‘The Queen’s judiciary running in fear of petty outlaws?’ Dudley sat shaking his head in disgust. ‘Am I alone here in finding that a complete humiliation?’
‘This place might look like England, Master Roberts,’ Vaughan said. ‘But it en’t.’
‘Give us time, Vaughan.’
Dudley smiled, and I sighed and poured more beer for us all.
‘Prys Gethin, Master Vaughan… Prys the Terrible, Prys the Fierce… is that his real name?’
‘Probably some puny little turd with a withered arm,’ Dudley said.
‘Two good arms, Master Roberts,’ Vaughan said, ‘but only the one eye. His real name… well, who can say? But clearly he’s too young to be the son or even the grandson of Rhys Gethin.’
Dudley looked blank-faced for a moment as the association of names registered upon him.
‘Prys, Mr Roberts. Ap Rhys. Son of Rhys? Dr Dee your house – your family home, Nant-y-groes… under Brynglas? The hill of Pilleth?’
‘Christ’s blood, Vaughan…’ Dudley slammed down his beermug. ‘The Battle of Pilleth?
I didn’t share Dudley’s fascination with all manner of mortal conflict, human and animal, but I knew that an army hurriedly raised by Edmund Mortimer, the Marcher Lord, had been outwitted and crushed by the Welsh, with terrible carnage.
But all this was a century and a half ago.
‘They’re yet finding the remains of the Pilleth dead,’ Vaughan said. ‘Turned up by the plough. A dark place, it is. Holds terrors yet. I don’t much like where I live, but I’d not live there.’
‘And which side,’ Dudley asked me, head atilt, ‘was your father’s family supporting, John? I do believe the Dees were there at the time?’
Oh yes, they must have been there. But, God help me, I didn’t know which side they’d been on or if any of them had died in the Battle of Pilleth.
‘Hill of ghosts,’ Vaughan said. ‘I’ve heard it called that.’
I wondered which side his family had been on. He sounded Welsh, spoke Welsh and yet the house, Hergest Court, was, if only by a short distance, in England.
‘Beg mercy,’ I said, ‘but I don’t yet understand how this is linked with Prys Gethin. Glyndwr’s long gone. There’s no Welsh army any more.’
‘Not as such, no.’ Vaughan drank some beer, wiped his mouth. ‘But the ole Welsh families who ran with Glyndwr… they still dream. And some still hate the English. And don’t feel obliged to live by English laws. Plant Mat, see, the first of them were likely men who ran with Glyndwr’s army and, for them, it was never gonner be over. And as Glyndwr’s general – the man leading the Welsh in the rout of the English on Brynglas – as his name was Rhys Gethin. See?’
The cold rain rolled down the panes, and only Dudley laughed.
‘Small-time outlaw affecting the name of a famous warlord? Shrouding himself in old myth to frighten the peasants?’
No smile from Vaughan. The boy sat silent, watching the unceasing violence of water on ill-fitting glass. Me? I understood at once what local superstition this would arouse and didn’t feel it misplaced. The land remembers. Only wished now that I’d listened harder to my father’s tales, asked a few more questions. But then, I never thought I’d ever come here. I sought to quench it, all the same.
‘One hundred and fifty years ago. This man must needs be… what… a great-grandson?’
‘Or no relation at all, more like. Just a man who wants folk to think him possessed of a vengeful and still-active spirit.’ Vaughan fingered his sparse gingery beard as if there was more he might say about active spirits. ‘The thought of Gethin returned to the place where he slaughtered a thousand English – even if he’s in chains – is bound to cause unrest among the local folk. Not that it frightens the wool merchants. But they weren’t raised yere.’
‘And the judges from Ludlow and Shrewsbury fear only for their lives,’ I said. ‘After what happened twenty years ago.’
‘Legge, however,’ Dudley said, ‘comes with sixty armed guards and has no fear that can’t be overridden by his ambition. But you’re right, only a good hanging can end this.’
Vaughan slumped in a corner of the parlour settle.
‘You think?’
A cattle raid one full-moon night in the Irfon Valley, the other side of Radnor Forest. This was how they’d caught him.
Been a few raids, and all the talk was of Plant Mat, so the local squires banded together and had all their men out – farm hands and shepherds, pigmen and rickmen. Long nights waiting in the woods, all armed with axes and pitchforks and clubs. The Plant Mat raiders, when they came, were badly outnumbered and taken by surprise, for once, and fled into the hills.
Except for their leader who caught his foot in a root and twisted his ankle, and the farmers’ boys were on him. Two of the squires were summoned from their beds and came out and beat him about before having him tied, hand and foot, to a cart.
‘They know who he was?’ Dudley asked.
‘They did when he told them. Stood there all bloody and told them his brothers would pay them well if they let him go. He’d get a message back and they’d arrange an exchange, and they’d be rich men and their stock would be safe forever.’
‘Tempting,’ I said, ‘for a border farmer.’
‘But an insult to a squire,’ Vaughan said. ‘These two, they both knew what had happened over at Rhayader, when Plant Mat were taking a slice of the farmers’ meat in return for not firing their buildings. Forever’s no more’n a year in Wales. You make a deal with these brigands, they leave you alone for a few months, then they’re back, and worse.’
‘Never bargain with scum,’ Dudley said.
All they did, Vaughan said, was to have Prys Gethin tied tighter and gagged him so they didn’t have to listen to any more of his babble. And then… a triumphal torchlight procession through the hills of Radnor Forest.
‘The new sheriff, Evan Lewis, he lives at Gladestry, which was along the route, and they sent ahead to have him roused. And Evan Lewis joined them on the road to New Radnor Castle, where Prys Gethin was dragged down from the cart. Standing there, under the full moon, they were in high spirits, mabbe a bit drunk. As you might well be if you’d brought the bane of Radnorshire to justice.’
One of the squires, Thomas Harris by name, had stepped up and spat in the prisoner’s eye. Well, not in his eye, exactly, as Gethin only had the one. What Harris spat into was the shrivelled skin around the empty socket of the eye that was gone.
Prys Gethin had not wiped it away. Although he could have done. They saw his hands were freed from their bonds. How was that possible?
Vaughan drank some beer and was silent for a moment, as if unsure how the rest would be received.
‘Stood there, blood and spit on his cheeks. Pointed at the two squires who’d beaten him, tied him down, spat into his eye socket. Stood there in the light of the full moon and cursed them by turn, low in his voice, pointing with a curled finger.’
‘Cursed in Welsh?’ Dudley looked unimpressed. ‘Terrifying.’
But I noticed Vaughan’s eyes and the bleak way he was staring into his beer.
‘Within a month,’ he said, ‘Thomas Harris was dead of a fever that came overnight. And the other, Hywel Griffiths, he drowned in the river, when a new footbridge collapsed in high wind.’
I hoped Dudley would not laugh, and he didn’t. I’d be the last to deny the power of a curse, especially if the victim knows he’s cursed.