The Hounds of Annwn (1-2)

Chapter 4-2

“I must ask, Rhys. Of all the mundane things to find in this world, I didn’t expect indoor plumbing.”

With a grin he replied, “His peers may consider my foster-father a decadent, fallen fellow for consorting rather too freely with humans and adopting some of their innovations, but even they admit he’s a very clean decadent.”

It would be beyond good to take off these clothes that had been well exposed to horses and hounds and get clean, George thought, even if he had to put the damn boots back on again afterward.

He turned to the wardrobe and found both a flannel robe and loose backless slippers, as promised. He pulled off his boots with relief and stripped off the rest of his clothes. At a loss for what to do with them, he draped them over one of the chairs. He took the gun which had been holstered at the small of his back, unloaded it, and put both the cartridges and the weapon into a drawer. He added the GPS device, and pulled the cellphone out, too, but dropped it with his left hand and had to stoop to pick it up again and dump it in the drawer. The rest of the contents of his pockets he emptied onto the dresser.

Standing there for a moment, he flexed his left hand and rubbed it with his right. Hasn’t been getting any better, has it? The doctor said the numbness would improve, but I think this one’s going to be a lifetime companion, like an old football injury. Well, you come off enough horses, these things are bound to happen. Awkward to keep dropping things this way, though.

He donned the robe and cracked open the door to peek into the hallway. No one there. He left the door open a crack and headed for the baths, just two doors down the corridor.

A small anteroom led to four main chambers, their doors ajar. The near two were clearly toilet areas, with pull-chains that emptied cisterns for flushing and shelves with basins for washing. The one on the right was for men, to judge by the stand-up options.

The next two rooms held the baths. He assumed the one on the right was also for men but was cautious about sticking his head in. More basins stretched along the wall leaving most of the room for a large steaming pool with square sides, like a Roman or Japanese soaking bath. A man was already in residence, only his head visible. His gray hair and long drooping mustaches were soaked but he popped his eyes open and grinned at George.

“First time in one of these? You’ll get used to it, my boy, I promise you. Wash your hair and rinse off over there, then come on in.”

George found soap and a straight razor. Careful, he told himself, try not to cut your throat. He bent over a basin, washed his hair in tepid water, and managed a quick shave, not without a few nicks, while peering into a small mirror. He looked around for a way to empty the basin, and the fellow from the pool called out, “Just toss it down that drain over there,” pointing to the corner. George did so and refilled it. This time he took a wet cloth, dabbed it in soap, and used it to wipe off as much of his body as he could reach. Emptying the basin again, he filled it one more time so that he could rinse off the soap.

At last, he walked to the edge of the bathing pool and stepped in. It took him a moment to get used to the steaming hot water but once he sat down on the built-in bench along the side, it felt wonderful. The soreness from his fall at the jump began to ease.

“Not bad, eh? Gwyn thinks I come here for the hunting, but it’s really the baths. I’m Eurig ap Gruffudd, from up the valley. Are you that fellow who brought back the pack?”

“Yes. I’m George Talbot Traherne.”

“I can’t understand it. Human, aren’t you?”

“So I thought, but apparently Gwyn has a… connection to my family.”

“Ah, took on one of the locals, did he? That boy has always been fond of the ladies. Ever since we arrived he’s been improving the native stock, so to speak.”

George was startled to hear Gwyn referred to as “that boy” but then Eurig did look significantly older.

“Can you tell me about this place? What’s its name?”

“You mean the manor here, Gwyn’s court?”

“Yes, and the village.”

Eurig stroked his mustaches. “Why, this is Greenway Court or, in the old tongue, Llys y Lon Las.”

“But that’s the name of a local spot in my world, Thomas, Lord Fairfax’s wilderness hunting lodge.”

“Is it now? I remember Thomas Fairfax well. Gwyn brought him here once for a visit, oh, must be a couple of hundred years ago now or maybe a bit more. I suppose he liked the name. He stayed a few weeks, hunting every chance he got. He was very pleased with the great hunt, as I recall. Shook Gwyn’s hand stoutly afterward, he did.”

He pursed his lips in reflection. “There was this one lass, what was her name? Dilys, that’s it. She caught his eye, and no wonder, with her black hair, and dark eyes. She’s gone now, but not before giving him a son. You may have met him, Thomas Kethin?”

George shrugged. He couldn’t keep track of the names yet.

“The village is Pantglas, or Greenhollow.”

Appropriate enough, George thought. Maybe he could find out more.

He said, “I never thought of, well, the otherworld as part of America. Can you tell me how your kind got here?”

Eurig settled a bit deeper in the water, like a walrus, clearly pleased to be asked.

“Certainly I can. Let’s see, where to start… Our own histories go back to the advancing and the passing of the ice, several times; before that we know little. We had the lands mostly to ourselves, for a long time, we and the various small folk, and the old humans, the hunters, and then the new humans moved in alongside our world, following the herds and then planting their crops. The small folk were fascinated and, I’ll admit, so were we, for a while.”

George was mesmerized. The end of the last ice age, from a fae’s point of view.

“There are some who hold that the old humans, the ones suited to winter, never truly died out, that they took our blood from the children we gave them and became the new men of today. Others find that a shameful notion and give it no countenance, but I’ve noticed there are sports among the humans that seem like throwbacks to one of my kind.

