The Ash Grove

by Margaret James

  ‘I was just about to suggest it, sir.’ The farmer grinned. ‘Have you been down Oxwich way?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I went there to pay a call.’

  ‘But your friend was not at home?’

  ‘No, I'm afraid not.’

  ‘Never mind, sir. Better luck next time. Get up then, eh?’

  Owen climbed into the cart.

  As it rumbled along, he turned to look at his benefactor. He saw a broad, strong, thick–set man of thirty or so. Fair–haired and blue–eyed, he spoke not with a lilting, sing–song Welsh accent, but with what sounded suspiciously like a West Country burr. ‘Might you be a Gower man yourself?’ he enquired, artlessly.

  ‘That I am, sir.’ The farmer shook his head. ‘My family have lived in these parts for six, seven hundred years.’

  ‘Yet you don't look Welsh.’

  ‘Welsh?’ The man nearly fell off his cart. ‘That's because I'm not!’ he cried. ‘Lookee here, sir. You're obviously a stranger to these parts, so let me tell you how it was. My ancestors were honest farmers. They came here in the Conqueror's time! They were granted these hills and valleys by royal decree.

  ‘They drove the savages out. They pushed them back to the marshes and swamps of North Gower, where they belong.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you, sir? Welshmen!’ The honest farmer spat. ‘A pack of thieving, idle, beggarly rascals, that's all those fellows are. I could tell you some tales about Welshmen, sir, that would make your hair stand on end. Have the eyes starting out of your head!

  ‘Why, back in the last century, there was such lawbreaking, such banditry and general skullduggery over North Gower way, that we honest fellows on this side of the country slept with muskets primed and loaded, and our cudgels at the ready by our beds! When my old father was a boy — ’

  The farmer rambled on. By the time they reached Swansea, Owen's eyes had been opened. He'd heard all about the wicked ways and horrible habits of the barbarian Welsh, who spoke a heathen language, bowed down to graven images of their ancient Celtic gods, and had the most disgusting table manners, too.

  * * * *

  Lounging on a settle in the snug bar of the coaching inn, waiting for the Cardiff express — for he meant to visit his uncle and tell David of his good fortune without further delay — Owen had time to cool his heels and reflect.

  He was going to marry his dearest, darling Jane. That was as good as settled. He would sell the ironworks, and with the proceeds realised from this, he would buy a country estate. He would commission the building of the most beautiful house imaginable, a gracious, airy mansion in which he and Jane and their ten children would live in perfect harmony for the rest of their days.

  But then, Owen remembered something else. There was going to be a loser in the case. His conscience smote him cruelly there.

  For, he knew nothing but good of the man. A lonely widower, in the twilight of his years he had fallen in love with a sweet and beautiful girl, whom he meant to make his bride. But now, he was to be baulked of his dearest wish. He would be cast into the darkness of solitude once again.

  Owen squared his shoulders. He would, he decided, do Michael Atkins some sort of compensatory favour. If the man were to be robbed of his heart's desire, some kind of reparation should and must be made.

  ‘Might I have pen and paper?’ he called, to a pot– boy idling by.

  ‘Certainly, sir!’ The boy lounged off, but a minute later he reappeared with a tray, upon which paper, two inkwells, a dish of sand and several scarlet waxen wafers were neatly arranged. With a flourish, he mended a pen, then offered it to the gentleman for inspection. Owen seized it, and began to scribble without further delay.

  ‘I wish this to be sent immediately, by express,’ said Owen, as he sealed his short note.

  ‘I'll take it to the post myself, sir,’ said the boy. Grinning hopefully, he pocketed the letter. Owen gave him half a crown.

  Then he strolled out into the stable yard, to take the air and think. If he were to do Mr Atkins a favour, he would need an intermediary. For, he reasoned, the man could hardly be expected to accept anything from the creature who had stolen away his bride.

  Frowning, Owen considered. Then, he hit upon the very fellow. Mr Evan Lloyd, a Monmouthshire ironmaster whose foundries, rolling mills and factories were famous throughout the whole of South Wales, was in the same line of business as Mr Atkins himself.

  Personally unknown to Owen, Mr Lloyd was also a friend and associate of Thomas Taliesin, and therefore by default an honest man.

