Longbow Girl (18 page)

J
ames watched Merry Owen walk into the pool, dive under the waterfall and disappear. He could hardly believe his eyes.

What the
heck
was she doing? Was this some weird feat of fitness and daring? Hike miles through the hills, then go caving in the dark in freezing black water. Was it some weird initiation ceremony, done for someone else's benefit? He'd had a strange sense as he'd been following her that someone else was around, but every time he'd turned and looked he'd seen nothing. But whatever stunt Merry was pulling, swimming in caves in the dark was dangerous. He'd seen enough rescue helicopters in this part of Wales. Too often, they flew away with the bodies of dead cavers.

He couldn't wait any longer. He kicked off his trainers, pulled off his jeans and sweatshirt, then, cursing loudly, he
waded in. The water was
freezing
. Merry must be out of her mind. He pushed in deeper, till the current swept him off his feet. He swam forward, breaststroked through the waterfall, flinching as the icy water pummelled him. He came up into the cave. The darkness closed around him like a physical force. There was no sign of Merry, just the swirling water. But then he could have sworn he saw a flicker of light ahead, underneath the water.

Feeling the first stabs of fear, he puffed in and out. When he had a good lungful of breath, he dived under and he swam. He kept his eyes open, seeking the light again. After a few strokes he saw it, some way ahead. It lit up the contours of a hole in the cave wall. There must be a tunnel beyond. He tried to catch up with it but the current seemed to be fighting him, and getting stronger. He kicked down and on, calling on all his strength.

He swam through the hole, into the tunnel. The distant light blinked through the darkness. Against all instinct, all sense, he followed it.

He pushed on, stroke after increasingly difficult stroke against the racing, freezing water. Fighting the cold and the current was using up all his breath. He was tiring. His lungs started to burn. He knew he should turn back, but the light flickered on ahead of him, leading him deeper.

If Merry could do it, he would too.
Anything is possible . . .

His lungs were on fire. Oxygen and strength burnt out. Close to drowning. He screamed inside, dragged up one last reserve of strength. He kicked out, lunged forwards. His fingers fought through water, felt air.

He erupted up into another cave. Opened his mouth, rasped in desperate breaths until he had enough strength to swim on. There was another waterfall ahead. He swam towards it, through it, out into an open pool. He staggered into the shallows, gasping, almost retching. He got to a bank, crawled out and collapsed. He was dimly aware that there was no light. That Merry and her head torch had disappeared.

Disorientated, shivering in his underwear, James got up. He gazed around. It was a clear night, lit by a half-moon and stars that seemed to be shining brighter than normal. It was strange, but the bank here looked just like the one on the other side. The forest was different, though, denser and bigger.

He searched for his clothes and trainers. Couldn't find them anywhere. Was this Merry's idea of a joke? Half drown him, then hide his clothes and give him hypothermia? It didn't seem like her and it made no sense.

He pushed through the trees, straining to see in the darkness, searching for Merry, but there were no flickers of light, no sign of her. It was as if she'd vanished into the night.

James hurried on. Branches scratched him. His arms and legs were bleeding when he emerged from the trees. He looked around in the moonlight, trying to get his bearings. The stark face of Pen y Fan was there in the distance, and he reckoned the rough ground ahead led to Maen Llia and Sarn Helen. And the way home. Yet it was different, he could have sworn. More trees, more bushes.
Wilder
.

He thought he caught a glimpse of someone, far ahead, moving fast across the open ground. It had to be Merry. He set
off in the same direction, breaking into a run, desperate to warm up.

He ran on but got no closer to the runner, which was odd. He was super-fit from football training. Maybe it wasn't Merry. Maybe it was a Welsh Mountain pony. All he could see were glimpses of movement in the distance.

His bare feet still felt frozen and hurt like hell when he stepped on loose stones but he didn't care. Pain meant he was still alive.

He ran on down the hillside, across the common lands and there, finally, was the Nanteos valley. Rising up on the hillside opposite, in all its sinister majesty, was his home, the Black Castle. Only different. No soft landscaping. No ranks of laurel bushes.

