Peel Castle, Isle of Man, Summer 1446 #3
I am not going to die here. This is not going to be the last sight as my eyes close. This is the worst place that I have ever been – but already I am improving my circumstances.
I turn and smile at Mary and say: ‘It’s so good to be outside!’ and she cannot stop herself: she smiles back at me for fellow-feeling, and I turn and walk to the north end of the island, where a slim tower points like a candle to the sky.
It’s not a very long walk; it takes us about ten minutes. We get to the earth wall at the north end and hear the men and women banging the stone slabs into the old earth bank with great battering rams, and Mary says quietly: ‘We should go back now, my lady.’
I sigh, as if I am longing to walk for longer, but I turn obediently, at once, and we trail back across the tussocky grass to the doorway to my tower, standing wide for my return, and then up the winding stair, through my open door.
I hear both doors slam behind me and the turn of the key in the lock.
I will count today as my first day of imprisonment, because today is the first day that I have seen my prison.
This survey is the first step of my escape.
I will count this day. I shall count down the days to my freedom.
I take the wooden spoon – which is all they allow me, for fear that I open a vein and bleed to death – and I scrape with the handle till I have made a mark on the blood-red sandstone. One mark: day one. I swear there will not be hundreds more.
MARY IS COURTING one of the local men – a skilled worker.
He must hope that she will take him back to Lancashire when she leaves next quarter day: Michaelmas.
He is good and tall; she would never have got a husband as good as him in Liverpool.
Casually, I ask her about his work in the town, about the fishing, about the work at the castle.
Although she is forbidden to talk to me, she is so filled with the excitement of first love, that she cannot resist boasting about him in hurried whispers when we are alone in my room and she is supposed to be serving my dinner or sweeping the floor.
She volunteers information about the handsome Dolyn’s apprenticeship to his father, a stonemason, in the family business, and I let her boast. Generations of Dolyns carved the stone coffins for dead bishops that were buried years ago, in the cathedral.
‘Plain stonework?’ I suggest, to encourage her to babble.
‘Oh no!’ Mary is indignant that I should fail to understand her precious Dolyn is an artist. She wastes long minutes describing the Manx knots, the basketweave, the script they copy but cannot read, the runes.
‘How I should love to see it!’ I exclaim. ‘In the crypt?’
She looks guilty; I see it at once, and I look away.
‘In a vault?’
She fumbles at the neck of her linen shift and pulls out a piece of string with a ring tied on it.
‘He give me this,’ she says breathlessly.
‘He says he’ll put it on my finger on our wedding day.
It’s Viking gold! It’s a treasure ring. They found it – in the barrow – him and his father, underneath the crypt.
But when his father went back for more . . . he never came home again.’
I am too clever to show any interest in an underground barrow, or how far it goes, in which direction. ‘What a beautiful ring!’ I exclaim. ‘It must be worth pounds! Is it solid gold? May I see?’
Proudly, she takes the string over her head and shows me the ring. ‘Real gold,’ she says.
‘Oh! Show me it on!’ I beg her.
She slips it on her hand and shows me her dirty fingernails and the thick gold ring heavy on her swollen knuckle. It is ancient work, old as the Vikings.
‘It’s so beautiful!’ I exclaim. ‘It suits you as if you were a lady. It’s as fine as anything I ever had in my jewel box. But, Mary – is it his to give you?’
She is so happy, she exclaims: ‘It is! It is! Because he found it in a long barrow deep under the crypt, under the chapel, but he didn’t take it straight away.
He left it at the opening of the tunnel – so if it was fairy gold, the Good People could take it back – that’s what you have to do.
You don’t steal from the Old Ones; but you can trade.
He left it with a bowl of gruel and a pat of butter, and when he came back the food was gone, but the ring was still there. So They say he can keep it.’
‘Is there much treasure in the barrow? Won’t he go back to look for more?’
‘He don’t dare.’ She shakes her head. ‘And I only want my ring.’ She ties it back on the loop of twine and puts it over her head. ‘His father wanted more, and he went to the other end of the barrow, on Horse Hill, but he never came back. So Dolyn says he won’t go looking for more.’
It is as if the endless shouting of the seas suddenly falls silent, as if the sea has stopped, in order to listen with me, so that I miss nothing.
I get up from my chair to close the shutter on the window to hide my avid face for a moment.
I want to snatch her by the neck and shake the words out of her but I wait till I am completely serene and my pulse is stilled.
‘Anyone would want a ring as beautiful as yours,’ I say, my voice quite steady, turning to smile at her. ‘How did he know to go to Horse Hill?’
‘’Cause that’s where they came out!’ she says triumphant at the courage of her lover.
‘They started under the crypt, and they went down into the barrow, and they walked and walked – under the sea without them knowing! – and then they saw daylight, and there they were at the cliffs on the bottom of Horse Hill!’ She turns and picks up her broom, as if she has remembered that I am a prisoner and she should be sweeping my room.
‘How brave! And is he very handsome?’ I ask eagerly. ‘Tall and fair? He must be very strong to work his trade?’
She leans on the broom. ‘I swear to God, when I take him home with me, my sisters are going to stare! They thought I’d marry one of the Stanley grooms – old Henry. I’ll show them different!’
‘How I wish I could give you a dowry!’ I clasp my hands together. ‘I have nothing! If these were the old days, I would give you a gown for your wedding day. When I am released I will send for you, and be godmother to your first baby! But your father will give you a dowry, won’t he?’
‘I’ve saved my own purse,’ she says proudly. ‘I’ll have a dowry to give my handsome husband on our wedding day.’
‘And will you live here? His father will come back to the family business, won’t he?’
She shakes her head. ‘We think his father’s dead – he shouldn’t have gone into the barrow for a second time. Dolyn wants to leave; he says if you offend the Fey, you should leave. He’ll come with me to Liverpool.’
‘Oh, dead?’ I cross myself, respectfully.
‘He wanted a find like my Dolyn. He went back on his own, into the cave on Horse Hill. Dolyn thinks the Good People carried him away. He’s lost.’
‘Lost,’ I repeat.
‘They had a wake for him, as one that was lost. As if he was drowned at sea. They put a white stone for him on the village cairn.’
‘Very sad. But I suppose he did die at sea in a way, if the barrow goes under the sea, from the crypt here on the island, undersea to Horse Hill.’
‘Aye,’ she says inattentively. ‘I said to Dolyn never to go into the barrows again. They all say in Peel, on the whole island, that if you go in, you don’t come out alive.
The fairies take you.’ She suddenly remembers that she is speaking to me, a convicted witch.
She throws me a brief frightened look. ‘Black arts,’ she says and crosses herself.
I cross myself again. ‘God keep us!’ I say fervently. ‘Poor Dolyn losing his father, and after such an adventure. He’s not a man to boast, I suppose?’ I smile sympathetically. ‘Some men do! He really did find your ring in a barrow that runs from the crypt to Horse Hill?’
‘He did,’ she says proudly. ‘And I won’t let him walk that path again. They say the Fey don’t like visitors, they don’t even like being talked about. So hush.’
‘Hush,’ I repeat with my finger across my smiling lips. ‘We won’t speak of this again.’
She nods briskly, she shakes out my cloak, which was drying on the edge of the table, and folds it to put it into my clothes chest. ‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ she says.