are little fields hemmed with grey stones and, beyond them, wide green spaces of rough pasture and peat bogs.
Higher up the slopes, there is the tinge of purple from the mountain heather.
I raise my gaze from the stony path ahead of me and see a world blown bare by scouring wind and constant rain.
There are not even birds in the sky. The rooks spring out of the bending trees, and the winds toss them sideways; they wheel away like black flags flying in the dark sky and struggle to land.
We stop at Rushen Abbey, a great white limestone building where I am greeted by no one, and I dine in the chapterhouse on gruel and mulled ale, as if I was nobody.
We have to change horses here; not even the little brutes can bear to go far on the sharp stone paths in the tearing winds.
I think that I might say I cannot go on, but Glegg comes to the block as I am hesitating.
‘They won’t let you stay,’ he says. ‘They’re devout Cistercians. They’ll be pouring salt into your hoofprints and washing your taint from your cup in holy water. If I left you here, they’d put you in a spiked barrel and roll you down the hill over the cliff.’
‘They’re holy men!’ I exclaim.
‘Yes – God knows what they think of you.’
‘I’ve done penance!’ I burst out in sudden wild anger. ‘My sins are paid for!’
‘Then how d’you explain the black dog that follows you everywhere?’ he asks me.
This is so ridiculous that I turn to my maid to have her tighten the oiled wool cloak around me and I get on the little horse without raising my voice over the howl.
We ride north into a lowering cloud, and soon I can see the rain scudding across the barren hills towards us.
I tie a rag over my hood to keep it in place, and I lower my head against the first rush of the storm.
There is no point demanding that we stop to shelter: there is no shelter, just the little sheep track winding through the empty valley, with the hills shrouded in cloud above us, a waterfall pouring down to our left, and higher up, eerie through the moving rain, long thin mounds of earthworks, with tall white standing stones like pillars of salt at each end.
We stop when the rain eases, and they help me off the pony; I am so stiff and cold that I can barely stand. They give me a drink of buttermilk and a loaf of barley bread. I give John Glegg a hard look.
‘It’s all there is,’ he says.