By the early twelfth century, work on the new priory seems to have begun and it was completed in about 1150. A cenotaph, an empty tomb, was placed approximately where the original shrine of Cuthbert may have been. It stood close to the high altar at the east end of the church, the presbytery, behind a screen so that the laity in the nave could not see it – without paying something to the monks. This was set up partly to encourage pilgrimage and provide income but also to make clear the close links with Durham and its guardianship of the shrine of Cuthbert. The fact that the church was built first, and not, as was usual, the accommodation for the monks, underlines the importance the Bishops-Palatine placed on securing their legitimacy as heirs of Cuthbert’s legacy.
The presbytery was in shadow and surprisingly cold out of the morning sun. An old Anglian cross-shaft had been placed close to where I imagined the cenotaph had been. I wondered how anyone could know the location of the original coffin after two centuries. And indeed, as the excavations on the Heugh have suggested, the saint’s body may have rested in the chapel known as St Cuthbert’s in the Sky. There is documentary evidence from the fourteenth century that the cenotaph had a painted statue of Cuthbert laid on top of it.
Facing south, the monastic buildings, the prior’s lodging, the monks’ dormitory, the storehouses and the stables caught all of the sun. There seems to have been no cloister but a large hall, and also the remains of a barbican gateway with a narrow, cobbled roadway running through it. This was a part of a series of defensive works made necessary by the outbreak of the long, intermittent war between Scotland and England that began in the late thirteenth century. On the south-eastern corner of the prior’s lodging, facing the harbour, are the remains of a projecting tower. The Outer Court, whose walls are still mostly intact, would have looked like a farm stackyard, with animal pens, stables and haystacks. Because of the sunny morning, this was where most visitors walked, took photographs and sat down on benches.
I saw a man pulling behind him what looked like a small, wheeled suitcase with an extended handle. A tube ran from it up to his neck, around his cheeks and stopped under his nose with an outlet for each nostril, the sort of thing often seen attached to unconscious hospital patients. Over the ruined foundations, the cobbles and the uneven grass, this contraption was not easy to manage. When this man and his wife sat down gratefully on a bench that looked towards the Heugh, I broke my vow of silence.
‘We come here as often as we can,’ she said, and her husband explained that his lungs no longer supplied enough oxygen. The contraption did, by recycling and purifying the air, and it was what kept this man alive. He told me that he could not walk for long without sitting down and that the batteries lasted six to seven hours, enough time to get to the island, be there for two or three hours, and get home. Throughout our exchange, he smiled, and when asked why he made such an effort to come to the island: ‘Peace,’ he said. ‘Nowhere else has this for me, and sometimes I even forget I have to trail this thing around.’
Near where the couple sat, stands a statue of Cuthbert very different from what was laid on the cenotaph in the old priory. Made by the same artist who carved the coffin bearers in St Mary’s Church, it shows the saint seated and apparently at prayer, his hands clasped tight on his knee. It struck me as very evocative, especially the forming of the head. Like the man with the portable respirator, Cuthbert seemed to be at peace here, ready to meet his God.
As with the great abbeys of the Tweed Valley and the churches of the north of England, the centuries of war between Scotland and England were very destructive and saw decline at Lindisfarne Priory. From around ten monks in the twelfth century, numbers dropped to only two or three in the fifteenth. This handful of clerics probably held services for pilgrims and were attended by a group of servants. Despite the fact that lookouts were posted at the Snook, the landward end of the island’s pan-handle, to warn of approaching soldiers, life was likely more than tolerable between periods of alarm. There are reports in the fifteenth century of two young monks behaving badly, playing dice, frequenting taverns and being ‘swearers and utterers of prohibited jests’. By 1537 the priory had been closed by Henry VIII’s commissioners and it began a long decline into ruin. Visitors still crossed the causeway, and written records and drawings they made showed that the church survived almost intact until around 1780, despite the lead having been stripped off the roof many years before. By the 1820s, the central tower above the crossing and the south aisle had collapsed and much of the stone was robbed out by local builders.
Walking back through the village, I could see where some of the warm sandstone of the priory had been put to good use.
