Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories

by Various

  Madoc was a striking man in his thirties, his eyes bluer than the sea. I could well imagine him as an ancient prince.

  I sat next to his hospital bed and smiled. “Siw mae, Madoc.”

  He paused, the way I would whenever I heard a phrase in Newfoundland English to make sure I hadn’t misheard. Then he sat up and spoke excitedly, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Contrary to what people believe, linguists don’t all speak twenty languages or pick up a new language instantly. Where we excel was figuring out linguistic patterns.

  Doctor Liu smirked. “Did you call him pork dumpling?”

  I understood the confusion. Siw mae sounded like siu mai in Cantonese, which meant pork dumpling. “It means how are you in modern Southern Welsh. Madoc would have been from Snowdon, Northern Wales, so I should have said sut mae.”

  Two weeks ago, on December twenty-sixth, a strange ship had drifted into the Harbour of St. John’s. Found aboard the replica of the Viking longship were four dead men and one survivor. Will Monteith from the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary contacted me to help him pinpoint the man’s origin through his language. Analyzing the tapes of the man’s speech, I came to the strange conclusion that the man who called himself Madoc had been speaking two archaic languages: Middle English and Middle Welsh.

  To be certain, I asked Will to arrange a face-to-face interview. Sometimes linguistic evidence was visual. For example, the v sound in Modern Welsh was produced like in Modern English, with the upper teeth against the lower lip, but the v in Middle Welsh was produced with both lips, like in Spanish.

  I turned on the tape recorder and pointed to myself. “Kate.” I indicated Detective Monteith and Doctor Liu. “Will. Philip. Meddic.” Doctor, in Middle Welsh. The double dd sounded like the first sound in the English word, they.

  He repeated the names and grinned.

  Madoc was a puzzle indeed. The theory that made most sense was that he and the other men were trying to recreate the Madoc voyage. Prince Madoc of Gwynedd was a Welsh legend, believed to have sailed west from Wales in 1170. He returned seven years later to tell of a new land of untouched bounty across the sea. Intending to settle the new land, he set out with a fleet of ten ships of settlers, and disappeared from history.

  This man could be a Middle Ages scholar with damage to Wernicke’s area. Wernicke’s aphasics had no problems with articulation, but their utterances made little sense. For the most severe cases, sounds were randomly chosen, spliced together to sound real, but contained few actual words. “Madoc” might be suffering from a similar jargon aphasia. However, the MRI and PET scans showed no such damage to his brain’s left hemisphere.

  But how authentic was Madoc’s command of Middle Welsh? I had two tests in mind.

  I gave Madoc two poems I had found, one by Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, another by Dafydd ap Gwilym, both printed in a font called Neue Hammer Unziale. The font seemed closest to Insular Majescule, the script a twelfth-century prince might have been familiar with. “Darlle,” I prompted him to read.

  Madoc read the first poem easily, but tripped over some of the words in the second.

  Will raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t he be able to read both poems?” he asked, his detective’s instincts coming to bear.

  “I made it difficult on purpose,” I explained. “The first poem was by a court poet who lived around the same time as Madoc. The second poem, however, was poetry written in the fourteenth century, and is usually designated as early Modern Welsh. I expected him to have more difficulty with that one. It’s like Chaucer trying to read Shakespeare, or Shakespeare reading Tennessee Williams; different time, different language.”

  “You’re trying to trip him up! Police work and linguistics are a lot alike,” Will said. “Patterns and mistakes.”

  “I’ve never quite heard it put that way, but you’re right.” Will and I shared a smile.

  Second test was a production task. I took out a colour pictorial of England, and opened it to a photograph with nine men in a pub.

  “Gwyr. Pet?” Men. How many?

  “Naw.” Nine.

  I shook my head. “Naw wyr.” Nine men. I prompted him to use compounds, as I wanted to test a phenomenon called lenition or mutation. In Welsh, if a word came after a number, the first sound sometimes changed or was dropped, as in the case of gwyr to wyr. Mutations appeared elsewhere as well, but seeing as I was only dabbling in Celtic, I kept it simple for myself.

