In less than a minute they have reached the stile and climb over it to step onto the lane that winds up from the lake. The tarmac feels firm beneath Tilda’s feet, and with each passing moment she begins to doubt what she saw, to find it easier to believe that the mist and the eerie light were playing tricks with her feckless eyesight and overwrought mind. The narrow road takes them past the church and immediately to the little dwelling next to it. Even as a newcomer to the area, Tilda can see that Old School House is unusual, and not built in the conventional architecture of the region. It is constructed of the same blue-gray stone as the church and is roofed with slates, but there the similarities cease. Every window, up and down, is mullioned and set in deep sills. There are pointy arches above the front door and the door set in the wall to the side. The house is approached via a little iron gate and a short path that leads through the most flower-filled garden Tilda has ever seen. Climbing roses scramble up pergolas and walls, as do wisteria, clematis, and jasmine. Even so late in the year and so early in the damp day, the air is filled with the aroma of flowers. Fine examples of hydrangeas and mock orange bushes vie with all manner of shrubs for space between the low wall that runs along the lane and the front of the house itself. Tilda can see that the garden continues around and behind the cottage, with tall and ancient trees to the rear adding shelter and shade and a sense of an enclosed and secret place. A place of beauty, of peace, and of safety.
‘Come in, come in.’ The professor drops his stick into an umbrella stand and drapes his coat over it. Tilda wriggles out of her waterproof running jacket, hands it to him, and then pulls off her muddy sneakers. ‘The sitting room is through there,’ he says, waving a hand at a door to their right. ‘You make yourself at home and I’ll make tea.’ With that he disappears into what Tilda assumes is the kitchen and soon she can hear a kettle humming and china being put on a tray.
The hallway is low-ceilinged and in soft light from the latticed windows, but it is still clear that Professor Williams is a man given to collecting things. Every shelf, every wall, every cupboard is crammed with bits of brass, or pieces of china, or paintings, or bric-a-brac of a wide and dizzying variety. In the center, at the foot of the wooden staircase, stands a very fine grandfather clock, its steady tick-tocking offering a soothingly slow rhythm by which to live one’s life. Tilda steps forward to examine it more closely. Its casement is burnished wood, dark red, walnut, she decides, and the clock face decorated with mother-of-pearl and gleaming brass hands. It is about to strike the hour, and she hears the preliminary whirring from deep within its workings as the hammers ready themselves to strike ten.
And then it stops. Completely and suddenly. No chiming. No ticking. Nothing. Tilda feels the hairs prickle at the nape of her neck and she knows, simply knows, that it has stopped because of her. She glances toward the kitchen and can still make out her host bustling about. Quickly, she goes through the low door into the living room. The space is clearly organized for the comfort of someone who enjoys reading. There are shelves lining two of the walls, and further cupboards and stacks of hardback volumes about the place. A small sofa is positioned near the fire, with reading lights above, and there is a worn armchair in the window, angled to make the best of the view into the garden and to the lake beyond. As with the hall, much space is devoted to housing all manner of objects and curios. In the moments Tilda spends waiting for the professor and trying to shake off the feeling of unease that has increased again with the stopping of the clock, she spots an ancient record player and beside it a box of vinyl disks; a fearsome wooden mask hanging on the wall; an ornate camel saddle; and on the mantelpiece a large ammonite she cannot resist touching. As she turns to watch the door for the promised tea, her eye takes in the broad desk in the corner of the room. On it, an old map is pinned down at its corners with two glass paperweights—a brass donkey, and a tin that once contained peppermint creams. She is leaning over it when Professor Williams arrives bearing a tray laden with the paraphernalia of teatime.
‘Here we are. Oh, I see you have found my map of the lake. A fine example of early nineteenth-century cartography, I think you’ll agree. Now, where shall I put this? Would you be so kind as to clear the coffee table of its debris? Thank you so much.’ He sets the tray down, the china giving an alarming rattle as he does so.
Tilda has taken off her beanie, so that now her unusual hair is more noticeable. She is pleased to see that if her host registers anything unsettling about her appearance, he does not show it at all.
