How the Heather Looks Read online

  We ducked our heads and went into the chapel and waited for our eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. There was not much to see, really. The cinder-block building was small, but there was another structure within it. Thick walls of small stones haphazardly placed rose to about waist height, tracing the outlines of a building that could not have been much larger than a medium-sized living room. A low stone bench ran around the wall, and there was an altar at one end where someone, surprisingly, had placed a bouquet of wild flowers. We looked down at our feet. We were standing on slate above the sandy floor, and a spring bubbled up through the sands. Barefooted Lucy had already discovered it and was happily wiggling her toes in the water. It was dark and cool and dim and quiet, except for the children. We shooed them out into the sunshine again. Far away we could catch the sound of the sea and, perhaps, the scream of a gull. Then silence again. We waited, as though expecting something. I thought of Aslan and the trumpets of Narnia. I tried to remember what it was that C. S. Lewis had written in The Last Battle:

  “I thought the house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

  “So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”

  We began to feel the awesomeness of what we had found. These were the original four walls left standing from that dim, distant time of early Christianity in Britain. The oratory was so small, so remote, one wondered how its teachings could have existed, much less survived.

  Outside, the children ran wild in the winey air and sunshine where bees bumbled among scant blossoms of gorse and vetch. Suddenly, we heard shouts from Ian and at the same moment Lucy started to scream. We stumbled out into the harsh brightness of sand and sun. Lucy, running around the church, had cut her foot on a rock half buried in the sand and it had begun to bleed. Ian, going white and red by turns, tried to explain. “Lucy was going around the church widdershins and I tried to stop her and she thought I was chasing her just to be mean….”

  I knew what he was trying to tell me and why he was so upset. Just the day before I had been telling him and the Ruggleses the story of “Childe Rowland,” perhaps the oldest tale in Joseph Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales. Ian must have heard it a hundred times, because it is my favorite tale for telling. The story is so old that it is in the form of cantefable, part rhyme, part prose:

  Childe Rowland and his brothers twain

  Were playing at the ball,

  And there was there sister Burd Ellen

  In the midst among them all.

  Childe Rowland kicked it with his foot

  And caught it with his knee;

  At last as he plunged among them all

  O’er the church he made it flee.

  Burd Ellen round about the aisle

  To seek the ball is gone,

  But long they waited, and longer still,

  And she came not back again.

  They sought her east, they sought her west,

  They sought her up and down,

  And woe were the hearts of those brethren,

  For she was not to be found.

  Of course what had happened was that Burd Ellen had run around the church “widdershins” – the opposite way to the sun – and had been carried off by the King of Elfland. One by one the brothers went in search of her, but it was only Rowland, the youngest-best, who was able to rescue her. In King Lear, Mad Edgar says, “Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came.” The “Dark Tower” was “a green hill all ringed about by terraces.” The story was already old enough by Shakespeare’s day for him to take for granted that his audience would recognize a reference to it.

  In the scholarly “Notes and References” which Jacobs includes at the end of his collection, he suggests that pixies, piskies, and pechs (the last is the word for “fairy” in Scotland) may well have been Picts who were driven into hiding and who became mound dwellers.

  If, as archaeologists tell us, there was once a race of men in Northern Europe, very short and hairy, that dwelt in underground chambers artificially concealed by green hillocks, it does not seem unlikely that odd survivors of the race should have lived on after they had been conquered and nearly exterminated by Aryan invaders and should occasionally have performed something like the pranks told of fairies and trolls….

  Altogether it seems not improbable that in such a tale as Childe Rowland we have an idealised picture of a marriage by capture of one of the diminutive non-Aryan dwellers of the green hills with an Aryan maiden, and her recapture by her brothers. It is otherwise difficult to account for such a circumstantial description of the interior of these mounds, and especially of such a detail as the terrace cultivation of them….

