by Alis Hawkins
Was he watching my face as he spoke, trying to see what I knew, what I understood? In the perfect silence of the small room, I heard him swallowing.
‘When he’d had a skinful, he’d get nasty, see? And he’d say he’d been cheated. Told me once that he was owed—’ Another swallow, as if he was taking Dutch courage. ‘That he was owed a maidenhead.’
I unclenched my jaw, appalled. ‘Ruth?’
At the edge of the whirlpool, I saw him nod. ‘Like I say, things weren’t right in that house. Whether she threatened him with a knife, at the finish, I don’t know. But take it from me, whatever Ruth wanted, it wasn’t me.’
John
I’ll be honest – I was about as enthusiastic about reading that volume of the Mabinogi as I would’ve been if you’d suggested I read some Greek, but Miss Gwatkyn’s comment about knowing Homer better than the legends of my own country had provoked me. It was as if she thought I’d chosen the Iliad and the Odyssey in preference to the Mabinogi.
So, to make sure I’d read at least some of it, it was the only book I’d brought with me. And I needed to read something to take my mind off the sounds of what was going on – again and again – next door.
Lydia Howell’d told me that the four most famous stories were in the third volume of the translation from Middle Welsh, so that’s the one I’d brought. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew all about the Mabinogi. Cut from the same cloth, weren’t they, Lydia Howell and Phoebe Gwatkyn?
The first story was about a prince – Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed – and, right from the beginning, I recognised places I knew. Homer’s stories had been about Troy, somewhere long forgotten, if it ever existed, but Pwyll had a palace in Narberth – a town you could still go to now – and his favourite hunting grounds were in Glyn Cych, a couple of miles over the river from Glanteifi. It was odd to think that the people who’d made these stories up, centuries and centuries ago, had known the land where I lived now – the valleys, the rivers, the mountains. Even Miss Gwatkyn’s Sarn Helen and her Roman remains, probably.
When we’d read the Odyssey and the Iliad at Mr Davies’s school in Adpar, he’d explained the difference between fairy stories and legends. Fairy stories, he’d told us, were morality tales. They held messages, warnings about things to avoid. Of course, they were entertaining – they had to be if people were going to pay attention to them – but they were made up. Just stories.
Legends, on the other hand, were what Mr Davies called ‘folk memories’. They were about people and events that had been real, once upon a time. All sorts of exaggerations and extra elements might’ve been added to make them more colourful but they had a basis in fact.
So I found myself wondering which the tales in the Mabinogi were – fairy stories or legends?
Like fairy stories, there was an awful lot of magic in them. And actual fairies. Or, at least, people who were half-fairy. But then, there were gods in the Odyssey and the Iliad, weren’t there? Presumably, when the Mabinogi’s stories’d first been told, people had still believed in magic. Mind, if we were talking about fairies, there were plenty of uneducated people who still believed. You met old people who were superstitious like that everywhere in Cardiganshire.
But the real places in the Mabinogi made me wonder whether the people might have been real, once, too. Trouble was, they were all fairy-story types – kings and princes, fairies and magicians, warriors and beautiful maidens. But that was true of the Greek legends, too, and I knew Miss Gwatkyn’d tell me I should be comparing the Mabinogi with them, not with the penny bloods I used to read before law books and monographs on agricultural improvement started taking up all my reading time.
The further I got into Miss Guest’s translation, the less I understood why somebody like Phoebe Gwatkyn thought so highly of these stories. Because, to be honest, some of what I was reading was quite disturbing.
Killers hidden in leather bags having their skulls crushed. Branwen being forced into marriage with an Irish prince and taken over the sea to his court where she was beaten and humiliated. King Math’s nephews, Gilfaethwy and Gwydion, starting a war so that Gilfaethwy could rape Goewin, his uncle’s virgin foot-holder, while Math was away fighting. Math transforming the treacherous brothers into beasts who then mated with each other and produced offspring.
