I slept in really late on Monday morning. When I finally stumbled down into the kitchen, Maddie was sitting at the table, reading a thick book with a blank spine.
“Morning. Where’s Dilys?”
“Good morning,” Maddie said, closing the book. She looked at me closely. “She’s out reading someone’s fortune. What happened last night? Are you all right?”
I had come in from my adventures long after midnight, in the end, half-frozen and not making much sense. I had passed by the ghost of Robert and now I felt nothing but sympathy and sorrow for him. Maddie had bundled me up into bed and Dilys had ferried three hot water bottles and a very strong hot toddy up to me. I didn’t so much fall asleep as pass out.
I sat down heavily. “Have I missed breakfast? Is it time for dinner yet?”
“You see, you guys so need to start doing brunch here,” Maddie said. “I’ll cook. You talk.”
I outlined what had occurred the previous night. She listened and nodded, and sighed. “Do you think it was Rachel?”
The thought had been nagging at me. “It’s the strongest possibility.”
“So, you’re going to see that old druid today?”
“Yes, I am. Are you coming?”
“Sure. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I enjoyed the last endless bus ride here so much I really can’t wait to do it all again.”
***
The retirement home was a quasi-Gothic pile in grey stone with actual turrets and circular towers and crenellations and all the other fevered products of an opium-addled Victorian’s imagination. Maddie squealed with delight when she saw it. We walked up from the bus stop and she ordered me to retreat to a safe distance so she could take photos on her phone.
“You know it’s probably only about a hundred years old,” I told her. I readjusted my backpack but I did stop walking.
“That’s still amazing!”
I thought about it. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
We were greeted by a smiling woman on the reception desk. She was flanked by huge pot plants and tubs of hand sanitiser. When we told her who we wanted to see, her smile was wiped clean off her face.
“Mr Pritchard? We only have the one Mr Pritchard here. Iolo Pritchard. But it’s not him you are wanting to see, is it? No one comes to see him, not at all, no.”
“No, that’s right. It is Mr Iolo Pritchard we’re after,” I told her. I didn’t think I could say “the ex-druid” but I did add, “He used to live in our town, Llanfair.”
“That he did, yes. Well, wait here. I can go and ask him if he would like to see you. Are you family?” She looked at the pair of us suspiciously, and I noticed her gaze lingered for too long on my cousin. I felt a surge of annoyance.
“Friends of the family,” I said, not specifying which family, which made it not quite a lie. “You can tell him that Bron and Maddie are here and that, most importantly, Dean Mason sent us. If he doesn’t remember Dean at first, remind him that Dean took over for him in Llanfair and that this is a matter of some importance regarding … uh, local history.”
The receptionist dragged her attention back to me. She repeated part of the message, frowned, and motioned us to wait while she went to see Iolo Pritchard.
“Do you have a plan b?” Maddie asked as we hovered around the comfortable reception area looking at photos of people with grey hair who were laughing and holding cups of tea in awkward positions. No one stood next to a chess board like that in real life.
“Oh, just the usual,” I told her. “We find a back entrance, disguise ourselves as staff, possibly by drugging some catering workers and stealing their uniforms, find one of those wheeled trollies…”
Maddie elbowed me. The receptionist came back and she was looking even more confused. “Have you ever met him before?”
“No,” I confessed. “But as I said, Dean…”
“Yes, that was the name that swung it. My colleague said that a young man called Dean Mason has been to visit Mr Pritchard in the past, so we’ve decided it’s all right. But take care, please. He’s elderly and frail and that can make people a little unpleasant. It’s not his fault.” Her eyes told a different story. I already knew, from what Dean had said, that this druid was a nasty piece of work.
It was funny how someone could be perfectly horrible and yet work for the good of others.
But then, Dean had often tried to explain to me how his work wasn’t necessarily for people. His priority was the planet and the Old Ones. I had once asked him, as a joke, if he found me injured, and a tree at risk of being felled, and he could save only one of us, which would he save.
He’d gone rather quiet.
We were led along a pleasant corridor with large pastoral scenes in frames on the walls. Televisions played very loudly from many of the rooms that we passed.
We came out into a long glass-walled room attached to the far end of the building. I would have called it a conservatory or a sun room but it was far too grand for such a suburban term. The theme of Victorian Gothic permeated even here, with wrought iron curling everywhere, and more plants than Kew Gardens.
In a wicker chair, nestled deep in tapestry cushions, with a plaid blanket over his knees, was a tiny shrunken man with grey skin and a shock of thick white hair. His eyes were sharp.
“Right, who is who? Janet, you can bugger off.”
The receptionist shot us an apologetic smile, whispered “Good luck”, and darted away.
“I’m Bron, Bronwen Talog. And this is my cousin, Maddie. Madison Grace.”
He took his time assessing us and I did not enjoy the scrutiny. I couldn’t, however, detect any magical aura around him at all. And that was odd, because most people carried something, however small or latent.
I realised that he was shielding himself very effectively.
He didn’t look likely to offer us a seat so I pulled up a chair from under a leafy plant and sat down. Maddie copied me.
“Oh, you’re staying, is it?” he said with a mean sarcasm.