  Although I do not think that modern archaeologists agree wholeheartedly with this theory, there is still scientific credence given to much of it. I could not blame Ian for being so apprehensive when he saw Lucy running widdershins about that ancient chapel. Anything could happen among those sand dunes and, as if to prove it, now Lucy was suffering the consequences with cut and bleeding foot. We all went back into the chapel and Lucy dipped her foot into the water bubbling up through the sandy floor. John bound it up with a clean handkerchief while Lucy’s screams subsided to sobs and her sobs to sleepy silence. In a few minutes she was asleep in her father’s arms. The water must have great curative powers for, although she bore the scar for weeks, the cut never became infected and gave no further trouble. The strangest part of the episode is the effect it had on Lucy. She often speaks of it, asking, “Do you remember? Do you remember the time we went into a church and it had a brook right in the floor and I went wading … ?” It is as though she were struggling to recall a dream.

  But at the time she hardly stirred as we set out to retrace our steps to the car. A few yards away we turned to look back at the chapel. It had disappeared again, behind the dunes. Like others before us, we had thought it a myth, but we know now that it is there – that we did not imagine it. It may be lost again for centuries, only to reappear as a fragment left over from the childhood of Faith. Perhaps it will always be there in Lucy’s consciousness, half buried, but imperishable as rock beneath the sands. After all, it is not every child who stumbles on the upthrust peaks of Narnia.

  CHAPTER 4

  In Quest of Arthur

  We had been living for two weeks on the moors, purifying ourselves in the wilderness. Now we were ready to set out on a quest. We were seeking King Arthur. There are so many Arthurs, and he is claimed by so many places all over Britain that it is difficult to know where to search. There are Arthur’s Chair and Arthur’s Cup, Arthur’s Quoit and Arthur’s Stone; the places where he and his knights are said to lie buried or sleeping range all the way from Scotland to the Scilly Isles.

  Ian was the most excited. He had suffered an attack of medievalism at an early age and had not yet recovered. Now, as we drove north along the coast of Cornwall, he suddenly came out with “Boy! I can hardly wait until we get to Camelot!”

  Camelot? John explained to him that we were bound for Tintagel, the place where Arthur was born and which he left when still in swaddling clothes. Then we were going on to Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon, where Arthur went to die. He didn’t know about Camelot….

  Well, how about that place in The Sword in the Stone? The castle where Arthur had lived when he was a little boy and people called him Wart, and Kay had been his foster brother and Merlin was their tutor and they had had all those wonderful adventures? Guiltily we had to admit that we did not know where that place was either. (Since then I have decided it must have been Castle Ludlow in the Welsh Marches, the very one we had hurried by on our way down to Cornwall.)

  Waves of gloom emanated from the back seat. I tried to explain to Ian that although King Arthur was depicted in medieval costume the real or historical Arthur had actually been a Roman-British chieftain who lived in the sixth century and who had never heard of a knight for the simpl
e reason that knights had not been invented by then. If he had had some sort of headquarters it was certainly not an elaborate castle or even as big a place as a Roman fortification, but something much more primitive that would be almost impossible to rediscover. It was a bitter pill for Ian to swallow, although John tried to be comforting by pointing out that the man who rallied the last of Roman Britain to fight off the Danes and Saxons must have been unique to have had so many stories attached to him. Ian was interested in spite of himself, but it was a complex notion and his enthusiasm died down entirely when he found that there was nothing real to which he could attach Arthur’s ghost. The final blow came when he asked about the Isle of Avalon and we had to tell him it is no longer an island. Why, he wanted to know, had we bothered to come to England?

  We drove into Tintagel and paused where the incoming roadway makes a sort of T with the main street. Straight ahead of us was a building with a large sign announcing itself as “King Arthur’s Hall.” John’s and my heart sank. The building was uninspired pseudo-Gothic, obviously Victorian. We dared not point this out to Ian but slunk past it in search of a restaurant that would serve us a really civilized meal, our first in two weeks.

  Refreshed and replenished, we went in search of lodgings. The enormous hotel at the cliff’s edge so repelled us that we turned inland and went back along the main street to the far end of the village. There we found a small, neat house with bright yellow gate, cockleshell path, and a Bed and Breakfast sign. We were admitted by a pleasant young farm wife who said she had two bedrooms vacant, plenty of hot water, and a drying cupboard. This last proved to be a cupboard in the bathroom, next to the hot-water pipes. That evening we reveled in hot baths. Next morning I washed clothes while John and Ian went to do a little shopping and exploring. I soon exhausted the possibilities of the drying cupboard and asked leave to hang the rest of the clothes outside on the lines I had spied in the farmyard. I thought wistfully of my washing machine and dryer at home – especially when I looked up at the sky – but there were compensations: Lucy was enchanted by the ducks and geese, turkeys and hens, pigs and tethered goat, all of which she could watch in the meadow just beyond the low stone wall that bordered the neat little yard.

