by Brian John
Daisy helped me out. “Well, in the family me and George, Betsi and Ioan, Rose and Henry, and Abel and his wife Susan. Then among the servants Myfanwy, Bessie, Will, Blodwen and Gerallt. Among Mother’s friends Wilmot and Delilah, Patty and Jake, Brendan and Gomer. There must be no secrets in marriage, so Gomer must share the secret with Gwenno. She loves Mother dearly, so her lips will be sealed. And Brendan must tell Mary -- can she be counted on, Mother?”
“I am sure of it, Daisy.”
“Very well. She does, after all, owe almost everything she has (including her cottage) to your beneficence and that of Wilmot. That makes, if I am not mistaken, twenty-one fellow conspirators. Then Shemi and Sian must be told, if they do not know the truth already.”
“Agreed, Daisy,” said I. “Shemi is, after all, a wizard as well as a dear friend. I can keep nothing from him. His contacts in the Otherworld have probably told him the truth already, and I imagine that he will already be on his way to the Plas.”
“Twenty-three, Wilmot.”
“And then Skiff and his wife Maria. They are faithful friends, and Skiff has such an extensive network of spies that we cannot keep anything from him. In any case, there will be times in the coming months when his contacts will be invaluable to us. He knows the wicked ways of the world better than anybody else. Add them to the list.”
“Hum hum. The Group of Twenty-five. I suspected a substantial number, but not that many. Well, it cannot be helped. Do we all have those names in our heads? Nothing must be written down -- is that clear? And there must be no conversations between members of the Group of Twenty-five in the hearing of others -- even sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. Are we agreed?”
Everybody in the room nodded solemnly, and I was encouraged to believe that we might succeed in our enterprise. The conspirators stopped short of a ritual mingling of blood, but all made oaths of complete secrecy, to keep the secret even from their nearest and dearest. They also resolved that if there ever should be a slip of the tongue, or a sighting of me, or any report of my being alive, they should resort to a matter-of-fact explanation that my ghost was abroad, and that it should be left alone, and would eventually find peace. Then Wilmot described in detail what we must do, with only a little discussion here and there. He said that there would be much talk in the district about my death, but assumed that the gossip would be ameliorated by the talk about the earthquake, which might be of more concern at a practical level since some farm animals had been frightened into running away and since there had been some damage to buildings. Some people had been hurt, and had required attention from Dr Havard. Wilmot said that in view of the strange circumstances in which my body had been found and recovered to the Plas, we could expect some interest from the press, and we all agreed on exactly what they should be told. Will had found the body and had called the other five men (Gerallt, Gomer, Abel, Henry and Brendan) who had been searching the mountain since before dawn, following the discovery that I had not returned to the Plas on the previous evening. They had all agreed that I had no pulse, and that I was cold and dead. Abel had gone back to the Plas to fetch a ladder, and all six had helped with the sombre task of carrying the corpse down from the rocky summit. That much was true. And so to the lies. Wilmot said that in view of my prominent position in the community, and the fact that I was greatly loved by the poor people in particular, there would be hundreds who wished to call and pay their last respects. He said that we could not therefore avoid a gwylnos, and that the body would have to lie in its coffin in the parlour between now and the funeral, with candles at head and foot and with a constant vigil from all the men of the family and the male servants working to a rota.
I gasped. “Oh my God, Wilmot!” I whispered, with tears on my cheeks. “You mean that you want me to lie in the open coffin and pretend to be dead?”
He smiled like an old dog fox that knows everything. “Not a bit of it, my dear Mistress Morgan!” he chuckled. “We will put it about that you died serenely on the mountain, but that after your death the earthquake caused great rocks to crash down upon your body, inflicting terrible injuries upon it. We will say that your face was most horribly damaged. As a consequence, we will say that the family took the decision to close the coffin so as to avoid distress among those who call to pay their last respects. That would be unusual, but not unheard of. We will say that the family wanted you to be remembered as a beautiful and elegant lady with a perfect complexion..............”
