Named of the Dragon Page 7

  He slowly turned to study me, and I saw his eyes harden; grow wary. "And what the devil would you know of my talent?"

  "Quite a lot, as it happens. I was looking forward to meeting you, but—"

  "Christ," he broke in, ill-tempered, "what rag is it this time? You won't bloody listen, the lot of you, will you? You're wasting my time and your own, coming here. I don't give interviews."

  "Very wise of you," I said. "One reads enough unpleasant things, these days."

  And then, because I always liked to have the last word in an argument, I wheeled again and walked away along the muddy path, hoping that my rigid back looked properly disdainful.

  *-*-*-*-*

  "Well, of course you didn't like him." Bridget buttered her toast with the superior air of a fictional detective who'd outwitted Scotland Yard. "It's the name thing, you know."

  I lowered my coffee cup, frowning. "What name thing?"

  "Well, think now. What's your name?"

  "Lyn."

  "Your full name."

  "Lynette."

  "And he's Gareth." She reached for the marmalade, smugly. "Arthurian legend, remember? Lynette went to Camelot to find a brave knight who could rescue her sister, only instead of getting Launcelot she ended up with Gareth."

  "Oh right," I said, as memory stirred. "She gave him proper hell, as I recall."

  ' 'Mm. They hated each other. So you see, you can hardly expect to get on with my Gareth."

  "Because of the name thing."

  "Exactly."

  "And was there anyone who did get on with Gareth, in the legend?"

  "Lynette's sister," said Bridget. "The one he went to rescue. They fell madly in love with each other."

  "Ah, well, there you are, then. I don't have a sister."

  "Neither do I, which means that you and I are sort of sisters by default, doesn't it? So Gareth has to fall in love with me."

  I knew better than to try to sort that one through before I'd had my second cup of coffee. "I suppose that there's some planet, somewhere," I told her, "where all of your theories make sense." Yawning, I stretched and looked around the sunlit kitchen. ' 'Are we the only ones up?''

  "Well, I haven't a clue about Christopher, but James was still snoring when I came downstairs. He's a night owl, is James. I don't know that I've ever seen him mobile before noon."

  "That does sound appealing."

  "What?"

  "Sleeping till noon."

  Bridget smiled. "Don't get any ideas. You're coming with me, on a top secret mission." Lifting the lid of the teapot, she checked the colour of its contents before pouring her first cup. "I've already talked to Owen, and he said he'd be happy to help us."

  Owen, I remembered, was the man taking care of the sheep and the cows and the farm. I looked at her, faintly suspicious. "To help us do what?"

  "You'll see."

  "Bridget—"

  "It's nothing illegal," she promised. "You needn't look so disapproving. Owen's much too honest to commit to something truly underhand."

  "Mm," I said, reserving judgement.

  "You'll like Owen. He drives a van," she added, as though that were somehow relevant.

  I'd known Bridget long enough to learn her thoughts were rarely random. "And do we need a van," I asked, "for this secret mission of yours?"

  "You'll see." Checking her wristwatch, she sugared her tea. "At any rate, we have another half an hour before we're supposed to meet him. Time enough for one more round of toast," she told me, happily.

  I would never know where Bridget put it all. She seemed to be continually eating, yet her waistline stayed disheart-eningly tiny. I had only to look at a rasher of bacon, myself, and my trousers felt instantly one size too small.

  They felt rather tight now, as I pushed back my chair. "Let me just go and change, then."

  "What for?"

  "Well, I can't go like this. I've been walking through mud." I twisted one leg round to show her the dark splattered hem. "And I only ever wear this jumper walking, it's all frayed at the bottom."

  "It's fine," said Bridget, firmly. "No one will see you, we're not going far."

  "Yes, well, the last time you said that we ended up at that garden party with all those photographers from Hello! and Private Eye milling about, remember? And I'd rather not be flashed around the nation in this jumper."

  "Oh, ye of little faith." She sighed. "AH right, then, change it if you must, but don't be too long, will you? And for God's sake, don't wake James."

  IX

  Now, worn out with weeping, she is not what she was.

  Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini

  I liked Owen on sight. He was an older man, grey-haired and ruddy-faced, with a solid, square build and big capable hands and crinkled grey eyes that seemed to find the world amusing. I felt rather less fond of his van. Compact and red, wanting only the words "Royal Mail" on its sides, it had not been designed with its passengers' comfort in mind, and my seat in the back felt decidedly wedged. My only consolation was that Bridget wasn't driving, and she had said we weren't going very far.

  As we rolled through the east gates of Castle Farm, down to the bay, Bridget leaned to look up through the windscreen. "I do hope it won't rain." The morning had grown milder since I'd come back from my walk, and the wind had carried clouds in from the sea. They gently bounced off one another; clung and stuck and thickened, softening the sunlight till there were no shadows left.

  Owen looked, too, with a more expert eye. "There's no rain in those clouds. Not for now, anyway." He took the road over the bridge, tooting his horn at a young woman walking ahead of us, pushing a pram. I looked quickly aside at the sight of the pram, so I only got a glimpse of her, a small form dressed in brilliant blue with masses of bright curly hair.

  Bridget turned in her seat as we bumped our way up to the main village street. "That was Elen."

  "Have you met her, yet?" asked Owen.

  "No, I..."

  "Lovely girl," he pronounced her. "She's what we used to call a 'flower child,' a true free spirit. Never has a spiteful word for anyone." Turning into the empty village street, he went the short distance along to the hedged road signposted to Pembroke and turned again, shaking his head. "She hasn't had an easy life, that little one. You know she lost her husband?"

  "Yes."

  "Lyn's a widow, too," said Bridget, using me as proof that Elen's hardships weren't unique.

  Owen looked to me for confirmation. "Are you? I'm so sorry. You'll know how the poor girl feels, then. She and Tony ... well, they made a handsome couple. So in love. It's always a shame when the young die," he said.

  Bridget, quick to take advantage of the opportunity to gossip, said, "He died before Stevie was born, didn't he?"

  Owen nodded. "Elen didn't even know that she was pregnant, at the time. When she found out... well, I think it was the only thing that kept her going all last winter, knowing she was carrying his child."

  From Bridget's expression, I knew she was remembering the comments we had heard last night about the baby's parentage. Knowing she was capable of saying something tactless and that Owen, who appeared quite fond of Elen, wouldn't like it, I tried to gently guide the conversation off that topic, asking Owen whether Elen had family in Angle, to help her.

  "No, not anymore. There was only her mother, and she died a while ago. Cancer," he told me. "And Tony's people, they live way up north somewhere. Didn't even come for the funeral. They didn't approve of his marrying Elen, you see, so they just cut him off. Very cold."

  Cold indeed. I couldn't imagine a family that did that. After all, my parents hadn't been keen on my marrying Martin, but they'd always treated him with courtesy.

  Owen shrugged. ' 'Elen sent them a notice, when Stevie was born, but they sent it right back. Said he wasn't their grandson. Imagine."

  Bridget refused to be sidetracked. "Still, she isn't completely alone, is she? I mean, I'm told Gareth takes care of her and the baby."

  "Well,
Gareth was good friends with Tony, wasn't he?" Owen's tone implied the fact was common knowledge. "And I know he still feels guilty, that he wasn't around to stop Tony from going to Freshwater West. It was dangerous weather for angling that day, with that storm coming in. Those waves come out of nowhere—they figure one knocked Tony clear off the rocks. It was hours before they recovered his body."

  "I can't see how it would have made a difference, Gareth being there," said Bridget. "You can't protect somebody from a wave."

  Owen agreed. "But guilt's an awful thing, you know. Just sits and twists inside you. Twists a person's mind, it does."

  I knew exactly what it did—I'd lived with it these past five years, wondering if Ivor's accusation might be right, if my riding had somehow done damage to Justin, or if it was some medication I'd taken, or maybe that one glass of wine at the publishers' party... Gareth Gwyn Morgan, I thought, didn't know what guilt was. He wanted to try walking round in my shoes.

