Sleeper’s Castle

by Barbara Erskine

  He saw her face light up as she pressed one to her nose and inhaled the scent of almonds and rosewater.

  ‘Edmund, thank you!’

  He nodded, brusquely embarrassed by her pleasure, then he looked at her again. ‘I wondered if you had had news of Glyndŵr,’ he murmured.

  She didn’t look up. ‘Nothing for months now. We hear little of what goes on beyond the valley with all the snow.’

  He looked shocked. ‘Do they not send to enquire if you are all right?’

  ‘We keep to ourselves and we look after ourselves.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Like Joan, some of the people in the parish disapprove extremely of the rebels.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ moving slightly closer to her he dropped his voice further, ‘I hear sympathy for the Lord Owain is spreading all over Wales. People see him as a saviour. The hatred of the English and their laws is everywhere.’

  ‘Except this valley.’

  ‘Maybe you are too close to the border here. But you would not necessarily know who supports who. No one trusts anyone these days; people keep their views to themselves. Anger and unrest is spreading. More and more people are talking about the Lord Owain and what he stands for: the ancient royal families of Wales; freedom and pride in ourselves as a nation.’

  She smiled. ‘So you are Welsh now, Edmund?’ she said, mocking.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘You are right to tease. But I have met him. I have seen him. I have heard him talk.’

  ‘Where is he now, do you know?’ Catrin’s face was only two feet from his as she leaned forward, holding her hands out towards the glowing fire.

  ‘No one seems to know. He vanished into the mountains, and pulled the mist and clouds round his shoulders and he disappeared from view.’ He chuckled. It was a quote from one of Dafydd’s poems from the previous autumn.

  She ignored it. ‘I know King Henry promised pardons for all who took part in the revolt provided they renounced all supposed allegiance to Glyndŵr,’ she murmured. ‘Most took that choice, even Crach.’

  Edmund grimaced. ‘And Owain’s brother Tudur, and Gruffudd.’

  She stared at him in horror. ‘His own son?’

  Edmund nodded. There was a long silence. ‘It’s not over, Catrin. There are more new laws against the Welsh and the Lord Owain is still free. No pardon was offered to him; the king confiscated his estates and gave them to one of his Beaufort brothers. But he is not defeated.’

  ‘Lady Margaret? Catherine and Alys?’ Catrin hardly dared ask the question, but Edmund didn’t reply at first. ‘All I know is that on the Welsh side of the border there is still much unrest,’ he said at last. ‘I hope they are all safe. I liked that man. Respected him.’

  Catrin gave him a sideways glance. ‘You would serve him if he called for support?’

  ‘I would be sorely tempted. If there is a muster this spring I will be called to serve the king as an archer. But I could not fight against Lord Glyndŵr.’

  They fell silent, both gazing down at the glowing coals, deep in thought, Catrin intensely aware of how close he was to her as he squatted, holding out his hands to the heat.

  He was about to say something when the door burst open.

  ‘Catrin!’ Her father’s voice, irritable as usual, rang round the room. ‘What are you doing child? I need more ink!’

  Catrin sighed. ‘I will fetch it, Tad.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ He had spied the figure in the shadows.

  ‘It’s Edmund, Tad. He has bought us supplies so that I can make your ink when we run out.’

  Dafydd studied the young man as he straightened, towering above Catrin. She too stood up, hastily sweeping the pile of little gifts into the folds of her skirt.

  ‘What are you doing in here alone with my daughter?’ Dafydd glared at him belligerently. ‘How dare you. Get out of here.’

  ‘Tad!’ Catrin’s voice was sharp. ‘It’s Edmund. Don’t you recognise him?’

  ‘Of course I recognise him.’ Dafydd took several steps forward, pulling his mantle more tightly around his thin shoulders. ‘That does not mean I want him alone with you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Edmund bowed stiffly. ‘I forgot my place. I will go.’ He turned abruptly towards the door, his cheeks flaming.

