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Having completed a rough sketch, he munched on a cold bacon sandwich. The flies harried him, and he swatted them away with his paintbrush. He glanced up and frowned. The weather was changing quickly. A bank of translucent clouds was forming, and the haze was like a pale lavender field suspended in the sky. The sun was barely visible. He might need an umbrella. But he didn’t own one of those either.
Sixteen
Bowes
Braithwaite hadn’t bothered with an entry for Bowes Castle. I wasn’t surprised. It was a simple keep with nothing to explore, no winding staircases or towers, nor dungeons beneath. The only issue had been the presence of the painter. He had stood right in front of the turret containing the latrines, the very thing Medici had wanted photographing. Why Medici had picked the banal feature was a mystery. Another one of his quirky requests, but if that was all he required, then at least Bowes should have been quick. Except it wasn’t. I had to wait for the guy waving his paintbrush around his head to budge from the crucial viewpoint.
Giving up, I left the site, bought a sandwich, and sweltered in the car.
I moaned to Yvette via text.
I’m melting!
The reply arrived ten minutes later.
We all are. It’s due to thunder tonight.
Thank God.I emptied a water bottle down my parched throat and started another. The hour hand moved on my watch. He had to have finished by now.
Ring me, tonight. Where are you staying?
B&B in Darlington. Couple who bicker constantly. Quite entertaining.
The issues were trivial and piled up in rapid succession, as if not arguing was a scary state of affairs. The tension in the house drifted up and down the stairs in tune with their quiet undulating voices. At night, they had fallen silent, although I was convinced I’d heard a rhythmic creaking.
After Meg, I had, for the purpose of staying on top of my emotions, procured a thicker skin. The people I encountered on my journey were snapshots, like photographs. If I had chosen to keep a journal, I could have filled the pages with insubstantial character sketches and fleeting descriptions of life. I certainly wouldn’t forget them, and they had the potential to colour the life I might choose to live.
The relatively short time on the road had widened my perspective. The big city life wasn’t for me; the realisation wasn’t a surprise. I hadn’t felt a spark of anything in Newcastle. As for Durham Cathedral, while the Norman architecture was grandiose, the churn of people through the great doorway had given me no opportunity to absorb and reflect. Ruined abbeys were likely to be better suited to my “gift”.
While I waited, I returned to Medici’s last message. It’s odd wording haunted me still. What had he meant by my need for inspiration and persevering? Was he hinting, possibly implying, that I should seek out my visions? There was that word again – seek. Bowes was a shell, and my mind was empty too. I wasn’t fascinated in the slightest by the stonework. The heat further lowered my expectations. I wiped my brow with a damp handkerchief and rummaged in my rucksack. What else could be coming my way? Next up was Barnard Castle, which according to Braithwaite…
High above the River Tees, cut into the rocky cliffs, Barnard Castle is named after its builder Bernard de Balliol. The castle passed into the hands of the Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, during the War of Roses. His plans to enlarge and expand the castle came to nothing when he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth. The boar, Richard’s armorial emblem, is carved into the oriel window…
Another bloody oriel window!
I put aside the guidebook. Preparation for tomorrow’s trip wasn’t stimulating either. A glance at my watch resulted in a sigh of frustration. I had one hour before Bowes closed its gates to visitors. I slammed the car door shut and re-entered the castle’s grounds.
Fortunately, the spot under the wall was empty and I planted the tripod on the trampled grass where the painter had stood and used exactly the same vantage; the upward angle was perfect for a vanishing point somewhere in the hazy sky.
Perspiration glued my t-shirt to my back. On the horizon, the strangely ominous clouds, purple and heavy-looking, barrelled into one another, blocking out the sun. Not a leaf moved, and the birds stopped singing. Alone at last, my mind was open and absorbent like a dry sponge. I didn’t know why, given my doubts and lack of faith, but I needed it to happen. I needed an entertaining vision, triggered by some kind of spell that bound me to the past. It would surely be a respite from the frustrations of the present.
I swayed, feeling it enter me like an ethereal mist. Where would I end up? I had no idea. I allowed myself to float away, surrender to the paths of history. No horn this time. What I heard was like a deep rumbling. The earth below my feet vibrated up into my knees. I touched the arid ground with my palm and felt the movement. Flat on my back, the shaking spread along my spine. Above my head, the sky went dark, illuminated only by explosions of light. The booms smashed against the castle wall, stones flew in all directions, but none of the shrapnel struck me. I wasn’t really there. I never was.
The air tasted of blood. My nostrils singed and burned with the smell of gunpowder, sulphur and smoke. All around me were the cries of men in panic and fear, although I saw no figures. I had conjured up battle scenes before and heard the whistle of arrows in flight, but none of those daydreams captured the raw terror, the pandemonium of a tower under siege. I was among the hectoring assailants and not within the walls defending. Nowhere was safe from missiles flying through the air and there was no escape from the stench of boiling oil and tar pits. The flashes of light were fleeting and blinding, and if there was anything to “see”, it was the silhouette of the castle’s crenelations and the crossbow bolts on route to their targets.
The spell ended abruptly, possibly it had lasted mere seconds. The rough vibrations ceased, and I felt instead the shards of prickly grass through the fabric of my t-shirt. Cannon fire faded into nothingness, only to be replaced by the rumble of thunder.
I had been wrong about boring Bowes. Something had happened here and left its presence, an echo of a battle, and my imagination had seen it, bringing the carnage back to life. War wasn’t the past I craved to see. Jousts and feasts, the laughter of folk making music or dancing, the kiss of courting couples or the tales of the travelling Chaucers; these were my flights of fancy, the indulgence of my daydreams, not this horror that left me rigid on the ground.
Why were my visions increasingly gruesome and filled with foreboding? I’d become afflicted by something, or maybe somebody. Was it possible other people’s emotions were influencing my moods? Rising to my feet, I stared at the flattened grass, the tiny specks of dry paint on the wilted blades. I knew exactly who had stood on this spot an hour earlier. There was no denying it: this new conduit was open and active, no matter how much I tried to pretend I wasn’t receptive to it and whether a gift or plain madness, I seemed to have less and less control over my daydreaming.
The pit of my stomach ached not with hunger but the familiar sensation of nausea that came with worry. Insanity, the medical version of madness, had I inherited it? Would I end up institutionalised, like my grandmother? I raked my trembling hands through my damp hair, feeling the heat of my scalp, and yet I had a strange urge to shiver, as if a fever had taken hold of me.
Now I was imagining the worst kinds of things.
Enough, Robyn.
The simplest solution was the best: castles had much more to do with war and death than my charming folk tales of medieval life.
