Will North

by Water, Stone, Heart (v5)

  “Am I permitted to know where we're going?” Andrew finally asked.

  Nicola smiled. “That's a secret, but just now we're going to St. Nectan's Kieve.”

  “Kieve?”

  “Waterfall, silly,” Lee piped up.

  “Never heard of it,” Andrew griped.

  Lee looked at Andrew and then at Nicola, to whom she said, “He doesn't know much, does he.” It wasn't a question.

  Nicola laughed and gave the girl a hug. “He's not one of us, sweetie.”

  “One of what?” Andrew asked.

  “That's a secret, too,” Lee announced.

  These two are thick as thieves, Andrew mused happily. He thought how lucky Lee was to have an adult friend with whom to share secrets, and once again mourned not having had children of his own. Maybe Nicki did, too.

  “So who's this St. Nectan character?” he asked, knowing Lee would roll her eyes, which indeed she did.

  “Fifth-century Celtic holy man,” Nicola answered. “Came over from Ireland and apparently was a hermit here at some point. There's a lovely church dedicated to him in Stoke, near Hartland, up on the Devon coast. But it's believed that this glen was a place of reverence and healing much earlier, in pre-Christian times.”

  Andrew was going to ask how anyone could know that, but he bit his tongue. This was Cornwall, after all, a land of legend and mystery, a place where people still believed that “piskies” lived in woods like this one.

  The trio continued to descend until they passed through a gate beside which were a wooden box with a coin slot and a sign announcing admission prices.

  “Somebody owns the waterfall?” he asked.

  “The waterfall and the hermit's cell, yes,” Nicola said. “In fact, the cell is in their basement. But the owners know me from the museum, so it's all right.” The path now led through a dense thicket of rhododendron and laurel, and as they advanced, the noise of the waterfall grew to a roar.

  Lee pulled Nicola down toward her and whispered something in her ear. Nicola clapped her hands and said, “Oh, yes; let's!”

  “Close your eyes,” Nicola ordered Andrew. Lee took one of his hands and Nicola slipped behind him, pressed her body against him, and covered his eyes with her hands.

  “No cheating,” Lee warned.

  Andrew didn't protest; he could feel the warmth and softness of Nicola's breasts against his back. He caught a faint fragrance—musky, with a touch of spice—from the inside of her left wrist. He hadn't the slightest interest in breaking free. The two frog-marched him another dozen yards or so through the damp, thundering air, until finally Nicola took away her hands, stepped back, and said, “Okay, open.”

  And it was a splendid sight. Ahead, a stream from somewhere high above them flung itself over a shelf of shale and dropped some six or seven stories—Andrew, the city boy, couldn't help measuring distances in blocks and stories. It fell through a series of intermediate shelved pools, launching itself again and again into the void. In the last of its leaps, it foamed beneath and through a stone arch before finally clattering to the rock-choked streambed below.

  The three stood as if hypnotized by the cataract, their eyes returning repeatedly to the lip at the top and following the water as it plunged in that odd slow-motion way water does, as if it were somehow simultaneously lighter and more viscous than it actually is. Andrew marveled at how this thing so insubstantial you could not hold it in your hands for more than a moment could nonetheless carve its way down through the layers of blue-brown Paleozoic rock, slicing through ancient history, micron by micron.

  Randi, however, was bored. He barked only once and then wheeled off downstream along the footpath through the shrubbery.

  “I guess we're leaving,” Nicola said with a chuckle. Lee took her hand and, reluctantly, Andrew followed.

  St. Nectan's Glen proved to be a cool, leafy, steep-sided gorge through which the stream hastened, as if it smelled the nearby sea, much as a horse knows it's nearing its barn long before the structure is visible. They crossed a narrow footbridge and climbed up the opposite hillside and out of the valley, eventually crossing a sunny meadow sparkling with oxeye daisies and buttercups. A stile in the stone hedge on the other side led to a narrow lane that twisted steeply downhill to the main road, joining it just above the bend where they had parked.

