Candlenight, page 36
"I can hardly believe it," Miranda said in a low voice to Guto. "Just wait till I tell Morelli. The only reason he got dragged into all this was old Winstone and his Cassandra routine."
"I'm confused," Guto said. "And I think I would prefer to stay confused."
Dai Death, who had no interest in any of this, was at the bar quizzing Aled about Bethan.
"I don't know where they went," Aled said. "But if you find them, get her out of here. This is no joke."
"I don't know whether I should be asking you this, Aled but why would they want to go up to the church with two crowbars and a hydraulic jack?"
Aled was silent, but Dai could tell this had cut him like splinters from a suddenly shattered bottle.
Eventually, Aled said slowly. "I shall have to tell them. If they don't already know."
"Tell who? What?"
"But I will not."
Unseasonal sweat shining on his head, rivulets rolling into his silver sideburns. Dai said, "I am finding it hard to work out who is mad here."
"Assume that everyone you meet is mad," Aled said.
Shirley had taken off her ski-jacket and unbuttoned her blouse to a dangerous extent. Charlie and Ray were taking an interest, but it was clear Shirley wanted Gary Willis.
It was very hot in the bar, the log fire superfluous in its inglenook. "Alec," Charlie Firth called out. "We'll have another bottle of that Welsh Scotch."
Aled brought the whisky and went over to the window, high in the wall behind the journalists.
Where were they?
There were few lights visible in the cottages across the street, but there was a glow about the cottages themselves, and a milky layer in the air. Premature snowdrops poked out of a tub under the window. He was sure they had not been there this morning.
"Can we move the table back from the fire?" the plump woman was saying. Half stripped, she was. "Too hot even for me."
He wanted to tell them to drink up and go.
In fact---realisation flared around him, underfired with a simmering fear---he wanted to go with them.
But if they did not go, he knew he could not stay and watch it happen, as he knew it must.
Chapter LXVII
Medieval, perpendicular. Two-tiered, pyramidal, timber- framed bellchamber . . .
The church was a giant monolith in its circular graveyard, its spire always seemed to be outlined against the brightest part of the sky, from wherever you were standing.
From the churchyard, you looked up and the whole edifice seemed to be swinging towards you, like a massive pendulum suspended from the moon itself.
"I can't," Bethan said. "I don't think I've ever liked old churches, even in the daylight, and I'm frightened of what this one has become. I'm sorry."
Berry had it worked out. She was saying this because she didn't want him to go in there. If he thought she was the one who was most scared he'd maybe back-off, seek help.
No way.
He took out his car keys. "Listen, how about you go fetch the Sprite. The gear's in back. Give me time to check things out—might not even be open." It was only a couple of hundred yards to the cars, and there was plenty of light.
She accepted the keys reluctantly.
"Listen, any problems, just blast on the horn, OK? Bring Guto and the guys outta the pub."
He tried out Aled's flashlight. The beam was strong and white and threw a mist into the air. He hurriedly directed it downwards, and it lit up a grave, and Bethan drew in a sharp breath.
On the gravestone was carved,
Dyma fedd Thomas Rhys . . .
Berry tried a shrug. "We had to be standing by somebody's grave."
He tried to ignore the smell, which was as if the grave had been opened.
A lot of whisky had been drunk. Alun, of Plaid, was looking at his watch. Miranda had fallen asleep on Guto's shoulder, Guto was endeavouring to give Bill Sykes a true insight into the philosophy of Welsh Nationalism, while Charlie and Ray were sharing a cold meat pie.
Gary Willis had gone to the gents, and Shirley Gillies had followed him out of the bar.
At the bar itself, the Tilley lamp had spluttered out and been replaced with a couple of candles in ashtrays.
"Quiet in here, though, tonight," Dai said to Aled. Where are all the locals then?"
Aled shook his head, said nothing.
"Funny buggers here," Idwal Pugh said. "Won't share a tafarn with outsiders, see."
"Rubbish, man," Dai scowled. "They have never been a town for that. I've been in here of a lunchtime, an English chap walks in and everybody in the place stops speaking Welsh immediately, out of courtesy. Very hospitable people, unusually hospitable."
"Where are they then?" Idwal said. "Most places, if there's a power cut, no telly—"
"They have no tellies here anyway. No reception, see."
"Well, radio then. Not even a proper light to read a book by, what would they do but go to the pub? No, you are naive about this, Dai."
"What I want to know," Dai said, "is what Bethan and at American fellow are up to."
"Get them out," Aled said suddenly. "Get them all out, Dai, for Christ's sake."
Behind him the telephone rang, and everyone looked up.
Dai said, "Don't imagine the phone to be working in a power cut. You forget it makes no difference."
Aled said, Y Groes pedwar, pedwar, chwech."
"Aled, is that you?"
"Yes it is."
"Aled, it's Gwyn Arthur from the police station. I'm ringing you myself because the roads are blocked all over the place and we've had to pull the cars off. Otherwise someone would have come out to see you."
"Snow's bad over there, then?"
