This Proud and Savage Land

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: Historical Fiction; Victorian Romance

Synopsis

Hywel Mortymer's story begins in 1800 when he is sixteen and a dramatic change in fortune leads him, innocent and inexperienced, to a brutal and dangerous life working in the coal mines. In the mines children can be horribly maimed in devastating gas explosions, or grow deformed with the burden of their labours and babies are born underground. Wales is in turmoil. A tragic divide between rich and poor, the workers powerless, penniless, starving and diseased sparks growing unrest as the newly founded Unions move inexorably towards the Chartist Rebellion. This Proud and Savage Land is a brilliantly detailed chronicle of early nineteenth- century Wales and a prelude to the bestselling Rape of the Fair Country.

Release date: September 4, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 406

Sample

I sat in a corner of the swaying coach and watched my father’s sleeping face. With his long legs thrust out, he slept in a fumbling dream of money-lenders, pawnbrokers and bailiffs, to all of whom he owed money.

Closing my ears to the galloping hooves in a vain attempt at sleep, I braced myself to the onward dash for the first stop at Llandovery. It was supposed to be summer, but since we’d left the Grouse Inn in the foothills of the Cambrian mountains a storm had beaten about us, mumbling and clattering among the distant peaks and lashing us with stair-rod rain – a fine way to celebrate a sixteenth birthday.

Now the coach skidded precariously on the flooded road and the two mares beat their hooves in a quieter, rhythmic pattern: rubbing at the misted window, I stared out over the dull forbidding country fifty feet below; one false hoof could send us somersaulting down into the flooded river. And then I heard the voice of Old Amos, our coachman, a wail on the wind.

‘What you think, master? Road might be topped over south o’ Bryn. And if the weir be awash we’ll not get through where Sarn Helen crosses the Main. I says to turn back and run for Builth, eh?’ And my father awoke with a start, flung open the door beside him and yelled back:

‘What ails ye these days, Amos? Whip us on or I’ll be up there and drive the thing myself!’ Wiping rain from his face, he slammed shut the door and glanced at me as the coach lumbered on. ‘You all right, son?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Cold?’

‘No, sir,’ and my father tossed me the Cyfarthfa blanket, saying:

‘Put that over your knees.’ He jerked his thumb up at Old Amos. ‘The damned idiot. I’ve known the day he’d have tackled the Devil’s Staircase in worse weather than this. A man gets old …’ Tipping a flask to his mouth, he swallowed greedily and the fumes of brandy swept over me. ‘Dear Christ! If ever ye see me aimin’ in that direction, lad, put me down six feet.’ Grinning wide, he made a fist of his hand, reached out and put it on my chin. ‘You like travelling with ye father?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now your mother’s gone we’ll do more of it, eh?’

It was dusk. Crippled hedgerows raised threatening arms at us as we clattered along, every one a witch of my nightmare dreams these days, for my father was on the road to the Devil: swigging again from a flask, he cried, ‘Try to sleep, lad. It was a windy old ride coming horseback over from Tregaron – lucky we didn’t strike footpads, eh? But, unlucky for them with you six feet up beside me! Now first stop Abergavenny – a bath, a steak and a bed, if the money runs to it, Hywel. Then on to Chepstow and over the ferry for London in the morning – that suit you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He roared, ‘In the name of God will ye cease the inordinate bloody politeness, lad! I’m ye father, not your headmaster.’

‘Yes, Dada.’

The previous night we had spent at the Grouse Inn, at Abergwysen: Old Amos, our family retainer – the only servant left to us – had waited there with a coach and pair to begin this final leg to London.

At the Grouse Inn lace-hatted girls had waited upon us at table; bosomy pieces with red lips and curtsys serving in the gentry room while ragged, lusty drovers hung their boots on to the tables in another: beards went up and ale went down like lift and force pumps, while Shadrach and Mesdach, the sister landladies, plus Poll Plenty, the barmaid, rushed around with trays of foaming jugs.

The Grouse proved worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, said my father, and this I could well believe from what I saw going on downstairs; what went on upstairs was nobody’s business. But despite his criticism, he was worse than any of them; cuddling bare-bosom ladies in the snugs and dancing fandangoes with old Shadrach, a glass in each hand, and this went on until the crows of dawn. All of which was a little different from the good taste of my school in Canterbury, which I had now officially left because Father hadn’t paid the fees.

Therefore it was with a bit of a shock that I found Poll Plenty with a leg in the bed beside me come dawn, and without so much as an invitation; which is going some for a bare fourteen.

