From Across the Ancient Waters- Wales

by Michael Phillips

  “Let me see the five crown.”

  The Englishman hesitated a moment then reached into his own vest pocket and retrieved a small handful of coins. He placed ten on the table between them.

  In less than a second they were gone, swallowed up in the miner’s blackened hand with the marvelous speed of a frog’s tongue snatching a fly from midair.

  With the coins secure in an unknown receptacle somewhere among his garments, he now slowly drew back the flap of his coat with one hand. The other crept slowly and mysteriously inside it. His fist emerged a moment later, clutching a small leather pouch. Untying its neck with deliberation, occasionally sending his cunning gaze across the table, he held it out to allow the other man a brief peep inside. The Englishman’s eyes widened at the sight. Even in this dim light there could be no mistaking the contents.

  The five crowns, however, only purchased him two or three seconds. Suddenly the bag withdrew, was yanked shut, and disappeared after the coins.

  “This came from the place you told me about?”

  “It did.”

  “You could lead me to it?”

  “For fifty quid, Sutcliffe, I’ll carry you there on me own back.”

  After a few minutes more conversation, the Englishman rose and departed the pub, leaving the toothless Welshman to his third pint. He squinted briefly as he climbed the dirty stone stairs back into the sunshine then turned again into Bute Street.

  After a block’s walk, he stopped and stepped quickly into a large, handsomely appointed black brougham whose owner had been waiting. The moment the door closed behind him, the driver above called out to his team of two. The windowless carriage jostled into motion.

  “Well?” said the man seated inside.

  “He is exactly what I expected, crafty as a Cardi and twice as greedy.”

  “Will he do it?” asked the other, whose voice left no doubt of his aristocratic upbringing.

  “I think for the right price our slimy friend Foulis Bagge would do anything, including sell his own grandmother. But he would tell me nothing without ten half-crown coins in his greedy fist.”

  “A small price. You paid him?”

  The man nodded.

  “Did he provide you a map?”

  “No. He said he had to lead us there himself. He did show me what he purports to have taken from the place with his own two hands.”

  “He will take us there, then?”

  “That was the agreement. But I warn you, he will double-cross us in a minute if he sees his opportunity. He may have to be killed once we know the exact location.”

  “Again,” said the other, “a small price to pay. You made arrangements to meet again?” he added.

  “He will wait to hear from me.”

  “Good. It seems the time has come for us to make closer approach to the owner of the land in question.”

  16

  The Festive Board

  The atmosphere around the lavish dinner table that evening at Westbrooke Manor was noticeably cheerier than could be claimed as the normal custom.

  Young people are notoriously skillful at moodily subduing meal conversation into irritable and sullen silence, invariably preferring anyone else’s company to that of their parents and anyone else’s conversation as well. On this occasion, however, the addition of Percival Drummond to the Westbrooke family ensemble promised amusement to his cousins and provided at least a slim potential of conversational interest for their parents.

  All except the youngest were seated promptly at seven thirty as a staff of two began to ladle out a colorless cabbage soup. Florilyn entered a minute later and took the last remaining seat, which happened to be opposite their guest. She did not look at him, though Percy was starring daggers at her.

  Percy waited, not quite sure what protocol would inaugurate the proceedings. When his uncle at the head of the table picked up his soupspoon, he assumed that no formal prayer would be forthcoming. A glance in the other direction, however, revealed his aunt momentarily bowing her head.

  The same instant Florilyn looked up. Her eyes came to rest on his face. Percy observed the movement and turned toward it. The expression that met his was not what he expected. It was a sly smirk, not particularly subtle. Florilyn’s glance flitted toward her mother then back again, as if making silent sport of old-fashioned religious predilections. The expression carried with it the assumption that Percy was of one mind with her in finding the private moment of prayer humorous—as if they mutually shared a slightly naughty joke.

