‘Your parents, dear child? I wish I could tell you. Pass me those bottles, will you, boy? Thank you.’ Now, as he surveyed the row of little glass phials, into which he was about to decant the laudanum, David Morgan sighed. ‘I made enquiries, of course. I discovered this little circumstance, I learned that little fact. But try as I might, I never found out precisely what occurred.’
‘Will you tell me what you do know?’
‘But it's not pleasant, child!’ David shook his head. ‘It's not a pleasant tale at all.’
‘Pleasant or not,’ rejoined Owen, ‘John and Lalage Morgan were my parents. I have a right to know what happened to them.’
‘That's true enough, I suppose.’ Carefully, David stoppered the flask of laudanum and placed it on a convenient shelf. Taking off his spectacles, he rubbed his eyes. ‘Your father was a good man,’ he began. ‘Always remember that. He was a loving brother, a gentle husband, and I'm sure he was a kind father to you.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Owen. ‘He was very kind indeed.’
‘Ah! So you remember him well?’
‘I try to remember.’ Owen shrugged. ‘But I've lived in Warwickshire for so long, that nowadays remembering anything from that time is like peering through a mist. All the same — there are certain things I recall quite clearly. Being carried on his shoulders, for example. Being taught to swim.’
‘What about your mother? Do you remember her?’
‘Not well. But sometimes, I think I see her face. Especially in dreams.’
‘Also, when you look in a glass.’ Meeting Owen's large, dark eyes, again David sighed. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘here's what I know. I make no judgements, mind. I speak no ill of anyone. I tell you the bare facts only, and let you draw your own conclusions thence.
‘So. As you're aware, John Rhys Morgan was a farmer. A prosperous one, too. He'd inherited a generous freehold. He had his own herds, his own flocks, enough land — more than enough, in fact. Indeed, he should have been content.
‘But he was not. Men have needs, you see. Some need liquor, some need women, some need drugs like this tincture of opium here. Often, it's no matter, no matter at all.’
‘But?’ prompted Owen, gently.
‘But your father needed danger. Excitement. He liked to defy authority — he wanted to be his own master, and have no one say him nay. When he was still a very young man, he became involved in the trade of contraband.
‘I begged him to give it up. Especially after he married your poor mother, most especially when I heard he was to become a father for the first time. But he would not listen to me. He hated the Saxons, he said, the dirty Saxons who robbed and taxed and oppressed poor Welshmen. He would defy them until his dying day.
‘I could never make sense of that! He'd married a Saxon, after all. She was the moon in his sky. Even his partner in crime, whose name he did mention to me once, but which I cannot now remember, was an Englishman.’
‘But one sympathetic to the plight of poor Welshmen, perhaps? A good friend, though from Saxon stock?’
‘Perhaps.’ David shrugged. ‘Good or bad, it's of no consequence now. So, one day, when you were six or seven years old, my brother was arrested on suspicion of dealing in contraband. He was to be taken to Swansea, to be examined by the magistrates there — or at any rate, that's what I was told. But he died before he ever arrived in Swansea, at the hands of the military.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Oh, the story was in the newspapers. Just a little mention, at the bottom of a page it was. The Excise congratulated themselves on the capture of a notorious smuggler, who happened to have died in the arresting officer's custody.
‘The man's land was to be confiscated. He'd had a wife and child, but they had run away — or so it was rumoured. At any rate, they'd not been seen or heard of since the arrest.’ David sighed. ‘A reward was offered, for information as to their whereabouts. But the woman was never found. Nor was her child.’
Sharply, Owen drew breath. ‘Do you think my mother may still be alive?’ he whispered.
‘I don't know, child. I honestly don't know.’ With a corner of his cuff, David dabbed at his eyes. ‘But after all this time, I doubt it. Well — if she had survived, surely she would have come forward, in order to claim you?’
‘Maybe, or maybe not. You see, she and my uncle did not get on.’
‘Indeed? Why was that?’
