‘Funding?’ His voice was no more than a pathetic whisper in the dark now. ‘Anlawdd... he funds you?’
‘He’s not our only benefactor. There are others. Doged, for example. Like I said, you’ve got to have friends in high places to make an operation like this work.’
By now they had reached what looked like the dungeon of the building. A cast-iron door was wrenched open, and he was shoved hastily through it. When he turned his back he realised that this was where the journey ended, that he was being shoved into a cell. He turned around to face Ysbaddaden, as the guards walked away.
‘You can’t leave me here,’ Cilydd protested. ‘I won’t be part of this! I need to be with my son.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, Cilydd. I’m sorry, I truly am.’
The door clattered shut, and the damp settled on him like a second skin.
*
He was awoken by the chattering of birds. Fitful, fantastic bursts of song. At first he couldn’t fathom where the noise was coming from, but he soon realised that it was coming from everywhere, dark wings ruffling around him in every direction. The last thing he remembered was being weak with hunger, lying on the floor, thinking he was going to die. And yet, although he still had not eaten, for what seemed like days and days, his hunger had evaporated. He felt full and energised, like he’d just had a good meal. The dark gave way to a host of piercing orange eyes, all staring up at him. He felt his way around the feathery mass, brushing against their coats as the chatter grew louder and louder. But the beaks were perfectly still between his fingers, politely shut.
Something rattled. Suddenly the door that was sure never to be open to him again, was pulled back, and light flooded in. In front of him was Culhwch. His eyes, Goleuddydd’s pale green eyes, were strong and determined.
‘Culhwch,’ he said, feeling once again the urge to throw his arms around his son, to pull his flesh and blood towards him. ‘It’s good to see you. I’m so glad you’re... you’re OK,’ he added, resting an arm tenta-tively on his shoulder. ‘I thought for a moment they might have... well, you know...’
‘I’m absolutely fine,’ his son replied. ‘They tried to lock me up but I’m fine. But we’ve got a chance now, a chance to get out of here. And we have to do it quickly.’
Birds hovered in the air between them, a rush of feathers in their faces.
‘What on earth are these birds doing? How did they get in here?’
‘I think Olwen must have released them through the air vents,’ Culhwch said. ‘She told me to wait for a sign. The birds... well they seem to me like a sign. I don’t know how they did it but they seem to have unlocked my cell. When I woke up I felt, well, like I’ve never felt before. Do you feel it too? A lightness. Yes, that’s it, much lighter than before. Like I’ve never eaten anything in my life, and will never need to again. I feel I could do anything. We can leave now, can’t we. We’ll get Olwen and we’ll leave.’
‘But Ysbaddaden, and the guards...’ Cilydd said, hating to dent his son’s bravado but finding himself adopting a grave tone, preparing his son for the worst. Wasn’t that what real parents found themselves doing, time after time? Bursting their children’s bubbles? He had never had to do it with Lleuwen. Gwelw did the disciplining, and then he cajoled her with hot chocolate and wan smiles in the aftermath. But now he felt it – an urge to be firm, to tell it like it was.
‘We’re not going to get out. Not with those guards around the place. Or the security. I think we have to face facts here Culhwch.’
Culhwch shook his head, a laugh brimming across his lips.
‘No, you don’t understand. It will be easy. Look. Just look.’
Cilydd followed his son out into the corridor. Right next to the door were Graid and Cubert. Slumped against the wall, curling into one another – a pair of sinking question marks. Eyes firmly shut. Emanating tiny, peaceful exhalations. He turned back to look at his son.
‘Everyone else in this building is asleep, Cilydd, everyone – the guards outside my cell were too, the guards at the top of the stairs – everybody. Everybody’s asleep but us. It’s Olwen’s sign – she’s calling us, giving us an opportunity to save her... we have to get her and leave. I promised her, remember?’
‘But why... I mean do you really think it’s wise to go and get her? If we can get out, I think we should just get out,’ Cilydd said, seeing, with sudden clarity, that Olwen was a mere nuisance. He had never wanted Olwen. He only wanted his son.
