The Black Rocks of Morwenstow

by John Wilcox

  They both fell silent again until Rowena said, ‘Josh, do you mind if we go in now? This wind has sharpened and I’m gettin’ a bit cold.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. Of course, let’s go back to the house.’

  Josh hoped to seize an opportunity to speak with the doctor but it seemed that he had been called away and had ridden up to Stoke, the village about half a mile inland back from the clifftop, where he was warden of the fine old church there. The two of them ate lunch together in the dark dining room. Rowena attempted to make conversation but Josh was too busy with his thoughts to be sociable.

  Eventually, he smiled and said, ‘Do you think it would be possible for you to take a little time off from your labours, say the day after tomorrow, and take me in the donkey cart to Morwenstow?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so. Father likes to ride his mare to make his calls so I think he could spare us the donkey and the cart. But why d’you want to go to Morwenstow? There’s hardly anythin’ there but for the church an’ the new vicarage, which the Rev. Hawker has just finished building there, down towards the sea.’

  ‘Oh, I would just like to see if there is anything left of The Lucy and also see where I was thrown up by the sea onto that rock. I don’t suppose you have heard if they have found any more bodies?’

  ‘No. Afraid not. It can be months afore the gobbets get washed free of the rocks down below and are cast ashore.’

  Josh shuddered. ‘Gobbets. I hate that word, but I suppose it is descriptive.’

  ‘Them remains are not nice to see, Josh.’

  Josh realised that the efforts of the morning had taken toll of his energy and so he retired to his bed that afternoon to rest and, later, the doctor took supper in his own room so that, once again, there was no chance for conversation with him. Was he, wondered Josh, deliberately avoiding meeting his patient, who had been, so unexpectedly, thrown into his care?

  The doctor, however, made no objection to Josh and Rowena’s excursion to Morwenstow in two days’ time, not least because it enabled him to ask his daughter to deliver a letter, concerning church business, to that village’s vicar, the Rev. Robert Hawker.

  Again, it was a fine morning and Josh felt much more comfortable sitting alongside Rowena in the donkey cart than in the basket chair for the rest had certainly eased his leg. The two chatted as they rode along the clifftop between white thistle-tops and over moorland trimmed by occasional drystone walls. Rowena pointed out the white sea compass flowers dotted amongst the heather and warned Josh about walking along the moor at this time of the year because of the adders that lay coiled catching the last of the year’s sunshine.

  It became clear that she was well versed in the history of this part of northern Cornwall and, glad to be back in the medieval world of Walter Scott, she burbled happily about its past. The church and the village of Morwenstow itself, she explained, were named after the lady Morwenna, the daughter of a Welsh king in the ninth century. She related how the girl grew up so learned that King Ethelwulf, King of Saxon England, asked her father to allow the girl to travel to England to be tutor to his daughters.

  ‘And she did so well in this calling,’ continued Rowena, ‘that the English king said that she could have whatever she wanted …’

  ‘What did she ask for?’ demanded Josh, intrigued, despite his scepticism.

  ‘“Oh sire,” cried Morwenna to the King, “there is a stately headland in far Cornwall, called Henna Cliff, or the Raven’s Crag, that cries out for a font and altar to be built there.” And the King said, it shall be so. And the church was built and named after Morwenna, who by this time had become a saint, so that many pilgrims have come here to worship in her name.’

  Rowena’s eyes were now alight with fervour, or perhaps just the thrill of telling a good story. Joshua didn’t care, because he could not but admire the blush on her cheek and the way she laughed with it all. No wonder, he reflected, that Jack the Captain of the Preventers desired her – and probably all of the village’s young men too.

  As though to underline the thought, a young man approached them now and Josh recognised the young sailor in the dinghy who had hailed Rowena on the previous day.

  ‘Good day, Rowena,’ he called, pulling off his knitted cap. He was a handsome fellow, roughly of Josh’s height and build, although he was probably a year or two younger. His complexion was tanned with sun and wind, and he walked with the slightly rolling gait of a sailor. ‘And good day to you, too, sir,’ he said with a half bow – perhaps a little mockingly? – to them both.

