Named of the Dragon

by Susanna Kearsley

  Something clamped round my shoulder.

  "Don't worry," said Gareth Gwyn Morgan, "I'll catch you."

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying, quite safe, on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. My hands had made fists round the sheets and I tried to relax them, to force them to open. Still feeling unreasoning panic I turned my head sideways and looked at the window, seeking reassurance that the dream was really over.

  The bright morning sunlight had pushed through the folds of my curtains to shimmer and dance on the soft painted walls. I focused on it, calmed my mind. But still, it took a long time for my heartbeat to regain its normal rhythm.

  I could hear someone banging about in the bathroom, and voices. And craving the comfort of people around me, I rose rather stiffly, and dressed, and went to find out who it was. The electricity had come on again. Outside my room on the landing the air had lost its sharpness.

  In the bathroom I found Bridget perched on the edge of the tub, watching Owen, who knelt, full of purpose, half-in and half-out of the double-doored airing cupboard.

  "Well, finally," she said, when she saw me. "I was beginning to think that you'd frozen to death in your sleep, or something."

  Her voice, familiar and good-natured, helped dissolve the horror of my nightmare and I felt much more myself as I assured her I'd been fine. "I had extra blankets. I slept like a log. I don't remember hearing you come in."

  "We got back quite late—after one, I should think. Everyone was being very jolly at the pub."

  "Did they manage to serve you your meals, then, before the lights went out?"

  "Naturally." She grinned. "If they hadn't, I'd have come home for a sandwich, storm or no storm."

  Owen emerged from the cupboard, to wish me good morning.

  "Good morning, yourself. What's the trouble?"

  "Damned immersion heater, that's what. Everything else came back on, except this." He slapped the mustard-coloured water heater with one hand and stood, with a whoofing breath of protest. "Bloody stubborn bastard," he said, but whether he meant the immersion heater or himself, I couldn't tell.

  Bridget swung one long leg. ' 'Yes, and I want my bath. I've been waiting for ages."

  "Hold on," said Owen, "I'll just go downstairs now, and twiddle a switch."

  Bridget waited until he was gone, and then motioned me closer, bursting to tell me something. "He was there."

  I lowered my voice to match hers. ' 'Who was where?''

  "Gareth was at the Hibernia, last night. And Lyn," she confided, "I think that I've hooked him."

  "Oh?"

  "He bought me a drink. And you'll never guess what?" She looked from left to right, dramatically, before continuing. "He asked me to drop round to see him, this afternoon. Just on my own."

  "Oh." I knew what was coming. I waited.

  "So here's what I'll need you to do," she went on.

  "After lunch, before James gets his nose in his writing, you ask him to show you the sights."

  "Any sights in particular?"

  "I don't know, maybe Freshwater West, or St Govan's. He loves to show people St. Govan's. Just ask him. Then I'll plead a headache, or something, and stay behind here."

  "And what about Christopher?"

  "I guess you'll have to take him with you, too."

  I looked aside, and made a show of trying to remember. "I don't recall this being in the Agent's Code of Practice."

  "Of course it is. It comes between 'thou shalt do everything thy author asks' and 'thou shalt assist thy author in seducing sexy men.' "

  "I see."

  Owen was coming upstairs again. Bridget sat back and fell silent.

  Apparently the switch-twiddling had done the trick. He put his head back in the airing cupboard and a moment later the heater clicked on with a comforting hum. "There now, that's got it. Just leave that to run for an hour or so, and you'll have all the hot water you need."

  "Wonderful," Bridget said. "Thanks."

  Leaving her in privacy, I followed Owen back out to the landing. "You'll be late for your walk," he said, teasing.

  I didn't answer him immediately—I was too absorbed in staring at the door, just past his shoulder. The door that I had opened by mistake last night... the one that led to little Stevie's nursery, through the cupboard. It looked just as I had left it, but for one detail: the key no longer rested in the lock. It hadn't fallen to the carpet, either. Someone had removed it.

