Finding Camlann (21 page)

But it seems he is mistaken: where there was no one before, a cloaked figure is approaching him from the far end of the span. He cannot yet see the face, though there is a distant familiarity in the tight upright bearing, the long deliberate stride, tall leather boots striking on the stones. There is something else, too, a sound like the breeze in the treetops. It grows louder as the figure draws near, a whispering, insinuating voice that surrounds him as if distilled from the limpid noontime sky.

Do you not fear me, crab scuttling sideways to your lair?

Black raven I am called, the death-wielder

Finding you in darkest dreaming.

Too late he recognises the hooded face, grasps the meaning of her words. He will use all his arts to defend himself, but already her weapons are drawn upon him, long sharpened stakes wielded with such ferocity that he has no time even to draw breath to scream.

IN SOUTH-WEST HEREFORDSHIRE,
the border between England and Wales follows the course of the River Monnow as it skirts the edge of the Black Mountains, turns to the east around the peak called Mynydd Myrddin, then curves again to the south before running down through low green hills to join the Wye at Monmouth. Here, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, the Lords of the Marches—the Nevilles, the Mortimers, and the Scudamores—defended their feudal territories in the no-man’s land between the western edge of the old Saxon kingdom of Mercia and the mountain strongholds of the Welsh kings. To the east, the chief threat was the capriciousness of the English king, better countered by subtle diplomacy and well-timed treachery than by force of arms. To the west, the Marcher Lords protected their vulnerable flank by building strong border castles on the river, garrisoned permanently from the thirteenth century against the incursions of Llywelyn the Great and his separatist successors.

Hunched over the kitchen table first thing on a chilly Saturday morning with the Ordnance Survey map open in front of him, Donald traces the border with his index finger, from north to south and back again. Soon he finds what he is looking for, Kentchurch Court, ancestral home of the Scudamore family. It is a large country house on the English side of the river, looking out across the valley towards the ruin of Grosmont Castle on the very edge of Wales. He turns back to the book he was reading as he fell asleep the night before, Caradoc Bowen’s
Notes on the Welsh Rising
. In the final chapter, Bowen describes a portrait that now hangs at Kentchurch, said to be the work of the Flemish master Jan van Eyck. The painting depicts a priest by the name of John of Kentchurch who lived at the house in the first half of the fifteenth century, and whose reputation for the occult eclipsed his more modest declared vocation as private chaplain to Sir John Scudamore and his wife Alys, daughter of Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r.

Deep in the Welsh Marches there arose an alchemist, magician, poet, and clergyman called John of Kentchurch, who was famous for making clever bargains with the Devil. Wonderful folktales of his exploits abound in the Marches, where he is sometimes known as Jack O’Kent (in the Welsh tongue, Siôn Cent). Some thought of him as kht unda latter-day Merlin, one to keep alive the Welshman’s hope of Arthur’s return.

On his death-bed, Siôn wrote a poem, tormented lines that spoke of a great spiritual and perhaps physical pain.

Woe to the one, woe to the many

Who shall endure a portion of my torture

Hear my groaning and sorely complaining

Like a wolf on a chain.

Do not heavenly Lord I beseech thee

Take me from the world in a state of burning.

Donald stares out of the kitchen window at the cool grey November sky as he ponders the last words ever written by the poet Siôn Cent. At length he closes the book, stows it in the small travelling bag that is waiting by the door. It is time he was on his way.

Soon he is in the car and heading out across the Oxfordshire downland north of the River Thames, full of restless excitement and a certain liberating feeling that he is leaving some part of his former life behind. Beyond Gloucester, he turns away from civilisation into a patchwork countryside of farmers’ fields set into a gently rolling, rising terrain that hints at tall mountains farther to the west. The passage to the Welsh borders, once loud with the cries of cattlemen heading for home along the old drovers’ tracks, seems almost forgotten now, the road twisting its way through a tranquil landscape that lies outside the common orbit of modern Britain. Here, in the farthest reaches of the Saxon kingdoms, the west Mercian dialect of Old English was spoken for centuries after the Norman conquest. The whitewashed farmhouses with their sagging, blackened timbers seem less like human structures than modest outgrowths of the Herefordshire soil.

