Finding Camlann (19 page)

‘Audrey, I’m very glad to see you.’ Donald smiles quietly to himself, remembering the home-made ginger biscuits. Audrey Jenkins is a kind, sensible woman, a widow herself, and it is right that they should have a chance to make one another happy.

‘Do come on through,’ Audrey says. She ushers him into the kitchen, then heads discreetly in the opposite direction.

Donald’s father is at the sink with a tea-towel and the last of the drying-up, looking intently into the darkness outside the window as if some momentous event is unfolding out there. He turns as his son enters the room, wipes his hands on the towel. ‘I’m glad you could come over, Donald. Did I mention that Audrey has been keeping house for me?’

‘Keeping house?’ Donald smiles broadly. ‘I’m happy to hear it, Dad. You’ll be great company for each other.’

‘I must say the place is rather more cheerful than it used to be.’ James Gladstone runs a nervous hand through his thinning grey hair. ‘And she has been keeping me on my toes. Did you know she has a doctorate in theology from the University of Kent?’

‘Yes, you’ve mentioned it a few times.’ Donald tries to imagine them engaging in deep philosophical debate over their toast and marmalade. ‘I’m sure you’ll be no match for her, intellectually speaking.’

‘Quite so.’ His father smiles, turns to the stack of dry crockery and starts putting it away in the cupboard. ‘How was your Cornish symposium?’

‘Not quite as useful as I expected.’

James Gladstone hangs the damp tea-towel on the back of a chair, looking inexplicably pleased with himself. ‘Well, come along and see what I’ve found.’

Donald follows him through to the dining room, rarely used in the ordinary run of things except as a place to store the best cutlery. The table has be c taows him then extended to its maximum length, and is now covered from end to end with large-scale geological maps of Wales. Numerous markings in coloured pencil can faintly be seen.

‘What on earth have you been up to, Dad?’

‘I must let you into a little secret. After we spoke about Caradoc Bowen and his maps, I went up into the attic to have a look through my old paperwork from the Geological Survey, and I found this.’ He picks up a long cardboard tube from underneath the table. ‘The maps were returned to me at the Survey. I had completely forgotten about it.’

‘Bowen sent them back to you?’

‘Well, yes—I had asked for them to be returned when he was finished with them. I have the covering note here, though it doesn’t say anything very useful.’

The letter is no more than a brief, courteous expression of thanks, neatly typed up on Jesus College letterhead. It is the signature that is of most interest to Donald. The correspondent identifies himself as H. E. Mortimer, Research Assistant to Professor C. H. R. Bowen. He remembers what Julia told him at the Randolph, that her husband was once a favourite of Bowen’s, a member of his radical political group, Tân y Ddraig.

‘The maps have evidently been well used,’ his father is saying. ‘I would hazard a guess that they have been taken out in the field.’

Donald looks more closely at the nearest sheet, which shows the Black Mountains from Crickhowell to Hay-on-Wye. Several areas of upland terrain have been carefully outlined in red and blue and green pencil, all explained by a hand-written key at the edge of the map. ‘You did all this yourselves?’

‘Yes, of course. You have to remember that those were the good old days when a formal request to the Survey from Oxford University would be attended to without question. We put in the red highlighting to indicate the most conspicuous outcroppings of the Devonian rocks. For the most part, what you are seeing here is the St. Maughans formation of the Lower Devonian period, known colloquially as the Old Red Sandstone. It is prevalent in south-eastern and central southern Wales, as well as some parts of the border country farther north.’

Next to each of the highlighted areas is a small cross made in faded blue ink. ‘Did you put in these markings as well?’ Donald says.

‘No, and I’m not sure what the annotations mean. I was hoping you might have an idea about that?’

Donald traces a finger across the map, his father looking at him expectantly. ‘I think I could make an educated guess. Bowen wanted to find one of the battle-sites that was described in the poem I told you about. But I don’t think he was looking for the right thing.’

‘And do you know what the right thing is?’

‘I have an idea about it, but we won’t know until we have a proper look.’ Donald glances across the tabletop at a dozen or more maps that together represent thousands of square miles of rugged Welsh landscape. ‘I’m going to need your help, Dad.’

