A Novel

by Sean Pidgeon

  He tears out a blank sheet from his notebook, pauses to gather his thoughts, pencil in hand, then sets down the most careful letter he has ever written in his life. At the end, he adds detailed directions and a small hand-drawn map. He tucks the sheet inside Lucy’s empty envelope, reseals it and writes Julia’s name on the front, then runs back to his car parked at Gloucester Green, drives up to St. Giles and on in the direction of north Oxford.

  The Old Way Down

  from the Mountain

  IT IS A comfort to Julia, seeing Emma Speedwell pulling her battered blue Volvo into the gravel drive shared by the two neighbouring houses. Emma, always in a hurry, shouts a cheerful hello as she runs inside. Turning the key in the front door, Julia sees a letter there, a brown envelope pushed half-way through. She opens it, takes out a single sheet of paper filled with Donald’s precise, angular handwriting. The first line hits her like a blow to the stomach. I looked for you at the college gate, but perhaps you changed your mind. What follows is a beautifully crafted letter telling her of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his bishop’s ring, his desperate final journey and the fate of his ancient book, the true meaning of the verses that are written there. The letter closes with a vision that first came to Donald at Trevethey Mill, when Julia was drawing a map of the Welsh mountains on a paper napkin. In his mind’s eye, they are walking hand in hand as they climb up to a high valley and look out together on a view described in an old poem they both know by heart.

  Within minutes she is in the car, reversing out of the drive. As she pulls away, she glimpses something in the rear-view mirror that stops her short, freezes all logical thought. Hugh’s Land Rover is coming along the street from the other end. The traffic light is amber changing to red at the Woodstock Road as she makes the turn too quickly, heart pounding, then drives away as fast as she dares, cutting through the back streets, heading out of Oxford to the north and west.

  By the time she reaches the Cheltenham road, making slow but steady progress through the banks of fog still lying heavily across the Thames valley, the crisis is over. In time the traffic thins out, the fog lifting as the land rises gradually to the west. The Oxfordshire farmland slips easily by, the faint green haze of the winter wheat now making its mark on the November fields.

  She turns on the radio, tunes to the BBC playing music that is twenty years old, a nostalgic soundtrack of her youth. There are sharp memories of her final summer living at Dyffryn; then a song that transports her to the springtime of her first year at Wadham College, not long after she and Hugh first met. They are walking hand in hand along a narrow, penumbral space between high college walls. Somebody familiar is coming towards them from Radcliffe Square, a tall boy with reddish-brown hair, good-looking in an awkward, gangly way. She feels the colour coming to her cheeks, thinks to disengage her hand from Hugh’s, but it is too late, the gauntlet must be run. It is only a couple of weeks since she was with Donald at the Ashmolean Museum, listening to his earnest explanations of cartouches and scarabs and hieroglyphs, then to the Randolph for tea, all the while sensing him falling for her, basking in the glow of his evident admiration. She cannot recall precisely what was said as they passed each other on Brasenose Lane, perhaps just an uncomfortable greeting tersely returned, then on with their lives.

  DEEP INTO THE lower reaches of the Wye valley beyond the Welsh border, Donald finds himself in the state of heightened awareness that sometimes comes upon him when he is alone on a country road. This sensation grows to a spine-tingling intensity, as if some old British magic is speaking to him along the quiet, meandering lanes and the hills and dells where the morning mist is still gathered. He looks out on the passing landscape with a rare depth of understanding, sees banks and ditches and sunken lanes with their own stories to tell, hedgerows anchored by ancient pedunculate oaks with twisted arms outstretched towards the sky. Fragments of poetry are in his head, On a green hilltop we made our stand, spear-tips trapping gold of sunset . . . At nightfall we fell like thunder down the slope . . . think’st thou yon sanguine cloud has quench’d the orb of day? . . . To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, and warms the nations with redoubled ray. Then the outskirts of a small town, drab grey cottages, a petrol station and a pub, enough to banish this temporary enchantment. His thoughts return to the present world, and to Julia Llewellyn, and to his hopes for what the day might bring.

