Which there wasn’t. In Catrin’s time.
In spite of the warmth of the water she shivered. She remembered the comet from reading Glyndŵr’s biography.
Somehow she managed to lever herself out of the bath, dress in warm clothes and go downstairs to lift the kettle onto the hob. There was no sign of Pepper.
It was as she sat sipping the tea that she heard a loud knock on the door. She put down the mug. The clock on the wall said it was after nine. Andy staggered to her feet and managed to hop towards the door. She put her hand on the key. ‘Who is it?’
‘Bryn.’
With a sigh of relief, she turned the key and pulled open the door. ‘Come in.’
Bryn walked in and closed the door behind him. He stood watching as Andy staggered back to the table. ‘What on earth have you done to yourself?’ he asked abruptly.
‘I had a fall,’ she replied. She managed a smile. There it was again, just for a second, the resemblance to Edmund. It made her feel cross and uncomfortable.
‘Where?’
‘I was out walking.’ She resented the almost accusatory tone of his question.
‘On the Bluff?’
‘Yes. Somewhere up there. I don’t know where I was exactly.’ She sighed. ‘If you must know, I met up with Rhona and we had a bit of an altercation.’
‘Which resulted in your ankle being damaged?’
She hesitated. ‘It was an accident, I slipped down the cliff—’
‘My God, Andy!’
‘I know. I was stupid to let her get near me.’
‘But she brought you home?’
‘No.’ She bit her lip. ‘No, she left me there.’
He stared at her.
‘Meryn found me.’
‘You have contacted the police, I take it.’
‘No.’
‘Why on earth not? That woman is obviously dangerous.’
‘I will be more careful in future. I don’t want the police involved.’ She glared at him. ‘That’s my decision and it’s none of your business. Understand? Did you want something, Bryn?’
He looked taken aback. ‘I just wondered if you wanted me to go on with my autumn planting as usual?’
She gazed at him askance. ‘You’re asking me about the garden? Surely Sue gave you instructions before she left?’
‘She did, but you seemed to be showing an interest.’
‘And what do you think would happen if I told you to alter the whole place? “Change the herb beds, Bryn. I want some garden flowers here. Oh, yes, and while we’re at it, perhaps you could root up those dreary shrubs.” I don’t think so!’
He folded his arms. ‘OK. I get the message. Your experience has obviously made you a bit cranky,’ he said conversationally. ‘I can see why.’
‘Cranky!’ She almost exploded with fury. ‘I’ll say I’m cranky. She nearly broke my ankle out there, she wrecked my shoulder. I feel like hell and you come in and ask me stupid questions which, if I answered them, you would ignore anyway!’
He took a deep breath. ‘OK. Sorry I asked. Business as usual then.’
And with that he turned, walked back to the door and let himself out, closing it with exaggerated care behind him.
She hardly noticed he had gone.
Pepper was sitting on the floor beside her, she realised, looking up pleadingly. ‘I suppose you want feeding again,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll bet you’re his familiar. You’re here to spy on me and then report back!’
Pepper ignored the comment and settled down to wait. In his experience humans always gave you what you wanted in the end.
Rhona was waiting at the bottom of the hill when Bryn left work that evening. He didn’t notice the car tucked into the lay-by, or the fact that it pulled out behind him, only moving ahead when he pulled into the pub. By the time he had ordered his drink she had turned and followed him into the car park.
There was no one else by the bar. She walked up to him and smiled. ‘Hello there. Do you remember me? I’m a friend of Miranda’s.’
He was sipping from his pint of local-brewed lager. ‘I remember.’ He kept his face carefully schooled. If this was the woman who was supposed to have attacked Andy he wasn’t going to betray the fact that he knew what had happened. Not yet. She ordered herself a gin and tonic and they stood in silence as it was poured. The barman glanced at them both in turn and kept his cheery remarks to himself. He took her money and retreated to the far end of the bar.
‘Did you tell her I had dropped by?’
He shrugged. ‘I told her some woman had come over.’
She smiled coldly. ‘Some woman?’