  I was just pinning the last sock to the line when John and Ian returned from the village where they had bought a few toothbrushy sort of things in the shops, and a garish picture of King Arthur’s last battle with his wicked son, Mordred. They had purchased it at King Arthur’s Hall. Ian had enjoyed himself, but John, born and raised in Hollywood, murmured an aside to me, “Phony as Forest Lawn!”

  Looking at the sky, we decided to start off immediately in search of Tintagel’s famous castle, and not wait for lunch. We were learning! We hurried down the street toward the cliff tops again and found a steep path marked by a faded Youth Hostel sign. The path led down into what, in California, we would have called a canyon. Dusty rock walls trapped the noon heat all around us, but in a few moments the path began to follow the bed of a lusty little stream and the hillside was covered with green. Lucy sat down in the path and pulled off her sandals. We came to a slab of slate flung across the stream as a bridge. Lucy sat down again to dabble her toes while Ian amused himself by playing “Pooh-sticks” – throwing tiny twigs into the water on one side of the bridge and watching to see which came out first on the other. The children were loath to leave, but we crossed the brook and took the path that led up onto the flank of the opposite hillside. We turned a corner and felt the cool sea breeze on our faces. The path was hardly more than a sheeptrack, although here and there we were helped by a man-made step. Up and up we went, walking in single file, the children ahead of us. We began to see outcroppings of ruins, hoary with moss and lichen, then the path would curve again and we would wonder if we had mistaken natural rock for man-made wall.

  Suddenly we came out on a wide plateau, the blue-green grass beneath our feet smooth as a richly textured rug. Lucy, in her bare feet, ran straight ahead to where an ancient wall marked the limit of the lawn. We followed hastily and peered over the parapet. It seemed to have grown of itself out of the cliff, stone on stone. A sheer precipice dropped fearsomely to the rocks below where green waters swirled. Sea gulls hung screaming as though suspended by a thread, their orange bills scarlet-tipped. Strong gray wings held them motionless just beyond our reach in the updraft of air at the cliff edge. Instinctively I reached out to grasp Lucy’s coat while John, almost at the same moment, noticed that Ian had started up a flight of steps leading to nowhere but eternity. He called to him, but Ian did not heed. John ran to the steps, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and we retreated to the entrance to the sward. It was then we noticed the sign posted there by the Ministry of Works: “Parents are requested to discipline their children.” How very un-American!

  John had a little talk with Ian. The Ministry of Works, he said, had made this place neat and accessible, repaired the outer walls, built paths, maintained steps, engaged in archaeological research, but had not made it child-proof. This was not Disneyland, but the real, real thing. If Ian wanted to see more of it (or anything else interesting in England, for that matter) he would have to learn to obey instantly and to use his common sense.

  Our little party returned cautiously to the ramparts to look abroad. We were on a headland jutting out to sea. Far to the south we could see St. Agnes Beacon, the hill on which our caravan had been “anchored,” thrusting its dome skyward. Except for that one hill we could see how definitely the southern part of Cornwall sloped off to the lost lands of Lyonesse. Ian was tugging at our coats, begging us to walk over to the other side to see the view he had glimpsed from his steps. Looking straight down we could see a tiny cove with great caves yawning on either side of it. The brook we had followed made a final leap down to the sands in the form of a waterfall, and ran among scattered rocks to the sea. All this was wild and romantic enough, but now we realized that we were seeing only part of the castle. The headland had been cut through by the sea and a steep wooden staircase led down from our plateau to the bottom of a deep V, then another staircase led up the other side of the V to the other half of the castle. That was the Inner Ward; we were standing on the Lower Ward. We learned later that in the thirteenth century a bridge was built between the two parts of the castle. Before that the narrow, natural causeway could be defended by three men. As we watched, the clouds that had sagged over the horizon all morning moved inland and everything was soaked with a sea mist. I thought with a pang of my clothes on the line; we were all hungry, and Lucy was ready for a nap. We decided to explore the Inner Ward another day, preferably without Lucy.

