Two Chapels

They landed in the dark coming from a stormy sea on to a sand beach. There was no sign of a castle but the waves and the wind had blown them off course, probably to the south. It was a cold North wind. They had lost several men in the waves just trying to pull the boats in up the sand; the water was so cold and the waves so strong in the dark moving like the muscles of an enormous creature. Its black glassy waves swallowed the men without them uttering a sound.

They had wanted to land at the castle which was somewhere on the coast here but there were no lights and no buildings. Looking over the waves peaking white in front of them, they saw only a curve of light sand and mountains behind, big black mountains.

But there was no way back, and they could never set out on the dark stormy waters again. They were here in this new land – the hundred – running away from persecution in their own land.

The women, scarves pulled over their hair, looked out over the shoulders of the men gathered in the front of the boat. Behind the beach was a flat grey meadow, or what looked like one. They were already thinking that they’d make a fire when they landed, to dry the clothes, then they’d try to put up the canvas shelters. Only they had to get past the crashing waves, and take the children through the roarers and the white foam.

The noise was incredible – a constant din – like howling wind at the top of the mountain. But this was the constant crash of waves curling over, beating the banks of sand then curling under themselves, sucking long white trails of foam underneath and out past the boats again.

Men were jumping out. The ten boats were close enough to be pulled ashore. They left the tall prows and jumped into water waist deep. Their faces were set in grim determination, hanging onto the prow, holding a coil of dark wet rope ready to dash inland to try to pull them ashore.

The men moved forward at last, waiting for the waves to move their way, using the forward force of the water to wade in and up a final little slope of stones and shingle. And there they sat – just a few resting, holding the ropes. Then they pushed ashore hauling on the ropes pulling with the waves, not looking back, bending their backs with the black mountains behind them.

The boats started coming ashore and the women and children and the remaining men heard the scrape of sand underneath wood. The waves were smaller and the noise less deafening. The women tried to get out holding up their skirts, screaming and shrieking at the cold bite of the water. They carried the little children, and the bigger ones walked or stumbled beside their mothers. None stayed dry. All shivered and moaned, beaten into submission by the wild edge of the land.

But what was this land? Beyond the white beach now gleaming weakly in faint moonlight, the mountains became a little clearer.

They sat in the sand and on the edge of the little meadow trying to warm up. The men went around looking for wood to burn and a place to shelter. There were few trees here in the salty spray. There were dark woods far up on the mountains but nothing here.

They would have to get warm or they would all die before dawn, so their search for shelter became desperate. There were creeks in the meadow which was really a salt marsh. The streams were muddy gullies with rich grass, distributaries of a river further up toward the mountains. This freshwater found its way to the sea somewhere along the beach. In the shelter of these little gullies they sat together watching the sky darken and lighten with flying clouds, longing for the dawn.

But before dawn there came light. Not grey light of the early sun but yellow light of burning. A few of the travellers stood up, their heads in the biting wind of the salt marsh. They whispered down to the others. There was a welcoming party! There were lights coming down the lane. Lights! There was a line of men with lighted torches!

The Irish wondered whether the Welsh would be friendly.

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On a morning five hundred years later, a woman walked in the same salt marsh along the creeks. Now there was a line of high dunes which had not been there half a millennium before. The dunes, which were yellow or white in the sun and grey in cloudy weather, shielded the worst of the wind so that the marsh had long grass and was good for sheep, and might even have been good enough for cattle.

The woman’s name was Gwen. It was impossible to guess what age she was, and people said she barely seemed even female, more like a man and woman at the same time. Her face was red and deeply lined and there was a hard squareness in her jaw which seemed a little masculine, but there was also a softness around her eyes. The truth was that she was a woman in middle years who lived alone and had never married. She had been solitary and odd when young, and not pretty, and so her father had never married her off. She became solitary preferring to look after the sheep – and after her father and mother had died she had inherited the farm, and had become even more solitary and odd. Her sheep were her companions and she lived in a stone farmhouse at the edge of the hills so that these salt marshes were her meadows and the wind off the sea was a wind she felt every day of her life.

She knew the grass meadows, the creeks and the paths through the big dunes down to the beach. The sea was always cold and she had never even put her bare foot into the water. She had constructed a simple fence of wooden poles that prevented her sheep getting to the beach because she was frightened of what the water might do to them. But sometimes she’d go through the dunes to the beach and look about. There would be stranded jelly fish and dead crabs. She would stand at the edge of the water and look out and imagine the creatures that lived under the cold green waves.

Walking back she always passed the chapel. It was a strange sight because its short Celtic tower, its rough stone walls, were half buried in the sand which blew inland everyday a little further. She always stopped to look. Even in her lifetime the chapel had become more and more buried by a great ridge of sand, perfectly smooth like a wing, that extended from a dune and climbed the seaward wall of the chapel and was almost at the level of the stone tiled roof. No one worshipped there, but the place had a strange dignity; and she thought of it as her own chapel – her own place of worship – because it seemed to be on land that belonged to her.

She always stopped to look and sometimes she stepped through the gateway that long ago had lost its gate into the tiny chapel yard. On the landward side there were aromatic plants growing because the sand had not encroached far – sea campion, marram grass and even a honeysuckle. Amongst the green were a few graves so old that none were vertical anymore. One was flat and you had to walk on it to get through the gate. On its surface and on most of the other graves were strange letters that Gwen could not read. She read Welsh very badly, and English worse, but even she could see that the language was foreign. People said around the villages that the language was Irish, but Gwen doubted this because there was no one around there who was Irish. At least as far as she knew.

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Gwen walked back over the salt grass and around some of the deep creeks. The sheep were mostly further up the meadow where the land was drier. She had noticed over years of tending them that they always gathered high up the meadows away from the sea when it was windy, and when it was warmer, they would gather around the creeks or even go as far as the wall around the chapel close to the dunes.

She knew all her sheep by sight and even had names for a few. Some had personalities in the sense that they were more adventurous or stupid than the others; some would wander far from the best grass meadows up into the hills where the walls were not well kept. She had lost a few sheep up there, but the weather was often so bad, and the heather so thick, that she would seldom go up to try and find them. A few sheep got their heads stuck in hedges or walls, and found that their backward curving horns would trap them. This is how Gwen lost most sheep. They would simply stand stupidly – trying to get out – until they exhausted themselves and then they would either die of thirst or starve. But she knew the stupid ones and she would often be able to guess where they had gone and go and rescue them.

She was used to the sheep and she managed all through the year without any help. Through most of the summer she moved the sheep each day around the pastures, making sure that they didn’t overgraze the best spots. Then she would supervise lambing which was hard; in the late winter and early spring it often meant going late into the fields to help a sheep giving birth to its lamb.

But in the spring there was something she couldn’t do – cut the wool. This was done by hired men. They came from the village and went around all the remote farms cutting wool, and she’d even sell the wool to them. This was her business. She grew a few vegetables but sheep were really her life – and the fields and the sea.

Gwen’s cottage was two fields beyond the salt marsh at the edge of the rougher fern-filled fields where the hill country started. It was small and south-facing in a hollow of holly trees and yellow gorse bushes that opened toward the estuary and the mountains. She couldn’t  see the high mountains that were only a few miles to the east because they were hidden by a hill shoulder. The shoulder and the foothills were covered with dense woods of dwarf oaks and dark ash and elder. Beyond them the purple heather started and there were no farms because nothing could be raised and fed on the heather.

After moving the sheep around one of the lower fields and checking the state of one of the field walls, Gwen walked back to the cottage. There was mud in the track that led to the house because it had been raining and in the mud were tracks of two men. She was very sensitive to her surroundings because she had farmed these few fields all her life. She had a kind of sixth sense that told her if someone was around and it was this that had alerted her, and why she was returning to the cottage earlier in the morning than she normally would on a sunny day. The tracks confirmed that she had visitors. But when she got to the cottage, where the path wound around the gorse bushes, she saw that there was no one at the door and that no one was waiting to see her. Whoever the visitors had been, they had gone away when there had been no answer at the door.

Gwen, like all the other hill farmers, never locked anything. In fact she owned no keys at all. The visitors would simply have been able to push the door to enter the cottage, and she half expected someone to be there but there was no one.

The room was its normal dark self. Comfortable and perhaps a little more feminine than you would have expected. There was a big welsh hearth and a big copper kettle, a table, a book shelf with only the Welsh Bible – and two chairs. One –an arm chair that Gwen always sat in day and night – the other a stool by the hearth where she sometimes sat to cook. The grandmother clock stood against the wall.

There was a narrow bed in the corner, though sometimes during the spring lambing she slept in the armchair. There were always clothes drying by the hearth on a drying frame. When she looked, she thought that the room was nice – and that it smelt nicely of strong tea and wood. She liked the resonant tick of the old clock.

She stood in the open door and looked south across the low coastal plain at the sea and then the estuary beyond and thought how lucky she was to see such a thing every day of her life. But she was also slightly perturbed by the visitors. There had been two, and she only had visitors outside of the wool season – the postman and her companion farmer Mr Williams – and she knew the boot tracks of both of these men. The tracks had not made by those boots. And she had never had a visit from two men at once before.

She went inside to get her clay pipe and stood for a moment lighting it and puffing the smoke, looking at the seagulls flying over the sea. Two visitors! She hoped they would come again.

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She went back out into the fields after a meal of an apple and an oatcake. The view had changed as it always did. This was a place of changeable weather – the wind came from the west and it brought rain and clouds with it always. People said that on the coast they got the weather of Ireland. On very clear days – perhaps only a few days per year – it was possible to see the faint grey shapes of Ireland across the sea. She wasn’t sure whether these were mountains or just tricks that the atmosphere played on her eyes.

