Sleeper’s Castle

  He was an experienced soldier. He knew his men could not face a large English army. He was contenting himself with raids; his lethal archers would pick off the enemy at river crossings and in narrow valleys. This war of attrition wore down the English, but still he needed the morale boost of capturing castles.

  When Conwy Castle had been taken, Owain Glyndŵr himself was far away. Two of his followers – his kinsmen, Gwilym ap Tudor and Rhys ap Tudor, brothers from the Isle of Anglesey – had planned and carried out the daring raid. In spite of searching high and low across the mountains and hidden valleys, Harry Percy, who men called Hotspur, appointed Justiciar of Chester and North Wales by King Henry, had failed to find any trace of Glyndŵr. Furious and humiliated by the way the lowly Welsh rebel had managed to evade him, Hotspur contented himself with besieging Conwy with a force of five hundred men equipped with siege engines.

  The Welsh held out and Glyndŵr stayed elusive.

  Catrin looked back across the mountains to Conwy as the sun sank into the river mouth and now in her dream she looked forward to midsummer. The gates of the castle were opening. She watched fascinated as the garrison began to troop out, led by the Tudor brothers and their closest friends. Recognising the impasse of the siege a deal had been struck; a treaty drawn up between the Tudors on one side and with Hotspur and fifteen-year-old Prince Hal, the king’s son, on the other. The garrison of the castle would all go free with full pardons. All except nine men, chosen as scapegoats to set an example to the people of Wales as to what would happen if they rose again in revolt.

  Catrin watched with increasing horror as the chosen men were paraded to the allotted place. She saw their faces as they realised their fate. The king had decreed that they be drawn, disembowelled and hanged, finally beheaded and their bodies quartered before the true Prince of Wales, his son, Prince Hal, and the silent crowds. Catrin tried to close her eyes. She did not want to see. She fought to wake up as the scene progressed, but she was held there as unwilling a witness as the men and women and, God forbid, children, who surrounded them. She could hear the screams of the men as they went to their lingering and agonising deaths, the gasps of horror from the watching townspeople and the garrison who only hours before had been their friends and allies. Men and women turned away to vomit as they watched, and only then did Catrin realise they were unable to move away as the surrounding soldiers of the king forced them to witness the end all traitors could expect. Only when the quartered hunks of meat which had once been men were loaded onto carts to be taken away and displayed in the places decreed were the onlookers at last allowed to disperse.

  Later local men appeared and cautiously, as if not sure if they were permitted to do it, they began to shovel sawdust onto the bloody ground, worse than any battlefield, looking up at the circling buzzards and kites and crows. The birds, always the witnesses of death, would feed well on the offal that had escaped the carts.

  As Catrin fought free of the dream she found herself sobbing hysterically. Someone was knocking at the door of the room. ‘What is it? What is wrong?’ Joan beat on the oak planks with her fists. ‘Let me in.’

  Catrin staggered to the door and lifted the latch before pushing past Joan and running downstairs. She only just managed to get outside before she was violently sick into a bed of wild daffodils.

  ‘What is it? What happened? Is it something you have eaten?’ Joan followed her more slowly. Catrin couldn’t reply.

  ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ Andy woke with a start. She was going to be sick. In the distance she could hear Joan’s voice calling anxiously. ‘Would you like a mint infusion? It will calm your stomach,’ and then the voice faded away to nothing. The room was empty, the only sound the brook outside, the constant ripple of water coming in through the open window. Andy stood up and ran towards the bathroom, her legs wobbly as another wave of nausea left her shivering. She had seen men being torn apart; men being systematically viciously tortured to death in front of her. No, not her. Catrin. It had been a dream, a dream they had somehow shared. As she reached the bathroom she let out a moan of grief and horror and stared at herself in the mirror, terrified by the sound she had made. It had been dragged up from somewhere deep inside her, somewhere so primitive, it terrified her. She ran the cold tap and splashed her face with water. The wave of sickness was retreating but the scene she had witnessed wasn’t. It was still clear in her mind. She had been there. She had seen it through Catrin’s eyes and it was beyond horrific.