  Rowena sighed and reluctantly pulled the donkey to a halt. ‘This is Tom Pengelly,’ she said. She indicated Josh, ‘Josh Weyland.’ She spoke curtly.

  ‘Ah, Mr Weyland. You had a lucky escape from the wreck of The Lucy, I hear.’

  ‘I did indeed, Tom. But you must call me Josh. I am a mere sailor, a man of the sea, like you.’

  ‘Not quite, sir, for I understand you are a second mate. I do not aspire to those heights. I am just a rower of “hobblers” …’

  ‘What are they, then?’

  ‘That is what the people here call the dinghies that go out to help the smacks round the end of the harbour wall and in to anchor,’ Rowena interrupted. ‘Now, Mr Pengelly, you must not detain us. Mr Weyland here has urgent work to do in Morwenstow.’

  ‘Ah, forgive me. Be careful as you go, Rowena, the clifftop beyond has crumbled at its edge.’

  Rowena clucked at the donkey and shook the reins. ‘I am as well aware as you of the dangers of the cliff path here, thank you, Tom Pengelly. Good day to you.’

  After they had left the young man behind, looking after them, his cap still in his hand, Joshua said: ‘Rowena, you spoke very sharply to that young man. You were almost rude to him. And I don’t have urgent business in Morwenstow, as you know.’

  ‘Humph. If I had let him he would have kept us gossiping all day. Everyone in Hartland wants to know about you. And anyway, you do have business of a sort in Morwenstow.’

  ‘Yes, well I suppose I do.’ Josh shrugged and smiled inwardly. Tom Pengelly was clearly another of Rowena’s admirers in Hartland, but her sense of possession of him was becoming rather irritating. He wished he could hear from Mary …

  After perhaps an hour and a half they turned off the cliff road and followed a path, little more than a sheep’s track, down towards where it opened out onto a small, flat common, containing a small group of dwellings, most of them huddled around a weather-ravaged farmhouse and a ramshackle inn.

  ‘This is Morwenstow,’ said Rowena. ‘I told you there was not much here for you to see.’

  Josh looked about him keenly. Immediately ahead, the ground ended abruptly to reveal the sea stretching out to Lundy, now distantly to the right of them. On their right, a path hung over with ash trees and thorns, wound its way down the hill, disappearing into a cleft in the clifftop.

  ‘Can we get down there in the cart?’ asked Josh.

  ‘Only as far as the vicarage, where I have to go anyway to deliver Father’s letter. After that there is a track of a sort, which is quite steep and we could not take the cart down it. It leads down to a little shingle beach and the terrible rocks that wrecked The Lucy. I doubt if you could get down there, Josh.’

  He nodded. ‘But that’s just where I want to go, or at least halfway down. I am getting much better now walking with this crutch. I’ll be all right. Take the cart down to the vicarage and I’ll get out there and walk to the beginning of the track and wait for you there.’

  Rowena frowned. ‘I don’t like this, Josh,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this at all. What if you slipped? You could be killed.’

  ‘Well, let me see for myself. I am determined to look at that rock where I lay. Come on, girl, I promise I won’t go on down if it looks too dangerous.’

  Shaking her head, Rowena turned the donkey down through the lane, which now appeared to be like a green tunnel. After a hundred yards, it bent to the left and became even more steep, but the donkey pulle
d back in the traces and retarded their descent until they met an open gateway, which allowed them a view, immediately below them, of a fine new house.

  ‘’Tis the vicarage,’ said Rowena. ‘The Reverend Hawker had it built as soon as he came here.’

  Josh grunted. ‘Well, the living must have been well endowed. That house would grace an earl or archbishop.’

  ‘They say his wife had money – and that virtually all of it was spent on the building of it. But he is a good man and the house is gifted to the parish. He supports the poor and has built a school in the parish for the children, all at his own cost. He is also a bit, what shall I say, peculiar.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He has built himself a little hideaway out on the cliff where he can look out to sea and write poetry. It is also said,’ her voice dropped away, ‘he smokes opium there.’

  ‘Goodness me!’ Josh spoke in assumed shock. ‘Whatever next!’

