The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley) Page 11

  “Perhaps. I don’t remember much more, but I woke up crying. Just before I woke I thought I was kneeling by the grave in the centre of the circle of stones and feeling an unbearable agony of grief for whoever was lying there.”

  “And was anybody lying there?” asked Laura with unusual gentleness.

  “Yes,” said Capella. “I myself was lying there. I was weeping at my own graveside.”

  “A very nasty dream.”

  “Yes, it was. I shall have to go to Callanish with you, after all, if only to break it. Mine was a ritual death. I knew that, and I didn’t want to be dead. I didn’t want them to take my blood to make the crops to grow.”

  “Dreams are the strangest things,” said Laura. “I’ve had the same experience in dreams—being detached from myself I mean, and able to see and understand what was happenning to the other me. Odd, that. I must ask Dame B. about it at some time. You mentioned seals. What happened to them?”

  “Oh, I remember now. After the dancing the men and the seal-women threw themselves on the ground and coupled.”

  “Ah, yes, sympathetic magic, like chucking a basinful of water skywards to give the rain a hint that it’s needed for the crops. Fertility rites always end up by increasing the tribal numbers. This is supposed to give the crops and the cattle a lead by way of indicating that they are required to grow and multiply.”

  “The seal-women were wonderful,” said Capella, halting and looking out to sea again. “They came up out of the water and as they advanced into the circle they turned into people, as I told you—glorious, beautiful people with great, burning, dark eyes and bodies which seemed clothed in light, and, oh, Laura, I longed to join them, but there I was, in my envelope of stone with the ‘other me’ looking on and I couldn’t get up and go to them, although I knew that was where I belonged.”

  “You know the poem, do you?”

  “The ‘envelope of stone,’ you mean?”

  “Yes. Dame B. has a hobby of reading modern poetry which, incidentally, she reads aloud most beautifully. You must have noticed what a lovely voice she has.”

  “The True Confession of George Barker?”

  “Yes. I found it and asked her to read it to me. She did, and then she turned up his In Memory of a Friend in Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book. Do you know that poem, too?”

  “Yes, indeed I do,” said Capella. “What about it?”

  “ ‘To those that love there are no dead, Only the long sleepers.’ So don’t worry about your dream any more.”

  “All the same, what do you make of that dream of hers?” Laura asked Dame Beatrice after dinner that night, when Capella had gone upstairs to finish unpacking.

  “The same as you do. She has seen a photograph of the Callanish stones at some time, and read the surmises about them.”

  “Still, you must admit it was a very strange dream.”

  “I had a patient once who dreamed he was hanged and in his dream he helped to cut himself down from the gallows. Talking of strange things, I had a strange encounter with Professor Owen’s cousin Catherine before she left the party. She seemed to think Capella was in some danger.”

  “But is she in danger?”

  “Possibly, but more probably not.”

  “You insisted on detaching her from the rest of the party.”

  “Only as a precautionary measure. More important is the fact that Miss Catherine has interpreted a warning I gave her in a way that I did not expect. It might have been better had she come with us to Lewis.”

  “She had her lecture tour to think about.”

  “It was last-minute thinking, though, wasn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 9

  CALLANISH AND THE BLACK HOUSE OF ARNOL

  “It is mighty curious, Huck. I don’t understand it.”

  Mark Twain

  Except that they were seldom out of sight of a house, the scenery on the drive next day to Callanish might have depressed the travellers. The island was given over to hundreds of tiny crofts, none of them covering more than a few acres. Each had its neat pile of turf for fuel, beautifully stacked near the dwelling, and the houses themselves surprised Laura. Although most of them were neighboured by the original croft cottage, now untenanted and crumbling into ruin, the occupied houses looked well-built, modern, and indicative of moderate prosperity on the part of the owners.

  The crofts themselves looked non-productive. Potatoes were grown, Laura supposed, but probably only enough of them for each family’s own use. Here and there she noticed patches of barley and sometimes there were chickens and sometimes a few sheep and she wondered how the inland population, those who were not fishermen, managed to make a living. Some of them, no doubt, were employed at the Stornoway airport which (with a change of aeroplane here and there en route) connected the island with Benbecula, Inverness, Glasgow, and London. Other islanders probably worked for the shipping company which ran the ferry service or had jobs on the mainland, while the oil-rigs provided employment for others.

  The outing was conveniently planned as a circular tour. After Callanish the car would follow the coast road northwards to Arnol and then cross the island back to Stornoway from Barvas with its fine salmon river and its superstition that if a woman was the first person to ford the river on May Day, this would bring bad luck to the fishing and the season’s catch would be a poor one.

  The sad-looking few miles of peaty moorland having been covered in excellent time, for there seemed to be no traffic on the roads, the car pulled up in a by-road almost at the end of the long double row of standing stones which Capella had referred to as the only complete avenue. It was not entirely complete, in that there were noticeable gaps here and there from which stones had been removed, but the rest of the scene was as the girl had described it.

  “I don’t believe any photograph a child had seen would have made such an impression on her mind that she would have had such a clear recollection of it, even in a dream,” said Laura to Dame Beatrice, “I thought it uncanny when she told me about it and I think it still more uncanny now that I’m seeing the place for myself.”

