From Across the Ancient Waters (2 page)

“Over the side!” sounded cries from all parts of the ship. “Save yourselves … she’s tearing apart … we’re going down!”

In panic, most of the crew leaped overboard to keep from being knocked unconscious on the lurching deck. Within minutes the brigantine’s three lifeboats were in the water. Whether they would fare better than the mother ship was doubtful.

There was one on board, however, who did not so hastily leap to his doom. He would outwit the legendary serpent of the deep with more than a brief prolonging of his own life. He had seen the signs an hour before as the winds whipped up the frothing cauldron. He knew what must be the result. He knew these waters better than his fellows. From the shape and flow of the waves, he had deduced what even the captain had not realized, that land could not be far off.

As his mates struggled above deck, he descended into the depths, to the captain’s quarters, empty now except for its most precious cargo. With the floor pitching and yawing under his feet, he lugged a great black chest from the closet. The thing was nearly too heavy to lift. He could not hope to swim a foot bearing it. The contents would sink faster than a great iron anchor. But there might yet be a way to save the treasure within it.

With all his might, he lifted the reliquary and struggled toward the stairs. Inch by inch he made his way up then onto the next flight. A great crash sent the box from him as he toppled onto his back. Luckily its lock held. He scrambled to his feet, retrieved his booty, and continued toward the sea-deck. Hearing both masts crack, followed by shouts everywhere, he knew the ship’s fate. If he could just get himself and the box overboard.

He reached the air to see lifeboats being tossed from above. All about, his fellows were scrambling overboard. No one paid him heed. None saw what he lugged behind him.

Another lurch of the deck sent the chest from him again. Picking himself up, he dragged his bounty toward a mass of corked netting. Hastily he wrapped it amid several folds, securing the strands to its precious load.

The
Rhodri Mawr
swayed one final time then lurched sideward. The motion flung him off his feet, over the bulwark, and into the sea, tangled in a mass of cord and chest and hemp and cork. Bobbing up into the dim light of dusk, he gasped for air. A length of cord remained connected to the bulwark. In seconds the sinking ship would pull the chest and netting and himself down with it.

A wave dashed him below the surface. He sent his fingers groping toward the sheath at his side. As his head surfaced again, his hand bore aloft a shiny blade. He plunged through the netting toward the ship.

A minute more and the
Rhodri Mawr
capsized to its side. Half its deck was now underwater, its keel exposed, the lower hold filling rapidly.

As the ambitious pirate felt himself pulled down in the sinking vortex, three quick slashes from his knife released him safely from the doomed ship, adrift with a lifecraft of cork and netting.

Thirty seconds later, the mighty vessel above him tipped further and slowly sank out of sight.

The rocky shoals of this coast were unforgiving. It took not many minutes for the squall to reduce the three lifeboats to floating debris. Futilely gasping for breath between twenty-foot waves, those of the crew who had trusted them found themselves clinging to mere scraps of wood. Most would not be heard from again. As they had given their lives to the sea, the depths now became their final resting place. If the serpent Gwbert-ryd was near, he must certainly be satisfied with this day’s work.

The great hull slowly settled to the bottom and came to rest almost in one piece. There the waters, though frigid, were calm. After its gallant struggle, the
Rhodri Mawr
could finally rest in peace.

No one ever saw the tangled mass of ship’s netting, held afloat by great balls of cork no storm could sink, bobbing up and down as it bore two parcels—one human, the other filled with that which men would kill for—away from the wreckage toward the coast of Mochras Head, overlooked through the mists of the storm, by the green hills of Snowdonia.

Stranger in North Wales 1867

Strange Benefactress

A
girl of indeterminate age stole with stealthy step into a narrow lane leading perpendicular to the central dirt road of a coastal village in North Wales.

Whether she had just pinched a sweetie from the post or a halfpenny roll from the baker, the quick furtive glance behind as she disappeared from view of the three or four humble shops of the place would surely prompt an observer to think, whatever her business, that she was up to no good.

