Sleeper’s Castle

by Barbara Erskine

  Sleep wouldn’t come. She found she was staring up towards the distant ceiling, afraid to close her eyes, conscious only of her own pulse beating in her ears. She screwed her eyes tight and counted to ten. Nothing. Sleep couldn’t be further away. Perhaps if she forced her eyes to stay open the sheer stress of it would make her tired. She was tired. She was exhausted, but she was not sleepy. Not now. Her mind went back to Rhona. Supposing the face she thought she had seen really had been Rhona; supposing she was out there in the dark, watching.

  Her eyes flew open again. She had forgotten the reason she was here. She had not asked herself the question. She had not told herself what to dream about.

  ‘Catrin. I need to know about Catrin,’ she murmured out loud. ‘Does she see Glyndŵr again? I need to dream of the past.’

  She could picture the house, she could picture Catrin walking to the back door and pulling it open, stepping outside, looking up at the stars and beginning to walk down the garden between the shrubs towards the brook, an empty bucket in her hand.

  But the garden had changed. It had elaborate beds. There was a table and chairs on a veranda and Andy could hear traffic in the distance as she watched the figure of a woman climbing the steps, walking through the door and locking it behind her.

  Rhona.

  She was closing the shutters, walking through the hall to the front door and out, locking that too. She was climbing into the red Roadster. On the seat beside her was a road map. She was smiling. Andy looked down at the map. It was open to show the Welsh borders. As Rhona pulled up at the crossroads and looked from right to left and right again, the map fell off the seat into the footwell and lay splayed open. Hidden in its pages was an ornate dagger and the dagger was covered in blood.

  14

  Ella cornered Sian in the deli. ‘I’m a bit worried about Andy. Have you seen her lately?’ She was clutching a pack of organic pasta.

  ‘Yes. We had lunch.’

  ‘You know she’s having dreams.’ Ella lowered her voice, glancing around to make sure no one was within earshot.

  ‘Everyone dreams there.’ Sian tried to sound dismissive.

  ‘But she’s not used to living on her own.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘She’s interested in the house.’

  ‘Which is fine.’ Sian kept her voice firm. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s in danger of becoming obsessed?’

  Sian’s heart sank. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘Roy told me she’s buying books on local history.’

  Silently Sian cursed Roy, someone else who didn’t know the meaning of the word discretion. Not that that was fair. She was his wife, for goodness’ sake! ‘She likes it here, Ella. She’s making herself at home.’

  Ella took a deep breath. ‘Do you remember Joe, the guy who lived with Sue for a while? Tall chap. Grey hair. She thought he looked like Richard Gere.’ She paused as she headed for the till to make sure Sian had nodded assent. ‘He was driven away by his nightmares.’

  ‘He was driven away by Sue. They didn’t get on when it came down to the basics.’

  ‘No.’ Ella shook her head. ‘He had nightmares. He thought the house was haunted. He was convinced that he would be killed if he stayed there.’

  ‘Killed!’ Sian almost shouted the word. She put her hand to her mouth as she realised everyone in the shop was looking at her.

  Ella looked round, embarrassed. ‘Let me pay for these things and we can go somewhere. I’ll tell you all about it. I thought you would have known. I thought Sue confided in you.’

  Sian had thought so too. She followed Ella out of the shop and up to the market square. They headed towards a small table in the corner at the back of Shepherds.

  ‘He told me he dreamt about battles,’ Ella said, stirring her coffee energetically. ‘Bloody battles. They became more and more real until he felt he was part of the action. He was terrified to go to sleep and even more terrified that if he did he would never wake up. He thought he was going to be killed.’

  Sian was staring at her open-mouthed. ‘Did you say anything to Andy about this?’

  ‘No. Joe swore me to secrecy. I met him the day before he decided to go. He was at a pretty low ebb. He came into the shop looking for Roy, but he was away on a buying trip so I gave Joe some tea and suddenly he came out with all this stuff. Of course I didn’t say anything to Andy. I didn’t want to frighten her. But I’ve been thinking and I don’t know if that was the right decision.’ She looked at Sian miserably.

