by Ann Swinfen
His voice grew fainter, and John saw that he had fallen asleep again. He did not wake even when the guard came to take away their dirty plates and to bring the rush dip. About half an hour later Dafydd stirred.
‘By Ruthin I said, did I not?’
It was as though he did not know he had been asleep.
‘And up the Clwyd. You must skirt the mountain of Llantysilio on the west side, and then you’ll meet your Roman road once again. By the time you reach Llangollen you’ll be nearly out of the mountains, and the road takes you south and east to Shrewsbury.’
‘I shall never remember these strange Welsh names,’ said John. ‘What was that last one? Clan Gothlen? I never heard of such a place. I’m sure we didn’t pass through there on our journey here.’
Dafydd gave a weak laugh, a mere mockery of his usual bellow.
‘Your English soldiers probably called it “Lan Gollen”, but no Welshman will understand you if you ask for directions to such a place. Come now, see if you can speak it like a Welshman.’
John repeated the name after him until he was satisfied.
‘Llangollen,’ said Dafydd. ‘That is your goal. After that it will be easy.’
‘You seem very certain I’ll be making the journey.’
‘The physician said you were to be released, did he not? Ah, we’ve not many more hours together, John, my friend, for we shall both be going on our journeys.’
‘Before you came here,’ said John, sitting down on the floor beside Dafydd’s bed and tucking the rough blanket around him, ‘I had given up all hope of leaving this place. Worse than that, I no longer cared what became of me. Despair is a sin against God, but I confess I had sunk deep into despair.’
‘You do not seem to me a despairing man.’
‘In the past, perhaps not. Then, I thought I saw my way clear. When I was young, and ignorant, and prideful. The world changed for me when I was taken prisoner. In my despair, aye, and in my hatred, my path was lost, the lamp before my feet darkened.’
‘But now it is lit again?’ Dafydd lifted his head with an effort and studied John’s face.
‘You lit it for me,’ said John simply.
‘Then my time has not been in vain.’
Dafydd said no more that night. On the following day John could no longer deceive himself that his companion would recover. Dafydd spent most of the day sleeping, his breath ragged and painful, the fever sometimes sending his whole body into violent convulsions, so that he half woke and stared about him unseeing. He took no food, only water, which he called for whenever he woke. The sickly smell of death was in the room. John felt it drawing near, a malign presence, though not as that emblematic figure of a skeleton bearing a scythe. No, it hovered like a dark intangible shape, just glimpsed from the corner of his eye; sometimes it seemed a great dark bird, like a monstrous crow, sometimes a man clad in black armour, whose eyes burned within the shadow of his helmet like fire.
He must be growing feverish, that was the source of these nightmare visions, but whether he was truly ill, or merely shared in Dafydd’s sufferings, he did not know. He spent much of his time on his knees, praying for his friend’s soul, and for a painless and quiet end to his torment. When night came, he could not sleep, but kept watch beside his friend’s bed.
It must have been near midnight when Dafydd woke and asked quietly for water.
‘I feel most wonderfully restored,’ he said, when he had drunk. ‘The pain in my limbs is gone and the fevered imaginings. I am ready, I think, to go forward to my Maker.’
John found he was weeping like a woman, and was glad of the dark, that he might wipe away his tears unseen.
‘The fever is broken,’ he said, ‘and you will recover now.’
‘Nay. My body is telling me that this is enough. Nunc dimittis. They had the right of it in some things, the priests of the old religion, in ministering the last rites to the dying. It would be a kind of loosening of the final bonds, would it not? As when a ship sets sail, and the ropes that held it to the shore are cast off into the water, and then are hauled in, hand over hand, to make the vessel trim for her voyage into the unknown, over the unfathomable rough ocean. We need that kind of release.’
He sighed deeply. ‘Yet I have loved life. Birdsong and falling water, and the joy of a day’s hard labour well done. Is it dark, John?’
‘Deepest midnight.’
‘Fasten back the curtain, that we may see if the moon be out.’
John pulled back the piece of canvas and hooked it behind the nail.
‘A sliver of a moon,’ he said, ‘no bigger than the paring of a child’s thumbnail. But such stars! It must be a frosty night, for the stars are pulsing, blue and silver and gold, so near you could reach out your hand and touch them.’
He heard a sound behind him and turned to see Dafydd trying to stand up.
‘Help me, will you? I would see the moon and the stars one last time.’
Leaning heavily on John, who held him firmly round the back, with his shoulder serving as a crutch, Dafydd stumbled to the window. The stars were more numerous than John had ever seen them before, a multitude of the heavenly host, the veritable signature of the Creator writ across the heavens.
When Dafydd began to shiver, John led him gently back to bed, and covered him with all their blankets, although he continued to shake, as if with the palsy. John felt his hands. They were as icy as a mountain stream in winter.
‘I hope,’ Dafydd whispered, ‘that you may find yourself a better chess partner than I.’
‘I could never find one who taught me more,’ said John, ‘for I have played the chess game of life too much with my head, too little with my heart. I have learned better now, I hope.’
