Those Who Know

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘Morgan Walters has given a paper to one of the other men,’ John said. ‘And somebody’s holding a lantern for him to read it. Proper performance.’

  ‘First charge.’ The reader’s voice was uncertain, either from imperfect literacy or inadequate lighting. ‘That you stole coal from Nicholas Rowland so that he could not heat his school, causing him to turn children away.’

  Despite the catcalls of the crowd, Hughes’s response was clear. ‘No. That’s a lie! I did no such thing!’

  ‘That’s because you paid boys to do it!’ a voice rang out.

  ‘If any boys stole coal, it wasn’t on my say-so!’

  ‘Shut up, liar!’ As the crowd rose up to dismiss Hughes’s denial, I felt the mood slip another notch towards mayhem. I had never heard of a death as the result of a ceffyl pren carryingbut severe beatings, though not common, were known to take place.

  ‘Carry on.’ I heard Walters’s voice above the crowd.

  ‘Second charge.’ The halting reader was obliged almost to shout in order to be heard. ‘That you paid a boy to … per …persuade Mr Rowland’s pupils to disrespect him, to refuse to do work and to … laugh at his crippled hands.’

  At the crowd’s renewed shouting, I gripped John’s shoulder. ‘We must do something! They’re working themselves into a frenzy.’

  ‘Yes, and we’re hearing more evidence! I can see what’s happening. Don’t worry.’

  Though both of us had raised our voices, nobody would hear us over the outrage that was being rained down on the accused.

  Shame on you, Matthew Hughes!

  Shame! Shame!

  I heard the unmistakeable sound of gobs of spittle being hawked and spat.

  Lleu pulled at my sleeve and I inclined my head to him. ‘That’s Billy Walters he was talking about. The one who persuaded the other boys to do those things. He said he wasn’t going to Mr Rowland’s school if his sister was going to be put over him and he went back to Mattie Hughes. And Old Mattie got him to do those things they’re saying. Said they’d soon see that Rowland’d use the birch if he needed to.’

  ‘And did he?’ I asked, almost speaking into the boy’s ear so as to be heard. ‘Did he use the birch?’

  ‘No. Don’t think he could’ve handled it, to be honest.’

  Possibly not. But he could certainly have instructed one of his assistants to do so on his behalf.

  A voice raised itself above the cries of Shame and You’re nothing next to Mr Rowland. ‘Think Miss Gwatkyn’s going to protect you now, do you? When she knows what kind of a man you are?’

  ‘The pushing’s started,’ John said at my side.

  ‘If they lay him out, we’ll stop them. Agreed?’ If Mattie Hughes ended up on the ground, I knew I would have to intervene. A man on the ground is vulnerable to boots and, in this mood, I did not doubt that the crowd would use them.

  ‘Enough!’ I was glad to hear Walters’s voice. It implied that he was still in control of the mob. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Third charge. That you spied on Nicholas Rowland. That you watched him about his daily business and threatened him.’

  ‘How did I threaten him?’ Hughes did not sound intimidated though he cannot have been ignorant of the danger he was in. ‘Who says I threatened him?’

  ‘You were heard telling him,’ Walters said, ‘that you were waiting for him to put a foot wrong and then you would “have him”.’

  ‘Have him?’ Hughes sounded almost amused. He waited until the publican quieted the crowd once more, then said, ‘You’ve been misinformed, Morgan Walters. I never said I’d “have him”. But I did tell Nicholas Rowland that I was watching him. I was waiting for him to put a foot wrong. Because I wanted Miss Gwatkyn to see him for what he was.’

  ‘She saw him for exactly what he was,’ a woman’s voice shouted. ‘A better man than you’ll ever be.’

  Loud cheers of agreement greeted her words and I felt the crowd pressing in on Hughes. I suddenly wished I had brought a walking stick or a riding whip. Anything with which I might enforce some kind of order.

  ‘Fourth charge!’ The reader had to shout over the mob. ‘That you killed Nicholas Rowland!’

  Now, the hollow sound of pots being struck was joined by the ominous thudding of staves on the ground.

