Taking a deep breath, Antony stood with the statue to his back. How near was this to the place the tree had grown? Legend said it was close. He would do his best. “Why don’t you all sit down? With a little imagination I’ll try to give you a picture of what it was like here 900 years ago.”
Ffodor ap Barris struggled to rise from his straw-stuffed mat in the loft. Dawn rays taunted him through cracks in the eastern wall. In the room below he heard Addfwyn crooning to the bairns as she set fresh oatcakes and ale on the board. Unlike her name, his woman was not meek. Never mind how his muscles ached from the scything yesterday. Today the barley must be gathered. Thank God that the rains held off until the harvest was in. Two more days with the help of his near neighbors, Garnoc and Eurwyn, and all would be safe. Then only the sheep to see to until the rhythms of the year circled round again to seedtime. The endless cycle—seedtime and harvest. And so it would be for him until he was planted in the soil with his fathers.
“Ffodor ap Barris!”
“Aye, woman, Nid ydym am gael rhagor o drafferth.” No more of your trouble he meant, but he knew better than to be so blunt. He descended the ladder, consumed his oatcake almost whole, emptied his tankard, and lashed on his boots. Addfwyn handed him more cakes and a chunk of pungent sheep’s cheese wrapped in a cloth, which he tucked inside his tunic.
“Which garth do you work today?” she asked, filling a stone jug with ale for him.
“Garnoc ap Ynyr.” The furthest field, on the top of the hill. It would catch the most wind so they would gather it first.
In spite of his surly mood, however, the late summer air bearing the scent of harvest and the streaks of sun breaking over the hill lifted Ffodor’s spirit. He met the others as usual at the ancient well, where they all drank from the communal dipper before starting up the hill.
The sun dazzled Ffodor’s sight as he crested the hill almost under the boughs of the spreading oak tree that was its crown. He looked up into the thick green branches, admiring how the light rimmed the leaves. Fall would bring a good crop of acorns to feed the village pigs. His mind was still on crisp bacon and fat hams when he looked higher in the branches.
“What gwirion thing is this?” He stood staring up at the figure that seemed to be growing from the branches.
Garnoc joined him. “Aye, daft, indeed. Who would put a statue of Our Lady in a tree?”
But Eurwyn fell to his knees, crossing himself. “It’s a miracle. We must get Father Ilan.”
“And will Father Ilan be helping to gather my barley, are you thinking?”demanded Ffodor.
Eurwyn was adamant. The Mother of Our Lord took precedence, even over the harvest. The priest was summoned. And with him all the women and children of the village, including Addfwyn carrying the infant Iddig in her arms. Ffodor cringed. He was certain to earn a sharp scolding for being the one whose keen eyes had caused all this bother.
His arms spread wide, Father Ilan gave thanks that a miracle had been visited on them. “My soul declareth the glory of God and my heart rejoiceth in God my Savior that the Mother of my Lord should visit us… His mercy is on them that fear Him in every generation, He has shown the strength of His arm…”
When his song was finished, Father Ilan declared, “She must be brought down.” And then he turned to Ffodor. “My son, you saw her first, to you belongs the privilege.”
Ffodor took a step backward, but Garnoc and Eurwyn grasped him under the arms and boosted him up the trunk of the vast tree. There was nothing for it but to grasp the bottom branch and pull himself up. Below, his neighbors cheered him on and Garnoc called out a rude jest.
Here in the branches the foliage was thick, the bark rough under his hands. He looked up. There she was, the Virgin Mary lodged in a fork in the branches, holding her precious Babe as serenely as if she were in her own home. What daft person had put her here? And why wasn’t that troublemaker the one to be charged with getting her down instead of keeping a man from his honest labor in the field?
Ffodor swung up to the next level of branches and reached forward to grasp the smooth carved wooden figure. He hoped it wouldn’t be thought a sacrilege if he threw her down to waiting hands below. There really was no way he could climb and carry the bulky statue.
