by Alis Hawkins
Then why had she told us? I glanced across at the footman who was doing the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil thing that well-trained servants do. But he was listening all right. He’d be the centre of attention in the kitchen when he went back down. Everybody’d be waiting to hear the mistress’s reaction.
‘Is it carried here often?’ Harry wanted to know.
In the area near Glanteifi, the ceffyl pren hadn’t had an outing since the Rebecca Riots. People’d got scared of what nocturnal gatherings led to. Not to mention the fact that there were police in town now, and they wouldn’t stand for it. But there was no police station in Llanddewi Brefi. People could black their faces and get a mob together to their hearts’ content. Go to whomever’s house they liked. Drag them out and make them face up to their wrongdoing, without fear of being arrested.
‘Not often, no,’ Miss Gwatkyn put her knife and fork together in the middle of her plate. How she kept body and soul together I don’t know – she ate like a bird.
‘Does Simi Jones know who they’re going out to?’ Harry asked.
‘Of course.’ Miss Gwatkyn played with the stem of her wine glass. ‘That’s why he thought I should know. It’s Mattie Hughes. It seems that he’s being blamed for Nicholas’s death. Simi’s message was that they’re going to try and persuade him to confess so as to avoid an inquest.’
I looked over the starched tablecloth at Harry. Because of where the candle-tree was placed, half of his face was more or less in shadow but I could see that, as usual, he wasn’t showing much expression. Only his eyes moved, constantly, to make the best use of that edge-vision of his.
‘Are you confident they won’t do him any harm?’ he asked. ‘That they won’t resort to summary justice?’
She shook her head. ‘Simi Jones will keep the peace.’
‘Would you have any objection to our abandoning you in order to act as observers?’
Miss Gwatkyn smiled. ‘If I objected to your going, Mr Probert-Lloyd, I wouldn’t have told you that it was happening.’
‘You’ll need coats and hats to disguise you in case you’re seen,’ Miss Gwatkyn said, once we’d finished the suet pudding. ‘I have a variety of appropriate items here that belonged either to my father or my husband.’
Husband?
‘Miss Gwatkyn, I’m so sorry.’ Harry was almost stammering. ‘I didn’t realise you were a widow. The people in the village referred to you as Miss Gwatkyn and I naturally assumed—’
‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, please desist! I’m not a widow, as it happens. My husband is alive and well. However, as he’s never taken up a position as master of Alltybela, I considered it prudent to retain the family name. So, despite the fact that I am, legally, Mrs Leonard Barton, at Alltybela I remain Miss Gwatkyn.’
Never mind what name she used – where was her husband?
‘My husband does not enjoy robust health,’ she said, as if I’d asked the question out loud. ‘Sun and warmth are essential to him so, for many years now, he’s lived in Italy. If he were to live here, in our cold, damp climate, I don’t believe he would survive a twelvemonth.’
She might be doing a good job of hiding it but Miss Gwatkyn was embarrassed. You could tell by all the information she was giving us. More than was needed by a long way. Was she hiding something behind talk about the weather? I mean, it wasn’t unheard of for people to live abroad for their health, was it? Granted, they usually took their spouse with them, but still…
‘I generally spend the months of December and January with him in Naples. I don’t tolerate heat well but the winter temperatures are pleasant. There’s far more sunshine in winter there than here.’
‘That sounds delightful.’ Harry’d recovered from his stammers. ‘I hope your husband’s health is improving?’
Miss Gwatkyn smoothed the front of her tunic where it lay in her lap, as if it was a cat. ‘Thank you, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Fortunately, his health gives very little cause for concern in that southern climate.’
She rose to her furry-booted feet. ‘Shall we?’
After she’d found us some fusty coats and a couple of hats that made us look like our own grandfathers, we changed into our riding clothes and Miss Gwatkyn took us down to the kitchen to black our faces. Except we weren’t allowed to do it ourselves. The po-faced butler got one of the footmen to do it so we didn’t get our hands dirty. I stared at his face as he rubbed greasy soot around my ears and the point of my jaw but he wouldn’t meet my eye. It was as bad as the business with the maids treating me as if I was invisible – I was neither fish nor fowl these days.