‘For God’s sake!’ I cried, easing her out. ‘What you doing here?’ and she went all pouty and made big eyes and said, pathetic:

‘Ach, be a sport, Hywel Mortymer? Isn’t ye pa upstairs in the feathers with Shadrach and Mesdach, and me shiverin’ cold in me little bare attic? While you’re here with the big Cyfarthfa blanket. Och, fella, be a sport!’

‘Cold me eye, missus, it’s the middle of June!’

‘Mind, you’re a marvellous six footer for all you’re a lad. How old are ye, for God’s sake?’

‘Sixteen today,’ said I, holding her off.

‘And me two years younger! Let me in, me son, and you’ll be two years wiser in the mornin’,’ and she shoved me over and came in head first.

‘There now, what about that,’ whispered Poll Plenty, shivering still, and she’d got me shivering, too, for I’d never been up against a lady before, and there happened upon me a strange development that had only occurred before in dreams. Which is all right, I suppose, if this sort of thing is done by mutual agreement, but I knew what would have happened if the Canterbury headmaster had caught me at it, so as Poll came in one side, I came out of the other, and I went up the rickety stairs to her attic in my nightshirt with her hanging on to my leg.

She was right: it was as cold as an Eskimo’s heart up there on her mattress, and I shivered and dew-dropped until the bell clanged for breakfast.

But you get no thanks from some people for kindly acts like giving up your bed, and Poll was huffy cool with me when serving at table with my father; like slapping down my egg and bacon with her nose up, and not so much as a good morning.

‘What’s wrong with her, I wonder?’ asked my father, buttering toast.

‘Can’t think,’ I replied. ‘She came into my room last night saying she was cold, so I put her under the Cyfarthfa blanket in my bed and went upstairs to the attic.’

‘That,’ said my father, ‘was generous. Doubtless she appreciated it.’ He munched his toast. ‘But some women, you’ll find, are never satisfied. Do they instruct you in the behaviour of the gentle sex in your school?’

‘Oh aye, about mothers and sisters mainly – being above rubies.’

‘Excellent. However, there are others who may not be relatives, Hywel. Remind me to talk with you on the subject at the first available opportunity. This afternoon, of course, will be taken up with meeting some of our creditors.’

‘Creditors?’

‘Your esteemed Uncle John, and Tom and Kent Mortimer. Relatives on your mother’s side, I fear, have always brought me trouble.’

There was no affection between my family, the Mortymers, and Sir John Mortimer, my dead mother’s brother; he and his two sons, Kent and Tom, were our sworn enemies, according to my father.

The similarity of our family names requires explanation.

My uncle, Sir John, was of an aristocratic line; indeed, my mother could trace her family back 400 years to the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross; and before that, even, to Edmund Mortimer who married Jane, one of Owain Glyndwr’s daughters, following a Mortimer defeat at the Battle of Pilleth.

But, somewhere down the ancestral line things had gone awry.

Rumour had it that Edmund had abandoned a lady who was in child by him in order to placate Glyndwr, who was pushing him into marriage to Jane. The court would have been scandalized, so the illegitimacy of the lady’s child was hushed. And, to differentiate the offspring from the noble Mortimer line, Glyndwr named him as a Mortymer, which to him was an indication of the bastardy.

Thus began the Mortymer ancestry, of which I was the last, and, when my father married my mother, the sister of Sir John and a daughter of the true Mortimer dynasty, a vendetta between the two families began.

It was a quarrel that had come to a violent head with the suicide of my mother two years ago; from that moment, my father and Sir John Mortimer became enemies.

This had now expressed itself in the financial ruin of my family, brought about by my uncle and my father’s own dissolute existence.

I did not know on that afternoon in the Grouse Inn that this family hatred would follow me down to my sons.

Awaiting our meeting with Sir John and his sons, I wandered alone on the cobbles outside the inn and watched the blacksmiths shoeing our two horses, with Old Amos fussing and fuming about them.

Earlier, I had seen these smiths fitting tiny iron shoes to the feet of rams and ewes; also soling and heeling a hundred geese for the squawking, jabbering thirteen-mile walk through the Cambrians to Tregaron. After fashioning for them little leather boots, he chased them through a patch of warm pitch and sand, and the old things came out on the other side wearing boots I’d have bought for myself. The sight of them, sheep, pigs, geese and cattle, took my mind back to my childhood when I’d lie hand in hand with my mother in the belly of the bed and listen to the pattering of their feet as the drovers brought them into Tregaron market.

