Sleeper’s Castle

by Barbara Erskine

  When Andy woke next morning she was on the sofa, covered by the rug. She remembered Bryn coming in. He had asked about the planting. Then she had read her history books for a while, checking out the horrors of the Battle of Bryn Glas and done a bit of sketching before she lay down on the sofa, exhausted. Then Bryn had come into the house again. He had knocked on the door of the great hall and said something about a parcel.

  Fighting the twinge in her ankle she dragged herself to her feet and made her way into the kitchen. There it was on the table. The courier had delivered her new mobile and Bryn must have signed for it. She remembered it all now and felt a flush of embarrassment for her earlier rudeness. In spite of it he had asked if she was all right, and he had pulled the rug over her before he left.

  It was as she was heating a pan of soup on the Aga that she heard a knock at the door.

  ‘Andy? It’s Meryn.’

  She let him in, casting a quick glance over his shoulder into the garden, then bolted the door again behind him.

  ‘You still think Rhona is going to come and try to finish the job?’ He sat down opposite her at the table and accepted a small bowl of soup.

  ‘I don’t know what to think.’ She was disorientated, she realised, her head still partly in the past. She was conscious of him studying her face. ‘I was asleep; dreaming,’ she explained. ‘Then I realised I was hungry.’

  ‘That seems a healthy sign.’ He smiled. ‘This is good soup. Did you make it?’

  ‘Do I look like a soup maker?’ She laughed, then stopped. ‘No, that’s wrong. I used to love cooking and I will cook again, but in the meantime, this is not bad. I found it at the deli. As I did this very passable bread.’ She pushed the loaf towards him. ‘The dream was about Catrin,’ she went on. ‘And the battle at Pilleth. Does that mean anything to you?’ Her eyes clouded as the memory came back to her. She put down her spoon.

  ‘Oh yes, that means something. The Battle of Bryn Glas. It was a major victory for Glyndŵr, wasn’t it. A great many men were killed. The Herefordshire levy was all but wiped out, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘And the awful women?’ she whispered.

  ‘Ah, the women. Yes, the camp followers are reputed to have descended onto the battlefield after it was over and mutilated the bodies of the English dead, something vociferously denied by Welsh historians, who say it was a vicious piece of propaganda by the English to discredit a great victory by the Welsh.’ He pushed aside his empty bowl.

  ‘I didn’t see them doing it,’ she whispered. ‘Catrin told me, and I looked it up just now.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘I think you should. Doing so will help to give you perspective. Distance you a little, perhaps. You seem to have no choice but to hear this story, unless you opt to move out of the house and go far away. Catrin wants you to know what happened. But you need the tools to deal with this.’

  ‘And if I had them, you think I could cope?’

  ‘I think you can cope. And I’ll be here to help you if you need me.’ He smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Why does she want me to know?’

  ‘Perhaps she can’t help it. It may be that she has to go on repeating the story to anyone who will listen. A form of post-traumatic stress disorder as we would call it nowadays.’

  ‘Which is still going on, even though she’s dead?’ Andy could feel her throat constricting as she said the words. ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked up. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I admit I have heard parts of the story from people who’ve lived here, but I have never heard how it concluded. If it concluded.’

  ‘Joe?’

  He looked startled. ‘You know about Joe?’

  ‘Only what Sian’s friend Ella told me.’

  Meryn gave a sigh. ‘I don’t know what happened to him. I wish he had confided in me. I begged him to, but he decided he didn’t want to put himself through it. It needs a very strong stomach to experience something like this night after night, Andy. I don’t know what happens in the end, but I have the feeling that whatever it is builds to a climax and it is at that point that people feel they can’t go on.’

  ‘And Sue?’

  ‘Sue has always refused to talk about anything to do with what she chooses to call hocus pocus.’ He smiled fondly. ‘A very strong lady, Sue.’

  ‘She promised me once that there were no ghosts here.’

  ‘Really?’ Meryn smiled.

  ‘Do you think she set me up?’