When I was a child, my parents and the other adults had always grumbled that we weren’t people to the squires, that they treated us like animals. But, looking at the footman’s face, it seemed to me that he wasn’t exactly treating me like a person, either. To him, I was a gentleman – a job. He didn’t care about my feelings or what I was going over to the village to do. He just cared about getting the greasy soot on to my face in a way that’d keep a civil tongue in the butler’s head.
‘Do you intend to ride or go on foot?’ Miss Gwatkyn wanted to know once we were set.
I knew Harry was nervous about riding in the dark and it’d be worse, here, where he didn’t know the roads. ‘Probably best to walk,’ I said. ‘Then we won’t have the horses to deal with when we get there.’
Miss Gwatkyn nodded. ‘I’ll get my hall-boy to take you across the fields.’
Instead of asking somebody to find him, she just opened a door and called down the hall. ‘Lleu! Come here, please!’ She grinned at us like a mischievous child. ‘His real name’s Daniel but we already had a Daniel when he arrived so I call him Lleu Llaw Gyffes because he’s a handy, fair-haired boy.’
She was obviously looking for a reaction but Harry looked as blank as me. Her grin disappeared and she tutted. ‘It’s the curse of our nation not to value our own culture. I’m sure both of you have at least a passing acquaintance with the Odyssey and the Iliad but you’ve clearly never read the tales of the Mabinogi.’
Ah. So Lleu Llaw Gyffes was a character in the old stories. A handy, fair-haired boy, she’d said. I recognised the word llaw – hand – but the rest must be Old Welsh.
Miss Gwatkyn hadn’t finished. ‘Tell me, please, how the literature of a country a thousand miles away is of more interest or worth than our own? Do we learn more of human nature from Odysseus and Agamemnon than we do from Math and Gilfaethwy?’
I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one and so did Harry.
‘Here I am, Miss Gwatkyn!’ I turned and saw a boy of twelve or thirteen with a mop of straw-coloured hair and hands and feet that were too big for the rest of him. Like a cartoon in a newspaper, he was, all stick limbs and huge head.
He spoke to his mistress in Welsh, like all the servants at Alltybela did. It had almost stopped surprising me.
‘Lleu, they’re carrying the ceffyl pren down in the village tonight. I want you to take Mr Probert-Lloyd and Mr Davies over there across the fields. And, just to be clear – you’re to go with them and come back with them. All right?’
He flashed her a grin as if she’d caught him out. His teeth were white and perfect and, if he’d had a decent suit of clothes and a haircut he’d have passed for an elegant young gent. The girls’d all be looking at him soon, doing that dance where they’d stare sideways at him then look away when he turned. Drive him mad, they would.
Turned out the boy was chatty, too. All the way to the village he was asking us questions and telling us things.
‘What’ll happen to Mattie Hughes if he confesses – will they hang him?
‘I didn’t think he was so bad, Old Mattie. If you had the sense to do what you were told he was all right.’
‘Have you spoken to Nan Walters and Ruth Eynon yet? Fancy themselves those two do, think they’re a cut above, now they’re teachers. Snooty little madams. Always on about how they were helping Mr Rowland. Helping him run the school, helping him get the money for a new
one, helping him write his letters. You’d think he couldn’t breathe without them blowing air into his lungs.
‘What’ll happen to Mr Rowland’s new school now? Will they build it anyway? If they do, I’m going to go there. Miss Gwatkyn said. Says I’m intelligent.’
He didn’t seem to need answers to his questions which was just as well because we were too busy trying to see where we were going. We’d decided not to bring lanterns so the dark would hide us and Harry and I were tripping over tussocks and stumbling into rabbit scrapes but Lleu seemed to be able to see his way as well in the moonlight as if it were noon. Had I been like that once? When I was a farm servant living in a hayloft, had my eyes been able to see in the dark like a cat’s?