But he needn’t have worried. The Virgin was not coming with him. She resisted his first single-handed pluck, so he inched out further on the branch and grasped her more firmly with both hands. The resistance was beyond that of a figure firmly stuck. More resistant even than if he had attempted to dislodge a living limb. The statue was an immovable force.
He couldn’t imagine the ridicule he would face when he descended empty-handed, but there was nothing else for it.
Father Ilan, however, didn’t seem surprised. “Aye. Go about your labors, then. I’ll keep vigil here. This evening we’ll hitch a team of oxen and see what they may do.”
Ffodor shook his head. “Not if you hitched eight oxen, Father. She’ll not budge.”
And so it proved, although many others tried.
As soon as the harvest was in, and a bountiful yield it was, too—many said the best they had ever known—all the village set about building a fine wattle and daub shrine chapel with a snugly thatched roof to shelter the holy Mother and Child. Surely when the winter gales blew and snows piled on the bare branches of the oak tree the Mother would deign to bring her holy Babe into shelter then. They prepared a fine alcove niche at one end, and Ffodor himself fashioned a cross to go on the wall. He was no master carver, but long evenings by the fire whittling with his knife had prepared him well enough to carve a loving corpus for the crucifix. All was ready.
In a repeat of the earlier exercise, they gathered at dawn. At Father Ilan’s direction Garnoc and Eurwyn again boosted Ffodor to the bottom branches. This time Ffodor swung up full of anticipation. And it almost seemed that it was a matter of the holy Mother moving to him as much as his moving to her. She felt like a living thing in his arms. Prepared as he was this time, he fixed her snugly in the sling he wore around his neck, and they returned lightly to the earth.
Father Ilan bore her aloft; Ffodor followed with his new-carved cross. The village trooped behind them into the chapel—inaugurating what was to become the first pilgrimage to Our Lady of Penrhys.
Nancy, who with Michael had joined them midway through the story, was the first to speak. “What happened next?”
Antony spied the welcoming group from the Uniting Church, who regularly met pilgrims for a special service and tea in their church hall, approaching across the greensward. He also saw the darkening clouds rolling in overhead, and felt the wind whipping up from the south. As a matter of fact, the first spatters of rain had begun to fall from the edge of the cloud bank. He would summarize the rest of the story: “For more than four hundred years, the site continued as one of the holiest sites for Christian pilgrims in Wales. By 1538, King Henry VIII was two years into his process of dissolving all religious houses in England, Wales and Ireland—appropriating their income for his coffers when Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, wrote to Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chancelor, pleading for the continuation of some of the larger abbeys, but advocating the destruction of such shrines as Our Lady of Walsingham and Our Lady of Penrhys.”
The darkness increased overhead, the wind drove harder, slanting the rain at them from the side, rather than on their heads, but the story would not be hurried:
“The shrine’s on fire!” Young Gwillan ap Ffodor jumped from his pallet and ran to the door of the cottage his family had lived in for generations. Even here at the foot of the hill he could see the hungry orange flames leap from the roof and lick the night sky. The crackle became louder as he raced up the hill with other villagers roused from their sleep. When they reached the top of the hill, the smoke, whipped by the wind, burned their eyes.
“Our Lady! She’ll burn. And her holy Babe!” Gwillan ran toward the door, but strong arms held him back.
“Nae, lad. She’s nae there.”
“Halfway to Lunnon, I’ve no doubt. Henry’s men would nae risk rousing the village until they were well on their way.”
“They’ve stolen Our Lady?”
“Aye, I heard the rattle of the iron wheels of the cart on the path, but I didn’t take the meaning of it until I saw the flames. It’s the times, lad. The way of the world. There’s no use fighting it.”
Gwillan shook his head. The words made no sense to him. But he understood one thing. Our Lady was not in the flames. She was gone. But that was not the end. It could not be the end. Our Lady of Penrhys had come to them, bringing her Son, the Lord Christ, to this mountain top. To the surrounding valleys. The white monks had dwelt with her and looked after her, and had ministered to all, far and wide, and taught the way of our Lord. It could not be the end.
