Court of Foxes

by Christianna Brand

  ‘It looks very much like the same England to me,’ she said, not very agreeably; for with every turn of the wheels she came away, alone and dejected, from all the light-heartedness of the life she had lately known. Rogues we may be, the whole lot of us, she thought; but it seems there is but dullness in virtue. And if this be Wales, it is only that much further from all I love.

  ‘Why, what did you expect?’ he said. ‘These are not the high mountains and great passes of North Wales. These are but the foothills of those mountains, a sweeter land to me by far, for all it has less of grandeur. But you will see soon how the roads twist and turn, with never an inch of flat land between the wild hills with their hanging forests of scrub oak, that have been here since the Romans and before them.’ And sure enough, soon the roads ran only uphill or down. It was sundown when he said, as they clattered through a small townlet: ‘This is Llandovery. In two hours we shall be home.’

  Llandovery. At that name, her heart turned over. ‘From which your brother takes his name?’

  ‘It’s the family name. The title comes from the great Bog of Tregaron, which lies in Cardiganshire, twenty miles northeast of Castell Cothi; five miles and more of bogland where the tall, pale grass that covers it all takes on, in sunshine, a sheen of gold—’

  ‘And yet more pink than gold,’ said Catti from her corner. She spoke dreamily, her mind so far away, that she omitted the respectful ‘my lord’. But he appeared not to notice it; the formalities in Wales it seemed were less extreme than in the haut monde of London. I’ll soon change all that, thought the new countess — she who had so lately railed at the empty obsequiousness of the inn-keepers; I’ve not come to the ends of the earth to be on terms of easy familiarity with serving girls. She listened in disdain as he answered, simple and friendly in the cool assumption of a superiority beyond necessity of condescension. ‘You are right. And yet gold also, a pale gold — have you not seen it, Catti, when the sun lay on it? — miles and miles of it, moving a little, shifting a little as the wind blows over the grasses, as though there were ripples on a broad lake of gold. And there are creatures there, wild birds that you’ll never see in any other part of Wales, and the great salmon come up the River Teifi to their spawning beds…’ He said to Gilda: ‘You shall see it some day.’

  ‘Don’t keep me too long waiting. Wild birds and spawning salmon,’ she said, irritably scornful, ‘have long been the passion of my life.’

  They had come through a winding valley, and now struck off down a narrow path where to their right the river hurtled and tumbled to green fields eked out of spare soil by a farmer, far below. ‘This way was hewn out by the Romans from the solid rock, in the building of the culvert which runs by a thousand tricks of land level and water pressure, from the waterfall behind us to the gold mines of Pumsaint, eight miles ahead. You may still see the mark of its progress through the fields, no tillage obliterates it.’ As she remained indifferent, contemptuously bored, he added: ‘We begin now the ascent through the forests of scrub oak that have been here since those days and for all the years before. Within half an hour we shall be in sight of home.’

  Home. Some dreary castle in this dreary land of rock paths hewn out by Roman legions (and not much improved upon since, reflected Gilda, jolted this way and that by the rough riding of the iron-rimmed wheels over boulders and pot-holes) — of stark mountains, patched with gorse and heather, of stunted oak pouring down the mountain side to the green fields fringing the quiet-flowing river, dotted with grazing cattle, blurs now in the failing evening light… My home is not here, she thought; my home is a bijou house with frilled curtains and a white door leading in from the cobbled street where the coaches rattle and the link boys clatter and the watchman cries out, All’s well! My home is a four-poster bed with the one I love to hold me in his arms and be not violent and rough but tenderly kind… My home is where all is laughter and fun and gaiety and love, where the talk is a sputter and a sparkle, not this flat dull conning-over with a servant wench of whether some salmon-ridden bogland be pink or gold… And she leaned her head against the padded leather of the coach and listened for any sound above the rumble of the wheels; and heard nothing, nothing — only the eternal silences of the countryside, the stillness, the dullness, the nothingness, the hush of the evening…

  The hush of the evening: slashed across suddenly, violently, by the high, shrill whinney of a horse, the clatter of hooves, the jingle of harness, the breaking of branches, the sound of men’s voices yelling…

  And a man’s voice crying: ‘Stand and deliver! Your money or your lives!’

