Candlenight (30 page)

   
It seemed Buddug had reminded
Huw that the end of the yard, where the children's toilets were, was very close
to the woods.

   
Which, as everyone knew, were
guarded by the
Gorsedd Ddu
.

   
The dark bards.

   
And the
Gorsedd Ddu
would view Huw's repeated appearances as a mockery.

   
If they found him there again
they might catch him and take him with them into the woods, and there would be
no relief to be found there. Not for a stupid little boy who tried to deceive
his teacher.

   
Bethan, coming down now out of
the Nearly Mountains swung the wheel of the Peugeot to avoid a grey squirrel in
the road. The squirrel shot into the forestry.

   
In Bethan's experience, small
children were often terrified by their first sight of a
 
gorsedd
of
bards, those poets and writers who had been honoured at
eisteddfodau
and walked in solemn procession wearing their long
ceremonial robes and druidic headdresses. These archetypal figures, in the garb
of ancient pagan priests, could seem quite awesome; sinister to little kids
until they found out that under those white robes you would usually find genial
grandfathers; figures who would occasionally dispense sweets like Sion Corn.
the Welsh Father Christmas.

   
The
Gorsedd Ddu,
the black bards—there was a difference here. They were
meant
to be terrifying.

   
The lower slopes of the Nearly
Mountains were sparsely wooded and Bethan had to slow down to find a path
between branches torn off the trees in the night. She would not have been
surprised to find the road blocked by an entire Sitka spruce, its roots ripped
out of the shallow soil.

   
This never happened to the oak
trees in the old woods.

   
The reason, Buddug would
probably say, was not only that the soil was thick and deep and the area so
sheltered. But that the oak woods were protected by the
Gorsedd Ddu
.

   
Most parents and infant-teachers,
in fanciful mood, might tell children the woods were the home of, say, the
Tylwyth Teg
, the Welsh fairy folk. But
that would not satisfy the streak of cruelty in Buddug. First she had refused
to consider that the child, Huw Morus, might be ill, and then she had made
wetting himself seem the safer option by invoking the insidiously horrifying
image of the mythical assembly of black-robed bards who were said to convene to
judge the traitors and the cowards.

Bethan decided there were certain aspects of the Welsh national heritage
which she disliked intensely—and most of them were represented by Buddug, who
would not be happy until children were sitting at their desks dressed stiffly
in Welsh national costume, drawing pictures of corpse candles and sin-eaters
consuming their lunches from the shrouded chests of dead people.

There was still a strong wind, but no trees had been blown down on the
lower slopes of the Nearly Mountains, and Bethan arrived in Y Groes well before
seven to find the last few lights glimmering in the collages, the village
enfolded in the dark hills like antique jewellery In velvet, under a delicate
oyster sky.

   
But the wind was high, the sky
unbalanced, a sense of something wild beyond the horizon.

   
Bethan parked in the entrance
to the school lane and set off across the bridge. Below it the swollen Meurig
frothed and spat. "Big, tough river now, is it?" Bethan said.
"You never had much to say for yourself in the summer."

   
She walked past the
Tafarn
and up the lane towards the church
and then between the two sycamores to the judge's house.

   
The iron gate was open, but
nobody was in sight. The wind perhaps? Bethan closed the gate behind her,
walked up the path, knocked on the door.

   
She would tell Claire
everything, including the probable reasons for the attack on Giles. Everything
except the involvement of Guto who must, for the sake of his image, remain an
anonymous hero.

   
Claire could pack a change of
clothes and Bethan would take them—and Claire, if she wanted—to the hospital. There
should be plenty time to get back to school before the first children arrived

   
The door opened.

   
"Oh Claire, I tried to
ring you—" Bethan said, then stopped and drew back.
   
It was Buddug.

Chapter XXXV

Buddug did not seem surprised to see her. But then Buddug never seemed
surprised.

   
She wore a high-necked,
starched white blouse and—Bethan would swear—a smudge of make-up. As if she had
arrived for an Occasion. She filled the doorway. Bethan could not see if Claire
was in the room behind her.

   
"Where is
Claire
?" she said flatly.

   
Buddug stared impassively at
her.

   
"Where is Claire?"

   
"Not here," Buddug
said calmly.

   
"Out? So early?"

   
She'd been out last night too.
The answering machine.

   
"And what are
you
doing here?" Bethan demanded.
Her mind could not grasp this situation. Buddug in Claire's house. At little
after seven in the morning. And formally attired. Looking quite grotesque—there
was no other word for it.

   
"Are you alone here?"

   
Buddug did not reply. There was
a silence in the room behind her but it was the kind of silence which implied presence,
as if a still company was sitting there. Bethan found herself thinking of the
drawing in Sali Dafis's exercise book, dark brown stick-people around a coffin
on a table.

   
"Are you not going to
answer me?" Her voice shook. "Where is Claire?"

   
Buddug did not move. The
thought came to Bethan that this woman was big enough and strong enough to kill
her, as simply as she killed chickens and turkeys, huge hands around her
throat. A swift, dismissive jerk of the wrists.