  Madoc caught on fast; we went through the book counting people and things. When we came to a picture of a boat, Madoc pointed to it, then himself. “Gwyr. Pet?” How many survived from his ship?

  I cast a sidewise glance at Will.

  “Un,” I answered. One.

  A shocked expression overtook Madoc’s face.

  “That’s enough for today,” I said. I gave him a bottle of ink, a sketchbook, and a seagull feather I had cut into a quill pen, and mimed writing motions. I wanted to analyze his writing.

  Madoc took my hand and drew it close for a kiss.

  Will smiled. “He might not be able to say it, Kate, but I think you’re after making a friend for life.”

  A week of interviews later, at Detective Will Monteith’s request, I presented my findings to the other experts at the R.N.C. Headquarters downtown: Doctor Birley from the Provincial Coroner’s Office; Rebecca Shannon, a lawyer working pro bono for Madoc; and Professor Connon from the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University.

  I had reservations about coming. My linguistic analysis had led me to a strange and inescapable conclusion: there was no doubting Madoc’s native fluency in Middle Welsh. Even if a hoaxer had learned Middle Welsh, he might pronounce words wrong, or not know the words for common things. Madoc never tripped over syntax or vocabulary, except when it involved a modern object. Could he be the genuine Madoc, lost at sea over eight hundred years ago, found at last in St. John’s?

  Was it a mad fancy? Perhaps. The academic in me scoffed at the idea. But the romantic in me wanted to believe. Here in Newfoundland, it seemed like anything was possible. I didn’t know how to describe it, but there was something magical and mystical about this place. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a leprechaun at my house, for instance. Time had stopped this winter, snow falling every day like the weather was stuck and couldn’t move ahead to anything different. I felt like I was living in a snow-globe, and the same guy kept turning it upside-down and shaking it. In his world it was only five minutes of playing; but inside the snow-globe, an entire month passed.

  But could I convince the others?

  “He’s a native speaker of Middle Welsh, with some training in Middle English,” I said. “He did quite well on the reading passages, and the way he pronounced his vowels and consonants were consistent with my expectations. The written evidence further supports it.”

  “Preposterous!” Connon said. “A good scholar could learn a second language well enough to fool you. It’s a hoax by someone in the Society of Creative Anachronism, I wager.”

  “We spoke to the Seneschal at Memorial University and contacted everyone on their Shire Roll, but no one from their group is missing, and no one heard about any re-enactment of the Madoc voyage,” Will said.

  “I hear he’s learning English,” Connon continued. “How do we know that it wasn’t his plan, fake the Madoc story long enough to ease back into English?”

  “You can’t stop someone from learning a new language. He’s a human being, not an artefact from some dig!” I said.

  “’Ang on, ’Arry,” said old Doctor Birley. He had that Newfoundlander tendency to drop his h’s and add them back on words that shouldn’t have them. “It might be plausible that h’one man didn’t ’ave vaccination scars or dental work. I meself was vaccinated in ’72, but I don’t ’ave a scar. But h’all four bodies, plus Madoc? The h’odds of that are right slim. Unless they were h’all raised in the backwoods, of course. But a person who ’as the wherewithal to pull off an ’oax like this wouldn’t be so isolated f
rom society. Or do you think someone planned this for forty years?”

  “I’ll admit the boat is the work of a meticulous forger.” Connon passed out some photographs of the ship and items found aboard. “The design’s consistent with what we know about twelfth-century ships. A Viking longship with a high prow, carved with a lion’s head. That’s an interesting point. You might have expected the red dragon typically associated with Wales, but the Lions of Gwynedd were in use in the Gwynedd arms, up until the time of the Tudors.”

  I set aside a picture of a twisted iron nail and studied the weather-worn red lion’s head that Professor Connon described.

  “I was expecting a coracle,” Philip Liu interjected. “I was reading Severin’s The Brendan Voyage about the seaworthiness of ox hide boats, and whether they were used to reach North America.”

