Named of the Dragon (12 page)

"Oh, you beautiful thing," I said, sliding my free hand up under her forelock to scratch round the base of her ears. They twitched at the sound of my voice. Twitched again as a faint squeaking of wheels approached along the kerb. A child's bike, I thought at first. But no, this sound was different, with a springiness I couldn't place ...

"You shouldn't do that," Elen's voice warned. "Gareth doesn't like it."

I turned. She'd stopped the pram between us, and her baby, who'd been sleeping, started fussing at the sudden lack of movement. It wasn't proper crying, really—more like a half-hearted sputtering, but I found myself pressing my back to the gate.

Sovereign, munching a piece of the carrot, didn't seem to mind the noise. She watched with mild eyes as Elen tried again. "Gareth really doesn't like it."

"Oh, it's only a carrot." Bridget wrinkled her nose and climbed down from the gate, wiping her hand on the leg of her jeans. "And anyway, he isn't here now, is he?"

The baby, impatient with waiting, broke into a howl and grasped at the side of the pram, as though urging it to move. At eight months of age, Stevie Vaughan made a solid little bundle in his hooded coat and mittens. But even in a temper, nose running, his face red and mottled from crying, he still looked a beautiful baby, with curling fair hair and blue eyes ringed with spiky dark lashes.

Pulling himself up on wobbly legs to reach out for his mother, he tottered, unsteady, then tipped to one side and went over the edge of the pram.

I reacted from instinct.

I couldn't remember, afterwards, how I came to catch him. We were all three of us reaching for him, holding out our hands to stop his fall towards the pavement, and then suddenly my hands were full, and I was holding him, an unexpected weight that huddled warm against my breast, his tiny fingers clutching at my shirt.

Elen straightened to stare at me, eyes wide with wonder, as though she'd just had an epiphany. "You ..." The word was the barest of whispers.

The baby moved, warm in my arms, and his soft hair, sweet-smelling, brushed under my chin. I felt a chill between my shoulder-blades, a blade of ice that barely missed my heart, and in reflex I pushed him away from me, holding him out to his mother. "Here, he's too heavy for me."

She took him, unoffended, and tucked him back into his pram. Stevie wriggled a protest and reached his mittened hands towards me, and Elen bit her lower lip. The smile she showed me trembled just a little, but it radiated happiness. "I knew you'd come," she told me. "Margaret promised me you'd come."

And then she turned and started off again along the road, before I could reply.

XIV

Why dost thou fix thine eye so deeply on that book?

William Rowley, The Birth of Merlin

“She's not right in the head." Owen's wife uncorked the sherry and began to pour it out, her mouth tightening. "I sometimes think our Angle men have lost their sense. It's all 'poor Elen this, poor Elen that,' but no one spares a thought for little Stevie, and it's him that's going to suffer."

Owen's Dilys was, indeed, a formidable woman. Short, round and sturdy, her chest puffed before her, she put me in mind of a little Napoleon, stoutly determined to marshal her troops. We had only just arrived, but she already had us organized in chairs around her sitting-room, knees down, heads up, backs ramrod straight, like children in a Sunday school.

The Sunday school impression was made stronger by the sitting-room itself. From the crisply pleated curtains to the glass-topped coffee table, everything appeared to have been starched and polished into submission. Even the plants stood erect in their pots at the window, not daring to droop or display a dead flower. The homely smell of chicken slowly roasting in the oven seemed quite out of place in here. Almost as out of place as Owen, who even in his Sunday best looked anything but formal.

He sat balanced on an armless chair, feet braced against the carpet so he wouldn't slide straight off the slippery chintz upholstery. But like the plants, I thought, he wouldn't dare complain. This room belonged to Dilys, not to him. And she was, as I had quickly learned, a woman of opinions.

"It's all these so-called experts who deserve the blame. Psychologists." She spat the word. "Saying how you shouldn't take a baby from his mother. Well, that's nonsense.
I
say, if the mother's mad, you take that baby, so you do, and give him to a couple who can bring the boy up proper."

As she started passing round the glasses, Christopher, beside me on the sofa, broke formation, leaning back against the cushions with a vaguely idle air. "Elen isn't mad."

I took my sherry meekly, with a murmured word of thanks, and ducked neatly out of Dilys's line of fire.

"And what would you call it, then, when a girl goes round the village telling everyone there's a dragon trying to steal her child? You call that normal?"

Owen sighed. "Now, Dilys ..."

"No, I simply can't allow that." She shook her dark head, passing judgement. "A dragon. Just imagine. She's a danger to that boy, and no mistake. A good job you were there to catch him when he fell," she said, to me.