‘Olwen is the reason we came. And more than that – if you ask me – Olwen’s the reason we’re still alive. Ysbaddaden would gladly let us rot down here. Just trust me. You’re... you’re my father. I need you to support me in this.’
Father. The word jolted him, sending electrical impulses all around his body. It wasn’t wholly unfamiliar – for Lleuwen sometimes called him Father, sardonically, wrinkling her nose at him – even Dad – but every time he heard it, he felt a pang of guilt, and could not help but think of her real father – Doged, tumbling over the rocks. Now it was a free word. Free as a bird. And so he did what he thought a proper father should do and followed his son back down a dark corridor, back towards chaos and disaster. The birds followed them.
‘So you’ve seen Olwen?’ he whispered into the back of his son’s head.
‘Yes,’ he whispered back. ‘Once you and Arthur fell asleep that trail sprang up again. I was becoming sleepy too and I knew if I didn’t follow it right there and then it would all be over. Wherever the flowers were it seemed doors would open, gates would open for me, just like that. I just kept following those flowers until I was inside – and Olwen was waiting for me. She looked terrified. And so tired. ‘I can’t have the baby here,’ she kept on saying. So I tried to carry her. But we didn’t make it very far.
Ysbaddaden and the guards, they were right behind us the whole time – teasing us, letting us think we could escape and then seizing us right at the last minute. Then he... I don’t know. He took Olwen. Just before he took her she told me: ‘It’s not over. The birds will help us. Wait for the birds. They’ll know what to do.’ Ysbaddaden seemed – well, not what I was expecting, really. Even as we were walking down here he was trying to assure me I was going to be reunited with you. But then he left me in that cell. Left me there to die.’
‘But what happened to Arthur?’
‘I don’t know where Arthur went,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen him since the forest.’
Cilydd tried to remember what Ysbaddaden had said about Arthur. Meddling Arthur would be punished, he had said. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind as they travelled further into the building. The quiet that surrounded them was not peaceful, somehow, but tinged with foreboding. He recalled something that Ysbaddaden had said about the birds. About them waking the dead. Was he dead? Was that it? The birds filled every corner with their feathers and noise. They came upon a large hall – chandeliers dangled from the high ceilings, white corridors splayed out in every direction, and portraits of the residents adorned the walls. Underneath each one was a note about their disappearance. As he rushed past he felt as though they were laughing at him, these great big oil incarnations of those tiny little photographs he’d held in the palm of his grieving hand, so many years ago. They paused suddenly in front of a face they both recognised.
‘Doged,’ said Culhwch. ‘Isn’t it? Your wife’s so-called dead husband?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You know, I never killed him. He’s here. Alive and well. Did your parents tell you about Doged? Was that it? Did they tell you I killed him?’
‘I found it in Arthur’s notes. The day I arrived in the town I broke into Arthur’s flat. I was searching for things – anything I could find. I saw it scribbled in Arthur’s notes. ‘I think Cilydd has something to do with Doged’s death.’ It was such a little detail – he may not really have even believed it at the time. But it was all I had. And when I heard your voice all shaky on the phone I thought, well, I thought it must be tru
e.’
This left Cilydd reeling. The thought that Arthur had begun to investigate him – to suspect him. And yet he saw that Arthur had more intuition than he gave him credit for. Arthur, for all his vagueness and indecision, had read something in him after all.
Culhwch finally hesitated by a door at the far end of the building. The birds twittered and screeched around them, rupturing the silence. They flocked to the door, covering every inch of it, a brawny dark force, until the door gave way. The birds swept in, gathering in a little coven around a bed by the window. When their feathers had stilled, he saw a blonde-haired girl lying there, with a ballooning stomach. Right next to her, slumped unconscious in his chair, was Ysbaddaden Bencawr. Culhwch knelt by the bed and stroked his lover’s hair.
‘I’ve come to get you...’ Culhwch said. ‘Me and my father, we’ll get you out of here. If we go now we’ll be away before everyone wakes up.’