  *Dafydd: the single f is pronounced like a v in Welsh, and the doubled like the hard th in ‘the’. Roughly, then, Duv-ith, accent on the first syllable.

  Bach: a gutteral sound, almost impossible to the English tongue — bar-ch, without any sounding of the r.

  Dai: is pronounced to rhyme with ‘dye’.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE COACH ROCKED WITH the sudden check, the rearing and stamping of frightened horses, brought too abruptly to a halt. She could hear the cursing of the coachman on his box, the yells of two outriders, unable to come near. ‘ ’Tis Y Cadno, my lord! ’Tis the Fox!’*

  ‘They won’t harm us,’ he said. ‘They won’t harm us. They only want our gold.’ But as she caught at his arm, terrified, the muzzle of a pistol appeared in the window and a villainous face, half masked by a scarf pulled roughly across the mouth and chin. ‘Crouch down, Gilda, don’t let yourself be seen; and for God’s sake, don’t let them have a glimpse of your hair! They say that he has a — has a fancy for fair women…’ He struggled blindly to pull forward the shawl she wore over her head, to block out the sight of her from the man at the window. Catti’s strong arm shot up and pulled her roughly down to the floor of the coach.

  The pistol gestured. ‘Come — out, sir, out!’ There was a clattering and slithering as he backed his pony away to allow for the opening of the door; but the Earl held his ground, still blocking the window with his body. Outside, the coachman struggled with his horses, pleading, ‘Leave me be, lads, t’aint no fault of mine if they won’t come to attention, I’m doing what I can.’ All about there was noise and movement, the sound of horses’ hooves scuffling the dead leaves beneath the scrub oak, men swearing and shouting, laughing, cheering — there must be a dozen or more of them, riding up along the road behind them, down the forest slope, above them, climbing up from below — ringing them in. Lord Tregaron spoke a word and the leader yelled out for silence, perhaps moved closer, looked more carefully: cried out in Welsh, yet clearly enough to be understood: ‘It’s the Earl, boys! Tregaron himself.’

  And it muttered and rumbled about the coach, the sound of rough voices: ‘It’s the Earl! From Castell Cothi! Tregaron himself!’ and the laughter and cheering were renewed. But the first man said suspiciously: ‘You travel very humble, for his lordship. Where’s the quarterings on your coach?’

  ‘I travel incognito out of respect for — such very gentry as yourselves. And for the same reason, carry no valuables. Travelling from one home to another, why should I do so? A handful of sovereigns for the journey and those already spent but for a such few shillings as wouldn’t be worth your acceptance.’

  ‘But which we will accept, however, my lord; being not so proud as you credit us.’

  ‘Are you Gareth y Cadno?’ he said in a puzzled voice. ‘I had heard he was proud: proud as the devil.’

  ‘Why as for devils, I am myself as it happens The Devil — Dio y Diawl, second in command to Y Cadno. The Fox is sick: wounded in an affray with a rider — who played him a trick and left him shot in the body and helpless. Of which rider you know something yourself, my lord, I believe?’

  And it was true. Crouching on the floor of the coach with Catti whispering rapid translations into her ear — for the man spoke for the most part in Welsh — she recalled how the Earl’s messenger had told her little brother of his wayside adventure. ‘Wherefore, my lord, Y Cadno craves a wor
d with you. I am to bring you to the Cwrt.’

  Well — he was a brave man, for all his foppishness: she had to acknowledge that. He stepped down immediately, closing the door of the coach quickly behind him. ‘Very well, I’ll come with you. Let my men take the coach on to Castell Cothi and I can follow when the Fox has done with me.’

  The man laughed, a great rolling ho-ho-ho! Beneath his pony’s hooves, the dry twigs snapped, and crackled as he backed away to allow for the opening door. ‘What — send the coach on? — and all your gold with it!’