  Next day dawned clear and we started out again, but in opposite directions. John and Lucy were bound for Trebarwith Sands to take advantage of the sunshine and natural bathing pool, Ian and I to explore the Inner Ward and the cove beneath the castle. Ian was so anxious to be off that I let him go ahead of me. He promised faithfully that he would wait for me on the sands of the cove and that on no condition would he start up the spider-web stairs or do anything else foolhardy.

  The path was steep and I was hot and breathless now that the sun shone again. I slowed down and decided to read the guidebook as I went along and I began to relax. But halfway down the trail and halfway through the guidebook I began to feel a trifle nervous. What was all this about dangerous tides, dark caverns, treacherous hidden pools? When I arrived at the spot where the brook began its tremendous leap to the sands below, I stood anxiously scanning the sands and rocks for the sight of a small boy in blue jeans, pale blue jersey, and English schoolboy cap. Ah, there he was! I shouted, but what with the sound of the waves and the waterfall he could not possibly hear me. Seen from this lower level, the beach was much larger than I had thought. There were several people hunting shells and pebbles or strolling on the shingle. The tide was coming in, but so far there did not seem to be much danger. Then I saw Ian doing just what I feared the most. He walked over to the mouth of a large cavern and peered inside. I saw h
im hesitate and look about him, then disappear. What was it the guidebook had said? “It is not always wise to attempt to explore this cave without a torch as occasionally there are deep pools not easily seen in the dim light of the cave….” And somewhere else, on another page, something about “Safety first: Bathe from the centre of beaches … observe care at all times. At all beaches the tide reaches the cliff at high water.”

  I waited a few minutes to see if Ian would emerge, then decided that I must start down at once and look for him. The path wound around between rocks, and I could not keep either the cave or the beach in sight at all times. I finally reached the coarse sands, cursing the heavy camera that hung like a millstone around my neck. I hurried over to the cave mouth and peered inside. It was immense. This was Merlin’s cave tunneling all the way under the Inner Ward. I stepped inside and called Ian’s name. There was no answer, only the sound of great seas booming hollowly afar off, then the sound of water gurgling from the pebbles. I moved ahead cautiously through the gloom. The sand turned to pebbles and round, flat pieces of slate, and, when I came to a chain of half-submerged boulders lying along the cave floor, I climbed up on them, my feet splashing in little pools. It was like walking along the backbone of a sleeping dragon. The way grew darker, then I turned a corner and saw light ahead and a patch of sky. There was still a length to go, but having come this far I was determined to make it to the end of the tunnel and, if need be, rescue Ian from the incoming tide in the next cove. If only I knew whether he were ahead of me! I splashed and climbed and slithered onward. Wet and tired and cross I came out of the cave’s mouth and found my way barred by giant boulders. I climbed to the top of one and looked up at the cliff. There were the white-breasted gulls of yesterday hanging motionless far above me. I could just make out the heads of some sightseers looking over the castle wall. I wondered if they could see me, or if I looked like part of the rocks below. I tried to judge the tide. The cove was already lost to the waves, except for a thin crescent of pebbles along the cliffs. Even if Ian did go into the cove he could not have made it around the next headland. The tide was coming in too fast for that. I sat on the rock to rest and to try to think. I had seen Ian go into the cave, of that I was sure, but had he come out again while I was scrambling down to the beach? It was just barely possible. A huge wave, green and foam-flecked, came hurtling in on the tide and in a moment I was drenched. I scrambled down from my high perch and started back to the cave. The tide had crept higher even while I sat on the rocks outside, and now I did not even try to keep myself dry. I reached the dragon’s back and in the half darkness it seemed to me that it rose and fell with the shadows on the wall, and the heaving of the waters was caught in scales and ripples on its flanks. I fairly ran out of the cave mouth and onto the gritty sands. There was Ian, sitting and talking to a young couple with a little girl of about Lucy’s age. They gazed at me in wonderment.