1
1910
The September heat made the River Thaw sluggish. Sun-crisped grasses and rows of tired cornstalks drooped on either side of the water. A red kite circled high above the Vale of Glamorgan, its gaudy wings brilliant against the hard blue sky. Ynyr’s dappled gray hide sparkled in the sunshine as if his big shoulders and sweat-damp hindquarters were encrusted with jewels. Morwen, in a rush of affection, leaned forward to encircle his wide neck with her arms. He snorted with his usual good humor, and she laughed, full of joy in the hot day, the shine of the slow-moving river, the inviting bulk of the ruined castle ahead of them.
Ynyr’s only tack was a leather halter and an attached rope. Morwen left the rope slack across his withers. He knew where she wanted to go. He always did. His wide back was as familiar to her as her chair in the parlor at Morgan Hall, and his swinging gait, as he paced up the river path, was as gentle as the rocking of her nanny’s chair. Her hat lay on her back, the string loose around her neck, and she lifted her face to feel the sun on her cheeks. She would develop freckles, but she didn’t care. Should Lady Irene notice the offending spots, she would have forgotten them by the time she went up to dress for dinner.
Morwen wiggled her ankles against Ynyr’s barrel, noticing how much farther her feet reached now than they had six months before. She was nearly sixteen, surely done growing. She was as tall as her mother, and half a head taller than her father. She felt Papa’s baffled gaze sometimes, measuring her height and coloring against his own. Father and daughter looked nothing alike. Morwen’s eyes and hair were dark as midnight, while Lord Llewelyn’s eyes were a vague blue, and his wispy hair had been yellow before it faded to gray.
Morwen asked her nanny once, in the days when she still took supper in the nursery, why her papa was so much older than her mama. Nanny had said, “Oh, that’s not unusual, Miss Morwen. Lots of papas are older than mamas. Lord Llewelyn had already come into his title when he married Lady Irene.”
“Why would she marry someone so old?” Morwen had asked, blunt in her innocence.
“Well,” Nanny answered, giving a tiny sniff. “No doubt Lady Irene was honored by his offer. A very good marriage for a girl from an impoverished family—to become a baroness, to live in Morgan Hall …”
“Mama didn’t have a title?”
Nanny pursed her lips. “No, Miss Morwen, she did not, but she does now. Enough questions! Eat your supper, and we’ll go for a walk before bed.”
“Won’t I see Mama and Papa?”
“Not tonight. They’re out for the evening.”
Now that she was older, Morwen understood that her mama had not only possessed no title, but no father, and no dowry. Morwen and her parents lived a different life from the other gentry of the Vale. The Morgans were an old family in St. Hilary, but Lord Llewelyn and his lady attended few of the dinners and garden parties held in other great houses. Morgan Hall was the place where the parish held its fetes and picnics, so Morwen knew most of the laborers’ children, and those of the doctor, the schoolteacher, and the rector. She had few acquaintances of her own social class, a circumstance that caused her governess to despair of her ever learning the art of social conversation. There was evidently nothing to be done. Lady Irene’s awkward background made her unwelcome among the aristocracy.
Morwen didn’t care. She preferred roaming the fields with Ynyr to playing croquet in a lacy white dress, would rather spend her afternoons mucking out a stall than be confined to parlors to sip tea and make small talk. It was a rare day when she didn’t manage to slip away from her governess and dash to the stables.
Ynyr always knew when she was coming, stamping his feet and whinnying with impatience until he caught sight of her.
The governess, Mademoiselle Girard, complained to Lady Irene of her charge’s intransigence, but it availed her little. Lady Irene more often than not had forgotten all about Mademoiselle’s objections by the time she saw her daughter again. Fortunately for Morwen, Mademoiselle was in awe of Lord Llewelyn, his history, his wealth, his important government role. In his presence she was speechless. She never made her complaints known to His Lordship.
Morwen tilted her head back to scan the broken walls of Old Beaupre Castle. She had grown up with this crumbling structure on the horizon, as much a part of the landscape as the river, the fields, and the square tower and ancient tombstones of the fourteenth-century church, but she had visited the castle only once, on an educational outing with Mademoiselle.
