Kieron Humphrey

The Undiscovered Country

    The first I knew of William was the rumbling in my chest. It was a blustery day yet that voice surged forward, powerful as the old alarum:
    “Mood quickened mind, and a man of wit,
    cunning in rings, bound bravely the wallbase
    with iron, a wonder.”
    What a voice it was. It could have come straight out of the longhouse or the keep, cleaving its own tunnel through silt and rock and time.
    “Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,
    high, horngabled, much throng-noise;
    these many mead-halls men filled
    with loud cheerfulness.”
    I turned and there, standing on the low wall below the lighthouse, was the blackest man I had ever seen. I did not notice how handsome he was at first because in the act of stepping down he caught his foot and teetered alarmingly. I darted forward and grasped him by the waist. He was strangely light, like a rotten bough, and I swung him down easily before he could topple. One of the ladies sniffed loudly.
    “I’m so sorry,” his mouth was close enough to my ear for me to feel its warmth.
    “No need.” I moved away slightly to get a look at his face. He had a long, straight nose and deep furrows in his cheeks. I pictured a knife slicing young skin. “Would you like to sit down?”
    “Oh no! I wouldn’t want to delay all these fine women,” he pronounced it woe-men, “and they will be anxious to get started, as I am myself.”
    “You’re here for the Vikings in East Anglia?”
    “For the Vikings, for the sea and for you.” His laugh was like a scale on a bassoon and I sensed rather than saw the ladies tuck their disapproval back inside their sensible coats. “I booked at the last minute. William Wodolo, at your service.”  He smiled and our hands embraced.

     “It’s a sell out!” babbled Barney down the phone in early March. I failed to detect any irony in his tone. “We could add more dates, I mean, if you wanted to; it’s a great way to market the book…”
    “Barnaby,” I fired his name into the mouthpiece, “if I want dates I’ll go to Saudi Arabia. You need to concentrate on getting me to America. That’s where I’ll find a nice, discerning billionairess to fund the department. Preferably one on her last legs.”
    But America hadn’t happened. I put it down to lack of interest from Hollywood – unrivalled barometer of historical fashion. Achilles and Alexander, sign here; Bloodaxe, Forkbeard, don’t call us. Barney had added his dreaded dates and I gave myself up to the attentions of the ladies once a month.

    “Tell me, Professor, how did the berserkers…go…berserk?
    “Professor, when do you think we will learn the true importance of Ubba’s Hoard?”
    They didn’t see me. They saw ‘East Anglia’s answer to Indiana Jones’ (the publisher’s words, not mine) and longed to be part of the adventure. If they were disappointed that my hair was darker and my nose larger than on the book jacket, they concealed it well.
    “My niece is doing Archaeology and Mining at Durham. Sophie Taylor – such an attractive girl, I expect you’ll come across her sooner or later.”      
    William didn’t ask any questions. He stood perfectly still in the middle of the group, like the charred oak I could see from my bedroom window as a child. I knew he was concentrating because whenever I finished speaking he blinked appreciatively, as if the information was exactly what he required.
    Mid-morning, just after Edmund had been captured, killed and his corpse beheaded, I suggested we take a respite from the wind in a tea-room. William remained on the prom, face fixed in the easterly. When he saw me look at him and hesitate, he waved me away towards the warmth:
“The sea has been calling me for a very long time. I’d like to listen to its song while I have the chance.”
    Inside I let the steam from a tall glass of coffee drift onto my face and cool my skin. For once the ladies had left me on my own and I thought about the words he used: the song of the sea. Whose phrase was that: Coleridge? Wordsworth? Or was it older, ancient as The Ruin he knew by heart?

