The Silver Witch (40 page)

‘Silence her!' Brynach shouts.

But I know the truth of it. I saw where she directed her nightmare curse, I saw whose eye she hooked with her wild stare, whose future she blighted. And the words were not meant for me, but for Wenna and her brother, and his son.

The guards, aided by a shaken Rhodri, grapple with Nesta, tying her gag so tight as she struggles that I hear the cracking of her jawbone. They spin her on her heel and push her headlong into the grave. Quickly, they turn and lift the great flat stone that lies upon the grass beside the grave. We can all hear Nesta's muffled cries as she tries to get to her feet, but before she has time to do so, the stone is dropped into place on top of her. Mothers cover their children's ears. Some among us cheer, letting go their grief at losing Hywel, finding a way to vent their impotent rage. Others fall silent, lowering their heads, sickened by the suffering man is able to inflict upon his own kind. The priest prays. The soldiers in the ranks behind where the prince stands bang their shields with their swords, drowning out Nesta's pitiful cries and moans. Noises that are soon enough smothered by the soil and stones shoveled into the grave. In less than two minutes it is done. The opening is closed. The earth has swallowed two more bodies. Hywel will have made his journey a hero. Nesta will stay where she lies. And the rest of us must continue with our lives, bearing our loss and carrying our guilt. And Rhodri must live in hope that our prayers and that brutal stone are sufficient to trap the witch's magic, else her curse will be visited upon his family, and I would not place a wager on Si
ō
n living to see another summer.

 

21

TILDA

Now she begins to examine her prison. Her eyes adjust to the gloom so that she can make out a corrugated iron roof—which resounds to the beating of the relentless icy rain upon it—and wooden walls on three sides, one containing the barred door. The small window above where she sits is too narrow to pass through and too high to reach. The slimy floor on which she sits is actually a platform, an indoor jetty providing covered access to the space where a boat could be moored. But there is no boat, has not been for years. Decades. Just an empty rectangle of dark, evil-smelling water that laps at the rotting planks only a few short yards below Tilda's feet. This entrance to the boathouse may once have let in light, but was long ago boarded up, from the ceiling to the water, so that only an uneven sliver of gray, a subtle lightening of the gloom, can be seen. The water at this point is overgrown with a tangle of reeds and rushes, so that it resembles more a swamp than a lake. With mounting horror Tilda realizes that the only possible way out is through that deep, weed-filled, treacherous water. She sits, benumbed by what has happened, stunned into motionless terror, her ears filled with the near-deafening sound of the incessant rain beating upon the old tin roof.

No one would hear me above the noise of this rain, no matter if I screamed my head off. And who would there be, anyway? In all the time I've been running this way, I've never met anyone so far from the footpath.

It is as if she has always known that one day it would come to this. One day she would have to face it. Her darkest fear has been there to test her from a distance all her life. Years of imagining, thinking, wondering what it would be like to be swallowed up by the waves, or swept away by a fast-flowing river, or held beneath the sunny surface of a sparkling swimming pool, all have led to this place, this moment.

Gingerly, she moves toward the edge of the jetty. Her fingers are already losing their color in the damp chill. She crouches then sits, lowering her feet into the water. The intense cold is a shock. Her breathing accelerates as she twists around and lowers herself over the edge and in. The jetty is slimy with algae and her fingers start to slip. She gasps, clawing at the wet wood, but cannot get a firm grip. With a feeble splash she slides into the water, bursting into tears of relief and terror as her feet find the silty lake bed. The water level is just above her waist. Raising her arms, elbows bent, she edges toward the entrance, inching her way along the uneven surface. The sloping uneven surface. By the time she reaches the gable end of the boathouse the water is up to her armpits. She knows she is in danger of hyperventilating. Of being sick. Of fainting.

No, no, no, no! Mustn't trip, mustn't stumble. Small steps. Come on feet, pretend we're running. Running in slow motion. Fleet feet. Strong steps. One foot in front of the other.