  It is early afternoon by the time he reaches the old drovers’ track that leads alongside the river to the base of the falls. It seems a far different place, the river much diminished, flowing smooth and tranquil over the rocks, a fine mist veiling the upper slopes. He gets out of the car, takes out the map to orientate himself, then looks in vain for a path that might lead up to the higher ground on the eastern side of the valley. The slopes on either side are steep and topped by treacherous crags. As far as he can see, the only way forward is along the river to the lower waterfall, where he climbed up with Julia and Caradoc Bowen.

  He walks a little way back along the track, follows it around a few bends of the river. Finally, as he is retracing his steps to the car, he sees what he is looking for. Ahead of him, the track seems to come to an abrupt end as the valley narrows towards the waterfall. Now he can see that it would at one time have turned sharply to the left and crossed over the bridge that once spanned the river at this point. The original path can still be traced on the far side, running up a hillside now thickly clad with bushes and small trees. This is the old way down from the mountain. He walks over to the riverbank and sits down with his back against one of the ruined stone footings of the bridge. For now, there is nothing for him to do but wait.

  JULIA CAN SEE the Land Rover five cars behind her. The first rush of panic soon subsides to a quieter, more rational anxiety. She might have expected it: seeing her drive away from the house at speed, Hugh has followed her all the way from Oxford. In any case, there is no way to avoid this confrontation. Ahead of her now are long, straight stretches with nowhere to stop, then a series of sharp bends as the road climbs up to the higher ground of the Forest of Dean. He is gaining steadily on her, and making no attempt to keep out of sight. She puts on her indicator, dives off to a steep, narrow lane on the right. It is signposted to a village they once visited on a long-ago happy weekend spent exploring this landscape of secret woods and hills. They always meant to come back.

  She drives no more than two hundred yards, pulls over in a narrow passing-place and waits there with the engine running. She can see him in her wing mirror as he makes the turn and accelerates down the hill. He pulls in close behind her with a sharp squeal of brakes, squeezes the Land Rover on to the grassy verge and opens the driver’s door. Instead of coming to her car, he crosses the road to a place where a gate leads to a farmer’s field. For an anxious few seconds, she stays where she is, wondering if she should simply drive away from him, try to lose him in the country lanes. Instead she turns off the engine, gets out and walks over to join him.

  ‘Ralph Barnabas told me he was going to speak to you,’ he says, almost casual, not looking at her. ‘Is that why you’re running away from me?’

  She feels wrong-footed by this statement, thrown off balance. ‘I can hardly believe it’s true, what he said to me.’

  ‘Why is that? Because you don’t think I’m capable of such a thing?’

  Looking at her husband leaning against the gate, the grim set of his face as he stares out across long sloping fields left fallow for the rough winter grazing, Julia sees someone who has become a stranger to her, who has nothing to do with the Hugh Mortimer she used to know, so bold and strong and inspired with the noble possibilities of the world. She opens her mouth to speak, but he holds up his hand.

  ‘No, don’t say anything, please just hear me out.’ He turns away from her, the words coming now with a quiet intensity. ‘I don’t think you ever quite understood about Caradoc Bowen. He was such an extraordinary figure in the early days, not like anyone else we had ever seen. We were young and idealistic and determined t
o change the world, and he spoke to us as if we had some grand purpose in life. He filled us with the romance of the Welsh rebellion, told us Owain Glyn Dŵr was Arthur returned to the aid of his people, and he alone knew how to find the place where Glyn Dŵr fell in battle and crossed over to the otherworld. If Bowen chose to cast himself as a modern-day Merlin, who were we to say he was not?’

  Hugh looks sharply at Julia, as if to see if his words have meant something to her. His face is pale, his eyes rimmed with red. ‘Then he offered us his greatest challenge. Where, he said, was the next Arthur, the next true champion of Wales? He was looking at me when he asked that question. He was looking straight at me, with my anger and my self-confidence and my pedigree coming all the way from Glyn Dŵr. He saw something in me, and I responded to it. If he was prepared to put his faith in me, how could I not believe myself to have all the makings of a Celtic hero from the past?’

