‘I did. Your phone was switched off.’
‘My phone?’ She froze. ‘I lost it. The new one has only just come.’ And she hadn’t even opened the parcel.
As she let him in, he glanced round the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry. It is early.’ He smiled. ‘Why don’t you go and get dressed while I bring my bag in from the car, then we can have breakfast and catch up.’
When she came back downstairs he was cooking eggs and bacon on the Aga, coffee was already made and the table was laid. ‘I brought breakfast with me,’ he said as she appeared. ‘I called your mother before I left and she reminded me you wouldn’t have any decent grub in the house. I take it this cat is expecting to be fed? I couldn’t find any food for it.’
Pepper was sitting on the corner of the table, his tail swishing gently in irritation.
Andy smiled. She was feeling happier than she had for days. It was just as if she was a child again; now she could relax and put all her problems and all her fears into someone else’s hands. Her daddy was there, so now everything would be all right. She filled Pepper’s bowl and sat down opposite her father, aware for the first time that he was studying her carefully.
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight, girl,’ he said critically. ‘And you’re as pale as death. What has been happening? From the beginning.’
By the time she had told him the whole story she found she had eaten everything he put in front of her. She sat back with the second cup of coffee he had poured and fell silent. For a while he said nothing, processing everything she had said, then, pushing back his own cup, he stood and headed for the doorway. He walked out of sight into the hall. She could hear his footsteps on the flags growing fainter as he moved deeper into the house. After a while they died away. She waited quietly, sipping her coffee.
Eventually he returned and sat down again. ‘Interesting.’
‘Can you feel it?’
‘I can feel a lot of things. Cold. The age of the place. But there does seem to be a sense of anger and resentment, which feels as though it is directed at me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ve come with the express purpose of sticking my nose in where it is obviously not wanted.’ He reached for the coffee pot. ‘This is cold. I’ll make some more. Dafydd …’ He raised his eyebrows and peered at her over his glasses. ‘Very protective of his patch, I’d say. Very suspicious. Very angry.’
Andy stared at him, astonished. ‘I’ve never sensed him here. Only Catrin.’
‘I suspect he’s responding to the arrival of another man on his patch. Perhaps another father.’
His expression changed from one of concern to glee. ‘I haven’t done this in years! Sandy doesn’t like this sort of stuff any more than your mother did, so I’m out of practice. Oh, Andy, I’ve missed you, girl.’
When he returned to the table with the brimming coffee pot he sat down and reached for her cup. ‘What did your friend Meryn say about Dafydd?’
‘Nothing. He never mentioned him. Meryn hasn’t done any “stuff” here,’ – she hooked her fingers into inverted commas – ‘All he’s done is talk technique and ask questions. Mostly he was concentrating on my ankle.’
Rufus glanced down at her feet, now swathed in socks and slippers. ‘Perhaps we should discuss Rhona before we move on to discuss Dafydd and Catrin. She seems to me to be a more immediate physical threat. I take it you have called the police.’
‘No. Everyone keeps saying that! There isn’t any point, Daddy! There are no witnesses and the policeman who came up here before would say it’s my imagination. He has us down as a pair of jealous women squabbling over the bones of their lover.’ Her voice broke slightly. She looked up at him and saw the twinkle in his eyes.
‘A vivid description, if I may say so.’
She found herself smiling back. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘No, it’s not. I’ve always suspected that woman had sociopathic tendencies. I couldn’t understand why Graham married her in the first place. He seemed too sensible to make a mistake like that.’
‘He regretted it bitterly.’
Rufus took a sip of coffee. ‘Why on earth didn’t he divorce her?’
‘I think he felt guilty in some way. And responsible.’
‘But she had other men?’
‘Oh yes. Several, I gather. But they all dumped her.’
He grinned. ‘It is a great shame you went and accosted her. That must have frightened the life out of her. And it obviously made her angry.’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose. When I thought about Kew it was because I was feeling so lonely and miserable here, but I was only daydreaming, I never expected her to see me.’
