The Hunted Hare

by Fay Sampson

  He felt his hand reaching for the camera slung round his neck. The zoom lens would show them more clearly. But he let it drop back.

  “There is a path down there!” It was a burst of indignation. “It’s not on the map. But if they can use it, we’re going to take that way home. Come on.”

  Recklessly now, he struck off the path that followed the high contour. He went angling down the slope. He was aware of scree slipping under his boots between the bracken stems. He looked back. Melangell seemed to be managing all right.

  They hit the gorse again. There were bigger rocks hidden among its thickets.

  “Ow! Daddy, I’m getting scratched. Are you sure this is the way?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not, but I can’t see anything better.”

  He knew he was taking foolish risks. He was glad Jenny was not here to see it. But he had set himself to take Melangell to the foot of Pistyll Blaen-y-cwm and he was determined to do it.

  He fought his way down to a lone oak that overhung another of those minor waterfalls. There was a sheer drop of twice his height, with water trickling over the edge. Below, he could at last see his way clear over tumbled stones to the foot of the hill. He felt a rush of triumph. Determination had paid off. They would get there, after all.

  He stowed his camera in his rucksack for safety and scrambled down the side of the fall. He held up his arms to Melangell.

  “You said we shouldn’t follow a stream.”

  “I know, but I can see there are no more precipices below us.”

  The litter of rocks down the watercourse was still steeper and the boulders bigger than they had looked from above. But they made it to the bottom, Aidan with only a grazed knee and a boot full of water. He turned to share his delight with Melangell. Her arms were bloodied from scratches and there were bits of gorse in her hair. Her freckled face looked tired.

  “Sorry, love. That wasn’t one of my best-planned expeditions. But the waterfall’s just along there. Then it’s picnic time.”

  They turned to face the high cascade. One, two, and then three torrents came leaping down from the rim. They could hear the pounding of the falls. This was the force that gave birth to the placid river they had seen gliding through the pastures around the church.

  Aidan led the way across a tiny field to a gap in a stone wall.

  He came face to face with a running figure. Her ragged panting was close to sobs. The tumbling black hair could not hide the fact that the heart-shaped face was streaked with tears. Brilliant blue eyes went from father to daughter.

  Aidan was staring into the distraught face of Lorna Brown.

  “Sorry!” she gasped. She tried to hurry past.

  Aidan put out a hand to stop her. “It’s Lorna, isn’t it? Mr Brown’s niece. What’s wrong?”

  She flinched away from his touch. Fear flared in her eyes.

  She shook her black curls vigorously. Her lips were pressed tight. Then she gasped. “No! No, nothing’s wrong. I… I mean I… Sorry!”

  She backed away from him, then turned and fled. She was not running up the hillside, but along the stream towards Pennant Melangell.

  Aidan watched her go, uneasily. Belatedly, without the beauty of her ravaged face to distract him, he noticed that her white shirt hung unevenly off one shoulder. His memory showed him the image of a button torn from the fine cloth.

  He looked up the last stretch of path to the waterfall. No one seemed to be following her. Yet they had seen two figures from above. He listened, but could hear no sound above the rushing falls. What, or whom, was Lorna running away from? What had happened in this secluded spot?

  He wondered if it was right to take Melangell on. But he could not define what he was afraid of meeting.

  He looked round for her. She had slithered down to squat at the foot of the wall and rest her legs. Her face was serious.

  “She’s not a very good liar, is she? She was crying.”

  “Yes. But it’s not our business. Her uncle will look after her.”

  He held out his hand and pulled her up. Her body felt small and light. He sensed a sudden urge to protect her from whatever it was that had brought that look of shock and fear to Lorna Brown’s exquisite face.

  For a while, he kept her hand in his as they went on further along the stony stream. They came at last to where the falls crashed between overarching trees into a black pool at their feet.

  There was no one else there.

  For a while, Aidan let the sound of pounding water wash away the long, foolish scramble down the hill, and that strange, disturbing encounter with Lorna Brown.

