Castle Rushen, Isle of Man, Summer 1446 #2
I eat sitting on the ground; my household and my guard stand around me, passing a jug of buttermilk hand to hand, mouth to dirty mouth.
At least Peel Castle is owned by the Stanleys and it will be like Castle Rushen, with a good kitchen and reasonable cellar.
I’ll have a warm bed and a fire in my room tonight.
This journey is a nightmare, but it will come to an end, and then, when I am settled in, I can write to my lord and tell him we have been long enough apart; I forgive him for deserting me.
I will write to the king on the fifth anniversary of my trial and ask him for pardon; I will even bring myself to write to Owen Tudor and ask him to speak for me.
This day has been one of the worst of my life; but there will be better days.
I chew on the dry bread and take a gulp of buttermilk that is rancid from shaking in the warm leather flask, but I don’t complain even of this. ‘How far?’ I get to my feet and speak to John Glegg.
‘Less than two hours,’ he says, glancing towards the rays of the sun split into shafts by the clouds piling up on the horizon. ‘We’ll get in before dark. We have to catch the low tide at slack water.’
At the side of the valley, running west to east, is another row of the little ridges.
The white standing stone at the end nearest to us has fallen, and I gesture to the groom to bring the little horse for me to use the fallen stone as a mounting block.
He recoils in horror and hisses something in their language.
I look at Glegg and ask: ‘What’s the matter with the fool?’
‘He would say that you are the fool,’ he tells me disrespectfully. ‘These are cashtal – long barrows – places of burial for the people who were here before the islanders. The island’s full of them, like a graveyard. That is a tombstone belonging to the Old Ones.’
Irritated, I shake my head; but I don’t insist. One of the men kneels on the ground, and I step from his back onto the little horse, ignoring that he crosses himself to invoke God and lays his hand on the fallen white stone for the Old Ones before he gets up.
We ride on in silence, single file on the winding sheep track.
The skies clear as we drop down towards the town of Peel; the high banks on either side of the track hide everything but the twisting way ahead.
I am expecting a little fishing port, gathered around the cathedral.
This is the religious capital of the island, and the principal town and castle of the west coast, as Rushen is of the south.
The road ahead opens out, and I look disbelievingly at the little island that stands among rushing water in the middle of the sea.
Waves pound the cliffs, breaking high into fountains of white spume on the seaward side, and wash in a roll of dark grey up the river mouth.
There is a tall round lookout tower facing the sea, and nearer to us, a squat square gatehouse built in stones the colour of dried blood, a jumbled tracery of a half-ruin behind it.
The island is ringed by a stone wall of slate-grey.
There is no cathedral, there is no archbishop’s palace.
It is hardly a castle, more a fort. There are no lights showing.
The track leads us through a handful of cottages on the seashore, each stone-built, roofed with a thatch of reeds lashed on by fishing nets against the constant gales.
Little boats are drawn up on the beach before the cottages, if it is ever calm enough for them to go to sea.
There is a thin trail of peat smoke from one or two chimneys.
A few sheep, with twisted multiple horns like devils, graze in the stone-walled garths behind the hovels.
I shoot an accusing look at John Glegg, as if he has brought us to the wrong place.
‘We’ve got to wait an hour before we can cross,’ he says shortly, gesturing to the castle. ‘It’s dead low in about an hour.’
‘It’s nothing but a ruin,’ I protest.
‘Peel Castle,’ he says.
I can’t speak. I have been brought to a cold desert, a stormy desert, a desert of sea and shale.
I dismount and wrap my cloak around me to sit on an outcrop of rock.
I watch as the high rolling waves slowly recede down the beach from the boats.
Even though it is low water on the inland side of the island, the sea is still boiling around the seaward castle cliffs.
We wait, then Glegg gestures for one of the guards to blow a blast on his trumpet.
At once, a man comes out of the castle gateway with a rope tied around his chest. He clambers down a rocky path from the door to the shifting treacherous beach of shingle.
I cannot believe what he is doing as I watch him step down into the moving sea.
On the castle steps above him, his fellow pays out the rope as he struggles to keep his footing in the wash of water; but he pushes through chest-high depths till he gets to our side of the shore, where our men haul him up the narrow rough-cut steps in the rock.
They take his rope and heave – three of them, six of them, ten of them – dragging a thick tarred rope across from the castle to loop it around an iron post set deep in the rock on our side.
‘You hold on the guide rope and you wade across,’ John Glegg explains. ‘I’ll rope you to me and to the man behind you. You’ll be perfectly safe.’
I look at the cold water washing uneasily back and forth as the green waters of the river meet the churn of the sea. ‘I can’t,’ I say flatly. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he says shortly. ‘But it’s the only way in.
And now is the only time, in slack water.
When the tide’s up, it’d be way over your head and dragging you upriver.You’d drown in the depths.
When it’s ebbing it would drag you out to sea.You can only walk in twice a day, if it’s dead low. ’
‘Glegg,’ I say earnestly. ‘I swear to God I cannot go in that water. I was lying before, about not riding, but I’m not lying now. I can’t go in that water.’
‘Then we’ll carry you,’ he says indifferently. ‘You can go on Nele’s shoulders.’ He gestures to the man who brought the rope from the castle. Nele silently shakes his head; he says something in their language – I imagine he’s refusing to carry a witch in deep water.
‘One of my men will carry you,’ he says, glancing back at them. No one volunteers.
‘I’ll walk,’ I say through my teeth.
They tie a rope around my waist and loop it around the thick guide rope so that I cannot be washed out to sea by the push and suck of the waves.
They tie a second rope and give the end to Glegg and tie a third rope around me and give the other end to the man who would not carry me, who has already come through the sea, the one called Nele.
Glegg puts one hand on the rough-cut rock and jumps down into the water.
He scowls against the cold as he sinks to his belly and staggers on the shifting seabed, grabbing the guide rope.
For a moment, I hesitate; I cannot find the courage to follow him.
Nele, behind me, gives me a quick, brutal shove, and I fall from the rock and go down into the water, belly first, water over my head, and I struggle up, in blind choking panic, my feet scrabbling on the rolling, shifting shale of the shore, till I leap up, my head above water, grabbing for the rope. Nele grins and slides in after me.
I am clinging to the rope, but it sways, washing out with the sea and then straining in towards the river. It is no support; it is nothing more than a guide to the submerged ridge. Glegg sees that I am gripping the rope, that Nele is behind me, and he turns his back and starts to wade across.
I am hobbled by my water-logged gown and cloak; I can feel them dragging me out to sea with every deep wave.
My boots are filled with icy water, but my drenched head and shoulders are even colder in the wind off the sea.
I grit my chattering teeth and concentrate on sliding my cold hands along the rope, taking little fearful shuffling steps along the shale bank, which forms a narrow causeway, invisible under the swirling dark water.
In moments, my hands are so chilled that they start to cramp, and I know I cannot hold the lifeline; a strong wave will sweep me off like flotsam.
I try to force my thin blue fingers to grip and my feet to find the underwater ridge, but as every wave pushes me upriver or drags at me towards the sea, I am weakening.
It is a lifetime before I see some rough steps cut into the cliff before me, the rope snaking up to the anchor ring, and John Glegg’s hand reaching down to grab me as his other hand hauls on the rope around my waist. Nele throws me up from behind as if I am a drowned dog.
I land on my knees, and Glegg unties me from the lifeline but keeps the rope around my waist to haul me towards the castle guardhouse.
The portcullis is up. I step inside the dark slate walls, out of the wind.
‘Peel Castle,’ Glegg announces joylessly.