  ‘Surely she wouldn’t do that. She knew you needed help.’

  Andy grimaced. ‘That might be her idea of help. To distract me. Take my mind off Graham and Rhona.’

  ‘Which it would have done, if Rhona hadn’t followed you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And now you’re saddled with a fearsome lady stalker in the present day and another in the past.’

  She grimaced. ‘I don’t think Catrin is a stalker. And she’s not fearsome.’

  ‘No. But don’t let her become too intrusive. We must make sure you’re in control of the situation.’

  ‘She must have been – must be – a very unhappy lady.’

  ‘Certainly a restless spirit.’ He pushed back his chair and collected her soup bowl with his own. Putting them in the sink, he filled the kettle, put it on the hob then turned back to her. ‘Can you manage to make your own coffee? I need to go, I’m afraid. I’ve promised someone I will be with them this evening on the far side of the moon.’ He winked. ‘Can I suggest you take the mixture I left you and have a good night’s sleep tonight, without dreams. Then think about how much you want to be there for Catrin.’

  She hadn’t told Meryn that she had thrown away his sleeping draught. She sat for a long time over her coffee after he had gone. Meryn had told her to stay in control, but he hadn’t told her how. Perhaps he imagined that Rufus had given her instructions, her own Dafydd, passing on his knowledge and his wisdom. The longing to talk to her father was overwhelming. Climbing stiffly to her feet, she went over to the dresser and picked up the landline. ‘Dad? I need to talk to you about something.’

  Even as she heard herself saying the word ‘dad’ she could hear the echo in the room: ‘Tad. Come back. I need you. Tad …’

  20

  Looking down at the parchment notes lying in a basket on the table in her father’s study, Catrin found herself swallowing hard. The theme was still consistent. War. Defeat. Bloodshed. Disaster. Warning after warning, in spite of Glyndŵr’s continuing success.

  Dafydd had returned to the house in the autumn last year as the weather deteriorated. The storms had been so consistently bad that the English army had retreated in disorder, once again convinced that the weather was on the side of the Welsh rebels, many of their archers deserting to offer their services to Glyndŵr, the man with magic on his side.

  Dafydd had brought news with him of the ransoming of Sir Reginald Grey – the Lord Owain’s coffers were richer by ten thousand marks! When the ransom demand for his other captive was firmly refused – hardly surprising, given that the hostage had a better claim to the throne than King Henry himself – Sir Edmund Mortimer pragmatically changed sides. The two men formed an alliance, sealed by the marriage in November of Mortimer to Owain’s daughter and Catrin’s friend, Catherine.

  This spring Dafydd had postponed his tour; he had been ill for several months now, coughing through the night as he lay awake tormented by his dreams. News filtered through that Prince Hal had burned Owain’s homes at Sycharth and Glyndyfrdwy, and now it was June and Dafydd had not yet left and it seemed the war was coming to him. The English were reinforcing the Marcher castles in the expectation of a Welsh attack, and Owain’s armies had moved south in a massive offensive. By the Feast of St John they were laying siege to Brecon, only sixteen miles away.

  Catrin glanced up at the ceiling. Her father was upstairs asleep, exhausted after hours of bending over his desk,
scribbling with a succession of goose feather quills, hurling each one into the corner of the room as it split and defied his efforts to trim it further. ‘I have to go to him,’ he had whispered to her at last, before he staggered towards the stairs. ‘I have to go. I cannot ignore the signs.’

  ‘I too have dreamt, Tad,’ she had replied.

  He looked across at her from the doorway, his face a combination of anger and anxiety. ‘You dream of defeat?’ He had never quite forgiven her for her intrusion into his dreams at Pilleth, and he would never forget the moment that she had proved herself to be as good a seer as he.

  ‘Yes.’ Her mouth was dry.

  ‘Is it this house?’ he asked desperately. ‘His other seers tell him he will triumph and he does. I see triumph, but always I see defeat too.’