‘It is a wonderful map,’ she agrees. ‘I can’t see that the place has changed much, though the lake does look as if it was bigger then than it is now.’
‘You are right about that.’ He takes his spectacles from their resting place on the arm of a chair and leans over the desk. ‘The church itself was nearer the shore, and so was the vicarage … there,’ he explains, pointing as he does so. ‘It’s a retreat house now, and there’s a good stretch of land between it and the lake. There are parish records recording the water sometimes flooding considerably farther out. And there, on the far side, you can see the crannog marked. The man-made island. They are quite common in Ireland, but this is the only one in Wales. Not that much of it was visible when this map was drawn up, but people knew it was there.’ He gives a small chuckle, a soft, merry sound. ‘Well, they should have known about it—it’d been there long enough.’
‘I read about it, when we came here to look at the cottage.’ She pauses, realizing she has given the impression there is still a ‘we.’
Have to get used to being just ‘I.’ Have to start.
‘My husband and I, we bought the cottage just before he died,’ she explains.
‘Oh, I am terribly sorry to hear that.’
‘It was sudden. A car accident. We were going to start a new life here…’ She does not want to be talking about this, not now, not here.
The professor smiles gently. ‘I think you’ll find being here helps. Eventually. The lake, this valley, it is a very healing place. At least,’ he goes on, ‘I found it so when my wife, Greta, passed away.’
Tilda returns his smile, grateful for his sympathy and his tact. ‘So,’ she says as brightly as she can, ‘you were going to tell me about the crannog. Everyone says it’s important, historically, but to be honest, it looks pretty small to me. I can’t imagine much of a settlement on it.’
‘Ah, well, people in the ninth century had a different idea of scale, you see. The population was so much smaller then, and construction so much more of a challenge. It must have taken a great deal of time and effort to build. Layer upon layer of stone to begin with and then timbers laid on top, bound together. Imagine making a base sufficiently stable to withstand buildings and people and their livestock.’
‘They kept animals on there too?’
‘Indeed.’ He snatches up a pencil and a piece of paper and begins to make a sketch of what the settlement would have looked like. ‘There was the long hall, here, like this. A building about the size of a barn, if you can picture that, single story, but quite a high roof, sloped to keep the good Welsh rain off it. They would have used the hall for important gatherings, celebrations, meetings of various visiting princes and so on. Historians have established that the palace was built for Prince Brynach, who was ruler of the region at the time. He and his family and extended family and guards would have lived there. And, of course, if the community were to come under attack the rest of the villagers would leave the shore and hurry onto the crannog to take refuge in the hall. We think there was another building here, probably providing living quarters for more soldiers and their families, with room for some of the more prized beasts to be stabled. Next to that, at an angle’—he squints through his glasses as he makes rough marks on the paper’—like this. That would have been the blacksmith’s workshop. Very important.’
‘For horseshoes, I’m guessing.’
‘Partly, though not all the horses would have been shod. What made the smithy so cru
cial was that this was where weapons were forged. Swords, daggers, shields, helmets and so forth … Those were dangerous times. The prince had to be ready to defend his territory.’
‘You certainly seem to know a lot about it.’
‘Oh—’ he shakes his head—‘a historian can never know enough about his pet subject. The lake has always fascinated me, as it did my wife. Greta was an anthropologist.’ He waves an arm at the more exotic artifacts in the room. ‘Most of what you see here was collected on her travels. It was she who first fell in love with the lake. She insisted we move here. Said she felt an affinity with the place. And I’m very glad of it. The lake provided us with so much to think about. People have lived here for centuries. Millennia, in fact. It is such an ideal spot for a settlement, d’you see? Fresh water, fish, the shelter of those hills over there, fertile soil; it has it all. Prince Brynach, when he built the crannog for his royal dwelling, well, he knew what he was about. And, of course, there are so many lovely legends and myths attached to the place. It has its own magic, I think it fair to say. One could study it a lifetime and not know everything.’ He returns to the tea tray. ‘Now, sugar? Milk? Chocolate biscuit? And perhaps you’ll tell me what it is that a ceramic artist does?’