Now the sky was an angry grey and the fields that had been bright in slanting sun were darker and greyer. The whitewashed farms and cottages in the villages didn’t show up any more as pale boxes in the landscape, but had hidden themselves in the meadows and the trees. The wind blew quite strong from the west. There were arcs of white waves in the distant bays to the south.

She walked to her most southerly fields. In the south of her land, the fields were smaller with quite high stone walls built long ago, long before her father and his father. But they slowed the wind a little bit. Here it might be possible to grow something – turnips or carrots or potatoes, perhaps just in the shadow of the north trending walls. But she had tried before and the soil was not good enough, perhaps it was too cold or wet. Perhaps there was not enough light close to the walls. Perhaps she hadn’t tried hard enough.

The sheep liked these fields and they would often stray down to the small fields where the grass was tall and tasty. But now in the early spring there was not always enough grass and sometimes the sheep would graze the grass too low. Then she would have to take her winter hay from the bales by the cottage and bring enough down for the sheep. This was hard work, back breaking. But it was worse cutting the hay in the late summer when it was hot and she would simply want to rest. Then she’d have to cut the long grass close to the cottage or on the edge of the rough ground and collect it up in bales so that it would keep for animal food during the winter storms.

But on this afternoon the sheep were happy and it was warm enough for them to sit in the shelter of the walls and sleep. It was still too cold at night for them to sleep then. Some of the lambs played between their tired mothers, also enjoying the warmth, possibly forgetting in their short memories the cold that came every night.

Gwen had an instinctive idea of the numbers of sheep she had and seemed to know immediately if any were missing. Almost all were here in the south fields but she knew there were ten in the coastal pasture near the church. So all were present and there were none that had strayed. She looked behind her at the mountains, which were very dark now that the sun had gone in and only the dark heather coloured them. There were clouds boiling on their sides high up and she knew it was raining there. The stream that passed below her cottage would soon swell all white with foam. It could rain very hard up in the mountains and she’d see lots of water pouring down the stream while the sun shone brightly where she was amongst the low pastures and the sea.

She thought that perhaps she might rest a little for the remainder of the afternoon – read her Bible or walk to the village. After all the sheep didn’t need her and it was the quietest time of the year after lambing and before the grass cutting and hay making. She looked out to the west wondering what the weather might bring later in the afternoon and saw two figures down on the beach. Her eyes were very sharp from always looking into the distance – so she could tell they were men, one wearing a very broad-brimmed hat. They walked along the beach a little and then disappeared into the dunes as if they had never been there.

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The village clustered around a sheltered hollow on one of the larger streams that flowed west off the mountains. It was only a few rough stone houses and a humpbacked bridge. Two of the houses had shops or stalls in the front room where bread and vegetables were sometimes sold. There was a small track – the only one that went deep into the mountains – that followed the stream east into a deep valley.

It was a long walk for Gwen, so she had to have good reason, and the weather had to be good. But she needed candles and salt for cooking. Also she thought she would buy a new knife because she had some ham at home and it was difficult to cut.

There was a little bit of rain in the wind as she descended and the stones in the floor of the path became slippery. In fact this path sometimes turned into a small steam in very wet weather so it was sunk into the soil some of the way. When you walked along, it was as if your head was down amongst the heather and you could hear the bees buzzing and the wind blowing through the rough heather branches.

The path crossed a field and then went along next to the stream and now it was only a few minutes to the village. The shopkeeper – a lady with red hair and a strange unpronounceable name – something like O’Mongain – owned the shop which sold vegetables and seeds and candles. Gwen was friendly with her and they were always able to talk about the weather or the things that the farmers were doing, or the state of the vegetables. This was about as close as Gwen ever got to other people, because of her strange looks and solitary ways. Gwen seemed rather sexless and her face was so weather-beaten. People in the area thought she was strange for living alone – for running a farm by herself, without a man.

But Gwen thought this was not her fault at all. She was not pretty. Her father wanted her to look after the farm. She was the only child. Perhaps it would have been better if she had married, but there were no men around. And what man would look at her? She didn’t own a mirror in her cottage, but when she saw herself in one – in the shop for instance – she was always shocked at how wild she had become. But the shock didn’t last long. She preferred to be in the fields with the sheep and she liked her life which she had grown into over the years.

‘There are potatoes, carrots, and tea, Mrs Jones’ said Mrs O’Mongain.

Gwen liked being called Mrs Jones, even though she was not married – Jones was her maiden name – but sometimes she was startled and looked behind her thinking that someone else was being addressed.

She answered in Welsh: ‘Tea! I will take some tea and vegetables. Just put them in the bag please’

‘And candles?’

Mrs O’Mongain knew exactly what Gwen bought every time and so would sometimes remind her of what to buy. She put a packet of candles in the bag.

Gwen took the bag and exchanged coins with Mrs O’Mongain. As she turned to leave she asked Mrs O’Mongain if she’d seen two men walking about. She mentioned that there was one with a wide-brimmed hat.

‘No. There are no visitors in the village, Mrs Jones. Where did you see them?’

‘On the beach this afternoon. And I think they even came to visit me this morning – while I was out’

‘Well that’s strange. What a shame you weren’t there to meet them’

Mrs O’Mongain smiled faintly and Gwen realised that she didn’t believe her. Perhaps she thought that Gwen dreamed of men visiting her. But she knew that there had been prints in the mud – and that there were probably prints in the dunes.

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Gwen lay listening to the wind. It was early, but after dark there was not much to do and she preferred not to burn the candles unless it was necessary.

The wind was always the same at night – something about the local land, the mountains and the sea always made the wind blow down the valleys across the coastal fields to the sea. Usually the wind reversed direction in the mornings.

But the wind! It was like thunder sometimes – there would be a distant roar because you could hear the effects of the wind on the trees high up and then the roar would come closer and closer and then suddenly it would be pouring over the roof of the cottage and then across to the beach. These rushes would come every five minutes.

All her life Gwen had fallen asleep to this great organic sound, as if the mountains were sighing with tiredness after each long day. The sounds slowly became part of her unconsciousness as her own mind rested after the day, and the long streams of air that passed overhead were transformed into dream sounds or parts of dreams that she never remembered in the morning. Sometimes the long sighing wind would slow close to dawn before it reversed and then she would wake disturbed by the differences in the sound.

And so it was this night. She woke to comparative silence. With the wind gone she heard the quiet cries of lambs in the lower fields and the far away sound of the waves. But lying, looking up at the ceiling, she thought she heard something else. There was a new sound she thought, though she could not define it or separate it from the other sounds. It was a sound from just outside. Perhaps near the door.

She lay still, quite sleepy. Not sure whether she was imagining something. She was disturbed; her normal placid existence had been affected by the visitors and by the sight of the men on the beach. She wasn’t sure if there was something or someone outside or not.

She listened but heard nothing more. She tried to resist sleep, but it came again.

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In the morning she had forgotten about the night-time sound, but thought she would look at the sheep in the lower field and in the marsh grass. Because it was cold again – the windows of the cottage were bright but steamed up with the cold air outside – she thought she would take some more hay down to the sheep. Also she wanted to look at the beach because she was curious about the men she had seen the day before.

She found herself hurrying to take the hay and get to the beach. She didn’t really know why.

The wind was stronger from the sea the closer she got and though it was sunny and bright it was still very cold, a few hours after dawn. She smelt the sea beyond the dunes and heard high birds circling overhead. The marsh grass was getting very green and the sand underneath it was light because it had been dry since last night. She made her way around the creeks to the first dunes. To her left was the chapel. She struggled over the loose sand and clumps of fragrant marram grass. A steep dune, the last before the beach, was always a struggle because no matter how hard you pushed down with our feet, the sand gave way. It was exhausting! But the view at the top was worth it and the blast of air that you got as you faced the pure sea was always a shock. The wind always blew there. She had never known a day when the air was still. From here the sand was less steep and sloped to the more gravelly surface of the upper beach.

Today the tide was low and there was stretch of dark sand, and the waves were churning far out. She could see a bank of sand far out past the first waves that sometimes appeared when the tide was at its lowest. The bank was known to appear more often now after the causeway had been built further up the coast for the railway that brought the slate from the mines in the mountains. The bank made navigating the sea around here difficult. She knew this even though she had never been in a boat because local fishermen said so – and how the bank could be very treacherous because it was stony and uneven.

She knew she was where the two men had been yesterday – and in the gravel and wetter sand of the beach, she quickly found their footprints. They were exactly the ones she’d seen by her cottage. So it was the visitors! She followed the tracks along the margin between the dune and the upper beach to an upright stone.

The stone was part of the old sea gate. Gwen had always found this a difficult name because there was no obvious sign of a gate here. It was just that the stone was called this. And what would a gate be for? She had played around this stone as a girl and it had always been part of her games, but in reality it was just a large upright stone, perhaps the height of her waist. It was very ancient – she had been told – and there had been some kind of gate here long ago. She remembered people in the village saying that there had not always been dunes here, and that at one time it had been possible to launch boats from there. Perhaps the boats had been tied to the stone?

She followed the tracks the other way, but it was difficult in the dunes. The tracks became simply shapeless depressions in the soft sand. But she could see them go around a steep dune face and then descend. She followed, half expecting to come across the two men sitting in the sand. But the indistinctness of their prints told her that they were long gone. The tracks descended toward the marsh side and to the western wall of the chapel.

Here the sand, in the shelter of the main dunes, was finer and more capable of keeping a track. The prints were very clear. She could even see the outlines of nails in the soles of one of the boot tracks. The tracks went around the rough wall of the chapel, and came back to the original place. The men had walked completely around the chapel. The little gateway had no tracks but here was no sand there to show them. In the sun the smell of the honeysuckle was lovely and it was getting warm, because there was so little wind behind the high dunes.