  ‘Now don’t you mock me, Josh Weyland. We are simple folk around here and not accustomed to the weird things you have seen in your travels round the world. We don’t take kindly to them.’

  Josh bent his head. ‘I’m sorry, Rowena. I didn’t mean to sound patronising.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘But I think we should get on. That could be a storm cloud coming up from the west and I wouldn’t want to be caught on the cliff.’

  ‘Very well. We can go a little further in the cart and then we must get down.’

  The donkey picked his way round another steep bend in the track and they halted at the edge of a lawn, which led to the house. It was indeed an imposing building. Built of local stone, it had five distinctive chimneys, each different in design, and copies, explained Rowena, of the various church towers of the parishes where the vicar had worked before coming to Morwenstow. It stood end on to the north-west and so shouldered the prevailing wind and weather, secure in a V-shaped cleft in the cliff, alongside a stream which plunged down to the sea.

  It seemed a remote, if beautiful, outpost of civilisation in this wild and cruel landscape and Josh wondered what kind of poetry its occupant created. He had an indication when Rowena returned to join him where he waited by a wicker gate leading onto a field.

  ‘The vicar’s not in,’ she said, ‘so I have left Father’s letter. But I have been able to memorise the words, which I knew he had carved into a stone above the doorway. Now,’ she paused for a moment, ‘yes, I have them. Listen:

  A house, a glebe, a pound a day,

  A pleasant place to watch and pray!

  Be true to church, be kind to poor,

  Oh minister, for evermore.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Josh nodded. ‘I am not sure about the poetry but he sounds quite a character. But, do help me along here. I want to get on. It looks as though there is a way down over there.’

  As Josh hobbled slowly over the tufted grass, Rowena tightly gripping his arm, he could see that the defile was sharply marled by the division between the rich green of the sloping farmland and the black line where the gorse grew untrammelled and the rocks began, like the stubble on a sailor’s chin. To their left, on the other side of the cleft, the grey-black stone of the cliff fell almost vertically, revealing, at its foot, a small beach of grey shingle.

  They were now inching their way down a steeply falling track, which followed the stream on its journey to the sea. As they rounded a twist in the stream’s course, they reached a small plateau where they could rest for a moment and from which they could look down onto the black, foam-shrouded rocks of Morwenstow, which reached out into the ocean.

  There, pinioned between two of the jagged fingers of rock, lay what was left of The Lucy. She was now little more than a wooden skeleton, her ribs and keel shuddering as each wave hit them, but her proud bowsprit still pointing up to the heavens.

  ‘Ah,’ muttered Rowena, ‘the wreckers have been at her. Look, Josh, look. And that’s the rock where you lay. Look …’

  But Josh was gazing down at their feet, where a hole in the turf showed where something had been thrust into the ground. And the hole itself was surrounded by what appeared to be a circle of grey ash.

  Josh spoke slowly. ‘I’ve found what I came for. This is where they put the brazier into the ground and this is where the ash fell from it. So there was a light. I knew it! Now I must find out who planted it,’ his voice dropped, ‘and why.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They drove back to Hartland Quay in comparative silence. Rowena seemed sullen, petulant perhaps that Josh had shown far more interest in a hole in the ground than in the rock on which he had nearly perished. She did, however, confirm that she had not arrived at the site of the shipwreck until Josh had been taken, still unconscious, to the path at the top of the cliff, and had seen nothing of the actual rescue, nor, for that matter, of the Preventers who, it seemed, had been down below on the beach.

  For his part, Josh was lost in thought for most of the journey. He had found one answer to the puzzle of the light. It had definitely existed and, seemingly, it was that that had lured Lucas onto the rocks. But was the luring deliberately carried out by someone on the cliff face? Who would have lit the brazier in the face of the storm and kept it blazing during that fierce tempest? Was there some innocent reason for its existence – a boundary light to help shepherds and other farm workers keep their animals away from the cliff edge, for instance? Possible, maybe, but unlikely.

  If there was, then, a malevolent reason for the light, why was he allowed to survive the fury of the storm and be rescued to tell the story? Was smuggling – so prevalent in this corner of England – somehow behind it all?