Half an hour passes swiftly in the old man’s company. As Tilda sits on the squishy sofa, her feet curled beneath her, the reviving tea and the friendly conversation with the professor have such a restorative effect upon her that she soon feels quite differently about what she thinks she saw at the lake. Their talk has taken them from the history of the area to the abundance of wild birds that now live there, and the fact that the farside is a thriving example of local tourism, with its campsite and boats for hire and sailing lessons. It all sounds to Tilda so reassuringly normal, and convinces her that her fanciful mind had been working with her tired body to trick her, nothing more.
Not enough breakfast. Pushing myself too hard. Too much time spent on my own.
As she forms the thought she remembers she does not, actually, live alone anymore. She has a shaggy hound as a housemate, one that might be in need of letting out by now. She puts her cup on the tray and stands up.
‘I ought to get on,’ she says. ‘Leave you in peace.’
‘My dear girl, I have nothing but peace, these days. Your visit was a most welcome distraction from the day-to-day. Please do drop in on me again.’
They make their way into the hall, where Professor Williams notices that the clock is no longer working.
He peers at it, tapping the glass that houses the face. ‘Strange. It’s usually such a reliable timepiece.’
Tilda watches him as he opens the casing and adjusts the weights and chains inside. She is aware of some of her earlier anxiety returning. ‘Perhaps it needs winding up,’ she suggests, even though she knows nothing about clocks, and is fairly certain the professor is the sort of man who would look after such a fine antique with great care.
‘No, no, I don’t think it’s that. Let me see…’ He minutely alters some setting which Tilda cannot see. There is a pause, and then the hallway is once again filled with the steady rhythm of the grandfather clock. ‘There!’ The professor shuts the door to the workings and gives the thing an affectionate pat. ‘Lovely craftsmanship. Look at the inlay, can you see from there? Here, thin strips of a lighter-colored wood cut and set into the walnut casing. Beautifully done. You’d think it was painted, the joins are so flawless. If you run your fingers over it the surface is as smooth as marble. You try,’ he says, standing back.
Tilda finds she cannot step forward. The calm that she has acquired while with Professor Williams is leaving her, minute by minute. Her pulse begins to race as if she has just run up the hill to Ty Gwyn, for she knows beyond doubt that if she touches the clock it will stop again. And this time there will be a witness to the madness. The professor will see that it is she who is causing the clock to stutter and fail. Just as the lights failed at the cottage. Just as the computer failed.
Because of her.
And I won’t be able to pretend otherwise any longer. Not even to myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurts out, ‘I really have to go.’ Hurrying to the doorway, she jams on her sneakers, hat and jacket as the professor chatters on about tea and clocks and the fog having lifted outside. She scarcely hears what he is saying as she mumbles a good-bye and hurries through the heavy oak front door, breaking into a run the second she turns in the direction of home.
* * *
Two days after meeting Professor Williams, Tilda steels herself to visit the busy side of the lake. Ordinarily, she would avoid the bustle of such a place, with its boats for hire, ice-cream van, café, sailing club, campsite, and so on, but the more she thinks about it, the more she knows she must go there. However much tea and a chat with the professor helped her to shrug off what she saw in the mist that morning, time on her own has forced her to think again. Try as she might to convince herself that what she saw was nothing more than a trick of the eerie light combined with low blood-sugar levels, she cannot shake off the feeling that there was more to it than that. On top of which, her own effect on the grandfather clock still disturbs her. She cannot see how, if, the two things are in any way connected, and yet there is a niggling sense that they must be. On her return to the cottage that same day the lights had fused again. Not when she first arrived home, but after she had been there an hour or so.
Something is going on. Either I’m losing my mind, or there is another explanation.
