Candlenight (64 page)

   
"The first thing we learn
at school," Buddug said, not even panting with the exertion, "is to
be polite to our elders."

   
Bethan fell in a heap to the
soft snow and sat there half-stunned, her back to the wall, feeling the blood
running freely from her nose or her mouth. Her glasses had gone.

   
"And the next thing we
learn—" Buddug bent down and dragged her to her feet, tearing her white
mac at the shoulders "—is to stand up when we are spoken to."

   
Bethan lolled, feeling her eyes
glazing.

   
"Don't you go to
sleep!" Buddug hit her again with a hand that felt as sharp and heavy as a
wood-axe.

   
Buddug hissed, "You killed
our baby."

   
Bethan tried to speak. Saw
Buddug's hand raised again and shrank back against the wall.

   
"We like them to be
pure-bred if possible," Buddug said. "Dilwyn's was a mistake. The child
has to work harder, see, because of its mother."

   
"You're sick," Bethan
whispered through swollen lips. "Go on, hit me again. What more can you
do?"

   
"Idwal!" They heard
from inside the church, a weak and despairing cry. "Help me, willya!"

   
Bethan's heart sagged in her
limp body. Buddug's lumpen features cracked with glee. Do you love him?"

   
Bethan desperately shook her
head.

   
"You will not miss him, then,
when he is gone. They will leave him tonight to see how much he can do to
himself and then, in the morning—"

   
Bethan rocked her head from
side to side to shut this out.

   
Buddug pinched Bethan's cheeks
together to make her look at her. "
And
then, in the morning
—

   
"What are they doing to
him?"

   
"No matter," Buddug
said, ignoring the question. "He will be long gone by then. He will know
that soon."

The knight smiled a victor's smile with reddened lips.

   
From outside Berry heard the
sound of scuffling, heard talking in Welsh, a voice cry out in pain.

   
He recognised the voice at
once.

   
"Bastard!" Berry screamed
at the Goddamn knight, his control gone. "Motherfucker!" All the
words that had seemed so pathetic, still seemed pathetic.

   
He pushed the fingers of his
left hand as far as they would go into the gap between the slab and the walls
of the tomb, jammed the arm in so that both arms were parallel under the
knight's dead weight.

   
He waited two minutes like that,
conserving his strength, then he wrenched hard on the trapped arm and simultaneously
heaved upwards with the good left arm.

   
The knight shifted and he felt
an appalling weight on the left arm. The good arm.

   
He cried to the rafters in his
agony and passed out with the pain.

When the long, bitter cry came through the church wall, Bethan pushed
Buddug aside and made a rush for the corner of the building and the doorway.
   
Or intended to.

   
She'd moved less than a couple
of feet when one of Buddug's great hands caught her by the throat and squeezed on
her windpipe. She is going to kill me, Bethan thought. Like the ducks, like the
chickens in the farmyard.

   
"We do not walk away when
we are being spoken to," Buddug said and squeezed harder.

   
All was quiet within the
church.

   
"Will not be long,
now," Buddug said.

   
"Why are you doing
this?"

   
"Do not make yourself
ridiculous," Buddug said.

   
Bethan thought of the
Gorsedd Ddu
, who judged the traitors and
the cowards.

   
She thought, we must hear each
other's agony and hopelessness before we die.

   
"
Dewch
" Buddug said, taking Bethan's arm. Come.
   
"No."

   
With little effort, Buddug
twisted the arm until Bethan gritting her teeth, felt the bones begin to crack.

   
Sobbing, she nodded and Buddug
propelled her across the churchyard to the top of the steps.

A meagre light appeared.

   
He opened his eyes and saw both
arms under the stone and there was no pain now, but he could not move at all.

   
And beyond the chapel, visible
through the lattice of the rood screen, the little light, like a taper.

   
The light did not move. It
seemed to cast no ambience. Like the light through a keyhole, something on the
other side of the dark.

   
Berry felt no pain, only sorrow
and profound misery.

Chapter LXXIV

When the blizzard eased a little, Guto and Alun left the Range Rover
with its nose in the snowdrift and walked away in different directions.

   
Alun's mission was to climb to
the top of the nearest hill with his mobile phone to see if he could get a
signal and, if he could, to send for the police. And the ambulance.

   
Which was too late now, anyway.
Snow matting his beard and freezing there, coming over the tops of his
Wellingtons with every step, Guto looked down on the Range Rover.
Left with its sidelights on and its engine running to keep the heater going,
quite pointlessly, for Miranda Moore-Lacey.

   
Guto didn't have a mission
other than to walk. He should have stayed in the heat, laid Miranda's body out
in the snow. At the thought of this, he rammed his hands bitterly down
into the pockets of his presentable Parliamentary candidate's overcoat and
ploughed on.

   
Years since he'd walked the
Nearly Mountains, and that had been in decent weather, he hadn't the faintest
idea where the hell he was.

