Sleeper’s Castle

by Barbara Erskine

  Later Catrin found her way outside to make sure the injured horse had been taken care of. She found Edmund gently rubbing salve into the animal’s leg by the light of a lantern. He glanced up at her as he heard the rustle of her skirts in the straw as she approached him. ‘How is she?’ she asked.

  ‘She’ll do. It’s not a bad sprain. Rest is all she needs.’ The smell of the salve floated in the air. She sensed there was lavender there and peppermint and perhaps juniper.

  ‘Did the grooms give you that ointment?’ she asked. She had seen them huddled round a brazier in the yard; they had told her where to find him.

  He shook his head. ‘I always carry a pot of this with me when I travel.’ He straightened, rubbing his hands together and then rubbing them up and down on the front of his doublet. ‘Good stuff. I make it myself. It does for men as well as beasts.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Only men?’ she found herself asking pertly.

  He laughed. ‘I dare say it would do for ladies as well,’ he said. ‘There is nothing there to harm them. You like it, don’t you, my love.’ He had turned back to the horse, his voice a low croon. The horse rubbed her muzzle on his arm and nibbled his sleeve.

  Catrin watched fascinated. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said at last. ‘Do you have all you need out here?’

  ‘I have plenty, thank you.’

  ‘Then I’ll bid you goodnight.’ She hesitated then turned and retraced her footsteps to the keep.

  Her father had noted her absence and guessed where she had gone. ‘Is the boy all right?’

  She sat down beside him on the bench at the table. ‘He’s fine. He’s with the horses.’

  Dafydd nodded. ‘They have asked us to sing again.’ He glanced at their host and hostess, who were watching them eagerly. ‘Shall we give them a lullaby or two to send us all to bed?’

  She smiled. ‘I will fetch my harp.’

  As she unwrapped her instrument, set it on her knee and began to tune it, her fingers finding the little pegs with accustomed ease, she felt extraordinarily happy.

  But that night the nightmares came back. Awake with painful suddenness, she stared up into the darkness, her heart heavy. It was a warning, of that she was certain, but of what? There was always skirmishing in the March. There was war in Scotland too. Edmund had told her and her father something of that as they rode and she had learned that he was tempted to join a company of archers. ‘The pay is good as an archer.’ He had glanced up at Dafydd’s face as he walked at the horse’s head near her. ‘I no longer have a place with my wife’s family, God rest her soul’ – he crossed himself sadly – ‘but now I am back at Hardwicke, I have no place there either. My brother Richard will inherit all that there is to inherit. Joan is safe with you. So I am free to go wherever fate sends me.’

  To go to war. Catrin shivered under the warm covers of the truckle bed she had been given in the women’s chamber, high in the keep. Was it Edmund’s war she foresaw? The war with Scotland or perhaps in France? He had talked a little of such matters as they had walked through the mist earlier and grudgingly she had had to admit to herself that he was an intelligent man, intrigued as he was by the politics of kings. He had told them of the treaty with France and of the repeated demands by the king for money to fund his excursions into Scotland.

  Sleepily she pictured her father’s study, his much rubbed-out parchment, the words of horror he had written there. She was not the only one to have premonitions of death. He had tried to keep his fears from her and she had kept hers from him, but they were going to have to discuss it one day; to try and discover what the walls of their house were telling them of the future and who it was who was being forewarned.

  Sitting up with a sigh, she pulled her cloak around her for warmth and sat gazing into the heart of the embers of the fire. The women servants of the castle slept on truckle beds near her. The room was warm and safe but it was not her own little bedroom. She thought back to the dream. How strange that something so intimate, which belonged to Sleeper’s Castle, could follow her here.

  She wasn’t sure when in her dream she had realised she was not watching the battle alone. Another woman was with her, as horrified and afraid as she was. Away from the mêlée, sheltered by a belt of ancient oak trees, they moved closer to one another in their terror; they were higher than the men they watched, not in her own cwm but on a hillside somewhere, witnessing the horror unfolding beneath them.

  Then between one breath and the next Catrin had awoken and the dream had faded as dreams always will and with it her companion, but not before she had noticed that the woman had light brown hair, wild and unkempt, with no coif or veil. As they looked at one another in horror at what they had seen, she saw the woman had clear grey eyes. For a moment they had held one another’s gaze, then she had gone with the dream into the mist.

  The next day it was raining and cold.

  Andy yawned and, dropping her paintbrush, stretched out her fingers to relieve their stiffness. After ringing Sian to thank her for the supper party she had settled down at the table in the living room and had been painting for several hours. She gave a wry smile, noticing the plants she was painting – a small posy of hastily gathered yellow tormentil and St John’s Wort – had drooped slightly in their glass of water. Instead of looking cheerful, they seemed exhausted and depressed, which was pretty much what she felt too.

