The novel is comprised of three sections in three time periods. The first is 635 AD. The narrator is EDIVA, a teenaged girl who works as a cook for a travelling group of monks and believers who are carrying the remains of Saint Cuthbert around the North of England as they attempt to evade the Danish invaders. They are the last of generations going back decades who have carried out this task.
The novel at times leaves these characters to examine the life of Cuthbert, a monk who was educated in the Borders (Southern Scotland) and came to live on Lindisfarne, an island cut off from the mainland of England twice a day due to tides. When the Danes invaded England, Cuthbert was forced to flee with the other monks and ended up doing a penance on an even smaller island, eventually dying there. His remains were deemed saintly due to his body’s supposed lack of deterioration and his coffin was carried for almost a hundred years around the North Of England, where a cult grew up around him, called ‘haliwerfolk’. It’s one of these groups of believers whom we meet in the section set in 635, and in essence it tells how they came to stay in the place which would become Durham, England. EDIVA is a cook but an intelligent girl who is well aware of the dangers of being too ‘Christian’ in an era prone to Danish invasion. But she and the others have visions of St Cuthbert and his resting place, and pursue their visions. EDIVA is befriended by a servant boy travelling with them, ‘OWL BOY’ who has enormous, serious eyes and who does whatever tasks are required. He is besotted with EDIVA but at the section’s end we are not convinced they were fated to be together. The ‘haliwerfolc’ stop, finally, intent on carrying out their plan of founding a great cathedral to house Cuthbert, who was a modest and unassuming man they have elevated to near Christ like status.
In the second section, set in 1827, the narrator is Professor FORBES FAWCETT, a historian and archaeologist who is an atheist. He arrives in Durham at the behest of Reverend Parnell, in order to witness the opening of St Cuthbert’s coffin for ‘investigative purposes’. He does not believe in ghosts or magic, but soon feels himself terrified by the presence of a youth he finds both off putting and physically beautiful. FAWCETT has dark dreams with words whispered in his ear and sees ghostly pilgrims passing through the night in his room, all spectres who haunt him and drive him to madness. He sees the ‘SULLEN BOY’ as he calls him, and is told to ‘Let History Lie’ meaning the coffin of St Cuthbert must be undisturbed. But he is powerless to stop the excavation which goes ahead incompetently and which reveals Cuthbert’s remains lie at one corner of the coffin, more or less fallen to dust.
The Professor loses his mind and becomes incoherent, telling us he has written this account from a mental institution and has been ‘cursed’ by the Sullen Boy and the others. We wonder as readers if his account is any more true than the ‘official’ one which details the opening of the coffin as a great ‘success’ which reveals Cuthbert to be present and accounted for.
In the third section, set in 2019 we meet 19 year old MICHAEL CUTHBERT, who works at various building sites. He desperately needs money to look after his mother, who is dying of cancer, and takes any job the agency hands him. He’s picked up at his next job by site manager HUGH CHADWICK, who tells him to not talk much and get on with his work, which he duly does. At the end of two weeks, CHADWICK recommends him for another job of removing asbestos from a site, which MICHAEL does without complaining. As a result, MICHAEL is then passed a’cushy’ job of making teas and coffees and providing lunches (as well as sweeping and tidying up) for the restoration crew at Durham Cathedral. He is awed by the cathedral and instantly takes a liking to EDITH, who works in the cafe and is friendly. We see him realising that the workmen and masons restoring part of the cathedral are skilled and proud of their work-he is intrigued by not just their camaraderie but the wholesomeness of what they do. They are friendly to him. But at night he goes home to his mother, who is worse every day. MICHAEL left school before exams and has no qualifications. He is bright and curious but has been raised to be passive and unadventurous. He is hopelessly naive. He and EMILY chat about history and the past, without MICHAEL really understanding what she’s talking about. They go on a ‘date’ at which Emily tells him she doesn’t want to get romantically involved with anyone but that she wants to remain friends with him. He is disappointed but also understands. The section ends with MICHAEL coming home to find his mother comatose. St Cuthbert appears to him and tells him to end his mother’s life. He smothers her with a pillow and leaves the house.
This is a literary examination of the monk St Cuthbert and his ‘cult’ from the 7th century onwards, using him as a kind of objective correlative of ideas and images: the monk’s remains, his coffin and the visions he invokes work throughout as disruptors, compelling the characters to change their lives, go mad or kick over the traces. The idea of a Saint (known unofficially as the patron saint of the North of England) who is a continuous ‘presence’ throughout makes the novel feel almost speculative: the middle section is in fact a ghost story in the manner of MR James’s “Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ about a spirit summoned almost by accident. The third section is both a critique of austerity and the have nots of modern Britain but also a portrait of that self same ‘boy’ we first met in the first and second sections: quiet, thoughtful, an observer of life. This archetype might never become successful but somehow manages to become the central character in the novel: a youth with no family or real past, and with an indefinite future. The mystery of the novel and the idea of St Cuthbert at its heart makes the novel almost frightening: the ‘haliwerfolc’ carrying St Cuthbert’s body have nothing except their faith to guide them, while the masons atop the Cathedral are fighting a battle agains the elements and seasons-or perhaps are in a kind of pact with it. One of the cleverest parts of the novel is the way in which the cult of St Cuthbert are reborn or revisited: first as the faithful, then as ghosts protecting their saint and finally as masons preserving the building which houses the saint. Myers is able to make connections and bring forward ideas about Englishness without being heavy handed or obvious and it’s a novel which reverberates in many different directions, encompassing the old oral traditions of the English and the ‘legend’ of the founding of Durham, the ghost story and haunting of a non believer and finally the epiphany of a young man with no hope or expectations but whom we suspect will go on and find his way in life, having done all he could for his mother, within his limitations and powers. Highly recommended, though a challenging book to read and immerse oneself in.