by Rhys Bowen
Betsy finished up in the dining room and went down to Meditation to see if Bethan was down there. The sooner she teamed up with Bethan, the easier she’d feel.
“Ah, good, you’re here,” Rhiannon said in greeting. “Now where’s that lazy child Bethan? Go and find her, will you? It will take two of you to carry the Wicker Man and I don’t want him damaged.”
Betsy went back up the steps. Bethan was nowhere in the main building. She wasn’t in any of the cottages. Then Betsy opened the health center door and saw a bucket sitting in the hallway.
“Bethan?” she called. “Are you in here?”
That’s when she was aware of the hiss of steam. She rushed to the steam room and struggled with the door. Finally she was able to wrench it open. Steam rushed out to meet her. She forced her way through it to the shape that lay huddled on the floor.
“Bethan!” she screamed, and dragged the lifeless figure out into the fresh air.
By midday Evan had completed his morning patrol of the area and was back at the station reporting in to HQ. It had been horrible feeling so powerless and cut off from Bronwen. He had followed the ambulance down to Bangor, only to be denied admission to the casualty ward where they had taken her. He’d called the hospital twice since but the news was the same both times. Miss Price was resting comfortably and they were conducting tests. He’d be able to see her during visiting hours that afternoon if she was done with her tests and back in the ward. What could it be? He asked himself over and over. It must be something terrible to make her collapse like that—cancer, heart attack, stroke. A terrible fear overtook him that she might die before he’d had a chance to explain and say he was sorry.
He looked up as the door opened and Glynis came in. “Hello there, Evan. How are you?” she asked, bright as ever. “I hope you don’t mind my popping in, but I’ve got Rebecca’s parents with me and you said you’d help me out with them. They are so devastated, poor people. Worried out of their minds. Terribly earnest types. God-fearing and all that.”
Evan got to his feet. “What do you want me to do?”
“Take them around the places you went before, maybe, and then I thought we’d run them down to the Sacred Grove so that they can see for themselves.”
“All right.” He sighed as he reached for his coat.
“What’s the matter?” Glynis asked. “You look terrible.”
“Bronwen’s in the hospital. She collapsed this morning and they don’t know what’s wrong with her.” It just came out, even though he hadn’t meant it to.
“Oh, I am sorry. How rotten for you. Look, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so to do this and then you can sneak away to the hospital if you like. I’ll cover for you.”
“Thanks, Glynis.” He managed a smile. “All right then. Let’s go and meet Rebecca’s parents.”
“By the way,” she said as they walked out to the waiting car, “the hostile American woman posted bail this morning. We’ve had to let her go.”
“Emmy Court, you mean?”
Glynis nodded. “She had the money wired to her. It’s all right, though. She can’t go anywhere. We’ve got her passport. Not that we had enough to keep holding her anyway.” She opened her car door. “Mr. and Mrs. Riesen. This is Constable Evans I told you about. He was the one who went around with Rebecca’s picture.”
The couple sitting in the backseat of the squad car looked like a typical American couple to Evan. The husband was wearing a San Diego Padres baseball cap. The wife was dressed in colors brighter than the average Welshwoman would wear. They both looked gray and haggard, but they shook Evan’s hand warmly and thanked him for his trouble.
“I just wish there was more we could do,” Evan said as he climbed into the passenger seat beside Glynis. “So you’ve still heard nothing from her. There’s no possibility she went home to the States but hasn’t contacted you yet?”
“Oh, no, Rebecca would never do that,” Mrs. Riesen said. “She was a real homebody, if you know what I mean. We had the hardest time persuading her to go away to college, and my, was she homesick that first year! She really didn’t want to come over to Britain for the semester, but she was awarded the scholarship and my husband told her, ‘Honey, it’s a wonderful opportunity. It might never come around again,’ so she went.”
“I encouraged her,” Mr. Riesen said in a voice that cracked with emotion. “I made her go.”
“Honey, you thought you were doing the right thing.” She put her hand on his. “We all thought we were doing the right thing. We didn’t worry about her once. She was never any trouble, all the time she was growing up. Other kids went through the rebellious stage, but not Rebecca. Didn’t have to set her curfews or anything. She was never out late. All she cared about were her studies and her music. Only ever had one or two close friends—never the partying kind, you understand.”
