Candlenight

Welsh lesson.

Poor Giles.

Bethan shivered, not only at the memory of a dead, snarling Giles spreadeagled on the study floor but because the temperature in here was many degrees below the death-bearing mildness of the night outside.

This, she realised, was the reality. The heat outside, which did not melt snow, was something else.

Tightening the belt of her raincoat, she went through the open door to the inner hall, ducking her head although she was small enough to go under the beams. To her right were the stairs. To her left, a flickering under the door, was the-

Come in, Bethan.

She was sure not a word had been spoken aloud.

Yet she went in.

We need to move fast,' Berry said. 'They're gonna know we're here.'

'Moving as fast as I can, man. You have the chisel?'

Berry patted a pocket of Robin's flying jacket. 'Fix the light first.'

Dai was wedging the torch roughly into the bottom of a centuries-old rood screen so that the beam was directed onto the tomb.

Distantly, they could hear Idwal Pugh pacing around outside. He would not come in.

Dai looked curiously at Berry, 'How do you know that?'

'Know what?'

'That they will know we are here.'

Berry shrugged. 'Shit, I dunno.'

The gipsy, he was thinking. She would know. Where are you tonight, lady? He grinned. He wasn't scared any more.

He thought, Jesus Christ, I'm not scared any more.

Dim Sais. Dydwy ddim yn Sais.

Where had that come from? He didn't know a word of Welsh, apart from sice itself and da iawn.

Weird, weird, weird.

Berry placed the chisel under the lip of the tomb, avoiding the eyes of the knight because this was just some old stone box, OK? Dai handed him the mallet and he struck the head of the chisel.

Thud-ud-ud.

Felt something crumble, give way.

He stopped. 'Where's Bethan?'

'Outside, with Idwal, I should think. She didn't want to come in, either. Morelli…?'

'Yeah?'

'This thing with Bethan and you. Nothing serious there?'

'What's that mean?'

'You know what it means, man, you know the way it has been for her'

'Yeah.' Berry hit the chisel again. They heard fragments of loose stone fall a few inches inside the tomb. A flat kind of chink as a piece struck something and did not bounce off, rather the substance it had fallen on simply crumbled.

Dust to dust.

The torchlight flickered.

'She's not for you, boy.'

'You don't think so, huh?' Berry left the chisel jammed under the lid of the tomb. Dai fitted the end of one of the crowbars into what was now a half-inch gap alongside it.

The torchlight flickered.

Berry's eyes met the smooth, years-worn orbs of the knight's eyes.

They were open now. He knew those eyes were open.

'I think maybe we aren't gonna need the jack after all,' Berry said.

Bethan said. 'I've come to talk about trees.'

Miss Rhys, the judge's granddaughter, was bolt upright in the judge's high-backed Gothic chair, her face made harsh by candlelight which ought to have softened it. Bethan stood on the old rug, where the dead Giles had lain, both feet on the dragon's head.

Claire said, ''My tree or yours?'

'You found your tree,' Bethan said. 'I want to find mine.'

'Why?'

'I want to chop it down,' Bethan said simply.

Claire Rhys looked at her with contempt.

'Well?' Bethan did not move.

'Have you asked Buddug?'

'If I had been five days in the desert, I wouldn't ask Buddug for a cup of water.'

'Go away,' Claire said. 'Go and ask Buddug.'

Bethan moved towards the desk, intending to knock a candlestick over in her face.

'Come any closer.' Claire said calmly, 'and I shall have to harm you.'

Bethan stopped. The room had grown very cold, she thought, under the influence of its mistress's displeasure.

She said, 'What have you become?'

Claire smiled. ''You never really met my grandfather, did you?'

Bethan said nothing.

'I've discovered, to my shame, that he was rather a weak man. He knew he had to return here, that he could not break the chain. So he left my grandmother and my mother in England and he came back. He came back alone.'

Bethan was momentarily puzzled. Then she felt nearly ill.

'He ought, of course, to have brought them with him.'

The village, Aled had said, demanded sacrifices.

'But he was weak, as I say. He left them and he returned alone.'

… the old Druids, see, they did not sacrifice each other, their… you know, virgins, kids. None of that nonsense. But I've heard it said they used to sacrifice their enemies.

'You brought Giles as your little sacrifice,' Bethan said, her voice like dust.

'And also atoned for Thomas Rhys,' Claire said. 'Don't forget that. I had to complete what he could not.'

She meant her parents. She'd given her parents in sacrifice to Y Groes and to whatever lay in the tomb and whatever it represented.

He was only English, Sali Dafis had said.

'You were very stupid,' Claire said. 'You and your child could have belonged here. You could have lived in the warmth, at the heart of our heritage and watched it spread and grow and flourish like a lovely garden.'

'Once the weeds had been killed,' Bethan said.

'Your words.'

'And Glyndwr will rise again, like the legends say, springing from his tomb with his army behind him to free Wales from the oppressor.'

Miss Rhys spread her hands. 'We are not naive. Glyndwr is dead and buried.'

And then her voice rose, horribly close to Buddug-pitch.

'But the Bird is aloft. And Death walks the roads in his long coat. And the shit-breathed hag— Gwrach y rhybin—the hag is on the wing again.'

Bethan turned away, almost choking.

They had both crowbars wedged under the lip of the tomb, the effigy on top slightly askew now.

The torch flickered.