She opened the oak door and looked inside. The building was denuded of all furniture because the chapel was disused. There was only a long narrow space big enough for perhaps ten worshippers. There was a layer of thin sand that came in by the wind and in the layer were very clear prints of the boots. So they had been inside as well.

Perplexed by this and somehow dissatisfied with the way that her life had been disrupted in some indefinable way, she stood by the door thinking. Why would anyone be interested in a disused church? She felt like going into the village again to ask people what to do. But perhaps no one would believe her anyway? Maybe she was going mad?

Sighing deeply she shut the door behind her quietly and walked out into the sun and onto the nice carpet-like surface of the short marsh grass. She looked up at her cottage in the distance and the sheep dotted on the meadows and felt a little better. It was alright. There were visitors. It didn’t matter. She would just get on with her work.

Past the creeks and in the ferny field she stopped to inspect the stone walls, and looked back at the dunes.

No! Not again. They were there! She narrowed her eyes. Two figures in dark clothes in the dunes. The wind was in her eyes, but she could see that neither had a big hat. In fact… In fact they were different. There were two, but one was smaller than the other. She watched for a second. Two people on the beach. But this time it was clear: one was a man – tall, dark haired. The other was a woman – shorter – with a long grey coat.

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Now she was really unsettled. There were strangers everywhere, on the dunes and in the fields. She’d heard of sheep thieves – people that would come late at night with a cart or just with a few dogs – and they would take sheep. They would herd them up into the hills – somewhere far from the farm and kill them for the meat, and sell the meat. Sometimes the stolen sheep would be sold to other farmers in the area. But it was not common in her part of Wales. The farms were too small and people knew each other too well – and knew their sheep.

Gwen decided she would try to forget the strangers and concentrate on her work. In fact it wasn’t difficult because as she came into the first ferny field on the way back to the cottage she saw a lamb on its own. She knew the lamb. It was small and looked a week younger than the other lambs, even though it had been born about the same time. Gwen remembered worrying about the lamb after it had been born on a cold night a few weeks ago, because its mother hadn’t taken to it, had hardly seemed interested. She remembered watching its pathetic little long legged figure following its bewildered mother around the freezing field, the breath from both animals steaming in the morning air.

Now the air was warmer and balmier, but the lamb was still not being fed properly by its mother. She would have to take the lamb to the cottage and feed it with milk that she’d have to get from the village. If she wanted the lamb to survive.

She could take it to Mr Williams in the next farm, because he had a cow and always had milk. She could talk to him about the strangers, though now she was uncertain about what she should say, and was worried about being thought a little bit mad. But she was glad for something to do – something that could improve her mood and take away the apprehension that she felt.

She went to the cottage with the lamb under her arm. The poor little creature hardly made a sound and it struggled weakly against her. Its dark eyes seemed already empty and sad as if it was resigned to its fate.

There was a path from the cottage to the Williams farm that went through some of the dense woods at the base of the hills. The path was much quicker than walking along the main track. Though it was warm and had stayed dry for a while, the rocks of the path under the trees were still covered with slippery green moss and the low branches were shrouded in lichen like fine lace. The lamb sat in a small bag that Gwen held over her shoulder and poked its head comically out watching the track in front.

She smelt Mr Williams’ house before seeing it because there was a wood fire burning and blue smoke hung over the slate roof. Mr Williams’ house was larger than Gwen’s but it was untidier. Williams had had a wife but she had run away many years before with a sailor. Mr Williams had never really recovered and now distrusted all women profoundly and only maintained a friendship with Gwen because she seemed more like a man and was not pretty or feminine in any way.

Mr Williams had a very classic welsh face of dark hair, deep set eyes and heavy jaw and jowls. Because he was a little lazy, he had become heavy and he had a roll of fat under his chin that shook when he talked. Gwen was fascinated by this and always had to look away when he talked to her. She liked him and didn’t want to upset him.

He was very welcoming and took the lamb immediately, expertly holding the creature under his arm and poking a special bottle that he used for his own sheep into the lamb’s mouth. It began to drink immediately.

Gwen didn’t know whether to discuss the strangers.

She asked in Welsh: ‘How is the farm Mr Williams? Are things going well for you?’

Mr Williams looked curiously at Gwen and his neck wobbled. His face was very red with the sun that had shone in the last few days. Most of the summer his face was the colour of beetroot.

‘As usual Gwen, dear. Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know. It’s been a strange week…’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh nothing…’

Gwen sat embarrassed. She wished she’d not asked.

But Mr Williams did remember something that had happened. He held the bottle a little out of the lamb’s mouth while he tried to remember and the lamb pushed forward trying to reach.

‘Yes there was a strange thing in the last week. I heard from someone in the village yesterday. There has been a break-in in the last week’

‘Break in?’ asked Gwen nervously. She had never heard the words before.

‘Yes, love. People broke into the Abbey at Caer last week. The brothers were astonished. The break-in was in the library’

Gwen had no idea about the Abbey but she instinctively knew what Mr Williams meant. She trembled a little, remembering the strange feeling of last night – that someone had been outside the cottage. She remembered very vividly. She really thought that there had been someone outside in the dark.

She wanted to cry. The strange tension of the last day was coming to the surface and she suddenly felt that she had not imagined the presence of the strangers and the way that the spirit of the land had changed.

Sitting upright and choking back tears, she told Mr Williams about what she had seen.

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After a few minutes while Mr Williams stroked the lamb and they listened to the crackling of the wood on the fire, Gwen asked him about the Abbey at Caer.

‘It’s very old. It was founded by Cistercian monks in the Twelfth Century. One of the oldest abbeys in Wales. Have you ever been there Gwen?’

‘No. I’ve never even been to Dolgellau! I’ve only been south to Machynlleth and a little bit west into the mountains. What’s Caer like?’

‘Oh, quite big. There are ten brothers. It’s a beautiful building. There’s a hall where they meet. There are some books there and maps made by the monks and by some of the first Christians in Wales, perhaps friends of St Augustine himself’

‘And what was stolen?’

‘Nothing apparently. They could find nothing missing’

‘Why would anyone want to steal a book or a map anyway?’

Gwen found this hard to believe, but then she read very poorly and she owned only one book: the Bible in Welsh.

‘Have you seen the strangers?’ she asked after another silence. She heard the quick breathing of the lamb while it slept.

‘No one. But my fields don’t look down onto the beach. It puzzles me that we don’t know where they’re staying. If there are two strange men in the area, they must be living somewhere…’

‘Two men, and this other pair – a man and a woman’

‘Perhaps they’re sleeping somewhere up in the mountains. They could hide up there at night and come down the paths in the morning’

‘But it would be hard’

‘It would. Don’t worry Gwen. Lock your door at night. Keep the sheep together in a field close to your cottage. But I think if they are sheep thieves they would have taken sheep already. Are any missing?’

‘No, Mr Williams’

He stood and gently woke the lamb. He put it by the fire and it stood, hardly waking up.

‘Gwen, I’ll look out on the fields a bit today. I have to go up into the hills sometime later to get some wood. I’ll have a look. You say they left tracks by your cottage?’

‘Yes’

‘I’ll look on the paths up there. Don’t worry. I’ll put this little chap in a pen outside. I’ll bring him to your house tomorrow, alright?’

She walked back without the lamb feeling a little better. In the late afternoon sun the wide slopes of the hills were brightly lit and each of the small trees had a long land-facing shadow. The beach and dunes were almost white in the sun. But there was no one there. The wind was slow, perhaps beginning its daily reverse from landward to seaward.

But when she approached the cottage she knew there was something different. Coming round the front she was shocked and a little frightened to see a rather well dressed man sitting by her doorway on a stack of logs.

He was smiling broadly and his big hands were on his knees. He looked up as she approached.

‘Miss Jones?’ he said in English. There was an accent in his voice that she hadn’t heard. She thought it might be Irish.

‘Hello’ she replied.

Something about her face seemed to strike him; perhaps she looked frightened because as he stood he held his palms out to her as if to illustrate his good intention. His big smile remained. She noticed he had large white teeth. His eyes were bright blue and he had thick long dark hair that fell across his forehead.

He continued to smile and Gwen immediately felt a little less frightened. She noticed his black shiny boots and thought that he was probably one of the men that had visited the day before. But she couldn’t be sure.

‘Miss Jones’

He bowed low in front of her.

Gwen had never been bowed to. She had no idea want to do, and even thought she might curtsy. But the bow did not last long and the man was soon looking down at her. His smile remained.

‘I am sorry to disturb you, Madam. I am simply a business man, by the name of McConnell, and buyer of antiques. I collect Welsh antiques – old clocks, carvings, paintings, anything old. I called before – yesterday. I will pay very good money!’

He smiled and stood back with both his huge hands thrust into his pockets. Gwen was overwhelmed by him. She had not seen such a handsome man in her life before. There was no alternative but to invite him into her cottage.

***************************

Howard sat by the small window of the house on the cliff. The walls of these houses were so thick that there was always a flat shelf in front of the window on which you could sit to look out. But then they had no bricks here, only very hard rocks from the mountains and the rounded boulders in the beds of the mountain streams. These stones made the walls very thick.

Rain was coming. The weather had looked good the day before when they’d been walking on the dunes, and in the lea of the wind amongst the dunes it had been nice and warm, even though it was still early spring. But now he could see big clouds coming over the bay and there were storms underneath that looked like pieces of white ragged cloth hanging from the clouds. He shivered, looking at the grey sea far below and glanced behind at Mrs Van Dijk who was still trying to read a manuscript that she’d borrowed from the Abbey at Caer. She was sitting quietly at the heavy oak table, but now and then she shook her head or sighed a little. He knew it was a difficult thing to translate because no one at the Abbey had been able to do it, but everyone, including Mrs Van Dijk, thought that it was important.