  ‘Sue never said a word to me about this,’ Sian said.

  ‘Sue thought it was a load of baloney. Crap was her chosen word,’ Ella said. ‘She thought he was making it up. But I don’t think he was. I think he was really scared.’

  ‘She would have told me.’

  ‘What did she say when he left so suddenly?’

  ‘Just that it hadn’t worked out.’

  ‘No. He ran away. Literally. Packed up one day, loaded his car and drove off without looking back.’

  Sian sat back in her chair. ‘And you didn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘I can keep secrets, you know.’ Ella coloured. ‘But I asked Sue. I was in an awful state. I didn’t know what to do when I heard he’d actually gone. Sue was actually pretty rattled. She thought he had found someone else and she told me this whole spiel about his excuses and his play-acting and his behaving like a complete asshole – was I believe the term she used at that point – rather than just being honest with her. I told her about the legends and the history of the house that Roy goes on about, and the old guy who used to live there, but she didn’t believe me. Not a word I said convinced her.’ She sighed. ‘Poor Sue. He was a nice guy.’

  ‘He was,’ Sian agreed. She picked up her mug of coffee and took a sip. ‘Sue told me once that she had had some bad dreams up there,’ she said after a moment. ‘And she made me promise not to tell anyone. She reckoned she could ignore them and then they would go away. I assumed they had.’

  Ella leaned forward. ‘Joe thought he had been stabbed in one of his dreams. He showed me the scar. That was why he panicked. He thought he would actually be killed if he stayed.’ She gulped down a mouthful of coffee.

  ‘Joe actually showed you the scar?’ Sian hung onto that one phrase.

  She nodded. ‘It was quite small. Deep. Obviously done by a sharp knife. I wondered if he had done it himself; not on purpose, nothing like that. Perhaps he did it in his sleep, but a medieval battle? I didn’t know what to think. When Andy told me she’d started having dreams too, I was terrified for her. That poor woman is up there all alone, actually excited by everything that’s happening to her.’ She sighed. ‘Wherever these dreams come from, they are real, in her head, and she admitted to me that they’re addictive. Somehow we have to help her.’

  After Ella had left, Sian sat for a while over her half-drunk mug of coffee. She remembered Joe clearly. He had been a nice man. All Sue’s friends had had high hopes of him. Then abruptly he had left. She had never pressed Sue any further about what had actually happened, assuming Sue would tell her when the time was right, but Sue never did, displaying unusual reticence on the whole subject. All she had volunteered was a succinct and pithy dismissal of the entire male gender, the only exception being Pepper. ‘I’ll stick with cats,’ she’d declared. ‘You know they’re not dependable, so they won’t ever let you down.’

  As for Andy: she remembered the red mark on Andy’s hand and she felt her stomach turn over at the thought. ‘Wherever these dreams come from they are real …’ Ella’s voice echoed in her head. Real.

  Reaching into her pocket for her phone, she called Andy. There was no reply.

  ‘I need to see you urgently,’ she said softly into her phone. ‘Ring me back as soon as you pick this up.’

  Andy awoke from her dream in the cave in a complete panic, covered in sweat, fighting to be free of the constricting clutches of her coat inside the sleeping ba
g. When she was eventually on her feet she found the torch in her pocket and flashed it around the cave, seeing the beam of light wildly running up the walls and over the distant roof. Somehow she found the entrance and staggered out into the cold night and ran back towards the kitchen door. It took her several terrifying seconds to find the key and only when she was once more indoors and the door safely bolted behind her did she begin to calm down.

  Her thoughts were all over the place. Tearing off her coat she dropped it on the floor by the door. She sat down in Pepper’s chair beside the Aga and put her head in her hands. She had dreamt. Of that there was no doubt. She had dreamt about Rhona, not Catrin, but then on the floor of the car she had seen a dagger, a medieval dagger. She took a deep breath and sat back, staring blankly in front of her. Had her dreams collided then, past and present, past and future? She realised that she was shivering violently. Somehow she made herself stand up, she filled the kettle and put it on the hob then she stood watching it, gazing into the cloud of steam long after it had started to boil.