This, for as long as I could remember, was the music of my childhood; the obscene bawling of the drovers, the bellowing of worn-out cattle and the lamenting shrieks of the porkers coming to town. At first this used to terrify me; as did the gilded portraits of my ancestors lining the walls of a house that was dead, but would not fall down. And, hearing my cries, my mother would draw me down into her warmth.

Sometimes, on these occasions, my father would come.

I can see him now, his great bulk filling the doorway of the bedroom.

‘Jesus Christ, woman, do we have to have a bloody audience? Is that wee crot always going to be here when I come to you on a hungry midnight?’

At this my mother would hold me closer, and my father would go, leaving behind him a stink of brandy.

I was still with Old Amos, watching the smiths at work on the horses, when I saw Sir John Mortimer and his two sons arrive.

I’d never had a really good look at Sir John, my mother’s brother, but now I saw him in bright, pitiless sunlight.

He was small; almost completely bald, and of shifty eyes; his dainty air and foppish manner contrasted with the bulky masculinity of my father; one could be forgiven for mistaking the illegitimate line.

Tom and Kent, his sons, followed their mother for size and deportment, being tall and muscular; Tom, near my own age, was friendly; Kent, mature, was an elemental snob – one determined, it appeared, to put the bastards in their place. By a strange presentiment I knew, at that first meeting, that he would prove my lifelong enemy.

Seeing them arrive, I joined my father in an ante-room of the inn; he said as I approached: ‘They have come.’

I nodded, taking a seat beside him. He added, ‘Listen, Hywel; you are the equal of this lot, so remember it. But, whatever they say, however quick your temper – keep it – or you will answer to me, you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We may be the poor relations, but we will leave this room with our pride, though we leave our assets behind.’

I glanced at him in the moment before the others entered.

‘They have broken you?’

He nodded. ‘Every penny, every acre, every slate. As I told you, you won’t be going back to school in Canterbury.’

He did not say more for then they were in, Sir John leading his sons; all of them evincing that aristocratic indifference that told they were not to be tampered with: sitting down, they faced us across the highly polished table. Poll Plenty entered, asking, with a curtsy: ‘You require tea, gentlemen?’ She fluttered an eye at me.

‘Get out, woman,’ snapped Sir John, ‘I want no witnesses to this.’

He scowled at my father. ‘By the living God, Mortymer, you’ll leave here penniless. This time I’ll relieve you of your property; next time, with half a chance, I’ll have your lives.’

‘I’ll give it a go with pistols, if you like?’ My father winked.

‘Death with honour, eh?’ The man’s voice was low and husky and never, before or since, have I seen such hatred in a face. He said: ‘An ignominious death for the pair of you – it’s all you’re entitled to as a legacy of your bastardy …’ Suddenly he got to his feet, his features contorted. ‘Make the most of what you have left, Mortymer. You sent my sister to a felon’s death: only through bribes does she lie in consecrated ground. You made her life a living hell, and in her name I will hound you, your son and his sons to shameful deaths. Only through this expiation will my sister know peace.’

With his hands forming a cage over his mouth, he wept.

Kent Mortimer, the elder son, glared at us. ‘By God, you’ve got something to answer for, you lot,’ he said, and Tom sat silently.

My father said, ‘And so have you, if you make me late for my afternoon punch. Come now, it’s a tipple we need to make us all sociable. Girl!’ And he snapped his fingers at Poll Plenty.

For the first time I realized the indelicacy, the studied vulgarity of my father in the face of another’s grief: for the first time, too, I understood the suffering of Sir John Mortimer, and the reason for his hatred.

Because the victory of our relatives was a shock to his system, my father spent the rest of the day in a drunken haze, wenching and roistering, and we didn’t leave the Grouse Inn for London until night was coming on.

At the gaming tables of high society, he declared, he would now proceed to make a fortune.

The storm, roaring among the peaks of the Cambrians, swirled about us furiously as Old Amos whipped up the horses, and we were off.

With four guineas in his pocket, my father departed with all the bonhomie of a self-made millionaire. Subject to immediate eviction from our Tregaron mansion, we left with hurrahs and catcalls from the Grouse servants, one of whom blew a hunting horn. We left with the sale of our lands properly concluded by deed, with what small assets we had in the Llandovery bank sequestered by my uncle’s lawyers to pay my father’s debts. We travelled now in a coach and pair owned by Sir John, with his express intention of removing us from the area: we went carrying on our backs our only possessions – clothes.

