Following the Sun (33 page)

Whitby Abbey was founded about 657 by Oswy, one of the powerful kings of Northumberland, and was made famous by its first abbess, St. Hilda, who enlarged the community of monks and nuns and constructed new buildings on the site. The monastery flourished until about 687, when it was reduced to ruins by the raiding Danes. The community of monks dispersed, and the abbot fled to Glastonbury, taking the relics of St. Hilda with him.

The abbey's finest hour occurred in 664 when a synod of bishops met there to settle a long-standing dispute concerning the actual date of Easter, which had divided the Christians of northern England, who had been converted by the Celts, from Christians in southern England, whom the Romans had converted. Such small matters, and even so small a matter as the correct tonsure of Christian monks, mattered greatly to these early Christians and, of course, would matter even more after the Reformation. But in the seventh century the issue had become especially pressing to King Oswy, who followed the Celtic rule, whereas his wife, Queen Eanfleda, followed the Roman. After a month-long debate the king decided in favor of Rome, and the date of Easter was set as the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. All that remained was to predict exactly when the vernal equinox would occur.

This was easy enough in theory: You simply note when the day and night are equal length and then wait for the next full moon. The trouble came with the elaborate celebrations that would take place in the Christian church at Easter. Given the communication systems of the period, under the old method, there was hardly time to announce the holiday and prepare for the events. Furthermore, both the equinox and the full moon occur at different times at different places on the earth, which meant that there still was no general day of celebration—something that did not serve an institution such as the Roman Catholic Church, which was attempting to make claims to universal truths. As a result, in the twelfth century the popes, some of whom were greatly interested in astronomy themselves, encouraged a closer examination of the apparent motions of the sun and moon in the heavens and a means to enable them to predict far in advance when the vernal equinox would occur.

During this period, Europe was operating under the Great Compilation of Ptolemy, which had been introduced in Córdoba by Maimonides and Averroës in the tenth century and had spread through France and Italy. Under the Ptolemaic system, the earth sat at the center of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars circled around in perfect symmetry. In order to calculate the time of the return of the sun each spring, astronomers determined that they would have to lay out a meridian line, north to south, in some dark building with a hole in its roof. They had but to mark the spot on the line where light from the sun crossed at noon on the day of the vernal equinox, and observe how long the sun's noon image took to return to the same spot on the line a year later.

Buildings of the right sort already existed it turned out—the great Gothic cathedrals of Italy and France. And so astronomers laid out meridians in stone on the church floors, pierced holes in the cathedral roofs or high walls, and began studying the heavens inside the churches. In effect, the churches became solar observatories. The irony was that in the very house of the Christian God, at the center of church power, and no more than a few feet from the sacred altars of Christianity, astronomers uncovered the great flaws in the dominant Ptolemaic earth-centered system that had dominated Europe and church doctrine for four hundred years, and ended up proposing a solar-based system. This development eventually shook apart the rock foundation upon which the church was based.

In 1543, by studying ancient astronomical records, Nicolaus Copernicus determined mathematically that the sun must be at the center of the solar system, but he still accepted the Ptolemaic model that held that the planets move in perfect circles. Fifty years later, by studying the skies with a newly invented device, the telescope, Galileo determined that the Copernican heliocentric model was correct. But even though he privately taught the system to his students, he did not openly declare the doctrine, since it was diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church. In 1616, the system of Copernicus had been officially denounced as dangerous to faith. Word got out of Galileo's teachings and he was summoned to Rome and instructed to stop teaching the system. In spite of this pressure, in 1632 he published a work that supported the heliocentric theory. That brought down upon him the infamous courts of the Inquisition. He was recalled to Rome and tried, found guilty, and forced to recant, which he did. More or less. Legend holds that as he rose from his knees in front of the judges he mumbled “
Epur si muove
” (“Nevertheless it moves”).

Some four hundred years later, in 1992, the Church officially accepted the theory and apologized for its error.