Before my wife arrived to collect me, I wanted to buy some of the excellent beans at Pilgrims Coffee House. The wind had begun to blow, but I sat down in a corner of the garden nevertheless. For no reason, and on the edge of a large group of chattering, animated people, I felt it again, but more powerfully: a sense of profound peace. Like exhaling a long breath, it seemed that all my cares slowly left me, like a receding tide. In that unlikely place, at that random moment, I knew I could look forward to the rest of my life without being afraid of death and look back at what had gone without regret. I have made many mistakes, hurt people I love, failed and committed many sins of omission, but I sat in the garden and thought differently about those dark times. I realised something absurdly simple: it may not have seemed so to the people around me, or indeed to myself, but I had done the best I could at the time. And what else could I have done? When death comes, that settlement with myself will help me face it. I knew that this was not a mood or a set of notions consciously assembled after a great deal of thought, but equally I understood that the moment would pass; this sense of peace would be fleeting. Something would happen to blow clouds over the sun and my attitudes would darken once more. But I knew at last that it was possible to come to an accommodation with the past and have real hope for a bright future. It was as if the island and the peace of Cuthbert had finally found their way inside my head, almost without me noticing.
I can only ponder more profound matters for a short time. I can’t seem to consider life, death and everything for longer than about ten minutes. Perhaps that is because, unlike Cuthbert, Drythelm, Boisil and the other ascetics, I don’t force myself to pray, stand up to my neck in freezing water or fast, using that effort of will to force out everything except the need to know the mind of God.
The starlings and predatory sparrows circled and hopped on the table, but I only had coffee so they moved on to other, better prospects with plates of scones or bacon rolls. Just as Cuthbert felt with the sea otters, the birds of Inner Farne and the eagle, this closeness was not an irritation to me, as it was four days ago. It felt good. Birds’ behaviour, except when there are crumbs and titbits about, is difficult to read. These descendants of dinosaurs are enigmatic. From the bench at Emmanuel Head, I had watched eider ducks flying very fast straight out to sea. Where were they going and what was the urgency? Birds were everywhere on Lindisfarne and I wished I understood more about them.
Thinking about my time on the island, it occurred to me that the daily, weekly, monthly, annual, eternal battle to do good work, to take care of my family, to solve problems or at least mitigate their effect, does not seem to allow many breaks. That is where my stay on Lindisfarne had been different. By isolating myself, at least when the tide was shut, with no transport except my legs, I could do little about anything. I just had to let things go. Over the past days, I had become better and better at that – and while the whole journey from Old Melrose had not been an epiphany (I don’t believe in instant conversions or blinding lights) so much as a good beginning, I could see it as the first few faltering steps in learning how to die. Now I knew it was possible to find Cuthbert’s peace and I had discovered where it could be found. I decided I needed to keep coming back to the Island of Tides.
13
The Rock
Four weeks after I left Lindisfarne, I set
out on the last part of the broken journey that had begun on Brotherstone Hill two months before. I wanted to go to Inner Farne, the tiny island that lies offshore Bamburgh Castle. Cuthbert died there on 20 March 687 and I thought it right to see where his story ended before this one did. Boat trips run from Seahouses until the end of October, and if I was to spend more than an hour or so on the island I needed to catch the earliest sailing at 10 a.m. That meant an even earlier start for me – up at 5.30 a.m. to see to the dogs and take Maidie, my little West Highland terrier, out for her morning walk in the dark.
A month after the moon had shone bright on Lindisfarne, it was full again and high in a clear sky. When I switched on the lights in the kitchen to make tea and feed the dogs, I heard an insistent tapping and scratching. It was the time of year when wood mice try to find a way into the warmth of the farmhouse, and I wondered about one causing chaos somewhere in the cupboards, but the dogs made no fuss. Then I saw it: a tiny goldcrest, its yellow-streaked head visible in the light by the window. Hanging on to the frame, it was tapping at the wood to flush out the tiny insects that had taken refuge there.