Evan nodded. “Do you have any idea at all what would have made her come to the Sacred Grove?”
“None at all. A place like that just wasn’t Rebecca. She was always very involved in our church—she’d never have been led astray.”
“Do you think that maybe she wanted to convert the people at the Sacred Grove?” Evan asked. “Someone mentioned she did some of that kind of thing.”
“I can’t see Rebecca doing that either.” Mrs. Riesen looked to her silent husband for confirmation. “She was too shy. And she was tolerant too—live and let live. No, that doesn’t sound like our Rebecca.”
They had reached the top of the pass and Glynis pulled up outside the youth hostel. “Constable Evans asked about her here, but nobody recognized the photo,” she said.
“I don’t know why she’d come to a place like this,” Mrs. Riesen said. “I can’t see her wanting to hike with a backpack. How would she have carried her violin? She never went anywhere without it.”
“Then maybe we should go straight down to the Sacred Grove,” Evan said. “I don’t know what good it will do, but there was one of the maids who had become friendly with Rebecca. You could talk to her and see if there was any clue she could give you.”
Mrs. Riesen looked at her husband and nodded.
“Another thing I’ve been wondering, Mrs. Riesen,” Evan said as the car swung around to the right and started to zigzag down to Beddgelert. “What made Rebecca stay on after the end of her course? Had she made friends she didn’t want to leave? If she was the homebody you describe, wouldn’t she have wanted to spend Christmas with you?”
“You know, we were rather surprised about that,” Mrs. Riesen said. “I was quite upset at the time, wasn’t I, hon? ‘She doesn’t want to spend Christmas with her family anymore,’ I said to Frank. She had a couple of fellow American students who were taking an apartment in London and she spent the holidays with them. But they’re both back home again now and neither of them has been in contact with Rebecca since the first of the year. She stayed on alone in London for a couple of weeks, apparently, then she went touring. She said she wanted to see something of the countryside—which is understandable. But we were surprised she was doing it alone. She was always a little cautious, our Rebecca.”
“And I take it you’ve been to Oxford and seen where she lived?”
“Oh, yes. That was one of the first things we did. She lived in a dormitory for American students who were attending the institute. It wasn’t actually part of Oxford University, you know. It was a separate program just for Americans. They got the chance to audit lectures with the Oxford undergraduates, but they did their assignments for the AIAO. That stands for the American Institute at Oxford, I believe.”
“Everyone who knew Rebecca was gone, except for the faculty and staff,” Mr. Riesen said, leaning forward in his seat. “It’s only a one-quarter course, you see. All new students each quarter. Nobody had anything to tell us at all. The faculty hardly remembered her. ‘She was quiet and shy and hardly ever spoke up’—that’s what that one professor said, didn’t he, Margaret?”
“And she didn’t m
ake any friends among the Oxford undergrads then?” Evan asked.
“She lived with other Americans, of course. And from what she told us, the British students were not particularly welcoming. Not that she was the social kind but she went to concerts and lectures with girls from back home. She loved her concerts, didn’t she, honey? Crazy about her music.”
Evan noticed they were using the past tense, as if they had mentally already accepted that she was gone from them.
Mrs. Riesen rummaged in her purse and produced a photograph. “That’s her, playing with the orchestra at home. Second from the left. She was assistant concert mistress. Very talented. You should have heard her play—it brought tears to your eyes sometimes, didn’t it, Frank?”
Mr. Riesen merely nodded.
As they reached the gate of the Sacred Grove, they saw that their way was blocked by an ambulance. Evan jumped out and ran ahead.
“What’s going on?” he yelled.
The security guard went to yell something back, then noticed his uniform and recognized him. “Nasty accident, Constable. One of the girls got trapped in the steam room. She was dead by the time they found her. Poor little thing.”
“Betsy?” Evan pushed past the guard, ready to run down the path.
“No, not Betsy. That wasn’t the name. It began with a B though—Bethan. That was it!”
