by Rebecca Bryn
There was Perthro again: something hidden, or it could mean a gain she didn’t expect, or even death. Kaunaz, mocked her: a beacon, a torch, light from the darkness. Eihwaz, the Yew Tree: yes, yes, patience, perseverance, endurance… as if she didn’t know. And Odin’s rune: the acceptance that humanity had grown to embrace limitless possibilities. She could achieve anything. Anything? After all these years she doubted that. She rubbed her chin between her thumb and forefinger. Perthro also concerned the bedrock of destiny, renewal of spirit, staying centred and keeping faith.
You shouldn’t doubt the runes, Rhiannon.
‘Algiz?’
No answer.
Lights went on in the cottages across the green. Curtains were drawn against the early dark. She put on her coat and pushed a knife, a marker pen and a torch into her pocket.
What are you going to do, Rhiannon? Where are you going?
The whisper caught her off-guard. ‘I need to know who that woman was.’
Has she come to take me away?
‘Hush, Nerys. You’re safe here.’
Don’t shut me in the dark. A child’s plea.
‘I’ll leave the light on. I won’t be long.’
Don’t lock me in.
She patted her coat pockets absently. ‘I threw away the key, remember?’
The voices fell silent. She hurried across the damp grass and lifted the stone on Siân’s wall. Her fingers gripped cold metal and she glanced behind her.
The black line of Isa, the ice rune, on Siân’s door accused her. She lifted the peeling paint with her knife, scraping until the sign was removed: it had served its purpose. She glanced around again, unsure why she felt so threatened: she’d never felt the need to invade any of the homes of the twelve before. The key turned in the lock and she pushed open the door.
Warm air hit her: odd, but the agent had been there a long while and it was bitterly cold out. Holding her hand over the torch beam, she let a little light filter between her fingers. The face on the wall in front of her rooted her to the spot. Cadi… little Cadi… it had to be. It sent a chill shiver down her spine and made her knees weak. Siân Ap Dafydd had learned the hard way what it was like to lose a child: she’d paid twice for what she’d done.
She rifled through drawers and cupboards in the kitchen and the pink box-room but found nothing of use. A drawing pad had sketches of Cadi, aged one, two and three. She replaced the papers and files carefully and stared at the computer monitor. Computers were one mystery into which she’d never delved. Her torch lit the uneven treads that led to the loft and she followed its beam into Siân’s bedroom. She opened a drawer and torchlight fell on a small clutch of envelopes addressed to Mrs S A Ap Dafydd.
Dear Siân, I can’t begin to imagine how hard this is for you. Your generosity at such a time overwhelms me. The kitten is well but Derek hasn’t come round to the idea of having it in the house yet. I’m working on him. No-one could resist its charms forever. G
Who Derek and the cryptic G were, she had no idea. She opened another envelope, and another. None had an address, signature or date; cat-lover G seemed obsessed with the playful doings of her wretched kitten, about which Derek still had reservations. She shoved the letters back in their envelopes and delved deeper into the drawer. An album held photographs and newspaper cuttings. Her heart raced.
Second child goes missing from village of death. Only weeks after the disappearance of two year-old Bethan Reece, another little girl has disappeared from her home in Coed-y-Cwm, near St Davids on the west Pembrokeshire coast. Bethan was…
She didn’t need to read the rest; she knew the story well enough. She pushed the album into the bottom of the drawer; newspaper cuttings would only tell her what she already knew. But for the cursed and self-righteous twelve, judge, jury and executioners, they’d still be here… and Nerys? Maybe it had always been too late for Nerys.
Siân had left nothing of value. She went downstairs and opened the front door cautiously. The night was silent, the only movement the flashing across the clouds of the lighthouse to the north. Locking the door behind her she paused: this was a house of sorrow and evil, but Siân had paid for her part in the crime with her life.
