Ferney (49 page)

‘Do you feel well enough to tell us about the cross?’ Gally asked.

‘That stuff works,’ he said. ‘Though I expect it wouldn’t if I used it all the time.’ They sat down and he smiled. ‘Now, if you’re sitting comfortably,
then I’ll begin.

‘Course, you know about Glastonbury,’ he said, ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Started out with the Irish monks. They were simple in their ways, lots of praying
and singing, and then it got bigger and bigger and like things usually do it all started to be about something else. Rich families started sending their kids there, like a boarding school, and they
had money sticking to them so the monks kept on building bits and pieces to make the place grander until the Vikings came and stopped them, pretty much put an end to it. They got it going again,
though. It was a busy old place, drew in the pilgrims like nobody’s business. Then they had a bit of a setback in the year 1184.’ He glanced at Mike. ‘I looked it up to check. In
a book. In 1184 they set fire to it. There was some young kid who’d been beaten for not sweeping properly and he put a torch to a chest full of manuscripts they kept in there, back of the
altar.’

‘What book’s that in?’ said Mike, interested.

‘Oh that bit’s not in a book. That was just local talk at the time. Anyway it was a hell of a blaze, you could see it for miles.’

Gally swept off on Ferney’s words. A warm, windy evening in May and she was anxious. Her uncle had been summonsed to Bruton, charged with clearing his plot deeper into the forest than it
was meant to be. Her father was brooding outside on the bench. She knew he was worried that if the fine was too big they’d all have to help pay, which would mean selling a cow and
they’d only been able to keep three over last winter. They needed calves to build up again before the November slaughter. There were six other children to feed, though the baby, like the one
before, wasn’t going to last long.

‘Why don’t you go and play with the others?’ said her mother. ‘You don’t seem to do it any more. You spend more time with that boy than you do with your own flesh
and blood.’ There was a call from outside and her mother ducked her head through the doorway. ‘And there he is. I suppose you’ll be off ?’

The news Ferney brought was just for her, but she had to tell the others, still feeling a member of the family despite his stronger call on her, and it set them all rushing off with most of the
rest of the village too. They hurried past the little wooden church to Pond Hill and there away to the north-west was a great red glow in the sky and even, now and then, a tiny individual uprush of
flames that carried across the miles. There was no doubt what it was. This was no small hut burning. Such events were commonplace, but in the sparsely populated flatlands below they would make a
brief flare, a little local tragedy. This was a blaze feeding on massive volumes of wood to make such a mark from far on the dark horizon. They all knew their bearings well from this hill.

‘It’s Glastonbury,’ they said to each other. ‘It must be all of it.’

It was a day’s walk there and a day’s walk back and she remembered the sense of disappointment when her father wouldn’t let her go with Ferney when he came to ask the following
morning.

This won’t do, she thought. I mustn’t drift off. Mike will hate it. And with an effort, she lifted her drooping head and brought herself back to Ferney’s present voice.

‘. . . losing loads of money. All those relics and stuff, bits of saint’s toe bones and other rubbish they’d got from travelling con-men, all gone up in smoke. They
couldn’t do a thing about rebuilding unless they got some money coming in so they needed something fresh to bring in the crowds again.’ He laughed and the pain seemed forgotten.
‘The first thing they did was really pretty silly. They suddenly announced they’d dug up Saint Dunstan. I expect they chose him because he’d been taught there as a boy, so they
say. He’d even built part of the church, so he must have seemed to be a pretty good rabbit to pull out of the hat. They hadn’t done their homework, though. They shouldn’t have
claimed they’d found him because he wasn’t missing in the first place. Someone pointed out that old Dunstan only had one body and the remains of that were still tucked up snugly in his
tomb in Canterbury. They tried some cock-and-bull story about rescuing his body when the Vikings were raiding, but it didn’t wash so they left it a year or two then they tried
again.’

He paused, smiling, and said to Gally, ‘Can I have a glass of water? My throat’s a bit dry.’

‘I’ll get it,’ said Mike, springing up.

‘Is this all right?’ whispered Ferney as soon as he was out of the room.

‘You can’t stop now. He’s enjoying it.’