Evan was back in Llanfair by early afternoon. He was sure that it hadn’t been an accident and had hinted as much to Glynis. Fortunately, she was ready enough to believe him. She had the spa area cordoned off and the body sent for immediate autopsy. Again Evan was impressed with her coolness under stress. He had to admit that she had been promoted ahead of him not because she was female or dating the chief constable’s nephew, but because she was bloody good.
Glynis had asked him to drive the Riesens, visibly shaken, back to their hotel in Bangor, while she stayed on and waited for D.C.I. Hughes to join her. Evan paced around his tiny police station, unable to settle. The hospital was still maddeningly uncommunicative about Bronwen and he was also worried sick about Betsy. In the light of today’s tragedy, Betsy’s incident in the steam room the day before had most probably not been an accident either. He wished she would have let him drive her home, but Rhiannon had interrupted when he was talking to her. “She is needed for a very important ceremony tonight. There is no question of her leaving early,” she had said. “But don’t worry. I’ll see she is taken good care of. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”
Rhiannon’s assurances had done little to still Evan’s fears. He had no reason to trust her any more than the rest of them. But he had to admit that Betsy was probably safe for the rest of that day. There would be a forensic team arriving from police headquarters at some stage, and lots of people due for a big ceremony that evening.
At least he would have a chance to go to the hospital, as soon as he finished his day’s work at the police station. He tidied the papers on his desk before leaving. Rhiannon’s book, The Way of the Druid, was lying on his desk, as yet unread. Evan fingered it uneasily. It had a picture of a robed figure standing in an oak grove on the front cover. He couldn’t make out what the figure was holding but it could have been a knife. He picked up the book and stuffed it into his pocket. Something had made Rebecca interested enough in Druids to seek out the Sacred Grove. Maybe the book would give him the insight that had been lacking. It would also help him pass the time down at the hospital if they wouldn’t let him see Bronwen straightaway. Knowing hospitals, he’d have some waiting to do.
“She’s resting at the moment.” The starchy ward sister blocked his access to Nightingale Ward, where he had been told he’d find Bronwen. “We’ll let you know when she wakes. She was severely dehydrated, you know. It took us ages to get a vein up enough to put the IV in.”
“Do they know what’s wrong yet?” Evan asked.
She looked at him as if he were a visiting worm. “Patient records are entirely confidential,” she said. “Now please take a seat. We’ll let you know.”
Evan sat. The chair was orange vinyl and not big enough for him. Did they actually design hospital chairs to be uncomfortable, just so that people wouldn’t hang around too long? he wondered. Part of National Health cost-cutting measures, maybe. He looked around for a magazine. There was a choice of Golf Digest and Woman’s Weekly. Then he remembered the book in his pocket. He took it out and started to read. An hour later he still hadn’t been called and he had reached chapter 10.
Chapter x. Sacrifices.
Sacrifice as a usual part of Druid ritual, although most sacrifices involved animals, not humans. Human sacrifice, greatly exaggerated and distorted by ancient Roman observers, did take place, but only in exceptional circumstances. Prisoners were ritually sacrificed so that their death twitches could be observed and the way they fell could provide divination answers to the oracles. Oracle Druids also disemboweled living victims so that their entrails could be read for answers from the gods.
Small numbers of ritually sacrificed bodies have been found throughout Britain, showing that ritual sacrifice was only performed in very special circumstances. Several bodies have been discovered, perfectly preserved, in bogs. The way they were decorated and the fact that their arms were bound with leather thongs show that they were put into the bog to die, although whether this was meant as punishment or as an appeasement to the gods is not certain.
In times of extreme emergency, or when the high priests felt that the gods were displeased or unapproachable, a perfect specimen from the tribe would be selected as an appeasement sacrifice—usually a young warrior or a virgin. In some locations they would be killed on a stone table with a ritual knife, but this does not seem to have been the preferred method in Wales or Ireland.