  Connon shook his head. “That was sixth-century Ireland. By the twelfth century, the Welsh made alliances with Norse raiders, and there were Norse settlements in Wales. Legend has it that the Gwennan Gorn, Madoc’s ship, was made from oak, but held together with stag’s horn instead of iron. The seafaring myths of those times warned of magnetic islands, which would have spelled doom to ships built with iron nails. The ship’s authentic in that respect. Nice touch, that. However, I have concrete proof that it’s all an elaborate hoax.” He showed us a photograph of a pipe. “One of the artefacts recovered from the ship. Note the five-petal white rose on top of the five-petal red, stamped on its heel.”

  Philip recognized it. “A Tudor rose.”

  “Right! Henry the Seventh created it to symbolize the union of the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York. But the Tudors didn’t begin their reign until 1485. If Madoc’s from the twelfth century, where did this anachronism come from?” Connon asked.

  “Maybe he stopped off to have a smoke,” Rebecca joked.

  Everyone laughed, but an intriguing idea came to mind. “Why not?” I said. “We’re thinking a single trip. Maybe it’s not his first and only trip through time?”

  Connon snorted. “We’re scientists! The very idea of time-travel . . .”

  “It’s not impossible,” Philip said. “Einstein’s theory of relativity allows for time-travel in the forward direction. Time dilation will keep a man from aging as fast, if he’s too close to a serious gravity well. Who knows? I’m starting to wonder if he isn’t the genuine article!”

  Connon shook his head. “You’re on your own. I won’t jeopardize my reputation with a cockamamie time-travel theory. I’m denouncing him as a fraud, Detective Monteith. Good day.” He grabbed his photos and stormed out.

  Connon’s departure left us all in a state of unease. Will sighed. “He’s right. If we announce that Madoc is a time-traveller, they’ll call us crackpots.”

  Rebecca, Will and I went for muffins and coffee at Tim Hortons after the meeting. The line took forever. The girls at the counter made one thing at a time, but by George they made it right. People didn’t hurry here.

  “Linguistics is the best evidence we have, Kate. Without you, Madoc will look like a fraud,” Rebecca said.

  I picked at my partridgeberry muffin. “I know. His future’s in my hands. Where does he stand, legally?”

  “If he’s a fraud, he could be charged with public mischief,” Rebecca answered. “Maybe breaking immigration laws, if we can establish that he isn’t Canadian. If he’s a real time-traveller, well, I don’t think there are laws that are applicable. But as a Newfoundlander, my instinct’s to welcome him to the Island, not lock him up.”

  “The press will eat us alive,” Will said.

  “I know a way to appease the press. A screech-in,” Rebecca suggested.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You don’t know what a screech-in is?” Will asked. He laughed. “We’ll have to initiate you too, Kate!”

  “It’s a grand old Newfoundland tradition,” Rebecca explained. “It’s a ceremony to initiate a CFA to honorary citizenship. CFA stands for ‘Come-From-Aways,’ or people who aren’t from Newfoundland. Like mainlanders and time-travellers.”

  “What do you do at a screech-in?”

  “We drink screech—that’s Newfoundland rum. Kiss a cod, dip your toe into the Atlantic. Good fun for all,” said Rebecca. “Then you become a proud member of the Royal Order of Screechers, and get a certificate to prove it.”

  “Kiss a fish?”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” said Rebecca, with a wink.

  “What you said, about Madoc’s multiple trips in time?” Will said. “Maybe this isn’t the first time he’s been to Newfoundland. Maybe he stopped in Avalon.”

  “Avalon?”

  “You might know it as Ferryland, a historical site about an hour-and-a-half away, half way to Trepassey,” explained Rebecca. “It’s a tourist stop, but I go out there to collect rocks, sometimes. The beach is amazing. Lord Baltimore set up the Colony of Avalon there in 1620, before he moved to the States because of the cold.”

  “Maybe he’ll recognize the area? Will, can we bring him to Ferryland?”

  “If my superiors say it’s fine, we can go tomorrow. But I think Professor Connon should come along,” Will said.