At Skenfrith on the River Monnow, gaunt castle walls with holes like black accusing eyes stare out at him as he passes by. The land is rising, domed hills merging gradually into the western wall of the Monnow valley and the harsher terrain of the Black Mountains beyond. The road climbs on up to Grosmont with its own dark castle, cousin to Skenfrith, perched high above. Here, in the summer of 1404, an army loyal to Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r met a force led by the young Prince Henry. The Welshmen doggedly pursued the enemy to the gates of Monmouth, but Henry and his troops found sanctuary inside the walls of the town. That night, the arrogant young prince, grimed in the mud and blood of gruesome battle, conjured up the necessary phrases to appease his father the king, claiming his lucky escape in the name of God as a victory for the English crown.

Dropping down into the valley, Donald crosses the Monnow once more and soon becomes lost in a bewildering tangle of sunken lanes cut deep beneath heavy overhanging limbs of beech and oak. He doubles back to the river and stops to ask for directions at the Devil’s Bridge Inn. It has a memorable pub-sign, a winged demon armed with flaming spears facing a sturdy priest across the span of the bridge. The bar is empty, staffed only by a small black-and-white dog who welcomes him like a long-lost friend. In the back, the proprietor can be heard muttering to himself as he clicks through the channels on his new television set.

‘Sorry about that,’ the landlord says, hurrying out at the sound of Donald’s speculative greeting. He is large and round, his pink face crinkled up in a habitual smile. ‘I don’t usually expect anyone, this time of day.’

‘I’m looking for Kentchurch Court,’ Donald says, stroking the besotted dog behind the ears. ‘It doesn’t s ksn&y">eem to be where the map says it is.’

‘May I ask if you’re expected there, sir?’ The publican seems to appraise him anew, as if he might have mistaken him for someone of a different class. ‘They usually require an appointment, you see.’

‘Yes, they know I’m coming, thanks.’ It was at first an awkward telephone conversation with the people at Kentchurch. Donald was interrogated as to the nature of his interest in the house, asked to give assurances that he did not work for the press. In the end, a casually delivered mention of Caradoc Bowen and Jesus College succeeded in sweeping all difficulties aside. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘I was wondering if there’s a story behind your pub sign?’

‘Not that I’ve heard, though they say there’s always been magicians and devil-worshippers in these parts.’ The landlord smiles crookedly. ‘Still are to this day, judging by some of the people who come in here on a Saturday lunchtime.’

Soon afterwards, armed with a detailed sketch-map, Donald heads back out into the Herefordshire countryside. Kentchurch Court proves to be very well hidden indeed, tucked away in a fold of the hills and shielded by deep tracts of woodland. The narrow driveway seems as if it might come to a dead end, but at last the building hoves into view, layers of amber masonry and red brick forming a large and imposing edifice. Donald drives through a gate into a stable yard, parks next to a delivery van in the far corner. As he walks towards the front of the house, the heavy oak door is unlatched and pulled open by a small man with thick-rimmed glasses and a fringe of grey hair. He is carefully dressed in a patched woollen cardigan over a check shirt and plain green tie, giving him the air of a butler on his day off.

‘Yes, good morning. You must be our visitor from Jesus College—Dr. Gladwell, is it?’

Donald hesitates for the barest instant, holds out his hand. ‘Gladstone. Donald Gladstone.’

‘My name is Gerald Rhys. My wife and I look after the house during the winter months. Please, do come in. How is Professor Bowen? He visited us several times in the old days, but we haven’t heard from him in many years.’