‘You didn’t tell me your name.’
She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement. ‘How is she?’
Bryn didn’t look up. ‘Fine as far as I know.’
‘Have you seen her today?’
He nodded.
‘Are you sure?’ He could see her body tensing. ‘I heard she’d had an accident.’
So, she hadn’t been back to check what had happened after she pushed Andy. He put down his tankard and studied her. ‘Where did you hear that?’ He wiped the back of his hand across his lips, deliberately boorish. She had an interesting face. Handsome, but very hard. Her eyes were darting round the room, avoiding his as he studied her.
She looked flustered at his question. ‘I was talking to a friend of hers.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not sure of her name. She said she had heard that Miranda had been hurt in a fall.’ Rhona took a sip of her drink. She gave him a quick glance. ‘But if you say she’s all right, she must have got it wrong.’
Bryn could see her thinking fast. Had she planned to leave Andy on the hill all night? He took another gulp from his glass. ‘She was fine when I left her just now,’ he said. He kept his voice flat. Bored.
Rhona took another sip from her G & T and he saw the flash of irritation cross her face. Was that because her plan had failed; he hadn’t given her the news she wanted?
‘I’m glad she’s OK.’ It had finally dawned on her that she should make some kind of response. ‘Did you pass on my message to her?’
‘Did you leave a message?’ He narrowed his eyes.
She looked flustered for the first time. She obviously couldn’t remember what she had told him.
He reached into his pocket and produced an old receipt. He turned it over so he could write on the back. ‘Remind me of your name,’ he said. He produced a pencil. ‘And where you are staying. I’ll let Andy know so she can get in touch.’
She drained her glass and banged it down on the counter. ‘Forget it,’ she said hastily. ‘It’s too late now. I’m on my way back to London. I’m sorry not to have seen her, but maybe next time I’m down this way I’ll ring her.’ She turned towards the door.
Bryn did not do more than give her a curt nod as she walked outside.
‘Freaky woman.’ The barman moved back up the bar. He had interpreted Bryn’s indifference correctly.
‘And some,’ was Bryn’s succinct reply.
He wandered over to the window and looked out. Her car was not exactly discreet. Red, like her hair. He noted the number down on the back of his scrap of paper and watched as she drove away. She was heading in the opposite direction to London.
19
It was high summer and there had been a battle. A big one. A stranger was sitting at the kitchen table, a young man, his arm swathed in bloody bandages. He had fled the field and travelled south over the hills by night, fighting off nausea and fever, looked after in lonely farmhouses and by shepherds on the moors. Somehow he had kept going. He had crossed the Wye Valley and was heading into the Black Mountains, back home to his parents’ house. Somehow he had found his way up the cwm to Sleeper’s Castle.
Joan was heating mutton broth for him while Catrin peeled off the blood-soaked bandages to reveal a deep arrow wound. His name was Jac. ‘I was fighting next to Edmund,’ he told them. ‘We drew bows together and we
won.’
Catrin glanced up in time to see Joan’s face set in a tight white mask. ‘Where is he now?’ she asked sharply. She turned back to her pot.
Jac didn’t seem to hear her question. ‘It was a glorious victory,’ he said. His voice was growing weaker. ‘The day before John’s Eve. The Lord Owain had stopped at the church of Our Lady at Pilleth to pray at the holy well when we were told the English army under Sir Edmund Mortimer was approaching far away along the river valley. We took position on the hill at Bryn Glas.’ He rocked forward, his head on the table. ‘Our men burned the church,’ he whispered. ‘God forgive us, we burned the church. But it was a glorious victory,’ he murmured again.
It had been a spring of glorious victories. Heartened by the appearance of the comet foretelling success and triumph for his cause, Glyndŵr had gone from strength to strength. With more and more followers behind his banner he had ridden to the attack and concentrated his attentions on the northern lands of his enemy Sir Reginald Grey, finally capturing him in April and demanding a huge ransom from the king. And now it seemed his successes continued.
