Sleeper’s Castle

  ‘But you are his seer!’ Catrin cried out. ‘You must know.’ She was terrified.

  He didn’t reply. ‘He would not attack us,’ he said doggedly after a moment. ‘He spares the homes of his supporters.’

  ‘He sent you home because he knows he will come to Hay?’ Catrin grabbed his sleeves and forced him to look at her. ‘Tell me, Tad. What have you seen?’

  He glanced round warningly. ‘Where is Joan? She must not hear this.’

  ‘You know very well she has gone to visit the farm. Tad, our friends, our neighbours!’

  He clenched his teeth stubbornly.

  ‘We have to warn them.’

  ‘No! We can say nothing.’ He seized her wrist. ‘We know nothing, Catrin. That is the way he works. No one knows. No one is warned. He may not come. He may turn and ride back to the west coast tomorrow. He may have already gone.’

  ‘Yet he sent you home to protect me,’ she whispered.

  ‘He knows the way of soldiers in war,’ he said dryly. ‘He would not want you harmed. And people like me slow him down. He has his own seer who rides with him into battle. I am a hindrance so it is better if I am not with him. I can serve him as well from here with poems and stories.’ She could hear the bitter hurt and rejection in his voice.

  ‘Did you tell him of your bad dreams?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘Where he is destroyed?’

  He shook his head. ‘I dream of success and glory as much as I dream of blood,’ he said slowly. ‘He does not always win, that is the way of war. I do not speak of the bad times, it is bad for morale. It undermines confidence.’ It was almost as if he were repeating someone else’s words.

  Catrin walked across to the fire, her back to her father. She shivered, pulling her thick woollen shawl around her more closely. ‘I have dreamt too. I have seen battles and victory and defeat. I have seen great areas of the country laid waste and people starving, their livelihood destroyed by one side or the other. Is it worth it, Tad?’

  ‘Of course it is worth it. It is for freedom! It is for our true prince!’ Her father gave her a scathing look and turned towards his study. ‘Something women cannot be expected to understand.’

  She stood looking down into the embers for a long time after he had slammed his door behind him, wondering what the woman in men’s hose, the woman who seemed to be called Andy, would say to that last comment. She had tried to shield her from the worst of the dreams but it had not been easy; she was too open, too receptive. It had not surprised Catrin to see this new shadow in the house. The ghosts from the past and from the future were as much a part of the fabric of the building as she was herself. Some reacted to her, some didn’t.

  Catrin thought back wearily to her own childhood when her father had begun training her to be a dreamer, to look into the future and to recall the past. She had had a natural facility for it and all too easily slipped into trance, led in by the flicker of flames or the shimmer of leaves against a summer sky. He had taught her to switch off, to erect barriers, to direct her attention to the question of the hour. She had never found that easy. Girls from the farms nearby would find their way to her door and give her a present or pay her a farthing to tell their fortune and sometimes she would comply, but other times she saw nothing but pain and travail for them and if she told them that they were angry and threatened her. Eventually her father forbade her to do it any more. When the pictures came unbidden she was silent. When she tried to avoid them, they came in dreams and again she was silent.

  With a sigh she walked out of the room, out of the house and went to stand on the bank of the brook, listening to the babble of the water. Even that sound was capable of sending her away into a distant place over the hedges and the fields, down the mountain, across the great River Wye and out towards the north, the forest of Radnor, where even now a secret army was cautiously creeping through the heather towards Hay.