  She sat staring into space, allowing herself to think again about the figure from her dream the night before, the figure she’d imagined seeing standing in the kitchen doorway. Almost without realising she had done it, Andy pulled her sketchpad towards her, reached for her pencil and began to touch in the details of the woman’s face. It was clear in her mind: sharp, fine-featured with expressive grey-green eyes, her hair hidden by a hood, her hands strong and capable. The rest of her clothes were indistinct. Andy remembered only the long heavy cloak, which swept the ground. The woman had been a remnant of a dream that had been particularly vivid, easily explained after months of stress and unhappiness. Hadn’t she?

  Pushing back the chair, she stood up and walked over to the hearth.

  Apart from the pool of bright light focused on the table where she had been working, the room was full of shadows. She looked round as the curtains stirred in the draught from the windows which were streaming with rain. A puff of ash shifted from the long-dead fire. This was the oldest part of the house, its great hall, she now realised. She thought back to what Roy had told her last night about its ancient and historical origins. The heavy ceiling beams emphasised its age, solid, brooding, throwing off the light from the lamp with something like disdain as the weight of ages overwhelmed the room. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. There had to be ghosts here. How could a house this old, steeped in history, lived in by generations of people long gone, not have ghosts? Ghosts, whatever they were, would be in the DNA of ancient plaster and oak; they were part of the fabric of time, as real as the pegs that held the joints of wood together.

  She didn’t feel afraid at the thought. The house was friendly; it seemed to welcome her, but it was easy to imagine a sense of its former life, watching, waiting, comfortable she hoped in the knowledge that she was here as the new caretaker.

  She sat down on the edge of the sofa and closed her eyes, wondering if she could conjure up anything of the house’s past. She used to do this with her father when she was a child, always hoping something would happen. Nothing ever had, but maybe this time it would. She was hoping, she knew, that the woman from the kitchen would appear again.

  She thought back to her father’s explanation and the theories she had read so often in her books, the ones she liked best, that ghosts were memories, moments in the past which had caught in the fabric of a house like a moth in a spider’s web, clinging, fluttering briefly then gone back into the dark. Sometimes it was more than that; sometimes someone had left a trace of themselves anchored by their emotions, and those would be the strongest impressions. She remem
bered once or twice, ghost-hunting with her father, when there had been a subtle shift in the air as though someone or something had moved on stage while they watched from the darkened auditorium, prompting her to open her eyes, frightened and excited, clutching at her father’s hand. Sometimes a slight flicker of light would catch their attention, but that was all that happened.

  As far as she recalled there were solid scientific explanations for all this stuff, something to do with quantum physics, but she never became an expert. Graham had come along and scoffed and shuddered and mocked, and she had put it all behind her.

  She hadn’t encountered any of these memories, fragments of the past, in the old days when she had been so keen on doing this, but maybe there was something here, in this house with its dreams and its shadows and its memories.

  Slowly she emptied her mind, allowing it to rest, open, receptive, ready for any impressions that might come as the silence of the room wrapped itself around her.

  Five minutes later she tensed. Was that a change in the atmosphere? She could feel someone there watching her. Someone was ready to communicate. Her eyes flew open.

  Culpepper was sitting in the doorway gazing at her in silence, his expression enigmatic.

  She laughed out loud. ‘You caught me,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you can see them, the people who used to live in this house.’

  The cat’s expression remained unchanged.

  The knock at the front door made her jump. The sound of the rain on the flags outside had muffled the noise of the car engine as an old muddy Volvo drew up outside the gate. Holding her coat over her head Sian ran up the steps and huddled under the stone lintel of the porch until Andy pulled open the door.

  ‘Had a wonderful thought,’ Sian spluttered, running her fingers through her rain-soaked hair as they headed into the warmth of the kitchen. ‘Let’s go and find Meryn. Not only does he know about the history of this house and this area in general, but I think he’s writing a book about herbs. Maybe you could illustrate it for him. I’m going to drive you up to his cottage, show you where he lives and we will see if there’s any sign of him.’

  Andy stared at her, shocked at this sudden explosion of energy. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. He might even be there! Do you want to come?’ Sian was laughing.

  Andy thought for a moment then she smiled. ‘That sounds good to me. I’ve been cooped up all day painting and I could do with a bit of fresh air.’ She cocked an eye towards the window. Rain was streaming down the panes, rattling on the flags outside. ‘Does he never answer the phone?’

  Sian shook her head. ‘Often not. He’s an amazing character, Andy. I think you would like each other. He may not be there – he does travel a lot – but it’s worth a look. If the cottage is all locked up then we’ll just have to wait until he returns. But if it looks as though he’s around I can leave a note and get him to ring me. Then I can engineer a meeting.’ She was studying Andy’s face. ‘You do look very tired.’

  Andy bit her lip. ‘I’ve been dreaming a lot.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sian went to lean on the Aga.

  ‘You sound as though you were expecting me to say that,’ Andy said slowly.

  ‘This house is not called Sleeper’s Castle for nothing, as Roy told you. People do dream here.’

  ‘Did Sue ever mention it to you?’

  ‘I think she had nightmares occasionally.’ Sian’s reply was cautious.

  ‘About Catrin?’

  ‘Who’s Catrin?’

  ‘A woman who I think might have lived here once. I’ve heard her name in my dreams.’

