The Secret History of Here

by Alistair Moffat

  Janis Cornwall told me that Phil had always wanted to see how the house where he had been born had been brought back to life and so we began by walking around the outside. Not much seemed familiar and so many trees, shrubs and hedges had been planted that the formative geography of Phil’s first years had been so radically reformed that he did not recognise much of it, only the vistas up the little valley.

  The ground floor of the old cottage and the large extension to the west are all open plan and Phil found it a little disorienting. ‘But I like what you’ve done. In fact I am a wee bit envious.’ When I suggested he sit in the corner of what had been the kitchen where the family ate and where his mum and dad slept, I sensed that blurred memories were at last beginning to loom out of the past. To his left he could see the familiar view to the Tile Field and Hartwoodburn Farm, but mostly he seemed to recognise that he was sitting by the same window he had looked out of as a wee boy and by two walls that had bounded his world. The steep stairs had stuck in his memory and the step down to the ground-floor bedroom where his sister slept. It was as though an old and faded black-and-white photograph had been torn up and only a few shreds and edges of the picture remained.

  Janis sent me a photograph she took of Phil and me standing outside the house. Both of us were smiling, knowing that a circle had been completed. Phil seemed very happy that the old ruin had come back to life and accepting that its revival had submerged much of his past. But it was always so in the long history of here. I gave Phil and Janis a prehistoric arrowhead and a spindle whorl that the Mason brothers had picked up from the fields around the house and that seemed to cement another continuity. Just as the lost lives of the hunter-gatherers had laid down an early layer of history, so Phil’s early years in this place had been laid over many others in between. And his experience here has now been overlaid.

  18 December

  Back to Edinburgh for some legal business involved in winding up a charitable trust, but this time I used the train journey to do some good work. Sometimes, the structure of a book can take a long time to fall into place, and a new project seemed to click together like the pieces of a jigsaw today. Christmas is coming and I have only one or two meetings before life begins to revolve around shopping, cooking, eating and drinking. And we all forget which day it is.

  19 December

  To the Northumberland coast and the fishing village of Craster for Christmas lunch with my sisters and their families. Not only is it a handy halfway point (they live in Newcastle) to meet and exchange batches of presents, it is also a gust of salt air off the chill North Sea, something very welcome in my landlocked existence. And the sea was wild this morning, white breakers crashing against the harbour wall. Before lunch, I shopped at the famous kipper smokery for salmon, cod and, of course, kippers, all strong tastes of the sea in the deeps of the winter.

  I enjoy the journey down the Tweed Valley and then the A1 to the south. Between it, the main railway line to London and the coast is a richly detailed landscape of farms, grand houses, dense native woodland, worked-out quarries and coal pits, very different in atmosphere from Scotland and yet so close to the border. I drove back through Seahouses, a miniature Blackpool of neon-lit amusement arcades, chip shops and gift emporia, before reaching Bamburgh and its majestic castle. Restored by the industrialist and arms manufacturer William Armstrong, it was originally the capital fortress of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria, a seamark rock visible along the coast and far out to sea. Then I drove past the wave-washed Farne Islands and magical, other-worldly Lindisfarne before turning inland for home.

  20 December

  This was what my mother called a back-endy day, one of those dreich, dowie, listless days at the back end of the year when nothing seems to get done. Recovering from a bad cold and with a thick head, I could not seem to get on with anything, and disastrously before Christmas I woke up to find I could not taste anything. And so I chopped some logs and did some household chores. Potentially most satisfying was to pour kettles of boiling water over wax-encrusted candle-holders to clean them. But the sink ran red as I cut myself badly when one of the glass sconces shattered.

  21 December

  Today is the winter solstice! This is the turning day of the year. The sun will rise, most probably hidden behind horizon clouds, at 8.38 a.m. and it will set at 3.41 p.m., allowing only seven hours of daylight and plunging us into seventeen hours of darkness. But tomorrow, edging across the southern ridge of Greenhill Heights, the light will begin to return, and after two weeks of the festive season it will seem that we have put some distance between ourselves and the deep midwinter dark.

  This morning I saw a long sliver of pale yellow light along the south-eastern horizon and it cheered me. The sun is hope: as the morning breaks, we wake and work begins. I think of that golden light in the east as Lindisfarne light, glowing from the little island on the edge of Heaven. Walking back with Maidie, I saw smoke pluming above the house from the fire I had lit an hour before. Damp logs burning slowly. The windows twinkled with warmth as I carried in another basket of drier firewood to get a blaze going.

  22 December

  Last night candles lit the past and made the future glow. Around a table set for a celebration sat three generations of our family. The faces of our granddaughter, Grace, and all of our three children and their partners were warmed by the gentle flicker as dishes of ham, roast potatoes, buttered leeks, peas, boats of gravy and, later, jugs of cream for sticky pudding were passed around amid a hubbub of happy chatter. I can’t remember what anyone said. I didn’t need to. All the children of this place had gathered together and what will stay with me is the warmth of that evening.

