Candlenight

'Shut up! Stop that screaming, you stupid, bloody drunken bitch!'

Her body arched at the waist, her neck extended as if she were trying to vomit.

'Are you totally insane, woman? Shut up! Do you hear me, you bitch?'

On his feet now, between her and the window, George grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down on the bed. 'Stop it!'

She looked up into her husband's bulging, sleep-swollen eyes.

Hands clenched around her bony shoulders, he lifted her from the bed then slammed her down again.

And again.

This time her skull crashed sickeningly into the head-board of Victorian mahogany.

George's eyes were opaque.

He smashed her down again, lifted her up, smashed her down, a rhythmic motion, grunting 'Stop it.'

Stop it.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Part Eight THE RED BOOK OF INGLEY

Chapter LIII

They watched each other over the breakfast table, different people now. She wore yesterday's black cowl- neck sweater and the big gold earrings; his sweatshirt still identified him as an American werewolf in London. But they were different people.

The Rhos Tafol's dining room overlooked the estuary, shining cobalt in the chill morning, there were perhaps twenty tables in the room, all stripped bare except for the one where they sat, by the window.

December.

'We could just walk away from it.' Berry spread marmalade on dry toast. Bethan looked down into her boiled egg. He loved the fall of her eyelids; it was what put him in mind of the women in Renaissance paintings.

'Or not,' Berry said.

They'd lain and talked about it until the dawn streaked the Dyfi. She'd told him about Claire in the river Meurig, washing away the English. And about Claire's photos; the tree that vanished, whatever that meant.

He'd told her about old Winstone — whatever that meant.

Also about Miranda. Who was funny and diverting but belonged to the person he used to be before last night.

'So.' Crunching toast.

Bethan said, 'When I came back from Swansea to be head teacher — less than six months ago, I can't believe it — I thought I was going to change everything. Let some light into the place. It was pretty hard to do coming back.'

'I don't know how you could.'

'The way I rationalised it, it was going to be a kind of memorial to Robin. Modernising the school, changing the outlook of the children. It was a mission. But—'

' — You didn't realise what you were taking on.'

'I was very determined. Nothing left to lose. Ready to fight centuries of tradition. And Buddug.'

'Buddug's this other teacher?'

'The name Buddug,' Bethan said, stirring the tea in the pot lo make it blacker, 'is Welsh for Boudicca, or Boadicea.'

'The hard-nosed broad who took on the Romans,' he remembered. 'Drove this chariot with long knives sticking out the wheels, relieving whole legions of their genitalia.'

'I had never thought of it quite like that, but the way you depict it, it does seem horrifyingly plausible, yes.'

'She's like that, this Buddug?'

'She's worse.' Bethan said.

'And what you're saying is you think you might accomplish now what you couldn't when you came back from Swansea?'

'I am not alone this time,' Bethan said, and his heart took off.

'C'mon, honey,' She turned over, coughed. 'One more time for Berry.' She turned over again, caught.

'She is very old,' Bethan said.

'We don't discuss her age. It upsets her. When I'm in London, this guy checks her over every few weeks. You can still get the parts, if you know where to look.'

He followed the estuary back towards Machynlleth. 'I like it here. I like feeling close to the sea. You wouldn't care to stay another night, think about things some more?'

'I told you last night, I should like to stay here a very long time.' She sighed. 'Keep driving, Morelli.'

'One point,' Berry said, pushing the Sprite into the town, towards the Gothic clock tower. 'You're a nationalist, right? Guto's a nationalist. This Buddug and all the people in Y Groes, they're nationalists too.'

'Why, then, did Guto go down like the proverbial lead balloon?'

'Precisely.'

'You have to live in Wales a long time to work it out,' Bethan said. 'And just when you think you've understood the way it is…'

She ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, as if to untangle her thoughts.

'You see… There are different kinds of Welsh nationalism. There is Plaid Cymru, which envisages a self- governing Wales with its own economic structure — an independent, bilingual state within the European Community. And there is another sort which you might compare with the National Front, the Ku Klux Klan, yes?'

'Extreme right wing.'

'Except they would not think of themselves like that. They are protecting their heritage, they feel the same things we all feel from time to time, but—' She sighed again. 'I'm afraid there are some people for whom being Welsh is more important than being human.'

'And — let me guess here — this type of person sees Plaid as a half-baked outfit which no longer represents the views of the real old Welsh nation, right?'

'Yes. Exactly. Da iawn.'

'Huh?'

'Very good. In moments of exultation, I revert to my first language.'

'So that's what it was,' Berry said, remembering moments of last night.

Driving south in worsening weather, Berry wondered why neither of them had put a name to what they were up against. Six deaths. Accident, suicide and natural causes. All English people, no other connecting factor. They couldn't be talking murder. Not as the law saw it

'Bethan,' he said. 'Can we discuss what happened to Giles?'

Sparse sleet stung the screen.

'Listen to me now,' she said, as if this had been building up inside for some while. 'There is one thing I haven't told you.'

Above the whine of the wind in the Sprite's soft top, she revealed to him the truth about Giles's 'fall' in the castle carpark in Pont. Why they'd kept quiet about it.