‘I don't know. I did once ask my cousins. But they are as ignorant as I am.’ Owen shrugged. ‘I do know that my mother married young, long before she met my father. Her first husband was a certain Mr Lowell, a near neighbour in Warwickshire. But later, after my uncle and his sister had quarrelled, the Lowells moved to South Wales, where Mr Lowell died. His widow married my father.’
Owen looked down at his finger nails. ‘I doubt if my uncle approved of the match. But even if he did, I cannot suppose a Welsh farmer would have been welcome in the drawing rooms of Warwickshire.’
‘But they are good to you?’ Anxiously, David searched Owen's face. ‘These Darrows, child — are they kind?’
‘Very kind.’ Reminded of the people he loved best, Owen smiled. ‘My aunt and cousins could not be kinder — in fact, they are my best friends. I don't think my uncle likes me much. But maybe I'm wrong. He's distant and reserved with everyone.’
‘Perhaps, then, he's that species of man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The ancient philosophers described the human race in terms of four kinds of personality, or humour. These are, the choleric, the sanguine, the melancholic, and the phlegmatic. These old ideas are not so much in fashion now, but personally I think there is a great deal of truth in what the ancients said.
‘Your uncle, for example — maybe he is naturally melancholic. He is distant and reserved because he cannot help it. He was simply born that way.’
‘Maybe,’ Owen agreed. ‘But — ’
‘Is he actually unkind?’ asked David, warming to his theme. ‘Is he cruel, perhaps? Is he unjust?’
‘No. Never. In fact, he seems over–anxious to behave honourably towards me.’
‘I'm very glad to hear it.’ David stood up. ‘Well, child — I've told you everything I know. As you've seen for yourself, it's all ancient history, buried so deep in the past that I feel we should let it lie. Do you agree?’
‘I suppose so.’ Owen shrugged his compliance.
‘Excellent. So now, instead of being gloomy, let us be happy that in spite of your early misfortunes, you have found friends to love you. To look out for your welfare, and help you on your way.’ David put on his spectacles. He looked crafty. ‘Tell me, Owen — what do you think of the apothecary's trade?’
* * * *
Owen was, in fact, fascinated by his uncle's work. He loved to sit in the apothecary's shop, that ill–lit sorcerer's cave of countless wonders, watching David Morgan measure powders, count drops, distil and pound and mix miscellaneous ingredients into an amazing variety of healing salves, tinctures and balms — which could then, it seemed, cure almost every ill the flesh was heir to. Except a broken heart.
So, delighted to observe that the boy was indeed interested in his work, David taught Owen to make various simple ointments and emulsions. To pronounce the Latin names of the dozens of ingredients he used in his secret art, and to prepare the raw materials of nature for conversion into medicines of all kinds. Owen learned how willow bark, pounded and powdered, could be used as an extremely efficient specific against marsh ague. How foxglove leaves, infused in quantity, were astonishingly effective in cases of dropsy and breathlessness.
David Morgan had a large practice, and soon the child was accompanying the apothecary on his visits to patients, standing deferentially behind his master while David described the malady, then prescribed the cure. David himself observed that his female patients especially tended brighten more or less immediately when the apothecary took his handsome young assistant along.
‘You see
m to be a tonic in yourself, child,’ David told him, as they left the house of an aged hypochondriac, for whom David had been prescribing vividly coloured placebos for the past decade. ‘You've done Mrs Evans more good in five little minutes, than I and all my drops have in five whole years.’
‘Maybe she'll get better now, then,’ suggested Owen.
‘Oh, my dear child — there's no chance of that!’ Shaking his head, David grinned, hugely. ‘We'll be called upon every other day from now on. Just you wait and see.’
* * * *
When at last September came, Owen found he did not want to return to Warwickshire. Well, he did — and yet he didn't. A regular correspondence with Jane kept him in touch with the doings of everyone at Easton, and as he read her letters he found he did miss them all.
But, here in Cardiff, he was employed. Here, he was useful. He wondered if the Squire of Easton had been right — if going to Harrow would be a waste of time, especially since he had now decided he would like to become an apothecary.