What on earth did Miss Gwatkyn find to admire so much in stories full of treachery, rape, murder and incest? Or Lydia Howell, come to that. Mind, Miss Howell’d have more sympathy than most with the Mabinogi’s shape-shifting characters and their secrets, wouldn’t she?
I read on, my fingers in my ears against the sounds coming through the lath and plaster, and found the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes – the character Phoebe Gwatkyn had named her hall-boy after. When his mother cursed him never to have a human wife, Lleu’s magician uncles conjured one up for him out of flowers. In a fairy story that would’ve been the happy-ever-after ending. But not in these stories. In the Mabinogi, the flower-wife, Blodeuwedd, fell in love with somebody else and the two of them plotted to kill Lleu.
Making a woman out of flowers was about as fairy-storyish as you could get but Blodeuwedd wanting to make up her own mind about who to be married to felt very real. Because that was exactly the situation Ruth Eynon’d found herself in, wasn’t it?
I sat there, my arse numb, my back warm against the chimney breast, my toes freezing out of my boots, and tried to think.
Look beyond the story to what Homer’s trying to tell you, boys, Mr Davies used to say. Look at the characters and the virtues they embody.
I remembered how he’d had us comparing Achilles, the warrior, the man of action, with Odysseus, the thinker, the user of words as weapons. Like the magicians in the Mabinogi, Odysseus had used words to get what he wanted, to make the world into the shape he’d wanted it to be.
The state of his hands meant that Nicholas Rowland’d had no choice but to be more of an Odysseus than an Achilles. Words and learning had been his weapons. But, for all his thinking and talking and persuading, some Achilles’d come along and pushed him out of the loft, hadn’t they?
So who was our Achilles?
Shoni Goch? He was a man of action. A fighter.
But then there was Montague Caldicot, too. A fighter of a different kind. More noble. More Ajax. In the Mabinogi, he’d have been a warrior forced to return to the court of his father in disgrace and magicked out of his true shape for a while until he repented, like Gwydion and Gilfaethwy. But what was he supposed to be repenting of? What had got him thrown out of the army? And, whatever it was, had Nicholas Rowland been misusing his powers of persuasion to blackmail him?
Caldicot hadn’t been on the list of Cardiganshire gentlemen Nan and Ruth had given to Harry, which meant that Rowland hadn’t written to him to ask for money or support. But, if Miss Gwatkyn was right and it was Caldicot who’d suggested that Rowland should set up his school in Llanddewi Brefi, you’d have expected Caldicot to be at the top of the list. So why wasn’t he? And, if Rowland hadn’t written to him, where had the fifty pounds in banknotes come from?
I thought of Nan and Ruth, sitting in the gloomy cowshed schoolroom, writing those letters. In a story like the Mabinogi, Rowland would’ve been a magician and the girls his captive fairy servants, writing magical spells that he dictated to trick people into giving him the things he coveted, the things that’d make him more powerful.
But that was me getting fanciful. The only young girls I’d come across in the Mabinogi were the maidens at the court of King Math. His virgin foot-holders. Objects of men’s lust.
The thought made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Was that what had happened? Had Rowland—?
No. That was just a disgusting suspicion brought on by reading Gwydion and Gilfaethwy’s plot to rape Goewin. And by the grunts and moans on the other side of the wall. We’d heard not a whisper of anything like that about Rowland. And, anyway, Nan and Ruth had always been together when they were with him, hadn’t they? Pro
tection for each other.
But then, Goewin had always been with the other maidens of the court, too, until she’d been lured away.
I pictured Nan Walters and Ruth Eynon, demure and prim in the parlour of the Three Horseshoes. Young women. Virgins.
Objects of men’s lust.
Was that how it had been?
Harry
Back at the Black Lion, I told Lydia what I had learned from Shoni Eynon. I had repeated his words to myself over and over, so that she might not find me lacking in my desire to treat her as my equal. Was she shocked by the sailor’s revelations? Given her history she must have heard similar things but, still, my face burned beneath my beard and I felt like a degenerate for saying such words in front of her.