She had demurely ridden her pony, following Mademoiselle on a slow, fat mare, with Jago, the horsemaster, bringing up the rear on his gelding. Mademoiselle had organized the trip to illustrate a lecture about Gothic arches and Grecian columns.
There was no mystery about the castle. It had been abandoned long before in favor of a more modern building. Still, Morwen had been thinking of it lately, drawn to the distant silhouette she could see from her bedroom window. Last night she had been there in a dream, hearing her name called by someone she didn’t know and couldn’t see. In the dream she drifted through empty rooms and struggled up blind staircases, searching in vain for the source of the voice.
The medieval part of the castle had been built in 1300, which hardly seemed possible. How could there have been people who lived their entire lives six centuries before she was born? Mademoiselle said that even the porch was three hundred years old. She refused to allow Morwen to set foot beyond it. One of the walls could collapse on her, and then what would Lord Llewelyn say?
Of course Mademoiselle didn’t know about today’s visit. She would have been appalled to see Morwen riding Ynyr, and bareback to boot. Morwen pretended she didn’t notice the farm laborers’ awe as they stared at the slender girl astride the enormous Shire.
Jago understood the accord between Morwen and Ynyr. When the horse began to stamp and whicker in his stall, Jago often came out to meet Morwen in the stable yard, grinning with the knowledge that the stallion had sensed her approach.
Ynyr climbed the grassy hill to the ruin and crossed the last bit of empty field, picking his way among gopher holes and curls of bramble. When they reached the crumbling wall that circled the castle, Morwen sat for a moment, enjoying the quiet. At Morgan Hall there was an unending coming and going, maids and butler and cook and governess dashing up and down stairs, in and out of rooms. It was all but impossible to be alone there, but here, on the hill above the river, was delicious solitude. There was no one to watch her except a few plump red cows grazing in the meadow.
Morwen put one leg over Ynyr’s withers and slid to the ground. She unclipped the rope from his halter and let it fall. He bent his head to graze as she brushed horsehair from the back of her riding skirt.
As she stepped into the shade of the ruined walls, she walked on grass. Unglazed windows gaped onto the Vale. The walls were naked stone, and the three floors had long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, there was little left but a skeleton of what had once been a noble family’s home. It now stood exposed to the elements, less sheltered than the simplest pigsty. Only the tower at one corner had any protection from the elements. The tower was the only mystery about Old Beaupre. No one knew what its purpose might have been.
Morwen trailed her fingertips against the moss-stained walls as she wandered inward. She followed the ancient outlines of a corridor until she came upon an inner courtyard, where she supposed the family had once gathered. A sudden coolness made her shiver, or perhaps it was the memory of her dream. She wandered on, following the fragments of wall, trying to picture the way the castle had once looked.
In a second courtyard the remains of a fountain lay in shards on the patchy grass. A staircase led upward, its broad treads set with river stone. The stairs led only to the open air, but there was a north-facing window near the top. Morwen thought it might afford a view of Morgan Hall.
If there had ever been a banister, it was gone now. Many of the steps were broken. As she mounted the stairs, her arms and legs tingled with awar
eness of the drop to her left. When she reached the window she clung to the sill for safety, feeling the chill of stone against her palms as she stood on tiptoe to peer out.
The square outlines of Morgan Hall showed clearly in the distance, framed by fields of yellow and green, its chimney pots sending tendrils of smoke into the clear sky. The roofline of the stables showed just behind, and thatched cottages dotted the farmland around it. As Morwen watched, the Vulcan tonneau pulled up in the circular drive. She squinted, trying to make out Jago at the wheel. Lord Llewelyn climbed out, a plump dark figure with satchel in hand. No doubt he had just come in from Cardiff on the train.
Morwen watched as Jago backed and turned the motorcar. He would be perspiring with the effort of managing the tonneau. He hated the thing, as she knew from the outings they made to the shops in Cowbridge.
Jago was far more comfortable with animals than motors, but Lord Llewelyn refused to hire a separate driver. Morwen and Jago exchanged private smiles whenever the subject of the tonneau arose. Of all the people at Morgan Hall, Jago was the single person Morwen trusted. It was Jago who had taught her to ride her pony, when she was just four years old.