  Andy was sitting in the coffee shop alone, sipping a double espresso, staring up through the window towards the castle walls. That ancient slab of keep and the huge old doors in the massive walls were part of the original building. The other end of the castle, the Jacobean mansion house, was out of place, incongruous now she had seen the original, intact, through Catrin’s eyes. She took another sip of coffee, feeling it bite, shock her system awake. She had seen the brushwood piled up against the walls, the flames taking hold, the shouting men charging the gate with battering rams and watched them burst open as easily as a lanced boil. The garrison was not expecting trouble. They had been expecting it to be a market day like any other. Another hour and they would have opened the doors themselves. The banner of Glyndŵr was at the head of the shouting horde as they charged up the ramp that led to the gates and on into the inner courtyard. The garrison was small and ill trained and only half-hearted in the defence of the castle. They fled, as did the people of Hay. There were to be no bodies hanging from these walls. The Lord Owain had a soft spot for Hay – why, no one could imagine, unless he knew the townsfolk were secretly on his side – but the castle must be razed, great holes punched in its defences, its stores looted and its weapons stolen so it was of no further use to king or baron on the English side. A token number of houses were burned, cattle slaughtered and then the invaders were on their way, leaving the place undefendable, a jagged ruin rising skywards in the centre of the town, visible from far away across the river as a warning to any who stood in the way of the Lord of Glyndŵr. He moved three miles downstream to Clifford Castle, which like Hay was barely defended, and then he turned his attention to the cloud-topped barrier of the Black Mountains which stood between him and his goal of Abergavenny.

  ‘Andy?’ The voice broke into her daydream. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ Sian eased herself in between the spare chair and the table, slopping her coffee into its saucer as she put it down on the table. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

  ‘No. I was getting a fix in quickly to wake me up.’ Andy gestured at her cup. She glanced out of the window. The small car park was full, the castle behind it sleeping peacefully against an intensely blue sky. In front of the war memorial a group of children were laughing and messing around as their teacher tried to call them to order. It all looked very ordinary.

  ‘Shall I get you another coffee?’

  She realised Sian was talking to her. ‘Sorry. No. Thanks.’

  ‘I take it you haven’t been sleeping well,’ Sian commented dryly.

  ‘No. I haven’t.’ Andy gave a wry grimace. ‘Actually my dreams have been a bit gory, better forgotten. What I wondered was have you had any information about Rhona? Bryn hasn’t heard anything and I’ve a bad feeling about her.’

  Sian’s left eyebrow shot up. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. Your bad feelings are probably like other people’s storm warnings. I’m afraid I haven’t. I’ve phoned various people I know who do bed and breakfast and no one has seen a woman answering her description. And I don’t think she’s at any of the pubs in Hay. The trouble is there are so many people doing B & B now. She could be anywhere.’

  ‘I thought it was a long shot, to be honest.’ Andy sighed. ‘I’m just so angry that she should follow me here. This is my haven. Somewhere that has nothing to do with her. Hasn’t she done me enough damage!’ Andy bit off the words. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit frazzled.’

  There was a short pause.

  ‘Are you managing to get any painting done?’ Sian thought it wise to change the subject.

  ‘A bit. I’m going to try and arrange one of the bedrooms as a studio. There isn’t enough light in the great hall where I’m doing it at the moment. As the days get shorter there’s less and less daylight in that house. The walls are so thick and the windows small.’

  ‘It wasn’t built for light. It was built for warmth. To keep the wind out.’

  Andy nodded. ‘If I was staying here forever, I would be tempted to build a proper studio. A sort of wooden summer house with large windows, but that would be too hard to heat, and it wouldn’t be easy to defend.??
?

  ‘Defend?’

  ‘She might torch it or something.’

  ‘Oh Andy, this is awful. You’re joking!’

  ‘No. I’m not. She seems to have a really vicious streak.’ Andy bit her thumbnail. ‘Anyway, that’s not going to happen obviously, and one or two of the upstairs windows in the more modern part let in a good north light. I am going to buy some decent lights as well and I will ask Bryn to help me move the furniture around to give me a bit of space.’

  ‘Wow. You must have made a bit of headway with him then.’

  Andy laughed. ‘I think he has a kind streak buried deep in there somewhere.’

  Bryn came up trumps. He helped her push the spare-room bed against the wall, out of the way, he distributed the superfluous chairs between her bedroom and Sue’s and brought a table upstairs for her to work at. He even offered to take down the curtains to let in more light. They threw a rug over the bed which, without pillows and with a few scatter cushions, immediately became a divan. When it was finished he looked round critically. ‘Not bad. You’re right, you’ll still need a decent light or two in here. I’m afraid you can’t get round the fact that this is an old house.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s perfect though. I needed a dedicated room for a studio.’

