by Jon Mackley
As they passed beneath the arches themselves, Lara’s sense of excitement diminished and was replaced by a feeling of reverent fear.
‘Are you all right, Pearl?’ Will asked after a moment.
Lara nodded, but remained silent.
‘It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?’
Lara nodded again. She wanted Will to stop his commentary so she could enjoy the tranquillity of the shrine. An unfamiliar sensation was pressing down on her, something she couldn’t remember feeling before.
Absolute peace.
They moved – almost dream-like – into the inner chamber. Candles flickered in the shrine. A statue of St Winefride stood in an alcove. Her head was intact, although a thin scar ran around her neck from where Caradoc’s blade had forced her transition from virgin to martyr. At the base of the statue were vases filled with flowers. Winefride smiled beatifically. She carried an abbess’s crook in one hand; in the other she held a palm leaf representing her martyrdom.
Around the pool, slender pillars reached up to the ceiling and for a second Lara imagined pilgrims, unable to walk, being carried upon the back of others, through the waters to receive whatever healing the pool would yield. There was an archway underwater from the pool to the shrine. She shook her head. Present day pilgrims should go to their doctors and not trust their healing to mysticism.
The main pool was a star shape with a bubbling spring in the centre. The basin would have had eight points, but it had been flattened along one edge. Will could hardly contain his excitement. ‘On the reverse side of Gawain’s shield there’s a symbol of Mary,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes she was represented by the symbol of two interlaced squares. Other people might see this as the old alchemical ritual of squaring the circle.’
‘If there’s an eight pointed star on the reverse of Gawain’s shield, isn’t that a total of thirteen angles? Of the stars?’
Will nodded. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. No wonder Gawain was so unlucky.’ He considered this. ‘The numbers add up to four, of course. That was the poet’s number of imperfection.’
Lara stared down at the bubbling spring. The pool was deep, and she guessed she might have difficulty in keeping her head above the water, while still keeping her feet on the floor. There was part of her desperate to test the waters, to see if there was any truth in the tales of healing. But she hesitated. She didn’t know what healing she needed, whether it was physical or whether the waters would cleanse the deepest pains in her mind. And all the time, Tantris’s comments rang through her mind: men found it impossible to lie with a woman who had been touched by God.
‘Well, we’re definitely in the right place,’ Will said.
‘Oh yeah? How d’you know?’
‘Because the line which mentions þe Holy Hede is line 700, and this is a seven sided star, even if it’s not perfect.’
Lara’s peace grated. Simultaneous thoughts struck her. The first was how the poet had commanded such authority and influenced architecture and composed his poem to such perfection so the clues tallied with the line numbers. The second was a much darker thought. A dream, forgotten until Will had mentioned it: a seven-sided star, a book, reptilian eyes glaring out from a burning hillside, something primeval … something evil.
But the dream fled as she watched the bubbling waters. ‘Could it be coincidence?’ she wondered.
‘Is anything our poet does a coincidence?’ Will answered. ‘Even if this basin was built more than a century after the poem was written, the people knew what they were doing.’
Lara’s brow furrowed. ‘Isn’t it possible we’re just making the facts fit? Seeing only what we want to see and ignoring everything else?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the fact this is a sixteenth century building?’
‘Or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush suppos’d a bear?’ Will said. ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ he added.
Lara raised an eyebrow. ‘I told you. I haven’t read it.’ She glanced back at the statue.
‘What’s up?’
‘I just keep wondering if there’s something else, something like promoting the cult.’
Will shook his head. ‘As well as writing one of our national treasures? I doubt it.’ He started towards the pool. Lara placed a hand on his arm. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘The poet came here from Chester. Monks owned this place. All he sees is a load of decaying buildings that were either going to be pulled down or rebuilt.’
Will nodded.
‘And he’s got a plan to hide a code. Maybe he thought about something else, tied in with the legend.’
‘You might be overstating his importance,’ Will said.
‘Do you think so? We’re talking about someone who could influence the Chester monks to let him leave a piece of graffiti on one of the flagstones?’
‘That’s one flagstone amongst a million and that stone was pretty well hidden, so unless you knew what you were looking for, no one would have seen it. The legend was written at least a century before Gawain.’
Lara pulled a face. She stared out at the spring, hoping for inspiration. Over the pool was a pendant boss. She could make out vague shapes which she assumed were from the life of St Winefride. Time, weather and iconoclasts had made most of the images unrecognisable. She could make out the graven image of a young girl receiving a blessing and she assumed this was Winefride and her abbot uncle, St Beuno.
Will pointed to the seven-sided star. ‘If this is the poet’s marker, we have to find something engraved in the side, something only the poet would use, just like at Chester.’
Lara peered around. Pilgrims had carved their initials into the stones, perhaps showing dates they had visited the shrine hoping to receive healing, or perhaps they were silent testimonies of healing which had been received.
The gentle sound of the gurgling spring was suddenly lost in the appearance of a new crowd of pilgrims. Lara was distracted. She shook her head in anguish. ‘Something’s not right,’ she said. ‘It can’t be the star. It’s too obvious.’