"Worst for ten years. Aled, Aber police have been on the line, and I am afraid I have bad news. Very bad news. You should sit down if you can."
"Let's go for a walk." Shirley said, and she grabbed Gary Willis's hand.
Gary thought. Ah, what the hell—and allowed her to pull him to the pub door.
The problem was, he was getting married in a couple of months and was trying to develop a new and disciplined attitude when faced with the sexual opportunities, which
ironically, had seemed to come his way quite often since his engagement.
On the other hand, Shirley, by all accounts, knew the score. Had a husband somewhere and a very discreet, adult approach to this sort of thing. She was also considerably older than Gary, and so, he reasoned, it would be a sort of a social service on his part.
Yeh, what the hell. They stepped out into the blue and purple night.
"Isn't it just amazingly . . . you know, not cold." Shirley had left her ski-jacket in the bar.
"Bit odd, really," Gary said. "Considering the conditions when we were coming over the mountains,"
"I quite fancy coming over the mountains," Shirley said grabbing hold of his tie and leading him into the street like a showman with a dancing bear.
She let him go when they reached the bridge, the river burbling below. Soft snow sat lightly and inoffensively on the top of the parapet. Shirley made a snowball and threw it at Gary. It hit him on the cheek and felt like candyfloss. Gary gathered up a handful of snow and advanced on Shirley who screamed delightedly.
Gary plunged the handful of snow down the front of Shirley's blouse. "You swine," She cackled and pulled his hand back down. "Now you'll have to get it all out."
"So I will," Gary said.
By the time they'd made their inebriated way to the far side of the bridge the blouse was off, Shirley waving it at Gary like a football supporter's scarf. Gary managed to grab a sleeve and the blouse tore neatly in half, leaving them looking down at their respective fragments and laughing helplessly.
Gary, sweating, pulled off his jacket and hung it over the bridge parapet.
They might have been on a beach in August.
Shirley unfastened her bra, took it off and twirled it around her head as she bounced off towards the woods. Gary thought she couldn't half move for her size.
"Slow down, Shirl, you'll have no energy left."
"Ho ho," Shirley gurgled. "We'll see about that, baby."
Running past the school lane, she let her skirt fall to her ankles and stepped out of it and kicked it away with the tip of a patent-leather boot.
She reached the edge of the woods and stood panting, wearing only her boots, a pair of pink briefs and a silver necklace, her back to an enormous oak tree, a ludicrous grin on her face.
Just for a moment, as he stood at the edge of the wood, fumbling with his belt, the total madness of the situation was fully apparent to Gary Willis.
He saw the oak tree, heavy with snow. He looked up at the iceberg hills, stark in the starry night. He looked across the bridge to the village, feeble glows from behind the drawn curtains of Christmas card cottages with snow on their roofs.
He looked at Shirley and saw the sweat freezing rapidly on her grinning face, the skin of her exposed body blue and mottled. And he thought, it isn't warm at all, it just seems
warm to us.
And then the moment passed, and nothing was clear any more.
Chapter LXVIII
Berry walked into the nave, footsteps on stone.
Tock, tock, tock.
Outside, it had been unseasonally, ridiculously, warm.
Inside the church it was winter again. When he switched off the torch, the light was ice-blue from through the Gothic windows on either side and livid through the long window at the top of the nave, beyond the altar.
He was glad Bethan was not with him, but that didn't make him feel any better about being here.
He walked up the aisle towards the altar.
Tock, tock, tock,
tock, tock,
tock.
The churches of his several childhoods, in different States, had mostly been newish buildings masquerading as places as old as this. His dad had been a lapsed Catholic, his
mom a Presbyterian. And so religion, to him, had been something pointless that people argued about.
Here, tonight — shining the torch on his watch he discovered it was not yet nine o'clock—he was aware for maybe the first time of the awful power of something venerated. Like the Welsh Language in Judge Rhys's study, only there was ritual worship involved here, and many centuries of it.
Whatever it was reverberated off the stones in the walls, was filtered through the mortuary light from the windows, lay rich and musky on the air.
And it didn't want him here.
Fuck you, he wanted to say, to make a stand, be defiant. But his full range of flip obscenities would seem pathetically peevish and infantile, and about as effectual as throwing stones at a tank.
"Help me," he said, to his surprise, and the walls immediately laughed off the words.
me, hee, heee . . .
He switched on the torch with a thunderous clack-ack-ack, and the monstrous shadows leapt out, rearing up then settling back just on the periphery of the beam so he would
know they were there, and waiting.
He drew breath and the rich air seemed to enter his lungs in staccato bursts, like something that was planning to come out as a sob. It was thick, sour-milk air, like in the judge's study, only here it had a great auditorium to waft around in and ferment.
Berry found the tomb. There was only one. It was in a small chapel to the left of the altar. A chapel of its own.
It was three feet high and five or six feet long, as long as the stone figure of the knight laid out on top, hands together, praying.
The knight wore armour and its face was worn, the expression on it blurred by the years. But the essence of this remained, and it had nothing reassuring to say. Berry thought the face might at one time have had a beard, but he could not tell if the beard was cleft.