  Drying her face on a towel she staggered downstairs to the kitchen. Pepper was sitting on his chair by the Aga gazing contemplatively into space. He looked at her. She saw his eyes widen, the pupils sudden slits of terror. He leapt off the chair and was out of the cat flap before she could call out. She stood staring after him. What had he seen? Or sensed? She didn’t like to think.

  She walked over to the sink and filled the kettle, somehow comforted by the mundane action. Her hands as she turned off the tap were shaking. This was the most vivid dream she had ever had, as vivid as the waking dreams that had taken her into the garden of her old house in Kew to see Rhona and her depredations.

  Leaning on the Aga she tried to think rationally about what had happened. On waking she had appeared to move from one reality to another. She had heard Joan’s voice clearly as the echoes of Catrin’s world had faded; it had been like a door closing on the life she had been a part of only moments before.

  This was fascinating, she reminded herself sternly. She could not afford to block out the memories, however dreadful they were. She doubted if she could do it anyway, but to exorcise them at least partially, or perhaps to deprive them of their power, she should write them down, reduce them to notes, put them into a filing box labelled research.

  Not so easily done. How could any human being do that to another? She could still see the faces of the men who had so efficiently eviscerated their fellow human beings. They were impassive, cold, just doing their job, trained killers, killing. She felt her stomach turn over again at the memory.

  Mint. Joan had suggested mint tea. That seemed like a good idea. She walked over to the door and opened it. It was growing dark now and a damp chill was settling over the garden as she made her way slowly towards the herb beds beside the brook. There were all the moisture-loving herbs, marshmallow, meadowsweet, comfrey and several kinds of mint, lovingly tended by Sue she was sure, yet allowed to run riot through the bed. She broke some stalks of mint and carried them back towards the house, sniffing them as she walked, feeling them soothing her almost at once.

  Halfway across the grass she heard from somewhere behind her a loud snap as if someone had stepped on a fallen branch and it had cracked under their weight, the sound echoing across the garden, clearly audible above the sound of the water. She stopped. She had forgotten Rhona. The executions at Conwy had driven everything else from her mind. She looked round, her heart thudding with fright, aware that the garden was quickly descending from dusk to darkness. Impenetrable shadows stretched across the herb beds, and the water in the brook was black, tinged only here and there with a silver runnel catching the last of the light.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called. ‘Rhona, is that you? Stop playing silly buggers. We need to talk.’ She waited, listening. The noise of the water blocked out all other sounds with its deceptively cheery babble. She wanted to scream at it to be quiet, to let her hear whatever else there was to hear. She took two steps along the path towards the house and stopped again. ‘Rhona?’ The mint was wilting in her grasp. The scent of it surrounded her, blocking her senses. She was holding it too tightly and her hands were wet with sap. She took another half-dozen steps, her fear threatening to overwhelm her. The solid black shape of the house in the distance wasn’t far. All she had to do was run. She turned again, hesitating, looking towards the sound she had heard. There was nothing there. The darkness was empty and still. If anyone was out there, they too were holding their breath, listening. She heard herself give a small whimper like an animal in
distress; a few more steps. Whoever it was hadn’t noticed she was moving.

  Her nerve broke. She began to run, reached the back porch, dived inside the open door, and slammed it shut behind her. She turned the key in the lock and leant against it panting.

  The door had been open. Wide open. Anyone could have walked in while she was on the other side of the garden. She stared round the kitchen. Dear God, perhaps Rhona was in here with her. Paralysed with fright, she found she couldn’t move.

  The kettle had begun to boil. Steam was pouring from the spout, condensation running down the window. She gave a little sob. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she muttered. ‘For goodness’ sake!’

  The rattle of the cat flap made her jump, then she smiled. ‘Pepper?’ He walked across the room, stopped, gave her a look of withering contempt and jumped on his chair. Whatever aura of horror had clung to her before must have gone. That was a comfort. As was the thought that he would not have come in so calmly if there had been anyone else in the house. Pepper, her watchdog.

