“But it’s in Welsh, and the parchment looks at least two centuries old.”
“Oh, absolutely—but this goes with it.” She handed me the other piece, and stood beaming, her smile including and enlivening every feature of her already brisk countenance. I could not help smiling back, and it was several seconds before I could turn my glance to the white sheet of ordinary folio paper, whose close script was legible enough.
“It doesn’t mean such a much to a low-brow like me,” I heard her say. “But if that’s not some modern shark’s translation of what’s written on the skin of the fatted calf, I’ll eat the calf-skin. What about it?”
I would have needed only a comparison of the proper names in the first few lines of each writing to assure me that it was so, had it not been the obvious conclusion, on the face of it. Lib had discovered an unpublished document, or part of a document, connected with Highglen House.
Two minutes later I had informed the company of the circumstances, and the Hall was as still as a vacuum. When I realized that all these people were listening to hear me read from the paper I held in my hand, my undisciplined hand shook. It is horrible to be nervous, and have to betray it.
I shrugged my shoulders and kept my hand as steady as possible. Here goes:
“ ‘. . . in some fear of being ill-received in Cwm Melin, for the lord there had the name of an intemperate man, one savage to strangeness when the humour was upon him. But mammering was more harm than use in the pass to which I had come, and save in that stronghold I had no surety of shelter from the snow, the town of New Aidenn lying some uncertain number of miles beyond the Cwm. Increasing storm and cold compelled me to seek kind reception within the castle, avouching truly that I was a person who had lost his way in those wilds and stood in danger of the elements. Being admitted within the gate and taken before my lord, I was excellently welcomed. The man himself sat alone before the blazing hearth in a room called the Hall of the Moth, with weapons and machines and all the abiliments of war heaped in the corners. He was none of your pouncing and mincing followers of court, but sprawled like a great bulchin in his chair, with ragged Abram-coloured beard, immense mouth, and eyes like yellow flames. He bawled for sewer and cup-bearer, and a table was straight fetched, and a feast-dish set thereon, with a manchet and good sherris wine a-plenty. I fell to my refreshment, nor did it escape my notice that my lord was somewhat in his cups, which caused him to be exceeding merry and boastful. He vaunted long about himself and his own great valour and prowess, exulting mightily in his late triumph over Roger, Earl of Gwrtheyrnion, which was truly an achievement which will redound in the history of time. Much he said that is known among men, and presently fell to speech of Sir Pharamond, fourth lord of that name, who builded this castle on the mill-site, after his house close under the valleytop had tumbled to its fall through the perfidy of the false steward David, a most foul and dastardly act, published far and wide among men. Very gleefully and asperly did my lord relate how they had skummed the countryside for the scroyle, and how they had meted out his fearful fate. Now my lord waxed more strange and withal crafty in his words, saying that which is not of common report, relating how above the newly builded battlements Sir Pharamond had made a tier of chambers, so that rumour whispered he was mad—but lord Pharamond only smiled, and called the windows of those chambers his eyes for descrying treachery. And ever afterward, said my noble host, the builder of the castle on the mill-site was untroubled by plotters against his peace. Now when I was emboldened to ask my lord to make this thing clear, he said no word but seized a flambeau up into his hand and beckoned me to follow. He led me through the kitchens and down into a cavern that was there, with a standing pool of water in the midst. This, said my lord, is the drowning-pit of my ancestor, for it was his merry mood to fling his disobedient folk into the water with his own hand, not binding them, but pressing them back into the pit while they essayed to come ashore. Thirty he had once drowned in a single afternoon. For the rest, were he werry, he could shuffle them off with no more trouble than snuffing a night-light. Now do you see, said my lord, but in such cunning wise that I knew some deceit lurked behind his words. Nor would he say more, but departed from the vault, leaving me constrained to follow him or remain in darkness, though wishful to examine the cavern—yet full of thanks, on the other hand, that he had not practised upon me the custom of his ancestor.
Again in the Hall of the Moth my lord laughed immoderately before the fire, saying that for that gear he himself was proof against all traitordom, for he kept there a cat that was never tamed, more sure than forty watch-dogs, more trusty than twenty men-of-war, since that it leaped to the attack without a snarl or a struggle, full silently and suddenly, until it had achieved the kill, and it failed not to lay his enemy low. Beware, said my lord, of gib my cat’s claw, and how you hear the purring of the cat, for its purr is more dangerous than the innumerable growl of hounds upon a hunting. The purring of gib my cat means death. I dared to ask that I might be shown this beast, provided it purred not at me. My lord, who had drunk much more wine since we had come from the cavern of the drowning-pit, bade me thickly go seek the beast for myself, and upon asking where, he bade me look beneath the perfidious tree, but beware lest it purr or I was doomed. So I said no more of it, discerning that while he grew the more merry he grew the more savage, and might well be goading me on to my destruction. At length my lord having fallen into a stupor, he was borne to his bed, and I conducted to mine, among those upper rooms which rose above the battlements. I slept sound, awakened but once, as I thought, by a long belch of laughter from some unknown part of the castle. Again sleep visited me, and in the morning, when the snow had ceased, a party of my lord’s men being at point of breaking away to New Aidenn, I made one of their company and reached my destination in soundness, the afternoon being that of the fourteenth day of January, 1523.’ ”[¹]
“Well,” avouched Mrs. Bartholomew, almost before I had completed the last sentence, “now we know the ancestry of that frightful animal.”
“The cat of the Delambres, you mean?” asked Belvoir.
“Yes. No wonder the Frenchwomen left it behind and Mr. Maryvale’s bullets couldn’t kill it.”