‘Hmmm,’ she said, when I had finished. ‘So there is more to Ruth than the studious, diligent young woman she presented to Nicholas Rowland and Miss Gwatkyn. But, if what Jonathan Eynon says is true, her accomplishments are all the more remarkable, don’t you think?’
‘Making her the kind of woman Nicholas Rowland might very well wish to marry,’ I agreed. ‘But we saw none of the resilience she must possess when she gave evidence at the inquest.’
Far from it. She had simply broken down when questioned too hard. But were her quick tears not now called into question?
’Spect she cried. Jonathan Eynon had said. Seen her do that often enough to get out of trouble with her father.
If that was the case, it seemed entirely possible that, in making the startling declaration that she and Nicholas Rowland had been engaged and then breaking down emotionally, Ruth Eynon had contrived both to set the cat among the pigeons and to see to it that the cat went entirely unchallenged.
‘I’ve been a fool,’ I said. ‘And I’ve relied on John’s opinion too much. When all’s said and done, he’s only just turned twenty. What does he know of the ways in which people deceive each other?’
‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ Lydia said. ‘But you shouldn’t blame yourself. You had no reason, then, to doubt the girl’s word, did you?’
‘But I should have had reason, shouldn’t I? I should have done my job properly. Spoken to Llew Price sooner. Gone to see Jeremiah Eynon.’
My self-recriminations were interrupted by the arrival of a coach party keen to be fed and watered before the next leg of their journey. They swarmed in, thrusting cold hands towards the fire, exclaiming how good it was to be out of the bouncing coach, and effectively ended our conversation.
A minute later, Minnever arrived and squeezed himself into the corner where we were sitting. I listened to his civil but profoundly unenthusiastic ‘Good morning’ to Lydia and knew that he was displeased to find her here. Still, there was nothing I could do about that now.
‘I have good news,’ he said, not needing to keep his voice low due to the surrounding hubbub. ‘I believe we can persuade Caldicot to step down. Withdraw from the election.’
‘Withdraw?’ I repeated, assuming that he would take back such a wild claim in favour of something more realistic.
‘Yes. I’ve found out why he was cashiered.’
‘How?’ Had he sent spies to London to prise the secret from somebody in Caldicot’s regiment?
He leaned towards me. ‘I told you I’d do my utmost to win this, Harry.’
Was he calling my own commitment into question or was the coldness in his tone explained by Lydia’s presence? ‘You did,’ I said. ‘And I’m very grateful. Now, please, tell us what you’ve discovered.’
There was a pause, then Lydia rose to her feet.
‘If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have things to attend to.’
I stood up. Minnever had obviously signalled his unwillingness to speak in front of her. ‘Lydia, stay—’
‘It would be best if this were for your ears only, Harry,’ Minnever objected.
‘Nevertheless, I would prefer—’
Lydia put a hand on my arm. ‘Harry, please. As I said, I have business to attend to. You may tell me whatever you wish later.’
Belatedly, I realised that Lydia was trying to absolve me of the need to stand up for her against my election agent and, as the door closed behind her, I sat down and waited to hear Minnever’s news.
He wasted no time in taking the seat that Lydia had vacated and inclining his head towards me. ‘Major Caldicot was cashiered for failing to report a capital offence. To wit: buggery. He caught two private soldiers at it. Didn’t have them taken into custody. Didn’t report them to his colonel.’
My mind started racing. ‘I see.’
How did this tie in with anything we currently knew of Caldicot?
‘And that’s not all,’ Minnever continued. ‘Seems he allowed the men to escape. To desert, I should say. When the subaltern who’d been with him realised that Caldicot’d failed to do his duty, it was too late to have the soldiers taken into custody. They were gone.’
So Montague Caldicot was not as wedded to the letter of the law as he might like to pretend. But was it significant that his dereliction of duty should involve this particular crime?