‘I give your uncle credit,’ said my father with a yawn as he settled himself comfortably in the coach. ‘I always admire good organization; his intention being to break us down to the sixth generation, I couldn’t have done a better job myself.’

‘So what now?’ I asked him as Amos whipped the horses to greater speed.

‘I shall tell you, my son,’ cried my father. ‘We plunge. For, when the chips are down and your luck is out, this is the moment of greatest fortune. My credit is still good in Jackson’s Rooms, is it not? Gentleman John Jackson will give me a loan and at his expense I shall recoup the family wealth.’ Tossing up his flask, he snatched it, uncorked it and drank deep, wiping his mouth. With a big fist up, he quoted, ‘“He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who dares not put it to the touch to gain or lose it all,”’ and he threw back his head and bellowed a laugh. ‘You hear that, what? Long live the Mortymers spelled with a y!’

He was sickening me; I did not reply. This, I thought, was what my mother had suffered for years: life with a bellowing, brandy-soaked bull of a man who spent his life with drink and whores, branding his insensitivity upon her soul. Now he opened the window beside him and shouted up into the storm:

‘Come on, Amos, what ails ye? We’re away to London, not a trot to Michaelmas Fair. Get the whip to them!’

The whip slashed down, and we broke into a gallop along the precipitous Treachery Pass. Propping up his riding boots, my father shouted above the thunder:

‘Some June, eh, me son? True Welsh mountain weather, so to hell with gentry farming – it don’t need carding and wagerin’ to lift the roof, ye know – a couple o’ dirty harvests’ll do it quicker.’ And he grinned and thumped my knee. ‘You understand, I take it, that we’re down to grub tacks?’

‘Of course.’

‘It bloody looks like it, for your face is as dull as tomorrer. Come on, man, shiver up your herring-roes! You’re done with that rotten English school, haven’t ye? – your mother sent you there, you know, not me – but if you’re short on education you’ll be into a fortune if you stick with me.’ He swigged at a flask. ‘Father and son, eh? – the bastard Mortymers! Dear God, I do ’em credit – your uncle handled it fine! But, if we’re groggy, we ain’t laid out, eh?’ His voice lowered confidentially. ‘Ye see, lad, the tables down in Jackson’s were supposed to raise us, but the luck went cold. But luck, son, is the essence of living: old Lady Luck, she downs ye one minute, then lifts ye up.’

The rain lashed down: thunder clouds barged themselves across the caverns of the sky as if in haste to deluge the earth; vivid lightning flashes blazed on my father’s haggard face, and he cried:

‘Anyway, to hell with property – it isn’t worth a fig these days – lazy tenants, repairs, poaching, land taxes, unpaid rent – we’ll be better off without the old pile, now your mother’s gone.’

The memory of her suicide momentarily stilled him, then he added, ‘Ever since she died her bloody relatives have been after the house and land, and now they’ve got it. God alive and reigning, fellow, have ye nothin’ at all to say?’

I shook my head.

For in the woodshed down on the bank of a little brook outside Tregaron, I had cut my mother down. Seeing her, I had expected to find her face contorted by the rope, but it was not. Indeed, it was an astonishing hanging, said the surgeon who attended her, for there was an expression of inestimable peace upon her face: no swelling of the features, no bulging eyes; she who had fought for family piety with all the district wenches, and begged him to farm instead of wager. But the attractions of Jackson’s Rooms and its gaming tables had beaten her. She had married a gentry farmer against her family’s wishes, and paid the price; proving no match for the riotous larkery of Jackson’s in Old Bond Street, where fortunes could be lost on the turn of a card.

Here gamed the fops and dandies of the day: the Dukes of York and Clarence; the amorous Duke of Marlborough, who bought and sold his pugilists like horseflesh to satisfy his love of The Fancy.

Here in Jackson’s met the millionaire Baldwins and Vernons; the aristocratic lay-me-downs of the turf – Lord Barrymore for one – now in the heyday of their riotous living; dining in sumptuous houses while the starving languished in London’s fetid slums. Here in Jackson’s establishment old scores were paid off and duels arranged that never took place in cowardice: over its gaming tables our family fortune had vanished into the laps of a clique whose pursuit in life was pleasure. In this palace attended by Royalty, my father had even exploited me. Now he said:

‘Once we bed down in Jackson’s we’ll find you a more able opponent than young Tom Mortimer, I vow. Have you been keeping up the art of self-defence under old Dai Bando at school?’ He leaned back and surveyed me with untainted pride.

