“Peter, the dream isn’t about the Rover, it mostly concerns the other one. Lasker. The Cloaked Man.”
“Why do you call him the Cloaked Man?”
“Because he wears a cloak. It doesn’t matter, Peter.” She didn’t want to be confronted on this point.
He moved on. “Are you sure? The dream, I mean.”
“My mother’s better than I am at this, but let’s try. Tell me about the sheep. Close your eyes and picture them . . . What colour were their faces?”
With his eyes shut, he conjured up the scenes that built to the stampede of the flock of sheep. “They started out as clouds, puffy like sheep’s wool. They were grey on top. Then they turned over and showed white on their bellies. At some point they transmogrified into sheep.”
“Their faces?”
He opened his eyes. “They were white.”
“The chanting of the word ‘Chervil.’ Who said it?”
“No one. It just came out of . . . the environment. I heard a voice repeat it five or six times.”
“Well,” Gwen said, and got up from the chesterfield. She began to pace around the Persian rug in her bare feet. “It’s obvious.”
“Don’t toy with me.”
She laughed, and faced him. “Chervil is a plant, a bit of a weed, not so good in salads. It has medicinal properties, but that doesn’t concern us here. You can find it everywhere. Chervil is just your mind’s trick for homing in on the cliffs. It represents the cliffs, if you want. You probably saw lots of it. Maybe it represents a wasteland, depending how you feel about the cliffs these days.”
“I was in a desert,” Peter said.
“Yes, that. The desert is in Australia. It’s not the Sahara.”
“How do you know that?”
“One point of clarification. Did the chant stop, then start again, later in the dream?”
He ran the dream plot in his mind. “Yes, I think so.”
“And was the word the same, ‘Chervil’? Could it have been ‘Cheviot’?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Because the sheep you describe are Cheviot sheep. They have distinctive white faces.”
“Found in the north of England mostly,” Peter added. “Where’s the connection to Lasker in the north?”
“Oh, there are at least three farms around here that raise them. The word could also reference Chesil Beach, which is just up the road, well within the Jurassic Coast.”
“That’s it, then. Chervil-Chesil-Cheviot. All in the neighbourhood.”
“No.”
“Well, why not?” Peter said.
“I don’t think so. The connection is in Australia,” she said. “Do you remember Harold Holt?”
Of course he did. “Australian prime minister who drowned in the sea. It was an accident. He went swimming in a riptide. There were conspiracy theories at the time. One had it that secret agents had picked him up offshore in a submarine. But no doubt that it was an accidental drowning.”
“The body was never found, was it? That’s probably why you dreamed it. Another case not closed. And, I might add, another example where Death still haunts us.”
“Australian sheep?” he said.
“No. Cheviot sheep. Harold Holt disappeared on a beach. What was it called?”
Now he remembered. “Cheviot Beach.”
He sat there in astonishment. Even if she had searched the Internet, how had she thought to seek out the death notice of Harold Holt, an almost forgotten Australian prime minister?
Gwen was tracking his thoughts. “Peter, the Great Dream Master, whether his name is Freud or Jung, loves puns. So, chervil becomes cheviot. Lasker turns Willemse to Willemsea.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what about the black figure in my dream?”
“Was he good or evil, benign or hostile?”
“I assumed he was evil, maybe an avenging angel. I thought he was the Rover, and then he might be André Lasker, your Cloaked Man.”
Gwen took her place again on the chesterfield. “He’s neither Lasker nor the Rover. He is obviously Father Salvez. Maybe the Annunciation image meant that he was ‘announcing’ something to you. He was all in black, like Salvez. His face too?”
“It was black where the face should be. Because he was dead?”
“I’m not so sure. In dream symbology, the white face is the Mother, but a blacked-out face isn’t necessarily the Father. It can be Death, but I’m not so sure. My mother’s better at this. Black is the void. A human figure all in black is inviting you to fill in the void.”
“Please don’t tell me that Salvez was summoning me to find my faith, find my way back to the Church?”