He didn't like to look too hard at it, felt it was looking back.
There was kind of a plaque thing on the side of the tomb, with lettering. But this was in Latin and maybe Welsh too, and he couldn't make it out.
Meredydd, the guy's name, it had said in Ingley's book.
Owain Glyndwr, I presume, was what he'd figured he'd say on approaching the tomb. Let the stiff inside know it was dealing with a wisecracking, smart-assed American who was in no mood for any spooky tricks, OK?
Only the words wouldn't come out.
He thought that if anything spooky happened in this place, there would be little question of how he'd react. He would piss himself, throw up, something of that order.
The years had not blurred a very ancient, sneering cruelty in the face of this knight that belied the supplication of his hands.
Berry didn't like him one bit and he had a sensation, like a cold vibration in the air over the knight's eyes, that the feeling was mutual.
He put out a finger, touched the effigy's eyes, one, then the other. The way the centuries had worn the stone you couldn't be sure whether the eyes were closed or wide open. Berry felt exposed, observed, and was unable to rid himself of the notion that somebody was standing behind him in the cold chapel, perhaps the knight himself, a great sword raised
in both hands over his head.
He tried to clear his mind of all such thoughts and made himself go through the motions of checking out the structure of the tomb, as Ingley must have done.
Before he died.
For Chrissake . . .
The body of the tomb was constructed out of stone blocks, each about ten inches by six, three rows of them supporting the top slab and the effigy.
He laid the torch down on the knight's stone-armoured breast, up against the praying hands with their chipped knuckles.
Then he turned his back on the tomb, fitted his fingers under the edge of the slab, closed his eyes, counted down from three . . . and heaved.
To his secret horror, the slab moved just enough to show him that with the equipment and perhaps a little help he could get inside.
The thought chilled his stomach.
OK. Calm down.
He knew he had to go fetch the stuff from the car, and whatever was in there he had to let out. And let some air into this place.
An act of desecration.
Sure. No problem.
Berry emerged from the chapel of the tomb holding the rubber flashlight confidently in front of him. The flashlight immediately went out.
He froze.
And the sour milk air clotted around him and clogged his head. He felt dizzy and sat down on some pew on the edge of the nave, and then found he could not move. His thoughts congealed; his senses seemed to be setting like concrete.
Then, after a while—could have been hours, minutes or only seconds—there were ribbons of light.
And the light came now not from the windows on either side or the long window behind the altar, but from above. It descended in a cold white ray, making dust-motes scintillate
in the air, and he had the idea it must be the moon and the pillars and buttresses of stone were like trees on either side and the air was pungent now with brackish scents and the residue of woodsmoke.
As the walls of the nave closed in, he looked up into the light sky and on the boundary of his vision a black figure eased out of the mist.
Chapter LXIX
Bethan parked the Sprite in the shadow of the lych gate and sat there for a minute or two, making her mind up.
Then she got out, slammed the door—you had to slam it or it would not stay shut—and walked back down the lane to the Tafarn.
What she was remembering was Martin Coulson, the curate, who had fallen and smashed his head on the tomb of Sir Robert Meredydd. And this had happened in broad
daylight.
The image came to her of Berry Morelli face-down on the stone-flagged floor, unmoving, a river of dark blood flowing down the aisle. She began to run.
By the time she reached the door of the pub, the perspiration was out around her eyes; she felt clammy, wanting to shed her hat and her raincoat.
But she remembered how Owain Glyndwr, it was said, could bring about rapid changes in the weather to confound his enemies. Even Shakespeare's satire seemed to reflect this. Bethan, having studied Henry IV at college, knew all Glendower's overblown speeches, heard them echoing as she ran.
Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottomed Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.
So Bethan took off nothing.
From the Tafarn's ill-lit interior came sounds of merriment. Guto's voice, and the rest were English accents.
Inside the doorway she almost bumped into a stooping figure emerging from the gents' lavatory.
"Bethan! Where the hell have you been? You look all of a tizz."
"Oh. Dai." It came out as a long sigh.
"You look as if you need a drink, girl. Come and—"
"No. no. no." Bethan wiped sweat from her eyes, smearing what remained of her make-up. "You must help me, Dai. First, you have to get all those people out of there,"
"Oh hell." Dai Death looked exasperated. "This is what Aled was saying before he stopped talking altogether.
Everybody's gone mad tonight. Anyway, they won't go. The road is blocked at the Pont end and God knows what it's like over the Nearly Mountains. The council's out with the snow-ploughs and they're waiting for some clearance from—"
"Dai, get them out. I do not care how. Tell Guto—"
"They're all bloody pissed, girl! They don't care whether they get home or not."
"God," Bethan was almost frantic. "Then can you and Idwal get up to the church and help Berry?"
"Why, what's he doing?"
Bethan wiped her eyes again and clasped her hands in front of her, squeezing the fingers. And told him very slowly and very precisely that Berry Morelli was trying to break
