Amanderella and the Marduk Affair Chapter 7.

Chapter Seven.

 

Too Tall.

 

Amanderella arrived at the Library just as Dotty was turning the key in the door. Morning light slanted through the tall windows, catching the dust motes in the air. Dotty brightened at once.

“You’re early,” she said.

“I need a ruler,” said Amanderella. “And your Ordnance Survey maps.”

Dotty blinked. “Oh! Yes. They’re in the cabinet by the window. I’ll fetch you a ruler.”

Amanderella settled at one of the long wooden tables. She spread out the map of Pentegfawr and the surrounding hills, smoothing the creases with her fingertips. Dotty placed a ruler beside her with the solemnity of presenting a sacred relic.

Amanderella nodded her thanks. “I taught myself to do this years ago, when I first decided to become an explorer,” she said, bending over the map while Dotty watched with great interest.

She marked the contour lines on a sheet of paper, measured the distance between them, and sketched a simple cross‑section of the land between St Rhodri’s church and the sea. She noted the height of the hill that blocked the view of the coastline, then laid the ruler across the diagram.

She frowned. “I need something to put under the end of the ruler to lift it.”

“There’s a box of dominoes in the Reading Room,” said Dotty. “Would they do?”

“Ideal.”

Dotty fetched the dominoes, and Amanderella built a small tower at the “church” end of the diagram. She added domino after domino, peering along the ruler until at last she nodded.

“That is how high the tower would have to be to see the sea from St Rhodri’s church.”

Dotty looked puzzled. “Eight dominoes tall?”

“Silly,” said Amanderella. “Each domino stands for twelve feet in real life. So the tower would have had to be—”

“Ninety‑six feet tall,” squeaked Dotty.

“Precisely. And that would have been impossible in those days.”

Dotty swallowed. “So the legend—”

“Is impossible,” said Amanderella. “A tower built in that valley could never have seen the coastline. Which means the real tower, if it existed, must have been somewhere else.” She folded the map carefully. “Somewhere with a view.”

Dotty wrung her hands. “But the legend has survived for so many years. Surely some of it must be right.”

“Certainly,” said Amanderella. “The Vikings did raid this coast, and people did hide their valuables. That part is possible. It’s the rest of the story that may be wrong.”

“It can’t be,” wailed Dotty. “It mustn’t be. The whole town believes in the legend. It’s what brings people here. Without it, the tourists will stop coming and the place will die.”

Amanderella thought quickly. “Marduk still believed in it. Or why would he go off wild camping after doing all the things we’ve just done? He must have found something that proved the story was true, just not here.”

Dotty stared. “You mean… the legend happened somewhere else?”

Amanderella nodded slowly. “Yes. Something he saw or read must have convinced him. Did he look at anything else besides the books you showed me?”

Dotty frowned and went to her desk. “There was… something else.” She pulled open the bottom drawer and rummaged inside. “He asked me to get a document from the main Library in the City. A special request. He filled in the form himself.”

She straightened, holding a large brown envelope.

“It arrived the day after he left,” she said softly. “I put it aside to give to him… but he never came back.”

Amanderella took the envelope. It was addressed to Mr M. Tibrickler, c/o Pentegfawr Public Library. The return label read City Reference Collection – Special Documents.

Dotty hugged her elbows. “He must have known what was in it. Why else would he ask for it?”

Amanderella opened the envelope and slid out a thin sheaf of paper, a careful transcription of an older manuscript. At the top was the title:

Extract from the Red Book of Hergest – Boundary Clauses (Late Copy of Earlier Material)

Her eyes moved down the page.

Halfway along the margin, squeezed in by a later scribe, was the line Marduk had been waiting for.

Amanderella read it aloud.

“ac o’r garreg wen hyd at dŵr Gwyllim ap Gwyllim o Ben y Cylle…”

Dotty leaned closer. “What does it mean?”

“We need a Welsh speaker,” said Amanderella.

Dotty sighed. “Oh, I wish I’d learned to speak my own language. My grandmother spoke it all the time, but I never paid attention.” Then she brightened. “Owain the Harbour speaks Welsh. He often gets books out in it. We could ask him. He usually comes in now to read the papers.”

“Excellent,” said Amanderella.

Dotty hurried to straighten the newspapers, as if Owain might appear and judge her for untidiness.