  ‘Silence!’ Walters yelled. As soon as the crowd’s noise had diminished sufficiently for him to make himself heard, he began again. ‘All your schemes failed, didn’t they, Matthew Hughes? Mr Rowland’s school prospered. You saw that you’d lost. That he was persuading gentlemen to support his new school. So you decided to kill him!’

  There was no mistaking the sound that came then. It was the baying of a pack, nostrils filled with the scent of its prey, rationality subjugated to blood lust.

  ‘The ceffyl pren’s coming forward,’ John said. ‘Walters is handling this. He’ll get Hughes onto it before they can really start on him.’

  Before I could respond, Lleu suddenly darted from my side into the crowd. Immediately, he was lost to me. ‘John, go after him!’

  John did not move. ‘I can see him. He’s gone straight to talk to somebody. Might be Simi Jones.’ He moved aside. ‘Yes. I think it is. Right, something’s happening.’

  ‘Out of my way.’ I heard then. ‘Let me through!’

  ‘Well, well! Looks like the plwyfwas is taking charge,’ John said.

  Lleu reappeared at my side again and spoke into my ear. ‘Miss Gwatkyn said, if things looked nasty, I should tell Simi to threaten them with the magistrates.’

  ‘Good boy.’ Instructions from his mistress or not, it had taken courage to fling himself into the crowd like that.

  ‘If you’re going to make him ride that damn thing, then get him on it and have done with it!’ Simi Jones’s voice cut through the crowd’s complaints. ‘But if you harm him, I’ll have the magistrates on you, by Miss Gwatkyn’s order!’

  John was going to have to amend his poor opinion of Jones who, despite insults and some shoving and jostling, stood his ground.

  And they did as he said. I listened to John’s narration of the scene, seeing hands grabbing the old soldier, thrusting the pole of the ceffyl pren between his legs and hoisting it on to their shoulders. The discomfort of sitting astride a narrow pole would be the lesser of two evils for Hughes. His balance thrown off by the unequal length of his legs, his main problem would be remaining upright. John described the crowd’s method of keeping him astride as they began to move up the street towards the church: rough blows from fists and staves, shoves this way and that as he almost fell to one side and was manhandled upright, only to overbalance on the other.

  ‘Not a single door’s opening to throw anything at him,’ John reported. ‘Everybody must be in the procession.’

  Alternatively, some villagers might disapprove of Morgan Walters’s resort to popular justice before the inquest’s verdict.

  ‘If nobody’s watching,’ I said, ‘why are they bothering to parade him up the street?’

  As John’s face turned toward me, I saw a dull flash in my peripheral vision – a reflection of one of the crowd’s torches from his spectacles. ‘It’s what happens, isn’t it? Otherwise it’s not a ceffyl pren procession, it’s just a mob accusing a man on his doorstep.’

  I wondered what Tobias Hildon’s reaction would be as the mob approached his vicarage. Would he attempt to remonstrate with them or, knowing that Phoebe Gwatkyn tolerated the carrying of the ceffyl pren, would he stay indoors and keep his own counsel? Few in the chapel-going procession would be averse to letting Hildon understand that this was their village and they would do in it as they saw fit.

  As we watched the lights jerking up the street and listened to the din of the procession’s discordant circuit of the church, I gripped John’s arm. ‘If Simi Jones can’t stop them when they pull him down, I’m stepping in. We’ve heard everything we’re going to now, and I won’t see an innocent man beaten senseless.’

  ‘Not exactly innocent! He may not’ve ki
lled Rowland but you heard the other charges. He tried to make Rowland’s life a misery.’

  ‘As, no doubt, Rowland’s arrival had made his.’

  ‘You’re saying Rowland deserved what he got?’

  ‘No. I’m saying that this is enough now. No more. When they get him off, we make sure he gets safely back into his house.’

  The parading and manhandling of Hughes had vented the head of steam that had been building in the crowd and I could feel the reduced tension as the noisy cavalcade made its way back towards us. The shouts were accompanied by more laughter now. Somebody had managed to turn the crowd’s wrath to ridicule and, though Hughes might still receive some blows as he was forcibly dismounted, I was less fearful for his safety than I had been five minutes before.