‘Boxing’s a prime subject in the curriculum, yes.’

It pleased him and his grey eyes momentarily shone. ‘But, ye’ve never had a black eye to prove it!’

‘The Noble Art, as taught by Dai Bando keeps your eye out of the way.’

‘One thing’s certain, though I’ve never approved of his methods, he taught ye enough to give young Tom, your cousin, a dusting!’ He kicked up his boots and shouted laughter. The coach rocked on the rutted road, nearly unseating us, and he took out his monocle and screwed it into his eye and adopted the effeminate manners of supporters of the Fancy, saying, ‘“By gad, Mortymer, where did ye get such bloodstock? From your loins, did ye say? Who, then, was the filly? For I vow, given two more years, I’d put the lad in with Game Chicken.”’

He could be entertaining, too, and I rocked with laughter. He continued, removing the monocle, ‘But I tell ye this, me son, it did your father’s heart a world o’ good to see ye dust up Tom to such effect – giving him two years and a stone to boot.’

It was the first and only time I had met my Cousin Tom in private; facing each other, on a family wager, within the roped square in Jackson’s Rooms. I replied: ‘But it was unfair. Tom had never donned a muffler in his life.’

‘But now ye’ll meet others who have, me lad – young up-and-comers like you, the sons of the finest blood in London. Dear God, if we play the cards right – you with the mufflers and me on the tables – we could raise a fortune that would set us high and mighty. And where would our relatives be then, poor things? Are ye on?’

‘I’m not taking the prize ring for a living, Dada.’

‘God alive, would I be suggestin’ it? Just a bout here and there to keep us fed till I get upon me feet – look, look, son – where else are you likely to meet the Marquis of Granby, the King of Prussia and the Duke of Mecklenburgh in a single afternoon? – to say nothin’ of bare-knucklers like Tom Cribb and Belcher … and Gentleman John Jackson, the king of ’em all?’ He swung himself over and sat beside me, his enthusiasm growing. ‘You’re a natural, don’t ye realize? You’ve fast hands and a dig in them both. Do ye realize I won a pony off the Prince of Wales when he wagered on Tom for size instead of ye for quality? And do ye know what he said to me when they brought Tom round? “Mortymer,” he said, “henceforth, Sir, we can keep our rough-meat pugilists safely grazed and watered in our stables, and wager, instead, on the prowess of our sons.” Now then, will you give it thought?’

I did. I thought of Cousin Tom’s bloodstained face and I pitied him, yet marvelled at his dignity in the face of that thrashing – doled out by someone akin to his little brother. But, and I knew this, Tom Mortimer would never forget the degradation of this defeat, and neither would his father.

The coach lurched along the rutted, flooded road; the hooves were a drumming rhythm above the wind. As we skidded past Rounder Bend I saw the signpost of the white mare’s skull: bright its bones in the light of a scudding moon, and the voice of Old Amos was a wail: ‘Road blocked fifty yards up, sir! Strangers about, too – and it dunna look healthy!’

Reaching under his seat, my father drew out the big horse pistol he used for highwaymen; furiously he powdered it; rammed in the ball. And, as the wheels locked and we ground to a halt, he cocked the weapon, sighted it, and kicked open the coach door. Instantly, it was slammed shut. A bludgeon shattered the glass, striking him in the chest and forcing him backwards. All in seconds: one moment security, next moment panic. And, as my father fell, the face of a man appeared framed in the broken window, to disappear instantly as the pistol exploded: dropping to my knees I heard the ball whine off into space, and a faint, distant cry. Hauling my father up, I saw, in horror, two men gripping Old Amos: saw them run him, his boots skidding on the road, to the edge of the drop to the river below; and propel him, his arms and legs flailing, into space.

Silence now.

No sound but the blustering wind and our own heavy breathing: blood from my father’s face dripped monotonously on to my hand. And then a man’s voice bawled:

‘Is he alone?’

‘No, the lad’s with ’im. They got young Tom, mind!’

‘What?’

‘They got young Tom.’

‘Don’t be bloody daft – he were here a second back.’

‘Not no he anna – look, somebody fired from the coach. He’s dead.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Aye, there’ll be hell to pay rent to when we get back home.’

‘Stop bloody talking and get this thing over …’

I risked a look through the broken glass: two men were stooping over the prostrate body of another. One said, getting up. ‘It’s only a graze, I tell ye. Give ’im a minute and he’ll be up. Come on, come on, you know what the old man said.’

‘All of it over?’ a man cried. ‘Look, Musker, them’s fine mares!’