One sultry August afternoon at Whitby, back in the late 1800s, a strange and sudden cloud enveloped the seas just outside the harbor and a violent storm swept in. By nightfall immense rollers were hurtling against the shore and watchers on the coast spotted a storm-tossed schooner, her sails tattered, rolling in toward the rocky coast. Those who knew the waters were certain she would ground out on the reef beyond the harbor and a searchlight was played upon the vessel. To their horror, observers saw that the ship was empty, save for a corpse lashed to the mast, its head lolling in the wash. Miraculously the schooner slipped through the harbor entrance, and with a mighty, jarring crash, struck the shore. At that moment, in the searchlight, watchers saw a huge dog leap from the bow and bound up the heights to a churchyard at the top of the cliffs. The schooner, the
Demeter
, turned out to be of Russian registry, and in the hold searchers found several oblong boxes marked “clay.”

Later in that same week, a local woman affected with sleep-walking wandered away from her bedroom at night and was found near the churchyard with two minor puncture wounds on her throat. She had been overwhelmed by a strange sleep. During this same period in Whitby, a certain tall, dark, and handsome nobleman from Transylvania appeared in the town.

Dracula was the invention of the nineteenth-century novelist Bram Stoker, but he has many of the qualities of the Zoroastrian god of darkness and evil, Ahriman, who heads a company of evil spirits and is the carrier of death and destruction. He is the opposite of Ahura Mazda, the all-wise, all-good, god of the sun and light, truth and goodness. Dracula is nothing if not a depressed character, a figure of melancholy—if depression and melancholy had a god, it would be he. He is, like depression, surrounded by darkness, clouds, graveyards, night doings, and a living death. All the words traditionally associated with depression are somehow related to this lack of light—a cloud hangs over one's head, the dark night of the soul, and the like. The same, of course, is true of the other Prince of Darkness, the Devil, and all of these figures, Dracula, Ahriman, and the Devil, have the same archenemy—the sun.

Innumerable movies have been made of Bram Stoker's Dracula story, but the one I like the best is the old 1940s version with Lon Chaney as Dracula. In this movie, there is a scene in the tombs of Dracula's castle in Transylvania in which the hero, Jonathan Harker, enters the underground chamber where the vampires rest by day in their coffins. Dracula rises up to attack and kill this invader, but as the evil lord of the castle approaches, our hero raises the crucifix. This drives Dracula into paroxysms of rage, but does not kill him. What defeats him ultimately is the sun. While Dracula is raging, Harker bounds to a tall window and tears off the darkening curtains; great dusty beams of light stream in, striking the vampire and forcing him, hissing and snarling, back into his coffin. Once Dracula is rendered powerless by light, Harker delivers the coup de grâce, the wooden stake through the heart.

I spent one more night in Whitby and then the next day began a hard slog across the high moors of Yorkshire, headed for the Swaledale, at the old bicycle man's suggestion. Immediately outside of Whitby the hills grew steep and precipitous, in some places so steep I was forced to dismount and push my bicycle up to the summit. High at the top of the moors the views across the countryside opened to the wide sky, with sharp, quiltwork, fairy tale hills, sheep meadows, banks of clouds in the western skies, and everywhere now the eerie descending cry of the curlews. I thought to stop early that day since it was such fine country, but had trouble finding a spot. There was no place in the little town of Grosmont so I pushed on to Egton, straight uphill for two miles through a lonely country, with very few cars, and once or twice a passing shepherd with his flock, one of whom I greeted. He stared at me somewhat aghast as if no one on earth had ever spoken to him before and then opened his mouth and pointed to it, indicating, I believe, that he was unable to speak. He had a good whistle though. I could hear him for miles, directing his dogs to work the flocks by means of his whistling.

Eventually I happened upon a quiet country inn beside a small river, with a stone courtyard, a dark wood-paneled pub, and a first-rate, civilized parlor. I had a late lunch and took a little walk along the riverbank to stretch my legs. Here, I was joined immediately and enthusiastically by two house dogs, a smooth-haired energetic Jack Russell terrier and a slow-moving shaggy black Scotty. We set out along the little path working our way upriver through grassy glades and groves of poplar, sloe, and larch. As I walked, the Jack Russell would dart off into the brush, shake something, and then trot on, hardly breaking stride. I went over to see what he was catching and found that he was killing water rats as we walked. Business as usual for him, I supposed.