  She shook her head in confusion. ‘Maybe it is that if these stones speak at all, they speak true,’ she said softly. ‘They speak what will be, not what we want to hear.’ It sounded like a plea.

  Once he’d left the room she turned back to his desk. The candle flames quivered throwing the dull light shivering across the walls. She could hear the shuffle of his shoes on the flags and then the faint sound of his footsteps as he climbed the stairs. Normally he would have locked the pages away in a coffer; none of the servants could read, so it was to stop her seeing what he had written. Today, however, he was too weary and too dispirited. The pages betrayed his usual dismay; his confusion and his horror. She glanced at them, then turned away.

  Catrin and Joan had planned to go to the market as soon as it was full light. Catrin lay for a while in her bed, dozing restlessly in the warmth of the summer dark, afraid to sleep in case she dreamed. It was already dawn when Joan woke her.

  They took her grey pony, sitting one behind the other on its broad back. For the homeward journey they would fill the saddlebags and throw panniers across her withers to carry their purchases. Sunrise was spreading a warm pink glow across the eastern sky as the pony picked its way down the steep track towards Hay. The transition from the quiet of the foothills to the bustle and noise of the town was abrupt; on entering the Lion Gate they left the pony at the Black Lion Inn and headed towards the market place, their baskets over their arms. Threading their way through the throng beneath the castle walls they were swept up in the excitement of the morning, listening to the shouts of the vendors, the music from a hurdy-gurdy, the bellowing of cattle being driven towards the shambles, the ringing of a bell in the distance. Instinctively Catrin put her hand over her purse; there were pickpockets and thieves and cutpurses mingling with the crowds, ever-alert for the unwary shopper. She and Joan exchanged happy smiles. They both enjoyed market day and for Catrin it was a relief to be free of her father’s exhausting presence, if only for the inside of a day.

  Above them stood the great castle, its walls patched and recently strengthened – castles up and down the border March had been repaired in readiness for the Welsh as they moved south and east across the country – but its great doors were unbarred. No one looked for an attack today and the town walls were manned with lookouts.

  The women separated. Joan, her purse stocked by Catrin before they left home and now hidden beneath her cloak, went in search of various items for her larder, her basket filling rapidly as she moved from stall to stall, striking bargains wherever she went. Catrin made her way towards a stall selling silken threads and needles, dyes and powdered pigments wrapped in small parchment packets and little linen pouches. When she asked for copperas she was greeted with a shake of the head. Turning to another stall she eyed the shoes and stockings longingly before moving on towards a glover, then another who sold parchment. Beyond she could smell the pie stalls and the bakers. The rich aroma on the air reminded her she was hungry.

  She felt a tug at her sleeve and turned. A tall man stood beside her, dressed in a long dark robe, a scrip at his belt. She looked at him, startled. He beckoned her away from the crowds, glancing round to make sure they weren’t being watched. ‘I have a message for your father,’ he murmured.

  Catrin frowned. Hefting her basket higher on her crooked elbow she followed him into the shadows between two buildings. The overhanging upper storeys meant it was cold there out of the sunlight. It smelt of urine. Obviously someone had taken the opportunity of its relative privacy to relieve himself in the mud. She gathered up her skirt fastidiously and waited to see what the man had to say.

  ‘Does your father plan to join the rebel army?’ he asked abruptly. She recognised him now. He was reeve to John Bedell, whose family owned houses in the town and farmed estates in the Wye Valley between Hay and Brecon.

  She tensed. In these days it was impossible to know friend from foe.

  The stranger held her gaze, then slowly, almost regretfully, he sighed. ‘This is just a friendly warning, mistress, and I mean you no harm by it. Tell him not to go. The king is asking for the names of supporters of the traitor, Glyndŵr. Any who are reported will be taken up. If they deny it and swear allegiance to our good King Henry, they will be offered a pardon. If not, they will be arraigned.’

  Catrin felt herself grow cold. ‘My father was ill all winter,’ she said firmly. ‘He plans to go nowhere. And what makes you think my father would support the rebel cause anyway?’ she demanded.