  She pushed herself away from the door and went to lift the kettle off the hob. In her panic she had dropped the mint leaves somewhere out in the garden. She saw the green stain on her hands and smelt the sweet minty odour.

  One way of guaranteeing that Pepper stayed indoors with her would be to feed him. Putting down his plate she stood and watched as he ate, admiring his concentration as, single-mindedly, he chewed his way through each biscuit and then licked the plate for every last crumb. He finished with a drink of water then retired to his chair again to wash his whiskers. She smiled. She envied him his centeredness and his appetite. She had lost all desire for food. Abandoning the idea of going out again and repeating the mint-picking episode, she sipped a cup of camomile tea and tried to read a book, choosing one of Sue’s to distract her. It was Beth Chatto’s Garden Notebook, pulled from a shelf of gardening books in the living room. She couldn’t face one of her own, they were too spooky. At ten she turned on the TV to watch the news. She dozed off and woke with a start. It was nearly midnight. Pepper was curled up on the chair, his tail wrapped round his nose, fast asleep.

  She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to go back to Catrin’s story. She didn’t want to relive any of that scene. Nor did she want to go upstairs alone. ‘I don’t suppose you would come up with me?’ she whispered to the cat. He opened one eye. Greatly daring, she stooped and picked him up. Cradling him in her arms like a baby she headed for the stairs, leaving the lights on and the TV quietly talking to itself in the corner. Pepper tensed and she waited for him to wriggle free, but he relaxed and let her carry him up to her room. She put him down carefully on her bed and, kicking off her shoes, lay down beside him, not attempting to get undressed, leaving the bedside lamp switched on, merely pulling the blanket over her as she lay, keeping as still as possible so as not to disturb him. He snuggled up into the pillow, yawned and went instantly to sleep. She smiled. ‘Sweet dreams,’ she whispered.

  By the window Catrin stared at her thoughtfully. She knew the woman had shared her nightmares and for that she was sorry. She knew she was afraid of falling asleep and knew exactly how that felt. She tiptoed closer, seeing that almost as soon as she had lain down sleep had overwhelmed her in spite of all her efforts to fight it. Did she know how to stop the dreams, she wondered? Perhaps not. She didn’t seem to know how to regulate them at all. Her attempts at dreaming true had been unplanned and wildly uncontrolled. Surely she had not intended to draw the red-haired virago to her.

  She stepped closer, examining Andy’s clothes, noting the stitching on her jeans and her heavy knitted sweater with almost professional curiosity. Such clothes would be warm and practical. She took another step closer and Pepper woke with a start. He sat up, his ears flat against his head, leapt off the bed and fled out of the door. Andy gave a small moan and turned over, reaching out for the comfort of the warm, solid little body. In her sleep she did not notice that he had gone.

  In the bedroom at the B & B Rhona woke and lay staring up at the ceiling, wondering where she was. The room was eerily quiet as the country always was. No cars; a darkness outside the window which was total. She wondered idly where the nearest street lamp was and smiled uncomfortably. She couldn’t imagine why Andy should want to live in such a godforsaken part of the world. But of course she had to. She was running away. Hiding. Rhona smiled again. Knowing someone was that frightened of you was extraordinarily exhilarating.

  She remembered when the psychiatrist had spent a stupidly large amount of time questioning her about her enjoyment of watching other people’s pain, going right back to the children at school whom she had taken so much pleasure in hurting. Chinese burns. Her speciality. In the end her mother had been asked to take her away from the school, which had suited her fine. She reckoned the shrink got as much of a kick out of hearing her talking about it as she did recalling her actions.

  She raised herself on her elbow and thumped the pillow. The action, however much it relieved her frustrated impatience, did not make the bed any more comfortable and after a few minutes she reached out and turned on the bedside light. It was time she did some serious planning. Her fellow guests were all leaving the next day and her hostess had asked her how long she would be staying. Fair enough. The woman had a right to know. She ought to move on and maybe that would be sensible. It would be easier to disappear if she kept moving. These hills seemed to be full of extraordinarily lonely houses, the perfect place to keep a low profile. She was pleased now that she had had the good sense to book in under an assumed name.

