Brief Fable for Our Time, Maybe, from the WIP

Emrys ap Rhys, an 18th-century Welsh brewmaster-to-be, is bidding farewell to an old man he has met on his return from London to Wales. He and Charlie met during a steady rainfall, in the shelter of a lean-to attached to the back of an English family’s barn; they’ve shared what food they have, and Charlie has spoken mostly (but not entirely) unintelligible nonsense, without end, as they ate. Emrys himself has feigned muteness, lest his accent betray him, but wants to thank Charlie somehow for a favor he believes Charlie has done him. But how to do so, if he can’t speak…?

He reached up, removed the floppy cowhide headgear with the rough threadwork and narrow brim. It was soaked; he might as well go bareheaded, truly, though the sun would eventually come out and he might miss the scrap of shade. He had worn the hat on his way out of Wales, four years ago, and he had put it aside and not worn it again until setting forth from London. It was a poor thing, but — he reminded himself — he was a poor man for now, and Charlie a poorer man than he, and in such circumstances even a poor thing can be a very great thing. He held the hat out in his benefactor’s direction, looked at it and then at Charlie, and grunted and nodded.

Again the grin broke across the lower half of Charlie’s face, and his damp silver whiskers glittered with a brief bit of light from somewhere behind Emrys — a lantern in the farmhouse window, perhaps. The old bent fingers reached up greedily, latched onto the hat, twisted it a bit to wring some of the excess water from it, and perched it upon his head.

Emrys was never sure in later days and weeks, months and years, because except for the brief interlude of lucency Charlie had spoken little sense, or at least little that was sensible. Yet he managed to convince himself that the last words he heard from Charlie were grateful ones, long unheard, especially with such an assured tongue and throat: Dioch yn fawr.

Or so he told himself even as he nodded in reply, touched his forehead, and walked again in the direction of the rain-chilled woods, leather-clad feet squelching in the farmyard’s soggy ground.