The Winter Witch (14 page)

“Ho! Hup!
Dewch! Heiptrw ho!
” he calls, before whistling again, this time at Bracken, who instantly recognizes the signal and speeds off in a wide curve so as to arrive swiftly at the rear of the herd. The rain is falling so hard and so heavy now that the noise of it half drowns his words as he turns to Morgana. “Go to the lower side. Keep below the cattle. Not too close. We must bring them down steady, not running, mind.”

Morgana nods and leans her body to turn Prince, giving him his head so that he willingly canters across the wet turf. The cattle lower their heads as he and Morgana pass. Their horns are short but sharp and shining in the rain. The bolder of the animals snort, and one or two dig at the ground with a hoof, their eyes wide.

“Ho! Come on, then! Ho! Ho!
Dewch!
” Cai waves his arm as he shouts, and urges Honey into a thudding trot, taking the higher ground, so that he is near the front of the herd, but just above them. He knows they need to gain forward movement before he can take up position ahead of them. They will follow him well enough once they are settled and resigned to being moved. For now he must assist Bracken in pushing them forward, and, with Morgana’s help, keep them straight and headed toward the track that will lead them off the hill. Already he is wet through and knows Morgana must be, too. It has been so hot, and his body is so coated with sweat and dust, that the warm rain is a blessed relief. Even so, it is worrying. Beneath Honey’s hooves water has even now begun to bubble and flow as the baked soil rejects it. Within minutes the terrain will become slippery, with the dusty track turning to slick mud before they can descend to the farm. He snatches off his hat, waving it as he yells at the cattle, eager to get them, to get everyone, off the mountain. For now the storm is fully upon them. Thunder crashes with such volume that sensible thought is impossible. Simultaneously the sky is illuminated by sheets of lightning which momentarily replace the slate-grey storm clouds, bleaching all color from the sky, revealing the landscape in a jittery, preternatural brightness. The cattle begin to give voice to their nervousness, so that even between the cacophonous growls of thunder the air is filled with noise. Water and noise. Cai squints through the rain coursing down his face. Morgana and Prince are a single, blurred shape moving back and fore, keeping the herd tight together, deftly retrieving a stray steer. She is more capable than he could have hoped, and he is profoundly glad of her help, but a part of him wishes she were safely back in the house. As long as there is only sheet lightning there is no real danger, but Cai knows the mountain weather well enough not to be complacent. If the nature of the storm shifts, which it could in an instant, forks of lightning will start striking down from the heavens, searching for the highest objects, which can conduct them to the wet earth. And, on this treeless hilltop, there is nothing higher than the cattle, the horses, and the riders.

“Ho! Bracken, steady, m’n!” Cai cautions the dog, who, without the calming influence of Meg, and barely able to hear his master’s whistles and commands, is quickly becoming overexcited, pushing the herd too fast. “That’ll do!” Cai hollers, but his words are completely erased by an almighty crack of thunder directly above their heads.

When the first spike of lightning splits the sky it does so with such ferocity that at first Cai thinks he himself has been struck. There is a ringing in his ears followed by a calamitous roaring of the cattle. Time seems to stop, and in that frozen moment he sees the celestial fire find its route through the three rearmost cattle. He sees the jagged light reach them, encompass them, and enter them. He hears the nerve-splitting crack as it hits them, hears the agonized cries of the surrounding beasts, and the terrible hissing of unimaginable heat on wet bodies. Later he will swear he could smell the aroma of sizzling skin and cauterized flesh as the unstoppable power of the lightning seared its way through the cattle, like hell’s merciless branding iron held in place until meat, muscle, and bone yield beneath it.