  ‘Edmund,’ Catrin called, but he did not stop. In a moment he was gone and father and daughter were left glaring at each other in the swirling candlelight.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Joan said uncomfortably when her brother told her what had happened. He had refused her invitation to stay overnight and was putting on his boots. ‘Come on, be sensible. You can’t go back in the dark.’

  ‘Why not?’ he snapped. ‘I’ve been walking these hills in the dark all my life.’ He reached for his heavy courtepy, which was still soaking wet, and over it pulled the rough sheepskin jacket that had kept him warm on the road.

  ‘Foolish boy!’ She was all elder sister now.

  He laughed grimly then abruptly he sobered. ‘There is something I have always wondered. Why is she not married?’

  Joan stared at him in shocked silence. Then she spoke. ‘Edmund, you can’t think—’

  ‘No, I can’t. I don’t. But I would like to know.’

  She was silent for a while, rubbing her hands up and down on her apron. ‘No one has ever been good enough for her. One or two suitors came to ask for her hand when she reached marriageable age, but he chased them away. I heard her beg once, a couple of years ago now, but he said no, he needed her to look after him.’ She sucked in her cheeks. ‘It wasn’t for a particular suitor she pleaded, but she told him she wanted babies like other women.’

  There was a long pause.

  Edmund put his hand on Joan’s arm. ‘Sis, I know.’

  She shook him off crossly. ‘I can marry any time I want if I want babies! I don’t. It was my choice to leave home. The men Father selected for me were not to my taste!’ she snapped. She glanced up at him. ‘But you will marry again, Edmund,’ she added more gently. ‘Not Catrin, though. Don’t even think about it. He’s a selfish man. He will never let her go. He told her that her poems would be like children to her and that they would live for ever. I don’t know if that comforted her. Maybe a bit, but in the long dark hours of the night how could it when she lies there alone.’ She gave a deep sigh.

  He reached into the bundle he had left on the floor. ‘Here is an Easter gift for you. Did you really think I had forgotten you? Don’t be sad.’ He kissed her cheek.

  ‘Get on with you!’ She gave him a playful clip round the ear. ‘And if you get lost in the cold and dark, don’t you blame me!’

  ‘I won’t.’ He was laughing as he let himself out into the cold wind.

  Alone in her bedroom Catrin spread the little pile of parcels on her bed and looked at them. There were, as he had promised, sweetmeats. She opened the packet and picked one up and placed it on her tongue, savouring the taste as it flooded her mouth with sweetness. Another parcel held the ingredients for making ink: copperas crystals and gum arabic, and a small, exquisitely decorated penknife for trimming quill nibs and in the last was a tiny, exquisitely illuminated book. Catrin stared at it, mesmerised. How had Edmund been able to afford a book? She opened it, the thick vellum pages crackling slightly under her fingers. It was a copy of a poem by Iolo Goch, a poem describing Prince Owain’s house at Sycharth. She began to read, her eyes filling with tears as his clever words evoked a picture of the beauties of the house and its surroundings. Tucked in the very back she found a note inscribed in a careful hand. The Lady of Glyndŵr gave me this, her own copy, to give you as a present. E

  She sat holding the note for a long time. She had not even realised that Edmund could read and write. Carefully rewrapping the book she opened the coffer at the end of her bed and tucked all the presents away out of sight.

  In the kitchen Joan glanced up from her dough. ‘Your father was looking for you.’ Her face was set in a heavy scowl.

  ‘Was he?’ Catrin watched the woman
’s hands as she twisted the dough back and forth, reaching for flour from the crock and sprinkling it onto the table before she slapped the lump down again. ‘Has your brother gone?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Of course he’s gone.’ Joan punched the dough and folded it over. ‘He’s not good enough to talk to you any more, I hear.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Catrin sighed. ‘I don’t know what came over my father.’