  Candlelight is like the ancient circle of firelight, with darkness behind, a focus for stories, for the making and remembering of family lore. Eight thousand years ago, no longer a time out of mind for us here, fathers and mothers sat around the crackle of flames and celebrated the solstice, the longest night. Our ancestors’ calendars may not have had dates and months, but they knew the year’s turning times, when the days were shortest and longest. There is some slight evidence that they counted the passing of time in nights rather than days. That habit is recalled in the peculiarly British word ‘fortnight’ for fourteen days and the now obscure ‘sennight’ for a week.

  The mothers and fathers who sat in the circle of firelight in their shelter by the shore of the Hartwood Loch were very rarely joined by their grandchildren. Most died too young to see their children have children. When farming came to our valley about five thousand years ago, lives became more settled and the population expanded very quickly. In their snug roundhouses, as the smoke spiralled into the conical thatched or turf roofs, some men became grandfathers and those few women who survived the perils of childbirth and the damp of too many winters will have seen a third generation begin to unfurl after them. That new sense of continuity linked to the ownership of land changed how families saw themselves. The passing on of customary rights and agreements became more important. And as hierarchies developed, families became part of wider kindreds. Our valley gradually became home to a community.

  Candlelight seems to collapse time. The habits and fabric of the lives of those who lived on the land remained largely unchanged for many millennia, but the last three generations of the four hundred who have passed their lives in this place have seen seismic shifts in how society is organised, from the universal availability of electricity and modern medicine to the digital revolution. The flicker of candlelight and the flames of the wood-burner transport us back beyond those shifts to a time of stories and simple bonds. All that experience in this place is not lost.

  Last night our family told itself familiar stories of a shared past and obligations freely given, of complexity and unexpected turns. But mostly we told stories of love, sometimes awkward, sometimes unarticulated, sometimes surprising, but stories of love nonetheless. If the memory of these precious times is all that survives of me, I shall die content.

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nbsp; 23 December

  We have a week or two of hard work ahead of us, as we muck out our stables and look after all sixteen horses without help. We fed the Old Boys and the mares yesterday, and I enjoyed being out in the East Meadow doling out the hard feed and haylage. Gem, the oldest at thirty-two, stayed at the far end of the meadow despite calls and me rattling the buckets. He is probably deaf now, but by tomorrow or the day after he will see the others move and follow them.

  24 December

  Last night ghosts stalked the Long Track. Suddenly the armoured knight rode out of the darkness of the past, his destrier’s long caparison billowing, its blood-red crusader cross bright against the white silk.

  In a grassy hollow on the old west road that runs to the Haining behind the woods bordering the Doocot Field, Rory has found a sword pommel. It came from the hilt of a heavy longsword of the sort wielded by knights and dates to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. It is almost identical in shape and style to another pommel found recently at Ashkirk, three miles to the south, on the old road to Hawick, the continuation of the Long Track. What lit up this find and links it to Rory’s are two inscriptions carved on the polygonal surfaces. Zion was another name for Jerusalem and INRI. It was daubed on the titulus, or name plate, hammered onto the top of Christ’s cross. The acronym translates as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. Along with a series of plant motifs, probably hawthorns to symbolise the crown of thorns, the inscriptions mark these pommels as relics of a savage piety and were believed to impart magical, protective powers.

  Proclaimed in 1095 by Pope Urban II, the First Crusade set out from Western Europe to recapture Zion, to take back the sacred places of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the infidel. In one of the most remarkable military and political episodes in all history, thousands of Christian soldiers marched and rode east to defeat Muslim armies and establish the crusader kingdoms in what is now Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. In fierce heat, squadrons of armoured knights charged with their destriers into the hosts of the heathens and scattered them. Their courage and audacity were sharpened by the certain knowledge that, as crusader-pilgrims, their sins were all shriven and, should they die in the Holy Land, their passage to Heaven was assured.

  As these outposts of Christianity in the east inevitably began to shrivel, more crusades were preached by the Popes in Rome, and in 1270 Lord Edward, the eldest son of King Henry III of England, sailed to the Holy Land and fought back the tide of Islam for two years. Those knights who rode with the future Edward I wore the cross as a badge of piety and renown ever after. And it seems that some of these warriors for Christ rode up the Long Track in July 1301, when the king invaded Scotland and came to Selkirk Castle. They had followed him in the searing heat of the deserts of the east and now they came north in his service.

  Sources hint at the identity of those who sailed with Lord Edward from southern France in 1270. Drawn from the wide European connections of the Plantagenet kings, it was a cosmopolitan army whose lingua franca was almost certainly French. And despite the fact that his father had given Edward an old English royal name, Edouard looked to Europe as much as to England. His mother was Eleanor of Provence, daughter of Beatrice of Savoy, the western alpine province of what is now Italy. It was from the fertile plain around Turin that Edward gathered a group of knights who may have been seen as an inner circle, perhaps even royal bodyguards.

  Chief amongst this group of adventurers and closest to Edward was Otto de Grandson, sometimes written as Grandison. It was said that no one could do the king’s will better, including the king. When an assassin sent by his enemies in the Holy Land stabbed his master with a poisoned dagger, Otto sucked out the poison and spat it on the ground, risking his own life. Others in the group known as the Savoyards were Otto’s son William and Sir William de Cicon and his brother, Sir Stephen.

