Table for three

“And who’s that? The statue up there, above the castle gateway. I guess it’s me?”

He’s looking at me across the table, and his eyes are so cold and grey that I hesitate before answering him. “No, it isn’t you,” I reply.

“It’s your son, who was born here, of course.”

He frowns and shrugs. “Yes, of course,” he says. “I remember. But when I was last here in Caernarfon, in 1284, this side of the castle hadn’t even been started.”

We’re all sitting inside the Palace Vaults, the pub right outside the King’s Gate of Caernarfon Castle. Through the window we can see the walls and towers, golden in the brilliant floodlights.

Me and my three guests. I’ve invited them to join me for a drink. Three fantasy guests from long ago, from different times, and yet sharing in common their connection with the huge, looming stone building we’re all staring at.

A fantasy, yes. I think we’ve all played this party game, where you think of three people from different periods of history and invite them to dinner together. So that’s what I’m doing. It’s all in my imagination. And it isn’t dinner, it’s just a few beers. We’re already on first name terms, at a corner table in the Palace Vaults, Caernarfon.

Me, and Edward and Owain and David. We met up on the quayside, by the river Seiont. It was already dark at seven o’clock, and I wanted all three of them to have that breathtaking view of the castle’s fully completed south side.

Edward Longshanks, remembered as the Hammer of the Scots because of his relentless campaigns in Scotland… King Edward 1st of England, who had swaggered into the strongholds of Llewelyn and crushed all resistance, until Llewelyn himself was dead – and then he had initiated the construction of his castles along the coast of Wales.

He surveys the multi-angled towers, the bands of different coloured sandstone which would reflect the walls of distant Constantinople… and on the highest turret of the Eagle tower, the remains of an eagle which symbolises the ambitions of King Edward 1st in Wales.

I watch him, Edward, as he appraises his castle. A tall lean figure, with grey hair and a grizzled grey beard, he feels our eyes on him, because he turns to look us up and down, as though to say ‘and who are you, to stand with me and share this space, beneath the walls of a monument I have built as my everlasting legacy?’ But then the flicker of an ironic smile plays on his lips… for he knows we all have our different connections with the castle. And so we find the warmth of the bar in the Palace Vaults and I buy the beer.

My connection? Me, I’ve been a tour-guide in the castle, in the relatively recent 1980s and 1990s. Funny thing, I probably know its towers and turrets and long dark corridors better than the king could have known them, because he would hardly have seen one single tower completed in his lifetime. And so he glances somehow wistfully at the King’s Gate and the statue of his son, who had been born in Caernarfon and would become the king himself.

We all drink the beer I’ve bought, although they grimace because it’s too cold for their taste. And so I go back to the bar for three glasses of whisky. That’s better – Edward swirls it around his mouth and he swallows, and Owain and David do the same. And so we all go outside again, and this time we follow Owain as he turns down Palace Street and pauses to stare eastward, where the rocky outcrop of Twthill is like a boulder heaped against the horizon…

Owain Glyndwr, one of my other fantasy guests – it’s his turn to remember. He’s remembering how hard he fought in his rebellions against the English, some 600 years ago in the early 1400s. He’s a bulky figure, built with the strength and resilience of an ox. As he narrows his eyes at the outline of Twthill he’s remembering a battle which was fought on that rocky knoll on the 2nd November 1401, when his troops confronted the forces of the English king, Henry IV. A gruelling, exhausting day, bitter and bloody… at the end of it all, when both sides had withdrawn in a state of numb weariness, it was hard to say who had won.

The hill was strewn with the dead, and nobody could celebrate a victory. Owain Glyndwr would know that 300 of his soldiers had died on that day. For the possession of a modest hilltop at Caernarfon? To show the English that the spirit of Welsh rebellion was still fierce in the north-west of the country? Now, as Owain turns and looks back at the walls of the floodlit castle, he remembers also that, a few years after the battle of Twthill, his troops would lay siege to that great building in further attempts to overcome English rule.

Owain Glyndwr, Prince of Wales – the only native prince of Wales since the conquest in the late 13th Century. Now, he shrugs his broad, bowed shoulders, ands his eyes meet those of the English king who started it all. Owain Glyndwr, who spent every ounce of his energy, every day of his life in his efforts to win Wales for the Welsh, and who would disappear into the hills when he could give no more. And lastly, who is this David, the third of my guests?

With a nod, sensing that both Edward and Owain have satisfied their silent communion with the past, he leads us back up Palace Street and onto the town square. We all pause by a statue, beneath a high archway known as the Queen’s Gate. David can’t resist a mischievous smile of self-satisfaction, as we appraise the statue and read the plaque on its plinth.

It’s him, it’s David Lloyd George. Not a king or a prince, but a politician. He exudes a kind of jaunty energy. As he meets the eyes of the other two men and reads their suspicion of his status, compared with theirs, he relishes the irony that, in his time, he wielded his authority as effectively as they had done – that as Prime Minister he would be credited with leading Britain to a successful conclusion of the Great War in the early 20th Century.

And yet… another of his achievements, celebrated on this very spot, he wears a little uneasily. He’s proudly, defiantly Welsh. And yet David Lloyd George stage-managed the investiture of an English prince here at Caernarfon castle in 1911. How can he justify such a conundrum, under the unwavering stares of the English king who began the succession of English princes and the rebel who spilt blood to be the native prince of Wales? He shrugs and smiles. He’s a politician, not a king or prince.

Our time is running out. Or rather, I feel my imagination of this fantasy is fading. My guests, after all, are ghosts from the past of this historic town. I set off in the direction of another pub, Y Castell, thinking how appropriately ironic it would be for the three of them to enjoy a drink there – only yards away from the fortress of such conflicting memories.

But when I turn to gesture them politely in its direction, they have vanished. My guests have disappeared, into the shadows of a night-time in spring. A king, a prince and a politician, separated by many centuries, inextricably linked to the history of Caernarfon Castle. n

Stephen Gregory’s first novel, The Cormorant, which he wrote in Snowdonia 35 years ago, has been published several times in both the UK and the USA, and translated into German, Polish and Italian. The new edition, which is available from Parthian Books, is its tenth publication.

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The one-act operatic exploration is aimed at fostering empathy and reducing stigma around dementia © Ian Smith