Three young bullocks are dead before their superheated bodies thud to the ground. A fourth is left senseless and immobile. A fifth and sixth sustain vicious burns to their backs. Terror travels through the herd as quick as the lightning itself. If time had, for a moment, paused, now it speeds forward as if at twenty times its normal pace. Cai watches in horror as the cattle, moving as one terrified mass, raise their heads and begin their stampede. He digs his heels into the old mare’s flanks, urging her after the disappearing stock, but she knows her own limitations, and is clumsy and wary of such a reckless descent. He shouts after the cattle, calling them back, knowing that his words are lost amid the thunderous drumming of their hooves on the stony ground and their petrified bellowing as they run. Bracken, however fleet of foot, is left behind, an ever-widening gap opening up between dog and herd. Cai whistles frantically to send him below the beasts to try to turn them back up the side of the hill. The corgi’s oversized ears serve him well. Picking up his master’s command this time he darts downward, quickly catching up with Morgana and Prince. Morgana is doing her best to maneuver the animals, but with little effect. Cai can see her attempting to steer Prince alongside the outer cattle, using him to lean into the panicked creatures to guide them upward. But the pony is too small, and the cattle too terrified. Prince is surefooted and willing, but he is no match for the muscled cattle, and, were he to trip and fall, such close contact could easily result in both pony and rider being trampled. Cai, being above and now almost completely behind the stampede, is reduced to the status of an appalled observer. If the cattle are not turned, but are allowed to descend the narrow pass at such speed there is no possibility of them all surviving the descent. The track is too narrow to accommodate the shape of the herd as it is, and with the beasts so panicked they will not step into place behind one another but charge blindly as one. They must be turned.

“Morgana!” Cai screams at her, waving his hat madly. “Morgana! You must turn them! They will go over the edge. Send them up! Up!”

Morgana gallops on beside them, Prince slipping and stumbling on the waterlogged ground but never once balking or slowing his pace. She is keeping up with the herd, but cannot turn them by her presence alone. Bracken is with her, barking wildly now, but to no avail. It is not enough.

“Call to them, Morgana!” Cai shouts as loud as he is able but he is already too far behind to connect with the cattle, all force and authority taken from his voice by the rumbling of hundreds of hooves, the bellowing of the beasts, and the relentless, deathly music of the storm. Still he prays she will be able to hear him. “Use your voice, Morgana!” he begs. “They will listen to you. You must call to them! Morgana, for the love of God … speak!”

But she does not. She looks back at him, her face stricken, her mouth open in silent torment. At the last minute she pulls hard on the reins, causing Prince to throw up his head and wheel around, for the way forward has become too narrow for them to proceed farther. In seconds the herd has moved ahead of her and is charging along the track that follows the side of the mountain down. Cai forces his reluctant horse after them. He reaches the brow of the hill, Morgana slightly in front of him, just in time to see the calamity reach its inevitable conclusion. The cattle charge on to the slender pass, and, too late, the front-runners realize there is insufficient room for them all. They swerve and push and scramble in an effort to stay on the track, but the force and speed of the stampede make such changes in direction and pace impossible. Cai watches in disbelief as his livestock plunge over the edge and disappear down the lethally vertiginous and rocky mountainside. On and on they go, like a seething torrent, pouring in a black waterfall, relentless and unstoppable. The doomed cattle charge to their deaths as if the devil himself is driving them on, on and on until all save a handful have gone, vanished, stepped into nothing and dropped, silent at last, to the stony valley floor two hundred feet below.

7.

He despises me now, I am certain of it. How can he not? He watched me let his herd rush to their end. Watched me fail to stop them. Watched me, Morgana dumb and dim, who could not make a sound to save them.
Could
not. But he will not understand that.
Would
not, he surely thinks. Thinks that it was my choice to leave them rumble on to meet their deaths, his marvelous cattle, his livelihood. Did he but know that I summoned every morsel of my energy, in whatever shape, to try to save them. But my will was of no use; it would not work for me when I needed it most, for my mind was in such turmoil, all happened with such speed, and the beasts were too strong and too possessed of their own terror for me to be able to affect them.

And more than this, it was as if some unseen force was resisting my attempts to control the herd. I sensed a strong presence, even over and above that elemental force of the storm. For that was a storm the like of which, in all my years of knowing and loving the mountains, I have never encountered before. It was not born merely of nature, I am certain of it. It was as if there was something, or someone, provoking and directing the very weather about us. The notion that such power can be bent to the will of any one being terrifies me. But who? And how? And, for this is what torments me,
why
? Why would anyone wish to ruin my husband? To see Ffynnon Las fail. Or to do him harm? Or was
I
the intended victim? I have no answers to these questions, and but one small clue as to where the truth might be found. For when we were on the point of losing the herd, when the storm raged at its most fierce, when the animals were in the grip of terror, and when I proved unable to change the calamitous course of events, something strange tweaked at my attention. Something altogether out of place. Only now, away from the turmoil and the desperation, have I been able to identify what it was that further perplexed me. It was a singular, memorable, and nauseating stink. The exact same stench that had turned my stomach in the chapel.