She pushes through the reeds, causing small waves to bounce back at her from the timber walls. She raises her chin as the water sloshes against her face. With every step she fights rising panic. Panic that threatens to send her falling into the water. Panic that might be the finish of her.

She reaches the low boards that block the exit. The moment has come. Now she must dive beneath the water, push through into the unknown, fight the tangle of weeds and swim to the outside. She knows if she thinks about it longer she will not move, so in one desperate, sudden action she forces herself under the surface. The sensation of going beneath the water is more that she can stand. She loses her balance, falling through the twisted undergrowth, her feet sliding so that she disappears into the brackish blackness. She reacts as she has always feared she will, as she has always imagined so vividly in her nightmares. She inhales. The mouthful of water becomes a lungful in a soundless scream of terror. Tilda feels time stop. Her intellect tells her she must get up, must break the surface, must push up, grab something, find air. Her instinct tells her to fight and flail and clutch and claw. But the blackness is enticing, the silence seductive. And the cold, the bone-deep cold, has her in its tight embrace, numbing her will as well as her body.

As she sinks down deeper into the cold blackness of the lake, Tilda thinks about how people say you see your whole life flash before you when you die. But no images of her childhood appear, no snatches of teenage romances, or family moments, or first foreign holidays. Nothing. It is more, she decides, as if she is watching her own death from a distance. As if she is a detached witness to the event, rather than the main player. She is not aware of any fear, nor pain. Just the seductive power of the cold, and the light-headedness a lack of oxygen is currently bringing about. She knows time must be passing at the usual rate, and that all she is experiencing is happening in seconds, and yet it feels as if these particular seconds have been stretched. As if down here, in the quiet darkness, everything moves to a different rhythm. Even her own heartbeat, which echoes softly against her eardrums, seems to have slowed effortlessly.

Her mind is able to drift back to the moment in the boathouse when she knew she could not wait for rescue. She had sat and shivered on the wet, slippery boards of the small building, trying to see why the ghost had not killed her. Without the torc, without poor Thistle, Tilda was defenseless. She was easy prey. And yet the apparition from the grave had chosen to leave her trapped, rather than deliver a fatal blow. It made no sense, after all the other attacks, after what had happened when Lucas had lifted the grave stone, the way the creature had menaced and hounded her, why had it pulled back this time? She had made herself find possible explanations.

It only wanted to scare me. But why? And it certainly felt like it was going to kill me when it swung the pickax at me. But perhaps I could have still reached the torc. Is that what it wants? The words it shouted at me,
Life for a life,
the professor said. But is it likely Seren killed the woman in that grave? If Lucas's theory is right, and she was being punished, I don't see how Seren can have been responsible for putting her there, so why would she come after her descendants?

The more she had turned the matter over and over in her mind, the more she had heard those words.
A life for a life
.

She wants someone dead, but not me. Wants someone's life, but not mine. Who, then? Who else can have a connection? Professor Williams says his family came from north Wales, not around here. And his wife, Greta, she and her brother, Dylan's dad, they came from Winchester. Not Wales at all, but Hampshire.

It was then she had seen it. A possible link. A small, fragile thread, but something that just might tie the past to the present in a way none of them had thought about before.

Winchester. The capital of Wessex. The place of the Queen of Mercia's birth. And the place where she sent some of her slaves. Not just Seren's daughter, but others from the crannog. Who were they? I must be able to remember. A middleaged woman, and a teenage boy. With bright green eyes. Like Dylan's. Oh my God! All the time, the link was there and I didn't see it. Professor Williams said Greta had wanted to move to the lake. That she had felt an affinity with it. She was researching the crannog and she must have got so close to finding the truth about what happened. And then she died, before she could find the final piece of the puzzle. Did she know? Had she realized the connection her own family had with this place? I wonder.