‘Do you want to rest, Lotte?’ he asked quietly.

‘No, Howard. It’s really difficult. Some kind of early Latin… and the letters are different’

She was a bit irritable but she’d been reading the manuscripts since early morning. He had been out into the village to buy some things. He felt slightly dissatisfied with himself, because so far he’d found nothing that he could usefully do.

‘It’s beautiful down on the beach, by the little church…’ he said.

‘It is nice’ She lifted her head. She put the manuscript down and Howard saw the dense writing that covered its surface, in a foreign language.

‘How can you read it?’

‘Latin? I learned it when I was young. I can usually read Latin easily but this bit is so old, Thirteenth or Fourteenth Century, maybe older’

‘Who wrote it?’

‘I don’t know, but he or she must have been educated to write in Latin’

She stood and stretched.

‘See the sky, Lotte? It’s raining far out. I thought it was coming here but it seems to have stopped’

‘Why don’t we go down to the chapel again?’ she said.

‘Why? We went yesterday’

She sighed. ‘I wish we’d never come here’ she said. ‘I always promise to do things’

‘You said you’d find it interesting. Reading manuscripts, talking to the Abbot at Caer’

‘It was interesting. To talk about St Augustine – to find out whether he came to Wales. But then there was this robbery’

She looked forlornly out of the window that began speckle with rain.

‘There is something in the manuscript that I don’t understand’ she said. ‘The people here say that the church in the sand was built in the Thirteenth Century but the author of this’ – she pointed at the yellow parchment on the table – ‘says that the church was built in the Fifth’

She came to sit on the broad slate shelf of the window.

‘What connection does that manuscript – the one you’ve been looking at – have to the one that was stolen from the Abbey?’ asked Howard.

‘I’m not sure’ said Mrs Van Dijk, her eyes on a distant point out at sea. ‘I’m not even sure what was stolen’

‘But the brothers said that something had gone missing’

‘I think that pages were torn from old manuscripts, but no book went missing. That’s why it was such a strange robbery. Hardly a robbery at all’

Howard remembered the chaos in the hall of the Abbey.

‘But the intruders went through all the books looking for something’

Mrs Van Dijk answered absently. It seemed like she was about to yawn: ‘There were pages taken from an old book on the history of this coast – about the arrival of a group of a hundred Irish refugees in about the Thirteenth Century’

‘The ones that were attacked? I talked to some of the brothers about it before we came here. There was a massacre. The Irish were murdered in the dunes by the local people’

‘That’s the legend. I don’t know if it’s true’

‘Does it say anything about the massacre in the papers you’re reading?’

‘No. Nothing so interesting. Bits from parish registers. There is something about the founding of the chapel down in the dunes’

‘About it being established earlier than the people around here think?’

‘Yes. Actually there’s a quick way to check.’

‘How?’ asked Howard.

‘Look at the gravestones. See what the earliest dates are’

She looked out at the sea watching the clouds shredded by the falling rain.

They walked down in the afternoon because the clouds had begun to lift along the coast. The sandy path went between low green ferns down the long curve of the hill. In the sun it was a very pleasant walk with everything so bright all around and the air so clean and salty. They could see the dense dunes and small beach, and the marshy fields just on the landward side of the dunes. In the shelter of one of the dunes was the chapel, but at this distance it was too small to see.

The wind was softer lower down. They walked in sandy fields where the grass struggled to keep the pale yellow sand from engulfing it. The dunes around were tall and mostly covered with a thick coarse grass. It seemed to be slowly converting the sand hills to ordinary hills as they blew in land and were covered more and more with green, fragrant vegetation. But at the southern end, the dunes were less colonised and some still stood out like big white hills on the skyline. The church was being engulfed by one of these dunes and sand covered more and more of it every year, people said. But no one came to dig the building out. The chapel was small and poor and simple, too small for the villages around. Or perhaps it was shunned for some other reason.

***************************

Howard sat with his back to the substantial wall that marked the landward side of the chapel. He was fascinated with the walls here. They were like vertical gardens – where plants and lichen grew in amongst the stones. In some places were the wall was up against the dune, sand spilled through gaps making cones or miniature dunes along the base of the wall.

He looked out across the marsh grass toward the mountains beyond. He tried to imagine the massacre that had happened here. Why would people attack visitors? The legend said that the Irish had been blown off course. They had been aiming for a place to the north where there were sympathisers, other Irish people. But they touched land here. Perhaps on a wild night it would have seemed terrible. But why would the locals attack? They seemed very friendly. But they were different people now. The massacre had been five hundred years ago.

Mrs Van Dijk came through the small entrance gate.

‘Howard come and have a look. There’s been someone inside recently I think. But I can’t see – the door’s jammed shut’

‘Did you look at the graves?’

‘Yes. None before about fifteen hundred. Most are half buried’

He followed her along the wall of the church climbing over the blown sand. He noticed the tops of two gravestone just poking out. The entrance was on the far side. It was mostly clear of sand. By the door there were many footprints.

‘With the wind, these must have been made today, or last night’ she said. ‘Can you push the door?’

‘It’s jammed. Can you remember if it was supposed to be locked?’

‘No’ she shook her head sceptically. ‘These places are never locked’

‘Doesn’t feel like it’s locked. More like there something holding it shut from the inside’

He rattled the door.

‘Is there someone inside?’ Howard suddenly felt wary.

‘There’s a high up window frame on the other side where the dune is even thicker’

He went around the path skirting the south of the building and climbed the dune and found the space where a window had once been. Sand was spilling through into the interior of the church. There were faint marks all around in the dune and where the sand was slowly cascading into the dark interior space.

‘Lotte look. Maybe they came out here. Can you see inside?’

She scrambled up beside him.

‘It’s too dark’

‘We can crawl in. We’ll have to go in…’

They squeezed through, scraping their stomachs and backs. Howard went first sliding untidily on an interior slope of sand to the stone floor inside.

It was soon obvious why the intruders had secured the main door.

***************************

In the dim light they saw that the aisle that led up the centre of the chapel had been dug up. There was no furniture in the chapel, and the place was otherwise empty, but it was a shock to see it so badly treated, like a gutted animal. The flat slabs that had formed the floor had been levered upright. There were wooden poles lying around that had been used for this purpose. The slabs had been lifted the length of the aisle and tipped on their sides or shifted over the tops of other slabs. There was a trench underneath, perhaps waist deep. The dark sandy soil was piled up here and there. There was a shovel in the bottom of the trench.

Mrs Van Dijk looked down into the darkness.

‘Left their shovel! They were in a hurry’

‘Why did they lock the door?’ Howard pointed at the door. It had been jammed shut with a stout wooden pole between the handles on the inside.

‘They probably worked at night. They didn’t want to be disturbed’

‘Maybe they wanted to hide their work for a few days, hoping that no one would go in and see?’

‘Perhaps they’ll come back’

‘Perhaps’

But Mrs Van Dijk shook her head, still looking into the trench, raw like a wound in the grey light: ‘I don’t think they found what they were looking for. But there’s probably a connection between the Abbey robbery and this church. They were looking for something to do with this church’

Howard didn’t like the damp inside and seeing the violence that had been done, he felt that there was something dark about the place, about the church, and maybe the dunes around. Maybe something terrible could have happened here, like a massacre.

‘Let’s get out. It’s terrible in here’

He looked back up to the window frame. They should have thought about climbing back out again up the slope of sand. It looked very steep and unstable.

A shadow fell across the light in the window frame and sand started to fall through in small surges from the outside. Maybe there was a rabbit outside. But then the shadow became darker and Howard saw the surface of a stone come up close to the space. More sand fell through and to the right of the stone a face appeared in the frame. A red face with wild white hair, a grey speckled scarf. A woman. She was gasping with the effort of doing something, talking in Welsh fiercely.

The woman looked down at them and said something that neither understood; then the stone was pushed up against the window frame from the outside, and darkness fell.

***************************

‘Oh dear’ said Howard staring up at the stone and the sand slowly falling through. They stood still and strained to hear anything outside. Then the door rattled. The light that came between the two halves of the door in a bright thin stripe was suddenly disturbed as someone passed across the door outside.

‘Quick’

Howard climbed over to the door in the half dark almost tripping over one of the upturned slabs. He pulled the wooden pole that had been used to hold the door locked on the inside, then pushed hard to try to free the door. But it was now somehow shut from the outside.

‘She’s locked us in’ Howard whispered.

‘Who is she?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before. She looked mad’

‘Are we trapped?’

‘No we can get out. Let me see about this stone’

He climbed to the back of the church and shinned up the sand slope beneath the window frame. He pushed with outstretched fingers on the cold surface of the stone lodged in the window. There was an answering cascade of sand from his feet, but he felt the stone move slightly. More sand came pouring through onto the chapel floor.

‘Lotte, I can’t reach the stone easily but it can be moved I think. You can go on my shoulders and push yourself. I think the stone will roll away. Then we’ll get out’

It took a long time to shift the stone and it was hard for Mrs Van Dijk to push, and hard for Howard to balance and maintain his position in the heap of sand when she pushed.

Howard was confident that they would get out, but he was feeling more unsettled about the church and the mad woman that had tried to seal them in. Now the sun had started to go down and the shadows on the dunes were lengthening outside. He wanted to get out of the chapel and into the fresh air. The smell of damp, stale earth from the dark trench in the middle of the chapel was very strong.

The stone finally began to slide down the edges of the dune that butted against the wall of the chapel and the space was open. Howard still had to push Mrs Van Dijk a little so that she could get her shoulders through the hole and then pull herself out.