The moon shadows behind the hedges and woods were black-dark, but the tracks were bathed in a monochrome light. Maidie and I had no trouble finding our way. The open sky and a stiff north wind made the early morning bitterly cold. Once out of the lee of the trees that line our track and onto the old road that leads down to the valley floor, we both shivered and walked more briskly. The light came first from the west, but the high, pale moon against a grey sky was slowly matched by a gathering of pink in the east, as the sun began to climb. I thought of rushing around the bay to watch it rise at Lindisfarne Castle.
From the old road, there are long views down our little valley and I saw dark morning lights: a searchlight sweeping over the high ground, perhaps someone out early, lamping for foxes. There were headlights moving up the Thief Road. About three miles away, and once a track used by cattle thieves, it leads up into the hills to the south. A few moments later the headlights swung across the moorland plateau and disappeared.
By the time I hung up my jacket in the porch and went to make some breakfast, the colours of the land were slowly coming alive, the sun’s first rays lighting up the tops of the trees around the farmhouse.
* * *
After turning off the A1 south of Berwick, the road quickly finds the coast and climbs up past a links golf course before a stunning reveal takes place. Around a corner, the breath-catching, mighty mass of Bamburgh Castle suddenly comes into view. Towering over the little village at its foot and looking out over the sea beyond, it is epic in its scale and setting, surely a fortress that reflected the power of the kings who built it. Enhanced by the restoration and remodelling commissioned by William Armstrong more than a century ago, it must be the most dramatic castle in Britain, even more impressive than Edinburgh. History seems to seep out of its stones.
Three miles further south lies an eye-watering contrast with all that grandeur. From a former life as a fishing port and safe harbour, Seahouses has been rebuilt as a miniature Blackpool. On three sides of its central roundabout are chip shops with seating for hundreds and long takeaway counters, an amusement arcade whose dark interior winks with lights, a bargain clothing shop, a crazy golf course round the corner, more chip shops and, masquerading as a gift shop, an Aladdin’s Cave that seems to defy every rule of the retail trade. I love it all.
Billy Shiel’s Boat Trips sail from the end of the harbour pier and, despite the sunny, windless day, there seemed to be only three passengers boarding the St Cuthbert II. Older than me and with shamingly good English, a German couple sat in the stern as we pushed off from the moorings. Most people make these trips to see the bird life, especially in the breeding season, and the seals, but the puffins and the other migrating species were long gone. My plan was to be put ashore on Inner Farne and be picked up by a later sailing. I wanted to spend as much time on Cuthbert’s island as I could. But first we were to make our way out to the farthest islands in the little archipelago. Depending on the tides, there are either fifteen or twenty, some of them little more than rocks peeping above the waves. As we nosed slowly out of Seahouses harbour, past the high concrete sides of the pier, I felt a familiar frisson of fear. The pier rises sheer and monumental out of the harbour like a bulwark against the deeps of the sea. I swim like a brick and if I fell overboard I would surely drown. I noted where the life belts were stowed.
Mercifully, it was flat calm, and when we cleared the harbour entrance to plough out into the open sea the low rocks of the Farnes came into view. They look deceptive. As we sailed closer, the south-western cliffs of the tiny island of Inner Farne rose up out of the water, high and jagged. Parts were vertical stacks, almost detached from the cliff face. The skipper took us past Cuthbert’s island to sail through a very narrow channel between Little Scarcar and Big Scarcar, two rocks that must have been singular undersea crags with very steep sides invisible under the water. If the boat had had wing mirrors, they would have scraped against the low cliffs. Several cormorants perched above us and the German couple took photographs. The birds reminded me of Graculus, the talking messenger-bird from Noggin the Nog, a TV cartoon I loved when I was a child. The German man rarely removed his arms from around his wife’s shoulders or her waist, and while it looked like genuine affection I wondered if she was as nervous a sailor as me.