  "Is something wrong?" asked Owen.

  "No." I looked quickly away from the door; forced a confident smile. "It's nothing."

  *-*-*-*-*

  I pushed my pace harder and crested the hill, my lungs burning. I didn't have time for this, really—it was after eleven already and Bridget, I knew, would be done with her bath now and having a fit. She would never forgive me if I didn't get back by lunch-time to help with her plan.

  But I'd needed the walk.

  I had taken a different route, over the bridge and along the south shore of the bay, through the cooling green woods that surrounded the Hall. I'd barely glimpsed the Hall itself, little more than a suggestion of pale walls and privilege set deep in the trees at the end of a long curving drive, looking rather forlorn with its owners away. And when the path had split in two a little further on, with one fork keeping to the coastal route along the soft shore of the bay, I'd turned instead and headed inland, up the wider lane and past the Lodge, where a little dog had come to the edge of the garden and barked its encouragement.

  It hadn't looked a steep hill, from the bottom, but now that I had reached the top my legs felt rather sore and I needed several breaths of air to slow my racing heart.

  I moved on more slowly, not paying attention. Normally, walking was good for my mind. Not today, though—my thoughts were a jumble. Part of me wanted to side with the others, and say Elen's story was madness; but part of me couldn't be sure.

  Either James or Christopher could easily have entered. Stevie's room last night. I couldn't think why they'd have wanted to—certainly not to harm Stevie. If anyone wanted to harm him, I felt fairly sure they'd have done it by now. The only thing that came to mind was that maybe they liked to make poor Elen panic, liked to play upon her paranoia. It would have been a rotten thing to do, but I knew they could have done it, all the same. And the more I thought about that door, the more I felt convinced that someone had gone into the nursery. Why else, I wondered, would the key be in the lock last night, and not this morning?

  And the marked page in The Druid's Year could hardly be coincidence. Which meant the culprit must have known that yesterday would be the one day Elen worried most that Stevie would be stolen—the day another "chosen child," King Arthur, had been taken from his mother.

  I frowned, thinking of Gareth and his talk about the mythical divine child as I turned a second time to follow the signposted footpath that cut westward through the wood.

  It was peaceful, here—green and deliriously quiet, the fallen leaves damp and too languid to do more than sigh when I stepped on them. Last night's storm had made mud of the path and it sucked at my feet, forcing me to go more slowly, to notice the rich earthy smells and the way that the sunlight came filtering down and the kiss of the mild morning breeze. I noticed the ground, too—the ruts in the mud and the rounded deep imprints of hooves.

  So I should have been ready. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I heard the horse coming behind me, not trotting but walking, quite leisurely, taking its time. And I should have expected the voice.

  "God, it's you again." Gareth, on horseback, looked rather like one of those centaurs I'd seen as a child in my book of Greek myths—dark and not completely tamed, his jaw set high with arrogance, black jodhpurs and boots and thick-knitted black pullover blending right in to the midnight black mare till the two of them moved like one animal, towering over me. They slowed to a halt, stomping a few times to flatten the deep mud, and Sovereign stretched her lovely neck towards me, nostrils flared to catch m
y scent. I fancied that her eyes held recognition. Gareth's though, held something else. "Are you always this subtle when stalking a client?"

  I looked at him, opened my mouth to respond and then closed it, deciding it wasn't worth the effort. Instead I simply turned my back and went on walking, as if he wasn't there. Sovereign followed along like a shadow.

  "What, no comeback?" asked Gareth. "No protest? No speech about what a detestable bastard I am?''

  "All right, then. You are a detestable bastard. Does that make you happy?"

  "Ecstatic." He reined the horse closer, and slanted a searching look down at my face.

  I stopped again, bending to make a great fuss over Chance, who had given up snuffing for rabbits and mice in the field and come running to greet me, his whole body wagging. Gareth gave a tight sigh and I glanced up. My eyes met his, warily, just for a moment, then darted away. But that was enough.

  "Something's happened," he said.