“She’ll come back. She’ll come back and bring her Son.” In spite of the sob in his voice Gwillan flung his words defiantly. They must be heard over the roar of the flames. They must.
Antony zipped his anorak, pulling the collar tight around his neck. He longed to turn his back to the driving rain, but that would force his hearers to face into the storm. He could finish the account later, but all were intent. Best to complete it on the spot. “Two months later, on a crisp September day in London, perhaps not unlike the day on which our simple Welsh farmer first discovered her in the branches of the oak tree, Our Lady of Penrhys, Our Lady of Walsingham and two of their Sisters were burned in a great bonfire. Some say the burning was at Tyburn—the traditional place for the execution of criminals in London, and where just a year earlier Henry had executed the leaders who had marched against the closing of the northern monasteries in the Pilgrimage of Grace.
“But wherever it was, the Shrine of Our Lady—even in its empty state—was still visited throughout the following centuries, with records showing devotion up until 1842. In the early twentieth century, a devout lady financed the building of a memorial church in the valley below in Ferndale—complete with a wooden replica of the original statue. In 1936, the Ferndale priest revived the ancient pilgrimage tradition.”
A sheet of water hit Antony full from the side. The wind whipped at his words. He raised his voice, determined to finish the story. “This statue—” He raised his face to look up at the modern stone statue towering almost straight above his head, then wished he hadn’t as rain sluiced his face. “This statue was erected in 1953, using descriptions from Welsh medieval poetry to reconstruct the original as closely as possible.” Although obviously much larger.
It was unnecessary to add the caveat, and it would have been futile as the strength of the wind and volume of the rain increased. If Mair, their hostess from the Uniting Church, hadn’t turned to lead them down the wet, green slope, they would likely have been washed down.
The tiny stone hut built into the hillside at the bottom of the incline couldn’t shelter all their group at once, but those who didn’t make it through the small doorway into Ffynnon Fair, Mary’s Well, huddled against the north wall for protection. Antony was with the last group to duck into the dim interior of the small rectangular building. Stone benches circled around three walls; a cistern occupied the south end. It was a blessed relief to be out of the driving rain, but it was equally chill inside. Until he felt Felicity snuggle close to him. Their exchange of smiles warmed the room. “This is the original building,” he told those around him. “Heavily restored, of course. The niche,” he pointed to the wall opposite the well, “was said to have held a statue of Mary.”
Felicity started to say something, but the sound that emerged was that of chattering teeth. “Right, into the minibus,” Antony directed. “We’ll have to rearrange the luggage—”
Michael pulled the keys from his pocket and handed them across. “Yeah, here you go.”
Thankfully, the violence of the storm let up as they made their way back up the hill to the vehicles. It took some time to shift the bags that had been hastily loaded that morning, largely by the simple expedient of tossing them onto empty seats. Careful packing cleared all but the back row of seats. Antony suggested Felicity and Nancy go ahead with Mair and their other hosts. The rest of them would follow in a minute when Michael caught them up. Antony smiled. Michael had probably wanted to use the shelter of a wall for a comfort stop.
Antony’s smile had faded, though, long before he saw Michael’s damp, black curls appear over the crest of the hill. “Sorry.” Michael jumped into the driver’s seat and shook his head, spraying water on those around him. “Didn’t mean for you to wait. I could have walked into town.”
Antony didn’t reply as his attention was arrested by Michael’s hands on the steering wheel. A long, jagged scrape on the back of his right hand oozed blood. His nails were darkened by what appeared to be fresh mud. What had Michael been doing at Mary’s Well?
He continued to consider as they drove through the wet, gray streets lined with dispirited shops, but could formulate no satisfying theory. The modern yellow brick structure of the Uniting Church offered a bright spot on yet another gray street. And the hearty mugs of hot tea and spicy sausage rolls, accompanied by their hosts’ warm greeting, provided a welcome relief to Antony’s unformed worry.