She had been six the first time she rode Ynyr. Jago wouldn’t have allowed it, so she waited until he was off driving Lord Llewelyn. She opened Ynyr’s stall, and the big horse obligingly lowered his head so she could attach a rope to his halter. The mounting block wasn’t high enough, so she climbed up on the fence around the paddock. Again Ynyr obliged, moving close enough for her to jump on. When she thudded his ribs with her small feet, he started off, and Jago had found them circling the paddock at a ponderous walk. He scolded them both, but Morwen had seen the gleam of pride in his eyes.
She was relaxing her stretched toes to lower herself from the window when movement flickered at the edge of her vision. She turned her head, keeping her grip on the windowsill, and saw a narrow window set into the wall of the tower. It seemed to her sun-dazzled eyes that someone—or something—had walked past it. She freed one hand to shade her eyes and looked again, thinking it must have been a trick of the sunlight, a reflection from a bit of quartz in one of the building stones or a shadow from a moving cloud. It came again, a wisp of gray, a flutter of black.
Morwen sucked in a breath. Was that an animal? It would have to be a big one. It couldn’t be a person lurking in that dark, vacant tower.
Far below her Ynyr whickered, then whinnied. A muffled thumping followed, his hoofbeats sounding on the grassy interior of the ruin. Cautiously, wary of the abyss beneath her, Morwen made her way down the broken staircase. Ynyr’s hoofbeats came closer, and she heard his anxious snort as he searched for her.
She reached the last stair just as the horse edged his way through the doorway, ducking his head to pass through, scraping his hindquarters on the lintel. “Ynyr!” she cried. “You shouldn’t be in here!”
For answer he bumped her chest with his nose. She took his broad cheeks in her two hands and planted a kiss just below his forelock. “You great silly. I’m perfectly fine!”
He snorted again and tossed his head, blowing spittle over her face. She wiped it off as she guided him in an awkward turn. He had to duck and scrape his way back through the doorway and out into the first courtyard. Morwen had come into the castle through a side door, but with the horse beside her, she turned toward a gaping space that must once have held a double door. Ynyr fit easily through it, and side by side they walked through the shadowed porch, passing beneath the Tudor archway. The sudden brilliance of the sun brought stinging tears to Morwen’s eyes, and she blinked them away as she bent to pick up the halter rope from the grass.
Her eyes were still dazzled as she stepped toward Ynyr to clip the rope into its ring. Her left hand lay on his wide shoulder, and her right reached toward his chin as he dropped his head to accommodate her.
He startled her by shying away, throwing his head up beyond her reach. Her hand, stretched out with the snap in her fingers, groped through empty air. “Ynyr! What’s the matter?” He was staring past her, eyes wide and ears laid flat. She spun to see what had frightened him.
A strange figure stood in the shadow of the porch. She wasn’t sure if it was male or female, so shrouded was it, covered head to toe in layers of dark fabric. The person might once have been tall, but now was bent, shoulders hunched around a widow’s hump, neck jutting forward. The face was hidden behind a voluminous hood that looked to Morwen like something out of a fairy tale. For one disorienting moment she thought a ghost had wandered out of the ruin of Old Beaupre.
The smell of the creature dispelled that notion. This person reeked of much-worn clothes and unbathed flesh. The hand that rose to fold back the hood was dark with dirt, the nails black and ragged and all too real.
Morwen took a step back to stay close to Ynyr. She wasn’t really afraid, not with the Shire beside her, but having ridden out with neither maid nor chaperone meant she was vulnerable. If this was a beggar, she had no money to give. If it wasn’t a beggar, then …
The hood fell away, revealing a face that must be female, though so seamed and gaunt it was hard to be certain. A cloud of curly hair surrounded it, hair so white it glittered in the sunshine. The eyes were midnight dark, but sharp, beneath thick silver eyebrows. When the woman opened her mouth, her teeth also looked sharp, and as white as her hair.
“You must be Lady Irene’s babe,” she said.
“I’m not a babe,” Morwen said, stung. “I’m fifteen.”