  When the Ninth Crusade finally reached the Holy Land, they made little impression. By 1270 the coastal cities were all that remained in the hands of the squabbling crusader dynasties and Edward had only a thousand men, including two hundred and twenty-five armoured knights. When Henry III died in 1272, his heir returned to England to claim his throne with his Savoyard knights, all of whom had earned the right to wear the cross.

  In the 1280s Edward began the conquest of Wales. Otto de Grandson was appointed Chief Justiciar to rule on his behalf and he was based at Caernarfon Castle, the key fortress in the north. This remarkable structure, modelled on the Land Walls that defended Constantinople, was built under the direction of the master-mason Walter de Hereford. Records show that in 1300 de Hereford and his workforce were in Carlisle, on their way north with Edward to build fortifications as his army conquered Scotland. This was the same strategy of castle-building consolidation used to subdue Wales.

  It is very likely that Otto de Grandson led the contingent from Caernarfon and that their expertise turned Selkirk Castle into a formidable fortification. It is a leap to assert this, but well within the bounds of likelihood that some of the Savoyard crusaders were encamped in our fields in July 1301, and that in an exhibition of swordplay in a grassy hollow by the old west road one of them either lost or dropped the pommel of a long and heavy sword, or it was damaged and discarded. Seven centuries later Rory Low picked up this far-travelled relic of the Ninth Crusade.

  I have written this diary in real time, only going back through its entries to cut repetition and tidy up as best I could. When I wrote a year ago in the introduction about an armoured knight, riding a destrier, wearing a caparison with a crusader cross blazoned on it, all I knew was that the Long Track was old, almost certainly medieval. The knight was only an image, an intuition, a symbol. I had no idea that at the end of the year Rory’s skill with a metal detector would make the knight real, a warrior who had felt the fierce heat of the deserts of the east on his back and who rode up the Long Track to have his pavilion set up in our green fields.

  With characteristic insight, Walter asked if the hollow where the pommel was found had an enclosure around it and was a good place for soldiers to watch. ‘Yes, it’s like a little theatre,’ said Rory. Walter’s hypothesis was that the pommel was discarded or lost because a sword may have been damaged during sword-play. Knights were professional soldiers and often practised their skills. Perhaps an older crusader was taking on a younger man. Perhaps silver pennies like those Rory has found nearby were wagered on the outcome. The pommel may be a long echo of the clash of steel on the old road. It was watched by a ring of spectators by the waters of the Ettrick as they remembered Zion and the knights who defended the gateway to Heaven from the infidel.

  25 December

  A happy day to remember events that took place in Bethlehem, not far from Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, the gentle, touching story that fired the fierce piety of the crusaders and inspired peace and love as well as war.

  Christmas carols are amongst the most resonant of hymns and I cannot get ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ out of my head as I work in a stable that is not so different. Three kings will probably not appear, but my children and grandchild will.

  This morning a chevron of about twenty geese honked loudly as they flew over the farmhouse, much better than French hens or turtle doves.

  26 December

  The ancient rhythms of the past have returned. The hard work with horses begins at first light and ends in darkness, as they are fed in their stables in the evening. When at last we sit down in front of the blazing woodburner, a comfortable seat is seductive. It would be very easy to stretch out my tired legs and fall into a doze. But if we did that, the days would begin to become chaotic, have no structure. The dogs and the kitten, as well as the horses, need looking after and so up we get with more to do. In the farm cottage at Cliftonhill, in the harsh winters of the 1890s, the same grunts and groans would have come from William Moffat as he stood up, put on his boots and walked over to the stables to give his Clydesdales their evening feed.

  27 December

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nbsp; Perhaps because I do it every day on the farm, I have taken to walking as a vehicle for telling stories. Walking through history, the places where it happened – and it happened almost everywhere – seemed to make it come alive or at least draw the past closer. My last three books have all been journeys of one sort or another, and while I try to arrive at some conclusions, they are usually provisional, somehow part of a longer journey, and not always associated with facts, events and dates.

  Walking and thinking, sometimes dreaming, sometimes flying far above the landscape, the clouds scudding by, I often drift, not focusing on anything for more than moments. I used to see such flights of fancy as a waste of time, but now I am not so sure. At the end of a walk, after the metronomic, hypnotic rhythm of putting one foot in front of another, I feel complications begin to untangle. My fancies sometimes turn out to be something more; intuitions, occasionally ones that solidify into facts, particularly when I walk exactly where saints, kings or artists walked and I see what they saw. And it sometimes offers a different gloss on what they wrote or was written about them.

  In the past, I used to spend long weeks and months at my desk reading. I began with primary sources where they existed, moving on to other history books about what interested me, trawling the internet for good material, and when I felt I had exhausted all of those, only then would I sit down to write. But now I pull on my boots, put a notebook in my pocket, sometimes a map, always a phone camera, and I go looking for ghosts, listening for the jingle of harness, the creak of cart wheels, the songs of field workers, the peal of ancient bells. If you look and listen quietly, the land will whisper its secret history.