Amanderella placed the document carefully on the table. The Welsh words meant nothing to her, but the way the line was squeezed into the margin, the darker ink, the later hand, all of it told her it mattered.

The Library door creaked open, and a gust of sea air drifted in. Owain the Harbour stepped inside, stamping sand from his boots. He was a broad‑shouldered man with a weathered face and the calm expression of someone who had spent most of his life watching tides come and go.

He nodded to Dotty. “Morning. Papers in yet?”

Dotty almost leapt out of her shoes. “Owain! Yes! I mean, yes, they’re on the stand, but we need you first.”

Owain raised an eyebrow. “Do you now?”

Amanderella stood politely. “Good morning. We’re hoping you might help us with a translation.”

Owain gave a small snort. “Dotty, bach, you’ve got dictionaries for that.”

“Not this,” Dotty insisted. “It’s old Welsh. Really old. And it’s important.”

Owain looked from her to Amanderella, then to the sheaf of paper. He sighed, the sigh of a man who secretly enjoys being useful.

“All right then.” He hung his cap on a chair and sat down. “Show me.”

He leaned over the document with the same steady concentration he probably used when checking harbour ropes in a storm.

“Well now,” he murmured. “This is interesting.”

“You can read it?” Dotty whispered.

“I can read Welsh, Dotty. It’s not magic.”

Amanderella waited.

Owain tapped the margin. “This bit here. That’s the line you want.” He cleared his throat and read it aloud, the words rolling easily off his tongue.

“And from the white stone as far as the tower of Gwyllim ap Gwyllim of Pen y Cylle.”

He looked up, eyebrows lifting. “Well now. That’s the second time I’ve read that line this week.”

Dotty blinked. “Second time?”

Owain nodded. “That Marduk Tibrickler asked about it last week. Came in with a list of things he wanted checking. This was one of them.”

Amanderella leaned forward. “He asked you to translate it?”

“Oh aye. Pointed straight at that bit in the margin. Got very excited when I told him. Didn’t explain why. Just thanked me, shut the book, and hurried off like a man who’d remembered he’d left the oven on.”

Dotty pressed a hand to her mouth. “So he knew. He knew the tower wasn’t here.”

Owain shrugged. “He knew something. Looked like a man who’d found the last piece of a jigsaw.”

Amanderella folded the document slowly. “He must have seen a reference to this line somewhere else. Enough to make him request the full copy. And once he heard your translation…”

Dotty’s eyes widened. “Pen y Cylle… that’s not here.”

“No,” said Amanderella. “It isn’t. This is the real place. This is where the tower stood. Not St Rhodri’s. Not this valley.”

Owain rubbed his chin. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a place‑name written down wrong.”

Dotty blinked. “What do you mean?”

“When my grandfather was Harbour Master,” Owain said, “the map‑makers came to do their big survey. All their fancy tripods and chains. Very impressive.” Amanderella listened closely.

“But they were English. And the locals were very Welsh. My grandfather said the map‑men would point at a hill and ask, ‘What’s that called?’ And the old boys would tell them, in good Welsh.”

He chuckled. “Trouble was, the map‑men wrote down whatever they thought they heard. Half the time it was nonsense. Some of the names on the old maps don’t mean anything at all.”

Dotty’s eyes widened. “So Pen y Cylle…”

“Could easily have been written down wrong,” said Owain. “Or written down twice. Or written down as something that looks a bit like Pentegfawr if you squint at it in bad handwriting.”

Amanderella felt the quiet click of a final piece sliding into place.

“So the real place,” she said, “might have been mis‑copied. Mis‑heard. Shifted on the map.”

Owain nodded. “Aye. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Dotty clutched the back of a chair. “So the real legend… might have been moved to the wrong place because of a mistake on a map?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” said Owain. “My grandfather always said the map‑makers left with a notebook full of nonsense and a headache.”

He stood. “Right then. I’ll leave you to it. Papers won’t read themselves.”

Dotty managed a faint smile as he wandered off to the newspaper stand.

Amanderella stayed very still. She stared at the folded Ordnance Survey map, her eyes narrowing. She traced a finger along the contour lines, following the coast away from the valley.

“A name is just a label, Dotty,” she said softly. “And labels can be swapped. But a view? You cannot forge a view.”

She felt the last tumbler of a heavy lock fall into place.