She laughed. “No, this was the dream of a Scotland Yard detective. Probably secular, then. At least your dream is some kind of progress.”
She leapt up from the cushions. “Time to go, if we’re going at all. The light fades early these days.”
Peter went to the entrance to the cottage and unpacked his hiking boots. While he was putting them on, Gwen went to her bedroom and retrieved a pair of bright purple Nike trainers. He stared at her outfit.
“What?” she said. “You need to dress for the cliffs. These shoes are perfect. You think we’re attending the Celtic Fair?”
Her dream interpretation was still buzzing around his mind. He felt as if he had just left a fortune teller’s tent. “Where are we going?”
“Three caves I want you to see. Conceivably, a person could hide out in them for a long time. Bring your gloves if you have any. It’ll get cold.”
“Why these three?”
“Don’t fairy tales have three of everything? Three hibernating bears, for example.”
“Three witches?”
“No, that’s Shakespeare. We’re leaving him at home today, along with all those sheep. Banquo’s ghost won’t help us this time.”
They were outside on the stoop of the cottage, just about to close the door, when Peter’s mobile rang. They moved back inside while he answered it.
It was Joan; the reception was good. “Peter, are you there?”
He hadn’t expected a call from his wife and was thrown off balance. Mrs. Ransell, her hair a Gordian knot and her face ruddy from sleep, burst out of the bedroom. Even though it was impossible, Peter understood from her look that she had known right off that Joan was on the line. They had met only once, at the funeral, although he had no idea what they had discussed. The old woman came close and made to grab the cell.
“Just a minute, Joan.” He fiddled with the buttons on the side of the device. “Hello? Hello?” He was satisfied that he had succeeded in putting the call on speaker. The three of them, Gwen and Peter baking in their heavy clothes, huddled around the mobile to listen to Joan, her voice tinny coming out of the miniscule speaker.
“Yes, what’s wrong?” he said.
“Two things. Well, nothing’s wrong at all. But Stan Bracher has been trying to call you.”
“Well, I’m here.”
“He’s nearer you than me. I don’t know why he can’t get through. He’s on the south coast.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He wouldn’t say. He was very coy. But there’s something else. The church.”
Peter had encountered so many churches over the last two weeks that he wasn’t sure which one she meant. As usual, she read his thinking process.
“The church today, Peter. Did you notice that big, enclosed display case at the end of the front path?”
“The one with the Bible passage in it?” He was thoroughly confused. He caught Ellen Ransell nodding, as though she understood where Joan was going with this. What did these women talk about?
“Did you read it?”
“I don’t remember it.”
“It was from Luke 21. It said: ‘That ye may be accounted worthy to stand before the Son of man.’ Underneath was printed Luke 21:36.”
“It was a different quotation when I was there before. Something about kings.”
“Not now. I think it was put there recently, maybe especially for Father Salvez’s funeral. You know how a picture in a sealed glass case can wrinkle after a while if it isn’t framed properly? Well, this sign was fresh, no water spots.”
“What bothers you about the Bible verse?”
“When I read it — I was talking to Mrs. Ransell at the end of the path . . . ”
He interrupted. “She’s right here.”
“Hello, Ellen . . . Well, something stuck in my head, but I didn’t figure it out until a moment ago. When we were touring the cathedral in Malta, I read out to you the inscription on the Grand Master’s tomb. It said, ‘In mortis starabo ante Filium hominis. In death I will stand before the Son of man.’ How can an obscure biblical reference on a knight’s grave suddenly show up at a Catholic church in Whittlesun, Dorset?”
Peter certainly didn’t have the answer, but after his dream interpretation session with Gwen, it wasn’t a day to reject coincidences out of hand. “That is weird.” He didn’t know what to say; he was anxious to get out to the cliffs. Mrs. Ransell tried again to grab the phone. “Joan, Ellen wants to talk to you.”
The old lady roughly took the device. She addressed her words to Joan, although the others could hear.
