Sleeper’s Castle

  ‘I don’t know how you did it.’ Rhona was thoughtful. ‘It doesn’t really matter. This is payback time, you must see that. Serendipity. Kismet.’

  ‘I never came to Kew,’ Andy protested again.

  Rhona took another step forward as if to see better. ‘It must be very cold down there,’ she went on conversationally. ‘You’re right out of the sun. I wonder, did you tell anyone where you were going? That delicious gardener, for instance?’

  When Andy said nothing she smiled. ‘I thought not. He wasn’t there when you left, was he. You know, it’s strange. I hadn’t even begun to think of the right way to dispose of you. So many options. And here you are, throwing yourself at my feet as if you had chosen to help me with my decision.’ She looked round critically and then gave a sigh. ‘I don’t really want to get my feet wet, but I think I must. To be sure.’

  Slowly she began to make her way down the side of the gully, slipping here and there as she went. Andy watched, mesmerised, as she came closer. At the bottom she stopped, steadied herself and then examined her boots critically. ‘Damnation. You are right. They’re going to be quite spoiled.’

  Even now Andy thought she might hold out her hand to help her. It was only at the last minute she saw, incredulously, Rhona take careful aim with a vicious kick at her head as she lay on the ground. Somehow Andy threw herself sideways and managed to dodge the full force of the blow. It glanced off her shoulder, but it was enough to throw her sideways into the ice-cold wet moss again. She lay still, unable to get her breath, a vicious pain slicing through her shoulder as she tried to raise her face out of the water and gasp for air.

  Behind her she heard Rhona laugh. ‘That was so satisfying.’ She seemed to be talking to herself. She stepped closer and bent over Andy. ‘I do hope you haven’t got a mobile on you, dear. I suppose I’d better check.’ She began to search with almost professional dexterity through Andy’s pockets and almost at once she found it in her jacket. Rhona slapped away her feeble protests and pulled it out triumphantly. Without hesitation she threw it over her shoulder. It fell with a splash into the cold black water of the spring.

  She turned away without giving Andy another look.

  It took her several minutes to climb out of the gully. Andy could feel tears of rage and despair burning on her cheeks as she lay in the icy water, pain knifing up through her ankle and round her shoulder, but instinct told her to lie still. If Rhona thought she had any fight left in her, she might come back.

  It wasn’t until she reached the top that Rhona turned and looked round. ‘I imagine it will get very cold up here later,’ she said conversationally. ‘It’s very easy to die of exposure in this sort of place. I am so sorry, dear. But you do see, I have to leave you here. Out of the way. For Graham’s sake.’ She raised her hand in a languid wave and stepped back out of sight.

  Taking a deep breath, Andy tried to move. Only one thing mattered. To get out of the ravine before her body closed down completely from shock. She was soaked through and shivering violently, waves of pain travelling up her leg into her hip. Cautiously moving her arms, she reached out, trying to get a grip on bunches of bog cotton to pull herself free of the engulfing water. It was hard to lift her head; at least the water wasn’t deep enough to drown her. She managed to raise herself on her elbows and looked round to see if she could spot her phone. There was no sign of it and anyway she had heard the splash as it fell into the spring. It wasn’t worth looking for it. What was important was to get herself down to the road.

  It took her an inordinate amount of time to drag herself out of the ravine. Every inch was agonising as she pulled herself up the steep side, dragging her useless ankle over rocks and clumps of heather, unable to take any weight on it and feeling the bruise in her shoulder as a searing pain every time she moved. When at last she pulled herself over the edge of the last of the rocks and lay on the soft grass on the level ground she was spent. She couldn’t even lift her head. Her teeth were chattering and she was overwhelmed by icy rigors, shuddering helplessly.