‘Remember. Land for every man and woman,’ said Dafydd faintly, ‘that none may starve.’
He said no more.
For many days, John knew nothing of what was happening around him, for he had fallen ill of the same gaol fever that had afflicted Dafydd. He did not even see them come to take away the body of his dead friend, nor did he know where he was buried or whether it was done with decency and respect. The fever had entered him like an evil spirit, tormenting him both body and soul. Pain gripped his head like a vice, and licked along his back and limbs with the fierceness of flame. There was no one to tend him, as he had tended Dafydd, but one of the guards must have kept the fire up, and he remembered, as if half dreaming, that a woman had come from time to time, perhaps a woman from the kitchens, and given him broth. He bore the physical mark of it afterwards, for she had fed it to him too hot, and it had scalded his palate. As the fever gradually began to loosen its grip, the blister in his mouth troubled him inordinately, out of all proportion compared with the far worse storm he had weathered.
Weathered it he had, although he could not guess why the strong blacksmith had been struck fatally, while he—younger, indeed, but less hardy—had survived. It had left him pitifully weak, and the memories of the nightmares which had afflicted him haunted his waking hours. The fever had brought hallucinations, of monstrous shapes pursuing him along narrow, dark passages, of his beloved Anne crying out to him for help. He had seen her drowning in the boggy depths of a marsh, stretching out her arms to him, but he could not reach her. Their fingertips almost touched, and he tried to call to her, but nothing but an animal-like grunt would come from his throat, as she was slowly sucked down out of his sight.
Afterwards, as he lay on his bed, convalescing from the fever and thinking of this dream which had visited him repeatedly, he wondered whether it had its seed in that long ago time in childhood, when he had pulled Anne from the marsh, or whether it was true, as some believed, that dreams foretold the future. Was Anne in danger? If the dream was a foretelling, then surely it would not be an exact picture, but rather a metaphor for the truth. Perhaps Anne was falling into a trap, was caught about with some snare from which she could not escape without his help. He did not know what to believe. Once
, he would have laughed at such ideas, but in his weakened state, he felt any horror might be true.
By the time he was fit to take notice of his surroundings again, he saw from the window that it was full winter. The snow had descended from the mountains into the valley, so that the little town of Denbigh and the farms in the river valley were no more than humps in the white blanket which lay over the land. A few trackways were beaten through the snow, and supplies continued to arrive for the garrison from time to time, though less frequently than before. John could not judge whether this was due to the difficulties of transport during winter, or whether the garrison in the castle had been reduced, for none were likely to make war here in north Wales in such conditions. Besides, according to what Dafydd had told him about Cromwell’s plans to put down the Irish, and the difficulties of retaining men for the campaign overseas, it might have become necessary to move some of the soldiers from garrison duty to active service.
He returned again to that lonely condition in which he had passed his time before Dafydd had come to share his cell, and he realised how much the philosopher blacksmith had changed his imprisonment. Having had that companionship for a short time, he missed it all the more bitterly now that he was alone again. He had still no idea of the date. It might have been a bitter late November, or near Christmastide, or even the beginning of the new year, when one of the guards arrived unexpectedly to summon him to a meeting with the governor. John went to gather up his clothes and books, thinking he was to be moved again.
‘Nay, leave all that be,’ said the soldier. ‘He’ll not keep you above half an hour, I’ll be bound.’
The governor received John in his office, as Danvers had done, but the contrast between the two rooms was immense. Where Danvers’s room had thick Turkey carpets and tapestries on the walls and comfortable cushioned chairs, this room was spare and uncarpeted, the furniture old and good but ferociously uncomfortable. The man, too, was a contrast to the elegant Danvers. He was a thickset, squat man, dressed in buff coat and light body armour, with a plain, unadorned sword at his belt. His lobster-tailed helmet lay on a chest next to the table that served as his desk, and his brow bore a permanent weal where the edge of that helmet pressed into the flesh. This was a professional soldier, whose clothes and surroundings spoke of a hard, perhaps ruthless nature.
The governor left him standing.
‘I understand that you have been ill,’ he said at last, after he had kept John waiting while he read and signed papers before him on the table.
‘I have had the gaol fever,’ said John, ‘that killed my fellow prisoner.’
The man grunted, but expressed no regret.
‘Are you recovered?’
‘If you mean: Is the fever gone?—then, yes. But I am much weakened by it.’
‘I’m confronted by a difficult situation,’ said the governor. ‘I received word some weeks ago from Colonel Danvers that a—’, he consulted a paper, ‘a Captain Stone would be arriving with a document authorising your release into his custody on recognisance of one thousand pounds. This is after you wife paid bail for you at Stafford, with jewellery to the value of . . . two thousand, four hundred pounds.’
John barely stopped himself from gasping aloud. Anne must have handed over everything of value that she owned.
‘However,’ the governor continued, ‘this Captain Stone has never appeared. The road from Stafford is, of course, long and dangerous, but he should have arrived by now. Until I received this document of authorisation, I was unwilling to take it upon myself to release you.’
‘But if you received a letter from Colonel Danvers—’
‘Do not interrupt. The letter was a personal one, not an official document, bearing the proper seals and authorisations.’
