There was naught at all of the year or so before those fishermen had hauled him from the waves.
Naught of the boat Mr Hughes said Tristan had built that year with his own hands. Naught of how he’d come to be shipwrecked or how the storm the fishermen spoke of had carried him to another land.
Naught of his last Christmastide in Wales all of two years ago.
He ought to stand, let his feet guide him home.
Yet he remained upon the stone.
To Tristan, it felt as though his life was a tattered book. He had a prologue, some semblance of a story, but the last chapters had been ripped from him, scattered to the four winds, frustration and the very devil of a headache raging whenever he struggled to recall them.
In Dublin, Mr Hughes had taken him to a doctor who’d nodded sagely but was unwilling to say – or knew not – when those chapters might be returned.
If ever.
For the last sixteen months in Ireland, he’d not known his own name, lived as a carpenter amongst some of the poorest yet kindest people on God’s earth – fishermen who risked their lives daily for a duke’s mackerel supper, shepherds who froze the night through with their lambs for an earl’s cutlet dinner.
And now he was home. A father. A duke’s brother. A nobleman with all of the privilege it brought.
How could he not be grateful? How could he not stretch his arms to the heavens of his Welsh land – its verdant forests, ancient traditions and wild nature. His home.
He ought to stand, make such haste as his leg would allow.
Yet he remained upon the stone.
Elated.
Fearful.
His daughter, his brother and his kinfolk would have mourned his death; black cloth would have masked the windows. Yet within moments he would re-emerge on their doorstep. There would be tears of joy, wailing and embracing.
Yet he was not the same father or brother or man they’d known but a poor shabby shell – his voice a frail rasp, a leg that oft failed him, a pain that plagued his skull and features so haunted.
The wreck had wrecked him also.
Perhaps he ought to have sent word. But each time, he’d sat down with the pencil and paper that MacNamara had given him, no words had come. How could he explain to them what he understood not?
How was it possible he could now remember Latin lessons at school and yet not his daughter’s fourteenth birthday? His last memory was of the foreman handing him the key to his new boat shed at Darowen Bay. And then… Nothing.
It made no sense.
But then, if truth were told, there were oft times when life made no sense – the loss of Sarah so young…
A rust-coloured splotch caught his eye, a fox scavenging for food, and he watched as the stealthy creature crept around the tower, nose scenting the chill air. Then another, younger, followed with tentative step.
Tristan’s lips pressed to a smile.
He had a precious daughter.
Mari with her flowing dark hair, moss-green eyes and her mother’s vivacity. And now he knew why that date in November had niggled so – the date of her birth.
So with knees creaking as though he’d sixty years and not thirty-five, Tristan raised himself from the stone, gathered his sack and ash-wood cane and limped on.
Mr Hughes had assured him that his daughter and kin were well, that his brother had even wed, and he wondered what else had transpired in his absence. Perchance other friends had married.
Like Gwen?
His foot stumbled, likely a clod of mud, and he paused, allowed his breath to catch up before lumbering on.
