Finding Camlann (24 page)

‘It was always the academic types who were the worst, forever summoning up the spirit of Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r, as if he could be of any help to us now.’

An image comes to Julia, Caradoc Bowen holding court in a shadowy corner of the Black Lion pub, his young disciples seated around him: and Hugh there too, hanging on Bowen’s every word. But if Stephen Barnabas is aware of any personal significance for her in his story, his expression does not betray it. ‘You must forgive my melancholic ramblings,’ he says. ‘I am sure this is all much more than you care to hear about.’

‘It’s the reason I came here today to speak to you,’ Julia says. ‘I’ve been trying to find out what happened that autumn, but nobody will talk to me about it.’

‘That does not surprise me. It may not be an easy story for you to hear.’

‘It’s important to me.’

‘In that case, I shall do my best.’ A small grimace crosses the vicar’s face as he reaches to set the poker back in its rack, then straightens himself as far as he can in his wheelchair. ‘It was a difficult year for me, in many ways. The first blow came when my wife passed away in the middle of June. That was not so much of a surprise, after all, but still in my grief I became angry and bitter at the unfairness of the world. I hope it does not shock you to hear me say that?’

‘I understand you very well, Reverend Barnabas.’

‘Yes of course, I am sure that you do. Well, if you can imagine my state of mind at that time, you may also comprehend how I came to misinterpret your father’s good intentions. The town was in a great ferment over the plans for the dam, and something I overheard convinced me that Dai had got himself involved, that the news of this latest English outrage had tipped him back into his old radical way of thinking. So I stood up at St. Clement’s one Sunday morning and spoke out against those who might think a true Welshman should distinguish himself by fighting wanton destruction with random violence. I was looking at your father as I spoke those words, and the entire congregation was watching me. He never forgave me for it.’

Julia was not in church that day, but she can imagine it well enough for herself, the cool, austere Victorian space, the sidelong glances in the pews, the murmuring and shuffling of feet as the fiery vicar sends down his denunciation upon Dai Llewellyn standing there with an upright but wounded dignity in the front row. ‘What could possibly make you think he would do such a thing?’

Stephen Barnabas bows his head, clasps his hands together more tightly in his lap; it is an almost theatrical, prayer- sica"15" allike gesture. ‘I blame my own foolishness, nothing more. The rumour was that the militants were very well organised, that there was a secret ring-leader. I had seen your father in animated conversation with some of the younger men, and I drew entirely the wrong conclusion.’

‘Caradoc Bowen was the one who was behind it,’ Julia says, quietly. ‘Not my father.’

‘Well, it is true that Wales has produced its share of zealous prophets,’ the vicar says, apparently now lost in his own memories. ‘As I look back on those days, I see my actions as a kind of treachery. I suppose you might say the events of the following autumn were a just retribution.’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about,’ Julia says, emboldened by her indignation on her father’s behalf. ‘I’d like you to tell me what really happened at the engineering works.’

Barnabas moves a trembling hand to stroke the cat, which through an exercise of extreme stealth has appeared in his lap and curled itself tightly into a ball. ‘It was a brave thing for you to do, to come here and ask me that question, and so I will do you the courtesy of describing the events as I saw them.’

‘Thank you,’ Julia says, the anxiety pressing harder on her now, a heavy weight against her chest. ‘I’m sure it can’t be easy for you.’

A gust of wind sighs in the chimney, briefly raising the fire to a bright orange glow. The cat uncurls just enough to stretch a paw in the direction of this new radiant warmth. ‘It was a cold autumn day,’ the vicar says, ‘very much like today, I suppose. Since losing Angharad back in June, I had fallen into the habit of taking a walk up in the hills in the late afternoon. On this occasion my departure was delayed by some parish business, and so it was almost dark by the time I set out from the house. I decided to make a shorter circuit than usual, out to the north past St. Clement’s, then just a little way up the valley and back again. My route took me past several small engineering firms whose offices were down by the old railway tracks. One of them, Ellis Engineering, had been awarded a contract by the British government to assist in the work on the Cwmhir dam.’

By now, Stephen Barnabas has settled his attention on a point in the deep distance, out of the window and beyond the garden wall. ‘I remember it quite well, feeling a certain distaste as I came upon the sign on the gate. Despite all my sermonising, I could scarcely be happy about the involvement of our most prominent local businessman in this unfortunate project, not least because Dafydd Ellis was a grasping sort of man without an ethical bone in his body. He’s long gone now, dead of a heart attack, may he rest in peace.’

‘What happened after that?’ Julia says, gently.

