Steph Haxton was one of the first local writers I met when I moved to Cornwall. Historian turned author (or gamekeeper turned poacher, as she’d have it), her research is meticulous and her wit legendary. Unfortunately for me she’s now moved to Scotland, but how would the sometimes elusive Mrs Muse take to the change?

 

Mrs Muse, plugging a new novel set in Scotland, by June should have been sitting on the doorstep of our new home. But I’d had not a peep for weeks. She’d showed briefly at Holyrood Palace; she’s a sucker for anything royal. But after a quick tap on the shoulder, she scarpered again.

A month later I decided to head up the M90 to Innerpeffray Library, a place highly recommended by a fellow bibliophile. With an overview of where I was headed, I let the Sat Nav tell guide me. My relationship with it being troubled, when it directed me off the dual carriageway not far outside Perth, I was immediately suspicious.

‘Turn right to Roman Road.’ It didn’t look likely, was signposted something else.

But round two sharp bends, there it was! Only a bloomin’ Roman road; straight, classic width, ditches either side bordered by beautiful woodland. Wow!

I had to stop a few miles on, when the trees dropped away.  On a ridgeway, I faced a breath-taking view over the Strathearn. Thirty seconds later, four police motorcyclists in formation swept past, easily doing 50mph. Incongruous on a rural lane, they were clearly enjoying a Roman road too!

Before long the brown sign for Innerpeffray Library sent me down a potholed track. A turf path though trees, a red squirrel bouncing ahead of me, led me past ancient yews surrounding a tiny chapel where a rash of goose-bumps swept me from head to toe. Around another corner stood the Library.

‘Hello! You took your time!’ said my precocious afflatus.

Beautiful books and friendly faces greeted me. A lovely volunteer explained the Roman origins of the site and the library’s history. I took a sharp intake of breath: 1680, a date central to my next novel. I had been looking for somewhere to ‘place’ the female protagonist. Even if Mrs Muse hadn’t been elbowing me in the ribs, I’d have known – this was it!

The weird coincidences continued: the gentleman giving me a tour of the reading room originally came from the Roseland. That might account for his choice of pages in Camden’s ‘Britannica’. But his finger, pointing straight at Pendennis, the castle at the core of my books? No. THAT was extraordinary. There was more.

The exhibition in the display cases was on ‘Emigration’. A member of the Library had researched and highlighted a name amongst the many hundreds in the borrowers’ registers.  Haxton. Ours is not a common surname anywhere so, of all the names in Perthshire, the odds of that had to be pretty long.

I was still shaking my head in disbelief when a charming couple came in. We were introduced. Roman re-enactors, they live about 500 yards from our new address. When they shared an experience that Mrs Muse began applauding with gusto, I beat a retreat on ‘overload’!

Deliberately taking a different road back to the A9, I found myself approaching the junction that I’d taken so warily almost exactly two hours earlier, but from the opposite direction.

There, sweeping across the carriageway ahead and disappearing into the trees, were four police motorcyclists. The same ones? I’ve no idea.

All I could hear was Mrs Muse yelling, ‘They aren’t police riders! They’re the ghosts of Romans, horsemen, and they continually ride the same route on one day every hundred years. They’ve just updated their steeds …’

I don’t care where she’s been, but Mrs Muse is definitely back!