He thought for a minute. ‘We have to do something. If the woman seriously tried to kill you—’
‘I don’t know that she did,’ Andy interrupted. ‘That’s the point. I was very confused when I came round.’
‘Whatever she intended, she left you there to die,’ he reminded her sternly.
‘And I won’t give her the chance again. She’ll get bored, Daddy, I’m sure of it. Graham used to say Rhona was some kind of nymphomaniac, always needing to find herself another man. As soon as she does, she’ll forget about me. After all, she has what she wants, which is the house and everything in it. Leave it, please.’ Andy gave him a rueful smile. ‘Let’s talk about Sleeper’s Castle.’
‘Which is fascinating.’ He sat forward, his elbows on the table. ‘This place obviously has a very strong anchor into the earth. I’m not surprised. These old Welsh houses are built of local stone. They’ve never really been separated from the bedrock they came from. You can probably see the old quarry from here. It’s the same in the Highlands and parts of upland England. You get a strong sense of rootedness, which you don’t get with wooden or modern houses. Then if you have a powerful crystalline structure in the stone, it gives you a ready-made sounding box. You can get it in old brick houses too; the sand and clay from which the bricks were made has the same effect, though more diffused. Here you have an immensely strong instrument, which if you know how to use it has wonderful capabilities. Clearly, generations of occupants of this house have known how, probably going back hundreds if not thousands of years.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘What a fabulous place!’
Andy laughed. ‘So speaks a psychic architect! Daddy, you are incorrigible.’
‘It’s part of my charm. But it’s also useful. Such places are wonderful, but I suppose they’re potentially dangerous too – as you’ve been finding out. But, my darling, sweet Andy, before we do anything else, somehow we have to neutralise this Rhona woman – and I’ve only got two days.’ He caught at her look of dismay. ‘I’m sorry, girl, but I have meetings scheduled next week that I can’t get out of. I can always come back though.’ He reached for the coffee pot again. She had forgotten how addicted to coffee her father was.
‘So what do we do?’ she asked meekly.
‘I don’t know yet. If you absolutely refuse to call the police we are rather stymied.’
‘Leave Rhona to me, Daddy. I will be careful, I promise. I wanted to talk to you about the ghosts. There are so many things you know about and I’ve forgotten. And I wanted you to meet Meryn, but he’s away until next week. You men and your meetings.’ Somehow she made herself smile.
He looked at her anxiously. ‘Oh, girl, I’m not sure I am going to be much help. It’s such a long time since we did any of this stuff together. I can’t remember what I used to say.’ He stared round the room. ‘It sounds to me as if this Meryn chap is the expert. But don’t worry. We’ll have a plan before I go. What you need is an on–off switch. You have to learn to control what’s going on.’
‘That’s what Meryn said.’ She smiled again. ‘And he asked me if you had taught me how to do it.’
He looked taken aback. ‘I’m not sure that’s ever been one of my talents, but we can always try.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I’m not sure even how to begin, to be honest, but I’ll try
and think of something. Now, let me go out into the garden and walk about a bit. That was a long car journey and I’m stiff. No’ – he held up his hand as she made to get up – ‘I suspect you should be resting that ankle. Let me go on my own. I want to get the feel of things round here, outside as well as in.’
She sat quite still after he left, feeling the emptiness of the kitchen. She had always been very close to her father as a child and had felt her parents’ split very deeply, however civilised and careful they had been to make their divorce as pain-free as possible for their only child. The realisation that he was only going to stay for two days had come as a hammer blow.
