Candlenight

He didn't even seem to have noticed Berry Morelli standing behind her.

'You don't know why I've come yet,' Bethan said.

'Oh, I know, girl. I know all right. And I'll tell you, you didn't realise when you were lucky. Take your friend with you and get back to Pont. If you can still make it.'

'Still make it?'

'With the snow. That is all I mean.'

'No, it isn't all you mean,' Bethan said firmly. 'Let us in, Aled.'

'We open at seven.'

'Good. That leaves us plenty of time to talk.'

'Bethan, you don't want to do this. Too many people—'

'I'm allowed to do it. I'm Welsh.'

'But he isn't.' Aled didn't look at Berry.

'I'm not English either,' Berry said. 'And I'm not polite, so—'

'No.' Bethan put a hand on his arm.

But Aled sighed and stepped back then and held open the door from the inside. Bethan walked in and Berry followed, and Aled closed the door and bolted it, top and bottom. 'No lights,' he said. 'Snow brought down the power lines. Go through to the dining room where we can't be seen from the street.'

Through the dining room window, they could see a small yard and the church hill rising sheer beyond it, palely visible because of its light dusting of snow. Aled make them sit around a square dining table, one of only five in the room. Then he lit a candle in a glass holder on the table — the only source of light or heat; just dead ash and the husk of a log in the grate.

'For a schoolteacher,' Aled said, 'you don't learn anything, do you girl?'

The convoy assembled at six on the castle car park. A Range Rover, a Daihatsu and a little Fiat Panda which was all Dai Death had been able to borrow from the garage at short notice.

Guto was furious when he saw who was piling into the six-seater Daihatsu.

'You said supporters,' he snarled at Alun, the General Secretary.

'It'll be fine,' Alun whispered back. 'A little adventure for them.'

'I hope there's a bloody pub there,' Charlie Firth was saying, getting into the back between ski-jacketed Shirley Gillies with her Uher tape-recorder on her knee, and 'Bill' Sykes in an ancient overcoat with a vicuna collar. Ray Wheeler was in the front with young Gary, Giles Freeman's replacement, and a farmer called Emlyn, who was driving.

It was still snowing, and there must have been four or five inches of it on the ground.

'Flaming cold,' Firth said.

'We'll just have to bunch together,' said Shirley. She was on her own tonight, TV news having been affected by a ludicrously timed cameramen's dispute about overtime payments.

Idwal Roberts, tweed trousers stuffed into his wellingtons, looked at the Fiat Panda and then looked at Dai. 'You're sure this thing is four-wheel-drive?' Dai pointed to the appropriate lettering on the little car's rear door. Idwal looked unconvinced.

'I'm sorry. I've forgotten — which paper are you with?' Alun asked Miranda, who was looking startling in a huge lemon-coloured designer parka with lots of fake fur.

'Gardening News,' Guto told him.

Alun, seeming somehow less efficient in a leather flat-cap and without his tinted glasses, gazed up at the dark and rumbling sky. 'It was supposed to stop tonight.'

'You dickhead,' said Guto.

'Yes, yes,' Aled said, anguished. 'But there is no way anyone can ever prove it. And what good would it do anyway?'

Bethan began to feel sorry for him. He was worn and tired, his wife had left him…

'She will come back,' Aled said. 'When she is well again. When the winter is over.'

'A lot of it left to come,' Berry said.

'Yes.' Aled stared into the dead fireplace. 'I don't know, something has changed, gone wrong, isn't it?'

'Maybe it was always wrong,' Berry said.

'No. It was not wrong.' Aled's face was ragged in the candlelight. 'How could it be wrong? We were preserving that which was ours. A shrine, it was. Is.'

'Not 'is'.' Bethan said. 'You don't believe that now.'

'I don't know. Why are you asking me these things? There is nothing you can do, except to save yourselves. Perhaps.'

Berry said, 'How can it not be wrong if people are dying?'

Aled put his face into his hands, peered slowly over his fingertips. 'Ones and twos,' he said. 'That was all it ever was. It was so strong, see. They could not withstand the exposure to it. Some of them simply went away. Fine. But over the years, some… Ones and twos, that was all.'

Bethan's pity evaporated. ''Ones and twos'. What does that mean, Aled? Minor casualties?' Hands curled into fists, pressing hard into the tabletop. 'Expendable English people, like Martin Coulson and— and—'

'Yes, yes — I was so sorry. He was a good man, Robin. A fine man. And I did try to talk you out of it, the cottage, once. Do you remember that day? But they see this place and there is no stopping them. Seduced, they are. You know that.' Eyes wide, full of futile pleading.

Bethan said quietly. 'The Gorsedd Ddu'

'No. I will not talk about that.'

'Ap Siencyn then.'

'If you know, why do you ask me?'

Bethan hadn't known. Not for certain. 'And the others?'

'Judge Rhys?' Berry leaned into the candlelight.

'Yes, Judge Rhys, and now—'

'Morgan?' Bethan demanded. 'Buddug? Dilwyn? Glyn Harri?'

'Yes, yes, yes! And the rest are scattered all over Wales. I don't know how many, I only run a pub. Oh, God. what have I done?'

'Ap Siencyn.' Bethan said. 'Tell us about him.'

'What is there to tell that you do not know? The minister, he is, and the dyn hysbys.'

'What's that?' Berry said.

'The wise man,' Bethan said. 'The conjuror. The wizard. Most villages used to have one. Someone who knew about curing illnesses and helping sick animals and—'

'Like a shaman?'

'I suppose.'

'He cure people?'

'Some people,' Aled said.

'And what about the others?'

'We do not ask,' Aled said. 'It has been a good place to live.'

'Where does the Gorsedd meet?' Berry demanded.

Aled screamed out, 'What are you trying to do to me?'

And the candle went out, as if someone had blown on it.

Chapter LXV

The first vehicle in the Plaid Cymru convoy drew up to find the village school in darkness.

'What the hell—?' Alun jumped down from the Land Rover and strode to the school door.

'What did I tell you?' Guto roared after him.

Miranda stepped down into half an inch of snow. 'So this is Y Groes.' She paced about, kicking at the thin