“We were built in 1971 by the churches of the Rhondda.” Mair’s cap of dark hair gleamed, and without her padded coat she appeared much smaller than she had on the hilltop. She continued her explanation to Felicity as she offered Antony a plate of small pork pies. “We’re the only church in Wales supported and recognized by eight different denominations. We offer worship and services for all the local community.”
“That’s wonderful. That’s just the sort of cooperation Father Antony’s Ecumenical Commission works to support,” Felicity said, and Antony smiled around his bite of pork pie.
“It’s grand for the whole area,” Mair agreed. “We offer after-school homework clubs and music lessons for children, a café, a launderette, a nearly new shop—”
“And hospitality for pilgrims,” Felicity added.
Another of their hosts, a plump, bald man in an Arran jumper, brought a refill of tea in a heavy, aluminum teapot. “And where do you go on from here, Father?” he asked, after Antony had sweetened his tea with three sugars and a hearty dollop of milk.
“The Rhondda Heritage Park this afternoon. We stay in Aberdare for Sunday and go on to St David’s Monday.” Antony’s smile showed how much he was looking forward to their time of peaceful retreat.
“Oh, aye, you’ll enjoy the Heritage Park. They do a grand job of showing what it was like hereabouts 100 years ago.”
Mair shuddered. “Grim it was, Colin. Some things are best forgot.”
“I don’t agree. We need to remember the struggles of the past to appreciate what we have now.”
Mair was adamant. “All those who died in the pits. Or more slowly from the Black Death.”
“But there were the good times, too. Family, community, singing—”
“You don’t have to go backwards for the music.” Mair said to her guests. “If you’re in Aberdare tonight and needing to get the coal dust out of your lungs, you’d be more than welcome to come along to the rehearsal of our male voice choir.” She smiled at Felicity. “Just six weeks until the Eisteddfod.”
Antony turned to find the pastor of the Uniting Church. Their brief midday prayer service was to be a keynote of the ecumenical theme of their youth walk, and Antony felt a great desire to give thanks for their safe arrival after all they had gone through. And to make a fervent request for the bulwark to remain strong.
He knew he would feel better if he could put a face on the dark shadows that seemed to plague them. But they had made it. For that they must give thanks.
Chapter 17
Saturday, continued
Penrhys to Aberdare
The wind and the rain blew on across mountain and valley, but th
e glowering dark clouds remained. In spite of the low-hanging canopy, however, they took the scenic route along the fabled Rhondda Valley. Felicity sat glued to her window watching intently as tiny villages tucked in a narrow valley between steep hills rolled by on both sides of the van. Rows of terraced houses sitting on shelves ran up the vertical slopes. She couldn’t begin to think how depressing it must be in the winter. Surely it would get dark by two in the afternoon, with what little sun might shine being blocked by the hills.
The clouds hadn’t lifted when they arrived at the Rhondda Heritage Park. Their tour of the once-working colliery was led by a burly former miner in a black overall and white hard hat. “For centuries the Rhondda Valleys were a pastoral paradise: clear running streams and waterfalls, lush with trees and plants. The sheep-rearing farmers that populated the scattered farmhouses existed as they had for centuries, as a sleepy rural community.” Maddoc, their guide, painted a picture of these hills as they would have been when St David strode over them. “Until the second half of the nineteenth century. Then, coal was discovered. By the end of the century, the Rhondda was one of the most important coal producing areas in the world. At its peak, the coal industry in Wales employed one in every ten persons, and many more relied on the industry for their livelihood. Rhondda alone at one time contained fifty-three working collieries, in an area only sixteen miles long. It was the most intensely mined area in the world, and probably one of the most densely populated.”
He continued talking as they walked to the winding house, “In its heyday, Rhondda’s coal was as important as the oil produced by the Middle East today. This Welsh Valley helped to power the world.”
An Unholy Communion Page 18