‘Perhaps you already know the rest of the story. It was common knowledge in the town that there were explosives stored in Ellis’s yard, ready for the blasting work at Cwmhir. As you may read for yourself in the report of the official inquiry, it was faulty wiring that caused the accident. All it took was a small electrical spark. I lost my legs in the explosion, traded them in for a piece of metal the size of a penny lodged close to my lower spine. This is why I am as you see me now. But it was better for me than it was for Gwyn Edwards the ironmonger’s boy, who had recently signed on with Ellis as a junior engineer. He had stayed late that day, you see, to catch up on his work. He never stood a chance.’

‘Gwyn had a lot of friends in town, send, you’ Julia says, struggling to steady her voice as the memory of it comes back to her. ‘It was hard to believe what happened to him.’

‘Yes indeed, and as to why he of all people should have deserved it, all I can suggest to you is that—as William Cowper tells us—God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.’

Julia once again has a troubling sense that the truth is slipping from her grasp. ‘There’s one other thing I need to ask you,’ she says. ‘You’ve been honest with me about what happened back then, but I’m wondering why everyone else is still avoiding the subject. My husband—Hugh refuses to talk to me about it. Do you know why that might be?’

Another grimace crosses Stephen Barnabas’s face, and he reaches a hand to rub at the lower part of his back. ‘I am sorry. It is not your question that causes me pain, though it is a difficult one. If you asked me to guess at the answer, I should say that it is out of loyalty to your family that Hugh prefers not to speak of these events. As you may recall, he came to church a few times in the weeks leading up to your wedding, and he was in the congregation when I foolishly accused your father of stirring up the mood of violence that had fallen on the town. I remember thinking afterwards that I must find a way to speak to Hugh, but I never did so. Perhaps he went away believing that what I said was true.’

A sound like distant thunder from the upper part of the house resolves itself gradually into heavy footfalls on the stairs. ‘That will be Megan,’
Barnabas says, sucking in his breath through a further spasm of pain. ‘Having finished her novel, no doubt, she has remembered that I still exist. I’m afraid I have been sitting for far too long in this chair. If you don’t mind, perhaps we might continue our conversation another day?’

As Julia makes her hurried farewell, fragments of failed conversations with Hugh come crowding in in her.
I’d rather not talk about it any more. There are some things you just can’t ask me, can you please try to understand?
By the time she reaches the front gate of the vicarage, securing it behind her and glancing uneasily back through the trees at the house now restored to its habitual blankness, she has convinced herself that she has recklessly misinterpreted Hugh’s intentions. His silence on the Rhayader bombing has been meant only to protect her, to avoid a discussion that might implicate her father in the attack that maimed the Reverend Stephen Barnabas and took the life of Gwyn Edwards, the ironmonger’s son.

The Sign of the Black Lion

D
ONALD TAKES THE
back route out of Hay, urging the Morris through narrow lanes boxed in by hedges as high as London buses. Beyond Llanbedr, the road becomes easier as it drops back down towards the River Wye and the main northerly route to Builth Wells. Taller hills are rising now, pale green with patches of faded bracken turned to purplish brown in the sunshine on the highest slopes. The river is a steady companion on his right-hand side, the dark waters descended from the wilderness of Plynlimon now touched by a gleaming silvery light. Donald drives on with the windows wound down and a half-remembered mythology ringing like a dissonant poetry in his ears.
I flew north to Plynlimon Hill, where Cai and Bedwyr sat on a cairn in the strongest wind the world had ever seen
. The cool mountain air carries with i vx20gnhere Cat the rarefied crying of far-off sheep, countless white dots studded across the improbably steep hillsides.

Dusk is falling on the banks of the Wye by the time he reaches the long easterly loop of the river that runs beneath the wooded slopes of Gwastedyn Hill on the approach to Rhayader. It is a majestic setting, the small grey market town encircled by sweeping escarpments whose lower slopes shelter dense stands of oak and beech. It was into this high country that Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r fled with his son Maredudd and his closest companions after the fall of Harlech Castle. As Donald looks up towards the higher ground now hidden by a descending layer of cloud, he pictures Glyn D
ŵ
r and his followers climbing up above the trees, higher and higher, until they vanish into the mist.

He parks in the centre of town, walks along East Street to a battered red telephone box near the market cross. The cool, dank interior is profusely decorated with graffiti, the slogans of Welsh nationalism,
y ddraig goch ddyry gychwyn
, the red dragon will show the way, stirring phrases and profanities scrawled on the walls and scratched into the glass. Some of the panes in the door have been smashed, spreading small bright shards across the concrete floor. When he picks up the receiver, expecting to hear only silence, there is a clear tone on the line. He takes out a crushed yellow message slip from his pocket, dials the number that is written there.

