Candlenight (66 page)

   
"By there . . . See it?
Figure scurrying along the bank. Could've been a child. Gone now. Under the
bridge, maybe?"

   
"Want me to go round
again, Guv?"
   
"Yes, one last time, then we'll
land."
   
Neil Probert groaned.

When the searchlight beam had passed over, Sali Dafis came out from
under the bridge, small and lithe, elfin in a black tracksuit. The air was
temporarily still, a break between snow salvos.

   
The body of the big woman still
lay on the bank, headless. Partially covered in snow, in various shades of pink
and a kind of crimson which was close to black.

   
Sali looked down at the body,
then up at the church tower, then down at the body again, and finally up at the
bridge, to her left, where her nain, Mrs. Bronwen Dafis, had appeared.

   
Old Mrs. Dafis leaned over the
bridge parapet and watched Sali silently.

   
Sali crouched beside the body
in the snow. She began to brush away some of the soft, white snow, and then the
hard pink snow. Finally the ice-blood around Buddug's neck.

   
She glanced up again at the
bridge, and Mrs. Bronwen Dafis nodded.

   
So did the woman now standing
next to her, the younger one. Whose face, the girl could tell, even from this
distance was equal in its severity.
   
Sali plunged her small, white hand
into the gore.

Rheithordy.

   
The gate was open.

   
But no light shone from the
house, not a candle-glimmer.

   
He knew where the rectory was,
though, could sense its bulk, although there was no feeling of a building about
it

   
Sometimes it was a building,
and sometimes it was just part of the woods, the oak trees crowding the lawn,
almost shouldering the rectory itself, as if feeding sap to their brothers in
its frame.

   
Aled walked to the front door
of the rectory and the snow went with him, flurrying around his body. He felt a
sudden power—he was bringing the snow. He was the bad-weather man.

   
The door was unlocked. He
turned the knob and it opened and the smell came out at him, mouldy, brackish,
the smell of the oak woods in decay, only ten times as strong as it would have
been in the wood itself.

   
"Rector!" Aled's
voice was harder and colder than the snow that came with him.

   
What did he know of ap Siencyn?
Who was the man? This latest in an ancient line which sometimes has been
interrupted but never for long because the wrong men would not last in this
parish—if they were Welsh they would move away, if English . . .

   
"Rector!"

   
Poking the gun before him. Aled
entered the hall, scattering snow.

   
He kicked open the doors, one
by one, saw still rooms tinged with snowlight through steep, multi-paned
windows
   
No firelight, no candles.
   
He knew, then.

   
Abruptly he turned and stalked
out of the rectory into the night, where they were assembled around the
entrance.
   
Snarling, breathing in spurts, Aled crouched
and blasted both barrels into the night and into the company of ancient oaks
gathered before him on the rectory lawn.

There were four shots; he had obviously reloaded.

   
Groups of people stood in the
snow outside the
Tafarn.
Nobody
spoke.

   
Bethan watched the faces of the
people and saw a complexity of human emotions, from shock and bewilderment,
through tired acceptance, to a kind of relief.

   
Among the people conspicuous by
their absence were the mechanic Dilwyn Dafis; his mother Mrs. Bronwyn Dafis,
the seer; skeletal Glyn Harri, the village historian. And bluff, bearded Morgan
Morgan, farmer, and husband of the late Buddug.

   
Bethan wondered for whom the
cannwyll gorff
shone now.

   
"Over?" Berry
wondered.

   
The police helicopter was
almost overhead. The villagers began to drift away, many into the
Tafarn
.
   
Bethan said, "You won't tell
Guto, will you?"
   
"Huh?"

   
She said, "That there was
a ram in the tomb."

   
"I don't understand. And
where the hell is Guto?"

   
"Probably in the bar with
Miranda celebrating his victory in the by-election."

   
"Jesus, how long was I in
that church?"

   
Bethan would have smiled but
her facial muscles weren't up to it. "He believes he had a vision in the
Nearly Mountains. There is a folk-tale about the Abbot of Valle Crucis in North
Wales. How one morning on the Berwyn Mountain the abbot is approached by a
figure out of the mist which turns out to be Owain Glyndwr. And Owain says,
Good Morrow, Abbot, you are out early, something like this. And the Abbot says,
No, you are out a hundred years too early. And Owain vanishes, never to be seen
again."

   
"Until he runs into Guto
on the Nearly Mountains?"

   
"Guto is not laughing
about this. He claims there was a miracle, which he won't talk about. . . .
Glyndwr, you see, was probably closer to Guto's kind of democratic nationalism
than to the . . . the
evil
conjured
in Y Groes. Whichever part of Glyndwr they thought they had here, it was
brought against its will. I'm sure of it. I have to be sure. Or else ... or
else we're
all
of us evil, aren't we?
But . . . well. Guto is convinced he will now win the by-election."

   
"Who knows?" Berry
said. "Maybe we did let something else outta the tomb. The whole point—the
whole secret of this—is not what actually happened but what you believe
happened. Hey, am I getting mystical, or becoming Welsh, or what?"