  Now whereas Percy would have been the first to ridicule the faith of his own father and mother, and that not merely in private for he had in fact been doing his utmost to publicly ruin his father’s reputation along with his own, the slight against his aunt annoyed him. Whether he found himself taking his aunt’s part against his cousin because of the incident earlier in the day or whether some unexpected remnant of the spiritual training of his formative years suddenly rose to the surface unbidden, Percy Drummond himself would have been the least able to say.

  It is a well-known fact that, removed from the parental objects of their rebellion, many temporary prodigals find themselves not nearly so antagonistic to the faith of their upbringing as they thought. They surprise both themselves and their parents by growing closer to the parental tree than seemed possible at the height of their youthful independence. In the end, their roots extend deeper into the soil of their early years than anyone would have expected.

  Though perhaps invisible forces might even now have begun probing his soul, however, Percy was aware of no sudden spiritual epiphany. He simply did not like his cousin making fun of his aunt. He understood the look perfectly, and it rankled him. He gave it no answering reception by sympathetic expression of his own. He would not, even by the subtlest passing glance, play his aunt false.

  Detecting by his blank stare that she had been rebuffed, Florilyn was clearly not pleased. The expression that followed added yet more to the spirit of worldliness that was all too apparent, even at fifteen, dripping from her countenance.

  All this passed in less than two ticks of the second hand on the giant clock on the wall behind Roderick Westbrooke.

  Percy waited in respectful silence. As soon as he saw movement from his aunt out of the corner of his eye, he took up his spoon with the others.

  “So, Percy, my boy,” boomed the viscount from the opposite end of the table, entirely oblivious, as he was to most of the internal dynamics at work in his family, to the brief drama that had taken place between the cousins, “how did you find your first day in Wales?”

  “Fine, sir,” replied Percy, looking toward him with an effort at a smile.

  “What did you find to occupy yourself?”

  “Percy went for a horse ride, Daddy,” chimed in Florilyn in a mischievous tone.

  “Did he now? Good for you, Percy, my boy. Did you accompany him, Flory?”

  “No, Daddy,” answered Florilyn in a tone of affected injury. “He seemed to want to be alone. He galloped off before I had the chance to ask if he wanted some company. It hurt my feelings, actually…. After all the rain, I had been wanting someone to go for a ride with.”

  “Don’t forget, dear, this is Percy’s first day here. We must be patient and allow him time to get used to his new surroundings. What do you say, Percy … perhaps you can take your cousin along next time? I dare say she won’t slow you down much.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Percy, smoke coming out his ears.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” said Florilyn. “I’m a little unsteady on the back of a horse. I might not be able to keep up with him.”

  A flinch of the eyes shot her way from her brother, accompanied by the hint of a sportive grin.

  “Nonsense,” blustered her father. “You’ll find we’re not so bad,” Westbrooke went on to Percy in a jovial manner. “Perhaps not so sophisticated as your city friends, but you must give us a chance. How about you, Courtenay,” he said, turning toward his son. “Good to
be home from the university, I’ll warrant. How did you spend your day?”

  “Colville and I went shooting in the forest,” replied Percy’s older cousin.

  “Any success?”

  “Not much. A couple of pheasants and a rabbit.”

  “Ah, well—the big game have probably retreated into the mountains for the summer. You’ll have to take Percy out with you next time.”

  Courtenay vouchsafed no reply. Instead he busied himself with his soup. What he thought of his father’s suggestion, he kept to himself. As the meal progressed, however, he thought that perhaps his father had indeed hit upon something.

  Though but a year and a half separated them, he had grown up considering his cousin a mere child along with his sister. The teen years had done nothing to convince him that he ought to modify that assessment.

  Yet in one of the inane displays of the animal kingdom, the male ego is compelled—in ways often foolish and rarely revealing manhood’s true strength—to demonstrate superiority over its fellows. Ironically this impulsion is stimulated all the more by insecurity. The greater the self-doubts, the more overpowering the drive to prove prowess. On the other hand, a young man with sufficient self-confidence that his budding manhood is not threatened by his peers, with nothing to prove, has little desire to strut the peacock’s tail of his ego. Paradoxically, the more cocksure a youth shows himself, in all likelihood the less of a true man he is on his way to becoming.