  ‘Do you have an easel?’

  ‘Not for the kind of thing I do. I use watercolours mostly.’

  ‘Your paintings are good.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  ‘In the living room. As you say, you have no privacy there.’ He grinned.

  She glanced at him uncomfortably. When had he been in the house looking at her paintings? Better not to ask.

  He noticed her hesitation. ‘I’ll leave you to it now. You’ll want to put everything in its right place. If you need anything else lifting, just call me.’

  She stood listening to his footsteps as he ran down the stone staircase. Two minutes later the back door banged shut and she was alone.

  It took an hour to bring all her painting things upstairs and arrange them round the room. By the time she had finished it was perfect, and to crown it all Pepper had taken up position on the divan sitting critically watching her as she put her jars of brushes in place and arranged some of her books on the shelves.

  It was beginning to get dark when she heard Bryn’s van start up. She stood listening to the sound of the engine as he turned in the lane and set off down the hill until it died away in the distance and she was alone. Almost at once she found herself wishing they had not taken down the curtains. She felt very exposed, standing in the brightly lit room as it grew darker outside. ‘I think we might get a blind for that front window,’ she said quietly to Pepper. ‘It wouldn’t block the light in the daytime and it would make me feel a whole lot safer at night if no one can spy on me.’

  Later she turned off the light and went through into her own bedroom. It felt cosy and safer in there, with the curtains closed.

  Joan had gone home for a few days. A message had come, begging her to go and see her mother, who had been taken ill. Catrin was standing in the kitchen surveying the pot of rabbit stew, which Joan had left for them, when there was a knock at the door. She opened it and a blast of cold wind and rain swept in. With it came two cloaked figures. One of them pushed the door shut and slotted the bar in place. Then he pulled off his hood.

  ‘Edmund!’ she cried. ‘You’ve just missed Joan—’ She broke off as the other figure began to take his own cloak off. Both men wore mail. ‘My lord Owain,’ she stammered.

  Edmund took Glyndŵr’s cloak and hung them both on the back of the door to drip on the floor. ‘I sent the message to Joan,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t have her here when I brought Prince Owain up to see your father.’

  Glyndŵr smiled at Catrin. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘It is good to see you look so well, Mistress Catrin. I trust your father is too. The ride he did in my wake round Wales wore him out, I fear.’

  ‘He is well, thank you. He is in his study,’ she said softly. She looked from one man to the other. ‘Shall I show you?’

  Edmund stayed in the kitchen as Catrin led the way to her father’s study and opened the door. ‘Tad, there is someone here to see you.’

  As the door closed behind their guest Catrin stood for a long moment staring at it. Then she turned back to the kitchen. One of the stew pots was now on the fire. ‘We are hungry. You don’t mind do you? It is not every day a lady gets to entertain the Prince of Wales.’ He grinned at her. His hair was dripping over his hauberk. ‘Shall we light a fire in your hall and entertain in style?’

  ‘Why has he come?’

  ‘To consult his seer, as he always does when he travels round the country.’

  ‘But he sent Tad home.’

  ‘To look after you. And to stop him proclaiming death and disaster in front of the whole army.’ Edmund’s face grew solemn. ‘Your father has a habit of being too honest about his dreams and he is constantly contradicting himself.’ He picked up a wooden spoon and began to stir the pot. ‘If my sister made this it will be good. It is a shame you can’t tell her it was eaten by the prince.’ He looked up. ‘Have you heard the news from Hay?’

  Catrin looked at him anxiously. What she had seen, she had seen in her dreams. ‘We have had no one by in the last few days.’

  ‘We took the castle.’

  ‘Took?’ She stared at him.

  ‘As in captured and dismantled.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry. No one was killed. He knew it was our home town and the natives seemed friendly.’

  ‘How can you capture a castle without killing people?’