We all smiled, and Wilmot had his way on that and assorted other matters. So it was that after dark, the stone wall behind the house was robbed of various convenient stones, weighed to exactly the same as my body weight. The stones were arranged in the coffin, wrapped in old clothes so as to ensure that there would be no rattling and bumping about when it was moved to Cilgwyn Church and eventually interred in the family grave. Then, with no ceremony whatsoever, the lid was nailed down, and the coffin was placed on the table in the parlour. Candles were lit according to the proper procedure, and from that point on Will organized a scheme by which there were always two men present in the room until the day of the funeral. “Funny that,” grinned George. “That particular tradition goes back many centuries, and was brought in by our ancestors to ensure that the Devil had no opportunity, between death and burial, to creep in and snatch the body away!”
Suddenly Wilmot took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “Oh my goodness!” he spluttered. “It’s after six of the clock! I must take my carriage and rush back to Dinas. It’s pitch black outside, and I hope my carriage lanterns will light the way. There is something I must do, and if I delay it will be too late. I will return within a couple of hours.” He turned to Delilah and addressed her. “Will you stay here until I return, my sweet?” he asked. “Will you be all right on your own?”
Delilah giggled and wobbled. “Off you go, dearest,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Since this place is populated by angels and assorted supernatural powers, I dare say I will be all right.”
Wilmot was as good as his word, and was back at the Plas after ninety minutes. He looked extremely pleased with himself , and refused at first to tell us where he had been and what he had achieved. That made us women very irritated, and increased his pleasure. At last, with a great show, he took a piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it in front of our noses before finally presenting it, with a deep bow, to my son-in-law George Havard. George looked at it carefully, and then gasped. “Wilmot, you amaze me!” he said. “Is this genuine?”
“Indeed it is, George. Just as genuine as if you had signed it with your own hand.”
“Wilmot and George!” I exploded. “What is all this about? Would you two disreputable fellows kindly explain to the rest of us what is going on here?”
George grinned and passed the piece of paper to me. It was a death certificate with the following words written upon it:
CERTIFICATE AS TO CAUSE OF DEATH
Mistress Martha Morgan of Plas Ingli, Newport
I hereby certify that I was summoned to the residence of said lady on the morning of 27th of February in the year of our Lord 1855. I found the body of the said lady in the kitchen, to which it had been transported around 9 am following its discovery on the summit of the mountain called Carningli. I conducted a detailed post-mortem examination, and found that although Mistress Morgan had extensive injuries to her face and body there was no bleeding associated with them. I therefore conclude that she died of natural causes in her sleep, in the early hours of 27th February, and that the body was subsequently damaged by rocks dislodged in the earth tremor that occurred at about 2 am.
There appear to be no suspicious circumstances associated with the death, and a number of witnesses have confirmed that the deceased went up onto the mountain of her own free will on the previous evening, as she had done on many occasions before.
Signed
Dr Herbert Figgis MA (Oxon), FRCP
Physician and Medical Practitioner
Cu
rrently locum at Dinas Cross, Pembrokeshire
“Wilmot, will you kindly explain?” asked Ioan. “Who is this fellow Figgis? I have never heard of him. Does he really exist?”
“Indeed he does,” laughed Wilmot. “He is an old friend of mine, and he is a medical man of many years’ standing. In fact, he is retired from active doctoring, but has been in Dinas for a three week period to look after the health of the neighbourhood during the unfortunate indisposition of Dr Wills, whom you all know. He owes me a thing or two, and I know certain things about him, from my time in Swansea, which he would prefer to be kept from the world. It was not too difficult to get him to write down the certificate in accordance with my wishes. Early tomorrow he returns to Swansea, and that was the reason for my hasty exit from this place a while back. If I had left things until the morning, it would have been too late.”
“But Wilmot,” protested George, “he has now committed a serious medical crime. If the truth should come out, his career as a physician will be destroyed.”