  He studied Rowena as she skilfully persuaded the donkey away from the cliff edge. She had set her jaw firmly in that determined way he had come to recognise when she felt uncomfortable with the conversation. He relied on her to be his means of transport and, indeed, his confidante. But looking at her now, her cheeks glowing from the sea air and her long hair blowing in the wind, as it did on the night of the storm, he recalled her reluctance to talk about wrecking, even about the shipwreck of her father and Cunningham.

  He shook his head. Perhaps he had been away from England for too long. Certainly, this piece of his homeland seemed strange and even menacing. And when was he going to hear from Mary?

  For once Doctor Acland was in evidence when they reached the house. In fact, he seemed to be waiting for them, for he had left the door to the sitting room ajar so that he could see the front entrance. He seemed concerned.

  He rose and, leaning on his stick, shuffled towards them. ‘I shouldn’t have let you go, Weyland,’ he said. ‘No man with a leg bound in splints and walking with a crutch should have gone anywhere near that blasted clifftop at Morwenstow. Damn it. It is four hundred feet from top to the sea. Emma should not have taken you there.’

  ‘We did not go to the highest point, Father. Nor did we go down to the sea edge.’

  Josh nodded. ‘No, sir. Row—Emma was very caring of me. We only went about halfway down the little track to the beach. But I found what I was looking for and—’

  The doctor looked at him sharply, his face lined from a fierce frown. ‘And what, pray, was that?’ he demanded.

  ‘If we could sit down together for a moment or two, I would like to tell you and to ask your advice about it.’

  ‘Well,’ the doctor half turned away. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Doctor, but what we found at Morwenstow worries me and I think that maybe you could throw some light on the matter.’

  Acland sighed. ‘Oh, very well. But I must return to my study. If you want to talk you must join me there.’ He shot Josh another gaze from under lowered brows. ‘It’s on the third floor at the top of the house and quite a climb. It is difficult for me to make it and could be dangerous for you with that crutch and your leg in splints. Perhaps we should talk at another time, eh?’

  Rowena responded quickly. ‘I could help him, Father.’

  ‘No, child. Why don’t
you make some tea – and bring us some of those scones you made yesterday, eh?’

  Josh frowned. Was the old man trying to evade him once again? ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘I think I can manage the stairs if there is a handrail and I really would value a few minutes of your time this afternoon, if you could indulge me …’

  ‘Oh, very well. But take care. I do not wish to operate on you again.’

  In fact, the stairway was not difficult to climb at all for Josh was able to use his free hand to pull himself up with the help of the handrail. The doctor, surprisingly, went on ahead, trusting that his patient could, indeed, look after himself.

  The study was a surprise. It was a large room and Josh guessed that it ran completely across the top of the house. But it was spartanly furnished: a desk, two chairs and a chaise longue. The walls, however, were completely lined with books; on one side they appeared to be musty tomes and Josh presumed that they were medical publications. But two walls carried serried ranks of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping – books instantly recognisable to Josh.

  The fourth wall was completely dominated by a large telescope. It seemed exactly the same as that in Cunningham’s cabin: standing on three telescopic legs and directed to look out of the large window. By the look of it, it was positioned so that the viewer could focus over the top of the terraced houses opposite and scan the ocean beyond.

  Josh exclaimed at the sight.

  ‘What?’ the doctor swung round, seemingly in some alarm. ‘What’s the matter, boy?’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry, Doctor. But this seems to be almost exactly the same as Captain Cunningham’s cabin in the Preventers’ barracks. He, too, has rows of Lloyd’s Register and a powerful telescope, mounted in much the same way as yours.’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve been there, have you?’ He growled so that Josh could hardly hear him. ‘We have much the same interests.’ He gestured to one of the two chairs. ‘Sit down. Now what can I do for you?’

  Josh took a deep breath and related all that he knew about the shipwreck: the sudden appearance of the light, Lucas’s ignoring of Josh’s warning, the figures glimpsed on the beach and the discovery that day of the hole halfway up the cliff path and the ashes surrounding it.