Carnedd Du | Story

It has been a while since I released an original story… March, in fact. So I felt it was time for something new.  Welcome, to the Most Gentlemanly Society of The Carneddau. Also,there’s a Jackanory style video I’ve done for this, if you’d prefer that instead. (https://youtu.be/_yKXADqF8Io)

 

Carnedd Du

by James Churchill

 

I should not have been surprised that Albert laughed at my suggestion. He regarded me, I suspect, as a dunce who had only gained his seat amongst the Most Gentlemanly Society of the Carneddau due to my having purchased property right in the middle of them. In Albert’s view I knew nothing about mountains, less about climbing them, and no sense of etiquette.

When I suggested I might spend a day exploring the valley of Carnedd Du, that which is hidden from sunlight and hardly touched by man, the gloomy and secret chasm between Dafydd and Yr Elen, I might have expected that Albert would champion it, for he was always one for championing the most untouched parts of our mountain home, but he only laughed. Yet, thinking on things, he always dismissed my suggestions, always, and I am not sure why I expected things to be otherwise.

‘Aloysius, more port dear boy,’ he beckoned to the bar boy when he had calmed himself. Aloysius, who haunted our meetings in the upper room of the Albion Hotel like a spectre, bowed and dutifully brought the port decanter.
‘What, precisely, is there to laugh about?’ I demanded.
‘Dear boy, there is little reason to risk the marshy track just for Carnedd Du. It isn’t at all spectacular and it is rather bleak.’
‘There are the monastery ruins,’ Max, who was attempting to preen himself in the mirror over the fireplace, standing on tip-toes so he could just about see, pointed out. Max was always far more accommodating towards me than his father. He never shot me down, in direct contrast to his elder. Even if my suggestions were terrible, as they sometimes were, he was always accepting of them to some degree.

Everyone in these parts always goes on about what a grand man Albert was, ‘he was a grand man was Mr Albert,’ they say, lamenting how he was taken from us too soon. Whilst I will admit that he was a great philanthropist and champion of the workers, he was not a lovable man. He was often cold, aloof and stiff. His stern, white bearded face betrayed little emotion and when he laughed or cuckolded someone, often myself, you could see the disgust in his eyes. He was a gentleman of the highest calibre, but no friend.

Max, though little more than a boy, only nineteen or thereabouts, was already showing all the best parts of Albert without any of the stiffness. He was kind, generous and the kind of man you were always pleased to show respect towards. He didn’t command it, he was a short and tubby thing with no stature or presence, in another life he would be a music hall comedian, but when he spoke he always earned respect and you never dared to make light of his fusspot fumblings. Max was, in a lot of ways, strangely loveable.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I was reading of the monastery yesterday and I rather fancied I might take a look.’
‘There is nothing to see… A pile of burnt stones, little more. Most of the local farmers nabbed half of them anyway.’
‘It was Henry VIII who destroyed it, I assume?’
‘Heaven’s no,’ Max said, smiling at my ignorance but not meaning any malice. ‘It was only thirty years ago… I don’t even think it had been founded in Henry’s day.’
‘Oh, it had,’ Albert pumped. ‘The reason it escaped destruction was the same reason why everything escapes round here… The remoteness.’ I sat up in my chair, interested. The book I had been reading only made a passing mention of the monastery ruins and I longed to discover more about it.

‘I remember you telling me about it as a child, Father,’ Max said, returning to his seat and looking more untidy than he had before he started trying to preen himself. Albert gave him the eye and Max, instinctively, brushed his hair back so that he looked no different to before he had begun preening himself.
‘I’ll admit, when it stood it was impressive. You couldn’t get near it, the monks were an openly hostile bunch, but anybody would be protective of a place such as that. Do you recall when we toured Greece, young Max?’
‘Only that I wound Mable up by telling her that she was being sold off to a donkey farmer who wanted her for his wife,’ Max chuckled. Albert ignored the statement.
‘You recall Sumela Monastery? The one on the side of the cliff? It was very similar, part way up Yr Elen. Back then, to see it, Carnedd Du was worth the trek. Such a shame that it was before photographs.’ Albert spoke, now, as though I were not in the room, and when I did speak he gave me an unpleasant glance.
‘Did nobody paint it? There must be a painting somewhere.’
‘Penrhyn has a sketch on one of his walls… By his architect I shouldn’t wonder. There’s nothing in common circulation. It was too gloomy down there for Turner, according to Mother.’
‘Don’t bother going down there, as I said,’ Albert huffed. ‘There’s nothing left.’

‘How did it burn down, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Another man, across the room, young and gangly, a guest of Max’s, answered. He had said nothing so far, only appearing to be interested in a painting on the wall.
‘Nobody quite knows for sure. There was a comet in the sky, a portent the hill farmer’s said later on. It crashed onto the slopes of Dafydd opposite the monastery. In Cythry they say there were noises from across the other side of the mountain… Explosions. Perhaps comet debris caught the monastery and set it alight…’
‘There was gunfire,’ Albert claimed. ‘Those explosions were gunfire, I’m certain… But it was like no gunfire I’ve ever heard, let me tell you. It sounded mystical… Unearthly… Like the forces of Satan were launching an assault.’
‘Satan… Or if it was a comet, maybe God descending to punish the sins of the monks?’ Another side eye from father to son.
‘It can’t be either. Satan… God… They’re both old fashioned sort of chaps. Don’t like guns. They prefer flaming swords.’
‘Do you think the comet brought something down with it?’ I whispered, worried that I sounded absurd.
‘The comet is all rumour, gossip and the ravings of hill farmers,’ Albert snorted. ‘The only thing that was real was the gunfire, and I know because I heard it. That, however, I would assume was the military.’
‘Tell me though, Mr Albert,’ the young man said, returning to his painting, ‘what would the military be doing shooting up a remote monastery in a remote corner of a remote corner of Wales?’
‘That, I cannot explain.’

A comet, or the military? I bought neither explanation, but Albert shifted the conversation away from Carnedd Du before I could think of how it might have occured.

‘Do you still plan to see Carnedd Du?’ the young man asked me, as we waited for carriages later that evening.
‘Yes. Maybe I can find an explanation for why it burnt down.’
‘Drunk monks, most likely,’ Max offered. Albert was away down the street, smoking a pipe and ignoring us.
‘I would like to see it too… There’s something that interests me. There’s… A mystery! Perhaps Max should be our guide?’

Three days later our trio boldly took the marshy path from Gerlan to Dafydd, meeting at the doors of the Hen Gerlan Inn.

I conceded that Albert had been right, that there wasn’t much to see barring a scattering of stones on the side of Yr Elen. I would not even have known they were there had Max not pointed them out.

‘That must have been one strong building,’ the young man commented. ‘A fire? Thieving farmers? No… THAT has been obliterated.’ I was in agreement. A fire could not have done that…

But what could? How is an ancient stone monastery, on the side of a cliff, reduced to nothing? I still do not know.