In the distance I could see Brownsman Island, the site of the original, relatively primitive Longstone Lighthouse. Beyond it is the modern version, on top of its characteristic red-and-white tower, the light I saw from Lindisfarne. The lighthouse features in a very famous and dramatic story. At about 4 a.m. on 7 September 1838 tremendous seas and gale force winds drove the steamship Forfarshire onto the deadly rocks of the Farnes. The ship foundered on Big Harcar, between Brownsman and Longstone, and immediately broke in two. Forty-three of those on board were plunged into the deeps to their deaths. As dawn broke through the storm clouds, Grace Darling, the daughter of the keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse, saw the outline of the wreck and searched through the swirling mist with a telescope for any signs of survivors. At about 7 a.m. she saw some movement on the black, sea-lashed rocks and in an open boat with her father she rowed out into the mountainous seas to attempt a rescue. Taking a leeward and lengthy course, they made two trips and nine people were saved.
A week later the Newcastle Journal carried a full account of the episode, which stressed that it was Grace who had persuaded her father, William Darling, to put to sea in the storm. The story was picked up by the London Times and its report asked, ‘Is there in the whole field of history, or of fiction even, one instance of female heroism to compare for one moment with this?’ Grace Darling immediately became the object of hysterical admiration. Tourists came to the Farnes to see her, to beg for a lock of her hair. Offers of marriage poured in, awards, decorations, a London theatre offered her a starring role in Wreck at Sea for £50 a week. William Wordsworth was moved to write a eulogy and she was made ‘National Heroine of Japan’. There is now a Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh.
The museum is also a monument to a story that spun out of control, a very early example of how newspapers can create a perception that obscures much of the truth. What really happened as the sea boiled around the deadly rocks was buried under all the adulation. As with many jobs in the nineteenth century, lighthouse keeping involved the whole family, although only one man was paid. When the Forfarshire struck Big Harcar at 4 a.m., Mrs Darling was on watch while her husband slept; the day before, Grace had helped her father to lash their rowing boat safely before the coming storm. Her brother, William Darling Jr, was also part of the family business. And so it was by no means unusual for Grace to be scanning the seascape with a telescope. In Grace Darling – Her True Story, written by her sister, Thomasin, and a Mr Daniel Atkinson, it is made clear that William Darling Sr made the decision to attempt a rescue because he believed that neither the Seahouses or Bamburgh lifeboats
would launch in such a fierce storm.
Darling’s rowing boat was the only chance for the survivors of the Forfarshire and, since his son was away, only Grace was available to row with him. What she did was indeed heroic, but not quite as heroic as the newspapers made out. In fact, Grace seems to have been embarrassed at all the fuss and it may have contributed to her early death in 1841, three years after the rescue. The seabed around the Farnes is littered with the hulks of hundreds of wrecks and the bones of thousands of sailors who drowned, thrashing and struggling in the icy waters. These were not thoughts to comfort a nervous sailor.
On a day of bright sunshine and flat calm, the Farne Islands looked very different from the night of the fatal storm that drove the Forfarshire against the rocks almost two hundred years ago. The skipper slowed the engine and took the boat alongside a series of low ledges close to where the ship had broken in half, so that we could see the basking seals close up. Unlike the howling choir on the sandbanks off Lindisfarne, these were much bigger North Atlantic seals, rather than the common or grey seals. Some, said the skipper in his excellent commentary, weigh three-quarters of a ton. Warming themselves on the rocks, they looked it: huge and ungainly, occasionally shuffling around with great effort. Two pups stayed close to their mothers because gulls often attack them, going first for their eyes. The big seals turned their soulful, almost mournful faces to look at us looking at them.
We sailed between Brownsman Island and South Wamses, a strange name, to the north-western side of the archipelago, and then turned for the landing stage at Inner Farne. To my surprise, there were no cliffs and the shore rose up very gradually out of the sea. Beside the concrete jetty, there was a small beach. I agreed a pick-up time with the skipper and, like a frail, old person, I was helped ashore by many hands. The island is in the care of the National Trust for England and I was greeted by very friendly young rangers. All of them had been delighted to come and work and live on Inner Farne for most of the year because of a keen interest in wildlife. One young man had a pair of binoculars around his neck and, as he talked to me, he often looked through them at something distant. None of them seemed to know much about Cuthbert, and when I asked to see the remains of his hermitage, no one knew where to look.
To the Island of Tides Page 27
