Certain undertakings had to be made before we set off for the north of Wales. Sir George and Doctor Warren would remain behind at Kew to continue His Majesty’s treatment. We arranged for the two of them to continue to provide our regular bulletins to Parliament on the King’s condition to create the illusion of activity. One might wonder why such a ruse was necessary, but the plain fact was that the King’s malady was of nearly daily interest in Parliament. To explain why two of His Majesty’s physicians had headed off to Wales would be nearly impossible.
I left with Sir George and Doctor Warren detailed instructions for what I believed would be the most useful course of treatment. I recommended that they halted with harsher physical means and instead take care to continue reacclimating His Majesty to proper civilized conduct to rebuild those shattered routines in his mind that had been buried under piles of filth. I had my doubts about their applications of my proposed treatments. They were the only options available to me, however.
Sir Lucas, for his part, had been very insistent that he go to Wales with my sons and me due to his friend, a physician in Clwyd, near Ruthin as it happened. The man’s name was Noah Yeoman and we would, according to Sir Lucas, have need of him as a trusted friend to guide us in the area. Sir Lucas also insisted that his knowledge of Welsh, albeit imperfect, was a useful asset and that he had some manner of facility with matters supernatural.
I brought Saint Augustine’s cudgel with me, of course, and sent a letter to Westminster Abbey to apologize for the artifact’s likely long absence due to my continued need for it. I had no concept of how long I would be away in Wales and thought it a common courtesy to set at ease their apprehensions. For one of their prized artifacts to be missing for so long a time must have been quite taxing.
We set off in two carriages. John, Robert, and I were in one carriage with one guard while Sir Lucas and Thomas and two guards rode in the other. I thought it good for Thomas and his indolence to be in the presence of a fine disciplined and active mind such as Sir Lucas’. At times, I wonder what precisely must have been my error as a father to make Thomas behave in such a way.
Those worries were, however, minor as we set off for Wales.
The first leg of our journey was easy enough on horses, drivers, and passengers. The rolling hills of the countryside of Berkshire and Oxfordshire were a pleasant sight as we headed west. Our first day’s full ride brought us to stay in Oxford, which was a pleasant diversion for me as one who had attended Oxford to learn medicine. Allowing my mind to marinate in old memories of my more youthful days allowed an escape of sorts from the cruel present.
I should mention that one of my first encounters with a supernatural being of some kind did in fact occur in Oxfordshire some twenty years earlier in 1768. There was a peculiar outbreak of an illness that had led to several people inexplicably wasting away.
The perpetrator was a strange sort of faerie called an Alp-Luachra, which I was told translated as “Joint Eater”, which does not mean that it eats a person’s joints, but rather that it eats jointly with a person. The strange creature will take the form of a newt that resides in a person’s throat and consumes their food. So puzzled was I when I treated this malady that I happened upon a cure entirely by accident. I was left to prepare a meal for the afflicted and I happened to over-indulge in the use of salt. That so depleted both my patient and the Alp-Luachra that the little creature left the body in search of water, allowing me to vanquish it.
Being near Oxford University again made me pine for the days of the “sweet smile of reason” that the professors taught us. One of my greatest regrets was ever becoming aware of the more primal and chaotic aspects of the world.
The roads to the northwest were somewhat more treacherous as we turned toward Wales. The hills rose and began to turn into mountains. In December, many of those rocky slopes had become slick with ice.
“There’s a chance we’ll have to abandon the carriages and walk if it gets bad enough,” John grumbled to me, looking out the window at the worsening wintry conditions.
“I pray to God that does not happen,” I hoped aloud.
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It so happened that Providence was kind enough to deliver us in our carriages to the Vale of Clwyd midday on December 19th after another few days of perilous riding through mountain trails. I considered that a great blessing indeed as I shuddered at the other possibilities. What we faced before us was bad enough without my being consigned to walking such a distance in a strange land at the age of seventy.