  ‘It was what you wanted for yourself,’ Julia says. ‘Bowen didn’t force you—’

  ‘No, he didn’t force me into anything,’ Hugh says, ‘but he had a real power over me, and he knew how to use it. The plan to dam the Cwmhir valley was the catalyst he had been waiting for, the perfect opportunity to exploit my anger. He told me about the deal my father had made years before with the British government, trading away the future of the Ty Faenor estate in return for some tawdry aristocratic favour. Then he said it wasn’t just Ty Faenor, that Dyffryn Farm would also go under the flood.’

  Julia knows this story from Caradoc Bowen, but the thought of it still has the power to shock her. ‘So the two of you told my father about it, but said nothing to me.’

  ‘Should we not have spoken to him?’ In the look Hugh gives her now, so full of unconscious condescension, she reads the whole story of their marriage. ‘Dai met us at the Black Lion with Gareth Williams and some of the local Plaid Cymru men, all of them fired up to do whatever was necessary to stop the construction of the dam. Some people thought your father was the ring-leader, but it wasn’t that way at all. He was the voice of reason, telling us we should steer clear of violence. We should remember what happened at Cwm Tryweryn, how the bombing there hadn’t done any good in the end, Capel Celyn still went under the flood. But Bowen was a captivating speaker, and Dai stood no chance against him. I remember your father took me to one side just before he left, tried his best to calm me down. He said he had been like me in some ways, in his youth, and he knew what was burning inside me. But I was not strong enough to walk away from Caradoc Bowen.’

  Hugh falls silent for a moment, concentrates on flexing the toe of his boot against the metal gatepost. ‘In the autumn, we met up in secret at Ty Faenor with Gwyn Edwards, one of the Plaid Cymru men who had been at the Black Lion. It was agreed that Gwyn would work from the inside. He was used to handling explosives from the time he spent with his father in the slate quarries, and he was already working for Dafydd Ellis as a junior engineer. It would be a simple matter for him to stay late one evening and set the whole thing up. All I had to do was stand outside and keep watch. But something went wrong, he was standing over the dynamite when it went off.’

  It is a cruel trick of Julia’s imagination, the colourful picture that paints itself: the destructive effect of explosives on the human anatomy, a wave of blood and body parts. She finds herself clinging to the only redemptive thought she can find, that her father was not responsible for what happened. He tried to prevent it, and he would be bitterly dismayed if he knew she had ever thought otherwise.

  Now she would like Hugh to stop, but there is a relentless quality to his catharsis. ‘Just as Gwyn Edwards was being blown to pieces, and just as Stephen Barnabas was having his legs ripped from his body, I was running away like a helpless coward. The explosion knocked me off my feet, and I picked myself up, and I ran off along the railway tracks without so much as a glance over my shoulder.’

  The way he is looking at her now, it seems he is waiting for some reaction. What is there to say? She has been trying to get to the truth of what happened, and now she knows, and does not want to know. For a bewildering moment, she wonders what crime her husband has just confessed to. Accomplice to something: murder, attempted murder, manslaughter? She speaks quietly to him now. ‘I’m not sure what you expect from me.’

  ‘I expect nothing at all,’ Hugh says. ‘Perhaps you’ll want to go to the police. I’ve never had the courage to do it myself.’ He pushes himself away from the gate, turns to face her. ‘But I hope you will find a way to forgive me.’

  Julia has an image in her mind now, the young Hugh waiting there in the darkness by the railway tracks, so arrogant and self-assured and entirely in thrall to the messianic visions of Caradoc Bowen. In the end, the logic of it twisted cruelly back on him. He was torn down by failure, by the insupportable weight of Bowen’s expectations. What Julia feels mostly is a sadness that comes from knowing what he might have achieved, but did not; what their marriage might have been, but was not.

  And there is another picture that she will not easily forget, a rushing waterfall, rocks sent tumbling down from above, Bowen grasping desperately at a last handhold before falling to his death: Caradoc Bowen, who was the only person alive who knew for sure what Hugh’s role had been. She cannot say precisely what he is guilty of, but at this moment, more than anything else, she wants to be far away from Hugh Mortimer. As calmly as she can, she walks back across the road to her car.