‘Will you write to my Uncle Darrow this week?’ That fine summer evening, apothecary and assistant sat quietly in the shop, preparing a batch of salves. Now, Owen looked anxiously at his Uncle Morgan. ‘Would you ask the squire if I could perhaps live with you just a little while longer?’
‘You wish to stay here, in this house, with me?’ Behind his spectacles, David's eyes were bright. ‘You wish to be my assistant, and take after me?’
‘Yes, I think I do.’ Confident that David Morgan would welcome the suggestion with open arms, Owen grinned. ‘I would like to be an apothecary. Also, I feel at home here. I think it's where I belong.’
So, David wrote to Ellis Darrow, proposing that Owen should stay in Cardiff, and attend the local grammar school there, while learning the apothecary's trade.
Readily — rather too readily, in David Morgan's private opinion — Ellis Darrow agreed.
So Rayner went to Harrow alone.
Chapter 4
The school at which Owen Morgan was the newest pupil was a very small foundation. Taking only twenty boys, these lads were mostly the sons of tradesmen and manufacturers, from Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, and the areas round about.
Although this was a grammar school offering a traditional English education, Owen's masters did not spend too much time on the classics, reasoning that Greek and Latin would be of little practical use to the shopkeepers and ironmasters of the next generation. Instead, the boys were taught to express themselves clearly in the English language, to understand accounts, and to write a fair, round hand.
Thomas Taliesin, a dark–eyed, dark–haired boy from the Valleys, was the first to pick a fight with the new boy, the first to have his nose bloodied in the process, and the first to decide that Owen Morgan was a good fellow.
This was perhaps inevitable, for the two of them had a great deal in common. An orphan like Owen himself, Thomas's parents had died of septic quinsy within a week of one other, leaving him the notional ward of an ancient aunt who kept fifteen cats and a house–trained pig, but who found the idea of sharing her rambling old house with a thirteen year old boy insupportable.
She had scoured the newspapers and weekly periodicals until she found an advertisement for a cheap school a fair distance from her own home. So Thomas, and two other boys whose relations didn't want them, were permanent boarders at the school, and sat at the headmaster's own table. Fortunately, Mr Dryden's wife liked boys, and was a very good cook, so they didn't do too badly.
As Owen soon realised, Thomas was a braggart, a liar and a thief. He stole regularly from shops and market stalls, and was not above offering the proceeds of his thievery for general sale, in the school yard. There was a fortune coming to him when he was twenty one. Or so he said. In the meantime, while he waited for his ship to come in, his shoes were down at heel, his linen ragged and his cuffs frayed.
But he wore his highwayman's hat with a jaunty air, he grinned and whistled and played the most outrageous practical jokes, and Owen was inclined to like him.
‘You are allowed out on Sundays, aren't you?’ demanded Owen one Friday dinner time, as he and Thomas washed off the blood, after one of their playground spats.
‘Who's asking?’ enquired Thomas, gingerly investigating the damage to his nose, upon which Owen had landed a punch.
‘We could go swimming, maybe.’ Owen grinned. ‘Do you swim?’
‘Like a bloody fish, man.’ Offended, Thomas glared. But then he grinned, too. ‘We'll go up to the old claypits, shall we? I'll teach you to dive.’
As well as learning to dive, Owen learned to blend into the scenery of rural Wales. Little by little, he felt he was becoming Welsh again.
But, although he and David nowadays slipped easily into Welsh from English, and just as easily back again, Owen found that at school the speaking of Welsh was not encouraged at all. There, the language of instruction was English. Indeed, most of the pupils came from families whose only language was the Saxon tongue, and of the twenty scholars in the little school, only Thomas and Owen himself knew more than a few words of the ancient Celtic their forefathers had spoken — and even they had learned two completely different dialects of that.
But, in spite of this, they soon realised they could have private conversations which no one else understood. In a bastard version of the most beautiful language in the world, they discussed their hopes, their dreams, their plans for the future. Both orphans, both sharp and clever, both supposing themselves effectually cast off by their rich but heartless relations, who would certainly live to regret their cruelty, it was perhaps inevitable that Owen and Thomas Taliesin should become great friends.