‘Maybe the poet was in a hurry when he was trying to work out his clues.’
‘There has to be more to it than that. He hid the clue to Chester behind the colours, not a specific symbol. Why should we immediately assume the most obvious and essential element of the well is the place the poet would have meant?’
‘What would you suggest?’
‘Something else, something that’s not right under everyone’s nose, or,’ she pointed outside, ‘Beuno’s stone in the pool. Tantris said Winefride’s uncle used to sit on that stone while she received her instruction. Wouldn’t it be straightforward to assume that if Winefride received her knowledge from there, then we might?’
Will led her by the hand and pointed to the stone, underneath the shimmering surface of the water. ‘That stone’s been worn away over the last thirteen hundred years. I think the poet would have taken erosion into consideration if he had also thought the buildings might change?’
‘I suppose so,’ Lara said. ‘But it won’t be here. Somewhere else, where you least expect to look for it.’ Her eyes widened with delight as she pointed to the symbol of a dragon. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t Arthur called Pendragon?’
Will nodded slowly. ‘He was. But Pendragon is a title, not a name. Besides, in Wales the dragon would be a reference to St Cadwalla.’ He leaned against one of the pillars and scratched his head in frustration. ‘But you’re right, the star basin is too obvious. We’re looking for something that forms a part of the riddle. Where would you go Lara? If you were going to choose the least obvious place to hide something? Somewhere where time wouldn’t touch it.’
She didn’t know. She was as frustrated as he appeared to be. She looked at the star basin again, listening to the rippling waters. It wasn’t going to yield any answers.
‘Look around. See if you can see anything.’
‘Roger,’ Lara said, giving him the thumbs up.
�
�What did you say?’ Will snapped, his eyes were livid.
Lara was shocked by his reaction. ‘Roger …’ she stammered. ‘Okay …? I’ll do it?’
The anger slipped from Will’s face. ‘Sorry. Thought you said something else.’
Lara walked away from the steps, not understanding his sudden mood swing. She stepped into a small chapel to be away from him. The verbal aggression bubbling beneath his surface unsettled her. She had seen it before, both in Michael and in her father, where the slightest word out of place could make them snap.
The chapel was peaceful. A stained glass window showed Winefride – displaying the scar on her neck – receiving tutelage from Beuno. They sat by the side of the pool. Lara wished he’d give her the same enlightenment he had given his niece.
The window was capped by a picture of a small crown with five stems like sunbeams.
Five … Lara breathed. She knew the glass was modern, but she wondered if, even now, there was some influence over the imagery.
She thought she could search every stone in the chapel, but she thought it would be futile. But her shoulders sagged, despondently. The flagstones were arranged as a square within a square. To some it would have been an elaborate pattern, to others it might have been a symbol of Mary. But to Lara, the idea of having a five stemmed crown, and an eight sided star so close together was too much to be a coincidence.
But there was no carving on the stones, no clues left by the poet.
She walked away, back into the biting winds, up steps away from the well and towards the chapel. Whatever silent faith Will had, she hoped for the same understanding. She pushed open the heavy oaken door and stepped inside.
The chapel was dark. The air was still and silent and, for a moment, Lara believed she might be alone in the world. The walls were adorned with friezes of animals, worn away by time. She tried to find a link between them and the twelve signs of the zodiac, or the twelve months of the year. Elsewhere was an image of a horse and a rider. These images had nothing to do with the shrine down below and she walked around with casual disinterest, pausing to look at a carved grotesque face. In a moment of irreverent joviality, she stuck her tongue out at it.
She wondered what the gargoyle had looked at for so long. She turned. An angel was carved into the base of one of the vaults. ‘There are worse things to look at,’ she admitted.
But there was something about the angel, with great-feathered wings and the long flowing robes. Iconoclasts had disfigured her face, but her body, and the shield she carried, remained unscarred by time. Five points were on the shield, not in the shape of the Seal of Solomon, but in the position of a figure five on a die.
When she had been about ten, her father had sent her to Sunday School. She could only remember going once or twice; even then, the village church had been dusty and spooky, like a neglected museum rather than a welcoming place of worship. She’d seen the symbol there: the five points representing the five wounds of Christ.
Her breath caught. This was the significance of five on Gawain’s shield. She stared at it. Her heart fluttered. She looked at the base of the vault, at the flagstones, at anything in the vicinity, for faded letters scratched into the stone. Eventually common sense ruled over optimism and she realised a carving made more than a century later would not have had any relevance to a poet’s visit.
She turned away in disappointment, kicking her feet as she contemplated the nave sanctuary. There was a carving of the Green Man’s head, crowned with an oak leaf chain. She doubted it would have borne any significance to the Green Knight in the poem. Foliate heads, she knew, were ubiquitous in church carvings.
Dejected, she sat down at the end of the aisle and realised if the clue had been left in the building, then it would have been destroyed when the chapel was rebuilt, after the poem had been written. There was no end to this treasure map. The reason no one had found the true meaning of the poem was that the clues came to a dead end. Poor old Gawain-Poet, Lara whispered softly. You wrote the most complex conundrum in English Literature and this is where it stops. No one will ever know your secrets.