“We settled down into territories on the newly freed land as the waters rose and the rivers shifted, and we carved out domains. My folk stayed mostly in the west. Not many are still alive from those foundation times, and most of our kind were born much later, but I myself have met Beli Mawr, Beli the Great, and he saw it all.

“The more we came to know of humans, the more we withdrew beyond their notice and avoided visiting their world. Gwyn always believed there was something to be learned from them, and he’s visited often. Many think him eccentric, but I, for one, am happy with plumbing, oil lamps, and all the rest. I remember what it was like before, well enough. Besides, we can’t really escape the connection between our worlds entirely. Most of the pleasant little novelties in our fashions come from you, and even our names take on the coloring of the human languages surrounding us as time passes. There are just so many more of you, and you’re so very, very busy all the time,” he said with a snort.

“We came here, to your new world, not long after Gwyn’s father created him Prince of Annwn. We knew there were lands in the far west but no way-finder had ventured the journey and made it possible before. It was restful here, for a time, like a return to our distant past. Different tribes of your kind were here already, in the human world, and we kept out of each other’s way.”

He smiled in reminiscence, then pulled himself a bit more upright in the bath.

“But it didn’t last. Our original local humans had their inevitable little wars, and then your colonists arrived with theirs, and it all became very lively as they sorted it out. We kept mostly to ourselves in our world, peaceably enough.”

“This killing of Iolo changes everything,” he concluded, subsiding into a brooding silence.

“What will happen?” George asked.

“The vultures will descend to see if Gwyn will lose his kingdom. We have many enemies. None of us likes the idea of change.”

The two of them sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, George pondering the deep history of these people and how shallow his life seemed in comparison.

“Well, my boy, we’ll not solve this tonight. I must be dressing.” Eurig stepped out of the bath. “I’ll see you again soon.”

George was shocked by the many scars he carried, like a battered veteran warrior. After Eurig left, he toweled off vigorously, donned his robe, and followed.

Back to his room, George discovered that it had been invaded in his absence through the open door. Myfanwy had managed to jump to the bed and was lying proudly on the blanket at the foot of it, wagging her stump of a tail. “You little devil. Well, I’m pleased to see you and glad of your company.”

He closed the door behind him and surveyed his fine borrowed clothing on the wardrobe hangers. He poked through a chest of drawers and found stockings, shirts, neckerchiefs, and gloves. The breeches had a drawstring at the waist, making the fit easy. The stockings came above his knee, and he tied his breeches below the knee, to act as garters. He saw with some surprise as he pulled them on that his boots had been brushed while he was out of the room, restoring much of their gleam. The breeches bloused out over the top of the boots in a most piratical manner.

He stood up and took down the tunic, slipping it on over the breeches. It fit well enough, coming to mid thigh, with slits up either side almost to the waist for ease of movement. The heavy satin felt smooth over his chest. The tunic had no pockets, but the breeches did, and the slits in the tunic made it easy to reach them.

He looked around for the sash and saw it on the bed. He reached for it, but Myfanwy, intent on his movements, anticipated him and pounced first. “None of that, my dear,” he admonished, but was enticed into playing tug-of-war with her for a few moments anyway. Then he took the sash and thought about how to arrange it—wrapped all the way around without ends showing, or ends dropping down? He ended up wrapping it around his waist twice, with both ends dangling down for a foot on his right leg.

Now for the kaftan itself. He lifted the robe off the hanger and slipped it around him, settling it across his shoulders. Everything fit well, with the bottom of the kaftan coming to mid-calf. He strode about the chamber experimentally to see how it moved and discovered that it flowed back properly as he walked rather than just hanging on him. It was wide enough to meet across his chest though there was no way to fasten it.

He glanced around the room for a mirror and spotted a small one mounted on a swiveling frame sitting on the chest of drawers, with a comb and a clothes brush next to it. Thank heavens, he thought, and combed his hair which was nearly dry. Then he took the brush to the end of the sash that Myfanwy had beaten him to and removed as much of the evidence as possible. He took a look in the mirror and thought, it’s not half bad. He tilted the mirror in its frame down to catch a glimpse of the rest of him. It’ll do, he thought, always assuming everyone else isn’t in black tie or its equivalent.

He took his pocket watch from the drawer and ran his thumb across the dragon engraving, then unhooked the compass from the other end of the chain. In lieu of an actual watch pocket or vest buttonhole, he fastened the chain around the drawstring of the breeches and slipped it into his right pocket. The knife Rhys had found him was on top of the chest. He slipped it into his sash on the left, under the top wrap and over the bottom one so that the end of the sheath was visible.

He thought about his conversation of a few minutes ago. That Eurig fellow seems to be a vassal of Gwyn, part of the local aristocracy. Most of the others I’ll meet tonight will probably be the same, and they’re not all likely to be friendly. I imagine there’ll be both political and social rivalries here tonight, and I’m not going to have a clue about the factions.

It’ll be like an Edwardian country house party where I’m the only stranger, the only one who doesn’t know the history and the alliances, and that’s going to be damned awkward. Well, it may only go back to the Norman Conquest instead of the last ice age, but my Talbot blood can make itself useful and stiffen my spine for me, if nothing else.

It’s only for one evening. I can uphold the honor of mere humans for that long.