“So it will, George. But that would be the least of his problems. He is already retired, and he is slowly dying from the effects of gin consumption over many years. By his own diagnosis, he reckons that he might have a few months left, if he is lucky. He was pleased to help. So now, my dear George, you can simply say to the world that you were unprepared to examine the body of your mother-in-law, on the grounds of the closeness of your relationship. Perfectly normal practice. Splendid! Splendid!”
At this point the assembled company noticed that I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Betsi and Daisy decided that it was time for me to be packed off to bed, and they ushered everybody else out of the room. As they left, they all promised to reassemble at 9 o’clock on the following morning, on the basis that the Rector had sent a note threatening to call at eleven, and that I had to be out of the house well before then. All my dear friends embraced me and wished me good night, and as Wilmot departed he whispered in my ear: “Dearest Martha, is this not vastly thrilling, and worthy of a great melodrama in the tradition of Wuthering Heights?” He sounded just like an excited ten-year-old about to embark upon a game of pirates and smugglers. I swallowed hard and nodded, wishing at that precise moment to be as far as possible from melodramas. Then Bessie came up from the kitchen and helped me into bed, knowing that I was too tired even to get myself undressed.
So ended the day on which I had died and come to life again as Mrs Susanna Ravenhill, a woman with a mission as yet undefined. I was utterly exhausted, and wanted desperately to sleep, but I knew that this would be my last night in this beloved house, and I could not find any sort of peace. With my mind in a turmoil, I tossed and turned, and paced the floor, and peeped through the shutters at the enigmatic face of the moon, knowing that in the room below mine there was a coffin full of stones, watched over by two of my fellow conspirators in what appeared increasingly to be a dreadful crime against the truth.
rrr
Deeper and Deeper
On Monday morning those of my fellow conspirators who had not spent the night at the Plas arrived early, to say their farewells. Nobody else was allowed into the house -- not even those kind souls who came without any prompting to help with the animals and the basic tasks around the farmyard. In my room I was dressed in my heaviest and blackest mourning clothes and given a heavy veil, since this was part of our stratagem. For the last time my family and friends referred to me as “Martha” or as “Mistress” and all swore solemnly that henceforth, if ever we should meet, by design or by chance, they would call me “Susanna“ or “Mrs Ravenhill.” We discussed very briefly the family history of my new persona, which was in truth very sketchy, with much still to be invented. We agreed that I would work it out, and that all would then be duly informed as to who I was, where I had lived, and what I had done with my life -- in case they should ever need to know.
At 10 o’clock promptly, Wilmot’s carriage was brought right up to the kitchen door. Quite out of sight of the rest of the world, I was hidden under a blanket and smuggled into its darkened interior. Then I was spirited away, in the company of Rose and Myfanwy, two young ladies who would not be terribly missed from the Plas during the next two hectic days and the forthcoming gwylnos. Wilmot drove the carriage himself, and we did not dare to draw back the curtains at any stage of our journey of three hours. We had decided upon Cardigan as our first destination, since that was a place in which I was not well known and since there were many comings and goings of strangers using the port or travelling through by coach and carriage between South Wales and the northern districts. There were many lodging houses used for short stays by people from all over the kingdom. I had to depend entirely upon Wilmot for my survival in a world that was suddenly hostile, in which one false move or a single misplaced word might have led to disaster. I feared that every glance towards me might signal an intent to penetrate my disguise and unravel my web of deceit, and I was very afraid.
But my old friend showed himself once again to be a master of planning. He let me off on Cardigan Bridge, and arranged to meet me back there at two-thirty, by which time he assumed that I would have found lodgings. He knew that if he had delivered me directly to a lodging-house, that would certainly have been noted by the landlady and the neighbours, and the information could then have been passed to others. I wandered into the town, clutching my heavy bag of possessions and noting with some satisfaction that those who passed me in the street were more interested in their own affairs than in mine. At last a small boy approached me. “Lookin’ for lodgins, Missis?” he asked in English.