  He retrieved his camera bag from his rucksack. His mind was calculating how best to convey the whirling dance of the falls in a single, still photograph.

  Melangell had climbed up on to the dark, wet rocks beside the cataract. She seemed to have forgotten her aching limbs.

  “Be careful!” he called, instinctively.

  She pulled a face at him and began to dance. He struggled to follow her movements in his viewfinder. She flitted across the screen, flickering in and out of the frame, like a moth. It was the movement itself which was the joy. How could he capture it?

  “Hold still,” he ordered.

  But she stretched her mouth to her ears in a grimace and waggled her fingers at him. She was refusing to be his model.

  He ached to capture that naturalness, the uninhibited grace of her dancing, before she had known she was being watched.

  “At least let me have one decent photo to show your mother.”

  She halted instantly in full flight. Her weight was poised on the toes of one foot. Her arms spread wing-like before and behind her. The noonday sun turned her nondescript curls into a halo.

  One second. Just long enough for him to click the shutter and capture it. Then her grin shot back and she was off again.

  She scrambled down the rocks, slipped off her trainers, and tried to see if she could find a way behind the waterfall.

  Aidan turned his attention to the higher view. The white leaps and bounds carved their cleft out of the almost-black rock. Softer white clouds drifted across the lofty skyline.

  Melangell’s voice sounded suddenly beside his elbow.

  “Why did you say her uncle would look after her? Yesterday, I thought she was scared of him.”

  They found a slab of rock in the sunshine and ate their sandwiches. Melangell demolished Aidan’s chocolate bar as well as her own.

  Aidan slipped his rucksack on and stood up.

  Melangell was paddling her way along the young river, as it tumbled among the stones.

  “Can we walk back beside the stream? We don’t have to climb up there again, do we?” Her eyes followed the high, precipitous slope down which they had come.

  “I sincerely hope not. You could clearly see a path from up above. That’s how Lorna came here, and whoever she was with.”

  Melangell climbed out of the water. She pulled on her trainers and picked up her own small knapsack. “Come on, then.”

  The path showed as a green ribbon among the rough grass. It angled away from the river.

  “Mind you,” Aidan warned her. “It’s not marked on the map, so we could end up in someone’s farmyard, or run into a notice that says ‘Private’.”

  “My legs say they’re too tired to care. And if there’s a farm, there’ll be a road, won’t there?”

  They walked in silence for a while. Aidan was desperately hoping she was right. If they were turned back now, it would make a long, tough walk even harder.

  Ahead of them was a stone wall, with a belt of trees behind it.

  Beside him, Melangell crowed triumphantly. “See? There is a farm.”

  Aidan checked the map. “There shouldn’t be, yet. There are farms either side of the river, but they’re further down the valley. All it’s got here is a bit of Gothic lettering that says Chapel (ruins).”

  “If it’s a ruin, there won’t be anyone there to stop us, will there?”
>
  She headed with determination towards the stone wall. Aidan caught a glimpse of a grey building between the trees.

  “It is a house, Daddy. I’d like to live here, between Pennant Melangell and the waterfall.”

  There was a gate. To Aidan’s relief, there was no sign forbidding entry.

  He put out his hand to open it, and stopped. Against his expectations, there were voices on the other side of the trees. Loud voices.

  Between the trunks, Aidan could make out two figures. Both men. One he recognized, even from behind. The burly figure of Thaddaeus Brown with his distinctive black head. The other was even taller, but cadaverous. He stooped over the large bulk of Thaddaeus. His Welsh accent rose sharply on the breeze.

  “I’ll never let you do it… Vandal!… Hang-gliding in this valley of the hare? It would be sacrilege!”

  The lower boom of Thaddaeus’s voice was harder to make out. Whatever he said, it caused the other to lunge towards him. There was a brief struggle, before Thaddaeus broke free.

  Aidan was suddenly reminded of Lorna’s torn shirt.