    “Unbelievable,” I said, “you’ve never seen it before?”
    He considered his answer, “No. On the television screen does not count. It does not fill your vision and suck you down into the swell or soak your soul with brine.”
    I had left the ladies clucking over their cappuccinos and gone out, at their insistence, to persuade him not to catch his death.
    “It’s all down to my father. He wanted his boys to be as educated as any man they met. He meant white man. Trips to the seaside weren’t on the curriculum. ‘One day you will look an Englishman in the face and he will see himself reflected.’ That was his motto.”
    “Where was he from?”
    “He was a Zulu, but he came to England at 18. The only Zulu in Brixton.”  He said it as if he was imitating someone else’s voice. “Probably the only African.”
    “A pioneer?”
    “Of the type without ironmongery, yes. He arrived in 1935.”
    The date took me by surprise. That made him 50, 60, possibly older. I examined him discreetly and saw that his tyre-black skin was worked with the tread of age, not ritual. Nearly as old as my father. Strange to admit it, but I felt an acute sense of disappointment.
    “He must have been tough…”
    “He was an actor of sorts. Are you familiar with early cinema?”
    “Not very: Wizard of Oz?”
    He clapped his hands together, “There’s an intriguing idea. Dorothy and friends find a poor negro who has no freedom. They know just the man who can restore it: the Wizard! Let’s give him a pointy white hat for good measure!”
    My forehead prickled guiltily. He must have thought me a complete fool.
    “There was a Director,” he continued, “a Czech, who wanted to make an African picture: honourable colonials, bad chieftains, one noble savage who sees the light. But no one filmed on location in those days – far too expensive - so they brought Africa to Shepperton instead. Two hundred black extras on the banks of the Thames.”
    “And your father was one of them?”
    “In the scene where the bad chieftain attacks the good chieftain my father is first through the barricade. He used to mime his great lion leap for us in slow motion, then the punchline: ‘Of course I ran bloody fast. Hanging around all day half-naked. I wanted to get warm!’ I suspect he wanted to make sure he got his own close up. He was very determined.”
    “So what happened to him?”
    “Leslie Howard turns up just in time to shoot him in the back,” he shook his head slowly.
    “I meant…”
    “I see, after the film,” he was laughing now and each note crashed on my chest like a breaker. “He had a taste for England by then. It gave him his independence. He cashed his return ticket and went to the labour exchange. ‘Porter,’ they said, ‘Railway?’ he said, ‘Can you read?’ they asked, ‘Yes,’ he lied, ‘Hospital,’ they said. That was when he realised that words were the key. He didn’t mind that some patients opened their eyes after an operation, saw this black-skinned monster towering over them and screamed for mercy as if they’d just woken up in hell. He didn’t mind the hand-wiping and the staring either. He was busy staring himself. The only thing which upset him was his ignorance: of nursery rhymes, of songs, of Shakespeare. The kind of thing you know from birth. He couldn’t join in and it made him feel inferior. He came home one evening and smashed every plate we had, simply because he hadn’t known George Eliot was a woman.”
    “She lived near where I grew up, as it happens,” I said without thinking.
    “South Farm, Arbury, then Griff House, then Bird Grove in Foleshill,” he flicked his eyes up so I could see the light in them. “If it’s got words, I know them. He did it to me. The Bible, Chaucer, the Bard, Keats, Shelley, Byron. He called us in one by one and tested us. Every mistake earned us a beating. I can see him sitting there puffing away on a pipe in his cardy and slippers. The pipe was to make himself more English. He’d sit in the haze and demand answers as if our lives depended on it.”
    I felt a sudden yearning to go back there and take his place. A line came to me, “We will always be misshapen in the eyes of our fathers.”
    He did not respond straight away, but unfolded his arms and looked at his upturned palms, “I knew I would never see an Englishman when I looked in the mirror – I would see my father, a Zulu, a warrior. I read more, further back, back to when white men were warriors too - The Song of Roland, Beowulf, The Battle of Brunanburh - and finally I arrived at Widsith.”
    “He who among men had travelled most in the world?”
    “Of course, you must have read it. I couldn’t fathom it at first. Where was the beauty in a list of tribes and chieftains? But I didn’t give up. I kept reading it, night after night, and I began to see that the names - Wald and his Woings, Saeferth and his Scygs – were not where the meaning lay. They were just stepping stones. Listen…” he paused and I heard gulls and waves, “that’s the real song. It’s the sound of undiscovered countries.”
    “But they don’t exist any more - everywhere is charted.”   
    By now the ladies were beginning to circle and he glanced around before he gave his reply, “So we must voyage inside ourselves. That’s why I want to follow Widsith,” his voice was low and urgent.
    “A poem?”
    “No,” his fingers suddenly snared my wrist, “a ship!” then the ladies could bear it no longer and closed around us like Viyella-clad Valkyries.