And what has my husband left to take on the drove now? Only a handful of the herd were able to stop themselves falling. A handful will not turn about the fortunes of Ffynnon Las. Has he purchased sufficient beasts from farmers to even make the long journey to London worth his while? He will not talk to me of these things, and why should he, when he holds me responsible…? I failed him, that is the truth. These past two days, since that terrible moment on the mountain, he has scarcely said a word to me, and none that was not necessary. His face is clouded with anger, as if the storm still rages deep inside him. Anger and grief, too, I believe, for I think it not an exaggeration to say he loved those fine, fearsome animals. ’Tis true, their fate was to be slaughtered one day, but not all of them, and not in such terror, not so brutally, not in such anguish. And not for nothing. For most lie rotting at the bottom of the precipice, their value decaying for want of access. The exultant cries of the buzzards and kites can be heard even now as they feast upon such bounty as they have never seen before. Foxes, too, will come and gorge themselves, tearing limbs from their sockets, devouring flesh and drinking blood and crunching bones until nothing is left but food for the worms.

If only he knew that he cannot hate me more than I hate myself. I have not slept but the roaring of those poor panicked cattle fill my dreams. Last night I forced myself to visit them, witchwalking to the very place where they lie. It is not a place of peace. I could still taste their fear in the wet air. Even the sky continued to weep, it seemed to me, the rain not having ceased since the weather broke. The tempest has passed and been replaced by a dull greyness and melancholy rainfall.

And now I must dress in more of Catrin’s finery, drag a brush through my knotted hair, tie a bonnet on my head, and accompany my husband to chapel once again. The idea of it fills me with dread. The memory of my humiliation there has faded; it is not that which sends a chill through me at the prospect of returning to Soar-y-Mynydd. No, it is the knowledge that Reverend Cadwaladr will be there. If it were in my power to do so I would choose never to be in his terrible presence again. He made his opinion of me plain. He delivered his ultimatum. He crushed Meg beneath the wheels of his gig without hesitation. I know he will destroy me just as coldly if he decides to do so. But I am not so easily put out. What proof has he against me? None. What actions of mine can he show as evidence that I am a witch? None. What witnesses can he call to my being anything other than a young woman whose strangeness lies only in my having come from another place, and in my wordlessness? None. This is my home now.

I know also that I have caused Cai enough trouble thus far. He needs me, for without me he cannot be
porthmon
. To leave him now would be to cast him to ruin, I am certain of it. I would prefer not to have to face the monstrous Cadwaladr at all, but Cai requires me to be with him at chapel, on his arm. He needs me beside him today, for all to see. It must cost him to look at me now. How he must replay the terrible events of the storm in his mind, and how he must see so very clearly my sorry part in it. I must do what I can to help. To make amends. However much I would prefer to stay away from the reverend, I cannot refuse Cai, not now. Oh, how I wish Mam were here to guide me, to help me be what he needs me to be. I am fortunate indeed to have Mrs. Jones to assist me as much as she does.

Cai is waiting for me in the trap and barely glances at me as I climb in beside him. I have found a modest bonnet for the occasion and am wearing a somber green dress, the plainest I could find. Mrs. Jones stitched up the hem for me and showed me how to pull my stays tight to draw in the extra width about my narrow frame. The rain has slowed to a fine drizzle. As we set off I cannot help thinking how different our mood is from the first time he took me to chapel. Prince trots onward just as briskly, but now Cai is as silent as I, and it is not a comfortable quietness. It is as if he does not trust himself to be civil to me. I confess I am surprised at how much his displeasure affects me. I had not thought to care so much for his opinion. I had not realized how much I have come to take his approval as a given. And how much I have come to value it.