“Yes,” I said. I decided I’d be firm, but pleasant. “We need to talk to you about events in Llanfair back when you were a druid there.”
“What’s a druid?” he said and cackled. “No one here believes in that. If anyone says druid they just imagine I won a chair for poetry at the Eisteddfod. Which I did,” he added. “But the people here are too stupid to see anything else.”
“Well, we are not like normal people,” I told him. “We know what sort of druid you were.”
“Were?” he spat. “Get out.”
“What sort of druid you are,” I said quickly.
“I doubt that very much. So that lad Mason is still feeling his way along, is he?”
“Dean? Yes, he is. He’s lovely.”
“And I am not.” Iolo shrugged. “And the pair of you are shedding magic like it’s going out of fashion. Leave a trail as thick as a Land Rover’s been through.”
I tried to pull in my energy. I don’t know what Maddie tried to do. “Anyway,” I said. “We’re here about a man called Robert Cameron.”
Iolo jerked his head back and once again I was subject to his painful scrutiny.
I had to break away from his silent gaze. I couldn’t read him at all. I bent down and fished around in my backpack for the photo that Jemima had given to me. There were three bags of herbs, a pair of scissors, a small tin of mints and of course the carving that the reverend had given to me. The wood was warm and comforting as my fingers brushed it. It was reassuring to touch something solid; Iolo was unsettling me.
“Here,” I said, giving the print-out across to Iolo. “That’s you on there, isn’t it?”
He exhaled slowly as he studied it, bringing it close to his face. “Robert. Yes, me. The old vicar, and there’s Johnny the smith.”
Well, that answered at least one question right away. “John, Blacksmith” was indeed a smith.
“Were you all friends?”
“Yes, and we’re all pretty much dead now.”
“You’re not.”
He raised his skeletal shaking hands. “I look pretty dead to me.”
That made me sad. I opened my mouth to say something placatory but he knew, right away, and before I could speak, he grunted and said, “It’s inevitable and it’s a fact of life and I don’t really care and anyway, you know more dead people than living ones, don’t you, Babdh?”
I inclined my head. I felt as if our relationship changed as soon as he named me; that wasn’t my title, in my tradition, but it was close enough and showed me that he knew me. I mean, properly knew me.
He let his hands fall back into his lap and his right fist struck the now-crumpled paper lying there. He picked it up again and pondered it.
After a while he said, “Well, at least the pair of you can handle silence.”
I still didn’t speak, but I held in a small smile.
“Well, then. Robert was keen on his sports. And it was he that wanted this fool sports centre built. Is it still there?”
“It is,” I assured him.
He lifted one lip in contempt. “It worked, then.”
“What worked?”
“What we had to do to get the thing to stay up! That was Robert, that was. He so wanted the place to be built and the only site the council would let him have was that accursed spot.”
“Accursed…?”
“Yes. And I do mean accursed. Every wall they built fell down. Every plank of wood rotted. The project manager fell ill. Ladders slipped. Machinery broke. It was not the right place for the site. I came to help, of course. I wanted to appease the land, gentle it, and console the spirits there. But they were angry and vengeful.” He tipped his head back. “Not all earth spirits are lovely, light things with wings and rainbows in their blonde hair.”
“Not all lovely things are blonde,” Maddie shot back.
“You miss my point. You’re not a fluffy sort, are you?”
“No, of course not,” Maddie said, affronted. “I accept the balance of life. And death. Growth, and loss.”
“Sounds good. But you don’t understand it yet. And why would you? You are so young and no one has died yet. Not for you. And your sort don’t deal with death the way we do. All those tinkling bells.” So he had seen her Faerie nature. He turned his attention to me. “You know about it.” There wasn’t a shred of sympathy in his pragmatic, dry words. “You know death.”
“I believe you about the spirits at the sports centre,” I said. “So how did you overcome them? Is that why the vicar is in the photo?”
“Of course. He was integral to the plan. The smith, too, of course, and you know why. If you don’t then you should be ashamed of yourself.”
I didn’t rise to his bait. I had a rough idea of the smith’s magical power but it was a craft that was alien to me. Still, I nodded. “What was the plan?”
He snorted and tipped his head back again, looking now at the ceiling. His dry neck was just folds of skin like a turkey’s. “Oh, you stupid girl, don’t you know your history and your folklore at all? It starts in the Mabinogion.”
I’d never read it in the Welsh – the literary side of the language was far beyond me – but I had a well-loved copy of Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation. “The Red and White Dragons?”
“Oh!” said Maddie. “I know this one. They are fighting, right? And that’s why that king can’t build his castle.”
“That is not one of the four branches of the Mabinogion,” Iolo said, still staring upwards. “But yes, it comes in later stories, and you are correct.”
I felt cold. “They free the dragons, don’t they? Merlin tells them to.”
The druid laughed and it sounded like sandpaper. “But that’s not what they wanted to do at first. And how would it be for Llanfair if we’d released all these earth spirits into the town?”
Now I felt cold.
“What did they want to do first?” Maddie asked.
Iolo whispered, “Tell her, then. Let you be the one to say it.”