Catrin looked sadly down at the young man who lay before them. He looked so vulnerable and so young. Victory, but at what cost?
‘Help me with him, Joan,’ Catrin commanded. ‘We’ll lay him on a mattress next door. I can dress his arm while he sleeps.’
Joan stared down at the young man. ‘He said he served next to Edmund,’ she whispered.
‘And Edmund told him to find us,’ Catrin replied. ‘Help me, Joan.’
‘Why didn’t he come himself?’ Joan hadn’t moved from the fire. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No, of course he’s not dead.’ Catrin felt a clutch in her throat. ‘He would have said. Help me!’ She managed to force her hands under the boy’s armpits and drag him upright. Joan reluctantly put down her spoon, bending to pick up the young man’s feet. Between them they half carried, half dragged him through into the great hall and settled him down on a mattress by the wall. Catrin pulled a blanket over him and looked down at him. Her hands were sticky with fresh blood. ‘He is badly wounded. We have reopened the worst of the injuries. Fetch me water and cloths.’
It took them a long time to clean him up and bind his wounds, and somehow Catrin forced a little warm water containing a healing tincture down his throat. As he fell back asleep, she looked up at last. ‘We will let him sleep then when he wakes he will be ready for your broth. That will do him more good than anything.’ Her hair had come loose, hanging from beneath her coif and she brushed it back off her face with the back of her hand. ‘He’ll tell us more once he is rested.’ She had left a streak of blood across her temple.
Joan looked at her miserably. ‘Edmund must be alive, mustn’t he,’ she said bleakly.
‘Of course he is,’ Catrin replied.
Joan walked away towards the kitchen. Catrin didn’t follow her. She went outside and made her way to the edge of the brook. She washed her hands and face in the icy mountain water and refastened her hair under her hood before she went back indoors.
Joan was chopping cabbage. ‘I’ll throw this in with the mutton,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose your father was there?’
Catrin bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. I have heard nothing from him since he left.’
He had gone while the dragon sign was still there in the northern skies. It had been visible for several weeks before fading into the distance. In Hereford market the word was that it foretold disaster for the Welsh; for the Lord Owain and his followers it was a sign of triumph, a portent of a destiny written in the stars.
It was late evening when Jac awoke, much restored and ready to eat a huge bowl of Joan’s mutton broth. His fever had gone and with it his reluctance to talk. He described the battle, the enormous numbers of men and horses involved, the curtains of arrows that rained down onto the enemy, the forests of spears, the thunder of the horses’ hooves as they charged.
‘So why did you flee?’ Joan asked sharply.
‘I got lost.’ Jac’s eyes flooded with tears. The women had realised a while ago that he was a great deal younger than they had first assumed. ‘Terrible things were happening. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. I couldn’t find the prince’s archers. Edmund had told me that if anything happened to him I was to go home, and if I came this way I was to look for you.’ His bravura at describing the battle had melted away and he was a little boy again, lost and alone.
‘If anything happened to him?’ Joan’s voice was harsh. ‘What happened to him?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up at her pleadingly. ‘I couldn’t find anyone I knew. Everywhere there were strangers, they were shouting, and this man came up with a halberd and there was a horse that was screaming and screaming with a spear in its neck and he lifted the halberd and he killed it and it rolled over and it was so quiet.’
‘All right, Jac.’ Catrin leaned forward and put her hand over his on the table. ‘I think you have told us enough.’
He was sobbing hard. ‘It was the women.’ He gulped back the tears and reached with a shaking hand for his mug of ale. ‘The local women and the camp followers climbed the hill and they were attacking the bodies of the English.’ He looked up at them miserably. ‘I keep seeing what they were doing. It was …’ He stopped, groping for a word that wouldn’t come. ‘It was awful.’
Catrin and Joan glanced at each other. ‘Let’s not think about that,’ Catrin said at last. ‘I want you to have some more ale and then sleep. When you are strong enough, you can continue on your way to your parents.’