  ‘I don’t remember Sue telling me what the dreams were about.’ Sian frowned. ‘She just shrugged them off. Are you telling me you’re dreaming about a ghost?’

  ‘No.’ Andy reached for her coat. ‘No, not a ghost. It doesn’t matter. You know how some dreams linger. And I don’t think I’m sleeping very well, if I’m honest. It’s odd, but I suppose I’ll get used to the silence. The brook is a strange bedfellow. I’m beginning to see how it works. Now it’s raining it will start to roar over the rocks again; when the weather has been dry for a day or two, the roar will subside to a pleasant ripple. I like it.’

  ‘Good.’ Sian looked round. ‘I love this house. Sue was so lucky to find it. It belonged to an old man who lived here for years and years. He had a bit of a reputation as an oddball – a bit fey, you know? Local girls used to come up and ask him to do magic spells for him to make sure they caught the lad of their dreams.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No. I know one of the guys at an estate agent in Hay and he told me there was a problem with the house after the old man died because no one knew who had inherited it. For ages they thought he had no relations, then at last someone turned up, a great-nephew, I think, who had been living in Canada. He wanted nothing to do with the place luckily, so it went on the market and they rang Sue who had been hunting for a cottage for a few months and she came down and bought it within days. Well, I expect you know that.’

  ‘She told me about it at the time. The house was in an awful state, as I remember.’

  Sian nodded. ‘He was old and living on his own. But he was completely sane, and he had designed the herb garden. He must have been nearing one hundred when he died and he had never been to a doctor in his life. He used the herbs as taught to him by his granny.’

  ‘He didn’t have the services of Bryn, I take it.’

  There was something in her tone that made Sian smile. ‘You’ve met him then.’

  ‘Not so as one would notice. He grunted at me and more or less told me to mind my own business – in fact I got the impression he would prefer it if I kept out of the garden altogether.’

  ‘That sounds like Bryn.’

  ‘It’s not just me then?’

  Sian hesitated. ‘Let’s say he seems to take a while to get to know people.’ She headed towards the door. ‘Give him time. Come on, let’s go and see if Meryn is at home. If nothing else it will get you out in the fresh air.’

  Thick cloud lay low over the mountains. As Sian drove up the steep winding lane, crossed a cattle grid and forked onto an even narrower road, the visibility narrowed to a white wall around the car. From time to time she braked and steered round a sheep sitting at the edge of the road, seeking the comparative warmth of the tarmac. The animals gazed at them with blank yellow eyes, expressionless in the rain. ‘They hate this weather, poor things,’ Sian commented as they stopped for the fourth time.

  ‘Does he really live right up here?’ Andy was vainly peering through the windscreen hoping to be able to see where they were going.

  ‘It seems a bit bleak now,’ Sian answered. ‘But it’s beyond beautiful when you can see the view. We’re right up below Hay Bluff here. One can see several counties spread out below.’

  They came to another fork in the road and she swung the car onto an even narrower track, which after a few hundred yards disappeared beneath a swiftly running ford, then reappeared to climb steeply again. Abruptly the mist began to thin and there were glimpses of blue in the sky ahead. ‘We’ve climbed above the cloud,’ Sian said. She changed down into second gear.

  They turned through an open gate, passed a sheltered stand of thorn trees and then they were there. A white-painted stone cottage appeared at the top of the track, its garden surrounded by a thorn hedge. There was no sign of a car outside.

  Sian turned off the engine and opened her door. The blast of cold air almost took Andy’s breath away as she followed suit, pulling up the hood of her jacket.

  She hadn’t expected Sian to head round to the shed at the back of the cottage and push open the door. She re-emerged with two parcels and a key. ‘I’m afraid he is still away. These have been here a while. They’re quite damp. The postman leaves them for him on a special shelf.’ She led the way back to the front door and inserted the key. The door was swollen and she struggled before pushing it open, leading the way into the cold dark inter
ior. It smelt of long-ago apple logs and stone.

  ‘I take it he doesn’t mind people coming up here?’ Andy asked cautiously. ‘It feels wrong coming in when he’s not at home.’

  ‘He has let a few people know where he keeps the key,’ Sian said cheerfully. ‘That way if any of us are up on the mountain we can pop in and make sure everything is all right. No one seems to have been here for a while though.’ She put the two parcels down on the table. ‘I’ll check if there are any clues as to when he’s coming back.’ She disappeared through a door in the back wall.

  Andy stood where she was, looking round. She could sense the man who lived here very strongly. It was as though a part of him was still here, watching them. She bit her lip, remembering her own strange new ability to daydream herself back to the house in Kew. That had been such a powerful experience it was as though it was real, as though if anyone had looked through the window of the house into the moonlit garden they would have seen her standing there. She took a deep breath as the thought of Rhona calling out to her in the darkness came back to her. From what she had heard of the man who lived here, he would be more than capable of watching her from afar. Hastily she followed Sian through the door and found herself in a small neat kitchen. ‘He’s turned off the water,’ Sian announced, spinning the cold tap in the sink. ‘That’s ominous. He wasn’t expecting to come back before the deep frosts.’