“Sacrifice. Human sacrifice.”
Maddie was the one to break the silence. Her accent was thick and strong as she struggled to speak. “No, no! But he died of natural causes, didn’t he?”
“So they say.”
“Are you saying he did not?”
“I am saying he died for the sports centre, and no more and no less.”
“But did you kill him?”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, you stupid girl. No crime has been committed. Why are you even here? Why are we talking about this now? It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” I told him, butting in. “My cousin is not stupid. You are rude. Listen. I found the body of Robert Cameron.”
Finally a flicker of emotion rippled across Iolo’s face. He looked confused. “You did not.”
“I did. He was in my garden.”
He laughed but it was unconvincing. “He’s under the sports centre, bringing the charm.”
“He wasn’t. He was in my overgrown hedge and had been for the past umpteen decades.”
“And yet the sports centre still stands?”
“It does.”
“Then it cannot be Robert Cameron that you have found.”
“I assure you it is. I’ve spoken with his shade, in the place between the worlds.”
He hissed and leaned forward. “Don’t you talk about such things here! You don’t know what it’s like. I’m a shadow here, I’m already dead. Don’t … remind me.”
“Of your old life?”
“Get out,” he said. “The pair of you. Yes, do remind me, don’t remind me, what do I care?”
“You do care,” I said. I got to my feet and Maddie followed suit. I picked up my bag from the floor and began to zip it up again. My gaze fell on the wooden carving of the harp and I pulled it free of the backpack.
“May I give you a gift to thank you for your time and your help?” I said, impulsively.
He peered at me with nothing but spite and suspicion on his face. “Me? What, and why would you bother? You have taken what you needed. Go away.”
I held it out in my hands. I let my own heart speak through me. “I was told to learn to play the five strings,” I said to him. “It is a lesson I am still learning. But this came from a spiritual man back in your beloved Llanfair and the wood seems to be warmer since I came near to you.”
Reluctantly, he took hold of it, and bent his head to it, as if listening closely. “Derw,” he said. “Oak. Here is our knowledge.” He pulled the carving in close to his body. He looked up at me and I knew I’d get no more thanks than that.
I didn’t push it. Maddie and I withdrew.
***
“That was a strange thing for you to do,” Maddie remarked as we walked down the curving gravel path that led from the retirement home to the road. “But it was nice, though.”
“It just felt right,” I said. My backpack was a lot lighter now. I wondered if I’d lost anything else. I hadn’t thought the carving weighed quite as much.
“So, what about these dragons, huh? What was he really telling us? Do you think the cops could be wrong about the way the guy died?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something is troubling Robert’s ghost, so maybe that was what he was trying to tell me? Yet why wasn’t it investigated when he died? I mean, his death wasn’t a secret. He has a grave! Even if he isn’t actually in it…”
I tailed off.
“What is it?” Maddie asked.
“There is someone in the woods to our left,” I said. “They are watching us. Just keep walking and pretend not to have noticed.”
“Perhaps it’s some gardener attached to the home,” she said.
“They are flitting from tree to tree, tracking us, and they are female,” I said. “Let’s just walk and talk and laugh naturally.”
Maddie tossed her head in an impressive fake laugh. “Hahaha what fun.”
“Indeed. Do you think it could be Rachel Harris?”
“Why
would she be out here?”
“To visit the druid?” I suggested. We both laughed again like we were telling the world’s best jokes. “No, there’s another thing. Perhaps she is following us.”
Maddie let her fake hilarity slip for a second. “Why would she do that?”
“Why is she doing anything?”
We reached the road. Our bus stop was up to the right. I glanced briefly to the left before we turned and made our way up the pavement. “I just saw a red sports car down there,” I said. “And who do you know drives one of them?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Maddie said. “But I am going to guess that Rachel does, right?”
“Right.”
Twenty
Adam called around that evening. I wanted to fling myself into his arms. As darkness had fallen, I’d been unwillingly remembering my exploits of the previous night, and I had become increasingly jittery. Both Maddie and Dilys told me that it was due to lack of sleep, but I knew it was more than that. The ghost of Robert had clung close to me since I had got back to the house, and though I now believed his intentions to be good, it still unnerved me. I could not be close to such energy without being affected.
I was also missing the presence of the carving that Horatio had given me. I had not detected any magic on it, but then, why would I? It was a gift from his own Celtic Christianity. I was not attuned to that, no matter the common ground Horatio and I had between us.
And finally there was the feeling that I was being watched, or at least, observed in a long-range and magical way. Rachel Harris, I decided. She was on to me, and I didn’t understand her power yet.
I was a little scared.
But I didn’t tell Maddie that. She was looking to me to be the strong one, here on my home turf, and I couldn’t let her down.
That’s why it was so nice when Adam turned up, straight from his shift, looking dishevelled and damp but entirely, solidly, reassuringly dependable.
The only thing that stopped me collapsing against him was the presence of Maddie. She welcomed him into the kitchen and offered to put the kettle on.
“Could you … check on the animals?” I asked.
She smiled very slightly. “Why?”
What The Cat Dragged In (The Celtic Witch Mysteries Book 1) Page 12