The more curious phenomenon of the Wicker Man has been reported by many ancient observers and was surely a part of the fire rituals, although whether on a regular basis or only in times of war is not known. The Wicker Man described in ancient literature was a figure made of willow branches and stuffed with straw. It was burned rather like our Guy Fawkes, on a bonfire to insure prosperity, fertility, or the success of the crops or as an offering to the gods in war. It is suggested that live victims were at times placed within the Wicker Man, although whether these were captives or victims selected from the tribe for a specific tribute is not clear.
As he read, Evan had been experiencing a growing uneasiness. Why was Rhiannon suddenly showing such an interest in Betsy? “She needs me to help her with the big ceremony.” Evan flipped back to the chapter on Beltane. “Beltane, the ceremony of new fire. Sometimes sacrifices were performed to ensure success of the crops and fertility of the herds.” He heard Betsy’s soft whisper from the previous night: “Promise not to tell another soul in the whole world. I’m still a virgin.”
The big ceremony tonight! Evan jumped to his feet. “Oh my God!” he gasped as he ran down the echoing tiled hallway. Beltane was tonight. The Wicker Man. He had to get to the Sacred Grove before it was too late.
He hadn’t ridden down on his motorbike this time, because there was still a chance of rain, and his own old bone-shaker didn’t do more than fifty miles an hour without protesting groans. He pushed it as hard as he dared along the expressway to Caernarfon, then on the coastal road to Porthmadog. Across the estuary, where the setting sun streaked the outgoing tide with pink, then into the twilight of the oak woods, and finally to the gate of the Sacred Grove.
As he approached the security gate, figures loomed out of the gloom and surrounded his car. They were waving placards and Evan soon recognized the song they were singing. It was ‘Cwm Rhondda.’ “Strong redeemer, strong redeemer, I will ever cling to thee!”
“Go back, Satan. Back to the place God has ordained for you!” shouted a voice and Evan saw Mrs. Powell-Jones brandishing a sign as if it was a weapon. The sign read, DRUID WORSHIP IS DEVIL WORSHIP. Other signs proclaimed, PAGANS GO HOME. KEEP WALES
CHRISTIAN. NO HEATHEN CEREMONIES.
Evan wound down his window. “Let me get past, Mrs. Powell-Jones. It’s me. Constable Evans.”
“Constable Evans! Well, I never … I hope you don’t intend to participate in the heathen orgy?”
“No, I want to try and stop it! Let me get past.”
“Good man. Good luck to you! I hope they’ll let you in. They closed the gate as soon as we got here.”
Evan pushed the intercom button. “Let me in. It’s Constable Evans. It’s very urgent.”
“I’m sorry, Constable,” came the scratchy voice through the intercom. “I’ve had orders not to open this gate. There’s a lot of raving loonies out there. If you can radio for police backup to keep the loonies out, then I’ll let you in, but until then it’s more than my job’s worth to open this gate.”
“The ceremony?” Evan shouted over the hymn singing and chanting going on around him. “Are they going ahead with the ceremony?”
“Oh, yes, that will have started by now. They were heading down to the oak grove about an hour ago.”
“Where is it? Where is this oak grove, man?”
“Not exactly sure. Over toward the point, it must be. That’s where they were heading.”
“Send someone over there and stop it before it’s too late!” Evan shouted.
“I can’t do that. There’s only me on duty and I can’t leave my post.”
“Call someone. Get someone over there, man, do you hear?”
“All right. All right. Keep your hair on, Constable. I’ll call them at the big house. What’s all this about then? What will I tell them?”
“To stop the bloody ceremony before somebody gets hurt, that’s what!” Evan shoved the car into reverse and backed through the milling crowd, making them scatter before him as he sounded his horn. Then he drove a mile or so back along the road, parked the car on the muddy verge, and ran through the woodland. He had to be able to reach the point from here. The property was on a narrow strip of land between two estuaries. It couldn’t be very wide at this point. It was just a question of cutting across at the right place. Darkness was falling rapidly now and trees loomed like ghostly figures, reaching out spiky arms to grab at him as he ran past. His breath started coming in gulps as he reached the crest of a hill and got his first view of the estuary beyond. At least he couldn’t see the glow of a bonfire yet. Maybe he was in time and they hadn’t started the ceremony.