  ‘I do.’ Joan looked up. ‘He does not intend for you to be alone with any man ever, so you stay with him, the selfish old goat!’ She looked up, mortified, and clapped a floury hand to her mouth, appalled at her temerity. ‘I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘You did.’ Catrin shook her head sadly. Joan had done no more than give utterance to her own thoughts. Not that she would ever consider Edmund as a suitable match, but that was not the point.

  Miserably she turned and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Joan to stare after her.

  Andy woke with a start. The paintbrush was still in her hand and the paint had dried on the tip. She shivered violently. The room seemed unnaturally cold. She reached out and touched her coffee mug. The china was icy. Daylight showed at the window. She had been sitting at the table all night. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and hugged herself as she staggered to her feet. Iolo’s poem. She had read it! It was included in at least two of the books she had bought. His description of the beauties of Owain’s home at Sycharth was legendary.

  She pushed back her chair and headed across the room. No wonder it was so cold. The fire had gone out. She stood looking down at the hearth. What fire? There was no fire. She had never lit one in this fireplace and yet she could remember it clearly, the molten logs glowing as they were consumed, collapsing, sending crimson sparks into the air as they turned to ash. And Catrin sitting, staring into its depths.

  She turned away from the empty fireplace as something in the window caught her eye. The creeper on the front of the house was fluttering against the glass, half blocking the cold early light. She ought to ask Bryn to cut it back. The pretty tendrils normally framed the view of the distant hills, but there was something in the way.

  It took a second to focus on the face staring in. With a little cry of surprise she launched herself towards the door. It was Rhona. Almost knocked off balance by the wave of shock and anger which swept over her she tore the door open.

  There was no one there. Scanning the front garden she headed for the steps. She couldn’t see anyone. Her car was on its own in the parking space. There was no sound of an engine in the lane, no smell of exhaust on the wind. She stood in the middle of the road looking up and down. Nothing. The high banks with their carpet of autumn flowers, the hedges, hung with old man’s beard, the muddy strip down the centre of the tarmac, the loose scattering of gravel, all bore witness to a lack of passing traffic. No one had jumped into their car and raced away here. Sleeper’s Castle was, as it always was, quiet and untroubled in its isolation.

  She had imagined it.

  From the open front door Catrin watched the woman who wore hose and boots and no skirt standing in the lane. She saw her turn round once, full circle, as though mystified by something, and then turn back towards the steps. She looked disturbed, anxious. Something was wrong.

  Andy glanced up. A gust of wind sent the heavy door swinging shut. As she reached it, it banged in her face.

  Andy stood, holding on to the Aga rail until she stopped shaking. The sight of Rhona’s face, there on the far side of the glass, had shocked her to her core. It had to have been a trick of the light, a reflection thrown by the pale fluttering leaves, there for only a second before it vanished. Her brain had constructed the face. It could not have been Rhona. Could it? She pictured the small red car in the car park and bit her lip hard. It was inconceivable that the woman would track her down and follow her.

  She spent the day painting and reading, but when the time came to sleep she was too stressed to consider going upstairs. Trying to put Rhona out of her head, she went back to thinking about her dreams, the dreams she felt she had dreamed but which she wasn’t sure she remembered when she woke up. Sometimes she had written them down spontaneously but there had to be some more reliable method of total recall.

  It took ten minutes to find the book she wanted. She remembered it from twenty years before when she had been studying paganism. Something Roy had said at that first supper party at Sian’s had reminded her about it, the ancient Celtic practice of sacred dreaming, the art of foretelling the future through dreams, something Dafydd and Catrin both practised and which, in the hands of medieval seers and prophets, was presumably the direct descendant of the Druid art. Would it work for foretelling the past as well? Not foretelling; aftertelling. She pulled the book from the bottom of the pile and carried it back in triumph to the kitchen.

