Lots of martyrs were burnt in Salisbury, it seems, when that sort of thing was in fashion, so no wonder they have to keep Bloody Queen Mary's chair in Winchester instead of Salisbury, where they've a right to feel a grudge against the wretched little, bilious bigot of a lovesick woman. Sir Lionel has several well-known martyrs on his family tree, Mrs. Norton says; and she is as proud of them as most people are of royal bar-sinisters. I never thought martyrs particularly interesting myself, though perhaps that's an uneasy jealousy, as we've none in our family that I know of--only a witch or so on father's side. Poor dears, what a pity they couldn't have waited till now to be born, when, instead of burning or drowning them, people would have paid them to tell nice things about the past and predict lovers for the future!
Witches were fascinating; but many martyrs probably marted out of sheer obstinacy, don't you think? Of course, it was different when they executed you without giving you a chance to recant, as they did with political prisoners; and do you know, they cut off poor witty Buckingham's head in Salisbury market-place? "So much for Buckingham!" Where it came off, there's an inn, now, called the Saracen's Head. I wonder if _it_ was chopped off in the neighbourhood, too, or if it's only a pleasant fancy, to cover up the Buckingham stain in the yard? Anyhow, they tell you there that in 1838 Buckingham's skeleton was dug up under the kitchen of what used to be the Blue Boar Inn. But even that isn't as ghastly a tale as another one of Salisbury: how one of Jack Cade's "quarters" was sent to the town when he'd been executed. I should have liked to know if it's still to be seen, but I thought it would be hardly nice to ask.
We saved the cathedral for the last, and just as we were in the midst of sight-seeing there, it was time for service, so we sat down and listened to music which seemed to fall from heaven. There's nothing more glorious than music in a cathedral, is there? Usually it makes me feel good; but this time it made me feel so sinful, on account of Ellaline, and Sir Lionel and Dick, that I almost cried. Do you think, dear, that if I were in a novel they would have me for a heroine or a wicked adventuress? I hae me doots; but my one hope is, that you can't be an adventuress if you really mean well at heart, and are under twenty-two.
Maybe I'd expected too much of Salisbury Cathedral, because I'd always heard more about it than others in England, but it wasn't quite so glorious to me as Winchester. It's far more harmonious, because it was planned all at one time, like the town, and there's singularly little foreign influence to be traced in the architecture, which makes it different from most others, and extraordinarily interesting in its way. It's very, very old, too, but it is so white and clean that it looks new. And one great beauty it has: its whiteness seems always flooded with moonlight, even when sunshine is streaming over the noble pillars and lovely tombs.
This morning I went back, with Emily, to service, and wandered from chapel to chapel, till nearly luncheon time. Then Sir Lionel came, and took me up strange, hidden, winding stairs, to the den of the librarian. It was like stealing into an enchanted castle, where all save the librarian slept, and had slept for centuries. When it was time to go away, I was afraid that Sir Lionel might have forgotten the magic spell which would open the door and let us escape. There were interesting things there, but we weren't allowed to look at the ones we wanted to see most, till we were too tired to enjoy them, after seeing the ones we didn't want to see at all. But you know, in another enchanted castle, that of the Sleeping Beauty, there was only _one_ lovely princess, and goodness knows how many snorey bores.
At three, we started to motor out to Stonehenge; and Sir Lionel chose to be late, because he wanted to be there at sunset, which he knew--from memory--to be the most thrilling picture for us to carry away in our heads.
Nobody ever told me what an imposing sight Old Sarum remains, to this day, so I was surprised and impressed by the giant conical knoll standing up out of the plain and its own intrenchments. I'd just been reading about it in the guide-book, how important it used to be to England, when it was still a city, and how it was a fortress of the Celts when the Romans came and snatched it from them; but I had no idea of its appearance. I would have liked to go with Sir Lionel to walk round the intrenchments, but he asked only Dick. However, Mrs. Senter volunteered to go, at the last moment, just as they were starting, and Emily and I were left, flotsam and jetsam, in the car, to wait till they came back.