  At present, Thomas Taliesin's own foundries were turning out a range of castings which Mr Atkins's Pontypool works then machined and used in the assembly of steam engines which were exported to America and the Far East. The next batch of castings would no doubt be ready for delivery some time soon.

  So — they could be delivered as usual, but Owen would pay the bill. Mr Atkins should have his castings more or less free of charge, enabling him to make a huge profit on his engines. Owen's bad conscience would therefore be appeased.

  Changing stages in Neath, Bridgend and Newport, Owen arrived in Pontypool tired and unshaven but bright–eyed and determined, his noble purpose unshaken and his vision undimmed.

  Seeking an interview with Mr Lloyd, he introduced himself as a fellow ironmaster, and was invited into the old gentleman's office. There, he got down to business. ‘I wish to make Mr Atkins a present,’ he declared. ‘Well, almost a present, of a batch of castings made for his factory by Taliesin and Company.’

  Mr Lloyd frowned. Then he shook his head. ‘What is that to do with me?’ he enquired. ‘More to the point, what has Mr Atkins done for you, that you feel under such an obligation to him?’

  ‘It's a private matter.’ Realising how ridiculous all this must sound, for a moment Owen chewed his lower lip. ‘As well as being a customer of my friend Thomas Taliesin,’ he continued, ‘Mr Atkins is a good customer of mine. But soon I am to arrange a transaction which will concern us both, and from which Mr Atkins will probably come off the poorer.

  ‘No, don't look like that. There's no trickery or fraud involved. Mr Lloyd, I wish to do Mr Atkins a favour, without it seeming to be so. I need to employ an intermediary, or broker. I hoped that broker might be you.’

  Still, Mr Lloyd frowned.

  Again, Owen explained.

  Mr Lloyd sucked the insides of his cheeks. ‘This — this favour you speak of will cost you hundreds,’ he said. ‘Maybe even a thousand pounds.’

  ‘That does not concern me.’ Dreamily, Owen smiled. ‘I shall gain something worth infinitely more than gold.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Mr Lloyd shrugged. He had never heard anything like it. This personable young man was either a knave or a fool. He would invite him to stay to supper, he decided, in order that he might study him more closely, and discover which.

  Ringing for a servant, he offered refreshment, had his offer accepted, then told Owen that supper would be upon the table in half an hour's time. Perhaps, while he waited, his guest might like to go and wash the dust off his face and put a comb through his hair?

  Owen agreed readily. Whilst he was out of the room, Mr Lloyd paced the boards. He considered the proposal which had just been made.

  He had heard of Owen Morgan. He knew all about his modest, but ever–growing enterprise. In the small world which Mr Lloyd inhabited, news of bad debts, sharp practices and possible bankruptcies always spread like wildfire. But as far as he knew, Owen Morgan's business was efficiently run, his order book full, and his credit good.

  Perhaps it was exactly as the young man said? He owed Mr Atkins a favour, meant to discharge the debt handsomely, and was too sparing of that gentleman's feelings to thrust any obligation back at him.

  * * * *

  The two businessmen ate a good supper of cold souse, home– cured ham, and a fine currant pudding, which was followed by cheeses and fruit served off Mr Lloyd's own factory's splendid, world–famous lacquered ware.


  ‘You have spent time among the heathen, I believe?’ murmured Mr Lloyd, as he cut into a beautiful, ripe Stilton, then offered his guest a more than generous slice.

  ‘Yes, indeed. I was in India for six, seven years or more.’ Owen accepted the proffered plate. ‘But how did you know about that?’

  ‘I cannot now recall. But one hears these things.’ Enigmatically, Mr Lloyd smiled. The heat of India had addled many a fine brain, he reflected, and would no doubt addle many more. ‘You did pretty well out there?’ he enquired, but casually.

  ‘Well enough,’ Owen agreed. ‘But I missed my friends and family most painfully. I was happy to come home.’

  ‘I'm sure you were.’ Mr Lloyd took some strawberries, which he mashed to a delicate pulp. ‘I have heard,’ he continued, ‘that in the tropics, the climate is disagreeable in the extreme. The air is full of pestilence and plague.’

  ‘Indeed it is.’ Owen caught the old man's drift. ‘Many Europeans succumb, to bodily and mental infirmities of all kinds. But I myself was fortunate in that respect. I escaped with my health unbroken, and my faculties sound.’