With a sigh she climbed to her feet and hobbled next door into the living room. He had sensed Dafydd in here at once. She tried to empty her mind, allow herself to become receptive. Nothing happened. Walking across the room, she stopped in front of Sue’s bookcase. The low morning sun had thrown a beam of light across the floor, striking the book jackets. Like the books in the study they were mostly about plants and herbs and gardening, but one book stood out. She frowned. Broad, with a shiny red jacket, squat, next to the larger format plant books, it sat there, beckoning. The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works. She could see the bookmark projecting from the top about a third of the way in. Reaching out almost against her will, she pulled it off the shelf. She almost knew at which play the book was going to open. She could hear Sian’s voice in her head: ‘Didn’t you ever read Henry IV Part 1?’ Sian, yes – she could see her reading Shakespeare – but Sue? What reason did Sue have for reading these plays, other than a specific personal interest?
The words leapt off the page at her. Someone called West. Her eye went automatically to the Dramatis Personae at the top. The Earl of Westmorland was reporting news to his king.
… there came
A post from Wales, laden with heavy news;
Whose worst was, that the noble Mortimer,
Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
And a thousand of his people butchered,
Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,
Such beastly shameless transformation,
By those Welshwomen done, as may not be,
Without much shame, re-told and spoken of.
Andy dropped the book on her knee and sat staring into space. Shakespeare was talking about the battle at Bryn Glas, the battle described to Catrin in such awful detail.
When Rufus came back inside twenty minutes later he found Andy engrossed, sitting on the sofa reading the play. He stared at her in astonishment. ‘There is a sight I never thought I would see: my daughter, deep in the works of the Bard. So, what’s brought this on?’
She looked up. ‘I am such an illiterate! I had no idea Shakespeare had written a play about Glyndŵr. Everybody in the country probably knows all this stuff, and here am I, totally ignorant.’
Rufus came and sat down beside her. He picked up the book and flipped it open. ‘I remember doing this for O level.’
‘Oh, not you as well!’ she exclaimed crossly.
He laughed. ‘This event was obviously pretty shocking. But remember, this may not be accurate history. Old Shakespeare was writing for a Tudor audience. Lots of propaganda.’
‘But the Tudors were Welsh, weren’t they?’ She sat back and closed her eyes with a sigh. ‘Oh, Daddy. This battle, with Welshwomen mutilating the English dead: Catrin wasn’t there, but Dafydd was and she seems to have seen it through his eyes. It was terrifyingly vicious.’
They both looked up. The sunbeam had vanished and deep shadow had seeped into the corner by the bookcase. A gust of wind in the chimney stirred the ashes and Andy groped for her father’s hand. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered. ‘It sounded like a sigh.’
He glanced round, a frown on his face. ‘I think we might go back into the kitchen,’ he said quietly. He pulled her to her feet.
Once there, he pushed her gently into a chair and went to make more coffee. She swallowed. ‘That was Dafydd, wasn’t it.’
He shrugged his shoulders. He was measuring coffee into the cafetiere. ‘From what you say, he was obviously a deeply troubled man.’
‘As anyone would be who had witnessed all that. But I’ve never sensed him here before.’
‘Maybe because you’ve made a connection to his daughter. I don’t suppose he’s happy with me being around.’
‘Really?’
He sat down opposite her and grinned. ‘Do you realise that you are still clutching a volume of William Shakespeare?’
She slid the book onto the table.
‘King Henry IV seems to have been a fairly pugnacious man,’ Rufus said. ‘I will confess, I can’t quite remember how the story goes, but wasn’t there a guy called Fluellen? The stereotypical Welshman? Maybe that was another play. I read them such a long time ago. But of course Glendower himself is there.’ He reached forward to push down the plunger on the coffee pot. As he did so, the kitchen lights began to flicker. He abandoned the cafetiere and sat back, staring at the light hanging over the table. It swung gently back and forth.
Andy watched it nervously. She could feel herself growing cold. ‘Is it Dafydd?’ she whispered.
Rufus was watching the lamp, frowning. ‘I’m not sure. This is where I often wish I could in all honesty cross myself and tell any marauding spirits to go in the name of the Lord, but alas I cannot invoke someone I don’t believe in. I have to fall back on a thoroughly British sense of fair play.’
