Named of the Dragon (14 page)

I'm not sure mine defeated Gareth, but it did surprise him. I saw his eyebrows lifting in the instant before someone stepped in front of me and blotted out my view.

"Well, well," James murmured. "Look who's here."

Elen didn't hear him. Shifting Stevie higher on her shoulder, she faced me with that same bright-eyed and happy look I'd seen that afternoon, a look laced through with secret knowledge.

"Hello," she said, turning in the aisle so that her back was to the window arched above the narrow pew where we'd been sitting. I hadn't really studied the window earlier, only the memorial dedication along its bottom edge, but now I saw it showed, appropriately enough, the Nativity. I looked at Elen, standing like a modern incarnation of the stained-glass Madonna behind her, and I smiled. "Hello."

"Stevie wanted to see you."

I rather doubted that. He was asleep, for one thing, with his hand curled in a fist around a waving lock of Elen's hair. But I was reckless still with Christmas spirit, and on impulse I indulged her. "That's very nice of him," I said, and bravely touched one finger to his hand. "Hello there, Stevie."

I'd meant it as a glancing touch, a tiny stroke, and nothing more. But Stevie's small hand spread, and reached, and curled again, and held my finger fast. A flash of warmth, like an electric shock, shot upwards to my shoulder as my gaze fell for the first time on the words set in the stained-glass window, underneath the blue-robed Virgin and her glowing infant:
Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.

I tried to pull away, but then some stronger instinct took control, and of their own free will my fingers closed round Stevie's little ones. The heat seared down and through me, swift as wildfire chased by wind, and as it moved I felt some small and frozen corner of my heart begin to melt.

*-*-*-*-*

Perhaps that was the trick of it, I thought—to face the thing I feared the most and conquer it. I felt strangely free, walking home with the others in the early evening darkness. The breeze had gathered strength. It bit through the folds of my jacket and jostled the leaves of the trees in the playground, scooting the heavy clouds over the sky so the silvery moonlight grew dimmer and flickered and vanished completely. James rustled his way through the thick grass, ahead of me. "If I hadn't seen diat myself," he confessed, "I would not have believed it. She never lets anyone touch him."

"I told you," said Bridget. "She thinks Lyn's some sort of a guardian angel."

"And where did she get that idea, I wonder?"

"From someone named Margaret, apparently." She swung through the kissing gate, thinking. "I wonder who—?"

"God damn and blast!"

Christopher, several steps ahead, turned back at his brother's outburst. "What's the matter?"

"The cows have been through here." James raised one foot in deep disgust, as I came through the gate behind him, bringing up the rear.

"Cheer up," I said. "We're nearly home."

"Oh, I'm immensely cheered," he drawled. "Church does have that effect on me."

Beside us, Bridget laughed. "It must be something in the male chromosome. Poor Gareth didn't look too thrilled to be there, either."

"Yes, well Gareth," James informed us, "goes to noble lengths for Elen."

Christopher turned again, shaking his head. "It's not for Elen." The clouds above us shifted and a gleam of pale light caught his hair, his eyes. "Gareth isn't interested in Elen. What he does, he does for Stevie."

"Really?" Bridget asked. "And how do you know this?"

"I know all kinds of things." His faint smile, I thought, was deliberately secretive, and watching him, I wondered if I hadn't maybe underestimated Christopher. It took a clever man to lay the proper bait for Bridget.

His tactic worked.

Before he'd reached the tower she was walking by his side, her face tipped up beguilingly, her laughter lilting on the evening breeze.

Beside me, James sighed heavily. "I don't think I can bear it."

I glanced at him, but he was looking at his watch, and not at Bridget. In the faint illumination of the dial I saw him frown. "We still have half an hour to go till opening time."

XVI

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:

I
will be
with him in trouble;

I will deliver him.

Psalms, 91:15

I was falling, and flailing my arms through the blackness ...

