This Rough Ocean

by Ann Swinfen

  By the time dusk fell, the stream had grown to twice the width and it was certain that the land was falling away towards a valley. John had been able to drink cold, pure water whenever he wanted all day, and he felt the better for it, even though he now had nothing left to eat but a handful of raisins and a bit of cheese smaller than the palm of his hand. He slept that night under a bush, and before he slept he prayed simply that it would not begin to snow again. For he felt that, if he could be spared another snow storm, he might survive to reach some village or farm.

  The next day dawned clear but very cold, his breath steaming before his face. There was ice dangling in his straggled beard and sugaring his eyebrows, and when he went to drink at the stream he was forced to break a fresh covering of ice with a stone. He was so light-headed now from hunger that he no longer made his way by rational thought, choosing his direction by the sun, but merely clung to the stream, like Theseus clinging to the thread that would lead him out of the labyrinth of death. This became more difficult as the stream leapt down steeper ground now, over rapids and waterfalls, with a strange muffled roaring sound beneath its casing of ice, as if the nearer it came to its union with some greater river, the more headlong became its downward rush.

  Sometime during the afternoon, with his shadow jumping ahead of him, John reached a bank tumbling down into a narrow valley through which ran the river his stream was seeking. And the stream, broken free from the mountains and the ice, flung itself over the bank in a final waterfall to join the river. A well-trodden track ran below him alongside the river, and ahead, just before it rounded a bend, there was a cottage, from which smoke was rising. It was a miserable hovel, like those he had seen when first he had been brought into Wales, but the fire was a sign of human company as welcoming as trumpeters proclaiming the Lord Mayor’s feast in London. John slithered down the snowy bank and began to stumble along the track towards it, weaving as erratically as a drunkard.

  He had almost reached it, was just wondering whether he should shout halloo to warn the inhabitants of his arrival, when he heard the pounding of horses’ hooves behind him. After all that unfathomable time lost in the mountains, suddenly he was surrounded by people on all sides! He turned and looked over his shoulder. At first, he thought his fever had returned, and the waking nightmares, for he thought he saw the selfsame band of outlaws riding towards him. After all his suffering, they would slay him in the end. Fate had been mocking him, tormenting him with the terrors and privations of his escape, only to hand him over to these brigands at last.

  John sank to his knees beside the road. He had no strength to endure any longer. Before he covered his face with his hands, in order to offer up his soul to God, he saw that, although it was the same group of men, they were less than half in number, and several wore bloody bandages. It made little difference. He was armed with nothing more than the knife with which he cut his food, and he was as weak as a three-year-old child.

  It seemed the inhabitants of the cottage had heard the horsemen also, for the door was suddenly thrown open. Then John felt himself clouted on the head, and heard, at the same moment, the explosion of a gun. He was dragged some distance by one of the horsemen, then the man let him go, and he rolled away into the snow-filled ditch at the side of the road. As he felt himself slipping into darkness, there seemed to be a battle taking place above him on the road, followed by the sound of horses galloping away. Someone rolled him over. People were talking in words he could not understand, then he felt himself lifted gently and carried into a place that was warm and dim.

  John was never sure afterwards how long it was before he woke and found himself bedded down on a straw mattress in the cottage, for he discovered that his rescuers spoke no English. There were two of them: a huge, raw-boned old woman and a young man of about twenty, who was probably her grandson and who was even bigger, so tall he had to stoop except in the very centre of the cottage. Their size, so much larger than most Welshmen, perplexed John. He had read tales of giants who had lived on in the Welsh mountains long after most of their kind had been driven out by the present native inhabitants, long before the Romans came, but he had always taken them to be the fantastical imaginings of poets. Now he was not so sure. As well as being so immense, the old woman and her grandson were both ugly: she with misshapen features and the warts and protuberances of age, he with the round face, hanging mouth and squinting eyes of the simpleton.