She took a broad marker from her pocket and drew a sign on the bare wood where Isa, the ice sign, had been. Laguz: the sign was a vertical line, thicker at the top than the bottom, with a downward stroke from the top slanting to the right, like half an arrow. It was the water sign, a moon sign, controlling the flow of emotion, health and healing… a sign of cleansing. She had no quarrel with whoever lived here next… unless…
She smudged the sign quickly with her sleeve as if, by allowing it to dry, it would gain potency. Caution, patience… something unexpected. Suppose that girl wasn’t an estate agent: suppose she was related to Siân, and was intending to come back and that was why the house was warm. She had cursed Siân and her family, however distant and far-flung, unto the third generation.
Chapter Five
Alana followed the coast-road north, catching glimpses of headlands and sunlit heather-clad hills where the sea-fog thinned and lifted. She parked at the rear of the solicitor’s office and climbed the two flights of stairs to reception. ‘I’m here to see Mr Davies? Ten o’clock?’
A tall, thin, balding young man poked his head round a door. ‘Miss Harper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ He sat down, waved a hand at a seat and searched among the files piled on his desk. ‘Here we are… Siân Ap Dafydd.’ He hotched in his seat. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
She sat down with care, reminded of her worse chair. ‘I didn’t know her.’
He interlocked his fingers and rested his hands on the desk in front of him. ‘It’s a shame when families lose touch.’ He almost smiled. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you for some form of identification. Passport or photo driving-licence… and a utility bill or something to prove your address.’
She put her passport and an unpaid final demand on the table. ‘My driving licence seems to have done a bunk.’
‘It happens.’ He looked from her to her passport photograph and back, and ticked a box on the document in front of him. ‘With the research Mr John has done on my behalf, I’m more than happy you are who you say you are.’
She put the documents back in her bag. ‘If I was someone else, I could afford to pay this gas bill.’
He looked at her blankly, and then his lip twitched. ‘Now then… Mrs Ap Dafydd died on November 20th. As executors we’ve dealt with notifying the death, and probate and, of course, not having managed to contact a relative, we authorised her funeral.’
‘Where is she buried?’
‘Her instructions in her will were that she wished to be cremated and her ashes interred with her husband’s. They’re buried in the churchyard at Whitchurch, near Solva. We’ve arranged for her name to be added to his gravestone as instructed.’
Eighty percent of less than she’d hoped decreased by the minute.
‘Your aunt’s estate comprises the dwelling house known as The Haggard, Coed-y-Cwm and all its contents. She also left monies amounting to…’ He shuffled through paperwork. ‘Fifteen thousand pounds. We’re just waiting for one hundred pounds of Premium Savings Bonds to be liquidated. Our fee and any tax liability will be deducted from the monies due to you. The estate should be well below this year’s inheritance tax level. Any questions?’
‘What about the twenty percent I have to pay Harry John?’
‘Your agreement is with him. Your contract doesn’t oblige us to pay his fees from your estate.’
‘I’ll have to sell The Haggard to pay the expenses.’ She opened her shoulder bag and handed Mr Davies the electricity bill. ‘I found this final demand.’
He took it and nodded. ‘I’ll see to that. We had the property valued for probate at… let’s see… a hundred and fifty thousand.’
‘It would be worth more than that as a building plot.’
‘I
t would, but you may get more than the probate value when it’s sold. Incomers love the old Pembrokeshire long-houses for holiday homes, even if they are damp and dark…it’s character.’
‘And most of it’s bad.’
He got to his feet and held out his hand. ‘We’ll be in touch when we’ve finalised things. If there’s nothing else…’
She shook his hand. It was clammy and he seemed eager to be rid of her. ‘Did you know my aunt?’
‘I met her several times.’
‘Did she say why she left everything to me?’
He glanced at a sealed envelope among the paperwork. ‘I’m afraid I can’t breach client confidentiality.’
‘That’s what Mr John said.’
‘And quite right, too. We adhere to a strict code of conduct, even if it does sometimes make life difficult.’
‘In what way?’
‘Confidences can be a burden.’