In the soft sand it took several attempts for him to get close enough. Only the dread of the darkness in the chapel behind him finally gave him the strength and he pushed through and went head-first down the dune to the bottom to lie exhausted in the cold sand. They lay on their backs for a while. A pale moon was rising in the south, lit by the sun that was dropping over the sea.

For some reason they both smiled. It was ridiculous. They were looking for some connection between obscure Latin papers and a chapel, but they had been trapped in the chapel by a mad woman. Why? Perhaps she’d seen the damage done, and had assumed that they had done it. Probably, in that case she would have called someone, the constables. They would be coming now to arrest them.

‘We’d better go, Howard’

He nodded. ‘I don’t like this place. We’ll walk along the beach and not take the coast path. We can climb the cliff path up to the house’

The beach had become wet and wild and cold; the sky purple with drifting scraps of white clouds as they walked against the wind. The sea was rough and the sound was continuous like wind crashing in trees. The moon behind lit their way but it was a few miles back by this indirect route, and the cliff, though not so steep, would be a hard walk in the dark.

***************************

Gwen shook with anger walking back to the road. She didn’t know what to do. She’d seen the two strangers. She knew this time that they were the man and the woman. She’d seen them looking suspicious walking around the chapel. When she noticed them climb in through that empty window frame, that was it! She strode over the dune from where she’d been watching and pushed one of the large round stones up the dune and wedged it against the open window frame. She remembered seeing their faces looking back at her, frightened and apprehensive. She’d never frightened anyone in her life. But Mr O’Connell had been right. There were strange people about, dishonest people. But she’d caught them!

But she also thought that they had not looked like threatening or bad people. The man had been dark, thin faced. He had the woman’s hand in his own as he’d watched Gwen push the stone across the window. This was not a sign of a thief. And the woman looked nice, pale with dark eyes. But friendly.

Gwen had never felt so unsettled in her life. They might die in there. Starve. Go mad. She had imprisoned them, perhaps wrongly.

But she was adamant. She could not be soft. Like Mr O’Connell had said - the people of the valleys and the beach have to defend themselves against strangers, any strangers. Mr O’Connell was nice, handsome. And she trusted him, even though he was vain and so careful with his smart clothes.

But her adamant mood didn’t last long and within a few minutes, after looking at her lambs in the lower fields she found herself walking back toward the church. They had had long enough, she thought. She would let them out. But she’d ask them what they’d been doing. Yes she’d really ask them. And she would want answers!

It was dark when she got to the chapel and she knew immediately that it was empty. She tried the door and dislodged the fence post from where she had wedged the door shut and pulled the door open. She looked into the dark. They had gone! They must have climbed out.

She peered into the gloom and almost shouted out when she saw the mess that the two intruders had made. How could they? The church had been desecrated. The floor all dug up, treated like a garden plot!

Now she was really outraged. To think that she had come to make friends with the two intruders! She felt like shaking her fists, as she imagined their faces looking up at her from the dark inside.

***************************

The house on the cliff was cold and damp, even with a small fire burning in the grate. The candles that had been left on the table were too weak to light the blackness of the two lower rooms with their low ceilings and recesses either side of the fireplace and beside the door. The rooms upstairs were cold and with even lower ceilings. A window at knee height was the only source of light in the bedroom.

Mrs Van Dijk had not taken off her coat. She sat at the heavy table looking down at the manuscripts but making no effort to read them. Howard had gone to look for the woman that had been sent by the Abbot to cook for them. They wanted to eat early, having got cold and wet on they climb up from the beach. It was now fully dark on the cliff and even the sea was invisible beyond the untidy grasses of the meadow in front of the house.

The house had been loaned to them by the Abbot at Caer, and was one of several houses owned by the Priory across the lands west of the mountains. He had been very insistent  that Mrs Van Dijk should pursue the reasons for the break in – the connection between the stolen, torn-out pages and the little chapel on the beach. The Irish treasure, Abbot David had called it, not altogether seriously. He thought that the thieves were looking for this treasure and that the stolen pages were some kind of clue.

But Mrs Van Dijk was depressed. This place amongst the dunes was not what she had expected. And being locked up in that tiny chapel! She hadn’t seen the strange woman clearly, but Howard had described her on the way back up the hill. Tiny eyes, wild white hair, talking all the time in that strange guttural language. Mrs Van Dijk wanted to go back to the abbey. Most of all she wanted to go back to her cottage in the Vale.

She tried to cast her mind back to the time months ago when she’d received the invitation from Abbot David. He had heard her name from another scholar from Oxford that had recommended her – Mrs Van Dijk – as someone that could read old Latin. The abbot had lured her with an idea that had always fascinated her: the story of St Augustine and his travels in the old kingdoms of Britain. This wasn’t the first St Augustine – St Augustine of Hippo – the one that had been born in Africa. This was the more recent one - the catholic missionary that had been sent by Pope Gregory to extend his authority to Christians all over the north lands. No one knew if Augustine had travelled to Wales or not. Had he brought his Catholicism to Wales? Abbot David had said that there were manuscripts that showed that Augustine had been there – in Caer Abbey. He had papers that he believed were written by the very hand of Augustine. And the papers – according to the abbot - had contained some strange ideas. He'd not been able to translate them properly which is why he had sent for her. He had said in his letter to her – months ago – that Augustine was a mystic, that he quoted catholic mysticism that was a mixture of Latin and Greek writers like Ovid and Homer, stories of Diana the huntress, the mysticism which Mrs Van Dijk had been brought up with.

This is why she had been so interested and decided to come to Wales, bringing Howard with her. But it had been a waste of time: the manuscripts were in such bad condition that it was impossible to read them, let alone translate them. And then the robbery had happened.

She shivered, looking critically at the tiny fire in the recess of the thick stone wall. It just heated the stones and the floor. There was no heat where she was sat at the table. She thought she would eat something when the woman came with the food, and then she would go to bed. At least then she would be warm.

***************************

Gwen saw that her cottage was different immediately, even from the outside. Something had changed. The light was low over the sea in the west bestowing its familiar gold tint to the stone of the house and the dwarf oaks in the wood behind. She had not locked the door, even though Mr Williams had recommended it. She pushed it open and saw mud on the stone flags. She always lit the oil lamp at the far end of the room and there would always be the faded light of the fire in the hearth. This was always the same, winter or summer. Its glow was reassuring. But there was something different now. She didn’t know what is was at first, just an acute sense of loss like an old puzzle with a piece missing.

No clock sound. The heavy rhythmic woody tock. No clock sound.

In the darkness on the far wall - on the other side of the table where she had sat eating her meals for forty years - the grandmother clock was gone.

She had to sit down before she could inspect the space where the clock had been. She couldn’t stand up. There had just been too much uncertainty, too much change, too many new people. In all her life she had met perhaps less than fifty people. She had never moved from the valley except to go once or twice to Machynlleth. She had seen the same people, the farmers, the shop keepers, the sheep shearers, but now in the space of a few days she had seen other people. Strangers. Those people that had looked up at her from the dark socket of the window in the church that was almost buried in the sand; the two men in the dunes near the sea gate; the well-dressed Mr McConnel.

She began to cry steadily and quietly. She would have to get another clock because otherwise how would she know the time? But how would she afford one? How would she get used to the silence without the marking of steady time. The time that had measured out her life, calmed her, made her move to the slow rhythm of the brass pendulum.

She got up and went to the wall beyond the table. There were marks on the slate flags, white scratches, more mud from someone’s boots. The clock had been tall, almost as tall as she was. It could have not been carried by one person, it would have to have been two. The two in the church that had dug the hole under the flagstones in the aisle. The smallish woman and the tall thin man. But then she had just seen them, so they couldn’t have stolen the clock. And she knew now with certainty that the two could not have made the mess in the chapel because she had watched them go in, and they would not have had time to do all that digging.

She was very confused. She had never been so upset in her life. Her house had been violated. She had been violated.

She sat back in the arm chair. She should go outside and look for evidence about how the clock had been carried away, but she was tired. She was distracted.

In the new silence of the room she heard the new lambs calling outside. She had forgotten the little sick one. It was with Mr Williams. She should go to see him and get the lamb. She would ask him what she should do.

***************************

She was pleased because the lamb was better. It had only been a night and a day, but the little one was in small pen in the meadow by the front door. So Mr Williams had done a good job. But she couldn’t keep her unhappiness from her voice when she called at the door.

He was there, sitting at the table where a single candle stood close to his bowl of food.

He turned. His face was red as usual, his eyes immediately concerned at the querulous tone of her voice.

‘What’s the matter Gwen?’

She didn’t want to say anything straight away. It seemed indulgent for her to simply turn up and cry and complain.

‘The lamb looks well’ she said. ‘He took the milk alright?’

‘Yes Gwen’ said Mr Williams. ‘Come inside. It’s getting dark’

She sat at the old round armchair next to the table. She felt guilty for interrupting his food.

She was not going to cry. She pushed her white straggling hair back from her face. She knew that she must look wild, from all the shocks she’d had. She didn’t want to imagine what she looked like.

‘The grandmother clock has been stolen from my house’ she said at last.

Mr Williams’ spoon stopped midway between his mouth and the bowl. He lowered it.

‘Oh Gwen are you sure?’

‘Of course. It’s gone. There was mud on the flagstones. There must have been two of them’

‘Two?’

‘Two people – to carry out the clock’

‘Oh. I’m so sorry’

He got up. he was unsteady on his feet. For the first time Gwen though that her neighbour looked old. His chubby features, the Welsh jowls, seemed to hang sadly around his mouth.

‘Have some tea Gwen’ he said.

He patted her knee. He still seemed unsteady. She wondered if he had had an intruder as well.

But he went to the hearth to make tea with the copper kettle.

‘I’m so sorry’ he said again. ‘When?’

‘It must have been today’

He picked up the kettle with the cloth around its handle and poured more water into the teapot. He straightened, holding his lower back.