  As Thaddaeus strode away, he turned his head. His words sounded clearly now.

  “I’ve told you. You’ll regret this.”

  The Welshman shouted after him, “I warned you. I’ll do what I like with what’s mine.”

  Thaddaeus marched past the small grey house and was swallowed up among the trees. They heard the sound of a car.

  Aidan and Melangell looked at each other, like guilty conspirators.

  Then a grin transformed Melangell’s face. “See? I was right. If Mr Brown came by car, there’s got to be a road.”

  “There’s just a small problem,” Aidan reminded her. “It could be a private drive. He’d come to see the man who lives here. We haven’t.”

  But Melangell scrambled lightly over the gate. She walked out from the trees on to the open grass before the house. The tall man turned to stare at her as she emerged. The skin of his face was stretched tightly over sharp cheekbones. Thin black hair, streaked with white, swept back from his brow like the crest of a heron. Black eyes snapped at her.

  “What are you doing on my land?”

  “Hello. Do you live here?”

  Girl and man spoke simultaneously.

  Aidan strode to catch up with his daughter. He tried what he hoped was a disarming smile.

  “Excuse me. We’ve got a bit lost. We walked over the hill from Pennant Melangell to the waterfall and we were looking for an easier way back. We didn’t realize anyone lived out here.”

  The stranger ignored him. Some of the anger drained out of his face as he stared down at Melangell.

  “Caradoc Lewis,” he said, to her not Aidan. “Yes. I rescued it. It was a ruin when I found it. But I sold my museum in Llanfyllin to buy this land.” He gestured at the small stone building. “Capel-y-Cwm. The chapel in the valley. Nobody’s cared about it for centuries. Never even asked how it got its name. Some say it was an old Methodist chapel.” He gave a scornful laugh. Then he bent low over Melangell. “But I know better. Shall I tell you a secret? Forget about that old church in Pennant Melangell. This is older by far. Long before Christianity, this was a sacred place of worship. The girl with the hare is thousands of years old.”

  Melangell gazed up at him wide-eyed. “Was her name Melangell too? Like the saint? Mine is.”

  He gave a start of surprise. “Oh, she’s veiled in the mists of time. The Anglo-Saxons called her Eostre, who gave us Easter, long before Christ’s resurrection. She will have had an ancient Welsh name earlier still. But yes, Melangell is the one that lives on. You have been given a powerful name.”

  Aidan stepped forward and held out his hand. “Aidan Davison.” He was aware of wanting to break the intimacy between man and girl. “I’m afraid we’re staying at the House of the Hare. I hear you were spearheading the opposition to it.”

  “That man!” Caradoc Lewis almost spat. “Not an ounce of sensitivity in his body to the things of the soul.”

  “Oh? I’m surprised. We thought the new building blended beautifully with its surroundings.”

  “And the people he wants to bring to it? I don’t mean you. You must have some feeling for the place to call your daughter by that name. But in the future…”

  “I shouldn’t think he’d get planning permission for the things you were talking about, would he? Hang-gliding? I can’t imagine that here.”

  The black eyes darkened further still. “Thaddaeus Brown is a man who is used to getting what he wants. Ask his niece!” There was venom in his last three words.

  It brought Aidan up short. His mind flew back to the figure of Lorna Brown, tearful and dishevelled, rushing along the path from the falls. What had happened to her? And which of these two men had been with her?

  “Was she at the waterfall? Lorna? With him?” He heard the urgency in his own voice.

  Caradoc Lewis’s expression changed. It became wary, calculating. Then he smiled thinly.

  “I rather think that’s a private matter… Now, you were looking for a way back to Pennant Melangell.” He smiled at the girl. “I don’t usually allow holidaymakers to use my garden as a right of way. But for a young lady called Melangell, I would have to make an exception. Go past the house, through those pine trees, and you’ll find a track that will bring you out on the road.” He stood aside and made a welcoming gesture that invited them to proceed.