  Instead of returning to the car, however, Andrew's guides surprised him by crossing the road and continuing downstream. The trail passed a handsome old stone gristmill nestled in a sunny hollow, crossed the stream again, and then edged around a series of ever-higher rock outcrops and pillars, many hung with verdant buntings of glossy English ivy.

  “What's this place called?” Andrew asked, feeling oddly rude for breaking the magical stillness of the air around them.

  His question met with an incredulous look from Lee and a forgiving smile from Nicola.

  “Rocky Valley,” she said.

  “Duh,” Andrew said, grinning.

  A little farther down the valley, they arrived at the ruins of two neighboring stone structures. Another mill, Andrew realized when he discovered the grindstones half buried in the rubble. He was about to ask Nicola about the place when he realized she and Lee had disappeared.

  He found them bent over and staring at the face of an exposed wall of shale behind one of the ruined buildings. As he approached, he realized that with their forefingers they were tracing the circuitous outlines of a labyrinth design cut into the rock face. The carving was delicately incised and a little over a foot in diameter. As he watched, they moved on to a second, nearly identical labyrinth of connected concentric circles a few feet away. Again, they traced it with their fingers, as if performing some silent ritual. Andrew found a brass plaque attached to the rock face that said that the stone-carved labyrinths dated from the Bronze Age, between 1800 BC and 1400 BC, and were believed to have religious significance. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he heard a discordant note, but before it could fully register his attention was drawn to the rest of the cliff face.

  Tucked into every nook and cranny, wedged into every crack and seam, as high as a human being could reach, there were tiny, fetishlike objects: a miniature baby shoe, a toy dog, a tiny model boat, a doll no more than an inch high, and simpler items—a button, a key, a piece of string tied in an elaborate sailor's knot, a pyramid of small shells. Nicola herself was pushing a polished cowrie shell into a cleft in the rock. She gazed at it in its niche for a few moments, then dipped her head and closed her eyes. He looked around further and realized there were bits of fabric tied to many of the branches of shrubs and trees surrounding the narrow rock grotto. Scratched into the rock face were cryptic messages: “Our little Claire is always with us,” “You are not forgotten, Brian,” and more. Lee stood off to one side, her hands clasped loosely below her waist, and was preternaturally quiet, as if in a trance.

  Nicola lifted her head, turned to Andrew, and smiled peacefully and with unabashed affection.

  “Welcome to church.”

  Andrew blinked.

  “Here in Cornwall, the practice of witchcraft survives and thrives. It's very gentle and mostly about acknowledging the power and the blessings provided by each of the turning seasons, revering the flow of the natural world. It helps us find our place in that flow. It tries to bring us into harmony with it.”

  “So you really are a witch?”

  Nicola laughed. “No, I'm not nearly that far along. I'm just learning about witchcraft, partly from working at the museum, but also by talking with friends of Randi's former owner.”

  “She was a witch?”

  “Oh yes, a revered one. I'm told that many people in and around Boscastle sought her advice and help over the years. There are times when I think her spirit lives on in Randi; I don't know how else to explain how he senses things so much more acutely than other dogs.”

  Andrew looked again at the artifacts strewn about the area.

  “And all this?”

  “Offerings—pra
yers, if you will. This has been a holy place for millennia, as the marker next to the labyrinths explains. Believers in this area are simply carrying on a very long tradition of communing with the spirits and with nature in this special place. Labyrinths like these are common symbols of the gateway to the spirit world.”

  “What's with the pieces of fabric tied to all these branches?”

  “They're clouties,” Lee piped up. “You tie them on and make a wish.”

  “And do the wishes come true?”

  The girl shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Nicola took his hand. “Come on,” she said. “There's more to see.”

  The three of them followed the dog across another footbridge and continued downstream. The little river was rushing now, cutting its way through a narrow rocky gorge. The outcroppings that had hung above the valley upstream now merged into a continuous corridor of ever-higher cliffs. The valley itself had become a constricted, twisting defile. One could almost imagine the stream elbowing the cliffs aside in its headlong rush to the sea.