‘Never mind that, get the whole lot over,’ and before I could gather myself the coach tipped beneath me. The horses shrieked as the coach went higher and the shaft took them.

Gathering my wits, I stooped, hauling my father up against me, and he moved feebly in my arms, semi-conscious from the blow of the bludgeon. As I reached out a hand for the door the coach tipped higher still, sending me sprawling back with my father in my arms. The horses were shrieking; men were shouting incoherently. If there was one out there, here was ten: a man roared:

‘And again so, lift!’ and the coach reared up beneath me, sliding us both into a corner.

‘Get another hold, I say. Lift, lift! Come on, Musker, get your back into it.’

Another voice shouted, ‘He’s only a lad, ye know – ain’t we after the old man?’

‘Shut your mouth and lift!’

And, in the moment before the coach overturned and teetered on the lip of the road berm, I saw through the shattered window the face of a man: he was wearing a French cockade hat and one side of his face was scarred as if blown away, muscle and bone, by shot: the face disappeared as the coach rolled over, and I saw below me the foaming Cledan River in full spate twenty feet down: flying hooves I saw, and a single spinning wheel, and felt my father’s arms go about me as a lanthorn flared and we dropped into space.

Now, locked in his embrace, I somersaulted in a mad world of scarlet and gold; into a topsy-turvy crescendo of thumps and smashes and pain: in a jack-in-the-box coffin we struck impeding rocks in our downward plunge, upright one second, upside down the next, but my father, not I, was taking the impact of the collisions. And then, in one last explosion of pain and light, the coach crashed into the mud of the river bank: glass tinkled, I remember, as I drifted into silence.

Utter silence, broken only by the rippling of the river.

All was stillness in my world of returning consciousness: then I heard the river again and the cadent voice of a solitary bird on the soft-breathing air. My eyes, but not my brain, saw weak sun-shafts filtering down through rents in the roof of the wrecked coach; I shivered to the sudden touch of lapping water.

Now I realized that I was lying face down upon the body of my father, and that his arms, still about me, clutched me in a vice of death. And the river, flooding into the half-submerged coach, was slowly embracing him so that his face was already covered.

I saw this face in all its mutilation, wavering in water below my eyes. Sickened, I prised myself free of his arms, and saw his body beneath me in all its ragged decimation; the once live bones jutting up, blood-smeared; the broken hands that clasped mine. Now a new phenomenon as the dawn sun blazed, lighting up the coach interior to a new brightness: the vision beneath me snatched away my breath as I stared down.

For the face that, but a few hours before, had been lined by dissolution had vanished, and a new face had replaced it. As if a magician’s wand had been waved above it, this new face was that of youth. Unlined and handsome, the youth of my father wavered before me as if in a holy transfiguration: his hair, but a few hours before sparse and gray, was now a shining black, as I had seen it in the portraits of his youth. But, young or old, he was still a corpse, and I dragged away the blanket that covered us like a shroud, and crawled painfully to an upturned seat.

Looking up through the smashed roof I saw above me the berm of the road that led to Llandovery, and high on a pole, glinting bone-white in the dawn sun, shone the white mare’s skull on Rounder Bend.

Nothing moved.

It was as if there was nobody else in the world but me and my dead father.

Then I noticed the little silver locket round his neck that held a portrait of my mother; the crash had upturned it and it was lying upon his breast. Bending, I removed it, then pulled out the Cyfarthfa blanket and folded it inside my coat.

Easing my cramped limbs, I climbed on to the roof of the coach, to find myself staring into the beaked face of a giant red kite; I don’t know which was the more surprised, it or me: it shrieked, its taloned feet scrabbling for a hold on the wood; then, fighting for balance, it spread great wings and sailed upward into the vaporous blue of the sun to join its mate. Together they indulged in cat-like mewing at my interruption: high above them a procession of white-gowned monks, having just finished St Peter’s weekly wash, waddled across the dawning sky. Filled with disgust and loathing at the birds, I raised a fist at them, shouting abuse. But they circled still, impatient for the prey: soon, I knew, they would descend again to rip and tear at my father.

Now I climbed from crag to crag and reached the berm of the Llandovery road; to sink down, sobbing, at the foot of the gibbet that bore the white mare’s skull.

From this high vantage I heard the snarling of dogs. A wolf pack, splitting into groups, was fighting over the carcasses of the horses, one of which was half submerged in the river: near by the body of poor Old Amos, as yet unnoticed, lay face down in the mud of the bank. Sick