   
"Look, I want to know.
Where is Claire?
What have you done with
her?"

   
Buddug came alive then, bulging
out of the doorway, the veins in her face suddenly lighting up like an electric
circuit.

   
"What is it to you?"
she shrieked. "Who said you could come here? Get out! Get back to your
school, you stupid, meddling little bitch!"

   
Bethan went pale. "How
d—!"

   
The front door leapt on its hinges,
as if hit by a gale, and Bethan lurched back, clutching at the air, as the door
crashed into its frame and shuddered there.

A sudden stiff breeze disturbed the giant sycamores and prodded her down
the lane. There was a ball of cold in the pit of her stomach as she walked back
towards the river.

   
What she felt for Buddug had
gone beyond hatred to the place where nightmares are born.

   
"You are early, Bethan."

   
He was sitting on a wooden
bench under the
Tafarn
sign, which
was beginning to swing now in the gathering wind.

   
"You are also early, Aled."
Bethan said, groping for composure. "For a landlord."

   
"Could not sleep, girl.
The wind rising."

   
"The wind's nothing here,
compared with Pontmeurig. Well, last night . . ."

   
"Ah, well, see, so little
of the wind we get here that the merest flurry we notice. I do, anyway. Because
the river is so close, see. The river goes mad."

   
Aled's hair was as white and
stiff as the icy snow on the tops of the Nearly Mountains. Bethan had always
found him a droll and placid man, easy to talk to, in Welsh or English.
   
She wondered if she could trust him.

   
"Do you . . . ?" She
hesitated.

   
He looked quizzically at her.

   
"Do you find things are
changing, Aled?"

   
"Changing?"

   
"Here. In the
village."

   
Aled looked away from Bethan,
over the oak woods and back again. "Things changing? In Y Groes?" He
smiled.
   
"Perhaps it's me. Perhaps I
should not have come back."
   
"Why do you say that?"

   
"I don't know. Too many
memories, perhaps." Although, of course, that was not it really.

   
"He was a nice boy, your
man. A terrible shame, it was, that he . . . well."

   
Bethan asked him, "What do
you think of Giles Freeman?"

   
"Nice fellow." Aled
said. "Well meaning, you know."

   
"He was—" No, she
could not tell him what had happened. Not even that Giles had fallen in the car
park. Not until she'd told Claire.

   
"I think, Bethan,"
Aled said. "I think you have a decision to make."

   
"What kind of
decision?"

   
"Well, as you said . . .
about your future. Whether you stay here, perhaps move into one of the
cottages."
   
"There are no cottages for
sale."

   
"No, but . . . well,
Tegwyn Jones's old place. It might be available. If you—"

   
"If I wanted to settle
down here?"

   
"—to settle down, as you
say. To become part of our community. It is . . . well, as you know, it is a
rare and beautiful place."

   
"Yes."

   
"But it makes . . .
demands, see."

   
"Does it make demands on
you. Aled?" There was rarely much colour in his face. He was not an outdoor
man, like Morgan, or even Dilwyn Dafis. All the same, he did not look well. Bethan
had not seen him face to face for several weeks, and she felt a tiredness coming
from him.

   
"Oh yes," he said.
"It has made demands on me, Bethan. Would you excuse me. I have the bar to
clean." He stood up.
   
"Nice to see you, as
always."

   
Face it. Bethan told herself.
No one here is going to help you.

   
Suddenly she wanted to dash
back to the Peugeot, shut herself in, wind up all the windows, lock the door,
put the radio on—loud, loud rock music—and race back over the Nearly Mountains
to sanctuary and sanity.

   
I could do that, she thought hysterically.
I could have a nervous breakdown. God knows, I'm halfway there. I could go to
the doctor, get signed off. Nobody would be surprised. The Widow McQueen. Came
back too soon.

   
Too soon.

   
Obviously she had come back too
soon this morning. What was going on? What had she disturbed?
   
Did she really want to know?

   
Had to pull herself together.
Her main task was to get clean clothing for Giles. If she couldn't get into the
house, it would have to be Guto—he must have
something
that would not look entirely ludicrous on a man six
inches taller and at least two stones lighter. Or she could even go to Probert's
and buy some things.

   
She set off purposefully across
the bridge lo her car.
   
But made the mistake of looking over
the stone parapet.
   
To where, fifty yards downstream, a
woman had her head in the water.

Bethan looked around for help but there was nobody on the main street at
this hour. She ran across the bridge, crying out
   
"Aled! Aled!" at the closed
door of the
Tafarn
, but the wind ripped
the words away and there was no response as she scrambled down the bank to
where the woman's head was being tossed this way and that by the thrashing
river.

   
Halfway down, Bethan lost her
footing. Her left shoe skated on a grass-slick, the wind seemed to flick her
into the air and she was thrown, screaming, full length down the slimy,
freezing river bank.

   
For a moment Bethan just lay
there and sobbed with anguish and incomprehension. And that amply-justified sense
of
déjà vu
which told her she would
look up to find two large, muddy hiking boots swinging one against the other.