None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  ‘I’m aware of the commotion, Ann. Go about your business.’

  I knew I should allow Moyle to deal with whoever was standing on the doorstep but, with the front door now open, I could hear the heavy-fisted messenger stumbling over the English phrases he had been forced into and I knew exactly what expression the butler would have on his face while he failed to help the poor man.

  ‘Won’t be a moment, Gus.’

  I pulled the door fully open and stepped into the hall, leaving my friend a clearer view of the man on the threshold than I had. ‘Is there some difficulty, Moyle?’

  The butler half-turned, as if he was trying to keep one mistrustful eye on the visitor. ‘This… person… wishes to see Mr Probert-Lloyd. At least, I think that’s what he’s trying to say.’

  I moved towards the doorway and addressed the visitor in his own language. Moyle would not like it but that could not be helped. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd is sitting in the magistrates’ court today. He won’t be back until tomorrow.’

  The figure on the doorstep raised a forearm to blot the sweat from his face, as if my speaking Welsh had given him permission to behave like a man.

  ‘I’ve come from Waungilfach,’ he began, as fluent now as he had been halting in English, ‘Mr William Williams’s place along by the—’

  I held up a hand to stop him, hoping that he had seen no change in my face when he mentioned the name of the farm. ‘I know it. Why has Mr Williams sent you?’

  ‘We were cutting an old fallen tree in the Alltddu – me and Dai Penlan, we work for Mr Williams – and when we pulled the roots out – mind, to be honest, we weren’t supposed to do that, Mr Williams said to leave the roots where they were because—’

  Dear God, we would be here till Sunday if I allowed him to carry on. ‘What’s your name, friend?’

  ‘Ianto. John. John Harris.’

  John, his baptismal name, the name I would use if I appeared for him in court, or wrote him a contract; the English name nobody ever addressed him by. ‘Right, Ianto. Tell me what happened when you pulled the roots out.’

  His hat-twisting hands dropped to his sides. He had probably been sent to Glanteifi with no more than a ‘Go and ask Mr Probert-Lloyd to come.’ I was the wrong Mr Probert-Lloyd but I was making myself available, so I would have to do.

  ‘We found somebody buried. That is, bones. We found bones.’ Somebody buried. At Waungilfach. The news was like a kick in the stomach.

  Gus’s curiosity was palpable as we stood in the stableyard waiting for the horses. Only his wariness of listening ears was saving me from an interrogation. Having told him that human remains had been found, I had avoided any questions he might have asked by fleeing upstairs, ostensibly to change but, in actual fact, to quell the shaking that had taken hold of me.

  Bones confirmed what I had always feared. She was dead. But buried?

  Buried implied a second party. It implied – no, surely it was evidence of – murder.

  A stable boy led the horses out and held them while we mounted up. ‘How far is it?’ Gus asked, nodding to the boy and taking up the reins.

  ‘Five minutes or so.’ In fact, had we set out to walk instead of changing and waiting for the horses, we would almost have been there by now. But it would not have done to arrive on foot. Williams of Waungilfach would have felt slighted and it was altogether too soon to allow my father to begin finding fault with me.

  In two minutes we were trotting through the gates at the end of the drive. I urged my little mare up the hill towards Treforgan and we passed the hamlet’s open-fronted forge, made our way down the steep little hill past the silent, weekday chapel and the mill with its rhythmically thumping wheel, and found ourselves on the edge of the river meadows where the flat pasture was bounded by the wooded slope of the Alltddu.

  Eyes averted so as to give me an impression of the path ahead, I was aware of the stiff, leafless cages of last summer’s brambles lining the edge of the path and my mind’s eye conjured up memories of an exuberance of black-spattered bushes rambling up the slope. Blackberries and wild strawberries and damsons – we had picked them all. My mouth puckered at the memory of the sharp sweetness of those damsons, those days.

  A sudden greeting snatched me back to the present. ‘Henry Probert-Lloyd!’

  William Williams. The sound of his voice brought a slew of unpleasant recollections and I fought down an old anger.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr Williams.’ I dismounted and found my reins being taken by Ianto Harris.

  ‘I barely recognised you,’ Williams sounded somewhat resentful. ‘You look quite different!’

  My hand rose involuntarily to my beard; even I was not used to it, yet, but its novelty did not excuse his tone. I gave what I hoped was a sufficiently forced smile to act as a dignified rebuke and proceeded to introduce Gus before clarifying why I had come instead of my father.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Williams said. ‘It’s good of you to come yourself, of course, but I think I would rather wait until your father can attend to this himself.’

  I stiffened. I might have been little more than a boy the last time Williams and I had had dealings with each other but I was a barrister now and more than competent to deputise for a magistrate.

  ‘Is it not,’ I suggested, ‘simply a case of confirming that these remains are human and sending for the coroner?’ Both of which Williams might have done already, had he not been so afraid of being seen to overreach himself.

  ‘Your father is a county magistrate—’

  ‘That’s hardly a necessary qualification, surely?’

  ‘No but, I think we should wait—’

  ‘And I am quite sure that he would wish us to act like sensible men’ – let him take that as a compliment if he felt so inclined – ‘and deal with this ourselves.’

