She glanced up to dearest Isabelle who was wrapped in a woollen pelisse, woollen cloak, woollen hat, woollen scarf and with a muff the size of a goat dangling from her wrist. In her woollen gloved hands, she held two bulging cushions and a woollen blanket.
“If you prefer, I could come back inside now.”
“Let’s stay for a while longer. But I’ve brought some cushions as cold stone gives you… Well, never mind, but it’s better to be safe than sore.”
Gwen smiled. Isabelle was French born and although she now adored Wales, the weather could still be a challenge. Down-to-earth and practical, she also had a penchant for romantic poetry. And its poets.
They arranged themselves upon the cushions and yanked the blanket up to their chins, watched a seeking fog travail the gardens.
“Lord Tristan…” Isabelle hesitated as if to gather her words. “It turns out he was found off the coast of Ireland by fishermen, half-drowned, his leg broken and grave wounds to his head and throat. The fishermen thought him dead when they pulled him from the sea, though it seems instead to have been some state of insensibility.”
Tears smarted at the pain he must have endured and Gwen gripped the blanket tight to cease the tremble in her hands.
Isabelle turned, grey eyes solemn. “But when it left him, Gwen, he’d lost all memories. Knew not his name. Had no recollection of his family. Of his life. Nothing. He said it was akin to a cave of endless dark.”
“Oh, Tristan…” she whispered, fingers twisting. “As…as a child, I recall a young miller who was struck upon the head when a beam fell. He woke a day later and could not remember a soul, not his parents nor his friends who stood over him. The doctor said it might return but…”
“But?”
“Not hours later he…he passed to the heavens. The doctor said there must have been bleeding somewhere within.”
Isabelle’s lashes fluttered closed, and they fell silent for a while, the fleet fog enclosing the garden in a ponderous pearl.
Gwen dabbed at her eyes. “Tristan is fortunate to be alive.”
“Yes, he is.” Isabelle sighed. “For all this time, he knew not who he was or where he was from, until by sheer coincidence, an acquaintance passing through Ireland on business recognised Tristan and…memories returned. He said it was like being ambushed.”
“This is wonderful news, is it not?”
“Of course. But…” She inhaled. “There is more, my dear friend…” Isabelle faffed with her goat-sized muff. And Isabelle never faffed.
Trepidation welled within.
“Y-yes?”
“He… Tristan’s memories are not complete, Gwen. He recalls nothing of that night the storm took him to Ireland. Or anything to do with his boat. Or building it. Or indeed that entire previous year here. Or…”
Gwen closed her eyes. “Us,” she said softly.
Isabelle rested her head on Gwen’s shoulder. “I’m afraid so.”
“I could feel…something was awry.”
“It seems our memories are fragile, tenuous possessions that we try to cling to, but the doctor said their loss was perchance no coincidence, a way for the mind to banish such pain, which would explain why anything to do with the boat or that portion of his life has been…”
“Lost.”
“Forgotten, Gwen. For it may come back, just as his memories have from before that year.” Isabelle reached a hand beneath the blanket and held Gwen’s own. “We all thought Tristan dead and yet tonight, here he is.”
“Be patient, you are saying to me.”
Her friend raised her head and softly smiled. “I’ve never enquired, how did you and Tristan…”
“Become more?”
Isabelle nodded.
“It was Mrs Pugh’s fault.” Gwen at last felt her lips curve. “I came to deliver some of my father’s writings to Rhys and she asked me to take a basket of food to Tristan’s boat house at Darowen Bay on my return home.” She sighed. “I took an interest in the boat he was building there. We shared the food and…he asked me to visit again, for the company. So I did. To see the progress.”
