Named of the Dragon (28 page)

XXXIV

'Tis time that I were gone.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Morte d'Arthur"

He's quiet this morning," said Elen. I slid a little forwards on the sofa, shifting Stevie higher on my lap so that his curls just brushed my chin and I could smell the warm, freshly bathed baby scent of him. All the excitement last night didn't seem to have bothered him any. Head bent, he was deeply absorbed in the red curling ribbon and bow that his mother had given him.

"It isn't much," I told her as she carried on unwrapping the gift I had brought. "It's only a book, and far too old for him right now, of course. But I thought that when he starts to read, you know, it might be nice." I wished that Lewis had thought to include a picture book in the package he'd made for me.

Elen slid the gift wrap off and looked. "Oh,", she said. "It's one of Bridget's."

"Yes, that's the first book she ever had published. And I had her inscribe it, right there in the front, so it might be worth money some day."

"Thank you." She said that with sincerity. "I wish that I had something I could give you, in return."

"I really don't need—"

"I know," she interrupted, brightening a little. "I could let you have a look around the shed, and see if there's anything you like in there."

"You don't have to give me a gift."

' 'Please. I want to. I want to do something to thank you, for all that you've done."

"It was nothing."

But Elen refused to be convinced. She looked at her son, sitting happily there on my lap with his tangle of ribbon clenched tight in one fist. He fluttered it up and down, clearly impressed by the rustling noise, before cramming it into his mouth. "Da!" he told us, triumphant.

"He's safe, now," Elen told me. "Owen said I needn't worry about Dilys, anymore."

Remembering the words that had passed between Owen and Dilys last night in the stable, I couldn't help casting a curious eye over Elen's frail features, seeking some trace of the older man there. Finding none, I said simply, "He seems very fond of you."

"Owen? Oh, yes. He takes care of me," was how she put it, in a tone that didn't question his affection. "It's because of my mother, you see. They were friends. He took care of her, too."

Stevie, apparently liking the taste of the ribbon, held it with both hands now, chewing more lustily, leaning his heavy head back on my shoulder and watching his mother with wide-open eyes.

Elen reached across to touch a finger to his cheek. "He's Owen's namesake, Stevie is. His proper name is Owen Stephen Anthony—I named him before he was born—but he looked like a Stevie, so that's what I called him. The Anthony's after his father," she said, as an afterthought.

I caught the fleeting upwards glance she sent me; saw her bite her lip and look away, as though there were something she wanted to tell me but couldn't. I tried to make it easier. "I thought you told me Tony wasn't Stevie's father. Don't you remember? You said Merlin tricked you."

"Yes," she said, as her head came round gratefully. "Yes, I was tricked. I would never have done it, otherwise. I loved my Tony."

"I know."

"But I'd been drinking, you see. There was wine, and I'm never too clear when I'm drinking. And he kept refilling my glass..."

I waited a moment, debating the wisdom of saying the name, but I had my own idea as to who here would have wanted to seduce her, and in the end my intellectual curiosity won out. "You mean Christopher, don't you?"

Biting her lip even harder, she nodded. "I wouldn't have done it, you know, only ..." Sighing, she folded her hands in her lap, and looked down. "I just made a mistake."

I understood completely, and told her so.

"Afterwards, well, you can imagine how I felt. And it wasn't just me—he felt awful as well," she said. "Really he did. He still does. I mean, not that he's said it in so many words, but I know that he wants to make everything better for Stevie and me. He asked me to marry him once, even."

I couldn't help raising my eyebrows at that.
"Christopher
asked you to marry him?" I could see him supplying her needs, out of guilt—writing cheques, maybe putting her up in a nice little cottage. But
marriage . ..

She nodded, thinking back. "He'd bought a ring and. everything. I told him no," she said. "Because... well, he's just not the sort of man one marries, is he? And besides, I really don't know he's the father, do I? I mean, there's still a chance ..." With hopeful eyes she looked at Stevie, nestled quiet in my arms. "He might be Tony's, mightn't he?"

*-*-*-*-*

"It's an interesting thought," said Gareth, several hours later. We were sitting in his kitchen, with our chairs hitched round to face the glowing fire in the Aga. He stretched out his legs, careful not to disturb Chance, who had fallen asleep on his back on the brick hearth with all four feet up in the air, looking for all the world like something that had just been struck by a lorry.

"Interesting," Gareth said again, still sorting through the Elen-Tony-Christopher connections, "because if what James said was right, about his family coming down the wrong side of the blanket from Henry Tudor, and if Christopher—the bastard that he is—is Stevie's father, then ..." He left the sentence hanging, and I finally had to prompt him.