It is an older woman who answers, a southern English accent faintly tinged with Welsh. She seems warm in a habitual way, cautious and protective. ‘I’m afraid Julia isn’t here, but she was expecting you to call. She asked me to tell you she’ll meet you at the Black Lion later on this evening. And not to worry about Caradoc Bowen, because she will already have spoken to him by then.’

IN DECADES PAST,
Julia and her mother would commandeer one of the hard wooden benches on the platform at Llandrindod station and sit with mugs of sweet milky tea in excited anticipation of some English relative: usually an uncle or aunt from London or, more rarely, her maternal grandparents from Sussex. It was thought to be a great adventure in those days for the
saeson
(as Dai would disparagingly refer to his distant, foreign in-laws) to take the train to Swansea, then up the Tywi valley to Llandovery and finally to Llandrindod Wells, the nearest stop to home since the old Rhayader station was closed down. They would all squeeze into the rusting blue van with her mother at the wheel, take the obligatory tour of the former spa town with its neatly kept squares and side streets lined with hotels now long past their Victorian prime, then happily bump home together the ten miles or so to Dyffryn Farm.

It would have been unimaginable a week ago, waiting here on a damp, chilly Saturday afternoon for the arrival from Oxford of Professor Caradoc Bowen. The professor was unavailable when she made the call the previous afternoon to Jesus College, but his unsympathetic secretary, Mrs. Frayne, become suddenly more accommodating when Julia boldly introduced herself as the wife of one of his former students. She had heard about the professor’s visit, and would be glad to meet him at the station and drive him back to Rhayader. It was Hugh’s name that put the seal on the arrangement.
Mr. Hugh Mortimer? Yes, of course I remember him—such a fine young man, and a great favourite of Professor Bowen’s. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see Hugh again.
The secretary proceeded to share a wealth o {re ofessf gratuitous detail concerning Bowen’s itinerary, as well as her opinion as to his likely state of mind upon arrival.
He hates to travel these days; he’ll not be in the best of moods, especially if he hasn’t eaten; don’t say anything to upset him, that’s my best advice
. It seems to Julia now, pacing nervously to and fro beneath the elegant glass awning with its white-painted cast-iron columns and scrollwork pediments, that to have come here today is pure recklessness.

The train arrives an excruciating ten minutes late, sliding into the station with a pungent smell of brakes. Julia stands off to one side, watches the passengers one by one as they step down on to the platform. Despite the fact that she has not seen Bowen for fourteen years, she is confident that he will be instantly recognisable. But she is caught off guard by a surprising rush of people, hulking teenage boys in muddied rugby kit, mothers with young children and shopping bags in hand, a few older people amongst the stragglers. She fixes on the most likely candidate, an elderly man with pure white hair and an air of erudition about him as he folds his newspaper and tucks it into his bag; then watches him settle a farmer’s flat cap on his head and take a swig from a flask in his pocket as he makes his way to the exit. He smiles and winks at her as he hobbles past.

Some sixth sense makes her turn around, and she sees him then, standing by the door to the waiting room in a long black trench-coat and battered trilby with an old leather briefcase in his left hand and a long furled umbrella in his right. He looks oddly out of place, like a black-and-white actor in a colour film.
Don’t say anything to upset him
. This phrase turns itself into a mantra, silently repeated over and over as Julia walks towards him.

‘Professor Bowen? My name is Julia Llewellyn.’

He looks at her for a long moment. It is not so much the face that she remembers, with its aquiline features and gaunt, hollow cheeks, but the old-fashioned round glasses, the hawk-like gaze focused on its prey. He surprises her now by taking off his hat and offering a dry, firm handshake. ‘Yes, of course,’ he says. ‘My secretary told me to expect you. I am glad to see you again after so many years.’

Julia hardly knows what to say next. She tries to remember the last time she set eyes on him, perhaps at some Jesus College event. It was before she and Hugh were married, certainly, because Bowen declined their invitation to come to the wedding, and things went wrong not long after that. She forces a smile. ‘I wanted to speak to you, Professor. I hope you don’t mind.’

He tilts his head to one side, a bristling white eyebrow arched almost imperceptibly. ‘Well, as you can see, I am entirely at your disposal, if you would kindly lead the way.’

It is almost a surreal experience, reversing out of the parking space with Caradoc Bowen in the passenger seat. In spite of all that Julia knows about him—the long troubled history of his relationship with Hugh, his research on Owain Glyn D
ŵ
r and Siôn Cent—he is almost a complete stranger to her. The image she has held in her mind, of the fiery Welsh nationalist, the eccentric scholar given to poetic and grandiloquent pronouncements, does not seem quite applicable to the elderly man who is now sitting next to her in the car, folding and refolding a large white handkerchief.

