I have spent so much time in graveyards. Not because I have any morbid desires. But looking, seeking something to give me the connection I need. A touch, a feeling of belonging. A comfort perhaps?
Yes, a comfort. Just the merest hint of a mercy. Also I seek, always looking and yet not with any real expectation that I might find that which I seek.
I read the gravestones, the ones that can be read, and mourn for the lives they mark. And the deaths. I can see how long they lived. And often, who they buried.
I know everyone dies, and most of them are buried, but the order they were buried? How old they were. And how many were so young. That wounds me in my soul. How many parents have buried children?
And that can never be a good thing.
And ever and anon the message is a little more subtle. I’ve seen ‘killed’ followed by a date and wondered, ‘what happened here?’ A war? Some accident or disease, or mayhap, a crime? Some dastardly action by the wicked against the weak?
Over the years I’ve passed through many graveyards. Too many to count. Too many to remember, but each only once, I’m sure of that. There have been hundreds, thousands of graves, each holding a soul, or often times several. I’ve made my peace with them. Bade them farewell on their journey, before continuing on mine.
The Church of St. Mary at Penwortham is an old church, a comforting church. It’s one I might have prayed in and felt welcomed. The age of a place like that is not measured in the stones that make the walls, nor the timbers that make the roof, nor the records kept by the priest. That church is built on an even older site. I can feel the ages seeping up from the soil and surrounding me. The parish goes back to before the Bastard conquered this land. It served as a place of prayer when the Danes ravaged the lands around, and maybe even before that, when the Gods that were worshipped were not my God..
I could see that the gravestones round the church were marked with dates hundreds of years gone. But I was not looking for those, even though I visited and offered what simple comfort I could to each of those interred beneath them.
There is one that might bear some particular significance to me. Mentioned seldom, but with some certainty.
One gravestone, lacking a name or even a date, yet titled ‘crusader headstone’.
And I sought it here.
Seventy paces in one direction and two hundred and five in the other, I found neither sight nor clue to where my quarry might be. I read every stone and passed my hand gently across each and wished those present a safe passage. Some may still have remained there.
But none answered me.
When you have sought as long and as far as I, despair cannot be allowed into your heart. Neither false hope nor deep sadness can I carry with me.
I turned to the church itself. There are few crusaders laid to rest in the hallowed grounds of such a small country chapel, surely such a thing would be signed.
The door was barred, so I passed around the boundary of the building, hoping and praying for help.
As I passed to the north side of the church I felt the first faint stirrings of hope.
Incorporated into the wall was a long slab of cold, hard stone, scratched with two marks.
Marks that were faded by years and weather, hard to see unless you looked for them.
And I looked for them. The rough sandstone edges were softened by lichen and moss. But the marks; a flowered cross in a circle and a sword, faint though they were, spoke of a martial remembrance.
I found it late in the afternoon of that damp and dreary December. I had almost given up. But I stopped and offered a brief prayer of thanks, finally allowing those first stirrings of hope to grow in my breast. I ran my right hand across the coarse surface, following the incised markings, and thought of the centuries past since some unknown mason had ground those lines. Where was he now, that artisan? Gone to his fate, leaving these marks for future ages to see and to touch.
A shiver ran down my spine and I knew I had found my goal.
I heard nothing, no step, nor rustle of clothing. There was silence, even the birds were gone, and the wind that had been rustling the trees had died. everything in that moment seemed dead; birds, wind, trees, all gone to follow that mason on his doom.
I stepped away from the wall and saw to my right a tall figure, dressed in mail and wearing the crusader’s cross on his surcoat. The cloth tattered, torn and stained. Bloodied even, and his face scarred, a deep wound across the left of his head. Blood, not oozing but dried, a deep shade of brownish-red made a crust down on to his neck and shoulder. He held the hilt of his sword in his right hand, the tip resting on the ground as though he lacked the strength to wield it.
I was shocked, not afraid but startled, graveyards hold no terror for me. I had hoped but never expected to see this soul from so long ago. After that long search, to find my goal was all I had desired.
He swayed, I took a step back and he a step forward, towards the stone embedded in the wall. He looked at me, his eyes dark and piercing and I felt the pain he carried. Not the pain from his bodily wounds, he was well beyond those. But the pain from his soul, yearning for something that was missing from his life. Or was it from his death? He reached out, his left hand followed my gesture as he stroked across the surface of the stone. I could sense the misery of one who had lost the comfort of a holy thing. The marker and remembrance of his body, of his worth, of his sacrifice. Now removed from his resting place and used as common building material.
We remained, frozen in that moment, he with his hand on the stone, me watching and feeling and sharing in his loss, until eventually he turned and walked back into the gloom of the graveyard. I followed him close by and together we faded from the view of those still living, who might have seen us.