She wondered why the poet had named þe Holy Hede. Why he couldn’t have chosen something with more durability, something like the pyramids, or Stonehenge, or something else in the little-known legend of St Winefride that might have pertained to something Gawain had done?
She felt a curious, tingling shock as realisation washed over her. They’d been looking for the wrong thing. She didn’t need to see the building or the carvings, but something as abstract as the two colours in Chester Cathedral. The poet might have feared the shrine wouldn’t have stood for another century, let alone the test of time. Instead, he’d found a correlation between, or even an influence on, the legends of St Winefride and Gawain. But the poet had mentioned little about Gawain’s background. Like Gawain’s reputation with women, he had assumed this was something his audience already knew.
She ran out of the chapel, down to the shrine, to where Will was staring absently at the bubbling spring. His disappointment was obvious. ‘Find anything?’ he asked.
‘There’s a shield in the chapel with the five wounds on it, but I thought we might be trying to force the facts to fit the formula.’
Will nodded. ‘You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. The cult of the five wounds was wide-spread in the fifteenth century.’ Frowning, he said: ‘This shield, did it show the hands and the feet with the stigmata, and was the heart in the centre.’
Lara nodded.
‘But you don’t think it was relevant?’
‘No. However important the poet was, he might not have been able to demand a certain carving should appear in a certain place. And I don’t think we’re looking for a symbol.’
‘I think you’re right. But I was listening to a guide while you were gone. She said the well was owned by the Cistercian monks in Chester. If the poet had influence over them, then they had influence over the shrine and the chapel.’
‘Well, it was a supposition that brought us here: the link between the decapitation of the Green Knight and St Winefride.’ Lara’s brow furrowed. ‘I think we need to find another link. Things they both did. But we can’t restrict ourselves to the Gawain-poet’s account. He didn’t have time to expand the legends his audience already knew. We need to think about the descriptions in someone like Mallory.’
‘Mallory was fifteenth century,’ Will said. He considered Lara’s ideas. ‘I think you’re on to something. I wonder if the shrine’s custodian can help us.’
There was a renewed fire in his eyes. He led her to where the custodian was selling tickets, guidebooks, postcards and trinkets. He was a tall, gaunt man, with grey hair and eyes as alert as a terrier’s. When he smiled, he was friendly and welcoming.
Will explained they wanted to know more about the legend of St Winefride and he nodded, understanding. ‘Our own guidebook explains the basic details, but if you’re looking for a more historical approach, I suggest you talk to Margaret Whittaker.’
‘Where will we find her?’ Lara wondered.
‘Were you staying at the hospice last night?’ he asked.
Will nodded uncertainly.
‘Then you’ve already met the person who would be of most use to you. Margaret Whittaker, the owner, is our local historian.’
Will thanked him and he and Lara walked back to the hospice. Margaret was sitting behind her desk, looking through pages of accounts. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said softly. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘The custodian said you might be able to help us,’ Will said. ‘We need to know more about the well and the history of St Winefride.’
Margaret nodded. ‘I can try. What did you want to know?’
‘Well, I suppose … if the Arthurian legends had managed to come this far north.’
She nodded. ‘Everywhere in Wales needs an Arthurian link to keep the tourists coming back,’ she said and her voice gave the sense of welcoming someone home. ‘Moel Arthur, Arthur
’s hill, is the place where he’s supposed to be buried. And then there’s Arthur’s court which is supposed to be halfway between here and Nantwich, but sadly there are no actual stories from Holywell itself.’
‘There’s a poem,’ Lara found herself blurting. ‘Written in the fourteenth century. It mentions the “Holy Head”, but we thought it might have meant Anglesey instead of here.’ Will’s eyes seemed to claw at her. But she knew they wouldn’t find anything if she didn’t ask the right questions.
Margaret leaned forward. ‘You’ve come to the right place, of course,’ she said with a smile. ‘Fourteenth century? He wouldn’t have meant Holyhead in Anglesey: that’s comparatively new. It was called Caergybi until comparatively recently; it means “Gybi’s fort”. But Holywell has always been known as Treffynnon: “ffynnon” is the Welsh word for “well”, this place is called “Ffynnon Gwenffrewi”.’
Lara nodded. Will had stopped staring at her and spoke again in a shaky voice. ‘The guidebook says pilgrims have been coming here for thirteen hundred years. Was it just the Welsh who were interested in the cult, or was it also the English?’
‘Both, and for a very long time. Until the railways came there would have been a crossing point to ford the Dee from Greenfield to Parkgate in the Wirral. It was part of a pilgrim’s route – they found pilgrims’ tokens and, after a storm, they even found a handbell from the Chester monks. Well, industrialised Chester changed all that: the estuary has silted up, but there’s a story told in the Life of St Werbergh of a local who tried to cross the waters as the tide was coming out and he was trapped. He was saved by a miracle.’
Lara nodded, but she wondered why Margaret was surrounding her answers with exposition. She realised it must be a technique history teachers learned at their teaching colleges, Will spoke in exactly the same way.
‘What about Winefride herself?’ Will asked. ‘Is there any evidence she existed?’