Ferney sipped the water Mike gave him and carried on. ‘Like I say, they left it a year or two then they started digging again and guess who they found this time? King Arthur and Queen
Guinevere, no less, and how did they know? Because with the bones in their coffins was that little lead cross with those Latin words on it and everyone took it for gospel truth, being a bunch of
simpletons.’

‘So it wasn’t true?’ said Gally.

Ferney snorted. ‘No more true than if someone said today that they’d just dug up Mickey Mouse and his wife Minnie. The whole story of Arthur was flim-flammed up by some fanciful
Welsh writer. He got everyone going about the Avalon business. Now those old boys in Glastonbury were pretty smart when it came to cashing in and they’d seen the way the Arthur story had
caught on, so something that turned Glastonbury into Avalon was bound to be pretty good for trade. Still is, come to that.’ He chuckled. ‘I went there a couple of years back. There was
a coach outing. I don’t usually like those things, but I wanted to take a look at the place again. Crawling with New Age magic shops, Avalon this and Arthur that. This cross must have helped
to bring in millions over the years.’

‘That’s a bit disappointing,’ said Gally. ‘You
are
a cynic. I always thought Glastonbury was somewhere special.’ She regretted the words as soon as they
were out of her mouth. Please don’t say yes, you always did, she begged silently, but Ferney just gave her a short look and Mike didn’t notice.

‘I’m not saying it wasn’t,’ he answered. ‘What with the Tor and all those Irishmen early on. You have to take a place like that a bit seriously because of what they
believed even if you don’t agree. It was that lot that came later who spoilt it. They got into this competition, you see, about another sixty years on. Just pure advertising, that was what it
was, our Saint washes whiter, that kind of thing. The people that ran Westminster Abbey started claiming Saint Peter laid the foundation stone or some nonsense like that, so good old Glastonbury
had to go one better. Joseph of Arimathea founded theirs, they said. Some poet, you could always rely on poets to come up with a good slogan, made up a story about how Joseph took the Holy Grail
there, then they said he planted his staff and it grew into the Holy Thorn. Now they sell you crystal balls and King Arthur tee-shirts.’

He fell silent and took another sip of water. Mike picked up the cross again. ‘So this has got a lot to answer for?’ he said.

‘Well they didn’t know, did they? They took it for what they were told it was. In some of the books which have that drawing in them, they say it should have been obvious. Those
letters are twelfth-century style, but who knew that at the time? Not even the monk who carved them out, I’ll bet.’

‘How did you find it?’ Gally noticed the tone of wonder in Mike’s voice which showed he accepted it.

Ferney looked hesitant.

‘Go on,’ Mike said. ‘Just tell it. I won’t mind, at least I think I won’t.’

‘Well let’s say, there was this man. We’re talking about the sixteenth century now.’ He screwed up his face in thought. ‘You know what was going on. Fat Harry
knocking six bells out of the monasteries and giving them away to his mates. Have you ever heard the story of little John Champernown?’

‘No.’

‘He was a decent enough man by all accounts. Went up to London from Devon on urgent business of some sort and when he got to the court, he saw a whole bunch of people kneeling down in
front of old Henry so he thought he’d better kneel down too, just to show his respect, you know. He didn’t realize the others were all queuing up for goodies and before he could get up
Henry’s men gave him some Cornish priory as a gift – St Germans, I think it was. He tried to explain it was a mistake so he could give it back, but they wouldn’t have it.’
Ferney wheezed with brief laughter.

‘Anyway, when the dust settled everyone started looting whatever they could. The king’s men were pretty quick at grabbing all the gold and silver, but there was still the lead on the
roofs and there’d be people up there taking all kinds of risks, pulling it off. Now to start with that was the way the king wanted it, because it would let the weather in quicker and bring
the stones down, but after a bit he realized he was missing out on quite a lot of money, lead being valuable stuff, so he set his commissioners to grabbing what was left and shipping it to London.
His cronies were building their own palaces wherever they’d been given the monks’ lands and they were keen to give him a good price for stuff like that. Anyway a bit down the road from
here there’s this place Montacute and a man called Wyatt . . .’