  The moment Courtenay Westbrooke learned that his cousin was coming for the summer, and why, an undefined resentment began festering within him. That Percy looked and acted like such a stripling—he was fully six inches shorter and two stone lighter than himself—yet had been in trouble with the police, had actually, if he had heard the thing right, once spent a night in jail, made him resent him all the more.

  He had never run afoul of the law, thought Courtenay. He had never been in trouble, never been arrested, never been sent away for the summer. Part of him envied Percy the roguish reputation that preceded his arrival. Yet in a perverted way, he also despised him for it. Hardly having subjected his motivations to the scrutiny of logic, Courtenay was anxious to prove, to himself and to Percy, that whatever his exploits in Glasgow, his fair-skinned little cousin wasn’t as tough as he might think.

  “How are you with a gun, Percy, my boy?” asked Westbrooke, turning from his son to their guest. “I take it you know how to use one?”

  “Yes … of course,” replied Percy hesitantly. The fact was he had never held a gun in his life, much less pulled the trigger of one. Guns had not been allowed in the vicarage. To his knowledge, his father had never owned one.

  “What did you learn in town about poor Mr. Drindod?” asked Percy’s aunt as the soup was cleared away and steaming platters of beef, vegetables, and potatoes were carried in from the kitchen and set before them.

  “Nothing,” replied her husband. “No one knows a thing. The man was simply found facedown on the beach half covered by the tide.”

  “Did you talk to Mr. Lorimer?” asked Katherine.

  “I did.” Westbrooke nodded. “He knows no more than I do.”

  “What’s it about, Father?” asked Courtenay.

  “One of the old fishermen from the village—he was apparently killed on the beach last night.”

  “Oh!” squealed Florilyn. “A murder—how exciting!”

  “Florilyn, goodness! What a thing to say!” exclaimed her mother.

  “What’s wrong with it, Mother? Nothing fun ever happens around here. I think it is exciting.”

  “It is dreadful … the poor man.”

  “We don’t know for certain it was murder,” the viscount went on. “There are no obvious signs of it, no clues, as it were. He was too far from the bluff to have fallen. If there was a struggle of some kind, the evidence was washed away long before the body was found.”

  “The body … I like that!” said Florilyn exuberantly. “It sounds like a mystery novel! Is it allowed to call it a corpse, Daddy?”

  “Florilyn, good heavens!” expostulated her mother a second time. “We have a guest. He’s going to think we are a family of heathens.”

  “I don’t care, Mother. Besides, I am a heathen, so why shouldn’t I talk like one?”

  The viscount roared with laughter at the humorous repartee. He hardly paused to consider what his reaction to his daughter’s uncouth tongue indicated of his sensitivity toward his wife.

  Percy was also enjoying it. He could not help an inward smile. It was not that his momentary loyalty to his aunt had faded. But neither could it be denied that he found his cousin’s irreverent and sassy manner more or less in harmony with his own. But he was still furious at her. He would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him smile at her antics.

  “What are you going to do, Daddy?” asked Florilyn enthusiastically.

  “There isn’t much we can do,” replied her father. “I wrote today and reported the matter to the authorities in Dolgellau. Whether they will send someone to investigate, I don’t know. Otherwise, he’ll be given a decent burial. God bless him and take care of his soul is about all there is to it.”

  “Oh pooh, Daddy,” Florilyn said with a laugh, “you don’t believe any of that.”

  “What are you talking about, Flory?”

  “That business of God taking care of his soul. You just pretend for the sake of what people will think. You go to church and sit there and make a pretense of paying attention. But I know you’re looking at your watch waiting for the boring sermon to end. The man on the beach is dead, and that’s all there is to it, don’t you mean? You don’t really think he’s still alive somewhere. Nobody believes that anymore.”