  ‘I have told you and I swear it — I carry no gold.’ But the hooves slipped and scuffled again on the leaves mouldering, ever renewed, beneath the small stunted scrub oaks, and over his protests a voice cried, ‘Move aside then, and let me see!’ and the light from the window was blotted out again. Petrified into quietness she crouched with Catti, on the floor in the blackness keeping her head bent low beneath its dark, covering shawl: and raised it sharply, in startled terror as a torch was thrust in and the whole interior blazed into light. And the shawl slipped back and the lovely hair fell all about her shoulders: and the voice said slowly, huge with triumph: ‘Well, but my lord, it seems you lie — when you say that you carry no gold.’

  No gags were necessary. In all those bleak, wild mountains, who would hear them however loud they might cry out? Sick with terror she felt herself hauled out, rough arms lifted her across the pommel of a pony, rough arms held her there. Beside her, she knew that Catti was carried also, screaming and struggling amidst the laughter and cursing of those who had her in their charge — somewhere behind them, Lord Tregaron followed. Down through the forest of oaks, fording the little river, sore with the jolting jog-trot of the pony over the tussocky ground she gave herself over to the merciful darkness of oblivion; and woke to find that the jog-trot had ceased, that there were lights, the flickering of torches in approaching darkness, an outline of black shapes towering above her as of rugged buildings. Whimpering she struggled into a sitting position, the rider still holding her round the waist with one arm, as with the other he reined in the stubby little pony to quietness. In the smokey dusk, all about her men were descending from their mounts. She cried out: ‘Where’s his lordship? Where’s my husband?’

  She saw him released, set free to stumble over towards her, rubbing his arms where the bonds had cut into him. ‘Hush, Gilda, make no outcry, be quiet, do what they tell you.’ His face was patched with shadows in the flicker of the torchlight. ‘It’s Cwrt y Cadno, the Court of the Fox — the lair, the den of this footpad, this Gareth y Cadno.’**

  ‘Oh, God!’ she sobbed. ‘What will they do to us?’

  ‘I think they won’t harm us. I think they mean to hold us to ransom.’

  ‘To ransom! Then very soon—? But in the meantime…?’

  ‘In the meantime they’ll house us, I suppose, in some sort. They seem to have a rough kind of fortress here among the caves between these great boulders.’ And indeed the massive blocks now revealed themselves, to eyes growing accustomed to the new light, as great rocks, tumbled thousands of years since into this narrow valley; through which the hand of man had threaded walls and reinforcements till the whole thing resembled one vast, nightmare, armed encampment, filling the little valley and spreading away up the hillside. Above and beyond them and all about them, the rough, low mountains of Carmarthenshire ringed them in, dark against the darkling sky; blotting out all hope, all thought, almost all memory of civilisation. She burst into a torrent of helpless weeping.

  Catti Jones had ceased her screeching and now came to her mistress, rubbing stiff arms also, but miraculously restored to courage and good cheer again. ‘Come Madam, come, my lady! My lord, I’ll take her.’ She put about Gilda’s heaving shoulders an arm which — unlike his own — trembled not at all; and led her towards lights that flared at the black mouth of an entrance to the caves. ‘ ’Tis not too bad, my lady, no harm will come to us, since they hold us to ransom. And meanwhile my orders are to wait upon your ladyship and see that you don’t suffer.’ And she went before her down the dark tunnel-mouth of the over-hanging rocks and emerging, urged: ‘Come — lift your head and see!’