  For while she must have lost consciousness. When she woke she was aware of the strange sensation of being bathed in sweat at the same time as shivering violently. Andy was still lying on her face but she was aware of a shadow falling over her. ‘So, you came back to gloat,’ she whispered. If Rhona chose to stick the dagger in her back she wouldn’t even have the strength to protest. Somehow she managed to roll over and look around. There was no one there. She couldn’t move any more than that so she lay staring up at the sky. She could see the buzzard now, circling lower than she had ever seen it. She could see the outline of the feathers in its wings, the spade-shape of its tail. It soared up and away and round and then came back, angling its wings to make the turn. The sun had moved a long way towards the west. It was casting long shadows across the ground and she could feel the whisper of cold in the wind. She must have been there for hours. Without her phone she had no idea of the time. If she wanted to live she knew she had to drag herself to her feet and start moving down towards the road; at least then she would have the chance of getting a lift back to civilisation. She tried to move her leg and let out a small cry of pain.

  She felt ridiculously weak and shaky. She tried to manoeuvre her arms behind her to push on the ground to get the leverage she needed to sit up. Her fingernails were split and torn and her hands were lacerated from the effort of climbing up the sides of the gully. It was as she tried to take the weight on her injured shoulder that the pain took her in a black wave and she fell back. Her last thought was of Catrin and the visit of the prince.

  Joan had returned from her visit mid morning, the mule loaded with supplies from her father’s farm. She was full of the excitement of her trip home and news of her mother who had made a strangely swift recovery from her mysterious illness. As she unloaded bottles and jars and dried vegetables and fruit, and stored them in the pantry she talked on, never pausing to ask how Catrin and her father fared.

  She never guessed that Edmund had visited the house; never had the slightest suspicion that the prince had been with him. Catrin had washed the dishes herself. There was no sign of their night-time visitor; she had hidden her gift behind a hollow stone in her bedroom wall. The other things, the writing materials for her father, Joan would never question, nor the extra food. They could be explained away if she ever asked by the visit of a travelling pedlar.

  There had been no sign of a passing troop of horsemen; the hillsides were empty. It wasn’t until a sennight later that news came of the devastation of Llanthony Abbey, so close across the mountain and along the pass, the monks turned out into the night, the sacred looted and scattered and made profane. The prince’s army had then marched on to take Abergavenny Castle before turning towards Usk.

  Catrin bit her lips in misery. To destroy the house of God. Was that not sacrilege?

  Time passed. There was no more news of the rebellion. Autumn turned to winter and winter into spring. Dafydd had developed a cough and had taken to his bed for several days at a time, but now he was stronger and growing restless.

  ‘Are you going with him this year?’ Joan asked. She hefted a skillet onto the table and pushed up her sleeves.

  ‘No,’ Catrin sighed. ‘If he goes, he will go with Peter.’

  Joan raised an eyebrow. ‘I won’t ask where he is going.’

  ‘His usual progress, from house to house.’ Catrin glanced up. ‘You haven’t heard from Edmund?’ It was many months since he and Owain had walked out of the house and into the night.

  ‘No word.’

  The two women looked at each other for a scant second and looked away. If Joan pretended she didn’t know where Edmund was, it was better left that way.

  Catrin woke with a start. Someone was shouting. Her heart hammering, she climbed out of bed and reached for her heavy mantle. The house was freezing cold. Opening the door of her bedroom she peered into the solar next door where her father slept. In the glow of the dying embers in his brazier she cou
ld see his bed was empty. The shout came again, from downstairs. She ran down the cold stone steps in her bare feet and looked round the hall where Joan slept near the fire. The woman was sitting up, her eyes wide, clutching her blankets round her.

  ‘It’s my tad,’ Catrin whispered. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll see to him.’

  She knew what had happened. It had happened so often before. He had fallen asleep propped against the wall on the stool beside the fire in his workroom and his dreams had woken him. She lifted the latch on the heavy door and pushed it open. Her father was standing looking down at the fire. She could see the stool on its side, the cushion lying on the floor where he had knocked it as he climbed to his feet.

  ‘Tad?’

  ‘Go away. I’m sorry if I woke you.’

  He stooped wearily, reached for a log in the basket nearby and threw it on the fire. They both watched the sparks fly upwards. The candles had long ago burned down.

  ‘What is it? What made you cry out?’ She closed the door behind her and moved closer to him. ‘Please tell me.’

  He shook his head. ‘I told you, girl. Go away. Go back to bed.’

  ‘Not until you tell me. Let me fetch you some wine.’