He shuffled the papers in front of him.
‘This has now arrived.’
He held up a document written on parchment, from which a red seal dangled on a ribbon.
‘It came here in rather curious circumstances. It seems that your friend Stone was attacked, beaten and robbed, shortly after passing through the town of Llangollen. Fortunately for him, he was found in a ditch by a farmer on his way into the town, who carried him to an inn and left him there. When he had recovered sufficiently from his injuries—I understand he suffered a severe blow to the head—he produced this document from some hidden pocket within his clothes. No doubt the robbers could have taken it had they wished, but they were interested only in stealing his money and his horse.’
‘How badly hurt is he? Will he recover?’
The governor held up his hand to silence John. He would tell this story in his own way and no other.
‘Stone begged the innkeeper to send the document on to Denbigh with a reliable man. He himself was not fit to ride further. There was great difficulty in finding someone who was willing to make the journey, since the footpads and broken men have been growing ever more dangerous in the mountains. Finally, a troop of horse being sent up here to the garrison agreed to bring it with them, and so it reached me at last only yesterday. I understand that Stone was to be carried by slow stages home in a carriage, once further funds had reached him. However, he sent a letter to me with this document, begging me to release you in any case.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I have not said that I will do it. There is a further problem. I can spare no men to escort you. We are short of troops here as it is. If you go, you must go alone. I don’t need to tell you of the risks, travelling alone, in winter, in wartime, in this mountain country which is the haunt, even in peace, of men little better than beasts.’
‘If I’m given the choice, then I will go.’
The governor looked him up and down with a cold eye.
‘You do not seem to me to be very robust. I know little about you, or why you are here in custody, but I believe you are not a soldier.’
‘No.’
‘I would not be too sanguine that even a soldier could make such a journey. However, as I have the authorisation and you are willing to take the risk, then I will give orders for you to be provided for. I cannot concern myself with the details. It will fall to the captain of the guard.’
John felt a sinking at his heart. If indeed it fell to the captain of the guard, then he would be ill provided, unless the governor gave specific instructions. Better to risk offending him and say something.
‘You will provide me with a horse and supplies for the journey?’
‘Settle it with the captain of the guard.’ The governor was irritated. ‘I have told you, I have no time to look into matters of detail.’
Whether the governor gave his orders at once to the captain of the guard, John had no way of knowing, but while he waited for his release, the weather grew worse. For three days it snowed without ceasing, and on the fourth, when he looked down on the town of Denbigh, even the usual faint tracks had disappeared. Worse than this, his fever had flared up once again. He was constantly thirsty, and his head ached abominably, so that he could barely think. This feverishness was aggravated by worries that there were other matters he should have raised with the governor. He could have asked if he might send a letter in the next military post that went out. In a letter to his father, he could have asked for a coach and an escort of friends to be sent out to meet him, at least as far as Shrewsbury, perhaps to Llangollen, thus reducing the danger of attack. In his present feeble state, he would do well if he was able to ride even as far as Llangollen in this weather. Dafydd had said that, following the way he advised up the Clwyd valley, it would be about thirty-five miles, instead of something like fifty following the other road to the west, by Cerrig-y-Druidion.
While he waited, he made what preparations he could. He folded up his spare clothes and his books, and wrapped them in both of Dafydd’s blankets, which had remained on his bed, together with Dafydd’s cloak, which had also been left behind. If he was to make a journey in bitter winter weather, he would need anything he could ca
rry to keep out the cold. He had flint and tinder, but it would be difficult to make a fire in such conditions. Dafydd had not told him whether there were in the Clwyd valley any towns where he might hope to find an inn, or even a mean wayside tavern. From what he had seen on the outward journey, most of this part of Wales was thinly inhabited, no more than scattered farms and cottages, where the people would be unlikely to take in an unknown traveller. There was one place he had mentioned, Ruthin, but John did not know whether it was town or village. For the most part, he would need to fend for himself until he reached Llangollen. He felt saddened, recalling the name, and smiled ruefully at the remembrance of Dafydd’s care that he should pronounce the place like a true Welshman.
After several days, the captain of the guard paid him a visit. John had not seen the man for weeks, not since before Dafydd’s illness. It might be that the fellow had been keeping his distance, not wanting to become infected with the gaol fever. Or there might have been some more private reason. In any case, the man’s appearance was shockingly altered. His clothes were dirty and the stink of his person, which had always heralded his entrance, was more foul than ever. He walked unsteadily, although it was morning, and he could surely not have drunk many bottles yet. His eyes were bloodshot and they roamed feverishly about the room, then fixed themselves on John with a kind of manic intensity.
‘So, where’s your cell mate, the vile blacksmith, the ungodly preacher and leader of mutiny and riot?’
John stared at him. Surely he must know that Dafydd was dead?
The captain staggered up to him and caught hold of the front of his doublet.
‘We know how to deal with people like you, you and that Anabaptist sectary. Hang ’em all, that’s what I say. Hang ’em, and cut ’em down, and put ’em to the fire. That’ll soon start ’em singing another tune.’