  A room as huge and high as the huge, high hall of the mansion in Hanover Square; and in its wild, crude way almost as magnificent. The plunderings of a hundred rich wagon loads had gone to the furnishing of this great room; the tables might be of young ash-plants lashed tightly together, but they were covered with such cloths of damask and brocade as had graced the hangings of Hanover Square itself; the floor might be covered largely with rushes, but one end was spread with a carpet of the finest Turkey, brilliantly glowing in the light of the torches thrust into sconces in the rough-hewn rock walls. And a chair stood at this same end, draped over with fox skins: a sort of throne, perhaps, for it was set a little apart from the roughly made benches — which were strewn nevertheless with small rugs and mats, each man perhaps choosing and making fine some place of his own. Light, in daytime, would filter in through slits and crevices in the rocks; for the rest the black walls were hung with tapestries as fine, no doubt, as any in Castell Cothi — some possibly having, indeed, been designed to hang there and never reached their destiny. And strangest of all, laid out upon the long central table, patterned with care as though for a stall in some grand charity bazaar in town, an assortment of valuables as motley as at any bazaar — and yet which no bazaar could ever have boasted of: firearms, chased with silver at their barrels, carved and inlaid boxes holding cups and cutlery of silver; dressing cases of gentlemen and ladies’ jewel cases, writing cases, exquisitely furnished; a heap of ornamental buckles torn from belts and shoes, a heap of embroidered shawls, of furs, of the rich hand-made lace of Brussels, of Honiton and Ireland… Fans, watches, trinkets, gew-gaws of fashionable women; silver chains, chains of gold, a small heap of jewellery set with precious stones, a small heap of sovereigns, gleaming, butter-yellow in the torchlight… The gleanings of the rich merchants, carrying their wares, alert and anxious but of necessity, to the new, thriving towns of the newly thriving land of Wales: of the gentry passing to and fro between this grand house and that, where to carry none of one’s splendours would make the visit not worth the undertaking (for how should a lady from the fashionable metropolis appear in the society of the great country land-owners without her diamonds, her jewelled trinkets, all the comforts of her gold-mounted beauty box, her wardrobe of splendid furs and rich dresses and cloaks and shawls…?): of the cattle drovers, returning from the long, slow trek to the London market, their beasts driven patiently before them — coming home with the profit stowed away in saddle-bag or pocket, because there was no other means of transferring it. Laid out here upon a table: measured, counted, belonging to all and so belonging to none — watched by the finest of all guard-dogs: the jealous eyes of a community who, together and severally, owned it.

  Two women appeared from an inner cave; rough, unkempt, but handsome in their brilliant Welsh way with the lovely complexions of a land of soft rains, bright-eyed, the dark hair, uncombed, tumbling in black tendrils from crown to shoulders; the strong, sturdy figures decked out in what had been the finery of rich women plundered — once lovely petticoats of cambric and lace, now bedraggled and clinging to sturdy brown legs. They spoke to Catti in Welsh. ‘They say, milady, there’s a place, a — a cave — where you may sleep: Y Cadno’s woman will give it up to you. And you shall have food.’

  But a few hours ago, mine host had scraped and cavorted and offered of his best to her ladyship; the night before that, it had required a whole retinue to see her up to bed. And now… All the planning and the scheming, in long-ago Gloucestershire, all the hours of anxiety, all the daring of it! — and for this… A cave where she might sleep; and she should have food. She could not help a small giggle at the thought of it, the topsy-turvy absurdity of it; and had suddenly a vision of her dear mother nid-nodding and bobbing, compliments-and-thanks-my-lady and there’s a cave where your ladyship may sleep — and wen
t off into outright laughter, peal upon peal of it ringing through the barbaric splendours of the great cavern, out to where in the flare of the torches, the men thronged, shouting aloud their triumphant news…

  Outside, in the broadening out of the little valley before its final embracement of the fall of rocks, a sort of foreground had been stamped by the tread of horses and men, and here the gang were assembled, the women running out to their men with tankards of ale or wine, with wild kisses and bursts of triumphant, capering dancing as, in incomprehensible Welsh, they tossed the good news to one another — the Earl himself taken and his lady, and brought to ransom, coach, coachman, horses and all (Willie-bach was bringing the coach round by the roadway.) It was like a stage set, thought Marigelda, running back from the great hall to the tunnel mouth, standing there, watching it: the young boys humping the saddles from the ponies, sliding the bits from their mouths, giving them a friendly whack on the rump, to send them trotting off gratefully to their own quarters, the women all laughing and dancing, a rabble of children scampering about amongst them; the men shouting to and fro their boasts of riches to come, half in Welsh, half in English, in either hardly to be understood. In their midst stood Dio y Diawl — Dio the Devil, stout and jovial, with a big handsome head and heavy body, fat yet muscular, with huge shoulders and arms; and laughed and touched tankards with reeling admirers and broke at last into a velvety tenor, singing a hymn of praise. All around him the song was taken up, the deep sweet music bell-like and clear in the hubbub of laughter and shouting, rising up in a crescendo of sound to the palely appearing stars in the quiet sky. And suddenly, from around a corner three men appeared. And the music died and the voices were hushed: and silence fell.