   
However, reaching the crest of
a ridge he found he was looking back towards Y Groes where the sky still was streaked
with this unhealthy red, shining out like the bars of an electric fire in a
darkened room. An electric fire in the dark always conveyed a sense of illness
to Guto; his mam used to leave one in his bedroom when he was sick. Years ago
this was, but the impression remained.

   
He wanted a drink. He wanted
several drinks. He wanted to get blind pissed and forget the wasted years
between being a sick kid in a overheated bedroom and a big, arrogant, macho
politician with a hard line in rhetoric and a posh English chick in French
knickers.

   
Stupid to think that he could
make all those years worthwhile at a stroke. The rock band that almost got to make
a record, the book that almost sold five hundred copies. The posh English chick
in French knickers who almost survived two whole days of being Guto Evans's
woman.

   
He glared down at the village
of Y Groes with savage loathing, vowed to avenge Miranda in some way and knew he
wouldn't because he'd always be too pissed to function in any more meaningful
way than punching the odd wealthy immigrant. And in just over a week's time
he'd be a member of the biggest political group in Wales: the FPCC—the Failed
Plaid Candidates' Club.

   
Overtired, overstressed,
overweight, Guto staggered on through the snow and the self-pity, hard to
decide which was denser. The endless snow seemed to symbolise both his
past and his future. As soon as he crunched a narrow path, the sides fell in.

   
Looking down at his plodding
wellies, he did not notice the shadowy figure walking up the hill towards him
until it was upon him.

   
"
Noswaith dda,
Guto."

   
Guto did not recognise the man.
That the man recognised him was no surprise; people usually did these days.

   
"You live near here?"
Guto asked him. "You have a phone?"

   
"I've come from there."
The man gestured towards Y Groes. Guto couldn't see him too clearly: he seemed
to be wearing leather gear, like a biker.

   
"Poor bugger," Guto said,
in no mood for diplomacy. "They let you out. is it?"

   
Guto felt the leather-clad man
was smiling. "They let me out," he agreed.

   
"Good," Guto said.

   
The snow stopped, the air was
still for a time. Guto looked at his watch, feeling this was significant. It
was 12:05 a.m.

   
Something companionable about
the stranger. Something odd, too. Something odd about the leathers he was
wearing, and what would a biker be doing in the Nearly Mountains at midnight in
a blizzard? Guto glanced at the man but still could not see him clearly; there
was a haze about him.

   
They stood together on a snowy
hummock, as though they were having the same hallucination, looking down towards
Y Groes. Guto noticed that the sky over the village
had lost its red bars, as if someone had unplugged the electric fire. The sky
over Y Groes was just like the sky everywhere else: charcoal grey and heavy
with suppressed snow.

   
"No time to waste,
Guto." his companion said and clapped him briskly on the back.

   
"You're right." Guto
said. 'Thanks.
Diolch yn fawr
."

   
He turned away, tramped off
down the hill back towards the Range Rover. When he turned around, the man had gone,
but there was a kind of heat below his left shoulder
where the hand briefly had touched him.

   
He almost bumped into Alun, who
had come over the rise, his mobile phone in his gloved hand. "Who were you
talking to?"

   
"Some bloke," Guto
said.

   
"I got through," said
Alun. "Gwyn Arthur Jones is sending to Carmarthen for the police
helicopter. They say we should go back to Y Groes and wait."

   
"OK." Guto got in the
front of the Land-Rover with Alun, not wanting to look at what lay on the rear
seat.

   
Alun reversed the Range Rover
for almost half a mile until they came to a sign indicating a lay-by and he was
able to make a three-point turn and they went back towards Y Groes, as Guto
always knew they would.

   
"God, I feel sick,"
Miranda said in his ear, inducing icy palpitations down his spine. "What
time is it?"

Snow swirled around the Fiat Panda, tucked into the side of the inn.
"What have I become?" Dai Death said. "Tell me that."

   
"What have you always
been, man? A covetous bugger." Idwal Pugh sat in the driver's seat, where
he'd been for the past hour, trying to get the car radio to work.
"Pontmeurig was not good enough. No, you had to find your paradise. Look
at it. You call this paradise?"

   
"I didn't believe it. And
then I did." Anguished. Dai pummelled his knees.

   
"I told you," Idwal
said. "I warned you not to go in there."

   
"And then—was as if I was
seeing everything through different eyes. I just dropped the bloody stone on
his arm. I did that! Me! How is it I could do that? How?"

   
"You tell me."

   
"Seems like a dream to me
now. Maybe it was a dream. Come back with me, Idwal."
   
"I will not."

   
"See, I go back there
afterwards—"
   
"You told me."

   
"—when the snow has
started and the fever has gone from my head. And I go back into the church,
see—"

   
"Yes, yes. But
where
have they taken him?"

   
"—Bloody tomb open, bloody
statue thing in pieces, shattered."

   
"But what was in it, Dai?
Did you look?"

   
"Oh, Jesus." Dai
wailed. "Don't go asking me that."

"A question you have for me. is it, little bitch?"

   
"I don't want to
know," Bethan said, and knew immediately this was the wrong thing to say.

   
Buddug smiled horribly.