  "Don't be daft. Nothing's—"

  "Tell me."

  I don't know what possessed me, then. It might have been the sight of him on horseback, stirring memories of my riding days and friends I'd shared my life with at the stables. It might have been the silence of the wood, like a confessional, with Gareth putting me in mind of a medieval hermit priest, a warrior monk who'd turned his back upon the world. Or it might have been the aura of the man himself, the way his solid, sure demeanour made a contrast to the ever-shifting atmosphere of Castle Farm, demanding nothing, giving less.

  Whatever the reason, I found myself telling him everything. I told him about the locked door, and the key, and The Druid's Year, and how yesterday had been the Light of Arthur, and the words tumbled out in a haphazard way like a litter of puppies pressed up to a gate that had suddenly opened. Gareth, no doubt, must have thought me quite mad.

  When I'd finished, I said, "... and it's probably nothing, I know, but if someone did do that to Elen—trying to make her think there really was a dragon living in the tower that was wanting to take Stevie—then I think it was a horrid thing to do, and ... well, that's all."

  He didn't break the silence right away. He went on looking down at me as though I were an alien, while the mare danced a step in impatience and Chance went back to hunting mice. "I see," said Gareth, finally.

  Embarrassed now, I cleared my throat. "I thought you had a right to know."

  Something strange, imperceptible, flashed in his eyes, but I was already turning from it, wanting to escape. And since he was clearly headed west, I wheeled and faced the way I'd come—the route that seemed the safest. "Sorry I interrupted your ride," I said, trying to sound not the slightest bit sorry. For, after all, he was making me feel like an idiot, and he was meeting with Bridget, and ...

  "Thank you," he said. The phrase sounded rough in his throat, as though he hadn't used it in a long while. I stopped in my tracks to look back, but he'd already signalled the mare to walk on, and I couldn't do much more than stand there and watch them—black horse and black rider—melt into the shadows that dappled the path, with the little dog trotting behind.

  XXIII

  A hermit once was here,

  Whose holy hand hath fashion’d on the rock

  The war of Time against the soul of man.

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Gareth and Lynette"

  If Bridget hadn't been a writer, I decided after lunch, she I could have made her living on the stage. Sitting quiet and pale in her chair at the table, one hand to her forehead, she'd nearly convinced me the migraine was real.

  "No, it's all right," she said, with the sigh of a martyr, "you go and have fun. I'll stay here."

  Christopher frowned. "We don't all have to go."

  Bridget glanced at him between her fingers, looking— if it were possible—even more pained. "But I want you to, really. I don't want to spoil your day."

  "I suspect," James said, rising to carry his plate and cup to the sink, "you've a more selfish reason for wanting us out of the house." Then, before she had time to react, he explained, to his brother, "She can't bear the noise, any noise, when her head hurts like this. So the last thing she needs is to have us thumping round the place. Right?" he asked Bridget.

  She relaxed with a nod and a grateful expression, enough to convince Christopher, who pushed back his chair. "All right, then," he said, "I suppose I could stand one more trip to St. Govan's."

  I felt a bit relieved, as well. I hadn't fancied facing Bridget if things hadn't gone her way—especially since I'd almost ruined her plans by returning so late from my walk. Another five minutes, and James would have been in his writing-room, lost to the world. Fortunately, it hadn't taken much effort to persuade him.

  He had sat at the head of the scrubbed kitchen table, head tilted to one side, amused, as he'd finished his tea. "An agent who wants me not to write," he'd said. "How peculiar."

  I'd smiled. "It rather defeats my own interests, I know, but it's such a lovely afternoon, and even writers need holidays, once in a while."

  Christopher had drily said that writing, by its very nature, seemed one great long holiday, a comment that most certainly would have earned him a bruise on his arm had not Bridget been playing at having a headache. Eventually, I knew, she'd make him pay for that remark. Bridget had a long memory.

  But happily, now, I appeared to be back in her good books, myself. And I knew I'd been forgiven when she offered me the last egg salad sandwich.