‘I suppose so. I hadn’t looked at it that way.’ She clog-danced down the bare wooden stairs. She had work to do before she could hope The Haggard would sell. She stopped at a small supermarket near the ferry terminal and bought rubber gloves and dustbin liners, milk, bread, cheese and butter… and flowers. She deposited her purchases in Minnie’s boot. Cleaning could wait until dark.
She drove up steep winding lanes onto the moorland. Craggy rocks stabbed skywards, the bones of the earth resisting ice, wind and rain to the bitter end. Standing stones, raised by a forgotten people, loomed like the ribs of a shipwreck in a sea of mist. Nearer the coast, the fog cleared; the sun sparkled on a jewelled sea and white surf broke against jagged rocks. She parked in a lay-by and got out, breathing sea air, the breeze lifting her unruly curls, the taste of freedom on her lips.
She’d filled her sketchbook before she realised she was hungry, and her fingers and toes were stiff with cold. Three o’ clock, and already the sun dipped towards the sea. She had time, if she was quick, to pay her respects to her dead aunt before dark.
The wind whipped round the tiny hilltop church. Gravestones leaned towards one another in eternal conversation, among spiny brambles. There was a sculpture in that image, if she could ever afford the stone. Inscriptions spoke of love in a language she didn’t understand and yet she felt the connection. A new plot, neatly mown, had rows of modern headstones and led off the old churchyard. Most of the inscriptions were in English, and many names were English too: incomers, like Harriet, captivated and captured by the spirit of the peninsula?
She stopped at a recently-disturbed grave with a polished slate headstone.
Dafydd Ap Dafydd
Age 59 Died February 18th 1999
Dearly loved husband and father
Below, the lettering was sharper, the gilding fresh.
And
Siân Alana his wife
Aged 66 Died November 20th…
She’d been younger than Mum. She tipped green water from the flower holder, filled it with fresh from a butt, and arranged the chrysanthemums, snapping the stems short to stop the wind blowing them over.
Had anyone mourned her loss? Was this what happened when families let wounds fester? Siân had no living children…. She read the headstone again. She’d assumed the little girl in the portrait was Siân’s daughter: if so, she wasn’t buried with her parents. Maybe she’d lived to adulthood and was buried elsewhere; the answer would be among Siân’s personal papers. She patted the headstone and walked back to her car. Maybe, when she got back to Leicester, she should talk to Dad again and try to come to terms with his new life.
The cottage was warm and cosy: the dying sun threw her shadow across the rug in front of the fireplace. Dark and damp? Cupboards gave up coffee, sugar and a tin of less than crisp biscuits. Coffee made, biscuit in mouth, she donned her rubber gloves, took a deep breath and opened the fridge door.
By nine o’clock that evening, the fridge was clean, the washing machine filled with bedding, and the dustbins full. She made a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, and took a drawer-full of paperwork to the table: Christmas cards, appointment cards, invitations to exhibit paintings… a life in full swing… gone.
She worked drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard; personal papers, bank statements and bills went into a cardboard box for later attention and the rest into a dustbin liner. Clothes, sorted according to condition, she bagged for charity shops or recycling.
The computer and art materials she left where they were. Aunt Siân’s papers, and the signposts she’d passed to galleries, showed the area had a thriving art scene, a place she could fit into: somewhere between the solicitors and the cheese sandwich she’d determined to keep The Haggard, and make a life in Coed-y-Cwm, though how with Mr John’s twenty percent to find…
Somehow, she had to raise the money to pay the costs. ‘Aunt Siân, you’re right, you shouldn’t let wounds fester, besides, if Mum and Dad had kept in touch with you, Mr Davies would have known where to find me. I wouldn’t owe Mr John his twenty percent.’
***
Gravestones leaned, whispering their silent conspiracy. A faint knocking disturbed the silence. Alana searched between the stones, panic clutching at her heart: someone was trapped inside desperate for her to rescue them. The sound came from here, no, here. The tapping was all around her. She spun on her heel: the whole graveyard had come alive.