  Mr Lloyd merely smiled. Nodding sagely, he ate another piece of cheese.

  Some excellent port had been brought in, and three glasses of this loosened Mr Lloyd's tongue considerably. Nods and smiles gave way to comments and remarks. Filling Owen's glass once more, Mr Lloyd took up his own. ‘Well, Owen Morgan,’ he declared. ‘Here's to your very good health.’

  ‘To yours too, sir,’ murmured Owen.

  ‘I thank you.’ Mr Lloyd smacked his lips. ‘Now there's a vintage,’ he murmured, approvingly. ‘There's a combination, too. Atkins and Morgan, I mean. Two names I never thought to see coupled again! Not in friendship, anyway.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Owen was peeling an orange. Glancing up, he frowned quizzically at the older man. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Oh, I don't know. Well, I do — but it's an old tale, nothing to the purpose today. Mr Morgan, you yourself spent your youth in Cardiff, did you not?’

  ‘Yes.’ Owen did not wish to begin making lengthy explanations about his birth and background, not just now anyway, so he nodded. ‘My uncle is an apothecary there.’

  ‘Mr Atkins has connections in Cardiff. He owns a small factory near Llandaff. It came to him as part of a marriage settlement, I believe.’ Mr Lloyd spooned up some more strawberry mess. ‘But did you know his family orginally came from Gower?’

  ‘Yes. But I learned that only recently.’

  ‘So did I.’ Mr Lloyd rubbed his old eyes. ‘I myself have several relations living there. A cousin of mine, a farmer he is — was, I should say. He's dead now. Died of grief, so the story goes, when his daughter lost her mind.’

  ‘Indeed?’ As one who had sometimes feared he would end his own days in a lunatic asylum, Owen sighed his sympathy. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Well, Mr Morgan.’ Evan Lloyd sighed too. ‘You should know that Gower is a backward, primitive land. North Gower especially is a lawless place. More so than most. There, thieves retreat to divide their ill–gotten gains, and smugglers ply their evil trade.

  ‘The Excise has a hard time of it, a hard time indeed. The smugglers are desperate, wicked men, who never scruple to spill human blood. One year, in fact, one of the excisemen was actually killed.

  ‘To restore order, and root out the malefactors in the case — or so they hoped, anyway — a company of redcoats was marched down from Swansea. The whole area was put under curfew. Poor Dilys Lloyd was a simple girl, she didn't understand that she was forbidden to be out after dusk, and one evening she went looking for a stray calf.

  ‘The soldiers caught her. I don't know what they did to her, but when she finally got home again, they found she'd lost her reason.’ Mr Lloyd dabbed at his eyes. ‘She's still alive, I believe. But from that night forward, she never spoke again.’

  ‘The poor creature.’ Owen shook his head. ‘Can nothing be done for her?’

  ‘It seems not.’ Mr Lloyd poured himself another glass of port. ‘But enough of that. Let me tell you a different story. Mind you, it's half gossip and the rest hearsay, but it's interesting, and it has some bearing on a remark I made earlier this evening. So — will you hear it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Very well. In the old days, then, there was a notorious smuggler on Gower, Morgan by name. John Morgan, that's it. A murderer, and a thief, he and his men terrorised the people of North Gower. His partner in wickedness was a fellow called Jack Atkins. A relation of our friend Michael? Possibly, but just as possibly not.

  ‘So there were these two villains, dealing in contraband, murdering excisemen, defying the King's majesty and all the rest of it.

  ‘Morgan was a Welshman, of course. Sometimes a farmer, sometimes a fisherman, he was always a thoroughly bad lot. Jack Atkins, however, was English. He was a respectable man, a magistrate, and a landowner of some importance. So, he was used to having all his own way. Having none gainsay him in anything! This being the case, I suppose it was inevitable that Atkins and Morgan should fall out.

  ‘Jack Atkins had bribed some of the excisemen who patrolled the beaches of Gower, and otherwise silenced the rest, so there was nobody could touch him. After he quarrelled with Morgan, therefore, he resolved to teach the fellow a lesson. He sent to Swansea for soldiers to arrest the man, which they did. The redcoats took John Morgan away, and beat him so badly that he died.’