Upon our arrival at Ruthin, I admired the pleasant environment. It was a quaint little village of some several hundred housed in a series of tightly-bunched Tudor-style homes, all contained on the top of a modest hillock. Buildings of white wattle and daub held together with dark wood were everywhere one looked. There were the occasionally odd stone buildings such as the local church and town hall as well as the constabulary and the remains of Ruthin Castle. Ruthin Castle, incidentally, had been the object of Oliver Cromwell’s ire in the prior century and most of it had been razed to the ground. Ruthin itself, however, had recovered far better than its most famous fortress.
The great hills surrounding Ruthin, some seeming as tall as a small mountain, were covered in pristine white snow. The tallest of them was Moel Famau to the northeast that had a direct line of sight across the treeless slopes down to Ruthin. I had heard from those who had been to the Vale of Clwyd before that the skies seemed far more open than in other parts of Great Britain. I could see from where that reputation arose. It felt as though one were at the heights of the Earth.
As for the town itself, it was an old market town and was structured in much the way one would expect. The roads and all major buildings were oriented around the central market in the town center. A stout stone clocktower stood in the center of the market square with the humble stone church of St. Peter’s just off to the north. Around the market were the customary accommodations of an inn, two taverns, and some ordinary shops along with the important institutions of governance such as the constabulary and town hall I mentioned earlier.
“Fairly cute,” Robert said, looking around the town as we exited the carriage. He sneered slightly before returning to his customary gloomy countenance. “Not unlike Lincolnshire, for better or ill. At least we have the love of our admirable sheep in common. That should grant us something to talk about with the locals.”
“Probably don’t make that comparison,” John scoffed at his younger brother. “Welsh love their sheep as much as their wives. Maybe a bit more.”
“When you boys are quite finished,” I scolded them. “We are guests of this town and we are to behave respectfully, whatever one may think.”
I noticed a handful of townsfolk walking slowly by the clocktower, all of them gawking at us. There were among them two men and three women, all dressed in simple heavy wool winter attire. Sir Lucas approached me while that silent standoff continued.
“Ah! Lovely little town! Truly lovely! I’ll see if I can learn where my friend Noah is. Yes, yes,” he chirped.
I watched carefully as he approached that gathering near the clocktower. The odd little Sir Lucas did not seemed perturbed in the slightest by the lack of reaction from the group as he asked where he might find his colleague. One of them eventually pointed silently to the opposite end of the square. Sir Lucas bowed graciously at the group and returned to us with a broad smile.
“They did not seem terribly warm,” I said listlessly.
“I dare say the Welsh have their own sense of manners. We will have to adjust, yes,” he lilted. “It would appear that Noah’s practice is on the next street over that way.”
“Probably the most useful place we can go at the moment,” I mumbled, apprehensive about the group still gawking at us from the clocktower. “Lead the way if you would, Sir Lucas.”
The next street was quite narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate two horses. The road below us was well-maintained cobblestone, though slippery with a thin layer of ice and snow that had been packed down by man and beast trampling it. We did not have travel far on that treacherous ground, however, as Doctor Yeoman’s practice was but the second building to the right once we entered the street. It was largely indistinguishable from the other white wattle and daub structures, though it had a clear iron sign swaying above the door: “Doctor Noah Yeoman, Physician.”
When Sir Lucas knocked, the answer was slow in coming. We heard some manner of rustling on the other side of the warped and splintering dark wooden door.
“Yes? What is it?” a slurred nasally voice, muffled by the door, sounded out.
I tried to glance inside through the windows, but they had all been shuttered.
“Noah?” Sir Lucas called out louder than was necessary. “It’s Lucas. Lucas Pepys.”
I would say that some ten silent seconds passed before the door swung inward, creaking on its hinges and scraping against the flagstone floor. The man inside the spartan room before us was of middling height, gaunt, with almost the same wire spectacles as Sir Lucas. His hair was disheveled, long and grey and a light beard had begun to grow in. With a weary smile, he greeted his friend.
“Oh, it’s good to see someone worth talking to. Come in, Luke,” he spoke softly through a pained grimace. “And the rest of ya. Don’t have enough seats for everyone, but it’ll have to do.”
A lack of chairs would hardly be the only arrangement that was far from ideal in Ruthin.