‘Yes, of course. I dare say I know the terrain as well as anybody, geologically speaking. But you’ll have to tell me what we’re looking for.’

‘We’re still interested in the sandstone cliffs, but only if they are rising above a river valley, and only if the valley also contains three waterfalls.’

‘Pre c">&heycisely three?’

‘Yes, precisely three.’

James Gladstone raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, we must do our best.’

They set to work in a state of suppressed excitement. The geology and topography of Wales is such that many locations seem at first glance to be strong candidates, but none of them quite meets all the requirements.
The task is made more difficult by the fact that very few waterfalls are marked explicitly on the map; their existence must instead be inferred by studying the contour lines. A sense of futility begins to set in. An hour passes, and then another, before Donald gives a small, triumphant shout. At the edge of one of the more southerly maps, he traces his finger along a thin jagged line denoting a stream dropping down a steep valley from a mountainous terrain. There are tall rock formations higher up, outcrops of the Devonian sandstone. Lower down, a placename in Welsh catches his eye,
Rhëydr y Tair Melltith
. He will later learn that the correct translation from the Welsh is closer to ‘Falls of the Three Curses’ or ‘Thrice-Accursed Falls’, though the English placename inserted by the cartographer is an interesting variation on this, Three Devil Falls.

Borderlands

N
OT LONG AFTER
dawn, with the cold soaking rain coming down from clouds that might be no more than a hundred feet above her head, Julia gently closes the front door of Dyffryn Farm. Behind her, the house is full of sleeping people, family and friends who failed to make it home in the groggy aftermath of her father’s wake. She has in mind to escape for a while, find some space to breathe. At the back of her mind, too, is the thought that she must try to call Donald and explain everything to him. She treads cautiously around the edges of the farmyard puddles to the gate, unlatches it and swings it open. Some old nervous reflex makes her glance back at the cottage to make sure Dai is not there watching her at the upstairs window; but it is her mother who catches her eye instead, raises her hands in a questioning gesture that says, I’m coming with you whether you like it or not. Soon they are side by side in the car, driving half-blind through the rain, Julia pouring out her story as they climb up into the high country above the Clywedog valley.

‘So you have two men to worry about now,’ Cath Llewellyn says. There is a glimmer of mischief in her pale blue eyes. ‘Three, if you include poor old Ralph Barnabas.’

‘You make it sound as if I should be happy about it,’ Julia says, though it is true that her spirits are lifting as they follow the narrow twisting lane up to the higher pastures that skirt the slopes of the mountains beyond. There is no traffic at all, only birds in the sodden hedgerows flying up on either side as they pass, stray sheep escaped from the fields, a large hawk glimpsed once or twice, soaring in and out of the lower reaches of the cloud.

‘I remember a time when your father would have chased all three of them off with his shotgun. It’s still up there on the wall of the barn, though he hardly touches it these days.’

They both notice the mistake, but say nothing of it. ‘I’m thinking I’ll head back to Oxford early next week,’ Julia says.

‘Will Hugh go with you?’

‘I haven’t asked him.’ Julia peers out through the rain, concentrates on keepin f">&hex2019;

‘It’s a bit late to be worrying about that, wouldn’t you say?’ Julia’s mother smiles bleakly. ‘In any case, I’m sure there’s not much you don’t already know, one way or another.’

‘I’d like to hear it from you. We’ve never talked about it properly before.’

‘Well, I’m not quite sure where to start. We had known Hugh from a distance, of course, ever since the days when he used to go to St. Clement’s church with his grandpa in the summertime. And of course your father knew of the family long before Hugh came on the scene. When Dai first arrived here from Llangurig forty years ago, Sir Charles Mortimer had recently passed on the management of the family lands to his son Robert, Hugh’s father. Sir Charles lived out his last years at Ty Faenor, and he was always popular in the valley, but Robert was a different story. He was the English aristocrat through and through, with his beloved Melverley estate and his horses and his cellar full of vintage port. He was obsessed with the Mortimer pedigree, even though his father’s baronetcy went to an older brother who ran away to Australia and never came back. On the rare occasions when Robert did visit Ty Faenor, there was always bad blood with the hill-farmers. They used to call him Sir Robert to his face just to rub salt in the wound. So, with all that family history, we were curious to know which sort of Mortimer your Hugh might turn out to be.’