   
Bethan pulled him into the
shelter of the
Tafarn
porch. Through
the door they could see a lot of people quietly drinking, helping themselves;
no landlord any more. The atmosphere was like an overcrowded hospital in
wartime, full of assorted casualties, people looking around wondering what
happened and who was left alive.

   
Wind-blown snow hit the porch
in a cloud. Berry stared at it, expressionless. Bethan said. "What are you
thinking?"

   
"Trying to figure out what
happens now," Berry said. "Apart from getting my arm fixed. Sitting
around waiting till I can drive again. Watching the bruises heal on your
face."

   
"And then you'll go back.
To London?" Keeping her expression as neutral as she could, given the condition
of her face.

   
He shook his head.
   
"To America?"

   
"No way. I got no roots
left anyplace. Maybe I should stick around awhile until something suggests
itself." He tried to hold her eyes. "Maybe I should learn
Welsh."

   
Bethan flung an arm around his
neck and kissed him, which hurt them both quite a lot. "Start with this .
. .
Fi'n caru ti
."

   
"Tea? Hold on, I got it.
You're saying 'I'd like a black tea, no sugar . . .'"
   
They smiled stupidly at each other.
"Yuk, how utterly nauseating," Miranda said, coming out of the bar,
sipping a vodka and lime. "How is it that other people in love are so
unbearable?"

   
She stood with them on the
porch, red hair a little awry, but otherwise as elegant and unruffled as ever.
"That bastard Guto," she said.

   
"What'd he do now?"

   
"He's dismissed me,"
Miranda said petulantly. "Until after the election. He thinks I won't be
good for his image. How ungrateful can you get? Besides, he's awfully funny in
bed. I mean, what am
I
going to do
until after the election?"

   
Miranda took a big, sulky sip
from her vodka and lime. It seemed to Berry that Guto had a point here.

   
"Well," he said
thoughtfully, watching Bethan out of the corner of an eye, his spirits suddenly
up higher than the helicopter. "I can get you a ten-inch lovespoon, but
you got to buy your own batteries."

"This the last time, guv?"

   
"One final look. No hang
on, listen, you hear that? Can you cut the engine a second?"

   
"It's a bleeding
helicopter, guv, not an Austin Metro."

   
"Sorry, Bob, stupid of me.
It's just I thought I heard . . .well, a shot. Never mind. Look, there's the
child, do you see her?"

   
"Where?" said Neil
Probert, eyes closed.

   
"Wake up, you dozy bugger.
What do you make of that?"

   
"Sorry, Sir." Neil
leaned over Gwyn Arthur's shoulder. The searchlight had picked up the small
girl on the main street

   
"Skipping along, see. Not
a care in the world, as if she's going home from school. And
what
bloody time is it?"
   
"One twenty-five, Sir."

   
The child looked up at the
helicopter, directly into the searchlight's glare, and even from this distance
they could tell she was grinning.

   
"Kids," said Gwyn
Arthur, forgetting for a moment that he was investigating at least one
suspicious death. "What are the bloody parents doing? And what's that all
over her face? Toffee?"

   
The child skipped gaily up the
street. "Oh Christ . . ." said Neil Probert. "Who's this?"

   
"Jesus . . ." Gwyn
Arthur breathed. "Get us down, Bob."

   
The man with the shotgun was
stalking the child along the street.

   
"Get the fucking thing
down!"

   
"Yeh, yeh, got to be the
field, though."

   
"Can't you get any
closer?"

   
The man was perhaps three yards
behind the girl. He raised the gun to his shoulder.

   
"Sod the fucking
field!" Gwyn Arthur screamed. "Go in."

   
The pilot glanced wildly from
side to side, judging distances, road levels. "Gonna damage it, guv."

   
"So it's damaged . . . Go
in!"

   
They were so low now, churning
up the night, that the man's white hair was blown on end. He went into a
crouch, the gun aimed at the back of the child's head.

   
"Hit him in the fucking
whatsits—land on him or something."

   
The girl stopped.

   
She turned round.

   
The man's hair and his clothes
were quivering in the swirling air.

   
He lowered the gun.

   
The girl's hair was unmoving in
the rotor-driven maelstrom. She stood quite still in the spotlight, staring at
the man.

   
The man stood there for long,
long seconds before sinking slowly to his knees in the snow and fumbling with
the shotgun and something else.

   
"What's—?" Neil said.

   
"A twig." Gwyn Arthur
said, suddenly calm "Pen. Pencil. I don't know. But he's fitting it under
the trigger

guard."

   
Aled rose from his knees, the
shotgun upright on the ground, its barrel tucked under his chin. The child
watched him lift a foot, bring it down the side of the gun to where the twig,
pencil, whatever protruded from the trigger guard.
   
Neil Probert turned away.

"OK," Gwyn Arthur said quietly. "Pull back. Land in the
schoolyard. Don't scare her any more."

   
The star burst of blood and
brains covered a very wide area of the snowy street.

   
Bob Gorner said, "She
ain't scared, guv. Tell you that for nuffink."

   
The child had turned her back
on the mess and was skipping back up the road, past the
Tafarn
, towards the cottages, to where two women were waiting. They
each took one of the child's hands.