I'd been trying not to think about it. "Really, it was nothing."

Bridget admitted that
she'd
been impressed. "Anyone would have thought you were keeping goal for England, the way you dived after that baby. I've never seen anything like it."

Dilys said, "Yes, well, I do hope that Elen was properly grateful."

"She didn't say thank you, though, did she?" Bridget looked to me for confirmation. "She only said she'd known that you would come, whatever that means."

"Ah," said James, with knowing eyes. "That's it then, she's pegged you as Stevie's protector."

My dream flashed before me. I stared at him. "What?"

"Madness," Dilys said, standing very straight and righteous. "Don't you take any notice, my dear. You've come down for a holiday. Don't let that foolish girl spoil it. Really," she said, with a shake of her head, "I can't think what possessed that boy Tony to marry her. She's always been peculiar. Such an unattractive child, she was—all hair and bony knees—no friends to speak of. And her mother was just the same, wasn't she, Owen?"

Owen stirred in his chair and remarked that, as he recalled it, Elen's mother had had many friends.

"Male
friends, yes. She had plenty of those." Dilys sniffed. "She loved stirring things up, that one, causing a scandal. Always chasing after someone's husband."

Owen frowned. "Now then, you know that's—"

"Any decent woman," Dilys cut him off, "would have died of shame to have a baby out of wedlock, but not her. I can still see her pushing that pram round the village, as though it were a thing to be proud of. It's no wonder her daughter turned out like she did."

Christopher took a deliberate sip of sherry. "How is
your
son doing, these days, Dilys? Married again, I hear."

"Yes, that's right."

"That would make this ... what? His third?"

Owen answered, cheerfully. "His fourth, the little sod. It's not the marriages I mind so much, it's all the grandkids. We must have a baker's dozen of them, now. Makes for a tangle, at holidays."

"Now, Owen," said Dilys, "you know he's a very good father."

"Oh, he's good at it, I'll give you that. He makes babies like nobody's business." The older man grinned, and drained his glass of sherry in a single swallow. “Must be that place where he works, rubbing off on him."

Bridget glanced up. "Oh? And where does he work?"

"A fertility clinic, in Cardiff," said Owen. "He does all the technical work in the lab."

Christopher put it in simpler terms. "He sorts sperm."

Dilys reddened, and was opening her mouth to respond when Owen distracted her by sniffing the air. "Something's burning."

She frowned. "I don't smell anything." But her hostessing instincts could not be ignored. As she bustled out to check her oven, Owen settled back, amused, and shook his head at Christopher.

"You'll tempt fate once too often, boy. I might not lift a finger, next time.''

"Oh, I'm not afraid." Christopher slung a lazy arm along the sofa back, well pleased. "My mother's just the same, you know. All bark and no bite."

"Well, wind her up another notch—we'll see who's laughing then."

But Christopher's appetite for argument appeared to vanish when the food was served.

Her opinions notwithstanding, Owen's Dilys made a smashing Sunday lunch. I could barely see the table for the food—a platter heaped with tender chicken, thickly sliced and steaming; bowls of peas and sage and onion stuffing; roast potatoes, richly browned to crunching on the outside, that I knew would melt to nothing on the tongue; fat leeks swimming round in a savoury white sauce; seasoned carrots and swedes, and two jugs of gravy to pour over everything.

"Eat," she instructed me, pushing the dish of leeks closer. "You're too thin."

I'd been called many things in my life, but "too thin" wasn't one of them. Still, I confess that I didn't raise much of a protest. At the risk of bursting zips I ate a second plateful, and a third, and chased it down with gooey chocolate pudding drizzled thick with double cream. By the time we waddled homewards, I felt rather like a pampered goose, force-fed to fullness, drowsy with contentment.

Climbing the stairs to my bedroom was out of the question, I thought. Too much effort. Instead I followed everyone else to the dim, quiet warmth of the dining-room, and collapsed with a sigh into one of the comfy pink chairs by the window, tipping my head back to watch the lights twinkle and dance in the fragrant fairyland of Bridget's Christmas tree.

"It's a wonder that Owen's not twenty-five stone," I remarked, with a yawn.

Christopher, who'd managed somehow to retain the energy to saunter round the room, glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "He works it all off, between his farm and this one. But you're right, if he ever retires, he's in trouble." Pausing by the bookcase where I'd found the Wilkie Collins book, he crouched to examine its contents. "Hey, James, did you know Uncle Ralph has your books?"

"Of course he does. I gave them to him."

