Candlenight

Chapter LXXV

The other side of midnight people began to emerge from their homes in coats and scarves, carrying lamps and torches, all very muted, hardly saying a word to each other. Like survivors of some bombing raid, Mair Huws, from the Post Office, and Eirlys Hywels silently helped Bethan take off what remained of the raincoat and wrapped her in an old tapestry cape, leaving the bloody mac draped over the bridge, dripping into the river.

Aled was crouching alone just inside the alley between the inn and the sub-station where the wind could not reach him. By the light of his torch, propped up against a brick, he was slipping another cartridge into his shotgun.

"What are you looking at?" He stood up and pointed the twelve-bore vaguely around him. In fact, nobody was looking at him except Berry Morelli, smoking a cigarette, one sleeve of his flying jacket flapping empty.

"Well, Aled. What can I say? You blew her head off. Dump the gun now?"

Aled shook his head. "To the rectory I have to go."

"Hey now, Aled," Berry said. "Think about this. Just take—"

"What is there to think about?" Standing with the gun hanging loose in his limp hands, white hair bedraggled. Aled put on a stark smile. "Mass-murderer I am now, isn't it?"

"When we explain to the cops—" Berry said, but Aled shook his head.

"Explain. Explain this?" He chuckled sourly. "Where do you begin? No, what I am doing is giving you an easy explanation, isn't it?"

Berry said, "Grief-stricken madman goes on the rampage with shotgun."

Aled smiled ruefully. "You are a little ahead of me, boy."

Berry looked at the little white-haired mass-killer and saw some kind of flawed hero.

"Go on, you bugger," Aled said. "Leave me be. Go to your woman."

"Why'd you do all this, Aled? There's nothing gonna bring her back."

Aled said. "Listen man, an accident. I have no reason to think otherwise. I blame no one for that. I—" He patted his jacket pocket, spare cartridges rattled. "I don't want the third degree, Morelli. Don't know why I turned away. Been coming on a long time probably."

"One more question, OK?"

Aled sighed. "I ought to shoot you as well, you nosy bugger."

"The tomb. Unless Glyndwr had curly horns—"

"Morelli, it never mattered what was in that tomb. The Gorsedd Ddu has always looked after this place, long before Glyndwr. Y Groesfan, the crossing place, where the warriors and heroes and the men of magic came to die. People have lived here half-aware of this for centuries. What they brought back, the four, was — I don't know — the spirit of Glyndwr, isn't it? Or something. How do you say it in English — the essence?"

Which they corrupted, Berry thought. They took the magic, and they wove that into the tapestry of this place. He thought of what he and Bethan had learned in the library over at Hereford yesterday. The impression they'd formed of the latter Druids as purveyors of a degraded version of the Celtic religion.

This was the tradition continued by the Gorsedd Ddu.

"Can of worms," Berry said, thinking of graveyard worms, grown fat on the dead. "How could folks live with all that?"

"Ah, Morelli, you will never understand. It's powerful, see. It works. What else in Wales is truly powerful these days, other than our traditions?" Aled's top teeth vanished into his snowy moustache. "Excuse me, I am going to take the air."

"No way I can talk you out of this?"

"Not unless you have a bigger gun," Aled said. Berry watched him walk away across the bridge into the snow.

He discovered Bethan was at his elbow, wrapped in some kind of Welsh rug.

"He's gone to kill ap Siencyn." Berry said. "I don't see him coming back."

She gripped his only visible arm.

"No," Berry said. "He knows where he's at. I think."

"Just goes on, doesn't it?" Her voice was hoarse and fractured; she kept massaging her throat. "On and on."

"Something ended here tonight. You must feel that."

"Nothing truly ends with guns," Bethan said.

Berry shrugged, which hurt his broken arm. "How do you feel now?"

"How do I look?"

Bruises besmirched most of her face. The skin was purple and swollen around both eyes. Her lip was twisted and her cheeks blotched with blood, some of it her own.

"You look wonderful," he said.

"Your poor arm. Is it very painful?"

"Not like in the church. Christ, I don't think I ever felt more — you know — than when I was lying with both arms jammed in the Goddam tomb and there's this candle drifting towards me across—"

Bethan looked up sharply.

"Don't panic," Berry said. "It was Aled. The dissident. His, ah, wife died."

"Gwenllian?"

"Accident in Aber. What pushed him over the edge, I guess. Sign that when something goes real bad, it ceases to discriminate between the English and the Welsh."

"Or traitors and the cowards," Bethan said.

"I liked him. Whatever happened here tonight, whatever lifted, it was in some way all down to him. Not me or you. He did it."

He licked his forefinger and rubbed a blood-fleck off her nose. "What happens in the church, Aled puts down the candle and he levers up the slab so I can get my arms out and then we kick the slab clean off the tomb and smash the shit outta the fucking effigy. He does most of that, I'm hurting too much."

Bethan said slowly. "So you know now what was in the tomb."

"Yeah."

"Do I have to ask?"

"Bones," Berry said. "Bones. Like you'd expect. Only not what you'd expect. Soon as the air got inside they more or less crumbled away. But. yeah, we saw what it was."

"And?"

"Aled figured it for a ram."

"A ram? As in… sheep?"

"Yeah. Make what you want outta that. Me, I don't want to think too hard about it. I lost enough sleep already."

The rotors of the police helicopter were heard, a distant drone and then a clatter. And with the clatter a searchlight beam swept the village.

"Best place to land, I think." Chief Inspector Gwyn Arthur Jones said, "is the school playground. What do you think, Neil?"

Sergeant Neil Probert only grunted. Flying at night through intermittent snow, he'd been terrified most of the way. Even the pilot did not look exactly happy. He'd made them wait an hour until the snow had eased, before deciding it was safe to make the trip at all.

Neil had not spoken since the searchlight had picked up the Daihatsu on its side at the bottom of a gulley, and Gwyn Arthur had ordered the pilot to go in low enough to ascertain that they were both dead, the two men who'd been flung out into the snow. They could not have been anything but dead.

"Tell you one thing, Guv," said the pilot now. a Cockney called Bob Gomer. "You won't catch me doing this number again."

"Ah, worst of it is over, man," Gwyn Arthur said, scornfully. "Right now, come on, let's go round the village once again before we land."

There was still apparently no power in Y Groes. Plenty of little glimmerings, though, candles, lamps. Far more than you'd expect after midnight even in a town the size of Pont. Something was up, Gwyn Arthur thought. No question.

The police helicopter circled over the pub — lots of wispy little lights around there — and then over the church and back again towards the river.

"OK, take her in then, Bob. No wait — what's that?" Gwyn Arthur leaned forward in his seat.

Neil Probert, feeling queasy, didn't move, just closed his eyes and muttered. "Where?"

"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.

"She's in shock," Gwyn Arthur said uncertainly.

But Neil Probert knew what the pilot meant. He sank back, closed his eyes, the sweat cooling on his brow.

Bob killed the searchlight and took the chopper into an arc towards the school.

None of them spoke.

For a moment it seemed the child had thrown a shadow ten times her size across the snow. A monstrous shadow, with the illusion of small, hard wings flapping at its shoulders.