“Joan, the Bible is best read in Greek, whether or not Matthew, Mark or St. Paul originally composed it in Greek. It’s what scholars use when they study the meanings of the fine text. There might be Hebrew and Aramaic scholars who disagree.”
Joan’s voice sounded metallic out of the speaker. “But the reference in the display case was in English, not Greek or Latin.”
Mrs. Ransell was not to be rushed. “Greek is the preferred language because it is precise. For example, if you want to be sure whether two people in the Bible are ‘cousins’ or ‘brothers,’ or ‘uncles’ rather than ‘stepfathers,’ the Greek is your best source. But Latin is next-best, and that’s what your Maltese knights were familiar with.”
“Are you suggesting that I read the passage in Greek?”
Mrs. Ransell heaved a frustrated sigh, though more with Peter than with Joan. “No. I am suggesting that you compare, read the quotations carefully. Pay attention to the similarities but also to the differences. It may in fact be a mere coincidence.”
Mrs. Ransell was drunk, and Peter saw no point in her lecture. He remained confused, and he also sensed Joan’s distress. If Mrs. Ransell was delivering a clue, Peter couldn’t find the trail. It was time to get back to business, and that meant embarking on their search of the cliffs.
“Peter,” Gwen said, “didn’t Father Salvez like word games?”
“Yes. But why the same quote?”
“First of all, it isn’t exactly the same — that’s what Mum is saying — and it isn’t much of a coincidence to find that two religious men, even centuries apart, would anticipate their pending encounter with Jesus, the Son of man. To really know, it would help to verify if Salvez was behind the homily at the church.”
Peter understood that Joan felt isolated as they bickered in the cottage so far away. But the distance gave her perspective on the discussion, and perhaps that was why she identified the next logical question. “You may be right, Gwen. Peter, did you tell Father Salvez about our visit to the Cathedral in Valletta?”
“No. I never talked to him at all after Malta.”
“Well,” Joan said, “if it turns out that the Latin on the Grand Master’s tomb matches the Latin Bible verse from Luke, what does that tell us?”
It told them, Peter knew, that, coincidence or not, John Salvez was trying to send him a message.
“Oh, you two!” Mrs. Ransell shouted. “Let me talk to Joan. Go do your walkabout. Come back later, by sunset, Gwen.” She kept the mobile and bustled into the bedroom, slamming the thick oak door behind her.
CHAPTER 31
They had been walking on a shallow downward angle for ten minutes, and Peter was already lost. Guinevere was relentless, steadily leading him towards the setting sun along sharp defiles in the grass-crowned dunes behind her cottage. Over that time, he couldn’t make out the sea at all, and she kept them below the horizon, in black shadows, as they moved west. She finally stopped; there was nowhere to go but up.
She turned to him. “Shelter your eyes when we come over the knoll. We’ll come out facing west and the sun will be directly at us.”
The vertical path was deceptive, becoming rough limestone as it climbed. The depression they had been following was merely a silt fosse for soil swept by the wind from the top plates of stone. Gwen reached back to help him over the lip of rock. He gained the upper rock plate, stood up and arched his back, and looked out to the east. The vista along the Channel recalled the wake of the Great Armada, fleeing out to the open sea. Looking westward, he made out the shape of Whittlesun and its harbour, and even with the face-on sunset, he thought he glimpsed Whittlesun Abbey. He looked at Gwen and she nodded.
They alternately descended and remounted the heights as they progressed to the first cave, although Peter thought at times that they were no longer moving west by the compass. She moved with full confidence, and he had no choice but to trail behind. She never hesitated when the path diverged. Whenever they succeeded in reaching an open perspective on the Channel, his sightline was inevitably blocked by the salients of rock. She kept them away from the edge; he well knew the risk of suddenly falling into one of the hollowed-out bays along this erratic shore.
Finally, after they had been walking for several minutes on a relatively flat plateau with a clear view of the water, she halted on a massive stone and called out against the crosswind.
“The cave is thirty feet below. First, I’ll take us up there” — she pointed to a rock mound ahead — “so that you can orient to the shoreline, get some idea of distance from the town. It’ll be stormy.”