"Yes?"

"Well, Henry Tudor claimed descent from the ancient Welsh kings. From Cadwaladr."

Again that haunting speech from Gareth's first play chased through my mind in the voice of the rebel Glyn Dwr, five hundred years dead:
The blood in my veins is the blood of Cadwaladr, last of those kings who were named of the dragon.

Although perhaps, as Gareth said, Owain Glyn Dwr had never really died. He'd been given no grave. Just like Arthur, he slept in the hills somewhere waiting to wake, or perhaps to be born once again . ..

Gareth smiled, as though following my thoughts. "And the name of the divine child, as he's usually foretold, is Owen. So," he said, "young Owen Stephen Anthony may yet surprise us all." He tipped his chair back on two legs and balanced it there, with his shoulders to the wall. ' 'Mind you, it won't stop me ripping out Christopher's liver."

"Gareth."

"I'd try for the heart, but I don't think he's got one, the selfish bloody—"

"Gareth," I reminded him, "you promised."

"I promised not to kill him, and I won't. But Tony was a good kid, like the brother that I never had. More than that, he was a good friend, and you don't find those too often. You, of all people," he told me, "should know what it means to lose someone who matters."

That confused me at first. I thought he was speaking of my losing Martin, and knowing Gareth's opinion of Martin I wouldn't have thought he'd have classed him as "someone who matters." But then I saw his face and realized he hadn't meant Martin at all. I looked away and watched the dance of blue flame in the Aga.

"Who told you? Bridget?"

"Elen," he replied. "I'd imagine the chain of events was that Bridget told Christopher, who told Elen, but I don't know for certain. It's hard to keep secrets, you know, in a village." And then he said, "I'm sorry." Only that. Nothing trite about time healing wounds, or the usual things people said to the grieving.

I liked him the better for that. "Thank you."

We sat there in silence and stared at the fire and the shared moment passed. Gareth shifted his shoulders, adjusting his chair in its tilted position. "So you're leaving tomorrow."

"Yes." I'd be driving Bridget's car back to London for her. She and James had left this afternoon, to see his mother, and tomorrow they'd be going on to Bridget's family in the Cots wolds.

"A shame you can't stay on a few more days," he said. ' 'I've got three new horses that need to be exercised, down at Cresselly. I'd hoped you could give me a hand with that."

"Me?"

"Well, I reckoned a woman who'd ridden Prix St. Georges dressage could manage to gallop a horse round a field."

I turned to look at him, surprised. "How did you ... ?"

"I know a lot of things," he said. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes. The lifeboat had been out all night, attending to a tanker that had floundered in the Irish Sea, and Gareth was showing the wear of his efforts. "There's one thing that I don't know, though."

"And what is that?"

"Why you thought to bring Stevie to me, last night."

I floundered a little myself, on that question. "I don't know ... it just seemed like the thing I should do." And then, because he went on sitting there, eyes closed, not saying anything, I felt a pressing need to fill the silence. ' 'I wasn't really thinking very clearly, at the time. It's a good thing that Chance came along when he did, or I might have sat crouched in your garden all night, waiting for you to come home."

"You'd have had a long wait," he agreed, as the dog on the hearth twitched one ear at the sound of his name.

I hadn't meant to tell him what I'd imagined last night in the stable, but to my surprise I heard the words slip out in my own voice: "I thought you
had
come, actually, when I was up with Sovereign. Someone caught me when I fainted, as I fell. I could have sworn that it was you."

"It must have been Merlin again, shifting shapes."

I watched his face, trying to judge if he meant it. And as I watched, his eyes came open.

The room seemed too warm, suddenly. Blaming the Aga, I started to gather my things. "I should really be thinking of getting back."

"Don't go," he said. "Stay to supper."

"I can't. I'll have an early start tomorrow, and I'm still beastly tired..."

"You only have to lift a knife and fork."

"I can't." To emphasize the statement I pushed back my chair and stood, fumbling with my coat. Where
was
the blasted left sleeve? There. I straightened the collar and faced him, composed. "Goodbye, then." I held out my hand. "It's been ... well, it's been ..."

"Quite." I caught the wry twist in his voice, though his face didn't change. The handshake seemed ridiculously formal, after all that had happened this past week, but I didn't know what else to do. One didn't hug a man like Gareth Morgan, or give him that glancing false kiss on the cheek that was the favoured way to greet and part, in my profession. Gareth, I suspected, wasn't the type that went in for all that. I doubted he would show affection lightly, if at all.