  I didn’t like the idea, but we did need a historian. I nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  On our way to Ferryland, Harry Connon went on and on about Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. I sat with Madoc in the back of the car. Will had taken him to a barber and dressed him with modern clothes, so he wouldn’t look out of place. Madoc watched in wonder as we passed cars and trucks on the highway. I had half-expected him to react with fear and horror at the strange technology, but he seemed fascinated instead. He truly had the soul of an explorer!

  Madoc was skimming through time like a skipping stone, and I wanted to know how he was doing it, and why. I had cobbled together some simple questions in Middle Welsh.

  Did he know where he was? Yes.

  Did he know what year it was? No.

  Did things change when he sailed? Yes.

  How many times did things change? Eleven.

  Eleven! Assuming he first set sail around 1179, and that each trip shunted him forward the same number of years, that would average seventy-five years per journey. His sixth stop would have been 1629, around the time of the Colony of Avalon.

  What was he looking for? The end of the whale-road. To learn. To see if it takes me back home to my people, my brother, he said.

  I recalled that in the legend, his brother Rhiryd went with Madoc to settle the new land.

  How did he travel through time? Storm comes every eighty-three days. Help me, Kate.

  I checked my datebook. Madoc arrived on Boxing Day. Eighty-three days from that would place the next storm on March eighteenth.

  Poor Madoc! I thought my first winter in Newfoundland was long, and I’d only lived a couple months of it. He arrived from each journey in winter, only to leave at winter’s end for a future winter. That was at least two years of fog and snow.

  “Will, is there any significance to March eighteenth in Newfoundland?” I asked.

  “The day after Paddy’s Day? Yeah. Sheila’s Brush. That’s a big snowstorm that always happens on or around St. Patrick’s Day. Not quite the same as Paddy’s Broom, another storm that also comes around then. Sheila is Patrick’s wife, see. She’s always mad at him, chasing after him with her brush and painting everything with ice. Why?”

  “Because that’s the day the time portal opens again, to seventy-five years in the future,” I said.

  The dig was closed on weekends, but Connon had research privileges here, facilitating our visit. To my surprise, the anthropologist was getting along with Madoc. As we traipsed through the snow at Ferryland, he spoke to Madoc in English, taking for granted that he would understand. Madoc was animated, pointing to places, speaking to me in Middle Welsh, but I caught only a few words. Clearly he had been here before. Frustrated, Connon put a pencil in Madoc’s hand, and made him draw in his sketchbook.


  Madoc led Connon through the dig, sketching out a map of Avalon as he remembered it. “His sketches seem consistent with the buildings we know to be in the Colony at the time. These buildings he drew are the bakery and brewhouse, which don’t exist today. They tore them down in 1637 to build Kirke House,” Connon explained. “You’ve done your homework, Madoc.”

  Will and I left them to their explorations for a quiet stroll along the shore. Like Rebecca said, the rocky beach had some beautiful stones. I knelt and picked up a smooth green stone. I showed Will the lovely lines in the rock.

  “That’s what we call a ‘salt water’ rock,” said Will. “Rounded and smoothed by the sea.”

  A tall, elderly gentleman down the beach waved at us. “You two look like a charming couple,” said the man, smiling.

  Will furrowed his brow.

  Embarrassed, I corrected him. “Thank you, but we’re not together.”

  “Take it from a man who’s seen much in his lifetime. You two belong together.” The old man tipped his hat and continued along the shore.

  “Did you know him?” I asked.

  Will shook his head. “He reminds me of my father, is all.”

  “What will happen to Madoc?”

  Will sighed. “He has no money, no citizenship. Kind folk like you’d find anywhere in Newfoundland will help him out, but he’ll be a burden unless he learns some English. Maybe he could sell his story; I don’t know. But he’ll end up in limbo, without Canadian citizenship.”

  “I have an idea about that, but I need to discuss it with Rebecca first,” I hinted. As Madoc’s pro bono lawyer, she would know whether the legal loophole I saw would actually work. “But in the end, wouldn’t it be simpler to let him go back on his ship? Imagine finding out what the world would be like in seventy-five, a hundred-and-fifty, three-hundred years from now. See how future generations live!”

  “He’ll be adrift and alone.”

  “No one needs to be.” I took a risk and took Will’s hand. He didn’t pull away.