They found handholds along the sides of a defile ahead, and in two minutes they emerged on the pinnacle. He poked his head over the fissured rim, found the wind tolerable and hoisted himself onto the topmost rocks. Talking was impossible; they used hand signals and gestures to communicate. The relatively straight line of the shore to the west surprised him, as if erosion had been largely resisted in that sector. Gwen pointed to his pocket and he took out his military binoculars. He followed her pointing finger to several spots along the shore, in both directions. She wanted him to identify promising indentations that might have provided hiding spaces for Lasker.
They descended and began working their way towards the rim of the cliff. They had to crab-walk and crawl against the rising wind off the Channel. The final goat track down to the cave inscribed another narrow maze, but Gwen moved with assurance. She paused twice to check for signs that someone else might have visited recently. They came out onto a sloping hill that ended in the sea some two hundred yards away. Their position gave them an open view of the coast below. From there, with Gwen’s guidance, he spied two dark indentations in the rock face opposite.
“Caves,” she said. “We can get to them in twenty minutes.”
The trek took thirty minutes. The path narrowed to a mere trace at times; Gwen knelt down and fingered the gravel, like an Apache tracker. Gorse and sedge grew in clumps and encroached on the track, threatening to obliterate it. Where it widened, she pointed to plants that had taken hold in the rich silt. “Buckthorn, whortleberry, horsetail.”
The first cave was disappointing. Sea winds had etched out a dry grotto in the cliff wall fifty yards above the Channel. Peter nervously held back from the rim of the cave. The hollow extended into darkness and the beam from Peter’s torch disappeared into the gloom. It was a good enough hiding place but no one had been here. Not even crisps wrappers or condoms, he noted.
The sky over the Channel had now ashened with the nascent storm and the fading of daylight, lending some urgency to their return to the cottage. After only one discovery, the heart had gone out of their plan. There were too many possibilities, and they had failed to narrow down the
search criteria. He had been naive, he saw. Even if André Lasker had holed up in one of the caves the night of his escape, he might not use the same refuge now. He could be anywhere, including a location much farther west, on the other side of Whittlesun.
The claustrophobic effects of the labyrinth of paths wore on them. “Let’s go to higher ground,” he pleaded. “I’m disoriented.”
As they climbed to a safer level, and inland a few hundred yards, Peter found a perch on a boulder that gave them a silhouetted angle on the row of cliffs in the distance. He paused for a last look at the grey clouds, with the dun water below. He began to see the meaning of his dream, or at least the part with the flying black figure. (To be fair, Gwen had never presumed to explain all of the dream.) A sea bird — Peter identified it as a skua — migrating along the Channel shortcut swooped past them, fighting a contrary wind as it struggled for a purchase in the rocks. The black figure was Salvez, but why had he flown into the dream? She was right, that most of the dream was about André, fed by the urgency in Peter’s subconscious to track him down, but there was something else. The figure was equal parts priest, angel and hovering bird. It floated above the scene for a good reason: there was something it had wanted to point out to Peter.
They stood on a broad, lonely plateau strewn with boulders. Even with the wind howling and battering the zone around them, Gwen noticed the change in him. “What is it?”
“The black angel. It’s a premonition.”
And then they were no longer alone.
Gwen knew the route back to the cottage and they were soon in sight of the farm roads that demarcated the fields from the cliffs. Their return would be faster once they reached a country lane. Behind them, the weather closed in. Peter turned to catch a last look at the sunset and thought he saw something sticking up above the horizontal plane. Gwen threw him a questioning look. He took the compact binoculars from his pocket, and aimed them towards the sea, adjusting the focus as he scanned the horizon. The dark figure jiggled into view and he steadied the binoculars with both hands. The figure stood sideways, but was gazing out to the Channel. Peter recalled the iconic scene in Wings of Desire where the angel stood poised on a rooftop overlooking the city. The man turned, full on. It was Ron Hamm. The face remained in half shadow, but Peter was sure.
Walking Into the Ocean Page 39