  Mr Lloyd's sight was dim. He was now engrossed in his tale, and so well pickled in port that if Owen had risen from the table and left him, the old man would hardly have noticed, but instead would have rambled on, talking contentedly to himself. This being the case, it was not to be wondered that he failed to notice his guest had gone deathly pale.

  ‘So anyway,’ continued Mr Lloyd, ‘this John Morgan's wife is a spirited lady. She learns of her husband's death and who was responsible, and takes herself off to Jack Atkins's house in Oxwich, where she stabs him cruelly.’

  Owen stared. ‘D–did she actually kill him?’ he managed to stammer, horrified.

  ‘Well, no.’ Mr Lloyd shrugged. ‘But she maimed him! She put her mark on him, certainly.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Well, Jack Atkins's men caught her, of course. They threatened her with a fate so terrible that she turned the knife on herself. Stabbed herself through the heart, she did, and died instantly.’

  ‘Good God.’ Owen could hardly believe his ears. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Ah now, here's the interesting part. This lady was no plain farmer's wife. No, indeed! She was English, and had powerful friends in England. Her brother was a magistrate, and he — ’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you. I heard he lived near Birmingham, but as I say — ’

  ‘No matter. Go on.’

  ‘When this brother heard of the fate of his kin, he had Jack Atkins arrested, interrogated, then tried for his part in the murders of all kinds of innocent men. The fellow was convicted, sentenced, and hanged for his crimes.’

  ‘But Mr Lloyd, how do you know all this?’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Lloyd looked crafty. He tapped his nose. ‘A brother of mine hired a nurse once, an old dame from Gower, and a veritable windbag of a woman, believe you me! This was one of her stories. She gave out that she had once been a servant in the Atkins household — nay, that when Mrs Morgan stabbed her master, she had treated his fever, and poulticed his wounds herself. I don't believe a word of it. But anyway — ’

  ‘There's more?’

  ‘Certainly!’ Mr Lloyd made a face which would not have disgraced a ghoul. ‘After Jack Atkins was arrested, his house was opened up. They found trapdoors leading to cellars stacked high with contraband — and others which had served as prison cells, and contained machines designed to serve purposes too horrible to mention.’

  Owen felt ill. For now, suddenly, he remembered a conversation he'd had with Thomas Taliesin on this very theme, a long time ago. “The s
eed does not necessarily inherit the taint of the parent plant.” That was what Thomas had said. ‘This Jack Atkins,’ he whispered, fearfullly, ‘do you think Michael Atkins may be his near relation? Perhaps even his son?’

  ‘I don't know whose son he is. As I told you before, there may be a connection.’ Mr Lloyd tapped Owen's lapel. ‘This is private after–supper conversation, remember. Between you and me. As far as I'm concerned, Mr Michael Atkins is an English ironmaster, and my near neighbour. He's never been involved in anything even remotely underhand, let alone criminal. Well, not as far as I know.’

  Mr Lloyd poured more port. ‘Drink up, my boy,’ he invited. ‘You look very pale this evening. Are you not sleeping well at night?’

  ‘Sleeping?’ repeated Owen, dazedly. He wondered if he would ever sleep again.

  ‘It's a good story, is it not?’ demanded his host, grinning expectantly.

  ‘An excellent one,’ Owen agreed. He felt sick to the heart. Mr Lloyd had been speaking of his own parents. How would the old gentleman feel if he knew that?

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Lloyd was saying now, ‘these days, the trade in contraband has virtually ceased. Since the peace came, the coastguard and the Excise have so many vessels and extra men available that it's not worth anyone's while to attempt it.’

  ‘No,’ Owen murmured absently. ‘I suppose it's not.’ He stood up. He found he was so unsteady on his feet that he was obliged to clutch the table, to support himself.

  ‘Are you sick?’ enquired Mr Lloyd, staring at him in astonishment. For he didn't look like the sort of young man who could not hold his liquor, and in any case, he hadn't actually drunk very much. ‘My dear young fellow, are you indisposed?’

  ‘No, no.’ Owen took a deep breath. ‘But I do need some air.’

  ‘Then, a short walk in the garden — ’

  ‘Yes.’ Owen turned to his host. ‘I thank you for supper,’ he said. Taking out his gold hunter, he glanced at it. ‘It's very late. I really must go home.’

  ‘Stay here!’ The hospitable Mr Lloyd beamed. ‘My dear sir, you are more than welcome to a bed for the night.’