And then I felt the bed beneath me, warm and safe and solid. My eyes came open slowly; saw the firelight dancing wildly with the shadows on my walls. She was here, I thought, lifting my head from my pillow. Here, in my room. By the window.

She moved, and the curtains blew forward and billowed around her like sails round a masthead. "This is a good thing you have done."

I turned my face towards her, pushing the tangle of hair from my eyes. ' 'What did I do?''

She moved again. The blue gown whispered to a halt a hair's breadth from the bedpost, and the firelight warmed the curve of one pale cheek as she gazed down at me. She'd lost her air of sadness, and seemed calmer now. "It will not be forgotten."

"What won't?"

"But mark me well, you must take care tomorrow," she said gravely, "for tomorrow will be Arthur's Light, a day of special danger. You must keep your vigil well, and be not swayed by the deceiver."

"You always speak in riddles," I complained. "Why can't you just... ?"

"I speak the truth, as plainly as I know it, and in (ruth your path is perilous. That you would do this for his sake betrays the greatness of your heart, and leaves me ever in your debt."

It was a strange sensation, to be dreaming, and to know that I was dreaming, and yet to feel myself responding as though everything were real. As she turned from the bedpost, preparing to leave, I pushed back my covers and scrambled out after her. "Wait," I said, "you can't go yet. You haven't said what I'm supposed to do."

She glided on, not looking back. "Sleep now, for on the morrow you will need your strength."

It suddenly occurred to me that something was missing. "Your son," I said, frowning. "Where is he?"

But already she was at the window, and the velvet draperies reached to draw her deep into their shadows while the glass became a mirror that reflected my own image.

Mine, and someone else's.

A smaller figure stood beside me, softened by the rippled glass, the blazing fire behind him setting all of him aglow until his golden curls became a halo shining round his upturned face.

And as I caught my breath and pulled my gaze away from our reflection, looking down to meet the child's eyes, I felt his hand slip warm and trusting into mine.

XVII

Then to her tower she climb'd, and took the shield,

There kept it, and so lived in fantasy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Launcelot and Elaine"

Owen was mending a fence at the back of the house, by the dovecote. He heard me coining up the drive and looked round, eyebrows lifting. "What's this? I thought all you London folk kept to your beds in the morning."

"Not me." I couldn't have kept to my bed if I'd wanted to. My dream had changed shape once again, and that bothered me, and when I was bothered by something, I walked.

"Oh, that's right. You were prowling round Gareth's back garden at dawn, weren't you, yesterday?" Grinning, Owen levered the fence rail back into position and reached for his hammer, "Very brave you were, too. There are some who go into that garden and never come back."

I smiled. "He buries them under the flower-beds, does he?"

"Most likely." Pounding one nail in, he picked up another and gave me a once-over glance. "You'll be joining them, lovely, if you don't put on something warmer than that."

"Oh, I'm fine." Holding out one arm, I showed him a fold of my thick home-knit pullover. "See? It's perfectly warm."

"Mm." His eyes remained unconvinced, fatherly. Bending his head, he positioned the nail.

It
was
chilly this morning. The wind had changed direction overnight, and blew now steadily from the southwest, pushing before it a low smudge of sooty grey cloud that chased up the long pastures and over the Haven. Outside the cosy pullover, my hands and ears grew tingly in the sharp air and my cheeks flushed red, invigorated.

I folded my arms in contentment and stood to one side to watch Owen at work. "What's the Welsh word for fence, then?"

"Don't know. I don't speak Welsh." His upward glance twinkled. "You won't find too many who do, in this part of the country."

"Gareth does."

"He's an import."

"He said he was born here, in Pembrokeshire."

"Oh, he's a Pembrokeshire man, true enough, but he comes from the other side, north of the Landsker."

"The Landsker? What's that?"