The tiny flaxen scamp was soon swallowed by shadows of high stone rising on both sides of her. Immediately she broke into a run.

Noiseless as they were swift, her steps took her quickly through the buildings of the village. Moments later she was racing across a wide green pasture. Several black-and-white cattle grazing in its midst paid the flight of the girl no heed.

In truth, the small Celtic lass was no thief at all. That her two hands and the single pocket of her threadbare dress were empty gave all the proof necessary that nothing untoward had taken place during the three or four minutes in which she had darted into the village and out again unseen. In actual fact, her exit had been made with one less encumbrance on her person than she had entered with. Her errand on this day had been one of giving not taking. She had been discharging a debt of kindness from her young heart.

The only evidence left behind that she had been in Llanfryniog at all was a small bouquet of wildflowers—dandelions and daisies mostly, with a few yellow buttercups sprinkled among them—plucked on her way into the village from the field next to the one through which she now ran. She would have left something of greater value on the latch to Mistress Chattan’s side door if she had had it. But the blooms were free and abundant, available to all for the having, and the only gift she could afford to bequeath. Flowers were thus the normal commodity of the unusual commerce in which she engaged.

At this hour of late afternoon, the front door of the inn swung back and forth on its hinges every few minutes. This was the time of day when the region’s miners came to relax with their afternoon pint before trudging home to their suppers. Already the place was bustling with animated talk and laughter as ale and an occasional whiskey flowed from Mistress Chattan’s hand. The tiny bouquet on the door of the lane that opened into her private quarters remained unseen for some time.

What manner of woman it was who thus served the men of the mine their daily ration of liquibrious good cheer was an inquiry that would have provoked heated discussion among the respectable wives and mothers of Llanfryniog. Though they were no more genteel than she, they were far from pleased that their husbands made such regular visits to her establishment. That the thirsty miners and fishermen of the region contributed so much to the health of Mistress Chattan’s cash box was as much a grief to their wives as it was a boon to the innkeeper. No one knew Mistress Chattan’s antecedents. Neither were they inclined to ask about them. But the women were suspicious. They would cross the road if they saw her ahead, like the priest and Levite of old, in order to pass by on the other side, little knowing what curses and imprecations she muttered under her breath against them.

Having left the small floral token of goodwill, not fragrant but nonetheless precious in the eyes of him who made girls and flowers and surly old women together, one would assume the recipient and the girl on intimate terms and that the discovery would bring a smile to the good Mistress Chattan’s lips.

In fact, only the day before the proprietress of Llanfryniog’s single inn—which boasted only three little used rooms but whose pub contained six frequently used tables—had given the girl a rude whack along the side of the head. This had been followed by a string of harsh words that ought not to be heard from a lady’s lips.

But Mistress Chattan was no lady. And when she discovered the small nosegay on her door later that evening, a silent oath passed those same lips, more vile than anything spoken against her customers’ wives. She knew whence came the gift and was anything but grateful.

On one thing were the wives of Llanfryniog and Mistress Chattan agreed—the young imp and daughter of Codnor Barrie was a menace.

Half the women of the village, like Mistress Chattan on this day, had at one time or another been the recipient of some such insignificant remembrance, usually wildflowers, from the strange benefactress of Llanfryniog. To chastise her or tell her to mind her own business, in the words of Solomon, only succeeded in heaping burning coals upon their own heads. Where one nosegay had been the previous day, a larger one would be found the next.

Most had learned that the best way to keep little Gwyneth a safe distance from their homes was to bite their tongues. Their policy was either to ignore her or treat her with distant civility. Rebuke or anger acted as too ready an incentive to the girl to repay evil with kindness—a sentiment they would all have endorsed in church every Sunday but which, when they found themselves on the receiving end of it, they found disconcerting in the extreme. Where she had come by such an absurd notion, they could only guess.