‘I heard of some other thefts’ he said. ‘Farmhouses near the road. A house in Harlech. It’s terrible’

He gave Gwen her tea in a tin mug. He patted her knee again. She felt a bit happier because she hadn’t started crying after all, and the lamb was alright and would grow up healthy.

‘The Irishman visited me too’ said Mr Williams unexpectedly.

She was surprised. ‘The one with the expensive boots, the clothes?’

‘Mr McConnell? Yes’

‘Asking to buy things?’

‘Yes but he saw nothing. I don’t even have a clock. But he asked about the Irish treasure’

‘What Irish treasure?’

‘The jewels, the gold, that they say was buried. There were killings on the beach. Hundreds of years ago. They say that things were buried for safety. Noone’s ever found any of it’

Gwen had heard a little of this but always discounted it. But it seemed like the sort of thing that the Irishman was after.

‘The Irishman was with someone else, another man’ said Mr Williams. ‘I saw them with a horse and covered cart in the lane, going along the road towards Tywyn’

‘When was this?’

‘About an hour ago. They came to see me this morning’

‘Where were they going?’

‘They asked me about another chapel, along the sea, I can’t remember its name. Also disused. I think they’re still looking for this Irish gold’

‘So these are our thieves’ said Gwen. ‘They’ll be a long way down the road now’

***************************

She didn’t want to go back to the cottage because it seemed too sad. She had left the lamb with Mr Williams for another night. She would go back in the morning. She wandered along the stone path next to the tall stone wall amongst crowded dwarf oak trees. It was dark, but she knew the precise way. She carried on to the farm track and crossed into the pastures and creeks that fringed the muddy tidal flats toward the sea. The moon silvered the grass around her and painted the dunes a luminous pale grey. She didn’t want to go to the chapel either because it was too sad, though she could see it dark and recessed between the nearest dunes. She turned to walk along the meadow and then passed onto the drifted sand that formed a curved platform between two dunes, where the solitary heavy standing stone – the sea gate – stood. It’s black upright presence and inky shadow was in the centre of the platform.

She struggled slightly up the soft sand and went over to the stone, resting her hand on its gritty surface. The sea was somewhat below, perhaps a hundred yards away, moving in and out in slow marine breaths.

She thought again about why it might be called the sea gate, when it was not a gate, nor even close to the sea. Perhaps it was one side of an old gate. Perhaps the sea had once come up this far, and it had been possible to launch a boat from here. Perhaps the Irish - those other Irish that had been killed – had come ashore here and struggled up the beach only to be met by angry locals.

But she found this hard to believe. People were mostly friendly here.

It was still very light with a moon full and high. Almost like daylight. There was enough light to walk on the road south. It was warm too. The lamb was being looked after and she could go tonight. It was not far. The men had stolen her clock, and they were on their way. She had only this chance. The chapel that Mr Williams had mentioned was just a few miles south. Perhaps they were heading there.

She lifted her head. She could see the line of the coast climbing into the silvery moonlit sky, the grey hills, and the sea like polished steel. The chapel was called St Cadfan’s and it was up on those slopes, above the sea. Not far away.

***************************

The rain began to fall in the early morning. Mrs Van Dijk heard it spraying the low window in the bedroom.

She lay looking up into the dark rafters of the room. Howard was still asleep.

Last night after they had eaten, she had cheered up a little with the hot food that the cooking woman had brought, in a pot covered with a cloth, along the lane to their house. She had enjoyed the heat of the stew and the meaty taste of the fat droplets that floated on the surface of the stew in their bowls. The bread was nice too – dense Welsh bread that you had to really bite into, and tear away from your fingers.

She had gone back to the manuscripts after eating. There were some descriptions of St Tanwg’s chapel in one of the scrappier papers, one that she had not bothered to read before. The text, in poor Latin, confirmed what she had thought and what they had found looking amongst the gravestones – that the chapel was not very old. At least the present one. The stones may be very old, from an earlier building on the site, but the building itself was probably Seventeenth Century, so could not have been there in its present form when the Irish landings had taken place. She understood that this would have been hundreds of years before that. So the present building would probably not have anything to do with the Irish gold that so fascinated the brothers at Caer Abbey. She began to think that the robbers, whoever they were, had dug up the floor of the Chapel in vain. There was nothing there, and nothing was ever there. The cooking woman who had walked down the hill from Harlech where she lived with her pot of stew had said that there had been other robberies in the houses and farms. So the robbers were just unsophisticated thieves, not literary men with ideas to find hidden gold.

The word was that they had moved on anyway. No doubt a wave of petty robberies would follow them.

Mrs Van Dijk got up from the bed and felt the cold that leaked through the draughty window as she walked to the stairs down to the main room.

The cook from last night had left more food on the table: rough bread, a bag of dried up apples, milk, butter and some kind of rough biscuit. Mrs Van Dijk took one of the biscuits and walked over to the window with the broad sill of slate. She sat, feeling the cold of the stone penetrate the thick wool of her nightgown, nibbling on the biscuit.

Through the window she saw the wind coming in off the sea in the tiny meadow in front of the house so that grasses, buttercups and thistles bounced in the boisterous air. There were some pink foxgloves that swayed and twisted and a flower that seemed like a yellowish spike of dense petals that grew out of the wall. Over the meadow, the sea was a curved shield of grey and she could see a veil of rain coming, its lower tresses stroking the waves. It would arrive at the house very soon.

She shivered and went to find the kettle and wood to rekindle the small fire to make tea. She consoled herself with the thought that there was now no reason to stay in the this place and that they could go back to Caer, and perhaps back home.

She heard Howard moving in the bed upstairs and then his heavy feet on the floorboards.

‘Do you want tea’ she called up.

She waited for the water to boil and read the contents of the last manuscript which seemed to be a description of the dunes and the grazing rights for local farmers in the meadows and salt flats next to the sea.

It rained all day and the wind rose hour after hour until it was pushing at the stones of the house and whistling over the slate roof. Mrs Van Dijk tried to read the manuscripts again but couldn’t concentrate. It was too cold. It was June and it was so cold.

She told Howard about what she thought about the robbery at Caer. He listened and nodded.

‘So they are just thieves. Perhaps not seriously after the gold, the Irish gold. Just going around stealing from houses and churches’

‘I think so’

‘They must have dug up the chapel’

‘Yes. A horrible thing to do’

‘And the crazy woman – she thought that we did it?’

Mr Van Dijk nodded. She thought they should go for walk and stay until the next morning, and then go into the village to try to get a lift to Caer, or one of the very infrequent coaches.

***************************

But at lunchtime the next day when they were packing their bags, a man came with a pony and small cart. He had been sent by the Abbot at Caer and he had an important message. The man was soaking wet from the rain that had persisted for most of the morning. He presented himself in the doorway. He had been repeating his message over and over to himself so that he wouldn’t forget it. He had come almost three hours from Caer.

‘A chapel has been robbed and a man has been found dead’ he said.

Howard had opened the door. He stood digesting the message and moved aside for the man to come in. Mrs Van Dijk was at the table, her heavy bag at her feet. They had been about to go.

The messenger said again ‘A chapel has been robbed and a man has been found dead’, this time to Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Howard’ said Mrs Van Dijk, ‘can you make our messenger some tea? I think we need to listen to his story’

The messenger who was quite old and thickly bearded was exhausted and cold. Mrs Van Dijk thought that he was too old to dash around the country. He was not one of the brothers of Caer, but one of the men that tended the gardens at the Abbey. His name was Mr Pugh.

But there was not much of a story to tell. The word had travelled along the coast that a disused chapel, St Cadfan’s, had been raided in the night. The robbers had dug something up. Then later they had found the body of a man on the beach. That was the detail of the message that had reached Caer and then had been transmitted back down the coast to the cottage.

Mr Pugh said that the Abbot thought that Mrs Van Dijk and Howard ought to travel to the chapel – St Cadfan’s – and that he would meet them there.

Mrs Van Dijk said to Howard: ‘he’s still interested in the Irish gold’

Mr Pugh nodded though this had not been part of the message.

‘I brought the cart, so that you could ride in it’ he said.

The cart was not comfortable. It was uncovered and old so that it rattled and you could see the stony track between the slats of the floor. There were two low platforms either side of deck over the wheels where you could sit. Mr Pugh sat on the board at the front, encouraging the old black horse along.

But the weather had improved. The road south wound through ferns that hung with bright drops of water from the storm of yesterday, but as the sun appeared, the fronds turned bright green. The hills rose away to the left, their slopes sprinkled with grey boulders; to their right were stony pastures and then the sea. There were small villages to pass through, but the slopes of the hill over the sea that contained St Cadfan’s were always visible, and they thought after a while, they could see the building itself, with its grey slate roof amongst the green banks of ferns.

They ate some food at a small inn in a village before the road began to climb the slopes.

They did not arrive until late afternoon moving slowly along a road that had degenerated to a track with steep slopes to their left and a ledge of pastures on their right. The pastures supported sheep and a few cattle. There were a few homesteads gathered around the chapel, but it stood out because of the solidity of its walls built of huge rounded boulders, and its stark grey slate roof that sparkled like a mineral facet in the light. It was huge, many times larger than the chapel in the dunes. The front that faced inland had a kind of turret with a space below, where once a bell would have hung.

The cart clattered down the steep lane to the chapel, the black pony leaning back on her forelegs to contain the weight. They got out.

It was a beautiful setting with the grey chapel and a narrow meadow behind and then the sea, a milky aqua colour streaked with waves. The wall of the meadow was banked up with soil and cut grass. So someone harvested the grass in the meadow.