‘And?’ Julia says.

‘It was neither one nor the other, of course, but certainly Hugh was a surprise to us. Don’t forget, your father was a hot-headed nationalist in his youth, and now here comes this impressive boyfriend of yours, scion of the ancient Mortimers and obviously a blue-blooded Englishman, whatever else you might have told us about him. But then the first thing Hugh says to us is that he prefers to be thought of as a Radnorshire man. He starts talking to your father about Glyn D
ŵ
r and the nationalist cause, even tries a little Welsh on him. Dai brushed it aside at first, thinking Hugh was just trying to charm him. It was only later that Hugh asked him about making contact with Plaid Cymru.’

Julia has a disorientating sense of old truths shifting under her feet. ‘I thought Dai had broken off with them years before that?’

‘Yes, but the nationalists still had a lot of respect for him. This was just after the plans for the dam were made public, and your father was in Rhayader trying to calm things down. There were a few who wanted to paint it differently, saying he was down there making trouble, but that was all just malicious gossip. It’s what destroyed his friendship with Stephen Barnabas.’

Reaching back for her own memories of that time, Julia recalls only a vague sense of discord in the town, of plans being made behind closed doors, her father doing his best to keep the peace. Hugh was there too, somehow on the fringes of things. ‘Dai went to a meeting at the Black Lion,’ she says. ‘I was away that day in Hereford with Aunt Nia, shopping for the wedding. Do you remember if Hugh went with him?’

‘Yes, they went down there together. I remember Hugh saying there were some Oxford people he wanted to see.’

Julia feel ky">peops it again, the old familiar landscape swaying beneath her. ‘I don’t think I knew that.’

‘You mustn’t read too much into it.’ Her mother touches a gentle hand on her arm. ‘Hugh was unhappy because of Ty Faenor, which would have gone under the flood, so he went to the meeting to hear what was being said. That’s all there was to it. If you want my advice, love, I would leave it there in the past. It’ll do no good to rake it all up.’

At last the road drops down a long hill towards the hamlet of Abbeycwmhir. They pass a small cluster of houses, a farm, a pub called the Happy Union where Julia has often been with Hugh, though she has never before been struck by the irony of it. A hundred yards farther on, she parks in front of a small stone church.

‘I’d like to walk down to the river,’ Julia says. ‘Will you come with me?’

‘No, I’ll stay here, love.’ Cath Llewellyn turns her knowing gaze on her daughter. ‘You don’t need me getting in your way.’

Julia gets out of the car and heads off along the road to a place where a path leads across a muddy field towards the Clywedog River. A plaque tells the story of the ruined stone walls and pillars that lie scattered across the valley floor, the remains of the medieval Cwmhir Abbey. The simple tranquillity of this place, the magnificence of its isolation, commended it to the wandering Cistercian monks who first came here in the twelfth century. For Julia, it has been a favourite destination since childhood, a safe and peaceful refuge, though it seems a lonely enough place on this cool autumn day. The clouds have begun to break up, showing small shifting scraps of pallid blue sky. On either side, the bare flanks of the hills are patched here and there with rough stands of evergreen trees, like threadbare clothing on an ailing child.

There was one day, early on, when they all came walking out here together. Hugh and Dai had not seen one another for a long time, not since the old days at St. Clement’s, and she remembers how anxious Hugh was to make a good impression, to find common cause with his future father-in-law. Soon enough they were trading stories of Hugh’s famous English and Welsh ancestors who had owned and destroyed this place, stirring tales of Glyn D
ŵ
r and the failure of his rebellion, his fugitive existence and final disappearance somewhere high up in the surrounding hills. There was a dour intensity in that conversation, but it was also a happy moment for Julia, to see the men in her life so comfortable in one another’s company, so full of mutual respect. Now her world has slipped out of balance, her poor father cold in the ground, Hugh on his own at Ty Faenor, Donald Gladstone cast aside as if he means nothing to her at all.