“There goes the Barrie girl,” said one of the village wives to her neighbor over the low stone wall between the gardens at the back of their two cottages.

Both women paused a moment and watched as the unruly head of white sped through the field of green.

“Aye,” sighed the other. She added a significant click of her tongue for emphasis. “But where does she come by her strange ways?”

“From her mother, some say.”

“Mere gossip. No one on this side ever saw the mother.”

“She must have been an ill one, to have given the world such a girl.”

“‘Tis the auld grannie, if ye be asking me.”

“She’s no grannie to the lass.”

“Who’s kin is she, then?”

“The father’s, I’m thinking. Though what relation I can’t rightly say.”

“What of the girl’s mother, then?”

“They say she was cursed with the evil seed.”

“Where did you hear such a thing, Niamh?”

“From them that know.”

“Nobody knows who she was, except that she came from over the water, where the man should never have gone looking for a woman. I hear she had the blood of Irish kings in her veins.”

“Now ‘tis you who’s spinning tales, Eilidh. How would an honest man like Barrie have got such a wife? Whether her blood ran blue or no, I can’t say, but ‘tis more likely that of knaves.”

“Aye, ye may be right. There’s rascals and kings alike above us.”

“Whatever the color of her blood, the mother passed
something
to the girl that was not altogether of this world.”

“Unless it came from her daddy.”

“Codnor Barrie? No, I’m thinking it must have come from the mother or the grannie’s side.”

“No matter. ‘Tis with us now. And none can escape whatever it be till she’s gone back to wherever she came from.”

The Gray Cliffs of Mochras Head

T
he course taken by the girl as she disappeared from the two observant busybodies led south of the village. Beyond the grazing cattle behind her, she ascended a gradual slope of uncultivated moorland and soon arrived onto the precipitous promontory known as Mochras Head.

Having completed her errand of grace, she skipped merrily over the terrain of gentle green as if possessing no care in the world. That the plateau across which her steps carried her overlooked a peaceful sea from a height of at least two hundred feet above the craggy coastline caused this Celtic nymph no alarm. She had roamed every inch of these regions since she could walk. The mystery of the sea lay in the depths of her being. Her soul felt its majesty, though she knew not why. These high perches above it were her favorite places in all the world.

Her father taught her that the cliff distinguishing this seawardmost point on the eastern curve of Tremadog Bay was not to be feared, and she trusted her father. Only she must keep three paces from it, he said. From there she might feast upon the blues and greens and grays of the sea to her heart’s content and dream of what lay beyond.

Though they knew nothing about her, everyone in the village knew that the girl’s mother had come from across these waters. Codnor Barrie loved the sea for his mysterious wife’s sake. His daughter shared the mother’s blood and was likewise a child of the sea. The father saw in young Gwyneth’s countenance daily reminders of the only woman he had ever loved. He knew that the sights, sounds, and smells of the water drew the girl and made her happy. Whatever evil the women of Llanfryniog attributed to the radiance shining out of them, the far-off expression in Gwyneth’s pale young eyes kept the melancholy memory of his wife quietly alive in the humble man’s heart.

The girl paused and stooped to her knees. She then stretched flat onto her stomach and propped her chin between two small fists. There she lay and gazed out to sea.

It was a warm afternoon in early June. The fragrance of the new spring growth of grass on which she lay wafted gently on the warm sea breezes. What rose in her heart as she lay on the grassy carpet were feelings and sensations no words could explain, no images contain. The world’s splendor exhilarated her spirit. For Gwyneth Barrie, that was enough.

How long she lay, she could not have said. When the sun shone and school was over and her papa was at the mine, time did not exist. The sea stretching out like an infinite blanket of green, the moor above it, the hilly woodland rising away eastward toward the peaks of Snowdonia—these all comprised the imaginative playground of her childhood. She was at home on every inch of the landward expanse of them.