  ‘By guile; clever tactics. And especially if it is manned by sympathisers.’

  They walked into the great hall. He bent over the log basket and began to gather logs.

  ‘Since when have you been the prince’s special companion?’ Catrin asked abruptly. ‘You and he, here alone?’

  ‘Since he needed to be guided up the hill to Sleeper’s Castle. Who else would do it?’ Edmund turned to the hearth.

  ‘Why don’t you light the fire next door in the parlour,’ she whispered. ‘It will warm more quickly and be more private.’

  ‘Private?’ Edmund shot a look at her suspiciously. ‘Is there anyone else here?’

  ‘Peter, the boy who minds the horses, and the girl, Betsi. They are both outside.’

  As Catrin spoke they heard a loud knocking on the kitchen door, the rattle of pails and the creak of the door hinges.

  ‘Get rid of them!’ Edmund reached for his dagger.

  ‘Betsi has been milking the cow. Don’t worry. She won’t recognise him.’

  ‘But she will recognise me and she will tell Joan. Send her away!’

  Catrin ran back into the kitchen. She unbarred the door and opened it, aware that Edmund was listening. ‘Sorry, Betsi. Bring in the milk. I barred the door against the wind. It keeps rattling.’

  The girl crossed to the cold slab in the pantry and began pouring milk from her wooden pail into one of the large earthenware jugs.

  ‘Joan said I was to heat up her stew for you, mistress’ – she glanced over her shoulder – ‘but I see you have already started it.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Betsi,’ Catrin tried to steady her voice. ‘I started because my father has a quinsy. I thought it might tempt him.’ She was thinking furiously. ‘You may leave us and go on back to the cowshed, Betsi. It will be warm in there. Don’t come back till morning.’

  She didn’t move until the girl had grabbed her shawl from the table where she had thrown it and made her way to the door. Betsi paused, looking at the two long wet cloaks hanging there, then she pulled the door open with a creak of hinges and went out, the handle of her pail rattling as she banged the door behind her. She didn’t give the cloaks another thought.

  Edmund appeared at once. ‘Well done. We can’t risk it. Word gets out so quickly.’

  ‘I’ll serve supper in the parlour to keep it private,’ Catrin sa
id. ‘The windows are shuttered.’ She hesitated. ‘If you want supper. Won’t he want to leave at once?’

  Edmund looked over his shoulder towards the study door. All was silent in there. ‘Go on heating the stew,’ he said, ‘and I will build the fire. We were hungry when we rode up here. I don’t see that that will have changed. Especially when it smells so good.’ He grinned.

  ‘Won’t Betsi see your horses?’ Catrin blurted out. ‘She will notice—’ She had noticed the two cloaks on the door. Tomorrow Catrin would have to give her an explanation for their presence.

  ‘No. Don’t worry, we left them out of sight—’ He broke off as the study door opened. Dafydd beckoned. ‘Come here, Catrin. You, Edmund, find us some food.’

  Catrin smothered a laugh as she saw the look of indignation which flashed across Edmund’s face. ‘It seems it will be your turn to stir the stew after all,’ she teased.

  Glyndŵr was sitting behind Dafydd’s writing slope. ‘Catrin, your father reminds me that you too are a seer.’ He leant back against the wall, tipping the high stool on which he was perched onto its two back legs. ‘I need to know what you see for Wales.’

  Catrin was struck dumb. She saw her father’s face darken, but he said nothing.

  ‘I have dreams,’ she said hesitantly. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. ‘Sometimes I see battles. I don’t know if they show the past or the future.’ She lowered her gaze.

  ‘I think you do.’ Glyndŵr’s voice was soft. ‘Don’t be afraid of me, Cat. Wherever I go I make a point of visiting local seers. I missed you this summer, but your father was right not to bring you. The battle lines are no place for you.’ He smiled warmly and held out his hand. Mesmerised, she stepped closer. She was still wearing his silver ring. ‘I want the truth.’ He held her gaze. ‘Even if it is not good. I want to know if you see the same things as your father.’