  ‘Please, Julia,’ Hugh says. ‘Stay and talk to me.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me the truth,’ she says, ‘but I need to be on my own.’ She closes the door and starts the engine. As she drives away from him, around a bend in the lane and out of sight, she has a final glimpse of him in her mirror, standing there transfixed as if she has just sent him into oblivion.

  SITTING ALONE AT the riverbank, Donald turns his thoughts back to Caradoc Bowen, to this brilliant and troubled man who in some respects got things so right, yet also came to get them so terribly wrong. He pictures Bowen as an intense young scholar in the depths of his research on Siôn Cent, immersing himself in the treasure trove of previously unstudied manuscripts that he found at Ty Faenor. It is not hard to imagine his excitement at coming across Siôn’s poetry book full of his unknown early work: and its crowning jewel, a poem written in a strange, archaic form of Middle Welsh, the Song of Lailoken. Perhaps he felt some magical connection to Siôn Cent, a sense that it was his fate alone to discover these verses and make them known to the world.

  Bowen wrote swiftly to Margaret Rackham with his first translation of the poem, not yet sure what it might all mean, but certain that he had found something of deep significance. His first mistake came early on. He took at face value the evidence of the manuscript, which seemed to tell him without a doubt that Siôn Cent was the author of the Song of Lailoken. Why should he not believe this, seeing the poem written out there in Siôn’s own hand, with its heroic message that seemed so perfectly to match his own conception of this great Welsh bard? According to Bowen’s interpretation, Siôn Cent was a prophet in the Merlinic tradition, seer of Glyn Dŵr’s rebellion and a central figure in its early success. He created the Song of Lailoken as a means of burnishing his leader’s mythical aura: it was a poem to be read or sung aloud, to inspire a renewed fervour in Welshmen’s hearts. His verses were carefully crafted to reinforce the popular mythology of the Celtic hero cast in the mould of Arthur, the one who does not truly die, who remains at the fringes of the mortal realm, waiting to return in his people’s time of trouble. To his impressionable Welsh audience, Glyn Dŵr was Arthur returned as champion of the red dragon in the hour of need.

  In some essential aspects of his analysis, the professor was entirely correct. According to the sober assessment of the Bodleian Library report, Siôn Cent was indeed responsible for the final two stanzas of the poem, the lines that Bowen declaimed so memorably to Donald in his rooms at Jesus College. But Siôn did not write the earlier verses of the poem, which were made at least eight hundred
years before his time. Far from being a Merlinic concoction on the part of Siôn Cent to commemorate the battles of Glyn Dŵr, the Song of Lailoken speaks of much older, deeper secrets than Caradoc Bowen can possibly have imagined.

  To come to a proper understanding of the poem, Donald must reach all the way back to the latter years of the sixth century AD, when St. Cyndeyrn established his monastery on the banks of the Elwy river. At Donald’s first meeting with Bowen, the professor spoke of an old Welsh tale describing Cyndeyrn’s encounter in the forest with the poet Lailoken, who was once a bard in the court of a British monarch of the Old North. Driven to the edge of madness by terrible visions of a battle he had witnessed, Lailoken predicted his own threefold death by stone, stake, and water. It is almost irresistible now for Donald to conclude that the Lailoken story is more than a mere folktale, that it preserves an echo of real events: that Cyndeyrn did indeed meet Lailoken on his travels, and committed to writing a poem he heard the old man recite.

  WITH THE AFTERNOON drawing on, Julia finds herself trapped in a thick fog on the main road from Monmouth and the Welsh borders across the Vale of Usk. What little traffic there is has bunched up into a small convoy strung together by the sharp glow of red tail-lights. From time to time, the car ahead disappears entirely, forcing her to drive on alone inside a silent white shroud, doubting the reality of her surroundings. Every time she tries to speed up, the fog seems to gather itself anew, curling and eddying against the glass, filling the car with a cold pale light.