“Oh yes, I know that. Fifteen. Morwen.” The old woman grinned suddenly, deepening the creases in her cheeks. “Miss Morwen, they call you.” Though she looked ancient, her voice was surprisingly clear, even sweet, with a slight accent Morwen didn’t recognize.
The woman took a step closer so she could peer up into Morwen’s face. Morwen shrank back against Ynyr. “What do you want?” she asked, ashamed of the quaver in her voice. She straightened, encouraged by Ynyr’s bulk behind her. With a decisive movement, she reached up to clip the rope onto his halter. “We have to go!” she said over her shoulder.
“I won’t keep you. I wanted to see you.” The old woman stood where she was, her ragged layers shifting in the breeze, the sunshine bright on her silver hair.
Morwen, about to lead Ynyr to one of the broken walls to mount, looked back. “What do you mean?”
The old woman grinned again, and though the lines in her face were so deep, the smile brightened her face with the memory of youth. “I wanted to lay my eyes on you, Miss Morwen. One time before I die.”
A strange feeling crept over Morwen as she stared at the unwashed crone with her shining black eyes and white smile. It was a sense of recognition. Or premonition. It confounded her and made her head ache. She stammered, “I don’t … That doesn’t …” but couldn’t think how to go on.
“She has never mentioned me, then,” the crone said. Her smile faded, and her eyelids lowered. “You have no idea about your grand-mère.”
“Ma grand-mère, elle est morte,” Morwen said, then wondered why she had responded in French.
It was the one thing—the only thing—her lady mother took an interest in. She was determined that Morwen should speak unaccented, perfect French. Lord Llewelyn approved because he thought it would aid her chances of an advantageous marriage. Lady Irene had never explained her own motivation, but she engaged a French governess, and she frequently tested Morwen’s fluency. It was often their only conversation.
The old woman switched to French as smoothly as Morwen might take a breath. Her eyelids lifted again, and her gaze turned steely. “What makes you think she’s dead, Miss Morwen? Who told you that?”
“My mother.” Morwen felt transfixed by the crone’s eyes, pinned like a butterfly on a board of cork. “M-my nanny.”
“Yes? Which?” The crone chuckled. “Which was it? Your mother or your nanny?”
This challenge, given as if this stranger had a right to the answer, was too much. Morwen turned away from the cron
e in her noisome draperies and hurried Ynyr toward the wall. She found a place high enough, stepped up, then swung her leg over Ynyr’s back. She gave the rope a small shake. “Let’s go, Ynyr! Go now.”
For the second time that day the horse surprised her. Instead of starting down the hill he took two steps backward, his head bobbing, his ears twitching. When she protested, a hand on his neck and her heels digging into his ribs, he shook his head from side to side, as if a fly had bitten his nose. “Ynyr, what is it?”
He turned in place, careful not to dislodge her, but deliberately. In two long strides he carried her back to the old woman, who stood with her hands buried in her sleeves. Ynyr bent his head to the ground at her feet and was still. Through a throat gone dry, Morwen croaked, “What is it you want?”
“I told you,” the crone said. “Your horse understands. Indeed, I know this horse.”
“You couldn’t know Ynyr.”
“But I do. And he recognizes me as well.”
Morwen couldn’t deny it. Ynyr stood with his head bowed and his ears drooping. When she tugged on his mane, he lifted one hind foot and rested it on the point of the hoof, standing hipshot to demonstrate that he had no intention of moving.
“What have you done to him?” Morwen heard the note of pleading in her voice. Why should this woman frighten her? And why would Ynyr—great Ynyr—
The woman withdrew one of her hands from her sleeve and laid it on Ynyr’s forehead. It was a surprisingly large hand, with strong-looking fingers. She bent and murmured something into the horse’s ear. When she straightened and moved a little away, he lifted his head to look directly at her, a thing he sometimes did with Morwen, and which always made Jago shake his head and mutter about unnatural behavior.
The crone smiled at Ynyr and opened her fingers in his direction. The horse, with a swish of his tail, backed and turned, and started briskly off down the hill. Morwen had to seize his mane with both hands to keep from sliding from his back. When she had regained her seat, she twisted to look back at the strange old woman in the shade of the castle porch, but she had disappeared.
A Secret History of Witches Page 21