A huge black dog sprang at her from behind a headstone and she woke with a start. A hoarse bark sounded a way off, loud in the unnatural silence. No dog she’d ever heard sounded like that. The tapping sound came again. She switched on the light and a pencil sketch of a little girl with huge eyes stared at her from the wall. She sank back against her pillow; she was in The Haggard, in Aunt Siân’s bed, not in a graveyard being attacked by zombies or a giant hound with a blood-curdling howl.
Aunt Siân’s dressing gown breathed lily of the valley: she wrapped it around her, went downstairs and made a cup of tea. The rough, strangled bark came again, closer this time. Was that a light flashing outside? She peered through the gap in the living room curtains and a brown eye stared back. It blinked and she didn’t. Hot tea splashed her bare leg: she swore, and flung back the curtain. The eye had gone.
She fetched a torch and opened the front door. There was that tapping sound again, louder now. Away from the street lamp on the far side of the green, it was utterly dark. Her eyes and ears adjusted and gradually, through the silence, she picked out the quiet chuckle of the river a quarter of a mile away. The harsh bark sounded again. Didn’t vixens call for a mate in January? Dad would know.
Her torch beam raked across the darkness; there were footprints in the soil outside her window but no sign of a peeping Tom. As she swung her torch round it picked out the door knob and something else; the thick black line on the door, which had flaked off the day before, was back and had sprouted a triangle at its base, a bit like an upside-down flag. Was someone trying to tell her something?
The gate flapped, loose in the breeze. She latched it securely and locked and bolted the door behind her. She wouldn’t sleep now, so she fetched the box of Siân’s papers. She should try to get an idea of what needed sorting before she went back to Leicester. Her tea had gone cold by the time she put the final letter about the kitten into its envelope. G had to be Mum, and Derek, Dad. She didn’t remember them having a cat so obviously Dad had eventually won that acrimonious battle.
She opened the album. Photographs, presumably of Siân, Dafydd and their young daughter, preceded yellowed newspaper cuttings, pasted to thick pages; a headline caught her eye.
Second child goes missing in village of death. Only weeks after the disappearance of two year-old Bethan Reece, another little girl has disappeared from her home in Coed-y-Cwm, near St Davids on the west Pembrokeshire coast. Bethan was a playmate of three year-old Cadi Ap Dafydd, only daughter of Dafydd and Siân Ap Dafydd, who lived nearby. Cadi disappeared yesterday afternoon. Police and residents are combing the area for the missing children but police say abduction has not b
een ruled out. House to house enquiries are being carried out.
Cadi was Siân’s dead daughter. Her cousin had gone missing? Had they found her alive? If not, and she’d died aged three, wouldn’t her parents have wanted to be buried alongside her?
She turned a page. A loose collection of bills, marked paid, were from a private detective. An envelope held a copy of her aunt’s will, showing she’d left her entire fortune to Cadi. She scanned it, heart thumping; it pre-dated the one the solicitor held by some thirty years. She turned her attention to the next newspaper cutting.
Three weeks after the abduction of Bethan Reece and Cadi Ap Dafydd, of Coed-y-Cwm, Pembrokeshire, the hunt continues for the two missing toddlers. Hope of finding them alive is fading. Police are again questioning the parents of both girls. A police spokeswoman said that they are following a number of leads and are appealing for information.
Three weeks… hell would be a doddle compared to that. Poor Siân. Another newspaper report, a week later, showed the police were treating the two disappearances as a murder enquiry. A piece of paper fell to the floor: a bill from a private detective dated ten years ago. The truth hit her like a shovel behind the ear. Siân had never had the closure of a funeral for Cadi: she’d never been found.
Almost inaudibly, into her mind, came a soft tap, tap, tap.
***
Greg’s fingers stilled on his guitar strings and the last notes echoed from the walls. An old man sitting hunched against the wall a dozen yards away clapped in appreciation. He scanned the heads in the crowd, searching for the knitted hat with the Nordic design, and regretting for the thousandth time that he hadn’t at least asked Maddy for her mobile number. A hand waved in greeting and a bright smile, framed by spiky blond and pink hair, appeared briefly above a medley of intervening faces. Maddy? It was Maddy.
