Wassail

By G. Frank Kirkpatrick

FROM
PLANE

HORIZON TO HORIZON, A OF DOLOROUS LEAD RAIN

COVERED THE EARTH.

THE

HAD HOUNDED ME ALL ALONG MY JOURNEY.

ID

DECIDED TO AVOID

THE MOTORWAYS ON

CHRISTMAS
GOOD

EVE, FIGURING TO MAKE AS

A TIME ALONG THE VALLEY ROADS UP THROUGH

POWYS,

OVER THE

WIRRAL AND THEN THROUGH THE

TUNNEL TO HOME.

ID WORKED IN

CARMARTHEN FOR A FEW YEARS, IT

BEING THE FIRST PERMANENT

PLACEMENT OF

HAD AFTER A YEAR TEACHING, AND

SUPPLY

USUALLY IT WAS QUICKER TO TAKE THE COAST ROADS UP THROUGH

ABER OR FOLLOW THE M4 ALONG

AND THEN UP TO THE TIME OF YEAR,

M6. THIS
THE FOR

THOUGH, RUN

TAILBACKS

WOULD

MILES, IF THE ROADS WERE OPEN

AT ALL. BEEN A

THERE HAD ALREADY HAD

FEW DIVERSIONS AS FOR

FLOODED

ROADS

COMING

DOWN THE OTHER SIDE OF THE

BEACONS. Progress had been good for most of the day, though, and Id been able to stop in

Llandrindod for lunch in a faded little teashop. The

doilies

and

Victoriana

sat

strangely with the strong tea and chicken tikka sandwiches I had for my lunch. Getting out of Wells was a bit more difficult, as the water was already up. My original plan was to pass through Newtown and then onto Wrexham, but the sat-nav on my phone kept sending me uphill, into

Snowdonia, when I reached the flooded roads. At first, this

made sense, heading for higher ground to avoid the deluge. Eventually, I would have to head east, or or into not England, that was Port.

whether Chester

Ellesmere

Instead, the roads lead up into the low cloud and soon the sun seemed as though it had sunk

beneath the road. It was only after passing through Bala that I realized how far off course I was. The GPS on my phone

seemed to be working, but I had had no bars since crossing a swollen and seething Severn as I headed north from

Newtown.

The old Peugeot

was holding up, considering how much water it had crashed

through and how many miles, up and down, it had done today. The rain was beginning to steam the windows as the temperature dropped, closing in like the clouds. There was another switchback along the road, taking me off in another direct with no option of

changing course. The road was

greasy with rain, the tarmac glistening like snakeskin. A huge sheet of water sizzled on my right, the scree and scrub of the mountainside on my left. straight and The road was stable, so I

watched the rain bounce off the water. In the gravely

angled sunlight, you could see

shadows beneath the surface: slanted slate roofs, the tower of a chapel and the stubble of headstones at its base. Streets still waited beneath the water, the buildings alongside them gutted and picked clean by the current: having the thirst of a city drowned a village.

They must have opened the reservoir further down the

valley ready for the rain and let it run down. The only structures in the valley that lay above the waterline were a small cottage near to where the road crossed the crashing river and a tiny pub for hill walkers on the opposite side. The cottage was a picturesque affair, layers of

dry stone built up to a slope of black slate, dull in the dying light. I had my lights on, cats eyes winking at me from the road, as I pulled up to the pub. A bedraggled beer garden lay against the yawning gravel expanse of the empty car park. The sign showed a shaggy dog holding a trumpet up to the moon. I did not have to walk

far

through

the

dismal

weather, pulling in practically to the door. Once through the porch, I was stood practically at the bar with its brass work and hand pumps. A little to the left, was a red brick hearth and a crackling fire. There was a middle-aged man behind the bar, his hair as sparse as his moustache was bristly. He

wore a scowl and an old plaid shirt the colour of porridge. Are you still serving food? One of us had to break the silence and my accent betrayed me as English right away. There was a staccato

burst of Welsh, a language I still had not managed to

master after half a decade and

a woman about the same age came out from the back of the pub. She bustled over to me with a menu and warmly asked me what I would like to drink, as though it was a foregone conclusion that I was thirsty. A quick look at the taps and I chose a pint of Postmistress bitter, sure that Id be on my way again soon and would

need a clear head.