  Unable to look Williams in the eye and utterly unwilling to tell him why, I turned my head towards the wooded slope beside us. She was up there. That was where she had been for the last seven years. Despite all my desperate hopes and wild imaginings, she had been here all along. Dead, as I had feared. But murder… I had not, for a second, entertained that thought.

  ‘Now that the remains have been exposed,’ I said, cutting across some vague further protestation, ‘we cannot leave them to be dispersed by scavengers. They must be exhumed to await due process.’ Let him put that bit of legalism into his pipe and smoke it.

  I started up the wooded slope and was relieved to hear not only Gus but Williams following. Excellent. First round to me.

  The steep bank was treacherous with rotting leaves and badger scrapes and we slipped more than once on the way up. My pulse was racing but I chose to see that as the result of unaccustomed exertion and ignored the churning in my stomach.

  After a minute or two of panting, bank gave way abruptly to beaten track. No wider than a sheep path, I remembered it as a shortcut from Williams’s farmyard to the edge of the hamlet. My feet knew this path and memories seemed to pass directly from the soles of my boots to my mind’s eye, memories of walking this way almost daily in that summer between boyhood and manhood. The summer when I had first felt the terrible doubts and delirium of love.

  Further up the slope, I could just make out the figure of a man sitting on the ground, half obscured by the confusion of branches and twigs that pushed down the slope from the crown of the fallen tree. Dai Penlan, the second root-digger, I assumed.

  I turned to Williams who was labouring up behind us. ‘When exactly did this tree fall down, can you remember?’

  ‘Four, five years ago, maybe?’

  I was sure he was wrong. She had disappeared seven years ago.

  As I scrambled up to where he sat, Dai Penlan got to his feet and pulled his hat off his head. I nodded a greeting and walked around the upended roots to the pile of disturbed earth.

  ‘Can you see?’ Gus murmured, at my side.

  ‘Enough.’ I knelt on the damp ground. In truth, my remaining sight was inadequate to identify what
I was looking at and, without forewarning, I would have dismissed the pale shape at the edge of my vision as a rock. Only because I was expecting it was I able to make out the dome of a human skull.

  I reached towards it but found my fingers reluctant to touch the bone. It was not squeamishness; not exactly. It was simply that she should not be dead. These bones should be covered in flesh, muscle, warm skin, bright auburn hair. I swallowed, almost undone by my last memory of her. There had been nothing bright about her then.

  Nothing.

  Was this really her?

  I turned to Gus, motioned at the skull. ‘Could you get it out? Carefully.’

  He took my place and, as well as I could, I watched him patiently loosening earth from bone before lifting it free with a grunt.

  ‘Here.’ He did not release the skull’s weight until he was sure that I had a secure hold and, when he did so, I realised why; it was far heavier than I had been expecting. A gentle exploration revealed cold earth impacted into every orifice.

  I set it on the ground in front of me. Then, cautiously, because I had no idea how easily skeletal teeth might be dislodged, I began rubbing soil away, picking off dryish chunks with my fingernails, forcing myself to scrub at the surfaces of the front teeth.

  Keeping my voice barely above a murmur so that Dai would not hear, I asked, ‘Is there a gap between the two front teeth? A bigger gap than usual?’

  Gus leaned forward. ‘Yes, there is. It’s quite pronounced.’

  I could see those teeth in my mind’s eye: the two big front ones she used to call coach-house doors because of their shape. The gap between them had given her an endearingly child-like smile.

  But she had not been a child. Seven years ago, when somebody put her beneath this tree, she had been twenty-two years old.

  Gus stirred at my side. ‘Do you know who this is?’

  Instead of answering his question, I laid the skull gently back down and rose to my feet. I was aware of William Williams waiting on the footpath below and I knew that decisiveness was called for if I was to carry the day.

  Taking care not to slide on the wet leaves, I made my way back down to him determined to engage in no discussion, simply to act as if I had the right to organise affairs as I saw fit.

  ‘Mr Williams, will you send Ianto back to the house for something to carry the remains in, please? An old sheet, perhaps, or some kind of cloth?’ I could not bear the thought of a sack being produced and her bones being bundled up like so much firewood. ‘They must be taken to the mortuary at the workhouse until the proper course can be decided.’

  ‘You should make sure to take the surrounding soil as well,’ Gus chipped in, reducing the likelihood that Williams would object. ‘To be sure of collecting all the bones.’ He half-turned towards me. ‘Don’t frown like that P-L, I’ve seen antiquarians do it. It’s how you ensure thoroughness.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Gelyot, who did you say did that?’

  ‘Antiquarians, Mr Williams. They go about looking for evidence of our ancestors – trying to put flesh on the bones of myth, so to speak.’ Gus tailed off, clearly regretting his choice of phrase.

  ‘You think this is somebody from long ago? Is that what you’re saying?’

  The hope in Williams’s voice was naked, embarrassing, and I was not going to allow him to harbour it for a second longer. ‘No, Mr Williams,’ I said, before Gus could respond. ‘Unlike Mr Gelyot, I think we both know very well who these remains belong to.’