  ‘Pull him down.’ Walters’s voice came when the crowd had stopped, once more, in front of Hughes’s house and the banging and horn-blowing had been silenced.

  ‘God, that must’ve hurt.’ I heard the wince in John’s voice as Hughes was pulled off the ceffyl pren and allowed to fall to the ground. ‘He’ll be lucky if he hasn’t broken his collarbone, too.’

  I almost told him not to sound so pleased but held my peace. I had no right to tell John what to think or how to react.

  ‘Simi Jones is there,’ he said. ‘He’s pulling him up.’

  Good. The plwyfwas was on hand to prevent any further violence. But the work of the ceffyl pren was not finished. Morgan Walters had yet to issue the injunction as to future behaviour.

  ‘Hear this, Matthew Hughes,’ he called out. ‘If, by noon tomorrow, you have not presented yourself to the coroner to confess that you are the murderer of Nicholas Rowland, we will come for you again. And we willsee justice done!’

  John

  The next morning, we were back in Llanddewi Brefi. But, whatever people might’ve thought when they saw us riding over from Alltybela, we weren’t there to do Morgan Walters’s work for him. We stopped in front of the Three Horseshoes and I found a boy to hold the horses there, just so everybody’d know we were inside. Llanddewi Brefi needed to understand that Harry was in charge of deciding what happened to Mattie Hughes not Morgan Walters. And that included Walters himself. Harry’d taken steps the night before to make that clear.

  Before we’d stumbled back to Alltybela over the fields, we’d left the ceffyl pren procession in front of Hughes’s house and slipped away to the Three Horseshoes. Inside, right in the middle of the table furthest from the front door, we’d left a note giving notice that we’d be visiting at nine to speak to the girls. Just by being there, that note told Walters that we’d seen the carrying of the ceffyl pren and – if we wanted to – we could have him arrested for leading it. Harry’d never do such a thing, but Morgan Walters didn’t know that. If he had any sense, he’d have made sure that his daughter was on the premises this morning, along with her friend, Ruth Eynon.

  I stared at the boy holding the mares. He hadn’t quite scrubbed off all of last night’s soot. I could still see it around his ears and in his eyebrows.

  ‘You can let them graze just over there.’ I nodded at a patch of scuffed grass a few yards away. ‘But no further. I don’t want to have to come looking for you when Mr Probert-Lloyd and I are finished, all right?’ Now he’d be able to tell anybody who asked who the horses belonged to.

  Inside, the place had the clean smell of fresh sawdust and its owner was waiting for us. Morgan Walters had done a better job of cleaning himself up than the boy outside. His square face was clean and shaved and, if his dark eyebrows had soot in them, well, it wouldn’t show, anyway, would it?

  ‘Good day to you, gentlemen!’ All cheer and welcome. Perhaps he thought his place on the local election committee gave him special privileges. He’d soon know different.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Walters,’ Harry said. ‘As I mentioned in the note we left, we’d like a few words with your daughter, if we may.’

  If Harry’d just kicked away any hope Walters might’ve had that we’d sent a boy over with the note, he didn’t show it. ‘Yes, yes. She’s here. And Ruth. Best if you talk to them in the parlour at the back.’

  Harry nodded. He didn’t want anybody eavesdropping on our chat with the girls any more than Walters did.

  A new fire was smoking in the little parlour but it couldn’t disguise the musty smell. Walters and his family most likely spent all their time in the taproom and the kitchen, with the parlour for best. The bits of furniture stranded here and there in the room looked decent but not new. Inherited from dead relatives probably. Morgan Walters had better things to spend his money on than sofas he never sat on.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the fireplace. Still couldn’t get over how much of a gentleman I looked with my barbered hair and new clothes.

  Nan and Ruth were sitting on straight-backed chairs, hands in their laps. I’d expected them to be fourteen or fifteen but they were older, more my age. Thought they were ladies, too. They might’ve left the best chairs for me and Harry but they didn’t stand up when we came in.