  "You'll want to take your camera, Lyn," she said. "St. Govan's is your kind of place."

  I remembered the name from my Pembrokeshire guidebook. "It's a chapel, or something, isn't it?"

  "Mm. A little stone chapel set into the cliffs, with these bloody great rocks all around it. And limpets," she said, with a roll of her eyes. "You can't put a foot down without treading on limpets. You'll love it."

  James rinsed off his dishes and turned from the sink. "Do you know, my love, I'll never understand how you can write the way you do about the fairies and the fields and things, and yet not like St. Govan's."

  I knew how he felt. Bridget had such a gift for imagery,

  for creating darkly tangled forests, flowered glens and magic places filled with beings of pure fancy, that it seemed unnatural, somehow, for her not to like ruins and castles and chapels built into a cliff.

  She waved James's comment aside with an invalid's hand. "So I'm not keen on man-made constructions."

  "Limpets weren't man-made, the last time I looked."

  "Well, I don't have to love all of nature, surely," she said in defence, "and limpets are horrid."

  "How can you not love a limpet?" James wanted to know, tongue-in-cheek. But he knew enough not to tease Bridget too long. She'd lost interest already, distracted by something she'd seen through the wide window over the sink.

  "We've got company," she said, without enthusiasm.

  From where I was sitting the window showed only a slice of the sheltered back garden, and the lone leaf dancing at the top of the viburnum. I couldn't see anyone there, but a knock at the door proved that Bridget had not been imagining things.

  It was Owen's wife, Dilys, her face flushed from walking against the brisk wind. "You should all be outdoors," she said, after handing James the plate of warmly crumbling fresh mince pies that were, ostensibly, the reason for her visit. "It's a lovely afternoon, you know. You mustn't waste this sunshine."

  James assured her we would not be wasting anything. "We were just making plans to go down to St. Govan's. Well, three of us, anyway. Bridget," he said, "has a bit of a headache. She thought she'd stay here."

  "Nonsense," Dilys said roundly. "There's nothing like fresh air for curing a headache."

  Bridget's smile was purposely wan. "Not my headaches. The only thing that makes them go away is a dark room and absolute quiet."

  "It won't be very quiet here this afternoon," said Dilys. ' 'Not with my Owen up cleaning the gutters. If the sound of him banging around doing that doesn't drive you mad, then his si
nging most certainly will. Thinks he's Anthony Newley, old fool."

  Bridget's sighs, I decided, were growing more heartfelt. Having Owen hanging round the house all afternoon had not been in her plans. He'd be bound to see her sneaking off to Gareth's. "I don't suppose you could convince him to postpone the gutter cleaning till tomorrow?''

  Dilys didn't think it likely. "He was saying there's a rather nasty blockage, and that storm last night just made things worse. He'll want to get it fixed before the weather turns again. But never mind," she said, to Bridget, "you can come and spend the afternoon with me. I've got a spare bed in the back room, for the grandchildren, and I'm only doing baking, so there won't be any noise."

  Bridget's expression was priceless. I glanced at her sideways and choked on my tea, and had to be thumped on the back twice by Christopher.

  "Sorry," I gasped, "it went down the wrong way." But I needn't have bothered. Nobody was listening.

  "There you are, darling," James said, to Bridget, "your problem is solved."

  "Oh, I wouldn't want to be a bother..."

  "Nonsense," Dilys said, again. That one word seemed to capture her whole view of life. "It's no bother at all."

  I could see Bridget's wheels working, trying to find an escape route, when James, with a well-meaning smile, closed the door of the trap. "We can drop you off on our way," he said, "and pick you up again when we come home. Then you won't have to walk in the cold."

  "Wonderful." The flatness of her voice was lost on everyone but me.

  By the time we set off on our afternoon's outing a half hour later, Bridget looked rather convincingly ill. So much so, I thought, that she probably did have a headache. When we stopped outside Owen and Dilys's house in the village to let her out, she went like a prisoner making the walk to the gallows, head down in dejection.