  She had finally gone too far even for her father. The viscount’s superstitions toward matters of religion were deeply enough embedded that he dared not cross them. Whether there was anything to it all, he hadn’t a clue. But like many an unbelieving man of so-called religion, he saw no reason to take any chances.

  A brief shudder coursed through him at the words that had just echoed about his table, as if his daughter’s audacity was tantamount to a curse against the gods and would bring retribution down upon them all. “Of course I do, Flory,” he replied, unaccountably ruffled by her perceptive assessment of his usual outlook of a Sunday morning.

  “Then where is he, in heaven or hell?”

  “How in blazes should I know? I’m no priest. I didn’t even know the man.”

  “What do you think, Percy?” said Florilyn, turning and staring across the table with large, inquiring, devilish eyes. “You’re the son of a minister. You probably know all about such things.”

  Taken by surprise, Percy had no leisure to prepare himself for suddenly finding himself on the spot.

  Glad to be off it himself, this time his uncle did not rescue him.

  “What do I think about what?” he said.

  “Whether the dead man will go to heaven or hell.”

  “I would say the same thing as Uncle Roderick—how should I know? I suppose it would depend on what he believed.”

  “Do you think there’s a heaven and hell, Percy?” she asked, blinking her large eyes playfully several times with feigned sincerity.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I don’t really know what I believe.”

  “Doesn’t Uncle Edward preach about heaven and hell all the time?”

  The question took Percy off guard. He found himself thinking a moment. “Actually,” he said slowly, “now that you mention it … no, he really doesn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him preach a sermon about heaven and hell.”

  “What does he preach about then?”

  “I don’t know … doing good, being nice … He’s always talking about doing what Jesus said. That’s one of his favorite phrases.”

  “What does that mean? How can anyone do what Jesus said?” laughed Florilyn. “Why would anyone even want to?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Percy a little testily. “
I’m not claiming to know what it means. I’m just telling you what he says, that’s all.”

  He suddenly found himself in the uncomfortably weird position of beginning to defend his father against his cousin’s nettlesome barbs. He didn’t like it. He had no interest in pursuing this line of conversation or being on the receiving end of his cousin’s irksome interrogation.

  Without planning it, he turned to Florilyn’s brother at his right. “Who’s the chap you went hunting with?” he asked.

  “Colville?” said Courtenay. “He’s our neighbor.”

  “Colville Burrenchobay,” added the viscount, relieved to have the opportunity to wrest the conversation away from his daughter. “His father owns the land adjacent to mine, northward.”

  “I saw what looked like a castle when I was riding,” said Percy, “about two miles away, I would say.”

  “That’s it.” His uncle laughed. “Burrenchobay Hall. Hardly a castle, but an imposing edifice indeed. Colville’s a year older than Courtenay. His father represents Gwynedd in parliament. But we try to forgive Trevelyan his odd politics. The boys grew up together. I doubt there’s a square inch between Blanau Ffestiniog and Barmouth you two lads haven’t explored together, wouldn’t you say, Courtenay?”

  Courtenay nodded.

  “Well, if you’re the horseman Florilyn seems to think, Percy my boy,” the viscount went on, “I’m sure you will learn your way around the hills in no time. No better place in all the world to ride.”

  “I ran into a fellow today with a flock of sheep,” said Percy. “But the horse didn’t seem to mind them.”

  “You’ll find sheep everywhere in the fields and hills,” rejoined his uncle. “The horses ignore them. Who was he—did he tell you his name?”

  “Yes … uh, let me see—Stevie … something like that, I think.”

  “That’s Stevie Muir,” said Florilyn. “A big, ugly oaf if you ask me.”

  “He seemed nice enough,” said Percy. “He invited me to visit him.”

  “Oh, ick!” exclaimed Florilyn. “I wouldn’t set foot in that filthy cottage where he lives! All those poor people are so uncivilized. Their floors are nothing but dirt! Can you imagine how dirty everything must be? Ugh!”