"It's a kind of dividing line, marked by the old Norman castles and such like, that separates us in the south from our Welsh-speaking neighbours. The Normans came down here just after the Conquest," he said, with the sureness of someone who'd studied his history at school. "Came and built Pembroke Castle, and fought with the local Welsh chiefs, who were already fighting each other. The old prince who'd kept them together had died—Rhys ap Tudor, his name was—and things were a bit of a shambles. And it weren't pure Welsh, anyway, even back then. There were Vikings who'd come in the raids and then settled here, taking Welsh wives. And Vikings," said Owen, "were kin to the Normans."

"Of course." I remembered my own history lessons.

" 'Norman' was really a short form for 'Norseman,' wasn't it?"

"That's right. So anyway, after a bit of a battle the Normans won out, and they brought in a boatload or two of Flemish refugees to thin the Welsh out more, and we've been different ever since. 'Little England beyond Wales,' that's us."

"Is that why the place names sound English down here?"

Owen nodded. "Some are English, some more Scandinavian. Angle, that's Norse for a hook," he said, giving the nail one last tap before testing his weight on the fence rail. "Though with all these bilingual signs now, they've had to invent names in Welsh for some towns. Bloody foolishness, that. You can't slap a new name on a sign and change nine hundred years of history."

"So you're not really Welsh, then."

"Oh, yes I am." Straightening, Owen looked down at me proudly, his grey eyes lit deep with a warrior's fire. "I'm as Welsh as the next man, and more Welsh than some, no matter what the bloody purists say. Any fool can learn a language, that's no measure of a nation. It's your blood, your birth, that matters."

He was right, of course. An Englishman could study Welsh, and speak it like a native, but he'd always be an Englishman. Nationality went deeper than the words a person spoke.

But although he'd firmly set me straight, he was too nice a man to take offence. Stretching his shoulders, he rested one hand on his hip. "Are you off on your walk?"

"I don't think so." I squinted, assessingly, up at the clouds. "It looks too much like rain."

"Then you might as well come help me see to the cows. It'll give you a bit of excitement." He winked at me, turning, and whistled a tune as he led me away from the fence and the dovecote, making an arc round the back of the house. The whistle turned into a hum, then a full-throated song, in his pleasant bass-baritone. I recognized the Christmas tune, and smiled at the words.

"Do you think there's much chance of it?"

"What?"

"A white Christmas."

Owen laughed. "No, we might have a wet one, but never a white one. We haven't had snow here in Angle for years. They might get it in Pembroke, though—inland, away from the coast."

We'd reached the row of sheds at the head of the drive. Owen paused at the third one—the green one closest to the house—and gave the door a rattle. "There, now," he said, as the open padlock tumbled to the ground. "She's gone and done it again. With alt of the things she's got stashed in this shed you would think she'd remember to lock it."

He meant Elen, I gathered. Christopher had told me that she used this shed to store the antique furniture she'd gathered and intended to restore.

Owen bent to pick the padlock up. "The cats like to follow her in here, you know, when she's fetching a piece, and she used to always worry she might leave one trapped inside, not knowing. That's why she didn't like locking the door. But now I've put the cat flap in, there shouldn't be a problem."

I looked down at the piece of rubber matting nailed across the bottom of the door. "I shouldn't think you'd want the cats walking on all of that furniture."

Owen assured me they couldn't get in on their own. Peeling up one corner of the rubber, he showed me how he'd made the flap to open out, not in, by cutting the rough-edged hole several inches smaller than the matting. It was still a fair-sized hole, and I saw why a moment later when, intrigued by Owen's fiddling with the lock, the big tabby stepped from the tangle of fuchsia and rosebushes behind us and came forwards to investigate.

"Go on, Big Boy, get out of that," said Owen, nudging the creature away from the flap as he clicked the padlock
firmly into place. The cat, unoffended, continued down the narrow flight of concrete steps descending to the courtyard behind Elen's house.