‘He’ll have to stand down, of course.’ Minnever’s confident assertion broke into my thoughts. ‘If I can discover the truth, so can others. He’d be vulnerable to blackmail and the corruption of his office.’
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘And, if Nicholas Rowland had found out, it gives Caldicot an excellent motive for murder.’
Minnever swivelled to face me. ‘No, Harry. We’re not going down that road. There’s absolutely no reason to think that Rowland had—’
‘You’ve just said yourself, if you can find out—’
‘I meant anybody else who was digging about! It’s nonsensical to imagine that the teacher might’ve stumbled across information like that. He was here, days’ travel away from rumours and news.’
‘He still had friends in London. A letter could have—’
‘No, Harry! This is not a line of enquiry. This is our way to dispose of Caldicot and have you stand, unopposed, on Saturday.’
Minnever was not to be contradicted on this, that much was clear; I would have to keep my suspicions to myself.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘You needn’t be involved. I’ll ask to see Caldicot, in private. Lay the situation out. Tell him that, if he doesn’t withdraw, I’ll have no choice but to go to the Tory agent and tell him what I know. There’d be absolutely no question of his continuing as the Tories’ candidate if they knew. Even if they could stomach it themselves, they wouldn’t want to risk that kind of news being made public.’
I knew he was right and I did not try to argue against his plan. But it was not the thought that I might go to the nomination meeting at the end of the week unopposed that kept me awake half that night. My thoughts were consumed by the notion that Caldicot was not the man he seemed, and that, whatever Minnever said, the possibility that Rowland might have got wind of his dereliction of duty gave my opponent a compelling motive to have wished the schoolteacher ill.
John
Before I left Glanteifi, we’d worked out that I wouldn’t get to London till late on Wednesday afternoon. Too late to go searching about for hansoms to take me to Holywell Street to collect Rowland’s ‘copies’ and whatever money he was due. Mr Gordon, the bookseller, wouldn’t thank me for keeping him talking when he was trying to shut up shop and get home for his dinner. Better to leave it till the following day.
So, my plan was to go straight to Gus Gelyot’s house. Mr Gelyot was an old friend of Harry’s who I’d met when we’d been travelling through London the previous autumn, on the way to see Nathaniel Howell. It was hard to believe it’d only been a few months ago. My life’d changed so much in that time that it seemed more like years.
The first time I’d seen Mr Gelyot’s house I’d been getting out of a hansom cab with Harry, surrounded by thick, smoky fog – what they call a London Particular. Everything about London had been strange and foreign to me then, and the Gelyots’ house’d been no excep
tion. Because I knew Mr Gelyot’s family was wealthy, I’d expected a grand house set in its own grounds, but I soon realised that London houses weren’t like that. Not the modern ones, anyway. The Gelyots’ house had turned out to be one of a long, shallow crescent of tall brick houses, each with its own pillared entrance porch.
On that first visit, everything’d been a surprise. The peculiar construction of the houses in the crescent, with their lower storeys below ground. The strange new colour of the Gelyots’ wallpaper – turquoise. The bright, hissing light of the house’s gas lamps. Even the surprisingly small entrance hall.
This time, of course, I knew what to expect as the door was opened for me and I went in. In London, the size of the entrance hall didn’t tell you much. It was just the introduction to a house, a way of getting to the rooms. Not like the halls in the old gentry mansions which were bigger than some of the rooms and had fireplaces and furniture. But it wouldn’t do to confuse narrowness with meanness – you could tell the money that’d gone into this place from the patterned floor tiles and the stained-glass fanlight over the door, as well as the polished wood of the staircase with its new runner. Harry’d told me that Mrs Gelyot insisted on changing the runner every season so that it never looked worn.
After a footman’d taken my coat and bag, the butler led me up to the drawing room.
I’ll be honest. I’d been worried about what kind of greeting I’d get from Gus Gelyot. Last time I’d been here, there’d been an argument when he’d tried to put me in the servants’ quarters and Harry’d objected. I didn’t want things to be difficult.