The birds were getting frantic, poking around in the room, pecking ferociously at things. One of them got hold of a pillow and started to wave it around like a flag. Another joined it, tugging and tugging at the seams until eventually the cotton ripped, sending a splay of feathers over the bed. These feathers were pale and long, at odds with their own dark wings –duck feathers, or goose. Many others descended and collected them in their beaks, laying them down on the ground to form a trail. The biggest bird in the room shook a gust of them overYsbaddaden’s head. ‘What are they doing?’ Cilydd asked Olwen. Her beauty took him off guard, and he saw what his son saw – something quite extraordinary, a porcelain perfection – fragile, breakable – he wanted to cup her in his hand. Hold up her up to the light. Her eyes seemed almost transparent, looking not at him, but through him, somehow. She held out her fingers to the birds and they shuffled towards her.
‘They’re faithful creatures. My father has always prided himself on it. But what he doesn’t know is how easily they change allegiances. For years now, they’ve been on my side. They’re Rhiannon’s birds after all, they’re conditioned to respond better to women. Or to those on the margins. Lonely people, yes, they like their lonely people. They’ll follow a lonely soul to the ends of the earth, all the while singing a sweet melody, trying to comfort them. They’ve comforted me for years, you see. Ysbaddaden lost his power over them a long time ago – though he’s never realised it. Because they keep up the charade. But anyone who looks closely enough knows what they’re doing. And what they’re doing now is imitating me. They create their own white trail wherever they go, from whatever they can find.’
It slowly dawned on Cilydd. The flour aisle. The white shells on the ledge after Doged’s fall. All the while Ysbaddaden believed that the birds were working for him while they were merely executing their silent rebellion, waiting to undo him.
‘I’m so happy you came Culhwch,’ Olwen said, stroking his hand. ‘I really am. I feel that, I feel that I could truly love you. But I can’t come with you. I’m too... too heavy. And the baby’s near. So near now. I can’t ask you to carry this burden with me.’
‘It’s not a burden... we’ll sort it out. My father... my father has a house. We can bring up the baby together. All of us. Can’t we... Dad?’
Cilydd looked down at Olwen, but all he saw this time was Goleuddydd. Making a run for it in the forest. Giving in to the darkness and the damp in that pigsty. He had a bad feeling about that baby. He didn’t want it in his house. It was nothing to do with him. But he nodded his head silently, all the same.
‘It’s up to Olwen,’ he said. ‘We can’t force her to come if she doesn’t want to. What do you want, Olwen?’
There was a muted anger in his voice, and he realised he was not speaking to Olwen at all but to Goleuddydd. What had she wanted, all those years ago? What on earth had driven her here, of all places?
He was angry. Angry at her for being such a wilful, silly wife – thinking she was so eccentric, making wild, inappropriate choices because it seemed like fun. Because it seemed like living. All he wanted now was to be reunited with Gwelw. Lovely, sensible Gwelw, whose business was fixing other people, making sure something as essential, as important, as their bones were in order – who would click things back into place in one swift movement, with a smile.
Olwen rose to her feet uncertainly and walked towards her father. The birds moved with her as she got closer to him, scattering more of the spindly goose down across his body.
‘You’re right, Culhwch, I can’t stay any longer. The baby... the baby needs to be safe. If we wait too long it might... it might die. And even if it doesn’t, there isn’t any kind of life here for a child. But it’s only if Ysbaddaden dies that I can start living. He has to die. Do you understand?’
Cilydd looked at Culhwch and Culhwch looked at Cilydd.
‘We can’t... we can’t kill him,’ Cilydd said, laughing nervously. ‘That makes us no better than him. And besides, we’ll be... we’ll be prosecuted, and I’m not risking that...’
‘No one’s going to be prosecuted for anything, haven’t you realised that yet? This has been going on for years and years and the police, the government, everyone – they’ve let it happen. They’ll find some way of bringing it all to a halt if he dies. No one’s going to look into it, trust me. It needs to stop. It can only stop if Ysbaddaden dies. Otherwise, I’m staying here.’
She sat back down on the bed, her cold eyes challenging them both. Ysbaddaden’s eyes flickered momentarily, but he remained solidly asleep. Neither Cilydd nor Culhwch uttered a word.