Chance, though, was entirely different. His tail nearly wagged itself off in his efforts to show me how much he thought of me, and when I gave his ears a final scratch and turned to leave, he let out a sharp whine of protest.

"He'll miss your walks," said Gareth.

"And I'll miss him. He's good company."

"Better company than me, you mean."

"I never—"

"As you said, I haven't made it easy."

I couldn't argue that, I thought. Instead I frowned, considering the problem. "Bridget," I said, "seems to think it's because of our names, you know. Gareth and Lynette."

"A sort of name-based incompatibility, you mean?"

"That's right. Because they didn't get on in the story."

"She's never read Tennyson, then."

I was tempted to ask what he meant by that, but he'd already moved past me to open the door, so I simply let it pass. "Goodbye," I said, again.

"Goodnight."

It was already dark, and bitter cold. I thought he'd waste no time in going back inside, to where the Aga burned its steady heat upon the hearth. But when I reached the halfway point along the lane between his cottage and the farm, and turned my head for one last look, I saw him standing in the doorway still, a solid shadow fixed within the light. And something told me he'd stay standing there until I'd reached the house and shut the door behind me, and he knew that I was safe.

XXXV

And he that told the tale in older times

Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyonors,

But he that told it later says Lynette.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Gareth and Lynette"

I closed the book of poetry and pushed it to one side. Taking a deep breath, I reached for the telephone, my fingers not quite steady on the keypad. It had taken my assistant, Lewis, the better part of an hour this morning to track down the ex-directory number, and it had taken me an hour more to find the courage to use it, but it was all for nothing. Gareth didn't answer.

I replaced the receiver as Graham, passing in the corridor, put his head round the door of my office.

"You're an idiot," he told me.

"Oh? And why is that?"

It was our first day back after the holidays, and no one was up to speed yet, except Graham. He never slowed down. "I've just come from a meeting upstairs with the powers that be," he informed me, "and somebody said you'd turned down a directorship."

"I did, yes. There were strings attached."

"But we're talking about a
directorship,
Lyn. Your name on the letterhead, all of that."

I told him I could live without my name on the company's letterhead. "Besides, when I'm made a director, I'd rather it be because I'm brilliant at my job, and not because I nabbed some poor sod for our client list."

"My dear girl, you're an agent. Nabbing clients for the list
is
being brilliant at the job." He settled himself in the doorway. "Which reminds me, I hear you've signed Swift."

"Yes."

"Well done," he said, pleased. "How'd you manage it?"

"Actually, I didn't do much at all. It was Bridget who clinched things."

"Bridget? How so?"

I didn't often know a titbit Graham didn't know, and I played it now for full effect. "Let's just say you'd best keep all your Saturdays in June free, and dust off your morning dress."

He stared. "She isn't."

"I'm afraid so. Third time's a charm, so they say."

Graham thought it terribly inconsiderate of Bridget to get married. ' 'This will ruin my finances, you know. When I think of the winnings I'll have to pay out..."

"Cheer up. You can always take bets on how long it will last."

"True." His idle gaze, scanning the room, came to rest in the corner. He lifted his eyebrows. "Good God. What the blazes is that?"

"A Christmas present," I informed him, "from a friend."

"Indeed." He looked at the weather-vane leaning against my office wall, with the gleaming metal dragon perched on top of it, long claws extended, threatening. ' 'You want to be careful where you put that thing. It looks like it might bite."

"It does." I flexed my healing arm in memory.

"On the subject of dragons," he said, "did I hear them correctly upstairs when they said it was Gareth Gwyn Morgan they'd asked you to get?"

"That's right. He lived round the corner from where I was staying."

"He's an arrogant bastard, from what I recall. I don't wonder you couldn't convince him to sign."

I didn't bother telling him I hadn't even tried. Instead, I rose to Gareth's defence. "I shouldn't think it arrogance so much as a desire for privacy."

"Privacy," said Graham, "is the price of fame."

I reminded him that writers all had different motivations. "They aren't all of them in it for fame."

Unconvinced, Graham shifted aside as my young assistant, Lewis, pushed into the doorway. "Lyn? Ivor Whit-comb's on line one."

"Oh, hell. I'm at lunch," I said, scrambling to gather my things.

"Right." Lewis turned and left Graham alone in the doorway to watch me, amused. "You don't really have to go to lunch, surely? I mean, it's only twenty past eleven."

"You don't know Ivor. He'll never take Lewis's word that I'm out—he'll most probably come round to see for himself."

