North Wales 1849
Old Hannah Lloyd was roused from sleep by the dogs. Intruder. Their barks should have made her frantic, but she paused for a few seconds to touch the other side of the bed. Of course he wasn’t there: a dream, that’s all it had been. She shook the impression of his hand from her shoulder and the warmth of him from her back. Gone. Gone for good he was.
A renewed burst of barking made her crawl over the coldness of his side, grip onto the walls of her bed and let herself down. These days it did no good to hurry. The world had become treacherous, with objects obscured by the thickening skin of cataracts.
The dogs were at the door, leaping at it, snarling. When she lifted the latch they were away into the haze of morning light, yapping absurdly at something. Before she could open the door fully there were shouts, one high-pitched scream which could have been animal or human and then the sound of a gun firing, once and then once again, and then silence.
‘Gwyn? Anwyn?’ She stood at the door peering dimly through the bright air.
‘Where are you, fy mechgyn?’
She felt for her shawl, pulled it around her and started slowly along the path. She knew each broken slab, each place where she would have to reach out to find a handhold to help her step down. She was still firm on her feet but her near-blindness had made her afraid. In the haze that now afflicted everything, she could hear whimpering.
‘Gwyn? Is that you?’
She waited, her head tilted to the side, listening. The whimpering changed pitch. She stepped forward again. ‘Who’s there? Who is it?’
She had gone beyond the garden now, past the wall and into the meadow where there was no path. A few paces more and she trod on something soft. She stumbled, her arms out, her knees sinking into warmth.
‘Anwyn!’ Her favourite dog. Her old friend. The golden fur and the black eyes. She shuffled backwards, caught his head in her hands, and clutched tightly onto his ears even though she could feel something wet, something warm. The animal whimpered again and his eyes closed against her hands. ‘Anwyn!’
Behind her the long dry grass snapped and broke. A foot in a boot nudged Anwyn’s rump and then a single sudden wrench pulled her to her feet. She could just see the cloth of a jacket: good stuff, too good for anyone she knew. She tried to pull herself away but whoever was holding her had a grip like lockjaw.
‘Leave me alone. Let me go.’ She lurched forward with her head, her mouth open. Some of her teeth were loose. She left one of them embedded in the hand of the man who held her. He cried out, tried to shove her away but she went for him again, using her nails as well this time. He backed away gaining enough momentum to sweep forward again with his fist, cracking it smartly against her chin so she crumpled immediately onto the carcass of her dog.
‘Behave now will you, gwrach?’
She moaned softly into Anwyn’s fur.
‘You had Sir Philip’s letter, didn’t you?’ The boot nudged at her just as it had nudged at the dog, ‘You have to be out. Today. Heddi. Understand? Your son, the one with big ideas, didn’t vote for him. His Lordship didn’t like that.’
‘Probably can’t read, anyway.’ Another voice, and then another boot joining the first one, trying to turn her over as if she was something dirty that had been dumped there and needed to be inspected. ‘Is she hurt?’
‘Not much. The gwrach went for me, Trev. Look. Am I bleeding?’
Trevor sniggered. ‘Nothing your Nerys can’t lick away. What did you have to hit her for?’
‘She’d have killed me, man.’
Trevor snorted. ‘Well, you can take her in if she’s a mess.’ The boots stopped their probing. ‘It’s clear up there now, is it?’
‘Still full of her cach, I expect.’
‘Good. We need some tinder to get it going, Joni boy.’
‘You’re not going to let her back in first?’
‘She had her chance. Now you get her down to town while I see to business up here.’ Trevor’s boot gave the silent mound in front of them another small nudge. ‘She got anyone, beside that la-di-dah son of hers?’
‘Oh aye, she pupped all right, a litter of little wasters. A son and a couple of daughters in those sties by the river.’
‘Well, let them see to her.’ He raised his voice. ‘The least they can do, eh, old woman?’
Joni knelt down and levered up her head. ‘Cach. I didn’t hit her that hard.’ He let the head fall again and then dragged at the arm.
Trevor laughed. ‘Looks like you’re going to be in the llaca when they see that, fy ffrind.’
Joni paused, held the old face with both hands and bellowed into it. ‘If anyone asks, you fell. Understand, you old crone? You fell.’
They saw the fire from the lakeside: a glow on the hill that drew the eye. But it was the nose that had been drawn first: burning, a rich odour of something other than wood. People said it was the smell of a life burning; all its hopes, its memories and disappointments. The old woman would not be consoled. Her daughters and then her granddaughters took turns in bathing her wound and talking to her, but she would not speak back. For days she sat outside their house in the street, on the wall and then on a chair, watching where a spiral of smoke beyond the lake grew smaller. People said she couldn’t see and yet still she watched. And when it was entirely gone her eyes closed. Days later, when she opened them again it was obvious to everyone that her mind had gone too.