    “This stone,” I rested my hand on the boulder, “marks the location where Ubba’s Hoard was found. More than a thousand artefacts in gold, silver, copper, bronze, lead, leather and stone. The most important find in Anglo-Saxon history after Sutton Hoo.” But the words had no heat, like the sun on a late Autumn afternoon. “Under the system of Treasure Trove, the Hoard was acquired by the British Museum,” I counted the beats, “all of it except this item.” I drew my hand out of my pocket and uncurled my fingers. The ladies craned. “It doesn’t look like much, just a circular piece of copper.” Not even a flutter in my chest any more. “But if you observe closely you can make out the shape of a raven scratched onto the surface. That symbol linked the Hoard with Ubba, one of the most ferocious of the Viking raiders to plague this coast.” I could hear the cold weight of each word as it dropped. They would notice, surely? But the ladies were still poised, expectant, the last rays illuminating their complicated coiffeurs. Beyond them William, in perfect profile, looked seaward. Something inside me shifted.  
    “You can imagine Ubba and his pirates arriving at this spot on a day like this. They’re tired, the wind is sweeping across the dunes, it’s been a long day’s trek with heavy loads to carry. They can see their ship moored over there,” as I pointed the ladies turned as one. “They begin to relax because they know they will return home tomorrow,” William swung to look at me but I pressed on, “Suddenly there’s a commotion. Dogs barking and voices in the distance, but coming this way. Ubba jumps up, reaching for his sword, but he already knows his men are too tired to fight. He runs over here and sees the beck. There’s an overhang where the water has washed the bank away – he motions for them to pass him the largest sacks. As soon as the last one is in they slip down through the dunes and onto the longboat. ‘We’ll come back for it later,’ he tells his crew. But he never did.”
    “Why didn’t he come back?” the ladies were wide-eyed.
    “Was he killed?”
    “A storm?”
    “A traitor?”
    “Do you think he might have left it on purpose – as a memorial?” it was William. He could almost have been mocking me.
 
    On the way back to the lighthouse one of the ladies twisted her ankle. It came up like a rabbit inside a python. By the time we had hobbled her back to the coach park it was dark and there was rain in the wind. I hurried to unpack hardbacks from the box in the boot of my car but there were not many takers – I put it down to the cold. William was last in line.
    “I’m afraid I won’t have time to read your book. The ship…”
    “I understand. Time and tide wait for no man.” 
    “If you would like to see it…”
    “Really? That would be wonderful. When are you…”
    “I don’t know yet – I’ll get in touch.”
    I gave him my card and we shook hands, somewhat formally. Then he walked away towards the station. His coat made him look bulkier than he was and I remembered how light he had been when I held him.

    “… and so you see, time and tide wait for no man or woman, save the archaeologist!”  I brought my hand down sharply on the lectern and launched the academic year, as I had done for countless Octobers past. 
    I stepped back and assessed the hall. It was awash with young faces, eager and full of promise, as mine had been once, in Swansea. Unaccountably it had gone to plan for me. On my very first dig – at the Old Priory in Lewes – I bagged three skeletons and a leather flask in a shallow grave. It gave me my first paper: “The Drunken Monks Of Sussex” and I was off. Earthworks in Northumbria; a Roman rubbish tip in St Albans; a Saxon boatyard in the Fens. Every time I dug, the earth relaxed its grave-grasp. Human remains surfaced like Spring bulbs and gave up their secrets. I listened and learned and dug again. It was listening that led me to the Hoard.
    Some of my research team had been on survey near Southwold and literally stumbled on a skeleton. The lab confirmed that it was old, Viking old. When I viewed the site I couldn’t fathom it at all. Local people always buried their dead on high ground - no one liked to go fishing and end up hooking a corpse. Vikings made bonfires with theirs. So who was this solitary? What was he doing in that spot?
    I put the skull in my office and spent months staring into its yellowed sockets. Friends used to catch me at it and give me a curious look. The students started calling me the Prince. One day I was running late for a lecture and I realised I was missing my keys.  I ransacked my desk and still nothing. As I stood in the middle of the room, fighting for control, Yorick caught my eye. There was something different in his expression: a softness or a sympathy. He was looking towards the door. I opened it; I can’t say why except that he moved me somehow, and saw my keys still stuck in the lock.
    Within days I had assembled my best researchers, arranged permissions, drawn up plans and schedules. I did not need sleep. Nor did the team. We began to move with great speed. Our thoughts twisted together like strands in a rope. No one noticed that it had been raining for days. We were waterproof, we were invincible.
    On the ninth day my walkie-talkie crackled into life: “Richard, you’d better come and take a look. We’ve found something.” I wondered whether it was another false alarm: it was surprising how often a chunk of rusted farm machinery could fool someone once the adrenalin got to them.
    “What’ve you got – Andvari’s Gold?”
    “Don’t go tempting fate! We’re in the North-West quadrant. North bank of the stream.”
    As I jumped into the water, knee-deep with all the rain, I thought that this was how they all must have felt – Carter and Pitt-Rivers and Randy Sir Morty. This same balloon of anticipation swelling in their guts. It was what I craved more than the artefacts themselves. I bent down and used my torch to pierce the amniotic darkness of the hole.
    The balloon burst, as it had to, and shock and wonder flooded in.
 