  Randi raced ahead and disappeared around a bend. Lee dashed after him. When Andrew and Nicola turned the corner, too, he came to an abrupt stop and said, simply, “Wow.”

  Nicola smiled. “I thought you might like this,” she said.

  Invisible until you rounded the bend, what lay before them was a wedge-shaped pocket of deep, boiling ocean into which the stream they'd been following flung itself with all the abandon of a lover meeting her long-absent mate. Charcoal-black slate cliffs rose almost vertically on both sides, creating a sharp contrast to the brilliant white surf foaming on the rocks below with each incoming surge. Gulls wheeled on the updrafts and salt spray blew back from the cleft at the base of the cove. Apparently oblivious to the lethal tumult below, black-faced sheep grazed at the very edge of the cliff face, the wind off the ocean rippling their thick, creamy coats.

  Out over the ocean, the sky was busy. Vast tracts of milky blue were broken by towering cumulus cloud masses and, closer to the water, fuzzy fast-moving squall bands ruffled the water where showers met salt. Had it been afternoon, with the sun low in the west, there would have been rainbows. Even so, the colors dancing on the undulating surface of the water were myriad, and put him in mind of one of Nicola's paintings.

  Nicola and Andrew had been sitting peacefully, a few feet apart, watching the seascape and keeping an eye on Lee, who clambered around on the rocks. They hardly needed to; Randi was herding the girl as if he were a border collie and she an errant ewe. Eventually, Nicola rose, put two fingers in her mouth, and startled Andrew with a piercing whistle. Both dog and girl turned and headed back.

  On their way back up the narrow valley toward the car, Andrew stopped by the ruined mill to look again at the labyrinths. Something about them bothered him, and, after a few moments of studying, he grasped what it was, what had caused the soundless discord when he'd first seen them and read the plaque.

  “Lovely, aren't they,” Nicola said.

  “Yes, and that's the problem. They're too lovely.”

  “I don't follow you.”

  “You see how clean and delicate these incisions are? There's no way they could be Bronze Age. The tools they had then were too primitive. To do something this precise, this sharply defined, you'd need hardened steel. But, you see, materials like that didn't exist then.”

  “I thought you were an architect; since when did you become an archaeologist?” There was an edge in her voice, and instinctively Lee moved off with the dog. Andrew, in his certainty, missed the signal, and drove home his point, instead.

  “Okay, okay; let's forget the matter of tools. This rock is shale. Shale is sedimentary and relatively soft. It erodes when exposed to water, and it fractures and crumbles when it freezes. Hell, that's how this valley was created; with enough time, water cuts through this stuff as if it were butter. Anything carved in this rock thirty-five hundred years ago would have disappeared altogether in just a few centuries of rain, flooding, freezing, and thawing. And that's not even counting the way the roots of plants, like all this ivy, would break up the rock face.”

  “Um … guys?” Lee was back. Nicola ignored her. Randi barked twice—his warning.

  “Listen, Mr. Know-it-all,” Nicola said, her voice rising, “this has been a holy place for centuries; just ask anyone around here! Who the hell are you to say it's not?! A week of stone-wall building and now you're a rock expert, too? Give me a break!”

  This time, Andrew could hear the shrill edge to her voice. He softened his. “Look, Nicola; I'm not trying to insult you. It's just that, well, I don't think these labyrinths are any older than that tumbled-down mill behind you. I think they both date back about a hundred and fifty years. Tops.”

  “Nicki? Drew?” It was Lee, more insistent this time. “The wind's changed, and look at the sky back that way.”

  She pointed toward the ocean, and the two adults followed her finger. The girl had sensed what neither of them had: The sky over the cove was as black as the slate cliffs surrounding it, and the wind had picked up and was sharp with the tang of ozone. At that moment, there was a single crack of lightning, close by. Even as they stood there, drops of rain the size of marbles began hammering the ground around them, raising little puffs of dust in the dirt and splattering the stones of the old mill like gunshots. The argument instantly forgotten, the three of them ran up the path. Randi led the way.