She is relieved not to be having to explain her actions to anyone. She is aware how unformed her ideas are. How unfounded her theories. She is acting only on a hunch, and has no real notion of where it will lead her. Or even what it is she is hoping to find. Last night she sat in front of the fire in the snug sitting room of Ty Gwyn, sipping a glass of daftly expensive wine from the local shop, with Thistle stretched out on the hearth rug, and tried to pull together what she knew. Or at least, what she thought she knew. Her flashbacks–or waking nightmares as she had come to think of them–of the moment of Mat’s death are not new. She has been having them for over a year now. But recently they do seem to be more vivid, more horribly, cruelly real in every heartbreaking detail. And then there are the electrics in the cottage. Bob found nothing wrong, yet the fuse box continues to trip out so frequently that Tilda has given up resetting the thing. She and the dog muddle along without electric light or the computer or any other plug-in appliances. The solid fuel range in the kitchen means she can continue to boil a kettle or cook the few food items she has left. And it heats the water to lukewarm, too. The open fire in the sitting room stops the house from becoming uncomfortably cold, even if upstairs is getting increasingly bleak as the temperature outside drops. Tilda is certain that it was her own proximity to the professor’s clock that caused it to stop, so she cannot pretend that the wiring at the cottage is faulty. It makes no real sense, but the fact is, she is the common factor in both cases.
Sitting next to Thistle, gazing into the flames, Tilda had tried to recall what she had seen—or thought she had seen—at the lake. Three people in a boat. Two men, one woman, rowing for the shore. Dressed outlandishly. Or rather, outdatedly.
By several hundred years.
And the farside of the lake utterly changed. No café, no boathouse, no sailing club. No buildings that made any sense. Just a collection of huts. As if everything had been washed away by the mist and replaced by another land entirely. The most obvious cause for what she had seen, Tilda had decided as she drained her wine, was that grief had finally unhinged her. She was losing her flimsy hold on her own sanity. It was not a conclusion that brought her any comfort. And the only way she could think of to disprove it, to come up with something, anything else, was to go to the north shore and reassure herself that everything was still there, still as it should be, in all its slightly tacky, hot dog and paddleboat normality. That her hallucination, if such it was, amounted to nothing more than the febrile workings of a troubled
mind. Her grief counselor, all those months ago, had advised her to accept her flashbacks as a part of the grieving process. Was this latest vision simply more of the same?
So here she is, duffle-coated against the late autumn chill, woolly hat pulled low, her pale plait tucked into her collar and Thistle walking a little stiffly at her side on the end of an old leather belt that stands in for a lead. Although it is late in the year, it is the weekend, and plenty of people have taken the opportunity to come down to the lake. The little car park is nearly full, and the bicycle racks bristle with mountain bikes and racers, their riders sitting nearby to eat their lunches, or wandering closer to the shore to view the lake. There is a family of swans being fed by some walkers, their cygnets grown large but still sporting some of their grubby brown feathers. Pushy mallards waddle onto the small tarmac quay in the hope of sandwich crusts or maybe the stub of an ice-cream cone. A harassed woman shepherds her own brood of young children away from the water’s edge, luring them toward the café with the promise of hot dogs. A party of teenage canoeists busy themselves unloading their boats from a trailer.
All perfectly normal. Solid people. Real buildings. Of course.
Tilda walks past the concrete boat launch and follows the path to the recently constructed crannog center. Unlike its ancient namesake, this little thatched building is a modest single-story room, with glassless windows set into its curved walls, constructed to give people better views of the lake. Like the original crannog, it is reached via a wooden walkway, the whole thing supported by stout wooden stilts. Standing on the decked and railed area that encircles the hut, Tilda has the curious sense she is above and yet upon the water. She can hear ripples lapping against the wood. Coots and moorhens scoot about below her, bobbing on the gentle waves the light breeze has stirred up, or hurrying into the cover of the reeded area of the shore. Thistle creeps nearer the edge and peers into the water, ears alert, following the progress of a water vole as it gathers weeds for its nest. Looking across the lake, Tilda can make out St. Cynog’s Church and the Old School House on the farside, and the bird blind a little farther around. This enables her to pinpoint where she must have been standing when she saw the people in the boat. The air is clear today, visibility excellent, and all there is to see is the reedy shore, the path, the fields with cows grazing peacefully, and the small area of woodland to the right.
The Silver Witch Page 5