‘And the fact that you are Scots and definitely not English?’ she managed a smile. The lamp had drifted to a standstill. It was shining steadily now.
‘There’s no reason to think he’s not friendly, is there?’ Rufus went on. ‘As far as you can make out, Catrin wants to tell you her story, that’s all?’
‘That’s all.’ Andy began to pour their coffee. Her hand was shaking. Her father was stirring things up. ‘I wanted to know how to turn off the dreaming if I need to, not stop it altogether. This is Catrin’s house, after all.’ She was trying to sound positive and she knew it sounded silly. ‘It’s all very well being scientific and questioning and enthusiastic about ghosts, but when one is in the great hall, as Sue calls it, alone and the lights are flickering and the wind whistles in the chimney and one is aware that there are people here who do not rest in peace, it’s a bit hard.’ The flickering lights had added a whole new element to the situation; she was not happy, she realised, with the idea of sharing a house with Dafydd.
‘I wonder why they’re not at peace,’ Rufus went on. He rubbed his chin as he often did when he was thinking.
‘That is the story Catrin is trying to tell me.’ Andy staggered to her feet and limped over to the dresser. ‘Here’s my record of the dreams. There’s a definite progression of the story.’
The light flickered again and she broke off nervously as she dropped her notebook on the table in front of him.
‘And this is a full account of what you have dreamed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Catrin’s version.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
She wasn’t sure what happened. Perhaps she had put the coffee pot down too near the edge of the table. As it fell onto the flags and shattered with a terrible crash of breaking glass, the light finally went out.
21
‘Who wrote this?’
Dafydd was standing in her bedroom, the manuscript of one of her poems in his hand.
Catrin stood in the doorway, white with anger. ‘I did.’
‘You copied it. Where did you find it?’
‘I composed it myself.’ She darted across the room and tried to snatch it from his hand. ‘Why are you in here?’
‘I wanted to know what you did for hours in here on your own.’ His face was thunderous as he dangled the parchment out of her reach. ‘You have no business to try to write poetry like this!’
‘What do you mean? I don’t understand. You taught me.’
‘I taught you so you could versify, so you could make up songs to sing to your harp in the bowers of ladies, not write proper poetry.’
She stared at him, confused. ‘I don’t understand. It is a poem about the garden. Is it no good?’
He clenched his fists, crumpling the page as he did so. ‘Yes, it is good.’
‘And you aren’t pleased?’ She looked at him anxiously. His face was drawn and tired, his hair awry. ‘You haven’t written about the Lord Owain?’ he asked. He gestured towards the small coffer where she kept her poems. She saw now that the lid was open.
‘No, of course I haven’t written about him,’ she whispered. ‘My poems are about flowers and trees and birds. They are about peaceful things. I don’t write about my dreams.’
‘And your dreams,’ he said, his voice dripping acid, ‘enable you to follow me where you have no business to go; they talk of war and destruction and are anathema to the Lord Owain. You have to stop.’
He threw her poem on the floor with an expression of disgust and stamped out of her room. For several heartbeats she was too stunned by his resentment and venom to move, then she ran forward and bent to pick up the piece of parchment, dusting it gently and smoothing the creases as she rerolled it and reached for the ribbon to tie it closed. One day she would have her poems bound into a book. Until then they would live in the coffer. The notes and verses she had scribbled about her dreams were hidden safely under her mattress. She glanced across at her bed. Her father had not thought to look there. The bedcover was smooth and unruffled.
He left the house three days later with Peter at his side. He was riding to join the Lord Owain, she knew that, though when she challenged him he denied it. A glance at Joan – tight-lipped on the doorstep beside her as they waved goodbye – confirmed that she too had guessed where he was going.
The two women went back into the house. ‘Well, that is all we will see of him for the next few months,’ Joan said grimly. ‘Please God and the Blessed Virgin the men of war stay away from this house.’
Sleeper’s Castle Page 32