I wasn't bored, however, because Emily read a religious novel by Marie Corelli, and didn't worry to talk. So I could sit in peace, seeing with my mind's eye the pageant of William the Conqueror reviewing his troops in the plain over which Old Sarum gloomily towers. Such a lurid plain it is, this month of poppies, red as if its arid slopes were stained with the blood of ghostly armies slain in battle.
But it was going back further into history to come to Amesbury. You know, dear, Queen Guinevere's Amesbury, where she repented in the nunnery she'd founded, and the little novice sang to her "Too late! Too late!" When she was buried, King Arthur had "a hundred torches ever burning about the corpse of the queen." Can't you see the beautiful picture? And when her nunnery was gone in 980, another queen, far, far more wicked than Guinevere, built on the same spot a convent to expiate the murder of her stepson at Corfe Castle. We are going to Corfe, by and by, so I shall send my thoughts back to Amesbury from there, in spite of the fact that Elfreda's nuns became so naughty they had to be banished. Nor shall I forget a lover who loved at Amesbury--Sir George Rodney, who adored the fascinating Countess of Hertford so desperately, that after her marriage he composed some verses in her honour, and fell then upon his sword. Why don't men do such things for us nowadays? Were the "dear, dead women" so much more desirable than we?
Wasn't Amesbury a beautiful "leading up" to Stonehenge? It's quite near, you know. It doesn't seem as if anything ought to be near, but a good many things are--such as farms. Yet they don't spoil it. You never even think of them, or of anything except Stonehenge itself, once you have seen the first great, dark finger of stone, pointing mysteriously skyward out of the vast plain.
That is the way Stonehenge breaks on you, suddenly, startlingly, like a cry in the night.
I was very glad we had the luck to arrive alone, for not long after we'd entered the charmed, magic circle of the giant plinths, a procession of other motor-cars poured up to the gates. Droves of chauffeurs, and bevies of pretty ladies in motor hats swarmed like living anachronisms among the monuments of the past. Of course, _we_ didn't seem to ourselves to be anachronisms, because what is horrid in other people is always quite different and excusable, or even piquant, in oneself; and I hastily argued that _our_ motor, Apollo, the Sun God, was really appropriate in this place of fire worship. Even the Druids couldn't have objected to _him_, although they would probably have sacrificed all of _us_ in a bunch, unless we could have hastily proved that we were a new kind of god and goddess, driving chariots of fire. (Anyhow, motor-cars are making history just as much as the Druids did, so they ought to be welcome anywhere, in any scene, and they seem to have more right to be at Stonehenge than patronizing little Pepys.)
You remember Rolde, in Holland, don't you, with its miniature Stonehenge? Well, it might have been made for Druids' children to play dolls with, compared to this.
If the Phoenicians raised Stonehenge in worship of their fiery god, they had good reason to flatter themselves that it would attract his attention. And I do think it was sensible to choose the sun for a god. Next to our own true religion, that seems the most comforting. There was your deity, in full sight, looking after one side or the other of his world, all through the twenty-four hours.
I never felt more awe-stricken than I did passing under the shadow of those great sentinel plinths, guarding their sunken altar, hiding their own impenetrable mysteries. The winds seemed to blow more chill, and to whisper strangely, as if trying to tell secrets we could never understand. I love the legend of the Friar's Heel, but, after all, it's only a mediæval legend, and it's more interesting to think that, from the middle of the sacrificial altar, the priest could see the sun rise (at the summer solstice) just above that stupendous stone. I stood there, imagining a white-robed Druid looking up, his knife suspended over a fair girl victim, waiting to strike until his eye should meet the red eye of the sun. Oh, I shall have bad dreams about Stonehenge, I know! But I shan't mind, if I can dream about the Duke of Buckingham digging for treasure there at midnight. And if I were like Du Maurier's dear Peter Ibbetson, I could "dream back," and see at what far distance the builders of Stonehenge got their mysterious syenite, and that one black sandstone so different from the rest. I could dream who were the builders; whether Phoenicians, or mourning Britons of Arthur's day--as Geoffrey of Monmouth tells.