‘As a native of this part of Wales, perhaps you are a student of its history?’ Bowen’s question seems friendly enough, but ambiguous, making Julia wonder if he means somehow to test her.

‘Not so very much, I’m afraid.’

The professor now clears his throat, as if at the beginning of a lecture. ‘The Romans were here very early on, of course. It was the Second Augustan Legion who built the fort at Castell Collen, just up there on the hill, in the difficult years after Caratacus’s rising against Aulus Plautius and then the Boudiccan revolt. As you may recall, there were great fears that the Britons would rise again in the west after Suetonius Paulinus left his carnage unfinished at Ynys Môn. As Tacitus put it,
omne ignotum pro magnifico
, whatever is unknown is held to be magnificent. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of the bold Venutius, such magnificence as there was had to wait many centuries to be revealed.’

It occurs to Julia that Bowen is accustomed to a passive audience, that his purpose is less to inform than to impress with his depth of knowledge and rhetorical dexterity; especially so, in this case, because she is a woman. ‘I’m curious about the name Caradoc,’ she says. ‘I believe it is derived from an original Brythonic form that would have been close to
Caratacos
, which would in turn have latinised to Caratacus. So you are perhaps named for a hero of the early British resistance?’

Slowly and deliberately, Bowen completes the polishing of his glasses. ‘I’m afraid I had forgotten that you are a scholar of our ancient language,’ he says. ‘Your supposition is quite correct, and yet my given name has perhaps played even a larger role than this in Celtic history and mythology. Historians have recorded one Caradoc ap Ynyr, a sixth-century king of Gwent who was named in remembrance of the earlier hero, Caratacus. The same Welsh monarch also became the model for Caradoc Vreichvras, Caradoc Strong-Arm, who was stolen by the French romancers to become an Arthurian knight. To me, this suggests both an extraordinary degree of porosity between history and mythology, and a remarkable continuity of tradition between the pre- and post-Roman Brythonic cultures. Do you not agree?’

This last statement reminds Julia intensely of Donald; it is a line she might expect to read in his book. Her thoughts drift back to their last, inadequate conversation. She tries to imagine what he is thinking, how he will react when he sees her, how he will expect her to react. ‘I think you met a friend of mine recently,’ she says, ‘Donald Gladstone.’

She senses Bowen looking at her with a renewed curiosity. ‘Yes indeed, and I have found him to be a most thoughtful and determined scholar, though I cannot say whether he will be successful in disentangling the real Arthur—if there is such a creature—from the many threads that bind him. We are due to meet again tomorrow morning in Rhayader, as you are perhaps aware, to pursue a rather different project.’

Julia is tempted to ask the professor if she can join their expedition, but she stops herself short. What would she do, if he were to say no? By now, they are making their way out of the town, across the River Ithon and then west to intersect the Wye valley and the main road north to Rhayader. They drive on across a rolling upland terrain with lonely farmhouses glimpsed from time to time in the folds of the hills, Cerrigcroes, Gelligarn, Pistyll Gwyn. Caradoc Bowen holds his peace, breathing heavily and evenly as if he might have fallen asleep. When Julia glances across at him, she sees that he is staring intently out of the window at the passing landscape.

Soon enough, the looming bulk of Dôl-y-Fan above and to the right marks their approaching convergence with the Wye valley. Even allowing for t {llohe loominghe rain, they will be in Rhayader within twenty minutes, and she has not yet come close to what she really wants to say to him.

‘I was hoping I could ask you something, Professor.’

‘Yes, of course, if it is in my power to answer.’ In her peripheral vision, Julia is aware of Bowen reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief, taking it out, putting it back again.

She speaks too fast, anxious to say everything before she loses her nerve. ‘I have been trying to find out what really happened in Rhayader fourteen years ago, when there was an explosion at the Ellis engineering works. The official report said it was an accident, but the local rumour has always been that it was set off deliberately as part of the campaign against the Cwmhir dam. I believe you were in Rhayader around that time, and I’m wondering if you might know what really happened.’

She tightens her grip on the wheel, keeps her eyes fixed on the road ahead; but Caradoc Bowen is almost eerily calm in his response. ‘May I ask, did you ever see the engineering plans for the dam?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘The blueprints and survey maps are still there in the British government archives, for anyone who is prepared to look hard enough. Were you to do so, you might notice that the flood waters would have extended farther than is commonly supposed, submerging not only the valley floor, Ty Faenor of course and the grave of Llywelyn the Great, but also, at the western end of the valley, the lower slopes of the hill called Moel Hywel.’

‘Including Dyffryn Farm?’ The words stick in Julia’s throat.