‘OK, well, I’ll shave him, then,’ said Olwen suddenly, pushing herself back up. ‘He needs a good shave – he’s simply not had the time these last couple of days, what with all the excitement that’s been going on around here. Yes, a good shave. Clean him up, good and proper.’
For a moment Cilydd thought that the dark thought had passed suddenly and that Olwen was stepping back from the murderous brink of her thoughts. But then he saw her hands trembling as she assembled the equipment. She swished some lather in a bowl and rinsed a razor under the tap.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I’ll start off by lathering him up, and then perhaps one of you two could... could finish things.’
Olwen’s hands worked quickly over Ysbaddaden’s face, moving in swift, white circles, foaming tiny waves all over his face. The more she gushed the sicker Cilydd felt. He was up on that ledge again, watching Doged fall. Except this time, he really was going to push someone. Slit someone open like someone had slit his own wife open. Ysbaddaden’s head tilted back, and the pale white throat seemed to grin at him.
He saw Culhwch step forward. He pulled him back.
‘I think you two should go now,’ he said, in a voice he did not recognise as his own. ‘I think you should start moving before people start waking up.’ He gave Olwen a meaningful nod as he took the razor away from her. ‘I’ll take over here.’
The steel was against his hand – cold and urgent.
Olwen nodded appreciatively at him and got up to leave the room. Culhwch helped her to the door. Neither one of them looked back. He listened to their footsteps receding down the corridor. The birds, in a confused flurry, flitted back and forth across the room as if not knowing whether they should stay or go. A few remained, hanging on the huge, cast-iron curtain rails, with one bird swinging upside down, its huge orange claws grappling with the dull gold. Cilydd stared down at Ysbaddaden’s face, and rested the razor on his neck.
Was it really just a matter of sliding it against the skin? And then how would he know where to stop? The blade glinted at him, dazzling him. It didn’t look sharp enough. If it wasn’t sharp enough, it might get stuck. He might only cut enough to wake Ysbaddaden up. Maybe he should try it out first on himself. He looked down at his own body. What bits of himself could he try to cut? He raised a finger up to the light. Just a little prick, just to see how sharp it was. Then he saw how ridiculous it was, this dilly-dallying, turning the knife on himself. Thinking that he had to
suffer first, if he was going to hurt someone else. If you’re going to do it, just do it. He was reminded of Gwelw at that moment, how she hated his indecision, his tendency to circumnavigate. Often, when they were going out to some event, some party or other, he’d make things complicated. Suggest going somewhere for a drink first, or to call in at a friend’s house. Gwelw would just do up her seatbelt and say quite firmly: ‘If I’m going to a party, then I’m going to a party,’ and he’d drive straight there, forgetting all the other engagements, which he could see, on arrival, were just not necessary.
He stared back down at Ysbaddaden’s neck. This was it. He was going to the party.
And just as he was about to do it, one of the birds twitched, and the door creaked open. He looked up. Standing in the doorframe was Arthur. He’d been severely beaten, his cheeks grazed and purple. One arm was held awkwardly at an angle, as though it were broken.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to do the honours,’ he said, limping forward. He was barefoot – even his toes were bleeding. A few of the birds, who’d been perfectly still until then, began to twitter. Their orange eyes slid towards Arthur. Then, it seemed, one by one, they flocked to him. Perching themselves on his shoulders, his back. One stood boldly on his head.
‘Arthur,’ he said, walking towards his cousin. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Oh, nothing a warm bath won’t heal,’ he smiled wanly. ‘I suppose it’s only what I deserve for med-dling so much these past years. Told you these cases had a connection, didn’t I?’
Arthur limped over to the chair where Ysbaddaden was sleeping. The tyrant’s throat rose and fell in fleshy gurgles, he rolled and winced, but still he did not wake up. How small people looked when they were sleeping, Cilydd thought, even the most powerful ones. They had no choice but to abandon every sense of themselves and become primal, thrashing, open-mouthed things. The birds looked quizzically down at their former master. One of them swooped down and tugged at an eyebrow. Plucking it right out, it drew blood, and a small kernel of life bubbled to the surface. It was evident that he had lost any power he had over them, for these birds seemed ready to destroy him now.
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