I sniffed the night air, felt the breeze cool on my face but, however hard I tried, I couldn’t see where I was putting my feet. God alone knew how Harry was managing. He really was blind in the dark.
Lleu cut across my thoughts. ‘Look! Lights.’
People going to meet the ceffyl pren. Had to be.
As we got nearer, we could hear voices coming out of the darkness. I shivered. What were we doing here? It was one thing going round the village during the day asking questions. But we had no business being out here in the dark. If they caught us, things might turn nasty. We’d be lucky not to get a damn good hiding before we had a chance to make anybody understand who we were.
Had Harry had the same thought? Either that or he’d slowed down because I had.
Lleu looked back at us. ‘Come on or we’ll have to run to catch up.’
And, as if he was in charge, we obeyed.
‘Lleu,’ Harry said, softly. ‘Did Simi Jones say who’ll be leading the procession?’
‘No, but it’ll be Morgan Walters. Sure to be. Thinks he’s the boss of Llanddewi Brefi, that one.’
Miss Gwatkyn had told us that the ceffyl pren was visiting Mattie Hughes so he’d confess and there wouldn’t have to be an inquest. Was that Morgan Walters’s doing? Was he trying to spare his daughter from having to give evidence in front of the whole village?
‘What do people think of Walters?’ Harry asked. ‘Do they trust him?’
‘Always spoken of as a fair man,’ the boy said. ‘Never heard of him going back on a deal or cheating anybody. Mind, he doesn’t give much away. Anybody’ll tell you – he’ll have the last farthing he’s owed on the very day he’s owed it or you’ll be paying interest for the rest of your life.’
‘Women?’ Harry asked.
The boy might be young but he wasn’t innocent. Or stupid. ‘Not that I’ve heard. Mrs Walters’d skin him alive, anyway.’
I realised that Lleu was much the same age as Billy Walters. ‘You must’ve been at school with his son?’
He nodded. ‘Billy. Yes.’
‘What did he think of his sister being a teacher?’ I asked. If the other boys had shared Lleu’s opinion of Nan Walters, Billy’d probably got some stick for being the brother of a stuck-up little cow.
‘Pretended he didn’t care. But he was jealous as hell.’
The night was quiet. Apart from our own footsteps we’d heard nothing but owls and the odd snuffle of a badger going about its business since we left the mansion. So when the noise started it sent a sliver of ice into my blood.
Wooden spoons banging on pots. Horns blowing. Fiddle strings screeching fit to grind teeth. A tuneless din that yanked me straight back to my childhood. Me on my father’s shoulders, Mam at our side, shawl wrapped around her head, face blacked, wearing Dada’s jacket inside out. Neighbours turned into strangers by the dark and by blackened faces. Excitement edged with fear.
The ceffyl pren.
Harry
We were fortunate that Mattie Hughes’s cottage stood on the fraying edge of Llanddewi Brefi as it meant that there was enough open ground opposite for John and myself to stay under cover of the surrounding dark.
I had the boy, Lleu, on my left and John on my right but, still, I felt vulnerable, isolated by my inability to make out much of what surrounded me. The torches and lanterns carried by some in the crowd only hindered my attempts to see as, instead of illuminating what was around them, their light simply sequestered all my remaining vision. My only impression of the size of the crowd came from the sound of voices and movements, from which I discerned that the procession had congregated in a tight, jostling pack before Hughes’s door.
‘How many people do you think there are?’ I asked.
‘Difficult to tell,’ John said. ‘Fifty? Sixty maybe?’
A daunting sight to see on your threshold. So far, no move had been made to summon Hughes but he could not be unaware of the ceffyl pren’s arrival. Though no individual voice was intelligible, the combined tone of the mob was unmistakeable: a tightly-wound anticipation with, underneath, something implacably hostile. It was no coincidence that ceffyl pren carryings happened at night; daylight restraints are loosened after dark, anger rises in the blood and darkness releases animal instincts.