  Aidan paused beside the house. He turned to look at it curiously. It was a patchwork of old grey masonry. The gable end showed a round-arched window that could well have been part of a Methodist chapel. But that door post… He felt a flash of both excitement and anger. Surely that was a standing stone older than Christianity? Who had put that there? There were carved heads over the low door that looked medieval.

  “May I?” His hands reached for his camera.

  “Be my guest. The world should know more about the ancient past of this valley. There are secrets still to be revealed.”

  Aidan’s fingers were busy with lens and shutter. Images of ancient masonry against a backdrop of mountains streaked with the cataract clicked into the camera’s memory and his.

  “Thank you,” he grinned. “I don’t know why I hadn’t heard of this place before.”

  “You will,” said Caradoc Lewis, vehemently. “The whole world will.”

  Chapter Six

  IT TOOK A FEW ATTEMPTS for Jenny to get used to firing from a wheelchair. She was glad no one was watching now. But soon she settled into a rhythm. Seated comfortably, she could harness all her energy into the draw of arms and chest.

  The yew bow felt good in her hands. She loved the wood, golden on the outside of the curve, paler on the inside. It was a beautiful thing. It was odd to think it was designed as an instrument of death.

  It was the thought that she held a weapon in her hands that made her suddenly conscious of her surroundings. How safe was this range? Over to her left, a row of outbuildings faced the butts. They, like the mature trees, must have been left over from an earlier house. She was sure they were a safe distance away. But what about the dense shrubbery on her right? She got up from her wheelchair and paced the distance between the firing area and the nearest bushes. Twenty strides. A little over the minimum safety margin. Relieved, she took her seat and picked up the bow again.

  The next shot zipped into the bullseye. She was beginning to enjoy herself.

  When she had exhausted all her arrows, she started to propel the chair across the grass to collect them from the target. Did she need the chair for this? Couldn’t she just get up and walk?

  She was just standing up when a young man emerged from the rhododendron bushes flanking the butts. Jenny felt a flash of alarm. What if he had walked out while she was shooting?

  “Stay where you are,” he called. “I’ll get them.”

  Jenny paused. She had thought herself alone, but someone had been watching her.

  He retrieved the arrows and brought them towards her. He w
as not someone she had seen in the house, as guest or staff. He looked no more than a teenager in a checked flannel shirt. Over a pair of rather muddy jeans he wore a leather belt with pouches for tools.

  “Euan Jones,” he said. He held out the red-and-white flighted arrows. “I do the gardens.” His voice had the strong music of mid-Wales.

  “Jenny Davison,” she said, smiling her thanks. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “You like it, do you? This archery stuff?”

  “Yes. I’ve done it for years. At least, before I fell ill. But Sian said I might still be able to do it sitting down. She was right.”

  “Lorna’s good at it.” Was that a challenge in his voice?

  “Yes, Sian told me she was an archer.”

  “That’s her bow.”

  Jenny looked at the wooden weapon she was holding. “Sian said I could use it.”

  “She won’t mind. She’s not here this morning. Out with him.” There was fierceness in that last word. Immediately Euan looked round in alarm, as though Thaddaeus might, after all, be listening.

  Is everyone here afraid of him? Jenny thought. That nice man with the warm brown eyes?

  “I shouldn’t think I’ll keep it up for very long. I’ll probably be finished before she’s back.”

  “It’s all right. They’re for the guests, really. It’s just that this is the one she likes.”

  “She’s got good taste. So do I.”

  “Well, then. I’d better get back to work. Shout if you need me.”

  He disappeared into the shrubbery. She had a glimpse of a wheelbarrow before the branches closed behind him.

  When she had fired all her arrows again, she waited for a moment. But Euan did not appear from the bushes. She did not want to call him. He had work to do. And she was not going to act the part of an invalid before she had to. There might be so little time left.

  This time she got out of the chair and walked the length of the grass to pull the arrows out of the target herself. Eight red bullseyes, and four in the inner circle of yellow. She might have been more accurate standing up.