  By the time they climbed into the Land Rover, the squall had passed, but they were soaked to the skin. Skinny Lee looked like a drowned rat. Nicola's white cotton blouse had turned transparent, and Andrew realized she was braless. His own shirt was much the same and clung to him like skin. It should have been a moment of hilarity, a sort of impromptu wet T-shirt event. Instead, apart from the damp panting of the dog in the back, no one spoke, and the atmosphere in the car was electric as they drove back to Bottreaux Farm. Even Lee, who had romped through the downpour gleefully, was quiet, her clear blue eyes panning back and forth between the two rigid people in the front seats, trying to parse the body language of silent adults.

  They lurched to a stop in front of Shepherd's Cottage and Andrew got out. He stood with the door open, leaned in, and said quietly, “I'm sorry I spoiled things.”

  Without turning away from the windscreen, Nicola said, “Not everything in creation is amenable to rational analysis.”

  Andrew nodded and closed the door. The car sped away down the track toward the farm.

  After she dropped off Lee, after she chatted amiably for several minutes with Roger (Anne was still in bed, still under the weather), after she got home, changed into dry clothes, brewed a pot of tea, and climbed up to her studio, Nicola was still fuming. Who the hell did he think he was—Sherlock bloody Holmes? What right did he have to question what everyone with any sensitivity at all had always understood intuitively—that Rocky Valley was a place of magic? Why had he been so insistent, so dogmatic? Even if the stone carvings weren't Bronze Age—and, in truth, she had to admit his arguments made sense—why was it so terribly important for him to be right? What did he win by winning? For that matter, what did she, if she prevailed?

  Nicola sipped her tea and stared out the tall window beside the chaise. The sun beat down on the quayside, and tourists wandered below licking melting ice-cream cones. If it had rained in Boscastle earlier, as it had in Rocky Valley, the sun had burned away any trace. On the other side of the river, the witchcraft museum was doing a brisk trade. Why was she drawn to these beliefs and practices? Why was it suddenly so important for her to defend them?

  She understood that part of the attraction was really the effect of repulsion: Her Catholicism hadn't protected her when she was being violated by her brother. Who could she go to, her priest? Not likely! In the church of her childhood, there were only three versions of women: the virgin, the wife, and the whore. Her brother had stolen the first of these. She'd turned to the second role and found only more abuse. Where did that leave her?

  Th
is new faith she found herself embracing rose from maternal, not paternalistic roots—a reverence for the Earth Mother and her consort, not the all-powerful Father and the hapless Madonna. In this gentler, more humane faith—if “faith” was even the right term—the female was elevated, not denigrated. Accepting and embracing what now, at last, seemed to her so obvious—the timeless cycle of the seasons, the wheel of the year, the noble and graceful stages of birth, growth, ripening, decline, death, and rebirth, on and on, throughout history and beyond—made her feel an integral part of the universe, rather than a pitiful and damned speck within it. Here there was no “original” sin—a notion she rejected instinctively whenever she beheld a newborn infant. There was no heaven, no hell, no eternal damnation for simply being human. Nor was this simply her Catholic dogma turned on its head; it was not the denigration of men and the worship of a vengeful, all-powerful woman. It was simply recognition of the purest, simplest, most obvious fact of nature: that woman is the source, that man is the parallel energy, that the two of them are forever partners, like the stamen and pistil of a flower, in the work of creating the world.

  As she was sorting out these thoughts, it suddenly dawned on her that Andrew hadn't actually challenged her beliefs; he'd only questioned the true age of the labyrinths. She'd somehow conflated the two things at the time, as if his analyses were intended to undermine the still-setting concrete of her new beliefs. She'd lashed out. Ridden right over him. Silenced him. Moreover, she'd flatly rejected his apology.

  Nicola groaned and slid down on the chaise.

  Randi trotted to her side and cocked his head, first to one side, then to the other. He blinked. He barked once. She swore he smiled.

  “Oh, shut up, you idiot dog! I already know. I've screwed it up again.”

  Rainfall radar loops show that the shower cells initiated over the high ground of North Cornwall, at around 1330 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on the 16th. These grew in structure and then an almost constant “shower train” sat over the area for at least two hours.