  Grateful as he was for his rescue from the brigands, John was afraid of the pair at first. It was the woman who had wielded the gun, for he saw her later cleaning and reloading it, no doubt in preparation for any further attack. This gun was an ancient arquebus, at least a hundred years old, and John was somewhat nervous it might explode of itself when the old crone propped it up in a corner near the fire. He decided that it must have been the boy who had carried him to the cottage, for although he was simple-minded, he seemed able to speak a few words, and could undertake easy tasks like chopping wood and making up the fire, or churning milk. The hovel was as squalid inside as John had suspected, and the pair were far from clean. The bed (which he shared with a large dog of wolfish appearance) was hopping with fleas and lice, an affliction he had been spared since the day the infested blankets had been brought to the cell in Denbigh.

  After a time, however, he began to see that these people, rough and dirty as they looked, were truly kind. When he had recovered a little they gave him broth to eat. The boy squatted on the ground beside the bed, watching him with that vacuous look while he ate. It made John nervous, but when he had finished and made to put the empty bowl aside, the boy seized it, saying something it his strange language, and brought John more of the broth, with a chunk of excellent fresh bread, only slightly marred by bits of grit in the coarse-ground corn. When John thanked him and gave a nervous smile, the boy beamed broadly and gave a little dance on his big clumsy feet, before settling down to watch him again.

  By the next day, John could feel strength beginning to seep back into his body, and when the old woman made him a dish of buttered eggs, he fell on it as ravenously as the wolf-like dog would have done. He was perplexed how to speak to these people and show his gratitude for their kindness, for all he could do was to nod and smile, and say ‘Thank you’ in English again and again. It seemed that they understood, for they said something in Welsh that he understood to mean: ‘You’re welcome. Please, it’s our pleasure.’

  The woman gave him goat’s milk to drink, which had a strong odour, but seemed to satisfy his shrunken stomach. The boy began to present him with gifts, little treasures which he must have found over a long period, and which he kept in a broken dish balanced on the beam above the door. At first it was pretty coloured stones, then one day a scallop shell, of pure white until you held it to the light, when it shone faintly rose. The boy held it up to show off this magical property. John was unsure whether he was supposed to admire it or to keep it, but when he tried to give it back, the boy shook his head and pressed it back into John’s hand, folding his fingers over it. Where could such a thing have come from, to this poor dwelling so far from the sea? It might have been the treasure of some pilgrim of the old faith who had journeyed long ago to Santiago di Compostela, but how had it ended here?

  John spent a week recovering in the cottage, gradually getting up for a little longer each day, moving stiffly about the confined space, and at last, when he was sure there was no one on the road, venturing outside. The weather continued very cold, but no more snow had fallen. Could he but have known where he was, he would have been content, for now that he was stronger, he felt that he could walk the rest of the way into England. He tried asking the old woman, ‘Llangollen?’, pointing ahead eastwards along the road. As first she seemed confused, then she shook her head.

  ‘Llangollen,’ she said, or he thought she said, pointing to the west.

  He must be pronouncing it wrongly. Llangollen could not lie to the west. The next day, he tried again, but the woman was adamant. Llangollen
, she was surely telling him, lay to the west. Somehow he must have come around it through the mountains. He tried again, asking, ‘Shrewsbury?’ She looked blank. ‘Oswestry?’ Still this meant nothing. Then she seized his arm and began to gabble in Welsh, with many gestures, her hands waving back and forth along the road, her tongue making the clop-clop noise of horses’ hooves. John clutched his head between his hands. Since he had left Denbigh, he seemed to be living in a fantastical world out of some old knightly tale, to have strayed into strange territories inhabited by grotesque creatures, where he was robbed of speech. All the while he tried to speak to the old woman, the boy shuffled round them, bobbing his head, laughing, and clapping his hands.

  Yet, in the end, the old woman’s attempts to explain fell into place. She must, after all, have been as frustrated as he. On the eighth or ninth day after he had been taken in by the strange couple, John heard the sound of a horse on the road. At once he leapt up, and took a step towards the loaded gun. If the brigands were returning, he did not want to depend on the old woman’s shooting skills again. But she laid her hand on his arm and shook her head, smiling happily. A few minutes later, the cottage door opened and a man entered. He was as small and wizened as the woman was large and gross, but he greeted her like an old friend, taking off his hat to her and nodding to the boy. He looked with suspicion at John. At once the woman launched into an explanation and he relaxed.