  He put his head on one side. ‘A word to the wise. I make no accusations, but remember: people watch, people talk. However quietly you think you live, however privately, there is always someone who sees.’ And with that he was gone, slipping further down the alley and out of sight round the corner.

  Catrin stood still, looking after him, her heart thudding with fright, then she turned and walked briskly back into the sunlit market square. She looked for Joan in the throng but there was no sign of her. A boy jostled close to her, sneakily reaching for her purse, and she slapped him away. Another man pushed past and a woman she knew from a farm in the hills waved and called a greeting, her own basket overflowing. Everywhere there were people she knew; no strangers; faces she had recognised since she was a child. Overwhelmed by the noise and the bustle, she turned back, trying to spot the man who had spoken to her, but there was no sign of him.

  The shadow of the castle lay over the ground, cold and implacable as, slowly, she retraced her steps towards the inn. There were no watchers on the battlements, no panic-stricken rush to bring in more weapons. Below in the square, the crowds had thinned, the stallholders were packing up, the hurdy-gurdy man shouldered his instrument and set off between the shops, taking the lane down towards the river and the ford.

  Joan caught up with her as they neared the inn at the sign of the Black Lion to retrieve the pony. With a grunt of relief, Joan tied her baskets onto the saddle, did the same for Catrin’s and filled the panniers with foodstuffs she had carried strung over her shoulder. She threw a glance at Catrin. ‘You can ride if you want to. You haven’t bought much. He can take the weight.’ Catrin nodded gratefully. She was tired and worried. Not wanting Joan to notice, she grimaced and rubbed her foot. ‘I’ve blisters on my toes. I should have bought new shoes.’ She managed a smile as she climbed into the saddle from the mounting block in the stable yard. ‘We’ll take turns though. It’s only fair. It’s a long way.’

  ‘And all uphill,’ Joan responded ruefully. Nevertheless she walked alongside the pony’s head cheerfully enough and before long was telling Catrin the latest gossip, embellished with much colourful language, as they left the town and headed out between the fields towards the narrow trackway that led up into the hills.

  Catrin listened with only half an ear, still preoccupied with what the reeve had told her. He had guessed her father was sympathetic to the Lord Owain, that much was clear, even though they had tried to keep their loyalties secret. How had he found out? Who had betrayed them?

  ‘They are bringing arms and cannon into the castle, did you hear? And strengthening the walls.’ At last Joan’s monologue penetrated her preoccupation. ‘John Bedell is moving in to supervise, with the king
’s commission to hold town and castle for him against the rebels.’

  Catrin stared down at her. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Everyone was talking about it. They are bringing in stores and food.’

  ‘So they are expecting another attack?’ Catrin asked.

  ‘Must be.’ Joan shuddered as she plodded on. ‘The rebel army is already outside Brecon, so everyone is saying. It is terrifying. If they come, I will have to go back to my parents. They will need me.’ She glanced up and Catrin thought she saw something like guilt in her eyes before she looked away again. They were both thinking of Edmund.

  Someone was knocking on the door. Andy dragged herself awake and looked at the clock beside her bed. It was six in the morning. There it was again, downstairs. The front door. Someone was banging on it with their fists.

  With a groan she dragged herself out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown. It took several minutes to make her way downstairs.

  ‘I was beginning to think there was no one here.’ When at last she cautiously pulled open the door she stood staring at the figure on the doorstep in disbelief. It was her father.

  ‘I left home in the early hours and drove overnight. No traffic, so I made it in remarkably good time.’

  ‘But what are you doing here? Why have you come?’

  His face clouded. ‘You rang and asked me, darling, don’t you remember?’

  He hadn’t changed since she saw him last. He was a stocky man, with hazel eyes and faded red hair showing traces of grey. His face was rugged but kind and as always there was a humorous twist to his mouth even when, as now, he was clearly concerned.

  She looked at him in confusion. ‘I don’t remember much at this moment, I’m afraid. I was asleep. Why didn’t you ring me?’