Thawing

out by the fire, pint in hand, I checked my phone: Still no

reception and it had gone five at night. expecting My brother was me around half

seven. I asked the barman if they had a pay-phone and he pointed to a door labelled toilets. There was an old unit about four feet off the floor,

covered in cigarette burns and bi-lingual taxi cards. I called my brother, Paul, to explain where I was. Ive got a bit lost, theres been a lot floods and Ive ended up in Snowdon, in a pub called... I checked the cork board above the phone... The Gabriel Hound. Its still

tipping down, so Im going to get something to eat, see if the rain dies off and then head back through Chester. Good luck, the river has flooded all the way through Chester to Llangollen. I

figured thats what would be keeping you. Why didnt you call?

I havent had a signal since lunchtime, Im

calling on a pay-phone. Bloody hell, do they still have those in Wales? risk driving in this Dont rain,

though. See if you can hole up somewhere for the night and get down tomorrow. The roads will be quieter anyway, then,

and well hold up Christmas dinner for you. The landlady was waiting with a pad when I got back to my seat by the fire, ready to take my order. I had had a

look at the usual pub grub on the menu while I was settling in and a look at the specials board on my way to the phone.

On a wretched night like this, it would have to be the beef stroganoff to fill me up and warm me from the inside out. I had a cup of coffee while I waited, served in silence from the barman. When my meal

came out in a big white bowl, with a crusty cob on the side, I asked if they did rooms or if they were any hotels nearby

that were open during the offseason. This really put the cat amongst the pigeons. There

was heated exchange between the two in clattering Cymri. It started with him muttering into his moustache before she replied in a reasonable tone. With each exchange, he got

sterner and she got louder, until she finally snapped: ...And thats enough,

Howell, were not sending him out into a night like this, tonight of all nights. He

stalked off into the back of the bar while she took a deep breath and turned back to me. Theres a little cottage, up the

way.

No one lives there and

were the care-takers, see? You can stay there the night, if youd like. After provoking an argument like that, I could hardly refuse. I wolfed down the eaten stroganoff, since my not having in

lunch

Llandrindod Wells and drained my coffee. Since the bar was now unmanned, I waited for

the woman to come back for the plates, huddling next to the fire. With the plates cleared, she came back with a huge iron key, blackened with age and a slim bottle of pale whisky with no label. Theres wood in the basket and thisll help keep you warm. Just dont go wandering

about in the dark. You dont want to end up at the bottom of that lake. Promise me, she said as she offered the key, that you wont be off

wandering about. I made my oath and took the key from her, following her out to the car park. An old estate was

waiting behind my little 107 on the gravel, blocking me in until

it moved off. As they pulled out onto the road, I followed them back to the cottage I had passed earlier. I fetched my bags from the car, while the landlady started the fire that had been built in the hearth. As she

handed me the key with one hand and the whisky with the

other, there was an almighty thump from the door as the barman hammered a nail into an old horseshoe, hanging it against the door. The woman looked from him to me and said again: Promise me you wont go wandering. Just settle in

here for the night.

Of course, I said but Ill need to be away early in the morning. Can I pay you now and just drop the key off as I leave, I dont want to disturb your Christmas anymore than I already have. No, no, no. We cant

charge you for this, for charity at Christmas. Just promise me,

you wont go wandering about outside. Again, I assured her that I had no wish to spend my Christmas Eve roving over

Snowdonia in the rain. With the key in my hand and the horseshoe fixed firmly to the door, they both wished me a merry Christmas (the only

English I heard pass his lips) and were off back down the

road. With nothing else to do, I watched their car pass the half-mile or so of mountain road and then looked out over the reservoir. In the moon

light, it looked like frosted glass, albeit with a weird life of its own as the rain beat down up on it. The only light for

miles came from the Gabriel Hound, the gibbous moon and

distant lights of the dam at the other end of the lake. The

stars were all swathed with rainclouds, peeping out

through the tears. After finding the loo, and making a few attempts on the pull chain to get it flushing, I found an old cut glass tumbler in the cottages small kitchen. I

put in slightly more than an inch of the blonde whisky and took a sip. It was fruity and peaty, reminiscent of home baking and quite unlike the blended Scotch I was used to. I started thinking: whose cottage this was and why it was empty, so I began to explore, glass in hand. There were shelves of