  ‘So, you are a traveller fallen amongst thieves, is it?’ he said.

  ‘You speak English!’

  ‘English and Irish as well as my mother tongue, which is the language of Wales. Mother Bronwen is telling me you want to travel on, but she cannot make out where you are going.’

  ‘Lichfield, in Staffordshire,’ said John, feeling his face flush with relief. ‘I asked for Llangollen and Shrewsbury and Oswestry, but she didn’t seem to understand.’

  The man gave him an odd look.

  ‘But why would you want to go to Llangollen? That’s further back into Wales.’

  ‘I must have come by another way and missed it. I came from Denbigh through the mountains.’

  The man gave a low whistle. ‘You came over Llantysilio, in the midst of this winter? I would not have said any man could do that and live.’

  ‘I think,’ said John soberly, ‘if these good people had not found me, I should not have lived.’

  ‘Aye, they’re kind folk, though many might call them strange. I don’t know what will become of the boy when the grandmother dies.’

  ‘Can you direct me which way to go?’

  ‘I can do better,’ said the man, ‘I’m a carter to trade. If you are not in great haste, I can carry you to Birmingham. That’s as close as I go to Lichfield on this journey.’

  ‘I can walk with ease from Birmingham,’ said John, near overcome with relief. He held out his hand. ‘John Swynfen,’ he said.

  ‘Dewi Morgan,’ said the man, shaking his hand and sketching a comic little bow. ‘Glad to be of service.’ Then he turned to the old woman Bronwen, and explained their exchange to her in Welsh.

  Dewi stayed the night in the cottage, sleeping in a chair beside the fire, and the two of them set off next morning early, for, as Dewi said, the outlaws were still troubling the area, but they rose late from their sleep and he wanted to be on the road before they stirred. As Dewi gathered up the reins, John leaned down from the seat beside him and handed Bronwen one of his precious shillings, which he had taken from its hiding place in his boot. She peered at it with her watery eyes, looking puzzled, then she smelled it, shook her head, and handed it back to John.

  ‘They’ve little use for money in these parts,’ said Dewi, who was watching in amusement.

  ‘I have nothing else to give her,’ said John.

  He pressed the shilling into her hand, and folded her fingers around it as the boy had done. She smiled at him, and nodded, as if she understood. Then as Dewi clicked his tongue at his horse, the boy came running from the house with his strange lop-sided gait, and held out one last treasure for John. It was the bright feather from the tail of some fine cockerel, and it gleamed with rainbow colours in the early light.

  John smiled and laid his hand gently on the boy’s rough head.

  ‘Tell him,’ he said to Dewi, ‘that I will keep it always, and always I shall remember the kindness shown me by two strangers in Wales.’

  Dewi translated and then they were on their way, rounding the corner almost at once and losing sight of the cottage, which John no longer thought of as a miserable hovel. Desperately poor, yes, but a place where more goodness might be found than in the palace of a king. He remembered Dafydd and his words: ‘Land for every man and woman, that none may starve.’

  

  The carter’s journey back into England went slowly, for the roads were burdened with snow and the old horse proceeded at his own leisurely pace, down through Oswestry to Shrewsbury, and then south and east towards Warwickshire. John spent much of the time sleeping amongst the bales of Welsh wool, which seemed as soft as goosedown compared with the hard sleeping he had known for months past. When he was not sleeping, he sat beside the carter on the seat at the front of the cart, grateful for his thick cloak against the north wind, dirty and torn though it now was, and even more grateful for the two fleeces Dewi unpacked for them to wrap around themselves. For much of the time they sat in companionable silence, each man occupied with his own thoughts, but from time to time Dewi would launch upon a long monologue, describing the places they were passing, along a route he had followed for thirty years, and commenting on the harm they had suffered in the war. But he was accustomed to travelling alone, and it seemed to John that he addressed his remarks to his horse more than his companion.