“You are very perceptive, young man. Now why should you make that assumption?”
“You are not local, that’s for sure,” he grinned. “And if you was out shoppin’ you’d be carryin’ a shoppin’ basket, not that heavy bag. My Aunty Polly is a widow who’s got a big house on the Pendre. She had a lodger till a week ago, and then he went off to America. So she’s got a room to let, and she can’t leave it empty, can she? She’ll prefer a lady, since gentlemen drink too much, and smoke, and don’t wash of’n enough. For a penny I’ll take you to our house.”
“That sounds reasonable. For two pennies I will come with you to inspect the premises, if you will carry my bag.”
“Agreed, Missis! Let’s go then. I’ve been expectin’ you.”
I caught my breath. “Expecting me?” I spluttered. “But I did not know I was coming here myself, until just a couple of hours since. Nobody knew it..........”
The boy grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “By the way, my name is Merlin, and I’ll look after you.”
I looked at him closely,and saw that his eyes were as bright as the sun and as old as the stars. I was intrigued, and knew somehow that our destinies were intertwined. Instinctively I trusted him immediately. “What a strange name, young fellow! I have met many Arthurs in my time, but never a Merlin. And why did your parents give you such a name?”
“God only knows, Missis. When I was a baby they was both transported to them colonies for somethin’ or other, and I was left with Aunty Polly. She’s very old, but she’s kind, and life could be worse, couldn’t it?”
I had to agree, since I should really have been dead. So Merlin and I chatted as we marched along the High Street and came at last to his aunt’s house. I thought it would suit my purpose very well indeed, and after a short interview with Mrs Polly Ifans I agreed her terms and took two rooms at the top of a winding staircase, on the second floor and overlooking the street. That was a major advantage, as was the fact that I could hear footsteps on the stairs should anybody come to visit me or choose to eavesdrop outside my door. Merlin took his tuppence and went off to play with his friends, and as I settled in I tried out my story for the first time. I told Mrs Ifans that I was Susanna Ravenhill from London, recently bereaved by the loss of my husband Jack and left virtually penniless because of the manner in which he had squandered his family fortune. I reassured her by paying for a week in advance
and by booking a further week. I explained that I was now seeking Jack’s and my own relatives in West Wales, with whom I had had no contact for fifty years or more. The good lady took all of that without batting an eyelid, and even looked dis-appointed that my story was not more spectacular.
Then I went out again onto the street, telling my landlady that I had already corresponded with certain people who might be able to help me, and now hoped to meet them in town. I met Wilmot, Rose and Myfanwy on the bridge as planned, and took them back to my lodgings, where Wilmot (who claimed to be an old friend from childhood days) put down a bond of five pounds as a guarantee of my bona fides. Mrs Ifans left us and returned to her kitchen on the ground floor, and the four of us embarked upon a frantic search for a life story which would be plausible and which might nonetheless defy detailed examination.
I resolved to claim, if pressed, that I was the illegitimate child of Squire Charles Howell of Brawdy and a servant girl, who was sent away to Carmarthen and who was paid an adequate and secret allowance for the rest of her life. That would be a shocking thing to say, and a terrible slander on my own dear father, who would never, never have become involved in a dalliance with a serving wench. I thought about the matter long and hard, and even sought divine guidance; but none came, and in the end I had to make do with my own conscience and the advice of my three dear friends. At last I concluded that in the circumstances dear Papa would forgive me from his place in Heaven. He might even be gently amused, since he had a wicked sense of humour. He would understand that I needed to explain my uncanny likeness to Mistress Martha, now deceased, and also my fluency as a Welsh speaker. I would assume that no other member of the Howell family (including my sisters Elen and Catrin) would have known of this illicit liaison or of my existence. I needed some link with the Plas, since I was sure that I had some unfinished task in the neighbourhood and since I knew that I would be unable to resist the magnetic pull of Carningli and the cwm. Martha, as a half-sister, would provide that link.