  I could feel Williams’s eyes on me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not right. She left. She ran away in the night.’

  But if she had run away I would have found her.

  I had always known, in my heart of hearts, that she was dead. And now William Williams would have to face his share of the guilt that had tormented me for the last seven years.

  Harry

  I wanted there to be no confusion about what should be done with the remains when they arrived at the workhouse so I decided to ride out there with Gus.

  ‘Don’t you think we should inform the proper authorities first?’ Gus asked, once we’d left Williams and the labourers behind.

  I half-turned. ‘The coroner, you mean?’

  ‘The police? Or isn’t there a force here yet?’

  ‘We do have a county constabulary, as it happens so you can stop thinking we’re quite so medieval. But it’s not like London. The magistrates still hold the reins.’

  ‘So shouldn’t we find a magistrate?’

  ‘My father will need to be first to know.’ I did not dare think of taking this to anybody else. ‘It’ll wait until tomorrow.’

  I knew I would be rehearsing a dozen different ways to break the news from now until my father’s return. He would be unwilling to take my identification of the bones at face value.

  Teeth – what are you talking about, boy? Is no other person in the history of South Cardiganshire to be allowed to have had teeth with a gap in the middle? You can’t be sure of these bones. Best to have them decently buried and make an end of it.

  Just as he had wanted me decently tidied away to Oxford and an end to my association with the young woman whose remains we had just seen.

  ‘How far is it to this workhouse?’ Gus asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

  ‘About another mile.’

  ‘It’s odd’ he ruminated, ‘half the people one sees in court live in absolute fear of the workhouse but I’ve never been near one.’

  ‘You’ll find this one quiet. Small by London standards. Beyond the master and matron – Mr and Mrs Davies – the only other official is a clerk. That used to be a Mr Thomas but I don’t know if he still holds the position.’

  I almost heard Gus’s mouth fall open. ‘You’re acquainted with these people?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see that his face was turned towards me but I could not make out any expression. That sort of detail was beyond me, now. ‘We’ve been introduced,’ I said. It felt expedient to admit that; goodness only knew how Davies was going to greet a visit from me on this particular errand. The last time I had visited the workhouse it had been in search of the woman whose remains I was now having delivered to Davies’s door.

  ‘P-L, how on earth did you come to be introduced to a workhouse master and his wife?’

  I sighed. Gus and I might both be the sons of gentlemen but our upbringing had differed in almost every respect. Whilst I had grown up in the damp, green country where the three counties of Cardigan, Carmarthen and Pembroke meet in a tangle of wooded river valleys, Gus had seen out his childhood in one of the newer, smarter garden squares in London. My father was a landowner and a magistrate, his a second-generation manufacturer whose wealth came from northern mill towns. And, though my father might command respect on the bench and in polite Welsh drawing rooms, his enjoyed friends in government.

  ‘I used to ride over with my father while the workhouse was being built,’ I told him. ‘He was chairman of the board of Guardians. Still is.’ Because nobody else would take on that particularly thankless task.

  ‘Your father is a Poor Law Guardian?’ He tried to keep his astonishment to himself but did not quite succeed.

  ‘Gentlemen who live on their estates have duties.’ Unlike the absentees who use them only for entertaining in the summer, I might have added, had I not felt a degree of affection for Gus’s father.

  ‘And have you been there since?’ Gus was gabbling, trying to make amends. ‘To learn the trade? Will you succeed him as a Guardian when you inherit the estate?’

  ‘As it happens, I’ve not been to the workhouse since the riots.’ I was trying to avoid his second question as much as to answer the first and I was taken aback by a yelp of astonishment.

  ‘Riots? Here?’

  ‘Yes, here! You think we’re so bucolic that rioting is beyond us?’

  ‘What riots? When?’

  ‘The Rebecca Riots! Come on, Gus – Welsh farmers daring to defy the authorities, ques
tions asked in parliament, pretty well daily reports in The Times—’

  ‘Not recently?’

  ‘During my first year up at Oxford. Just before we met, I suppose.’ I saw his hand wave as if it were swatting a moribund fly.

  ‘Oh, there you are then. I never so much as looked at a newspaper while I was an undergraduate. Who does?’

  I could not help but smile; I had been far from a daily reader of the papers at Oxford myself. Had I known then that in a few short years I would be unable to read at all, I might have been a more avid consumer of newsprint.

  ‘Bread riots, I suppose?’ When I did not answer straight away, Gus’s tone changed. ‘What? Is it a deep, dark secret?’

  He meant it in jest but, in truth, the riots had assumed the status of communal secret; as if the collective shame of three counties had taken physical form and hidden people’s past from their own view.

  ‘Tollgates,’ I said.

  ‘What? People rioted at the notion of having to pay to use a decent road?’

  I hesitated. Short of a lecture on post-war economics I could not possibly make Gus understand why the farmers of West Wales had cast off their characteristic docility and defied their betters over three counties for the best part of twelve months. ‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘More or less.’

  ‘And Rebecca? Who was she?’