Tilda had found it. Dylan was the descendant of the other slave sent to Wessex from the crannog. It must have been his ancestor who had in some way been responsible for the terrible end that the woman in the grave had suffered. It was Dylan's life she had come back for. Now that she had that piece, more fell into place. The witch's ghost in the Landrover had been trying to get to him. The falling lights at the dig were meant for him.

Dylan!

Now, in the water, it is the thought of him asleep and defenseless in the cottage, unaware of what terrible danger he is in, it is this thought that sparks panic inside Tilda. Only a few seconds ago she had been content to let go, to drift ever downward and become part of the lake. To accept her fate. But now, realizing that she alone can save Dylan, she is forced to fight for her own life.

I couldn't help Mat. I'm not going to let Dylan die too. I am not!

She starts kicking. Her legs are strong, but the cold has numbed them so much she can barely feel them. She uses her arms in a desperate attempt to halt her descent, to propel herself up. She can still just make out the light above the surface, but there is so much dark water between herself and that soft glimmer. There is pain in her chest now, and a buzzing in her head, all telling her to take another breath. But she knows that to do so now, at such a depth, would be the end.

Come on, girl! Just like running. You can do it.

She has succeeded in stopping her fall. She is at last moving up rather than down, but her progress is so slow. Too slow. She can feel her lungs burning and her strength beginning to fail.

Seren, where are you? Why don't you help me? Please!

But no vision appears to lead her to safety. No tall stranger, the image of herself, comes to her rescue.

Is this it? Is this how I fail? Will Dylan and I both die today because of something that happened over a thousand years ago?

And yet, even as this desperate thought forms in her head Tilda feels something shift, something change, as if the very water has taken on a different composition. As if her own body has altered so that it is no longer something in the lake, but it is
part of
the lake. Suddenly she feels that she is not flesh and bone, but liquid, her whole being melded and merged with the chill, pure water. She has lost all sense of being separate from it. She has lost her fear. The realization that she is no longer afraid, after a lifetime of fear, now, as she faces her own death in the way that has always terrified her, shocks her but curiously feels right. As if all along, down the years, she has been reading her reaction to water wrong.

Not afraid, but awed. Not fear, but wonder. Not revulsion, but … what? A need? A longing, somehow, that twisted my stomach to knots and made my pulse race. A yearning. All that time, all those nerve-tingling moments, not terror of the unknown then, but the rekindling of a far-distant memory. A memory that should have been passed down to me, but got lost, got confused along the way.

She does not see anything in the water beneath her. She is not aware of another presence. The first thing she feels is pressure against her back. Feels herself being moved through the gloom, being moved upward! Her mind is spinning, free falling, on the verge of losing conscious thought, so that she is unable to make sense of what is happening. All she knows is that she is being pushed up, through the choking water, toward the day that waits beyond the surface. When she is almost at the top, she can feel the immense strength of whatever it is that has lifted her at such speed, so that an instant later she surges up, breaking the surface in a great wave, gasping and gulping air the moment she is free of the water. Her throat burns and she coughs, spluttering, ridding her body of the water she had taken in when she plunged into the lake. She thrashes wildly, fearing that she will sink again, but she is sitting on something that keeps her safely afloat. She wipes water from her eyes and tries to see what it is that is now taking her to the shore. Instinctively, she grabs at the solid mass beneath her, and is astonished to feel flesh, warm and firm, and to see what can only be a neck lifting up in front of her. The creature raises its head now too, and uses its powerful limbs with their webbed feet to swim gracefully and easily toward the shallows.

The Afanc! My God, the Afanc!

If she wasn't already so shaken, so shocked and battered by her experiences, by the bruising blows from the ghost, by the deadly cold, by the bellyful of water, by her own terror and by that final alteration in her very being, Tilda might have laughed, might have considered herself finally crazy. But she has no strength for such rational reactions. She is able only to slide from the back of the magnificent beast and crawl on hands and knees through the shallow water and onto the lakeside. When she turns, gasping, head aching and fit to burst, it is in time only to catch a glimpse of the Afanc's tail as it disappears beneath the surface of the lake.