James shook his head. He must have damaged his brain during the swim. Or he was hallucinating. Feeling as if he were in a nightmare, desperate to wake up, James ran on towards his home. As he approached the drawbridge, a strange man loomed from the darkness and accosted him in Welsh.

‘Who the heck are you?' asked James warily. He took a few steps back.

The man broke into English. ‘Watchman,' he declared.

‘We don't have any watchmen,' James said carefully, as if talking to a madman.

‘I am the Black Castle's watchman,' the man repeated belligerently, taking a step closer.

‘This is my home!' said James. A new wave of fear pulsed through him but he held his ground. ‘This is my family's castle.
What are you doing here? And what's with the costume?' he added, eyeing the man's weird baggy woollen smock, rough leggings, woollen hood.

‘Your home?' asked the man with a look of disbelief.

‘Yes. My home. Now I'm going inside and you'd better get lost,' said James. He was freezing, desperate to get inside and call the police – have this weird stranger arrested.

The man grabbed his arm. James kicked him hard in the shin, earned himself a punch in the stomach, found himself gripped in a headlock. Shouting and struggling, he was dragged across the drawbridge, beneath the portcullis, across the cobblestoned courtyard, and into his home.

The man released him in the Great Hall. James stood, hands fisted by his sides, numb with shock. Portraits, but none of his family. No rich Persian carpets, just flagstones strewn with rushes and straw and sprinkled with dried flowers. Different furniture. Different smell. No jasmine and furniture polish. Instead, woodsmoke and lavender. A fire burning in the great hearth.

Two tall men in white tights, codpieces and indecently short and ornate pleated jackets swaggered up. Both of them wore rapiers in metal sheaths attached to belts. Both had trim beards: one black, the other red. The black-haired one had a vicious scar running down his cheek from the outer corner of his eye to his mouth. The red-haired one had a puppy face that would have made him look friendly were it not for the hard look in his eyes and the sword.

‘Who's this scoundrel, Aeron?' he asked the watchman. He
turned to James before the man could answer, firing off another question. ‘Where are your clothes, boy?'

James felt his guts turn to liquid. He wanted to shut his eyes and wake up in his bed. He did shut them for a moment, then opened them again quickly.

He stood as straight and tall as he could.

‘I am James de Courcy. Who are
you
? What are you doing in my house? And where are my parents?'

‘Your parents?' asked the scarred man sardonically, turning to the other with a raised eyebrow.

‘The earl and countess. My parents!' shouted James.

The watchman snorted disbelief.

‘The countess is much too young to be your mother,' mused the scarred man. He spoke softly but James could feel the violence pulsing just under the surface.

‘I am Lord James de Courcy, son of the earl and countess. Where are they?' James repeated. He felt that, above all, he must stay calm. Or fake it. That he must not show fear.

The puppy-faced man twisted and stared at the portraits rising up the staircase from the Great Hall. He turned back and murmured:

‘The nose . . .'

The scarred man scrutinized James again. ‘Has the mark . . .' He reached out, grabbed James's arm with almost invisible speed. ‘Come with me. You too,' he added to the watchman.

James, shivering, was led to the drawing room. The scarred man knocked, was called in with an imperious:
Come
. A female voice; a stranger's voice.

They walked in. The drawing room. Familiar yet unfamiliar. James's eyes fixed on a woman sitting by the fire. She was embroidering a tapestry. Her black hair was plaited and pinned up with an elaborate band of jewels and fur. And she was also wearing a costume: a full-length gown of green and gold velvet, with huge, dangling sleeves and skirts.

The woman put down her embroidery, got up, turned to face him. James gasped, struggled for words, could not speak.

The woman's winged eyebrows arched even higher.

‘Brioc, Cranog? What have we here?' she asked.

‘Begging your leave, my Lady,' said the scar-faced Brioc. ‘The watchman found him wandering around.' He paused, pushed the man forward. ‘Aeron, tell Lady de Courcy.'

‘Found 'im outside, my Lady. 'Ee seems to think he owns the place.
His family's castle
and a load of nonsense.'