‘It was because of the children,’ Jac went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘One of them told me it was because of what the English army had done to the little children at Ystrad Fflur.’ Tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks. ‘They raped the women; then they dragged the little children away and hurt them – so they had to pay. Even in death, they had to pay. You do see, don’t you? They had to pay.’
Catrin found she couldn’t speak. It was Joan who reached for the jug of ale and topped up the boy’s mug, and Joan who led him back to his mattress and covered him with the blanket again, tucking him in and pushing his hair back from his hot face with a gentle hand as if he too was a child.
Catrin walked outside and stood staring up at the luminous night sky. It was July now; the battle had happened weeks ago. Was Edmund still alive? Had he been involved in the horrors the boy described? What had happened to the Lord Owain’s army? Was it still together, or had it disbanded and retreated into the hills to celebrate its victory?
Slowly she walked down the path, her soft leather shoes silent on the stones, through the vegetable beds towards the cliff. The cave was a blacker blackness under the stars. She crept in and stood listening. In that cave was all the wisdom of the earth; in there was the answer to her every question. Sometimes it answered her; sometimes it was cold and unresponsive.
Huddling in the corner she waited, listening to the sound of the brook in the distance, lulled by the inner silence of the cave. As her eyes closed she did something she had never done before. She reached out to her father.
He was sitting in front of a campfire, staring into the flames. She saw him start a little as he felt her questing and she saw his increasing anger as he realised what she had done, but he did not push her away. He was exhausted. Not afraid, but not at ease with what was happening around him either. Gently she probed further.
He had been there, seen the battle and now she could see it too, the columns of marching men spreading out below them, trying to avoid the boggy ground where the River Lugg wound through the flat valley bottom, heading for the steep hill where the Welsh lay in wait. Mortimer’s army was splitting, heading up towards the church, some following the trackway, others trying to climb the hill. Did they not know the enemy was there? She could see the knights on their horses, harnesses bright, pennants flying jauntily, the archers following and then the foot soldiers. They were confident, invincible. None were expecti
ng the attack.
She winced miserably as she saw the first block of Welsh archers rise to their feet, take their stand and loose a storm of arrows down into the faces of the men and horses below them. She could see the boy, Jac, and next to him, grim and focused, she could see Edmund reaching into the bag at his waist to pull out another arrow. She heard, as she had heard so often in her dreams, the screams, the thunder of hooves, the shouts and yells, the clash of swords, the splintering of lances, and over it all again and again the whistling howl of the flights of arrows before they thudded into shields and mail and flesh.
The end was swift. Blocks of archers in the valley bottom changed sides and turned their weapons on their own. From the hillside on Bryn Glas, behind the lines, her father had watched the glorious triumph, the scattering of Mortimer’s army, the limping wounded, the dead and dying horses. He had seen men out of control, pursuing their enemy, and he had seen the women of the Welsh breaking out from the camp around him and setting off down the hill. They were holding knives.
Catrin shuddered with horror. ‘Where next?’ she asked. ‘What is going to happen next?’
Dafydd heard her question. ‘We are marching south. We are heading back towards Hay.’ And she felt his fear and his denial.
Then she saw the prisoners. The Lord Owain was standing, exhausted, beneath his standard as his men at last regrouped. And there, a man on each side holding his arms, another holding a sword to his back, was Sir Edmund Mortimer himself, pushed to his knees on the grass. For a long time the two men looked at one another, then Owain gestured at the soldiers to release the younger man. He stepped forward and offered him his hand so that he could rise. ‘A fair battle, Sir Edmund,’ he said, ‘and a vicious one.’
Sir Edmund was too overwhelmed with exhaustion to reply.
They both knew what would follow. Sir Edmund would be taken into captivity far behind the lines and a ransom would be asked from the King of England. Neither knew if it would be paid.
Owain turned to address someone behind him and there, for a brief second, Catrin saw Edmund, her Edmund, standing in the shadows. The firelight was playing on his face; she saw it drawn and tired and smeared with blood, but he seemed uninjured. He moved slightly and looked aside into the darkness beyond the firelight, and she wondered if he knew she was watching.
Sleeper’s Castle Page 30