books in every cranny, poetry

in

English

and

in

Welsh,

several books on King Arthur and the Mabinogion: the books of Math and Pwyll and the children of Llyr. There was no television, no radio and I was lucky to find a socket to charge my phone, so I plugged in and picked a slim tome from off the shelf. It was the only English volume by Mathilda Norman

amongst the many Welsh ones. According to the back of the book, she was the last

headmistress of Capel Anfyn school, before it was drowned beneath the dams. There was something of the Romantic poets in her work, meter and metaphor and emotion welling up from the

chthonic past. The first of the poems was a sonnet called the Choir of Arawn and contains couplets like: Long is the night and long is the waiting Of Dyfeds false lord, for his Damnd to sing.

Throughout the fourteen lines, it describes how the Devil, horned and hoofed,

leads his chorus of lost souls out to add the wicked and unwary to their number. It is unashamedly overwrought,

clearly the work of someone to whom English is a studied language.

The

next

poem

was

Plutos Lake and I held out no hopes for this as Fleetwood Mac queued up on my phone. Thankfully, it was Peter

Greens Fleetwood Mac; Stevie Nicks singing Rhiannon would have been a bit rich. But the psychedelic drone, the sense of doom fitted perfectly with the imagery of the poem: a land of

the drowned and forgotten, of being buried first under the earth and then under the water: Winter deep beneath Water, black above; so very so very

Dog and deer and lap wing stolen, Pomegranate price of Ab Don. After topping up the fire, I managed to read a third poem, before I refilled my whisky, The Turning of the Wheel. A timely piece, if youll

excuse the pun, given all the Mayan panic the other day: For nothing ends that had ever begun, But only fades, so to become brighter Later, when the

stars are clear again.

It was as I filled the glass, the slim octavo open to a poem called The Wygtllyn, when I noticed a light, where before there was only darkness. From the open window, I could see a pale green wisp of light

reflecting on the water. It took me some moments to realise that this light was neither alone nor above the water.

Like

fireflies,

the

lights

emerged from the water into the night, not much clearer in the haze of the rain. They were lanterns of burning harlequin green light, casting a wan, thin glow over a procession of figures stumbling from the waters edge. figures were swathed The in

soaking

cerements

and Great

wreathed in chains.

black hounds stalked amongst them and at their head was a figure, more shadow than seen, with eyes of malachite fire and thin hands seemingly carved from jade. From the procession

came a soaring glossolalia of

harmonies

and

counter-

harmonies. The language they were singing was not Welsh and it was not English, but it was certainly a language: and soft

bubbling

vowels

consonants, a definite order and meaning just beyond the reach of understanding. Sweet sopranos chimed in concord with pealing tenors, a tectonic

baritone counterpoint moving below it all. The song had a broken rhythm, hard to follow and jarring for all its beauty. As the volume increased, I made two terrifying

realizations: there were a lot of them and they were getting closer.

The procession, dragged

shadow as the

led

the

others and

their

fetters

chanted their dismal aria. Up the bank and over the road, they headed straight for the cottage, straight for me. I

could see them clearly; opaque and as real as anyone I had ever met, only the saturated palette of their flesh and their

eyes, black as a new moon, betrayed them. The creature

with the burning eyes did not pause as the others did, the drowned grindylows fanning out around the house with their barghests at their feet. That was when I realized: The shades were visible

through where the shadow

should have been. It was close enough to cottage now that I should have been able to see its own shrouds and shackles, but all I could see were the hands and the eyes, burning with a lambent light, and the soaked chorale behind them. A wave of vertigo roiled through me, I toppled to my knees as the severed hands and incorporeal

eyes approached the doorstep. The last thing I remember is the sound of those hands wrap, wrap, wrapping on the door... The cottage was freezing as the sun streamed through the

window from across the tarn. But it was dry and that was all that mattered. I grabbed my bag and went straight to my

car. Locking up the cottage, I saw the horseshoe broken and snapped as though by some extreme cold. After shoving

the key through the letterbox of the Gabriel Hound, I drove out of the valley as fast as the wet and winding roads would allow. It was not until that

reservoir and Capel Anfyn were

out of sight before I could stop and resume my course...

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