  Eventually she went upstairs and lay down on her bed without getting undressed. She lay there for a long time, looking at the window, her mind playing over and over that scene in the car. The T-junction, Rhona slamming on the brakes, the road atlas sliding inexorably towards the edge of the seat, falling to the floor, the pages splayed open and the dagger lying there, dripping with blood.

  She did not sleep again that night.

  It was only just light when she went downstairs, and groping for her car keys on the dresser she let herself out into the ice-cold dawn. Somehow instinctively she knew she had to find help, and the only person she could think of was Meryn.

  She climbed out of her car and stood looking round. The attractive stone cottage, painted white and smothered in ivy and roses still felt deserted, the windows staring blindly out across the garden towards the distant hills. She looked up quickly as she heard the echoing cry of a buzzard and saw the bird in the distance, wheeling low in huge lazy circuits over the hill.

  When she had come up to his house with Sian she had felt intrigued and excited at the prospect of, if not meeting Meryn in person, then at least of seeing his home, but now she realised it was quite different. Perhaps she shouldn’t have come. This was a private place, a lonely place, with a strange otherworldly atmosphere, a place where shadows raced across the hills, thrown by the fleeting light of the rising sun, where cwmau and gulleys captured the darkness even in the bright light of day, where secret water threaded through peat moss hags and rocks, bilberry and heather.

  Taking a deep breath she walked up to the front door and knocked. There was no reply, as she had known, she realised, that there wouldn’t be. He wasn’t here, so she should go. Now.

  She hesitated. She needed him. She needed help and advice from someone who knew what they were talking about. Part of her wanted to climb back into her car and go home. Another part wanted very badly to go to the shed, as Sian had done, pick up the key and let herself in.

  The door of the shed stuck a little as she pushed it. Inside on a shelf, which had been empty when they’d left, she found a bundle of post. So the postman at least had been here since she and Sian had paid their visit. She reached for the keys and took them off the hook. She weighed them in her hand, two silver keys on a ring with a small metal tag. She looked at it carefully. It was shaped like an oak leaf.

  Slowly she turned round, wrestling with her conscience. As she reached the door, the keys still in her hand, an icy gust of wind blew into the shed and, for the second time in twenty-four hours, a door slammed in her face.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said out loud as she found herself in darkness. The only window, north-facing and smeared with green algae, was hung with dusty spiders’ webs that effectively blocked the light.

  She took a deep breath and hung the keys back where they had been on the hook.

  ‘Sorry!’ she whispered. She groped her way back to the door and pushed, terrified it might have locked itself. It opened easily. Outside the sun was higher now; the clouds still sent shadows racing across the ground. The buzzard had gone.

  She opened the car door and slid into her seat. For several long minutes she sat there, her eyes closed, her heart thudding with fright. When at last it steadied she leant forward and reaching for the key turned it in the ignition.

  Bumping down the drive and onto the track she glanced into the rear-view mirror. Was that a figure standing by the gate looking after her? She heard herself give a small whimper of fright and accelerated out onto the mountain road.

  Bryn’s van was there when she turned into the parking space. She sat without moving for a while after turning off the engine then she pushed open the door and climbed out. She was pleased there was no sign of him. She wasn’t sure how she felt yet. Frightened. Embarrassed. Ashamed that she was still upset by the terrifying dream she had brought on herself in the cave. She had given way to the urge to seek help from a man she didn’t even know. Slowly she climbed the steps and let herself into the house. There was no sign of Pepper in the kitchen and she was almost glad. He would have seen through her at once.

  She noticed the light flashing on the phone and pressed the button to play the message. Sian’s anxious voice made her frown. Her initial thought was that somehow Sian knew where she’d been. Whatever it was Sian needed to say, she didn’t feel up to dealing with it at the moment. She went to the Aga and slammed the kettle on the hotplate. Perhaps a cup of strong coffee would stop her hands shaking.

