Malpas Veryan and his companion, Nicholas Tynant, had taken rooms in the slightly larger of the two hotels, and Edward and Lilian Saltergate had booked in at the other. Both parties were old acquaintances and, although they could hardly be called close friends, a mild tolerance existed between them, although they were not attached to the same university. Dr Susannah Lochlure had joined the staff at Edward Saltergate’s college and the two girls mentioned in Bonamy’s letter to his godmother were nominally in her charge and shared a hired caravan with her for what was anticipated to be the time which would be spent on the work on the castle ruins.
On this first full morning at Holdy, however, nobody felt any inclination to begin labouring on the hill, so, having fraternised over dinner at Veryan’s hotel on the previous evening, the whole company, including Bonamy and Tom, was now a few miles from the castle at a quiet strip of the coast about halfway between Holdy village and the town of Holdy Bay.
Malpas Veryan, a long, lean man with a talent for complete relaxation when he was not feverishly working, was sprawled on the cliff-top, his eyes closed against the almost intolerable blue of the sky. Beside him sat Nicholas Tynant, a more compact, athletic figure, pipe between his teeth and his arms round his knees while he watched the scene below him. Edward Saltergate, squatting on the firm sand, was using a bit of pointed stick to mark out a plan of what he thought Holdy Castle would have looked like before Cromwell’s artillery got at it, and the four women and the two young men, Bonamy and Tom, were disporting themselves in the ocean.
There were sea-pinks, the hardy tufts of thrift, in the little hollows and on the ledges of the cliff. On the cliff-top where the two dons were taking their ease, the short but untrimmed grass was scented with thyme. Occasionally Nicholas looked down at the painstaking cartographer below him, but for the most part he watched his Aphrodite as she challenged the waves.
Now and again a seagull flew past, but all the wading-birds, the ringed plovers, dunlin, sandpipers and sanderlings, had disappeared from the flat, wet shore, frightened away first by the bathers as these ran across the sands and into the sea, and then too deeply suspicious of the crouching figure of Edward to return for the molluscs, the small Crustacea, the marine worms and the rest of their natural food.
After a lapse of time which had been registered by nobody, Edward straightened himself and walked slowly round his sand-map. Then he walked to the edge of the water and called out to the bathers that he was ready.
Malpas Veryan sat up, Nicholas Tynant put his long-cold pipe in his pocket, and then both men got to their feet and, by means of a flight of wooden steps, descended the cliffs. In the sea, Susannah, with a flash of white arms, sculled shorewards on an incoming wave and the others soon joined her on the beach, splashing through the last of the ripples as the long, lazy, incoming tide followed them on to the sand as though reluctant to let them go.
The bathers picked up towels and began drying their hair and their arms as they followed one another up the beach, an incongruous quartet of women and two golden-armed Iollans, the graceful, straight-limbed youths.
‘The Spartans, on the sea-wet rocks,
Sat down and combed their hair.’
said Veryan.
‘ “I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn,” ’ said Nicholas, looking at the white limbs of his so-far unattainable beloved. The swimmers formed themselves into a semicircle around the sand-map. They continued rubbing their hair and arms, but the actions were automatic. Their interest was in what lay at their feet. Edward Saltergate expounded. He still held the sharpened stick with which he had been working and he used it now as a pointer.
‘Of course, this rough plan is on the flat,’ he said. ‘You may find it rather different when you tackle the real thing on the slopes of the hill. Here at the top is the keep. There is still quite a lot of it standing, as you saw yesterday afternoon. At the foot of my sketch-plan are the remains of the outer gatehouse, still rather impressive, and the remains of the walls of the outer bailey lie between these two buildings and enclose a large space of a very unusual shape.
‘In my survey last week, I made out the remains of the flanking-towers in this outer wall. I think there would have been ten of them altogether, and I do hope that we shall locate them all. The most important (and enough of it remains for identification) is this one at the end of the middle bailey. It would have been circular and, except for its entrance, enclosed. The other towers were semicircular and were merely lookouts and defence posts to prevent enemies from climbing over the walls.
‘There may have been a postern gate between the keep and the nearest lookout tower, but now there is nothing but a gap in the wall. On the opposite side there are some remains which may have been the old hall before a larger castle hall was built in the small enclosed inner bailey which also contains the keep.
‘There is a long, deep ditch, still plainly to be seen, between the outer bailey and the middle bailey, and we may be able to find the remains of the secondary gatehouse which would have been approached by a drawbridge, for the ditch acted as a dry moat. There would have been no direct access to the inner bailey from this direction. The entry from the middle bailey would have been round to the side in accordance with the strategy of the times, which tried to ensure that an attacker had to walk as far as possible and under constant threat from the besieged garrison before he was able to attempt to storm the last entrance to the castle. Any questions?’
‘No,’ said Veryan, ‘but your ditch is interesting.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Tom Hassocks. ‘What about the water supply?’
‘That’s a good question,’ said Edward. ‘In a place of this size, there would have been two, or possibly three, wells. A small stream runs past the foot of the hill, and there must be a spring or springs somewhere on the hillside as well. The builders of the Middle Ages were more knowledgeable about feats of engineering than is sometimes thought. They understood the use of water-towers and they knew how to pipe water from the source of supply up to their buildings. They used oak, elm and often lead for their pipes and my secondary interest is to see whether we can locate any of these underground conduits. They still should be in existence.’
‘Two or three wells, I think you said, sir,’ said Bonamy.
‘Choked with rubble by now, I fear, Mr Monkswood. One of our tasks will be to locate and partly clear them. Are you volunteering for what may prove to be a thankless task?’
‘You mean we are unlikely to locate them, sir?’
‘Oh, I have every hope of finding them. One was probably in the outer bailey near what I think was another postern gate guarded by its flanking-tower, and there was probably another in the keep itself, where there is a good chance that we shall locate it when we have cleared the interior of the building. Clearing the wells themselves will be a different and more difficult matter.’
‘Would there still be water in the wells?’ asked Tom.
‘I don’t see why not. Anyway, I have made a large plan in Indian ink of the site, and Dr Lochlure has said she is prepared to pin it up in her caravan in case anybody wishes to consult it, as the next tide will wash away this ephemeral picture we have here.’