I jumped as a ragged cheer went up and the procession’s cacophony began again, its discordant clamour filling the chilly night air. The cold sky must be clear, the stars pin-prick bright.
‘Looks like Morgan Walters has arrived,’ John murmured at my side.
‘Is he carrying the ceffyl pren?’
‘No. He’s got two men behind him with it.’
By custom, the wooden ‘horse’ carried in the procession was a pole with a sheet draped over it, presumably – as Miss Gwatkyn would no doubt have been able to confirm – to represent the white mare of ancient tradition. Sometimes a horse’s skull was added which, though I’d never seen it myself, must have given the ceffyl pren a particularly sinister aspect.
‘He’s shutting them up,’ John said, as the rough music of the crowd thudded and screeched to an uncoordinated stop. A few moments of pent-up silence followed before a voice boomed out, startling me.
‘Matthew Hughes! Come out and face your neighbours like a man!’
As if it was a play and Hughes had been waiting for his cue, I heard his door unlatch and swing open.
‘Here he is!’ I heard a trace of the crowd’s febrile exultation in John’s voice. ‘He’s got no light though. Hasn’t even lit a candle in his house from what I can see.’
‘Less chance of anything getting set on fire,’ I said, foreseeing the jostling and manhandling that would soon take place. ‘Does he look afraid?’
‘Difficult to tell. He’s too far away. But he’s standing straight, like a soldier. Got his crutch, too.’
‘I thought you said he didn’t use it indoors?’
‘He said not.’
Was Hughes attempting to win the crowd’s sympathy or simply arming himself in order to remain on his feet if he could?
‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, Morgan Walters.’ Hughes’s voice was clear, self-assured. ‘If you think I had anything to do with Nicholas Rowland’s death you’re wrong.’
‘You hated him!’ came a shout.
‘Hard to love a man who takes your living away, believe me. Don’t suppose you’d be any different.’
A suppressed murmur went through the crowd which Walters was quick to silence. ‘Didn’t just hate him, though, did you?’
‘Say what you like Morgan Walters. I had nothing to do with his death.’
‘Hughes is trying to go back in,’ John said. ‘But they’re not going to let him.’
‘Get your hands off my door!’ Hughes might only have been a private soldier but he knew what the voice of command sounded like. ‘Don’t you forget – this house belongs to Miss Gwatkyn.’
‘Bring him here.’
There was some scuffling and swearing as Hughes was dragged into the middle of the encircling crowd, then a shout and the hollow sound of something wooden hitting the ground.
‘They’ve taken his crutch off him,’ John said.
‘On your knees!’ came a voice. Not Walters this time.
‘Can’t, can he?�
� another mocked, ‘He’s a peg-leg!’
As if they had been waiting for the words, the crowd immediately took up a chant. Peg-leg! Peg-leg!
‘Get it off him, then we’ll have him on his knees!’ It was a woman’s voice and the shrillness of it seemed to further inflame the crowd who began yelling in a frenetic unison. Off! Off! Off!
The mood was becoming ugly. I leaned towards John. ‘I think we should intervene.’
‘We can’t.’ John sounded apprehensive.
‘At this rate they’ll tear him limb from limb!’
‘No, they won’t. This is just how it goes.’
‘John, it’s turning from a crowd to a mob.’
‘It’s been a mob since the minute they got here! This isn’t a chapel outing. People think he’s betrayed them. Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to hear what they’ve got to say? See if there’s any evidence for the inquest?’
I hesitated. ‘Very well, but we can’t stand by and see them do him real harm.’
‘I know.’
From the savage cheer that went up then, I deduced that Hughes had been deprived of his wooden leg and forced to kneel.
‘Now, former Private Hughes,’ Walters’s voice came again. ‘Hear the charges laid against you.’