‘But you're not absolutely set on becoming an apothecary, are you?’ demanded Thomas one recreation, as the two of them sloped across the school yard muttering to one another in a rough approximation of the language their parents had taught them. ‘You don't honestly mean to spend your life mixing salves for winter chilblains, or balm for cradle cap?’
‘Why should I not?’ Owen grinned. ‘The relief of suffering is a noble calling,’ he declared, parroting David Morgan. ‘The alleviation of pain — ’
‘Don't give me that cant.’ Extravagantly, Thomas yawned. ‘Apothecaries! Healers of the sick! Quacks and piss prophets, more like. Every man Jack of them, one and all.’
‘Oh, yes? What about you, then? What will you be?’
‘A rich man.’ Thomas kicked a stone across the yard. ‘I shall become a manufacturer. An ironmaster, with my own foundries, my own mills, my own workshops. I'll have a thousand men under me. All obedient to my behest.’
‘Where will you get the cash, to finance an undertaking like that?’
‘I'll seek out a wealthy fool, and persuade him to invest. I'll offer him profits beyond calculation, merely for sitting on his backside and signing his name.’ Thomas sighed. ‘I can't wait to be a man. To leave this dismal little town. To strike out on my own!’
* * * *
In those first years of the nineteenth century, the population of Cardiff was a little over a thousand souls. David Morgan was one of three apothecaries in the town, but his practice extended far into the countryside round about. His patients were usually farmers and their families, the better–off sort of peasant, and servants. But, such was his reputation, the gentry also consulted David Morgan — although in cases of serious illness, a physician from Monmouth or Chepstow would be called in.
Not that this was worth the expense. Not in the least. The physician might be an Oxford or Cambridge man, might style himself Doctor and know the Latin for any organ or bone you cared to name — but his practical skills would be minimal. Whereas although he was merely an apothecary, and merely licensed to dispense drugs, David Morgan's understanding of physiology, pharmacology and obstetrics was second to none.
So it was David who taught Owen the rudiments of anatomy, how to set bones, how to treat burns, and how to recognise the symptoms of common ailments in both children and
grown men.
Full of intellectual curiousity, and blessed with a highly retentive memory, Owen absorbed information like a sponge. ‘Perhaps we ought to send you to college after all,’ murmured his uncle, as he watched Owen at work one Saturday afternoon. ‘We could make a physician of you, maybe.’
‘I don't think so.’ Carefully counting drops, Owen added them to the specific against the gout, which he was concocting under David's watchful eye. ‘I wouldn't want to spend my days fawning on the aristocracy. Or haunting the anterooms of the great.’
‘You wouldn't need to, child.’ David grinned. ‘Talented as you undoubtedly are, and with good looks to boot, the great — the ladies especially — would be beating a path to your door!’
The year turned, then turned again. Faithful to his promise, Owen wrote regularly to his cousin Jane, and received her replies. These occasionally enclosed a flowery little note from Maria, hoping he was well. Sometimes, even Isabel Graham wrote to him, slipping her highly–scented, hot– pressed letters inside Jane's.
Isabel's letters were longer than Maria's, but not very interesting for all that. As he opened her latest offering, he saw that today's epistle was no exception to the general rule.
‘My dear Owen,’ he read. ‘I hope you are quite well. Last week, Papa bought me a new pony. She is a dappled grey, and her name is Twilight. The weather here is very bad. It rains constantly. I do not know when I shall get out to ride. I am very well. My parents send their kindest regards.’
Yawning, Owen tossed this exciting intelligence aside, and began to read the letter from Jane.
Having sanctioned the correspondence between the two cousins, Jane's parents saw no need to censor it, so she could write about whatever she pleased — and she did. Furthermore, she was a natural correspondent, who if given a sheet of paper and a pen could bring a rout, a ball, or a dinner party to gloriously vivid life. Who described people she did not like with a delightfully malicious wit, and who always concluded her long letters with, ‘my parents send their best love. As, of course, do I.’
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