‘He’s still going strong,’ Donald says, pretending a greater familiarity than he truly feels. ‘I saw him a couple of weeks ago.’

Rhys ushers him into a high wood-panelled hallway hung with faded portraits of cold-eyed noblemen from centuries past.

‘The Scudamores?’ Donald says.

‘Yes, that’s right. Starting with the first Sir John, at the end there.’

The painting of Sir John Scudamore, captured in confident pose circa 1430, shortly before he was dismissed by the crown from the office of deputy justice of South Wales, shows narrow features and long, flowing hair tucked into an embroidered cap.

‘He reminds me a little of Richard the Third,’ Donald says.

Gerald Rhys looks at him sharply, as if accusing him of some mild treachery. ‘No relation. None at all, I can assure you. Sir John was persecuted by the English monarchy because he had the temerity to marry the daughter of Henry’s great Welsh nemesis, Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r. They kept the marriage secret for sixteen years. Now then, I believe it’s Jack O’Kent you’ve come to see. Follow me, please.’

He leads Donald thro ks D#x2019ugh a series of sumptuous Georgian rooms appointed with fine porcelain and elaborate furniture bearing the scrolled foliage and floral motifs of the Louis XV style. On the walls and ceilings, ornate plasterwork disguises the simpler lines of the building’s original structure. They make their way towards a distant corner of the house, where Rhys opens a door leading into a smaller room with plain dark wood on the walls and worm-eaten beams not far above their heads. It seems a deliberately sombre refuge, a sanctuary from eighteenth-century frippery and ostentation.

‘Here he is,’ Rhys says, pulling back the curtain from the room’s only window. At first, the dusty sunbeams fail to illuminate the painted triptych hanging on the wall, instead throwing it into a deeper shadow. As Donald’s eyes adjust to the gloom, the outlines of the portrait on the central panel begin to emerge: an old man in a white robe, his cheeks sunken from hunger or illness, gazing meditatively through a window as he pauses in turning the pages of a book. There is something almost familiar in the pinched, aquiline features, the firm line of the mouth, the distant, dark eyes hinting perhaps of suffering, perhaps of long-suppressed anger or bitter regret for times long past.

Donald peers more closely at the artist’s rendition of the book that rests in Siôn Cent’s hands, hoping in vain that some useful detail has been preserved. ‘Do you know how much of his later poetry has survived?’

‘Some of his religious verses were composed while he was living in this house, and those poems have been preserved in various contemporary copies. His early work of course was captured in the book discovered by Professor Bowen at Ty Faenor. It seems he left it behind when he fled here from Cwmhir Abbey.’

Rhys has Donald’s attention now. Bowen’s paper on the poetry book of Siôn Cent suggested that the Song of Lailoken was written while Siôn was in hiding at the abbey. This is a small but perhaps crucial point. If the text Siôn claimed as his source, the book of Cyndeyrn, was in his possession at Cwmhir Abbey, it too might have been left there when he escaped to Kentchurch Court. ‘How do we know for sure that’s where he came from?’

Something in Gerald Rhys’s expression suggests a schoolteacher disappointed in a promising pupil. ‘As is well known,’ he says, ‘the secret marriage of Alys, daughter of Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r, to Sir John Scudamore was consecrated at Cwmhir Abbey in 1414, and the witness to the marriage signed himself as
Brawd Siôn o Cwmhir
, Brother Siôn of Cwmhir. You can see the document for yourself in the National Library of Wales. The signature matches the known hand of Siôn Cent. He was wanted by the English crown because of his role in Glyn D
ŵ
r’s rebellion, doubtless to be made an example of, and so we can guess that he went into hiding as a monk at the abbey. Soon after that, presumably under pressure of English discovery, he fled to Kentchurch and remained here to the end of his life under Sir John’s protection.’ Rhys pauses, as if to make sure his explanation has been appropriately absorbed. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a rather busy day ahead of me. Were there any other questions, before we leave our friend in peace?’