Synopsis/Details
In 1648, in the countryside of Monmouthshire, Samuel Pritchard, a gaunt and haunted Parliamentarian, trudges behind an ox-drawn cart. He is physically broken—he walks with a limp from a war wound and bears the mutilated stump of a right ear, punishment for a seditious tract he wrote years earlier. The land around the family farm appears blighted; corn wilts, shadows move without cause. Samuel hears voices and sees portents; he speaks aloud to his dead brother, Rhys, who was killed at the Battle of Edgehill. Samuel carries guilt over Rhys's death and fears that the world is ruled by a predetermined, merciless design. His visions include a premonition of King Charles I kneeling on a scaffold, the axe falling, and the executioner holding up the head to a silent crowd. This flash of future regicide is tangled with his own memory of being tied to the pillory while an apothecary slices off his ear.
When Samuel reaches the farmhouse, his wife Ann comes out to meet him. Her warmth and beauty briefly soften his bleak mood. He has been away for weeks, carrying news of the Civil War: the Royalists are gathering, and Cromwell's Parliamentarians must stop them at St. Fagans. Samuel, a committed Puritan, believes freedom of worship and conscience depend on defeating the King. Ann, still grieving the loss of their infant children, Angharad and Robert,is uneasy. She has lost faith in a Supreme Being who would let innocents perish. Samuel tries to comfort her, speaking of a new Independent chapel, a future without popish idolatry,and a commonwealth where ordinary men may read and think for themselves. Yet Ann senses something more troubling in him. She asks about his headaches; he rubs the side of his head. He admits his visions are worsening: he sees the dead and hears their wailing,and he has become convinced that he will never see his brother Rhys again. He talks of 'the hag of the mist',a death omen named by an old villager. Ann grows more fearful,but she cannot hold him back from the cause.
That night, the supernatural moves from the edges of Samuel's perception into nightmare. As Ann sleeps, Samuel dreams of a wood filling with mist, corpses swirling in a turgid stream,the voices of King Charles and Oliver Cromwell mixing with the clamour of battle. A dark,androgynous figure emerges from the depths—a thin,wasted frame with leathery wings, green slime oozing from the wing tips. It is the Hag of the Mist:a crooked-backed crone with shrivelled black flesh,suppurating wounds,matted hair,and one green eye and one blue. In the dream,her long hair tightens around Samuel's neck;a pike staff is thrust through his back,and he wakes gasping,convinced the night-gown is soaked with blood. He finds his hand worm-eaten and suppurating,but it fades back when he clenches his fist. The vision leaves him shaken and certain that his death has been shown to him.
The next morning,Sam tries to conceal his terror from Ann. She has heard him talking in his sleep, but he deflects. He speaks with bitter certainty about the coming war, the apostles of the King,and the necessity of the fight. His Puritan conviction is inseparable from his personal doom:he believes God has already determined everything,and his visions are simply the divine plan made visible. He reveals more of his haunted past:the mutilation in the pillory opened his mind to 'strange happenings';since then he has seen indistinct figures who cannot speak,and bright halos around men who later died in battle.
He tells Ann that the King will be executed,the executioner will die soon after,and the regicides will be confounded. Ann challenges him,'You could be in error!' but he insists he has seen it. He also admits, almost to himself, that she will not survive him. Finally,standing in the open doorway looking out over the fields, he names the hag again:she is his death; he heard her wings against the shutters. He does not fear death, but calls it a 'cruel necessity'. In his last moment before closing the door, he accepts
that he will not return from St. Fagans.