The stranger, the
countess
, approached James. ‘Who are you? Why are you near naked and what are you doing roaming around my castle, claiming it for yourself?'

James blinked. He knew the woman. He'd seen her before. On the wall. Immortalized in a portrait. She was his
ancestor
. The twelfth Countess de Courcy. But here she was. Alive. Standing in front of him. Near enough to touch.

It was impossible! But it was happening. He'd been in this very room just hours ago. In that time all the lights had been removed. The subtle heating concealed inside bookcases and cabinets had been removed. All the furniture had been removed and replaced. It wasn't possible. Unless, his mind raced madly . . .

He thought of Merry. Her sudden interest in history. In Henry VIII. He thought of the legend, of the angel warrior who'd saved her family. And Merry's violent reaction to it.

Then the truth hit him. The angel warrior was
Merry
. She'd travelled through time to save her ancestors. And he'd followed her. Back to the sixteenth century.

T
he twelfth countess, who had died nearly five hundred years earlier, took a step closer to James.

She stood, very much alive, beautiful head angled to one side, scrutinizing him.

‘So who are you?' she asked, voice edged with curiosity.

James sucked in a breath. If he spoke the truth, he knew it would end badly. He glanced at the men standing guard. The scarred man's right hand rested lightly on the ornate silver handle of his rapier. His eyes were fixed on James.

‘I am Lord James de Courcy, your ladyship,' he announced with the simple sincerity of truth.

‘And I'm the king of England,' muttered the red-haired man.

‘I swear on my life that I am James de Courcy,' James
declared. Despite his terror, despite his exhaustion, his brain still worked. He offered his hand to the countess. He pointed to the signet ring, stamped with the de Courcy crest of the phoenix rampant,
Avis la Fin
engraved below.

The countess grabbed his hand, studied the ring. Studied him. Her eyes opened wide.

‘You have the ring, the crest.
Our
crest. It's just like the earl's ring! And you have the nose,' she pronounced, looking to her armed men for confirmation. They nodded back, reluctantly. James, who had always hated his nose, now gave thanks for it.

‘A kinsman,' declared the countess, letting go of James's hand. ‘From where?' She grabbed his chin, turned his face this way and that, scrutinizing him. James submitted to the examination. He knew instinctively that all that kept him from the men with the rapiers was the countess's belief.

‘You're not one of the French de Courcys are you, with your dark colouring? You look French.'

Thank God for his mother's insistence on him learning French at school. He excelled in the language, spoke it fluently.

‘
Oui, Madame la Comtesse
,' answered James in his flawless French accent.

‘But what are you doing here? Where are your parents? Your servants? You cannot possibly have come alone.'

James thought wildly. ‘My parents stayed in France, thank goodness. I wanted to see this country, have an adventure. I came with my servants by sea. There was a great gale. We were
shipwrecked.' He paused, closed his eyes as if it were all too much, and concocted the next piece of his story. ‘Only a few of us survived. We made our way across land. I sought to find the sanctuary of my kinsmen.'

‘Begging your leave, my Lady,' cut in the scarred man. ‘When he was brought to us he was asking where his parents were, as if he expected them to be here.'

The countess turned to James, eyebrows raised.

James, trapped in the lie, had to come up with a better one.

‘We were attacked at night,' he said, rubbing his head. ‘I was beaten. Everything, even my clothes were taken. I managed to flee but I could not find the rest of my party. Then . . .' He struggled for words, swayed in the sudden heat from the fire. ‘I'm confused, disorientated . . .' He felt the countess leading him to a chaise longue, calling for hot broth and robes.

Cranog, the red-haired man, hurried off, leaving Brioc keeping watch.

‘You were beaten, kinsman. Were you hurt badly?' asked the countess with sudden maternal concern.

James nodded. Conveniently he sported a collection of bruises from football. He could see the countess noticing them.

‘But you must have walked for days. You are exhausted!' she exclaimed.

Like Merry before him, the rigours of the crossing caught up with him, and, helplessly, James passed out.