  She cursed herself again for her stupidity in going to look for Miranda yesterday.

  Easing herself into a more comfortable position, she wondered whether Graham had ever told Miranda about her. She imagined he had, at great length, going into detail about her supposed misdemeanours. After all, during some of their worst quarrels, he had referred to her as a witch; and worse. Little did he know. She smiled grimly.

  The people she had picked on had always asked for it. If they’d left her alone and minded their own business she would not have had to punish them. She should have punished Graham. She might have got round to it in the end if she hadn’t been distracted by that nice man from America. They had spent a long time together on a wonderful trip across the States, she and Abner, and then it had all gone wrong. He had begun to irritate her. She sighed. Dealing with him had been less enjoyable than she had hoped; she’d been forced into the rapid change of plan when a local cop had begun to take an interest in her. She had had to cut her losses and come back to England before it got out of hand and by then Miranda was there gloating over her conquest of someone else’s husband.

  Outside it was beginning to get light. She could see the pale outline of the window behind the curtains now. She wriggled down under the duvet. Another couple of hours’ sleep and then it would be time to go down for breakfast. Later she would go to the bank and collect some cash and after that she would go back to Sleeper’s Castle. The thought sent a shot of adrenaline through her body. It was the perfect place to confront Miranda. She had never set foot inside the building but some strange instinct told her it was a house that was accustomed to creating its own history; a house used to violence. And if she didn’t find Miranda there alone there were hundreds of miles of wild mountainous country around it where, if fate played into her hand, their confrontation would happen.

  15

  Catrin’s father came home in the autumn. He had followed his hero on raids across north and mid Wales, recording success after success in his poems and songs as Owain with his comparatively small army of guerrilla fighters harried and burned their way across the country, all the time being assured that they were winning more and more support. The English seemed incapable of catching up with him; time and again his men would descend from a mountain hideout or a forest lair to destroy a marching army or an unsuspecting camp and then he would be gone again, leaving his victims to lick their wounds.

  Cat
rin had watched in her dreams as manors and castles were taken and destroyed; she saw the horror of men and women turned out into the night as their homes burned behind them. She witnessed Owain’s rage when he heard the monks of Abbey Cwm Hir had betrayed him to the English and watched the destruction in August of the abbey. Then came the horror of the capture of New Radnor Castle. ‘No!’ she murmured in her dream. ‘No, please, no.’ The surviving men of the garrison had been rounded up by Owain’s army, sixty or seventy captives in all, and beheaded in revenge for the treachery at Conwy. Their bodies were hung from the castle walls.

  ‘Were you there?’ Catrin asked Dafydd. Her face was pale. ‘Was Edmund part of it?’

  Dafydd looked away, unable to meet her eye. ‘I was with Owain until he despoiled the abbey. It was in the patronage of the Mortimers, his vowed foes. You do see, don’t you? There was no choice. And then we took Montgomery. He failed to capture the castle at Welshpool but the area around it was burned. To punish the enemy.’ He paused, clearly uncomfortable. ‘It had to be done. This is war. We went on to Powys Castle and there we failed.’ He gave an anguished sigh. ‘Its constable, John Charleton, was too strong. We withdrew to the hills.’ He glanced at her. ‘The Lord Owain told me to come home.’

  ‘Why? If you were supporting him, lauding his victories.’ Catrin didn’t know what else to say. The detail of the scenes she had witnessed was terrible and she had been forced to watch, unable to wake up, just as her father was forced to watch in reality from hillsides or distant vantage points.

  ‘Because,’ he cleared his throat and laboured on, his voice hoarse. ‘Because the fight is possibly coming this way. I don’t know what he plans, he would never tell me, but he studies his maps and he listens to his spies and he follows the valleys and rivers with his finger and he smiles as he has warning of the movement of the king’s army or news of a castle or a manor or an abbey which is badly garrisoned and rumoured to support Henry of Lancaster. No one knows where he will appear. No one knows what he will do next.’