  Capella had walked away from them and was standing with her right hand resting on a tall grey stone at the end of the unfinished western arm of a complex which did indeed bear a striking resemblance to a Celtic cross with the circle of thirteen stones as its centre.

  “Well,” said Dame Beatrice, “we have seen nothing like this before.”

  The site had a mystic awesomeness about it, for the stones had the strangely striking appearance of stark and ravaged humanity. Laura commented upon this.

  “I’ve read about this place,” she said. “There are the usual legends, of course. The islanders call the stones Fir Bhreig, false men, and say they were once giants who inhabited the island and refused Christian baptism, so St. Kieran turned them to stone. There is also a story about a white cow which came up out of the sea and gave a pailful of milk every day to the island women until a witch came with a sieve and milked it dry.”

  “Strange how legends repeat themselves in the folklore of people who cannot have met one another. There was the cow Adumla in Scandinavian myth. She came up out of the ice and found a saltlick and licked it into a hole from which emerged the Norse gods, Odin, Thor, Baldur, Loki, and the rest, said Dame Beatrice, “and there are many legends of men turned to stone either by the power of witchcraft or as a punishment for misdeeds, and this applies to women also. Shall we join our young friend? She looks as though she had gone into a trance.”

  “I’m not sure we did the right thing in bringing her here. I don’t wonder she’s a bit peculiar.” She was telling me the other day that her father makes his living by contributing chunks of written matter about the occult and other mysterious topics to journals which cater for the many-headed who like such things. The kid was probably brought up on ghost-stories and fairy-tales. Incidentally, I’ll say, with my usual boldness, that the Irish are the only people who have ever really understood fairies, to know w
hat they are like.”

  They had been walking up the northern, almost complete avenue of stones and had reached the circle. They crossed it and, passing the row of single stones which formed the unfinished top of the cross, ascended the knoll from which they could see the waters of Loch Roag.

  “The Irish?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, yes. They had no truck with little people with wings and wands. The leprechauns, I suppose, are their substitutes for those. No, the Irish saw the fairies as the ‘great host of the Sidh,’ taller than human beings and of great, though terrible beauty, the ‘shining ones,’ the ‘lordly ones who live in the hills, in the hollow hills.’ The chap who wrote that song knew all about them.”

  They returned to the stone circle. There had been a cairn there, but excavation had left little trace of it, except for the small cist which had been part of a passage grave. Dame Beatrice remained in comtemplation of it while Laura walked over to Capella, who was still leaning against her thin grey pillar of Lewissian gneiss.

  “Well,” she said cheerfully, “that was some dream of yours! Are you sure you never saw this place before?”

  “I certainly never did, except in my dream,” said the girl, “and perhaps a photograph I have forgotten.”

  “Join us, won’t you?”

  “Yes, in a minute, when you’ve looked into the tomb and are sure there’s nothing there.”

  “There can’t be. If there was, Dame Beatrice would notice it. I’ll wave my handkerchief to give you the all-clear, anyway, when I’ve had a look.”

  “You’re very understanding. Most people would laugh at me.”

  “I’m a Highlander. Besides, half the people on these islands claim to have second sight. You may be the sort of person who kind of breathes in the atmosphere of a place.”

  “Well, at any rate, there is nobody dodging about behind the stones. The strange thing is that now I’m here—in the flesh, I mean, instead of in my dream—I don’t really feel afraid any more. I don’t feel a bit like I felt at Castlerigg. That was terrifying, because I saw the dead body lying in that rectangle of stones, I know I did.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve wondered that myself, but I simply don’t know.”

  Laura went back to Dame Beatrice, who was still looking at the tiny chambered tomb with its eighteen-foot guardian stone appearing to loom over it. She was peering down at the two little compartments separated by stone slabs. There was nothing whatever in the tomb. Laura took out her handkerchief and waved it. Capella hesitated for a moment and then walked forward and joined them.

  “No, there is nothing here,” she said, looking into the hole.

  “This isn’t the only stone circle hereabouts,” said Laura, “but it’s by far the most complicated and perfect. Why don’t we go and have a look at the others and then come back here for purposes of comparison? We’ve plenty of time.”

  “I’d like that,” said Capella.

  “You didn’t dream about the other circles?” asked Laura, as the two of them followed Dame Beatrice to the car.

  “No. I saw this one and my dead body and the seal-women, and I saw the priest-king, but they were all on this one site, and there can’t be another one like it.”

  To find the other stone circles involved going back on their tracks for about a couple of miles to an oval, about forty feet by thirty, which had a low central stone and a cairn. This circle could have been seen on their outward route, but the other two circles—one exceptionally large when it was constructed, and now almost in ruins—were off a road which went south of the Stornoway route and was almost on the sea-shore. The other, a little further inland, was a concentric circle with the tallest stones forming the inner ring.

  None of them had the grandeur and the mystery of Callanish with its strange suggestion of being planned in the shape of the symbol of Christianity, and with its central ring, its one complete and three vaguely suggested avenues of stones and its small double-cist grave guarded by the tallest stone of all.