  Owen seemed to hold the man in high esteem, though. He smiled as he said, "Besides, if Gareth wants to think a thing, you're wasting breath to argue. He's a stubborn man."

  I could have thought of quite another adjective. Instead, I bit my tongue and took an interest in the scenery. We were nearly at Pembroke now, approaching the lovely green wood on its outskirts.

  "There's a house for a book, now," said Owen, nodding at an old home coming into view just out my window. It stood some distance back from the road at the edge of the wood, darkly brooding. "My mother used to have to come past here by horse and trap, when she was young. It scared her half to death, that house. She always told us it was haunted."

  I didn't blame her. I should have found it easy to believe in haunted places here, myself. As we dipped and twisted through the silent wood, where pale sycamores and spindly hazel trees rose like ghosts themselves from the thick russet carpet of dead fallen leaves, I fancied that I felt a hundred eyes that followed us, and seemed to catch at times a flash of strange elusive movement at the corner of my eye. By the time we reached the place where the stream widened out and the castle loomed up in the foreground I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see medieval sentries on the battlements, or shades of some Welsh prince's army massing round it, laying siege.

  But there was only the castle. I watched it rather wistfully as we approached, but knowing Bridget didn't share my fondness for historic sites I doubted she'd have made it the target of this morning's "secret mission." I was right. Owen drove straight on past, through the pastel-painted shops of Pembroke and out the other side of town. At the next village he took a turning south. We'd just come through a rather nasty S-bend, with a little church set off among the trees to the right, when my curiosity became unbearable.

  I looked at Bridget, questioning. "Should I have packed a lunch?"

  She only laughed and kept the secret, and I had to wait till Owen, moments later, turned us neatly off the road into a bustling car park. "Here we are," he announced.

  I looked up at the building, read the sign, and smiled, finally catching on.

  "I should have bloody known," I said, to Bridget.

  *-*-*-*-*

  James lit a cigarette and lounged against the open doorway of the dining-room, blinking in the slow deliberate fashion of a man who had awakened to discover that an elephant was sitting on his bed. "And where," he asked, "did that come from?"

  "Manorbier Garden Centre." Bridget sat back on her heels, all innocence, careful not to crush the strings of fairy lights she'd stretched across the carpet.

  He inhaled smoke and nodded, looking up the full height of the tall Norwegian spruce, to the place where its tip touched the ceiling. "What, they just dropped one by, then, did they?"

  His sarcasm was lost on Bridget. "No, of course not. Owen took us over there this morning, in his van."

  "Ah."

  "You simply cannot have a proper Christmas," Bridget said, "without a Christmas tree."

  She had a point, I thought. And she had picked a smashing tree. It rose a full nine feet and let its branches drop in perfect, bushy tiers that spread to fill the space between the end wall windows. This was the first time I'd been in the formal dining-room, a long, high-ceilinged room that jutted out into the garden from the rear wall of the middle house. Pale pink roses softly climbed the wallpaper, and twined around the heavy ivory curtains that were drawn back, now, to let the daylight in. The richly polished walnut table, chairs and sideboard held court at the far end of the room, leaving our end free to be a sort of sitting area. And when we'd pushed the pink armchairs and footstools aside, sliding them back to the walk, they'd framed the perfect space in which to set our tree.

  "Could you have got one any bigger, do you think?" asked James, still looking up.

  Bridget shrugged. "Owen said we ought to have a large one, with these ceilings."

  "Well, if Owen said it, who am I to argue?" He yawned, and rubbed his neck. "I don't suppose there's coffee left?"

  "Darling," she told him, "it is one o'clock. If there is coffee left, I don't think that you'd want it."

  He considered this and, saying nothing, turned and wandered off again along the passage. Bridget grinned.

  "He's always grumbly, when he first wakes up," she told me. "Here, plug that in, I want to test this lot."

  I watched the fairy lights blink on to mark a tiny airport runway down the carpet. "How many of these did you buy, anyway?"

  "Three boxes of a hundred. Don't tell James," she advised, "or he'll spend the night watching the electric meter spinning."