Mrs Van Dijk thought that the church was magnificent. It brought to the front of her mind a question that she’d asked herself before – why were there so many abandoned ancient churches and chapels along this coast? Perhaps it because of the rise of methodism in the villages and towns, the building of so many Wesleyan chapels with their high austere facades, their cavernous interiors. These had perhaps lured worshippers away. She thought it was a shame. It would be nice to worship here in this magnificent place over the sea among the pastures and meadows smelling of mown hay.

‘The sea’s beautiful. Look at the colour Howard’

He was squinting, looking at the waves far out and the shape of Irish hills which he thought he could see. He was wondering if the Irish had ever been here, the group that had come across the sea.

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘no-one from Caer here yet’

She remembered the dead man. She was not ready to see a corpse. But she would look in the church, to see the damage done. Really this was the Abbot’s business not hers. She thought again that this was more about the Caer man’s interest in the treasure from across the sea than anything else. He would be here soon. She would tell him.

The gravestones were arranged in the upper part of the sloping graveyard and the lower part was the meadow with its ramped up end, so that the graveyard wall was almost hidden. There was a dense plantation of yew trees in the top corner of the graveyard, across a mass of tall grass that half concealed gravestones tipped at various angles, white with lichen.

Mrs Van Dijk noticed that a track had been made in the grass toward the yew trees. She wandered along it, pulling at the grass stems. Howard followed.

‘Strange this flattened grass’ she murmured. ‘And look, something big was lain on the grass here’

Three was a rectangular area of flattened dewy grass.

They had to step over old, almost horizontal branches of an old yew tree. There were signs that the old yew leaves and mulch had been scored or scraped by something heavy. At the back of the yew plantation in the dark where the plantation met the outer graveyard wall was a tall rectangular object tilted so that it its top rested on the stony wall.

It was a clock.

Howard was amazed. ‘One thing I would not have expected to find’

There were scuffs in the mulch that had been made by boots.

Mrs Van Dijk tapped the wood surface. She looked at the clock’s face, its delicate reflective glass. The clock had usually been well cared for, at least before it had been dumped here.

She tapped the wood with her knuckles. The wood was hard and true, but its varnished surface was dotted with rainwater and dew.

‘This was left here yesterday or the day before. I think someone hid it temporarily’

She touched the rounded surface of one of the great cobbles that constituted the graveyard wall. She looked behind the clock.

‘It’s a grandfather or grandmother clock’ she said.

At the base of the clock where it was tilted into the dark soil there was a scrap of something, She thought it was paper. She reached down. A thin scarf, grey with white dots. She pulled it from under the heavy corner of the clock. It was powdery with dark soil that fell as she shook it.

Howard had seen the scarf before but couldn’t remember where.

***************************

‘We should look in the church’ she said.

‘I wonder where this dead man is?’

‘I don’t want to see him’

‘Nor me, but we can look at the beach from up here’

‘We should look in the church first’

The building opened from its southern corner through a small door, not a large decorative opening. Inside were lines of simple pews in pale wood that had been bleached by sun and salt air, perhaps for centuries. Wooden poles that looked rough and simple formed a frame that seemed to partly hold up the roof. A line of high up windows let in inclined beams of light.

The aisle between the pews had been dug up, the stone flags laid aside or levered up. The dark stony soil was reddish in the light. There was mud in the parts of the aisle close to where they stood - mud that had been traipsed in and out on boots. The trench that had been dug was a foot or so deep.

‘Like the other church’ murmured Howard.

But Mrs Van Dijk shook her head. It was disgusting what had been done. To do this and then just leave! She walked carefully along the edge of the trench avoiding the tilted raised flags. The soil was stony, fragrant and barren. There was no glint of gold, so sign of cache or horde. Perhaps they’d found and taken whatever had been there?

Howard was looking in the opposite direction, at the back wall of the church. She heard him take in his breath. She stood straight, following his gaze to the dim recesses.

‘What’s that’ Howard was saying.

There was an odd - but also familiar - image on the whitewashed plastered part of the back wall.

Howard avoided the muddy footprints moving to get closer. He had to stand on a disused pew to see the image better.

It was a strange image, etched or painted onto the white plaster. It was of a skeleton. The image was stylised – at least this is what he thought because the image was not a real skull but a simplified picture - like a child’s - half skull, half human head. The bones below – the neck and ribs - were stark and cream white in colour, with flecks of pink.

Mrs Van Dijk was behind him.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this’ she breathed. ‘Churches have paintings of the dead in frames on canvas. But this is something informal – like a child’s. Just painted on the plaster’

Howard moved a wooden box away from a pile of furniture that partially obscured the painting. He could now see the feet and the bones of the shins and ankles. It was quite accurately drawn, he thought, but old, clearly very old.

‘It is unusual isn’t it?’

A voice from the door. It was the David the Abbot of Caer. His broad shoulders almost filled the narrow doorway. His upper body was well built, if not fat, and his face was full as well, with small eyes were that squeezed almost shut by his big cheeks.

‘The only painting of its kind in Wales. We think it’s Tudor in age’

The Abbot stepped in from the dark doorway. There was someone behind him, as well as Mr Pugh the driver of their horse and cart.

Mrs Van Dijk was pleased to see the Abbot. She liked him, his learning and his urbane humour, but doubted that he was very godly. He was too well fed and too intelligent for that. He dominated the other brothers at the Abbey with his big personality. Mrs Van Dijk thought, not for the first time, that she and Howard had been enlisted by the Abbot to do his treasure hunting for him. He was clever enough to conceal his motives.

But he had brought food and bottles of cider from the Abbey garden, so they went to sit outside. The other brother from Caer, and Mr Pugh, sat on the grass with them.

The Abbot said: ‘There are a few other paintings like that. Made to remind people of the inevitability of death’

He was grinning. This kind of thing seemed to amuse him.

He said: ‘Do you know that the painting is positioned so that on a moonlit night in the spring and summer the moon lights the picture, and it appears in all its glory in the church, luminous, standing out from the plaster as if it’s alive. To scare the nighttime worshippers!’

The Abbot was cheerful, even excited. ‘Any sign of the gold? The Irish gold?’ he said this with a flourish of the cup into which he had poured his cider.

‘…and a man is dead’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

The Abbot lowered his cup. ‘Yes I forgot that. I’m sorry. This is not the place for levity. The man, the robber, was found on the beach. Well dressed with fine boots. He had not been in the water. He had probably fallen from the cliff, just over the meadow there. There’s a cliff edge that’s eroding, collapsing, getting closer each year. One of the reasons for the abandonment of the chapel. I’m told that the body is in one of the houses on the road just up there. It will be buried’

He drank from his cup of cider, blinking in the sun.

‘Brother Gareth can take you down there. You have to walk along a bit and then descend a steep path. It’s not far, but there isn’t much to see, I’m told. Perhaps he was found robbing the church and someone threw him off the cliff. Perhaps divine intervention’

The Abbot smiled faintly at the thought of divine intervention.

They ate some coarse bread and salted meat. Mrs Van Dijk went back into the church to look around. She came back a few minutes later.

‘Come and look. Also we should show you the clock’

The Abbot and Howard followed her back in. The gloom was such that it took a while for their eyes to adjust. At the far end of the trench she pointed out in the clay soil a yellowish half circle, like part of a buried gourd. There were curious markings on its surface, thin grey sutures.

‘A skull’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘Half exhumed. There are a few teeth. Perhaps the robbers found something – jewellery? A knife or a sword?’

The Abbot shook his head. ‘But there’s nothing around. No jewellery – and the robber is dead. Where is his hoard?’

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘There were two of them. I think that’s clear from the mud on the floor, the weight of these flags needed two men’

‘So the other one has gone?’

‘Yes’

Mrs Van Dijk showed the Abbot the clock in the yew trees. He thought that the clock had not come from the church and that it was a stolen item from somewhere else, perhaps a house along the coast somewhere. The Abbot had heard of other thefts that had occurred, apart from the desecrations of the churches.

The brother, Gareth, a kind of unofficial servant to the Abbot took Mrs Van Dijk and Howard down the path down to the stony beach. Descending carefully amongst tall ferns and pink foxgloves they saw that the cliff was unstable, of boulders and clay, perhaps thirty feet high. Its base was lapped with grey and white cobbles among dried seaweed and fronds of algae. The lazy sea pushed against a bank of cobbles a few yards away. It was high tide.

Gareth showed them the place were the robber had been found, face down. There was pool of congealed brown blood, but nothing else. No other sign that a man had died there.

***************************

Now Gwen felt devastated, like the world had ended or was going to end. Everything was finished. Everything she had worked for. The constables would come for her, even though it had not been her fault. Because she had done nothing wrong. But there wouldn’t be any thought for her. Just the dead man on the beach. She was a strange old woman; she had no real friends, certainly no friends with any power or influence. The constables would come for her and take her away.

But it hadn’t been her fault. She would have to explain that. She just saw him run into the dark meadow in the moonlight. She could picture him now: tall, with a few large bounding strides reaching the wall at the edge of the meadow and then jumping over. Then silence after that. Then the noise of the other man running to his cart, and the horse being slapped on its rump and the wheels turning on the steep track back up to the road. She hadn’t really understood what had scared them so much.

Taking the clock out of the back of Mr McConnell’s cart had been stupid though. She cursed her stupidity. It had been so heavy to lift. But it had been the first thing she’d seen: the cart tied up with the horse at the gate with the clock on its side at the back. The men – Mr McConnel and the other one - had been in the church. She’d seen the lights in the high windows. So she had managed to pull the clock out. The heaviest thing she’d ever carried – or dragged – through the nettles and tall grass to the hiding place under the tree. So that she could go back and get it later, after everything had finished. It was her clock. She had a right to retrieve it.

But that was so stupid, because people might know it was her clock, and know that she’d been there: and the constables would know and come looking for her, asking questions.