  At last, after many days, they came east out of Birmingham, on the way to Tamworth. Dewi halted the cart on the road near a great oak tree, and said that this was the nearest he came to Lichfield. He screwed up his eyes, looking into the north as John climbed down from the cart and lifted the tattered remains of his bundle after him.

  ‘I fear there’s more snow coming,’ said Dewi. ‘I don’t like the look of that great cloud looming over there. How far is your home from here?’

  ‘About three or four hours’ walk. I hope I may reached it before nightfall.’

  John followed Dewi’s glance to the north and gave a rueful laugh.

  ‘It seems that whenever I must go afoot, I bring down snow storms about my ears.’

  ‘Come with me to Tamworth instead,’ said Dewi. ‘And we’ll try to find another carter who may take you with him nearer to your home.’

  John looked from the black cloud to Dewi and back again. It was hard to confront the long walk and the coming storm, but now that he was so near, he was impatient to head for Swinfen. He shook his head.

  ‘I thank you for all your help, my friend, but I’ll be on my way. I haven’t seen my family this year and more, and I cannot turn away now.’

  The two men shook hands. Then Dewi stirred up his horse on the road to the town; John shouldered his pack and headed northwest towards Swinfen.

  At first he made good progress, but the snow that Dewi had foreseen soon began to fall. The wind grew stronger, whirling the flakes in a blinding curtain, so that, in whatever direction John turned, the surrounding countryside was blotted out. Still, this was fairly familiar territory for him, although when he did come this way, it was on horseback, which gives a man a very different view of hill and wood than when he goes afoot. The road, already hidden in drifting snow, disappeared in the blizzard. He knew he had missed his way after he had been walking two hours and had not come across the village of Hints. When he felt himself beginning to climb, he realised he must have strayed on to Packington Moor. The moor was no place to be walking in a blizzard, but on the far side of the moor lay Swinfen. Reason told him that if he continued to put one foot in front of the other, he must, in time, come home.

  Putting one foot in front of another was not such an easy mat
ter. Dewi had given him some pieces of sacking to wrap around the broken remains of his boots, which had served to keep his feet warm while he sat in the cart. Now, however, the snow began to cling to the sacking like dough to a baker’s fingers. Before long, each foot was encased in a monstrous boot of freezing snow, growing heavier by the minute. He could not unwrap the sacking, for his boots would finally fall apart, and he would be left barefoot. His survival, barefoot on the moor in February, would be doomed. All he could do was to stop from time to time and prise the armour of snow from his feet, but each time this grew more difficult. He had no gloves, and must keep his hands as warm as he could by burying them in his pockets. As soon as he tried to free his feet from the snow, his fingers stiffened and turned blue with the cold. The wretched object on his head, which was all that was left of his hat, barely kept the snow out of his hair; it could not prevent snow slipping down the back of his neck, where it mingled with his effortful sweat to soak his shirt and doublet. Icicles had formed in his beard and rang together like bells of glass.

  With the struggle of climbing the moor into the teeth of the storm and burdened by packed snow, the muscles of his legs began to throb with pain. He realised that the days in the cart, which he thought had restored a little of his strength, had merely deceived him into thinking he was well again. Every few yards, his calf muscles went into spasms of cramp which left him gasping, bent over and rubbing his legs to try to force them to function again. The weird sense of unreality which had haunted his gaol fever crept back into his mind, magnified by the confusion of the endless snow. Faces peered out at him from amongst the flakes, leering and then vanishing. He thought he could hear the howling of the wolves which had once lived here. A wind-twisted tree looming up in his path reached out gigantic arms to clutch at him, so that he gave a cry like a frightened animal and stumbled into a run to escape from it. In his haste he tripped over something buried beneath the snow and was flung forward on his knees, where he stayed, sobs rising in his throat, as he cried out against a God who had inflicted such punishment on him.