  The tap on the door made her jump. Bryn pushed it open. ‘I thought I heard you come back. There was a woman up here asking for you.’

  Andy stared at him. ‘A woman?’ She put her mug down.

  ‘Red spiky hair. Wouldn’t leave her name. Said you would know who she was.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Andy sat down at the table with a wail of despair.

  ‘Not a close friend then?’ he commented wryly. ‘Anything I can do?’

  She was incapable of rational thought. ‘Have some.’ She reached for the coffee pot.

  He stepped inside the door, closed it and came towards the table. As he passed the sink he reached for the upturned mug, which was sitting on the draining board. She poured him coffee and he sat down facing her.

  ‘I don’t think I have actually seen someone turn as white as a sheet before in front of me. I thought it was one of those clichés you find in women’s novels.’ He took a cautious sip of the black coffee. ‘So, you had better tell me about it. I have to say, I didn’t like the look of her. She didn’t go out of her way to lay on the charm. She appeared to think I was your toy boy. She didn’t think much of your morals.’

  Andy sighed. She took a gulp from her mug. ‘That’s because I lived with her ex for ten years. He was the love of my life.’ She drank another mouthful.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘She’d already left him,’ she went on. ‘She didn’t want him, but when he died she changed her mind. She decided she had adored him.’ Why was she telling him this? ‘As his widow, she felt entitled. She destroyed his will and claimed the inheritance. Hence my present state of homelessness.’ She did not try to hide her bitterness.

  ‘And she’s followed you here because …?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. She hates me with a vengeance.’

  The dagger. She could see it so clearly, the blood still dripping from the blade. She took a deep breath and looked up at him helplessly. ‘I sometimes think she might be certifiably mad. I’m terrified she’s actually planning to try to kill me. I know that sounds ridiculous,’ she added. Ridiculous or not, the dream had been a warning. She had sought the advice of ancient gods and they had responded.

  ‘So you came here to hide from her?’

  Andy nodded. She was afraid she was going to cry.

  ‘If it’s any comfort, I didn’t tell her you were here. She brought out the bolshie bastard side of my character. But I think she knew. She seemed pretty sure of herself.’

 
‘I think I saw her looking through the window yesterday. I managed to convince myself it was a hallucination.’

  ‘This is the house for bad dreams.’ He watched her as she took another gulp of coffee.

  ‘Isn’t it.’ She put the mug down abruptly. ‘You know about the dreams?’

  ‘I’ve worked here for ten years.’

  ‘Of course. You told me.’ She gave a weary smile. ‘So, sometimes you sleep on the job?’ The smile turned into a suppressed gurgle of unhappy laughter.

  He picked up the coffee pot and refilled her mug. Ignoring her question, he asked, ‘What are you going to do about this woman?’

  ‘Rhona.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t want to move on. She’s already chased me out of my home, I am not going to let her chase me out of Sleeper’s Castle as well.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. So, what are we going to do about her?’

  She smiled. ‘You have no idea how good it is to think I have an ally. I don’t know what to do. Up till now I’ve just been trying to avoid her. I thought, I hoped, seeing her was a dream.’ She knew she sounded pathetic but at the moment she couldn’t help it.

  ‘I take it there’s no point in us asking nicely for her to go away?’

  ‘I doubt it. I think she’s seriously unstable. Graham always thought so.’

  ‘Graham being the gentleman in question.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bryn put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his folded hands. ‘I don’t suppose you want to call in the constabulary?’

  Andy laughed. ‘Too late. She’s already thought of that one. She told them I was stalking her and they came up here to check on my whereabouts. Luckily I could prove I was here in Hay, and she was in Kew at that point so her case didn’t stack up.’

  She wasn’t about to tell him she had started it with her sleepwalking, or dream-stalking or whatever her activities might be described as. She shuddered. And now she had dreamed again and this time it was a proper dream and it contained a warning.