From where she is standing, a surviving column of the old ruined abbey frames one edge of the modern farmhouse that lies directly behind it. In the back garden, damp washing is flapping and rippling in the breeze, rows of legs and arms making ghostly disembodied children reaching for the ground. Their alter egos can be heard shouting excitedly inside the house. A thin trail of dark-grey smoke from the chimney thickens a little as somebody stokes the fire within, settling the new day into its familiar comfortable course.

If things had gone to plan, the engineers would have drowned this valley and everything in it. This was to become another of those places that have been erased from the map of Wales, turned into reservoirs for pure English drinking water. Julia can hear her father’s voice, hoarse with emotion as he described to her the bitter story of Capel Celyn in kpelnkithe Tryweryn valley, where the villagers had to dig up their own dead before abandoning their homes to the incoming flood.

She turns away and heads back towards the road. Her mother is asleep in the passenger seat of the car. Julia leaves her in peace, continues on to the small stone church. Finding the door open and the interior deserted, she walks into the cool, resonant space, sits on a pew in the back row. She stays there for a while shivering faintly, looking up at the stained glass panels in the chancel windows. Their subjects are familiar to her from childhood: The Good Shepherd, The Crucifixion and Resurrection, I am the Light of the World, The Baptism and Agony in the Garden. But she finds no useful advice written for her there.

IT IS CARADOC
Bowen’s formidable secretary, Mrs. Frayne, who answers Donald’s call to Jesus College. ‘Yes, Dr. Gladstone. I believe the professor is busy, but I will check for you.’

A minute passes before he is put through. ‘Three waterfalls?’ Bowen says, when Donald has finished his story. His voice on the line is thin and querulous. ‘You are an archaeologist, as I recall. Do you have some proper authority for this conjecture?’

‘The suggestion came from a colleague of mine. She’s a Welsh language expert at the OED, Julia Llewellyn.’ Donald feels a small twist of guilt at the thought of her. He was able to reach a colleague of Julia’s at the OED, from whom he learned only that she would be away from the office for a few days. It cannot be helped; he would have spoken to her if he could. ‘I believe you know her husband, Hugh Mortimer.’

‘Yes, I know the name.’ There is a pause now, a hiss and crackle of static. ‘We must go and have a look at this place you have described, as soon as can be arranged.’

‘I suggest we meet first in Rhayader, and go on from there.’ It is perhaps a reckless idea, to go to Julia’s home town. Donald remembers too late the story she told him about the violence that happened there, the possible involvement of Bowen’s militant nationalist group, Tân y Ddraig.

‘Yes, it is as good a starting point as any,’ Bowen says. ‘There is a respectable inn at Rhayader, the Black Lion. Gareth Williams was the proprietor when I last visited the town, many years ago now. I suggest we meet there—shall we say, next Saturday evening? We can stay overnight at the inn, then drive together into the mountains the following morning.’

After he hangs up, Donald distracts himself with his preliminary report on the excavations at Amesbury. He asks the switchboard to forward his calls to Tim Watson’s desk, tells Tim to make sure he is not disturbed. The opening sections come easily enough, a summary of the known history and archaeology of the town and its environs, followed by a standard description of the topography and geology of the excavation site. Then comes the crucial process of inventory, every last tarnished scrap of metal to be documented, every sherd of pottery, every sliver of bone. Soon he is working his way laboriously through his detailed field notes, expanding the terse annotations he made on site.
Pottery finewares are restricted to three late Romano-British sherds originating in the New Forest (context 103) . . . A fragmentary human skull was recovered from context 104 . . . A brass doorknob c. 1825 was found together with fifteen damaged red clay bricks at the far end of trench 2 (context 205), evidence of late Georgian construction-relat kruct the far ed infill
. It is dull but oddly satisfying work, the minutes ticking comfortably by as he captures for posterity the structure and contents of a muddy Wiltshire field.