It looked a peaceful place. At the bottom of the steps a fig tree stretched its knobby branches clear across to rest upon the roof slates of the jutting back part of the middle house, forming an arch leading into the courtyard of sloping stone terraces hemmed in by low whitewashed walls, weeping green where the weather had loosened the mortar. The coping stones, too, had been softened with green, breaking only to make enough space for a gate at the north-eastern corner. That gate —painted blue, like the drainpipes and doors at the back of the East House— led into the yard and beyond to the low line of metal-roofed cowsheds.

Owen and I took the shorter route, round the side wall of the green storage shed and down a plainer flight of steps. The yard had a comforting animal smell. I trailed after Owen, not minding the mud and manure that clung to my boots. "Can I help you with anything? Really," I said, when he looked at me, doubtful, "I do have experience mucking out horses."

"These are cows."

"Well, I know that, but..."

"No, they're night and day from horses, cows," said Owen, solemn-faced, as we entered the calf shed, "so you'd do better to just sit down over there, and keep me company. All right?"

I sat on an old-fashioned milking stool inside the doorway, and smiled. "Are you always this difficult?"

"Well now, I'm bound to be, living with Dilys. It's eat or be eaten in our house," he told me. He picked up a pitchfork and bent to his work, and I watched him a moment in silence.

"Owen?"

"Yes, lovely?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Apparently so."

"What Dilys said yesterday, about Elen thinking a dragon was trying to take Stevie, was that really true?"

"It was." He shook out a forkful of straw and the dust scattered upwards. "My Dilys might gossip, but everything's fact."

"Why a dragon?"

"What's that?"

I frowned, and tried to speak more clearly. "I can understand her worrying. That's normal, every mother worries. And because she lost her husband, I can understand why Elen might be scared of losing Stevie, too. But I should think that she'd be worried about
people
doing harm to him, not creatures from some fairy tale."

"Ah, but Elen," Owen told me, "likes her fairy tales. She lives them. Always off in her own little world, Elen was, as a child. She was different, you know. Like her mother." His eyes, for a moment, grew soft. "Always believing in magic, and princes. Elen once told me that Tony was her Pwyll"—in his voice that came out as "Pwill"— "and that he'd saved her from unhappiness, like Pwyll had saved Rhiannon."

"Who?"

"Rhiannon."

I looked a blank, and Owen shook his head and smiled, tut-tutting at my ignorance. "And you an educated lady. That's the oldest of Welsh tales, that is. The first branch of the Mabinogi."

"Oh, the
Mabinogion."
I was at least aware of the existence of the book of Welsh myths, though I'd never read it. "So Rhiannon was ..."

"A princess."

"Ah."

"You'll have to read the story," he said, grinning. "I aren't going to spoil it for you. The important part is that, in time, Prince Pwyll and Rhiannon had a son, a little baby, who was stolen by ..."

"A dragon," I concluded for him, nodding understanding. "So that's where Elen gets it, then."

"That's right."

"But you don't think she's mad?"

"Who, Elen? No," he said, as though the very thought were quite ridiculous. "She has her fancies, sometimes, but it's just her way of coping, see. She did it as a child, to keep from crying when the other children called her names because she had no father. And she did it when her mother died, and now again with Tony. No, Elen knows what's real," he told me, certain. "She's just inherited her mother's way of seeing things, the Celtic way, that sees the past and future worlds all blended in with ours. That isn't mad, it's Welsh." He speared another clump of straw and shook it clean. '
'My
mother always made me walk round fairy circles in the grass, so I wouldn't step inside and disappear. Now, that's as strange as Elen's dragon, but I grew up fine," he reasoned. "So will Stevie."

"I'm sure you're right."

"I'm always right." He looked at me and winked. "Besides, with you protecting him, how could the boy go wrong?"

"What?"

"I heard what happened in the church. She doesn't let just anybody touch that baby, lovely. You'll be stuck with playing guardian, now."

"I'm not sure I want to play guardian."

"Oh, it's only for the week." Owen's level voice made light of my objections. "You'll do fine. Just see that you don't take him up the tower."

"Why is that?"

"Because the tower," he advised me, "is where Elen's dragon lives."