Candlenight

They found one small, unmarked stone close to the entrance of the church. There was nobody around to ask if this was the supposed grave of Owain Glyndwr.

'This is totally England.' Berry said. 'You know, this is more like the real old England than any place I ever went to. No cars, no ice-cream stalls, no parking lots, no information bureaux.'

'I wish I could interpret what we've learned.' Bethan said, pulling away and going back to the stone which might or might not be Glyndwr's.

'Did I gather by your reaction that the families of these four patriotic Welsh guys still live in Y Groes?'

'I can't be sure. Yes, there's a Dewi Vaughan. F — O — N, he spells it, the Welsh way — how they spell it now, rather than then, I should imagine. And yes, he's a carpenter. Like his father before him. Davies — Dafis. Several of those. Thomas Rhys, well—'

'Very weird,' Berry said. 'Judge Rhys feels he has to return to preserve the family tradition. He leaves his house to his granddaughter, his chosen heiress. She changes her name to Rhys. Her husband, who is irrelevant to all this—'

His voice dropped. ' — dies.'

'And she's possibly pregnant, don't forget.'

'So Giles has served his purpose,' Berry said. 'Jesus, I hate the thought of all this. Sorry, what'd you say then?'

'I said, if it is Giles's baby'

'Hey, what—?'

'I don't know,' Bethan said desperately. Snatching up the hood of her raincoat so that he couldn't see her expression, she moved quickly away through the graveyard, a ghostly white lady in the dusk.

Chapter LIX

He almost didn't wear a tie.

In fact, if the Plaid Cymru president had not been lined up to speak he thought he would have had difficulty persuading himself to go at all.

At seven o'clock he entered the Memorial Hall through the back door and peeped into the main hall from behind the stage, convinced he'd be looking at half-a-dozen people and about three hundred empty chairs.

To his surprise, there must have been over two hundred in the audience already.

A big turn-out for the humiliated hard-man.

He was still feeling depressed and cynical when he climbed on to the platform at the Memorial Hall and took his seat next to the party president, who was going through a patch of unprecedented popularity.

Celebrity night.

By the time they were ready to begin, there must have been nearly five hundred crammed in. and a full complement of Press. He got an encouraging smile from the plump lady from BBC Radio, who seemed to fancy him. But all the rest, he was sure, had come to watch the official public funeral of Guto Evans's election hopes.

Since the report in the Western Mail, he was convinced, people had actually been avoiding him in the street, out of embarrassment.

Fuck 'cm, he thought. You've got nothing left to lose, boy, so fuck 'em all.

And he did.

He came to his feet feeling like one of those athletes on steroids. Full up with something anyway, and it wasn't the drink, thanks to Dai Death.

Somebody asked him the old question about where he stood on Welsh terrorism, petrol bombs and the burning down of property to deter immigration. To his surprise, he didn't give the careful, strategic answer he'd spent hours working out. Instead, he lost his temper and heard himself saying how much the great Glyndwr would have despised the kind of pathetic little wankers who could only come out at night with paraffin cans.

Politics, he roared, was a game for adults, not spotty adolescents.

Aware that this must sound pretty heavy coming from a man who looked like a sawn-off version of Conan the Barbarian, he felt a surge of pure adrenalin, like red mercury racing up a thermometer. Or one of those fairground things you slammed with a mallet and, if you were strong enough, it rang the bell. For the first time since the London banker had performed the knocking over of the chair right on cue, Guto Evans, fuelled by rage and bitterness, was ringing bells.

For over forty-five minutes, he fended off hostile questioners with the ease of a nightclub bouncer ejecting tired drunks. He didn't care any more what he said to any of the bastards.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' the Plaid president, looking shell-shocked, said when Guto finally sat down. 'I think you have seen tonight an example of precisely why we selected Guto Evans to fight this by-election. And why Guto Evans, without any doubt, is going to be the next MP for Glanmeurig!'

And up in Eglwys Fawr, Guto thought cynically, as the audience responded with vigour, the Tories will be saying exactly the same thing about Simon Gallier.

On his way out, men he didn't know patted him on the shoulder, and three women kissed him.

Groupies, by God.

Unfortunately, not that young, the three women — in fact, not much younger than his mam, really.

But, bloody hell, this one was…

She had definitely come to the wrong place, dressed like that.

'Mr. Evans. I wonder if I might have a word.'

'The night is yet young, darling.' Guto said, his system still flooded with that desperate, high-octane, who- gives-a- flying-fart-anyway adrenalin. 'Have as many as you like.'

They spent the night in a glossy new hotel on the edge of Hereford. Country inns were out as far as Bethan was concerned. No oak beams, no creaking floorboards, no 'character.'

This room was done out in calm and neutral pastel shades. And that included the telephone, the TV with video and satellite receiver, the bedside lamps with dimmer switches and all the envelopes and containers of stuff which nobody ever opened but which showed the management really cared.

Towel-swathed, Bethan came out of the shower into this hermetically-sealed haven, where Berry Morelli was sprawled across the pastel bed, trying to screw up the colour-coordination with his bright orange undershorts.

'Sooner or later,' he told the ceiling, 'you're gonna have to tell me whatever it is you haven't told me.'

She didn't look at him, went over to the dressing table and began to untangle her hair.

Facing his image in the mirror, she said. 'Did you read the same thing as me into those notes about the church and the tomb?'

Goddamn red book again.

'Could be,' he said. 'Sir Robert Meredydd. Died 1421. That would be within maybe a year or two of Owain Glyndwr. You're saying this Meredydd actually is Glyndwr? That these guys brought him back to Y Groes and secretly entombed him under a false name?'

'Well, there we are. Possible, isn't it? I have also thought of something else. Dewi Fon, the carpenter. Davies, the coachman? Dilwyn Dafis runs the garage at Y Groes.

Repairs vehicles, does a bit of haulage. It's a very old business. I didn't realise quite how old.'

'That's wild,' said Berry. 'I mean, that is wild. You're suggesting this guy Dilwyn's ancestor built some kind of special funeral cart or horse-drawn bier or whatever they had in those days to fetch Glyndwr home. And five centuries later the family's still in the transport business. Who's the fourth man, the farmer?'

'Morgan. There is only one Morgan family in Y Groes, and Buddug is married to the head of the tribe.'

'The ball-slasher?'

Bethan nodded into the mirror, unsmiling. 'The Morgans have farmed there since… who can say?'

Berry said. 'Are we imagining all this?'

She said sharply. 'You mean am I imagining all this?'

He went over and put his hands on her shoulders, didn't try to dislodge the towel. She carried on combing