The trail seemed to go on and on, and the light of the sun fell through the twisting tree leaves, and soon the glades ended and the trail began to climb into the hills. The Scotty turned back at this point, but the Jack Russell carried on with me, still scurrying off left and right, hunting vigorously. It was warmer now, I could hear the rippling river below me and the curlews above me in the hills, and the distant bells of the sheep and the air was filled with the sharp scents of the moors, and it was all fresh and sweet and charged with the glories of the high country of Yorkshire and its deep structure of legend and literature. This was, among other things, the country of the Brontës.

At one point I came to a sheltered spot among ferns and brake where the warming spring sun was beating down with full force. I lay back and folded my arms behind my head and felt the power of my deity on my face. Relaxing there in the benevolent warmth, I could understand why, here in the northern climates, the summer solstice celebrations were so festive, and why the early peoples would become so concerned about the sun's possible disappearance at the winter solstice.

That night at the inn I had one of the best meals I had had in England, a roast duckling and a good bottle of Chablis, and roast potatoes sprinkled with thyme, along with fresh green peas, wild leeks, and a basket of hot rolls with butter, followed by a salad and a little apple tart for dessert. I was offered coffee and brandy in the parlor and was prepared to accept the offer until I saw there another group of country gentlemen dressed in tweeds and smoking and milling around back and forth between the pub and the parlor. My immediate thought was to duck out—I feared more war stories abrewing—but one of them spotted me.

“You the chap with the old Peugeot?” he said.

Peugeot, I thought. He noticed my Peugeot. Maybe he's another bicycle man.

“Come and have a drink on us, lad. Any man that braves these bloody hills on an old machine like that deserves a dram.”

I couldn't hide, and this begat another night of heavy drinking that ended with full-bodied northern males slapping me back heartily and calling me laddy, and trying to get me to go trout fishing with them the next day in the fast-running rivers of the Yorkshire dales.

There was one shy fellow there nodding in agreement to nearly everything the big boys shouted out, and toward the end of the evening he came over and asked quietly where I had come from.

“Cádiz,” I said.

“Oh, Cádiz,” he said. “I would like to go to Cádiz. Someday I want to go back to see my people.”

“Your people are from Cádiz?” I asked. He was a sandy-haired fellow with sky blue eyes.

“Well long ago, yes.”

“And they immigrated to Yorkshire?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“But you have people there still?”

“Well a long time ago, you see. I lived there.”

It turned out he had lived in Cádiz in the tenth century, and had served as a musician in one of the early courts. He told me in a flat, matter-of-fact manner that he had fallen in with one of the caliph's favorite concubines, and they plotted their escape together. Their plan, he said, was to sneak her out of the harem on a dark night, leap over the city walls, and head to northwest Portugal, to those regions recently reconquered by the Christians.

“I had it in mind to convert, you see, and then marry under the Christian law. But our plot was uncovered.”

The poor innocent lamb, standing here before me, with his narrow face, somewhat bucked teeth, and tousled sandy hair, had been ignominiously dragged to the dungeons of the
alcázar
and beheaded with a huge curving scimitar.

What became of his beloved Jezebel, he did not know.

“But I shall meet her again someday,” he said. “She and I are free, you see, from the restraints of time. I knew her before Cádiz.”

And where was that, I wanted to know. I had a sense of what was coming.

“Egypt.”

“Eleventh Dynasty?” I asked. “Thebes?”

“Right. How did you know that? You weren't there too were you? Do I look familiar? You must have been there too.”

“Just a sense,” I said.

It was indeed only a good guess, but I had met people with past lives before, and somehow they never seem to have had to live in boring times. They're always in the courts of the Medici in Florence or in Rome under Augustus Caesar, or Thebes in the period of the worship of the sun god Amon.