Montacute. Mons acutus, the pointed hill. Gally had heard of the hill long before she ever saw it. The story had gone round the countryside as fast as travellers could carry it of the miraculous
cross that was dug up there, the Holy Rood that Harold worshipped, the cross whose name his troops shouted as they stumbled to defeat at Hastings. It was a weary way to Montacute, but she’d
been before, in the darkness of a dangerous night watching for soldiers, although she could not remember why. The next time she went the castle had seeded other buildings, stone by stone, so
nothing was left there but a small chapel and down the hill the French monks had built their beautiful monastery. The third time was when everything was changing.

Ferney tied their horses’ reins to the ring on the leaning door and they walked, awestruck, arm in arm into the desecration of the old priory church. It was newly vandalized, open to the
sky at one end where the fire had burnt through the roof timbers. A great heap of wood, curled and sectioned grey-black by the fire, was piled up below the hole. Around the edges they could see
from surviving, part-charred boards that they had been pews, the fire extinguished by the pouring rain that came once the flames had breached the roof. Soaked, smoke-blackened hangings drooped down
from the walls and the smell of wet ash spread through the desolation as the priory’s final incense. A crow flew in through the stone tracery of the west window, where a few glass shards
missed by the stone throwers gleamed. It swerved as it saw them, cawing loudly, and clattered out.

‘It feels like a crime,’ she said to her brother.

‘They’ve destroyed beauty that took time to make. That’s the crime. There’s nothing so destructive as belief.’

‘It’s all right for us. How are other people meant to know what to believe?’

‘Follow your sovereign,’ he said wryly. ‘That’s what we’re told, isn’t it? We’re not sinning if we do what royalty says, even if they change their mind
every other year. Do you know what I mind most about all this?’

‘No.’

He waved his arm at the land outside the windows. ‘No more vines. No more wine. Do you realize they’ve driven out all the wine-makers? Without the priors there’ll be nothing to
drink but ale and that’s a dreary prospect, my sister-love.’

They went to the door and looked down the hill to where the men with the ropes and the sticks were laying out their geometric patterns. ‘It’s going to be one of the greatest houses
in the whole country when it’s finished,’ said Ferney as they remounted, ‘according to Sir Thomas Wyatt.’

His voice, older, echoed the words ‘Sir Thomas Wyatt’ and she pulled herself out of it for a second time like a tired driver fighting off sleep. Brother and sister? How had
that
been? My God. They’d been rich that time round, it was clear, but brother and sister? How on earth would they have managed that? There wasn’t time to get to grips with it
now.

‘So Wyatt bought a whole load of the Glastonbury lead for his new roof. There hadn’t been nearly enough at Montacute Priory,’ said Ferney, ‘and this man I’m talking
about came across the wagons on the road. One of them had a collapsed wheel, so they’d had to shift all the lead off it before they could take the wheel off and get it all sorted out. He got
there just as they were putting the last of it back on and he spotted this bit of lead they’d missed lying in the mud. He wasn’t a poor man so he wouldn’t have been tempted to
keep it, but when he picked it up and saw the writing, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it on the wagon, knowing it would go in the melt with the rest, so that’s how it turned up, you
see. Wyatt never built the house, mind – lost it when his son joined the revolt against Bloody Mary, then it got sold on two or three times before the Phelips finally took over the whole
project. I expect they were glad to have the lead ready and waiting.’

It begged every question there was. Ferney made no attempt to explain the cross’s history in the four hundred years between that moment and the present day, but Mike accepted that.

‘And now you really want us to look after it, do you?’

‘Yes please. That and the drum, two of my special things. They’ll be better off with you.’ The unspoken words ‘when I die’ hung in the air.

There was a short silence and Mike seemed to feel a need to break it. ‘The Reformation,’ he said, ‘it’s unimaginable really – the change it must have made to
life.’

‘There’s changes men bring about,’ said Ferney, ‘and there’s changes that come anyway and sometimes they’re better. King Henry and the Catholics, that was all
about power. You know, whenever they get the chance there’s always strong men, or women come to that, who’ll start turning everything to their particular advantage. Before you know it
they’ll have a hold on everything. It takes a hell of an upheaval to break that. Do you know what it took to get rid of slavery in this country?’