AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But it had given him another superb plan, which he was working on in his head at the same time as annoying Ben and reading headstones. Maybe he could enquire where all the Russian yachts were being held by the German lizard and…buy one. Now he was so superbly English. It seemed almost patriotic. It was more practicable than finding an island with an airstrip, anyway, although, obviously, Ben could learn to fly a helicopter and hecouldbuy one of those.
Aleksey didn’t have good memories of travelling in these machines, however. As with motorcycles, every time he’d gone in one, someone had been trying to kill him. It was very unnerving listening to pilot chatter that included the wordStingerin any context.
Being six foot four didn’t help either. Everyone ducked under the blades. Some people actually had to.
‘Look at this one.’
Aleksey dutifully glanced to where Ben was examining a neatly tended stone, and consulting a pamphlet. ‘These graves are all from shipwrecks off this coast. Just unknown bodies washed up on the rocks. That’s not a good way to go.’
Better than being a Russian shot down in Afghanistan, trust me.‘Hmm. I suspect there might be touch of guilt in the careful burying and marking of the spot.’
Ben nodded and conceded, ‘Wreckers,’ but added swiftly, ‘Not the church-goers though.’
Aleksey ruffled his hair but pointed up to the top of the steeple. ‘Highest point around for the false light to be put? To mimic a lighthouse? Life was harsh.’
Ben ignored this as usual and nudged him. ‘Museum?’
Aleksey sighed, but it was a pretty half-hearted attempt to appear reluctant. A museum about sailing and shipwrecks? Did he want to see it? Ben saw through his deceit and quirked his lip.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
It was a bit of a walk down to the museum, which lay below the cliffs upon which the old manor house where they’d had lunch sat. Aleksey tried to distract himself and Ben with fascinating observations about the unique geological features of the place, but knew he was wasting his time. Ben wasn’t interested and his leg hurt. The museum was definitely worth the pain, however. It was an old whitewashed building, built of the same stone as the quay upon which it sat. On the lintel were carved the wordsFrom Pentire Point to Hartland Light, a watery grave by day and night. Reading this aloud, Ben asked, ‘Where’s Pentire Point?’
Aleksey never liked admitting he didn’t know something so ushered Ben in through the low doorway.
The museum was fairly quiet, but there were some older tourists wandering around, probably taking advantage of the lower prices for accommodation in Devon and Cornwall beforegrockle seasonarrived.
The earliest record of a wreck, and thus the first exhibit, was from 536 AD, which astounded Ben. Aleksey was fairly sure he was going to say that they didn’t have boats then, or that England didn’t exist, so circumvented the moment for him by saying conversationally, ‘It is fairly widely believed that Jesus came to Cornwall, and that would have been more than five hundred years even before this wreck.’
‘I’m not falling for it. It’s not funny.’
Aleksey was highly amused by this reaction. He supposed this is what you got when most of what you said was utter bullshit. ‘Honestly. He came with his uncle who was a tin trader. You can look it up. Ask Martin, your faith guru. He’d know.’
Ben was still frowning over this as they viewed pieces of wreckage from a shipLa Trinitefrom Normandy, which had been boarded by a local landowner and seized. The Norman captain had objected to this, not surprisingly, so the baron, Ralph de Beer, had cut the anchor line; the ship had drifted onto the rocks, and he’d claimed his prize that way.
The next display gave them pause for thought. There was a graphic depicting an elongated figure in a cloak wearing what appeared to be a bird’s beak on his face. The description read Wreck of theLes Droits1347. Under that wasThe sailors brought in their bones a disease so violent that whoever spoke a word to them was infected and could in no way save himself from death.
‘Bloody hell.Look at that picture. People dancing with skeletons.’
Aleksey put his reading glasses on. ‘According to local legend, Les Droits was the ship that brought the plague to England. The Black Death.’
‘Wow. Plague ridden survivors of a wreck crawling to land covered in pustules. I bet the wreckers regretted that one.’
‘According to this they had recorded outbreaks here in Cornwall a year before the better known 1348 ship that came into Dorset. I wonder if any of these original French carriers were buried here in the church.’
‘Fucking hell, listen to this:In 1349 over six hundred men came to Totnes… They came from the Land of the Heart where they had encountered a great storm, which brought them to our land. Each wore a cap marked with a red cross in front and behind. Each had in his right had a scourge with three nails. Each tail had a knot and through the middle of it there were sometimes sharp nails fixed. They marched naked in a file, one behind the other and whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked bleeding bodies.That’s a translated contemporary account by someone called Juhel de Totnes.’
‘Normally I would say don’t swear at me, but, yes, I agree, fucking hell.’
‘That’s sad, look, a woodcut of a family watching a little child being led away by a skeleton. Jesus. That could be Molly. Imagine living through something like this.’
Aleksey was struck by something Ben had said and turned to look back towards the door, as if he could see further—up the cliffs and away to Dartmoor. ‘I think if you took a direct line from here to Totnes, if this is Land of the Heart as this contemporary report implies, then I think you would go right across Dartmoor. And…our valley.’
‘Do not! Do not start with your lines and omens and the joining of weird dots. Don’t do it!’
‘I wasn’t! I was merely pointing out an interesting fact.’