  I introduced us, in Welsh, and the slighter of the two replied in English. ‘Good day, Mr Probert-Lloyd, Mr Davies. I’m Anne Walters and this is Ruth Eynon.’

  Nan – or Anne as she was calling herself this morning – was a dark-haired slip of a thing but she had one of those faces that wanted you to know she could see right through you. Not just sharp but cutting, if you know what I mean. Ruth was softer-looking, a bit rounder, more shapely, with a dimple in her half-smile. And they might give themselves airs because Nicholas Rowland had favoured them, but they were still dressed like working women in betgwns and aprons. The way they’d done their hair wasn’t what you’d expect, mind. Both had braids that were swirled into shapes on either side of their head. It was exactly the way Miss Gwatkyn did hers. But where, on her, it looked all of a piece with her tunic and furry boots, on these two, in their everyday clothes, it looked wrong, out of place.

  ‘You’ll be here to talk to us about Mr Rowland’s death, presumably.’ Nan Walters taking charge. In English. Making a point.

  Billy would’ve laughed his head off if he’d heard her. Presumably?

  Harry kept a straight face. ‘That’s correct.’

  Nan’s nose went even further into the air. ‘Mr Jones, the parish constable, will have informed you that we were the first to see Mr Rowland’s body?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘We’d been given to understand that Mr Rowland’s pupils had found his body. Perhaps you’d like to tell us exactly what happened? Eyewitness testimony is always to be preferred to second hand.’

  Nan Walters looked pleased. Didn’t know he was buttering her up.

  ‘Ruth and I always arrived before the children. We’d go in and help Mr Rowland set things out for the morning.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ Harry asked.

  ‘We’d make sure the slates were clean.’ Ruth spoke up. ‘And fill inkpots for the older ones, cut the paper into pieces for them to practise on.’

  So, Rowland’s school’d had ink and paper, had it? His pupils had been lucky. Learning to write by scratching on a slate is one thing but mastering pen and ink is something else altogether.

  ‘And we’d make sure there was enough coal inside, for the stove.’ Nan took over again. ‘It was easier for us to do it than for Mr Rowland.’

  ‘And sweep,’ Ruth added. ‘There was always mud from the children’s boots.’

  ‘Why didn’t you sweep it out at the end of the day?’ I asked. My mother would no more’ve left boot-mud on the floor for the following day than she would’ve left clothes there for vermin to get at.

  ‘That was when we did our work with Mr Rowland,’ Nan said. ‘He didn’t want us to waste the light on drudge work.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Can you tell us exactly what you saw when you went into the schoolroom?’

  For the first time, there was a flicker of something between them, eyes moving towards each other at the same moment. They w
eren’t quite as untroubled by what they’d seen as they were trying to pretend.

  ‘We saw him straight away.’ Something changed in Ruth Eynon’s eyes and she sounded as if she’d gathered up all her courage. ‘You’ve seen how the schoolroom’s set out. The door opens so you see the right-hand side of the room and that’s where he was.’

  ‘How exactly was he lying?’ Harry asked.

  The girls glanced at each other again. Deciding who was going to answer? ‘On his back,’ Nan said. ‘With the ladder on top of him.’

  ‘Were his hands gripping the ladder?’ I asked. I wanted to know if they’d really seen him, really looked.

  Nan Walters turned to me. Her eyes were like gleaming pebbles, hard and cold. ‘Mr Rowland couldn’t grip the ladder, not properly. He’d sort of hook his thumbs round the edge,’ she mimed with her own hands, fingers curled, thumbs catching at her palms.

  ‘So where were his hands if they weren’t holding the ladder?’

  Nan’s eyes shifted, looked past me, as if she was trying to see Rowland’s body in her mind’s eye. ‘Out, like this.’ She put her hands up level with her shoulders. ‘As if he’d overbalanced backwards.’

  ‘Did you move him?’ Harry asked.

  Both girls shook their heads.

  ‘Did you touch him at all?’