  ‘No!’ His shout echoed round the house. ‘I told you to leave me. Now.’ He straightened his shoulders and strode towards the door. Opening it, he gestured at her to leave. ‘Now!’

  There was nothing she could do. With a sigh she walked past him out into the hall. He slammed the door behind her.

  Joan had lit a candle from the embers and set it on the table. She too had thrown logs on the fire and the hall was full of leaping shadows. ‘Nightmares again?’ she said. She yawned.

  ‘He won’t talk about them. He gets no rest.’

  Joan shuddered ostentatiously. ‘They must be bad.’

  Catrin said nothing. Joan could not read or by now she would have looked at the documents on Dafydd’s desk and seen the words he could not help writing again and again before he scratched them out because he did not want to believe them.

  Blood. Fire. Death.

  Catrin pulled her mantle round her more closely. ‘I am going back to bed. Put out the candles, Joan, and try to get some sleep. It will be dawn soon. I feel it by the chill in the air.’

  As the weeks passed news came via the same routes as always. They listened to gossip in the market, they welcomed visitors to the kitchen and heard from them news from every direction. The numbers of Owain’s followers grew daily; his army was now known as Plant Owain: the children of Owain. Most Welshmen supported him quietly, cautious as to where their neighbours’ loyalties lay, but the men still flocked in their dozens to his standard. Meanwhile Dafydd paced up and down the great hall of the house, smacking his fists together in frustration.

  ‘You could have gone to the prince. You didn’t have to stay here with me!’ Catrin reminded him yet again as she followed her father into his study and watched as he sat down at his desk.

  ‘Do I look as though I want to be riding across the hills in the vanguard of an army!’ he exploded. ‘I am too old. I am no soldier. You know that better than I. I ache in every joint of my being, there are times I couldn’t climb on my horse without someone there to give me a boost up my backside.’

  He did not see her wry smile at the words. She knew better than anyone the pain he was in, his hands knotted from holding his pen, his back an agony of spasms from leaning forward over his desk.

  ‘And besides,’ he went on, more quietly now, ‘I still have no good news to give him. I hear he captured Welshpool at last and seized Prince Hal’s baggage train; I hear of other bards and soothsayers foretelling victory for Wales, and I wonder where I have gone wrong. I see victory, oh, I see victory at first, but then …’ he paused. ‘Then I see disaster. My nightmares are of disaster.’

  As were Catrin’s now. The night before she too had dreamed of death and destruction, and again it was of a house of God, but this time the blazons on the knights were English. She saw the silhouette of soaring arches against the flames, heard the screams of the monks and then the most awful thing of all, the crying of children. She had watched in frozen terror as she saw men-at-arms rounding up a procession of small children; they were dragged from their mothers, screaming and crying and chained together like little animals as the rain began to fall. As she watched, the bedraggled convoy was led away into the hills and out of sight. ‘There are hundreds of them,’ she heard herself murmur as she woke, her pillow soaked with tears. Little Welsh children, taken away to England by order of the king.

  ‘Little Welsh children,’ Andy echoed. She was burning up with fever, racked by dreams. Again a shadow flitted overhead. Somehow she forced her eyes open. The sky was darker now. Another shadow swept over her, a black shape in the air. She looked up and saw the circling birds, two buzzards now, no, three and other birds, larger, with the great forked tail of the red kite. She heard herself give a whimper. They had gathered to look at her. Great hunting birds, their amazing eyesight scanning the slopes below, they had seen her easily, so why had no one else? ‘Help!’ Her cry was so feeble it was barely audible. She saw the birds veer away slightly, then they returned, circling ever lower. She could see them in such detail now, every feather of their wings and tails, as they circled ever downward, closer and closer. They were huge.

  ‘Dear God, they’re planning to eat me!’ The thought hit her all at once. She had seen carrion birds circling the corpses on the battlefield in her dream. That was their job. Cleaning up corpses. Tearing at the bloody meat, stripping the bones. They had seen her fall and their instinct had kicked in. They saw her as a meal. Somehow she summoned the strength to shout louder and wave her good arm. They veered away sharply once more, but then, seeing she was still on the ground, they closed in again. She could see the great gleaming eyes as they looked down at her, feel the wind under their wings. One of them let out a wild yelping call, triumphant, echoing over the empty moors and hills.

