This story is based upon one of Jersey’s most mysterious and ancient myths.
The Rock of Execution
St Martin’s Parish, Jersey
Winter, 1251
When the dawn drowned the stars, Geffray knew he was about to die. They even removed his blindfold for the final act. The hideous voices who mocked him were revealed at last: his friends, his neighbours, his brothers. The entire parish of St Martin, he realised, had come to watch him fall.
Children jostled to gain the best view of his death. A lad flung some pebbles over the cliff, foreshadowing the ordeal to come. A gaggle of milkmaids he once danced with stared at him from a distance, their whispers rustling in his ears like broken promises.
This place was St Martin’s time-honoured killing ground. A boulder set high above the gentle harbour of Anne Port, it overlooked a lethal scree. The rocks below shredded any man who fell. From ancient days, criminals had been cast into the void here, and none had returned.
The stragglers to the show were making their way in now; old men limping in from the fields, their backs twisted by the plough and the ravages of age. A squad of militia from the Castle strutted round the headland, bearing halberds. Spinsters and seamstresses, farm boys and grooms; all had come to see him die. Even the fishermen had come to gawp, watching from their boats out in the bay.
Silence fell like frost. The Rector of St Martin fidgeted in his cassock, sweating and ruddy despite the chill of the morning. Behind him, the Jurat loomed, as unyielding as granite, a scroll from the Bailiff clasped tight in his hands. Some said Geffray’s crime was so flagrant, so shocking, that the Warden of the Isles himself had intervened to pass sentence on the malefactor.
The red sun began to rise, a bloodstain curdling the eastern skies. It burst up over the horizon of Normandy, bleeding into the drowned valleys. As the light grew, Geffray noticed a raven-haired lady had joined the throng. The crowd murmured. All eyes were drawn to her fierce beauty, for she strolled with a magnetic grace. It was Ysole of Rozel herself, the wronged woman, draped in the black robes of mourning.
Geffray had been her plaything, her daytime companion. Hers was an open bed, and of course he knew all about her husband, the ploughman Renaud. The two men drank deep of the same befuddling wine. Yet Geffray knew she was besotted with Renaud above all, for she would always breathe his name. Renaud became the shackle that dragged at his feet, the unseen mocker who taunted him, even in his dreams.
And one night, in the darkness of a tavern, the men would meet. Jealousy raged like wildfire. Words flew, then fists, and Geffray felt the racing panic of a chokehold at his neck. He fumbled for his hunting knife, and the night burst open like a bloody heart. Renaud died beneath him in the straw, his dark blood pooling around his strong ploughman’s arms.
Geffray was now a killer; he could expect no mercy. He was cast down into the punishment pit at Gorey Castle. There he was abandoned without food or water, his mouth bloated by thirst. On the third day, he stammered out his confession.
Only then did they bring him a pitcher of watery ale, along with a black robe, the garment of the condemned. In the darkness before dawn, Geffray knew where he would soon be bound. Mont Orgueil, he realised, was an apt name, for it was pride that had brought him to this place. Before first light, a tumbril bearing the prisoner rattled out of the castle gates.
The sun rose, and the time to die had come. Geffray refused to acknowledge the presence of his lover, to give her the satisfaction of his tragedy. He stared only at the fat Rector, who muttered words of cold, impenetrable Latin. Seagulls screeched over the rocks, and somewhere, far off, a baby cried.
Then Geffray stood on the great stone of punishment, the place his mother had once shown him as a little boy, spoken of with a hushed dread. This rock was the door from this world to whatever lay beyond.
And he barely felt the brutal shove to his lower back, the stumble into space, and the horizon swallowing him up. The mocking of the crowd faded as if in a dream. He saw a blaze of red, felt the sea-air screeching in his ears, and the giant sun burning the sea-mist. He plunged like a stone.
Then he landed, knee-deep, in a tiny crescent of soft and yielding sand. The impact stung for a moment, but he felt no pain. A mere foot away on each side lurked a pair of massive, bone-shattering boulders. It was a sheer miracle; he felt like a baby thrust out new into the world, landing on a feather-down rug. He had cheated death, and his heart roared.
A smile slowly broke over him. Lazarus had returned from the grave. The men on the ledge had witnessed this resurrection and watched slack-jawed in astonishment. Then Geffray vaulted up the shallow slope in the mid-bay and strode back in strength and majesty to greet them all.
The crowd retreated before him, dumbstruck. Even the Rector crossed himself as Geffray crawled up from the land of the dead. A shiver of awe rippled across the throng. This time, Ysole was waiting for him. Their eyes met; hers flashed with the colour of cornflower. Her love shone raw and true, as keen as a hunter’s blade.
Now the world was Geffray’s, and everything was whole again. A surge of bravado, of wild exuberance, gripped him. He looked beyond the Jurat and Rector and addressed the court of his peers. “God has judged me in this trial, and behold, I am an innocent man! I will leap once again now, to show that your laws can never bind me in chains. I am a free man of Jersey, and this is the testament of my freedom”.
The Jurat blustered, purple and indignant. But no one dared touch the resurrected man, or lay hands on him again. Buoyed by the singing of his blood, Geffray stepped back on to the rock in triumph, as a free man. The waves; the people; the cliff-face seemed to be cut now from the same cloth around him, woven together in a single tapestry.
A great cheer erupted from the crowd at last, to carry him up and over, a guttural, primeval roar of acclaim. For a precious moment, Geffray savoured it all; the red dawn breaking over Jersey, the adoration of the crowd, and the tides racing in below.
Then he leapt into the rising sun.
Paul Darroch is the author of Jersey: The Hidden Histories and Jersey: Secrets of the Sea.
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