  I promised not to tell. And the tree did look lovely, with all of those lights, though it took us an hour to string them round to Bridget's satisfaction. "Oh, damn," she said. "The ornaments. I must have left them in Owen's van, he'll have taken them home. Wait here, I'll run over to his house and fetch them."

  Happy to obey, I sank into the nearest armchair and massaged my pricked and stinging hands. With Bridget gone, the house sighed into silence. If I hadn't known that James was somewhere—working in his writing-room, no doubt—I would have thought myself alone.

  I yawned. The fairy lights grew softer, blurring into tiny stars that spun against the darkness as my eyelids drooped. Only a minute, I promised myself. I'd only keep my eyes closed for a minute. But it was several minutes later when the quick approaching footsteps brought my head up with a guilty start. I blinked, and tried to think of some excuse to make to Bridget.

  But it wasn't Bridget.

  The blue-robed woman came across the carpet and her long gown whispered to a stop beside my chair. Viewed this close, in daylight, I could see she was not beautiful, but still her young, fine-featured face held strength and dignity, and the shadows of great sorrow. Not a face, I thought, that one would soon forget. She fixed her soft, reproachful eyes on me, and drew a sighing breath, and spoke. "Will not you do me this one service?"

  I found my own voice. "Look, I'm sorry, but—"

  Wordlessly, she raised her hand and once again the little boy appeared, his small face more imploring now, and wet with recent tears. My own son might have looked like that, if he had lived—a child of five, with golden hair. I felt my own eyes fill, and looked away.

  "You are his only hope," the woman said. "His last hope. They will take him from me."

  "Why?" I asked. "Why would they do that? Why would anybody want to harm this boy?"

  ' 'Because my son was born beneath the banner of the Dragon Kings, and men in these dark times fear Merlin's prophecy." She paused, half-turned her head to listen. "The time grows late. They will soon come. Please ... take him, hide him, keep him safe."

  But I couldn't keep him safe—that was the problem. I'd failed to keep my own son safe; how could I take responsibility for someone else's? I shook my head. "You don't know what you're asking."

  "You are the person he has chosen."

  As if to make his own appeal, the boy took one step closer, arms outstretched, but even as I watched him he began to fade like
warm breath in the winter air, growing ever paler, insubstantial.

  His mother turned sad eyes on me. "Too late," she sighed. "Too late."

  And then she started fading, too, and I believe I held my own hand out and called for her to wait, and then the colours of the dreain began to run and I was running too, tears streaming down my face.

  My eyes came open slowly. I looked around the empty room and knew I was alone, that I had been alone the whole time, that the woman and her child had been illusions. It was all a dream, I told myself. You know it never happened.

  But I went on crying, anyway. The tears, at least, were real.

  X

  I met a lady in the meads.

  Full beautiful—a faery's child,

  Her hair was long, her foot was light,

  And her eyes were wild.

  John Keats, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

  The prophecies of Merlin?" James's eyes, above the computer, still held that dreamlike look of writerly preoccupation, for all he'd said I wasn't interrupting anything. He leaned back in his chair and tried to focus on my question. "The prophecies of Merlin," he repeated. "Well, I—"

  "There's no point asking James about a thing like that," said Bridget, coming in to join us. "He's got the world's worst memory, haven't you, darling?" She'd been upstairs in the bathtub and the scent of soap and lavender clung to her, delicate. Twisting her damp hair into a makeshift pony-tail, she pushed up the sleeves of her jumper and crossed to the coal scuttle, turning to look at me over her shoulder. "What's got you interested in Merlin?"

  I'd been hoping no one would ask me that. I could hardly tell the truth—that I'd dreamed of a woman who'd told me men feared Merlin's prophecies. As a reason, that sounded ridiculous even to me, and I couldn't afford to have James think me mad. But I'd dreamed of that same woman twice now, and that troubled me, and I had thought that perhaps if I could break this new dream into its component parts and learn what each part meant, at least I'd feel more in control. I tried to come up with another excuse. "Actually," I said to Bridget, "it started with you going on about Arthur this morning."