  So many methods, but there was one she remembered particularly. And there it was, the place marked by a crumpled bus ticket. She frowned. The dreamer was sewn into a bull’s hide. She didn’t like the sound of that; knowing the Celts, did they mean a freshly slaughtered bull still dripping with blood? On the other hand, a treated hide, tanned and clean, would be no worse than having a leather sleeping bag. Being sewn in implied restraint – was that because one might want to run away from the dreams which visited the dreamer? She read down the page. The dreamer was often left near running water, which was of course the liminal place, between this world and the next, and often in a cave. The next morning the persons who had left him there would return to find out the answers to their questions. This was an Irish practice, it said, but also used in Scotland and other Celtic countries. Where more Celtic than Wales and by a running stream? The dreamer would be left in the sleeper’s cave, it said. She looked up feeling a clutch of excitement in her throat. Supposing it was the cave, not the house, which held the secret of the seers? The cave at the bottom of her garden. All she had to do was go out there and sleep. She studied the page again. It couldn’t be that simple. For instance, how important was the leather swaddling? She pushed back her chair and thought. Upstairs in the cupboard was her leather coat, normally kept for best, but what the hell. She could wrap herself in it to make sure she gave this her best shot. Then all she had to do was make sure that she had utter privacy. The only risk, the only person who could possibly disturb her was Bryn, but Bryn would not come here at night. He never came at night. She would wait until she had seen his car drive off down the lane then take her coat and make her way to the cave.

  It took far more courage than she would have thought possible. Bryn was there from eight o’clock the next morning and stayed until just before four. Once he had left, she made her way to the cave with a sleeping bag and a couple of cushions and made herself a makeshift bed at the back against the rock face. Then she returned to the house and waited. She couldn’t eat; she poured herself a glass of wine and looked at the salad she had prepared, figuring it would be harder to sleep on an empty stomach, but her appetite had gone. Pepper had had no such qualms, scoffing his own supper and disappearing out through the cat flap again with unaccustomed haste. It was only after he had vanished that she wondered if she should have kept him locked in. Supposing he followed her into the cave and kept her awake? But it was too late to worry about it now.

  Fighting off the thought of Rhona lurking in the shadows outside, she reached for the heavy coat and put it on, dropped the torch in her pocket, turned out all the lights except the lamp on the dresser, took a deep breath and let herself out into the night. Locking the door behind her she pocketed the key. She walked up the garden slowly, without using the torch, letting her eyes grow used to the dark. Behind the clouds the moon threw a gentle diffused glow providing enough light to stop her walking into things.

  The grass was wet and the silence was full of the sound of the brook cascading over its rocks. She stopped and looked behind her. Her senses were straining to hear and see, every instinct warning her to take care, but there was nothing untoward that
she could see. As she looked round, the half-moon appeared from behind its cloud and flooded the lawn with soft silver light. The garden was empty. Taking a resolute breath she walked on, heading past the herb beds through the elder brake and on towards the darkness of the cliff. Outside the cave she paused. The entrance was in deep shadow, nothing but a blacker cleft in the blackness of the rock. Her mouth was dry and there was an uncomfortable tightness in her stomach. She gave one final look round and ducked into the cave entrance, stopping just inside in the absolute total darkness. Now was not the time to give in and reach for the torch. Holding her hands out in front of her she took one step and then another into the emptiness, aware of the change of atmosphere, the dry stillness, the slight musty smell, the rattle of a pebble under her foot as she made her way cautiously across the floor towards the back. It took longer than she had expected, as though the cave had grown larger. Her heart was thudding even harder now as she shuffled one step at a time, feeling for her sleeping bag with her feet as her outstretched fingers met the back wall.

  In the event she almost missed it. In the dark she had begun to circle round without realising it. When she finally grappled against the cold rock she had to edge sideways for several steps before at last she kicked the soft pile of cushions. She knelt down and carefully began to wriggle into the sleeping bag – not easy in the heavy coat. When she finally managed it she found she was indeed swaddled so tightly that she could barely move. She straightened to lie on her back and lay for a while staring up into the dark. The cave was full of small rustlings and movements; surely the bats would be outside hunting in the dark? Best not to think of bats or rats or anything else that might live in there. The sleeping bag would keep her safe, only her head poking out.