    Ever since I had seen him disappear in the rain, William kept cropping up in the oddest places. At the swimming baths while I did lengths. Sheltering from the rain under an ash. Last thing at night before I went to sleep. I’d know it was him from the voice - not specific words - just the rumble, like hearing a goods train in the distance.
    One Thursday, quite near the end of term, I was sifting through my post and amongst the usual mail-outs there was a small handwritten envelope. As if to confirm my suspicion, I heard a low mahogany chuckle in the corridor behind me.
    The following morning I was driving towards London with the invitation on the seat beside me. It was short notice but that didn’t surprise me – William’s entire life had probably been a litany of last minute impulses. 
    ‘William Wodolo requests the pleasure” ran the first line, in a decorative Celtic script, ‘of your presence,’ I had smiled at the oddness of the style when I first read it, ‘at the launch of his ship, Widsith.’
    The street was easy enough to find – a wide crescent with Victorian terracing on the outside of the curve and enormous, ugly white blocks on the inside. Only then, seeing the cramped pavements with their overflowing bins, did I begin to feel uneasy. I was contemplating a stealthy retreat when I saw the number – on the terraced side.
    A woman opened the door. She looked like she had spent a lifetime crying. 
    “You here for William?”
    “Yes, is he here?”
    She must have thought I was daft but she moved towards me and put her hand on my arm.
    “It’s alright. Come in and get acquainted.”
    Acquainted? With her? She opened the door wider and guided me into the hallway. The polite rattle of china on china from a room to the right suggested a tea party. When I reached the doorway a number of faces turned in my direction - a few of them smiled in that tight-lipped way which expresses solidarity rather than pleasure. People shifted a little, as if slow-dancing, and a gap appeared through which I saw William, laid out on an old wooden stretcher. He looked old in death. There were clusters of lines on his forehead and around his eyes which must have been kept at bay by his voice. As soon as it ceased they had sprung into relief.
    Clenching my fists, I threaded my way out of the room, heard low voices and turned the other way, down a hall towards a door showing the orangey blue of city night in its panes. Outside I began to cry - torrents which choked me and made me gasp for breath. Head back, hallucinating, I saw a prow, unfurling like a banner above my head. I wiped my eyes and looked again. A row of torches, planted at intervals down the length of the garden, flickered orange. In their uncertain light I made out the ship’s lines, the formidable curve of its haunches and the mast, sturdy as a tree trunk. Smooth-planked and shield-sided, it rode on a sea of brushwood, each neat bundle fastened with twine. I stooped down and tested one of them against my hand. The door opened behind me and someone called out, “Don’t worry. It’s good and dry,” and then a laugh welled up from somewhere in the house, deep and long like the horns in the halls of Valhalla.

* * * * *

Biography

Kieron left a career in television to concentrate on writing fiction. He lives in a castle in Sicily with an orchard and a view of the sea in his imagination. According to Waterstones his work would – hypothetically - fill the gap between that of Keri Hulme and Leigh Hunt.

kieronhumph@hotmail.com