"Ah, well that explains it, then. I shouldn't have thought they were quite to his taste, really. Nor this," he added, prising out a larger book and reading the title spelled out on the glossy white cover:
"The Druid's Year.
Now what the devil..." Flipping it open to read the flap he caught sight of an inscription and said, "Oh, it's from Gareth. That does make more sense."

Bridget recognized the name.
"The Druid's Year!
I think my friend Julia illustrated that—is her name on the cover? Julia Beckett?"

Christopher checked. "Yes, it is. She's a friend of yours, really? She's terribly good."

"I know. She illustrated all my early books. Here, toss that over, will you?"

I'd have recognized Julia's work from the cover alone, from the rich use of colour and the almost fussy amount of detail that were her trademarks. The book itself appeared to be a calendar of days, detailing the seasons and the rituals and feast days of the mystical religion that had brought a sense of order to the ancient Celtic world. Bridget immediately turned to the month of June, looking for her birthday, while Christopher gave his attention back to the bookcase.

"I'd think this comes from Gareth as well," he said, holding up a slim red volume.

James turned, and squinted. "What is that, his play?"

"Mm." Christopher straightened, and flipped a few pages. ' 'Lots of good juicy battle scenes, you know, in this one. Manly stuff."

I stretched my hand out, curious. "May I please see that, for a moment?"

Christopher passed it to James, who was nearer; he tossed it to me in a flutter of pages. "Here, catch," James said. "What do you want it for?"

"Oh, just testing my memory." I skipped to the end of the first act, in search of that one speech by Owain Glyn Dwr. He
had
mentioned dragon kings, surely—that's where that small bit of my dream had been born. That's where ...

"I thought you didn't remember what you'd read," said James. "Only how you felt about it."

"Well, yes. Unless it's poetry."

"Oh, I see," he said, and if I hadn't seen his laughing eyes I would have thought his pride was injured. ' 'So Gareth's work is poetry, while mine is—"

"Yours is wonderful. I love the way you write. But plays read differently than novels," I said, trying to explain.

Bridget, unsticking her nose from
The Druid's Year,
arched an eyebrow. "Jealous, darling?" she asked James.

"Of Gareth? Why on earth would I be jealous?"

I prudently extricated myself from the conversation, turning the pages of
Red Dragon Rising
in search of the passage I thought I remembered . .. yes, here it was. Glyn Dwr's voice. Gareth's words:
The blood in my veins is the blood of Cadwaladr, last of those kings who were named of the dragon...

I read it through again, with satisfaction. I'd succeeded in sorting out every new thing that had entered my dream, now, except for the woman in blue—and I knew there was likely a simple explanation for her, as well.

Across from me, Bridget had turned soft and kittenish again, stretching out her feet to contemplate them. "James?"

"My love?"

"What are we going to do for Christmas lunch?"

He made a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh, his head dropping back for support from the cushions.' 'For God's sake, Bridget..."

"No, I mean, are we eating it here?"

"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it."

She considered the matter a moment, then said, "I think we should. Eat here, that is. It's not a proper Christmas if you don't have lunch at home."

James arched an eyebrow. "Are you going to cook it?"

"I might." She wriggled deeper in her chair, and set her chin deliberately. "My potatoes never do turn out as perfectly as Dilys's, but I make a cracking bread sauce."

Christopher, who'd given up the bookcase and had wandered to one of the tall narrow windows to view the back garden, half-turned to face Bridget. "Could you make chestnut stuffing? The real kind, I mean?"

"If I had the ingredients." She looked pointedly at James.

"All right." He stifled a yawn. "Perhaps we'll go to town tomorrow, and let you do your Christmas shopping."

"I have to buy your present, yet," she told him.

"Well, that settles it. We'll
definitely
go to town." He stretched, and turned to me. "You're being awfully quiet, over there."

"I'm digesting." Reluctantly, I closed the book of Gar-eth's play, and let the pages feather past my fingers. I'd been enjoying my re-reading of it, revelling again in his exquisite use of language, in the rhythm of his words. A
shame the man himself was such an unappealing character. For all I would have loved a chance to represent his talent, I had no desire to deal with
him
that closely.

"Right," said Bridget, angling her wrist to check the time, "we've got another half an hour, then we really should get ready."

"And what," asked James, "would we be getting ready for?"

"The carol service."

"Ah."

"It starts at half past four," she said, "so I should think as long as we leave here at four-fifteen ..."

"I haven't been to church in twenty years," he interrupted, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "It's not my thing. I never could sort out when I should sit, or stand, or whirl about. Who needs the aggravation?"