"Ah." He twisted his head to read the title of the paperback on my desk. '
'The Idylls of the Kingl
I didn't know that Tennyson was one of your clients."

"I'm just checking a reference." I scooped up the book with my handbag, preparing to dash. "Care to join me?"

"For lunch? No, I can't. I'm already promised to an American film producer, I'm afraid. Reservations, twelve o'clock," he told me, gloating, "at the Savoy."

My own budget didn't quite extend to the Savoy, but I'd seen a new place on the Strand that looked promising.

Outside the air was sharp with petrol fumes and the various smells of warm bodies pressed close on the pavement. Stripped of its Christmas cheeriness, London looked bored with itself, dull and flat beneath skies that felt heavy with gathering rain. I found myself missing the clean Angle air and the winds off the coast and the deep, quiet calm of the morning.

I'd been restless since my return. The only moment's peace I'd had had come two days ago while I was standing by the yew tree in a little Kentish churchyard, looking down on Justin's grave. I'd only been there twice since the day of the burial—once when they'd laid the headstone, and once on the first anniversary of his death, but I'd found it too hard and I hadn't gone back. This time had been different.

It was as though my holding him at last, alive, if only in a dream, had sealed us both together in a way that went beyond the grave and touched on the eternal. As I'd stood there in the churchyard, where the tiny ivy tendrils had stretched over from my grandmother's grave to twine around the glossy leaves of holly at the base of Justin's stone, I'd felt a sense of continuity—of life returning and repeating endlessly, and falling into slumber.

Someone jostled my arm. Coming back to the present, I took a step sideways to give them more room, but they nudged me again so I stopped altogether and sighed, turning to the nearest shop window in an effort to control my rising temper.

The window glass cast back a dark reflection ... mine, and someone else's. Someone who stood watching me from several feet behind.

I whirled.

Gareth looked distinctly out of place here. Moodily brooding in black jeans and jacket, he looked like Lucifer himself, cast down from heaven.

"You," I said, a little stupidly.

He came closer but kept to his edge of the pavement, so the crowds of bustling people flowed between us, but I scarcely noticed. In one movement they vanished like spokes of a fast-spinning wheel, and I saw only Gareth.

' 'What on earth are you doing in London?'' I asked.

"Following you." He thrust his hands into his pockets and widened his stance. ' 'I was just getting ready to pay you a call when I saw you come barrelling out of the building. So I followed."

"Oh." I couldn't keep the pleasure out of that small word. And then I said, not thinking, "But you told me you'd never come back here again."

"Did I, now?"

"Most emphatically."

He neither denied nor confirmed it. He simply went on standing there and watching me with thoughtful eyes. I'd thought he would be ill at ease in London, perhaps a bit awkward, but instead he looked like... well, like
Gareth,
solid and immovable as ever, planted firmly on the pavement making everyone flow round him as a stream flows round a rock. "In Celtic myths," he said, "there is another well-known character, apart from the divine child. Shall I tell you who he is?"

I nodded, waiting.

"His name changes, of course, but in essence he's always the same. A young hero, of dubious parentage, searching for something—that changes, as well. But the form of his quest," Gareth said, "doesn't change." He was storytelling, speaking levelly across the ever-shifting crowd as though there were no one between us. "This hero, he comes to a wasteland, a place ruled by a dying god, a barren place, and empty."

I knew from his expression he was speaking of himself, and London. "And then what happens?"

"Then there's a woman." His gaze met mine, held it. "A woman of pure heart, who travels to the underworld and heals the dying god, and brings the wasteland back to life."

It would, I knew, be an enormous challenge, trying to restore his faith in people, to convince him that the world in which I lived and moved—the world he'd turned his back on seven years ago—was not the evil place that he'd imagined it to be. I asked, "And does the hero find the thing he's after, in the end?"

He crossed the pavement then, and stood beside me, looking down. "I think he does, yes." Someone brushed past and joggled us both and my book fell. He bent to retrieve it. Reading the title, he handed it back with unreadable eyes.

As our fingers touched, a glancing touch, I felt again that spreading warmth, the sense of promise. "Would you like to come to lunch?" I asked. "I know this little place nearby that's very trendy, full of actors."

He frowned in hesitation, and I tossed his own words back at him.

"You've only got to lift a knife and fork."

I didn't realize how much I'd missed Gareth Morgan's smile until I saw it. He suppressed it deliberately, studied my face. "Will Simon Holland pay for this?"

"Well, naturally."

"Right, then. I'll come to lunch. But I will not be held responsible," he told me, "for what happens."

And with one hand at my back he steered me back into the ebb and flow of life along the pavement.