  She looked round frantically. She needed a stick to wave at them, to help her stand and try to walk. There were no sticks. No trees near her. She took a deep breath and dragged herself up to her hands and knees. Which way? She had lost all sense of direction. Look for the Bluff. That would guide her. Her head was swimming; her eyes wouldn’t focus. With a single last little cry she collapsed back onto the ground.

  While Joan was fetching more water from the brook a shadow appeared in the doorway. Catrin knew Pepper well. She was amused by her ghost cat, fond of him even. She knew he could see her too. She saw his eyes widen, the pupils narrowing into a vertical slit as he watched her. He sat down to keep an eye on her as she made her way across the kitchen to throw more logs on the fire beneath the cooking pot. Joan came in, a pail of water from the brook in each hand. Pepper jumped up and vanished through the door.

  Catrin followed him into the garden and stopped abruptly, staring out across the valley. Something was wrong. Out there on the hillside someone was calling. She pictured that other woman, Andy, the woman she saw sometimes in her house, the woman she thought of as the ghost in men’s clothes. She sighed. It couldn’t be her. The garden was silent again now. The cat had gone.

  17

  The shadow had stopped moving at last. The birds must have overcome their caution and landed on the ground. Andy screwed her eyes tight shut, waiting for the cruel beaks to start tearing at her flesh. She felt a hand on her face, touching her forehead. Fingers pressing gently under her jaw, feeling for her pulse.

  Rhona!

  Her eyes flew open and she let out a cry of fear.

  ‘Hush, you’re safe.’ It was a man’s voice. His hand touched her forehead again, then he ran his fingers down her shoulder, gently pressing her collarbone. She let out another whimper, her eyes everywhere, scanning the darkening sky, the surrounding hills, the man bending over her. He was no more than a silhouette. She couldn’t make out his face clearly. ‘The buzzards,’ she whispered. Her mouth was dry, her voice no more than
a murmur.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ he said. ‘It was the birds who showed me where you were. Lie still now. Let me see how badly hurt you are.’

  She felt him run his hands down her legs as he crouched beside her. The touch was impersonal, professional. He reached her ankle and she couldn’t stop herself letting out another cry of pain.

  ‘Twisted rather than broken, I think,’ he said. ‘You’ve taken quite a tumble.’

  He stood up and she saw him grope in his pocket. He pulled out his phone then slipped off his jacket and tucked it round her gently. Her eyes followed him as he took a couple of steps away from her and punched in a number. ‘Gareth, I’ve found a young woman up here on the moor near the spring at the head of Nant Rhyd-goch. She’s had a bit of a fall and I need your help to get her to the house.’

  Switching off the phone, he turned back to her.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ she asked. And then she thanked him. Or she thought she did, though no sound came. She drifted off to sleep, opened her eyes and saw the sky growing crimson in the west. It was very beautiful. She tried to smile and must have slept again. When she woke it had grown dark but for the small streak of red on the western horizon. There was another man there now and a pony. Was it Catrin’s? She couldn’t tell. She felt the soft touch of its nose as it lowered its head to examine her. The second man had brought blankets and a flask of something hot, and the two men hoisted her onto the saddle, sitting sideways, wrapped up warm. When the pony started to walk she found the motion restful. Her ankle and shoulder hurt, but not so much now. She dozed. It was dark, but they seemed to know where they were going. ‘Where’s Rhona?’ She remembered saying that out loud. They stopped and asked her who Rhona was and should they go back. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, she tried to kill me.’

  The first snows drifted up the valley in mid November and with the cold came conflicting news from every side. Owain Glyndŵr was besieging the great castle at Caernarfon. He had raised the gold and white standard of Uther Pendragon on Twt Hill and six hundred men had died; then they heard that he had lost as many men as had the king. Glyndŵr withdrew from the castle realising he could not capture it, garrisoned as it was, and then the rumours said that he was asking the King of England for pardon and restitution of his lands.