It had started to rain in the middle of the night on the long walk home, so that she’d been absolutely drenched. Then it had rained all the following day. She’d lit the fire in her cottage and dried herself. She had felt momentarily alright, almost pleased with herself until the news came from Mr Williams that the Irishman, Mr McConnell, had been found dead on the beach. The district was aflame with talk of death, and the church’s desecration.

Now she waited by her fire, wondering whether she should go back for her clock, or simply wait for the constables to arrive and take her away.

***************************

The constables did not arrive during that day or the next.

Gwen went to collect the lamb from Mr Williams. She was feeling calmer now, less worried. Her heart had stopped its loud beating, and last night she had slept, and she had eaten properly. But it had been days since she left the lamb with her neighbour and she knew that she had not been her normal self, and Mr Williams would know that too.

He had kept the lamb in a small pen in a half ruined outhouse, so that the poor thing had been able to avoid the storm of the few days before. The lamb looked very well, fatter, fed regularly with cow’s milk.

‘Are you alright Gwen, dear?’ he asked. He wanted to know if she had been ill, or if there had been any other problems with the lambs. He had not seen her out at all yesterday. He was used to seeing her in the fields by the road, or on the marshy meadows between the tidal creeks and the dunes.

She told him that she was fine and that she had caught a little chill from being out in the storm the other night, but that she was feeling better. She would take the lamb.

She had the small carrying bag, but the lamb struggled and had to be forced in by holding its forelegs tightly and pushing its woolly head down. It bleated pathetically under her arm, as she wandered down the stony path, still slimy with water, between the tall ferns.

The sea was milky blue-green, with a violet band far out just under the horizon. She began to feel better.

***************************

Visitors came in the afternoon. But not the ones she had expected. It was the woman and the man, the two that she had tried to lock up in the chapel in the dunes. She heard them before she saw them. There was a curious sound like distant discordant bells that rose over the calling of the sheep and lambs.

She went outside to stand on the step in the sun. The man was carrying a big package on his shoulder wrapped in a leather blanket. The object jangled discordantly with his heavy laboured footsteps. His face was red with effort.

‘Mrs Jones’ said the woman in English, in an accent she had never heard before, more harsh with consonants than the English she usually heard.

The woman said again: ‘…Mrs Jones. We have your clock’

Gwen froze, unsure of what to do. Perhaps they had just found the clock. Perhaps someone had identified the clock as Gwen’s.

The woman smiled. She seemed kind, not aggressive. It was hard to tell the woman’s age, but Gwen thought she wasn’t English. When she smiled there were many lines around her mouth and her eyes crinkled up so that you could hardly see them. It was a kind of merry smile.

‘Can we come in with your clock?’ the woman said. ‘It needs a wipe and a clean. It got a bit wet in the rain’

It was too late to deny that the clock was hers.

She was aware also that she had not yet uttered a word. She must seem like a mad woman.

‘Come in’ she said at last in her faltering English.

The man came first with the clock, tilting his head under the low door. The clock continued to jangle. Perhaps the pendulum had not been secured before they had wrapped it up to carry it.

He stood it in the middle of the floor by the old oak table.

‘Can you put it there?’ Gwen tried to indicate the back of the room. The man sighed, but leaned to take the weight again.

The woman said ‘I am Mrs Van Dijk. I’m from England. From near Nottingham. This is my husband Howard’

The woman smiled again. Gwen felt calmer.

Mrs Van Dijk said: ‘We found your clock. We thought you would like it back. Howard has walked a long way with it, and he’s very tired. Perhaps he could have some tea?’

Again the crinkling of the eyes. Gwen thought she was a strange woman. She seemed old and young at the same time.

Gwen was compelled. She felt something falling away, some tension. She took the copper kettle and poured water from the bucket. Did she have tea in the house? Yes, she had tea. And enough cups? Yes of course.

She put the kettle on the hearth.

The woman, Mrs Van Dijk, had sat on the armchair. She’d taken off her hat, a sort of bonnet. It was on the table. The man, Howard, was standing, one hand on the arm of the chair.

‘It was not me’ said Gwen in a rush. ‘I didn’t even know that he had fallen’

There was a kind of relief in the room like a long held back exhalation. Gwen’s tension was falling away.

‘It was not me’ said Gwen again.

***************************

The story was clearer when she told it now. Perhaps because she’d practised it so much in her head, over and over again, for the constables.

There had been the long walk down the lane to follow the Irishmen. It had been early evening when she’d left, but it was getting dark, so it must have been about nine o’clock when she came to St Cadfan’s. This is when she’d seen the Irishmen’s cart. She’d sat in the grass in the lane watching it, but there’d been no one around. There was an arch that led into the churchyard. She’d sat for a long time watching the arch, not knowing what to do. But darkness had helped her decide.

‘The clock was in the back of the cart’ Gwen said.

Mrs Van Dijk nodded and sipped at her tea, looking at Gwen over the rim of her cup now and then. Her eyes were very alert, almost amused.

‘It was hard to carry. It made such a noise, I thought the men would hear, but they didn’t. They were inside the church’

‘You hid it so that you could come back and get it?’

‘I thought I might hide it and then just go. I couldn’t carry it further than a few yards’

‘But you were curious?’

‘I could see the light in the church. Just a faint light moving around. It was quite dark and the moon was low and hidden behind clouds. I tied my scarf around my face, so that only my eyes showed. I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to be identified. I wanted to be anony… anon…’

‘Anonymous?’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Yes’

‘You left your scarf by the clock under the yew tree. That’s how we knew the clock was yours’ said Howard.

Gwen thought that Howard was thin faced and looked like he needed a good dinner. But he seemed kindly.

‘I was wearing the scarf when I tried to lock you in?’

Howard nodded: ‘I recognised it’

‘I’m sorry for that’ Gwen said.

‘You thought we had dug up the floor?’

‘Yes. This is what they had done at St Cadfan’s. I came around the side. I could hear the scrape of shovels and the gasping of the two men. I recognised Mr McConnell’s voice’

She tried to remember. She had had pieces of tree branch and leaves in her hair from dragging the clock into the yews. The scarf over her face had made her face hot and it was dusty so she had begun to cough.

‘I was in the church and I could see them digging like a pair of devils, a candle on the pew beside them, taking to each other, laughing. One was holding up part of a bone or something. It looked like part of a skull. They were laughing. I don’t know what happened exactly but there was a rush of air through the door behind me and the candle went out. I started to cough but I was so angry too, you see. I was so angry that I think I was shouting at them for stealing and for digging up the churches’

‘But then suddenly it was dark. Deep sudden darkness, and it was very strange because at that moment the moon must have come out from the clouds and it came through the windows at the back of the church. There were silvery rays lighting the dust from all their digging, but also rays that shone right down on that strange picture, the one of the skeleton. I was shouting and screaming at them and then there was this strange light on the skeleton. I saw it myself looking back. It looked so real, big and white, with a sort of face of despair. I wasn’t sure what happened because both of the men seemed to get a sudden fright and they were running past me and out into the meadow outside. The taller one, Mr McConnel ran out across the grass and then over the wall at the far end. I didn’t see what happened to him. But now I know. It must have been terrible to fall into the sea. The other one was on his cart and moving off, beating the horse to go up the steep track to the road. It was very sudden’

‘Did they take anything from the church?’ asked Mrs Van Dijk.

‘I don’t think so. Perhaps the skull?’

Mrs Van Dijk almost smiled: ‘No they left that’

‘I was so worried - when I heard that he had fallen into the sea. I didn’t mean to frighten them’

‘He didn’t fall into the sea but onto the stony beach. It was not your fault. The church can be restored. No one but us knows that the clock is yours’

‘I trusted that Mr McConnell. I know I was stupid to trust him. What was he looking for in the churches?’

Mrs Van Dijk had finished her tea. She settled her eyes on Gwen again, a friendly but inquisitive look.

‘Irish gold probably’ Mrs Van Dijk smiled. ‘You know about the legend?’

‘I know’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t really care. If there was treasure it would have been found by now’

‘Perhaps’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

They talked a bit about the weather in the coming days, because the two visitors were on their way back to England the day after tomorrow and they would be taking the high passes over to Welshpool and Shrewsbury and the weather could be terrible up there. But Gwen thought the weather would be fine.

It was time for them to go. That afternoon they would travel to Caer, and tomorrow, set out for England. They had just wanted to return the clock to Gwen.

Gwen saw them to the door and stood on the step, but she had a question of her own. She was beginning to feel a bit more confident speaking in English rather than Welsh.

She asked Mrs Van Dijk: ‘is there anything in the papers that you read - the Latin that you read - that says anything about the Irish gold, if it’s not in the churches?’

Mrs Van Dijk considered for a moment, raising her eyes to look at the clouds gathering over the mountains. She said: ‘I read a lot and there was nothing about the churches, in fact none are old enough to have been around when the Irish landed on this coast. The coast may have been very different then’

‘So there was nothing’

‘Only in a manuscript that I saw a few days ago, during that stormy day. It was something about the land ownership and grazing rights in this area. The Irish had been confronted on the beach and there had been items left. Perhaps even a crown of one of the Irish kings. The manuscript said that it was buried or concealed at something called the sea gate. I remember the words sea gate. I couldn’t understand why there would be a sea gate here’

Mrs Van Dijk was looking intently at Gwen.

She said ‘You don’t know any sea gate, Mrs Jones, do you?’

Gwen blinked in the sun, looking out at the sea over the distant dunes.

‘No’ she said. ‘I don’t’ know any sea gate. There’s nothing like that here’

Gwen shut the door after the two visitors had left. She sat down in her armchair and considered winding up her clock.

She thought that she had seen enough visitors for a lifetime.

© M H Stephenson 2025