  “Dashed weird, this set-up,” said Laura, when they returned. “There’s no possible comparison between this and the others. Still, I’m glad we’ve seen the lot. There must have been quite a settlement here in the early times.”

  “Climatic changes altered things,” said Capella. “There are five feet of peat on top of the good earth now, except where they’ve dug it out from around the stones. It used to be warmer when I lived in these parts before.”

  Laura made no comment. Dame Beatrice walked to the car and sat in it while the other two walked to the knoll and looked across to where the waters of Loch Roag, sheltered by the island of Great Bernera, washed against the pre-pelagian shore. Capella pointed.

  “That’s where the seals came from. This is where I stood in my dream. The grave was not there then. It came later.”

  This was not quite the same story as the one she had told before.

  “So you did not see the heaped-up cairn,” said Laura.

  “No, I did not see the cairn, and I don’t know whether it was heaped over me or over the priest-king when he died. I will tell you something, though, Laura. Not only had the cermonies some connection with water—you will have noticed that the stones we have seen are never very far from the sea or a loch or a river—but what is done must be done in the presence of the dead.”

  “Yes, I’ve read that, too,” said Laura. “I think we must have read the same books, you know. You must have got through a lot of indigestible books at an early age for them to have made such an impression on your mind.”

  “You think that’s the explanation of my dream, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’s a reasonable one, in my view.”

  “I should like to believe it, but it doesn’t explain that flitting figure at the other stone circles. Did you read about Callanish specially? I mean, did you and Dame Beatrice always mean to come here instead of seeing the things at Clava?”

  “I believe I hankered after Callanish and I have seen the Clava stones. Besides, they were not on the original itinerary. We expected to visit Callanish.”

  “I am glad I came. It has broken my dream in a way.”

  “You’re too imaginative by half. I must say that your dream must have been very vivid, but everything you described is in the books, albeit a lot of it is archaeological guesswork. Well, I wonder whether we ought to be making tracks? We’ve still got to visit the Black House of Arnol, and I’m beginning to think I can do with my lunch which I can’t have until we get back to the hotel.”

  She was also beginning to think that it was not such a bad thing, after all, to have brought Capella to Callanish. The girl now seemed relaxed and cheerful. At Capella’s next remark, however, she changed her mind again.

  “Yes, we must go,” said Capella. “That tall stone which guards the grave doesn’t want us here any longer. There is one thing that I don’t understand. In my dream there was not one stone circle here, but two.”

  “Yes,” said Laura, once more relieved. “Yes, there must have been. I myself have read about them, but only two of the outer circle remain and the theory is that a later wave of people did a certain amount of alteration here to make the site possible for the celebration of their own religious rites. They may have been the tribe which made that chambered tomb. It’s obviously later than the rest of the set-up and it’s possible that its guardian stone was set up when the tomb was made, and not earlier. Can you see what I mean about an outer circle? Let your eye travel from that single stone at the north-north-east, which most people think is part of the main avenue. It isn’t. If you follow round between the first and second stones of the eastern arm of the cross, and, keeping the same distance outside that ring which is still standing, you should be able to pick up another solitary stone to the west of the unfinished south avenue. Got it?”

  “Yes, and that explains my dream. And now as you say, we must go. I’d love to come here again, and I’ve shed all my fears. I’m thankful
, too, that Stewart isn’t with me.”

  On the drive to Arnol Laura wondered whether the girl had told the truth about not wishing for Stewart’s company. If Capella was in love and her feelings were reciprocated, puzzling dreams of death and a dual personality would soon be half-submerged memories, she thought.

  Capella said, but not to anyone in particular, “Well, I’m also thankful we have shed our interloper. There certainly was no sign of anybody flitting from stone to stone at Callanish. Stewart teased me about it, but Sister Veronica saw it, too.”

  “Odd business, that,” said Laura. “I heard about it from him and also from Catherine, and, if anything could be said about that redoubtable lady’s attitude to the rumours, I’d say they made her very uneasy indeed.”

  “She did not tell you, I suppose, that she, too, had seen our extra member?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “No,” Laura replied, “she did not claim to have seen anything except one or two other legitimate visitors like ourselves, but she said she had heard the stories and she even hinted that if our party had been augmented on one or two occasions she could make a guess at the identity of the interloper. All this came out before her Truth Game paper was stolen.”

  “If anybody had said anything to Catherine,” observed Dame Beatrice, “it would have been the mischievous Stewart, I suppose.”

  “If there was any living person who had attached herself to our party, Professor Owen would have seen her, I think,” said Capella.

  “Her?” said Laura. “You said you did not know whether whatever you saw was male or female.”

  “What I saw was an apparition,” said Capella in a slightly higher tone than was usual with her. “Whoever it was, it was alive in its own sphere, but that sphere is not ours. I don’t know why I am suddenly sure it was a woman I saw.”

  The road to Arnol skirted Loch Roag again and passed or crossed some small inland lochs, then swung away from the coast at Carloway and proceeded north-eastwards until it almost met the open sea again. Then there were more inland lochs, the River Arnol, and then the village itself and its Black House, relic of a more primitive age but one almost within living memory.