December (39 page)

      
Shelley gripped the curtain to hold back the hot tears building
behind her eyes.

The woman was smiling at
Weasel out of the darkness. He did recognize her, but his mind was too
blown-out to figure where he'd seen her before.

      
Weasel backed away from the car, gulping in the hard, dark air
to stop himself throwing up.

      
He stood in the road. There was no other traffic. The lights
shone down from the house upon the broken fence, giant slats like railway sleepers.
The car had smashed into the bottom of the fence and slammed a bunch of
sleepers back, and two of them had, like, see-sawed and come flying at the
windscreen.

      
The sleepers lay half across the car bonnet, glass all over them,
the other halves inside the car.

      
Weasel hadn't heard any screams, only a sound like a house
falling down. The engine was still chuntering away, exhaust smell on the air
and another smell when you were closer - like a rusty smell.

      
It was probably blood. Realising this. Weasel clutched his
guts and Vanessa's omelette came up.

      
Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he felt better. He should do
something, call the cops, get the road sealed off. Anybody came round the bend
- splat.

      
On its side in the road was Vanessa's lamp, one of those red
plastic ones with a handle. It was still on. As Weasel picked it up, he thought
he heard a car droning in the distance. He should go towards it waving the
lamp, warn them.
      
He needed help.

      
Thought somebody would've come by now. It was less than half a
mile outside the village; even at this hour
some
bastard must've heard the crash.

      
The car noise had faded out. They must've turned off. Which
was a pity; they could've helped him, gone for the cops. He couldn't risk going
back to the house in case another car showed up while he was away.

      
No choice. Weasel ran back through the gates.

      
'Princess?'

      
She was still standing on the lawn where he'd left her, by the
concrete birdbath. 'You gotta help me,' Weasel said.

      
She didn't move, didn't even look at him. Most likely, she was
still in shock. He'd never forget her standing in the middle of the road, still
as a bloody garden gnome, the car screeching and swerving to avoid her and then
hitting the fence.

      
'You smell bad, Weasel,' Vanessa said.

      
'Yeah, I been sick, Princess. Listen, you gotta go back up the
house and you gotta ring 999. You know how to do that?'

      
After a second or two, he thought she nodded.

      
'And they'll say: What service you want? And you say police and
. .

      
Ambulance?

      
Too late for that.

      
'... you say police. And they'll ask you where you are and you
tell 'em, you say Larkfield St Mary, near Stroud, and you tell 'em there's been
a serious accident, you got that? A serious accident.'

      
Vanessa stared at him for a moment and he thought,
Oh, Gawd
, but then she turned suddenly
and ran towards the house and left him there and didn't look back.

      
All he could do was hope she'd get it right. Weasel walked
back out the gateway to the car. It had come to him, who she was, the woman
who'd smiled at him. He should make sure. He had the light now.

      
Gawd.

      
He hadn't seen the man's face, hadn't tried to. Seen his neck,
that was enough. What was left of it. The sleeper had crashed in through the windscreen,
taken him under the chin, pinning his neck to the head-restraint. The rusty smell
was strongest here; Weasel gagged again.

      
The engine had coughed its last. All quiet in the car, except
for this dripping sound, like
plop, plop,
plop
. Oh, Gawd help us.

      
He let the lamp's beam fall through the windscreen just once.

      
Typical. Even in his last second, Sir Wilf had been scowling. Even
with a hole in his neck you could put your fist through and the top of his spine
on view through the mush, his face showed no horror, only, like ... rage.

      
Weasel stepped back to the rear door on the passenger side, the
only one he'd been able to open.

      
There'd been no padded head restraint on this side; maybe Lady
Tulley had found it inconvenient, some people did. Where the restraint should
have been, another wooden sleeper lay like a shelf across the back of the seat,
in which Lady Tulley's body still sat.

Her head was tossed like a
handbag or something on the back seat, and now he could see it properly, no,
she wasn't smiling after all.

      
Wedged between Lady Tulley's head and the driver's seat was a
mud-spattered wheel. They must've had a puncture on the way; no wonder Sir Wilf
was scowling.

I

Dreamer

The neat, square, grey
tower most visitors thought was Abergavenny Castle, this actually wasn't it at
all. This was in fact a nineteenth-century folly, once Lord Abergavenny's
hunting lodge, now housing the town's museum; it just
looked
like a castle, see.

      
Eddie Edwards explained this to the vicar as they walked along
a narrow path between two jutting stone walls - pinky-grey, like ash, like the
colours of the Abbey. It had taken less than half an hour to drive here from
Ystrad Ddu, even at Mr Edwards's famously moderate speeds.

      
'This, now,
this
is
the real castle,' Mr Edwards said. 'These walls and those segments by there.
Not boring you already, am I? Only you've gone quiet.'

      
'Sorry,' the vicar said, in a distant sort of way. 'Not much
left of it, is there?'

      
'Ample, for our purposes,' Mr Edwards said, striding forth.
'Now, Vicar, you follow me round by here, and you'll see what a sound defensive
position this was.'

      
It had been his idea to come today. He knew the vicar didn't
want to, but the boy needed taking out of himself. Mr Edwards was, quite
frankly, fed up with seeing him mooning about the place, looking preoccupied
and generally out-of-sorts.

      
He led the vicar around the side of the high wall, where the
castle hill fell away to reveal a magnificent expanse of countryside, out
across the river. On the other side of the castle was the town itself where
they'd parked, not a terribly important town, architecturally speaking, but
pleasant and lively.
      
Which was more than you could say
for the vicar.
      
Had he always been such a loner? On
the way here, Mr Edwards had asked him if he'd ever been married, thinking
maybe the wife had died, leaving him bereft. The vicar had smiled, shaken his
head, declined to elaborate.

      
Couldn't be a Nancy-boy, surely, now? Didn't
behave
like a Nancy-boy. Still, though,
the languid way he moved, the slightly effete mannerisms, the way he'd toss
back that lock of feathery, fair hair …

      
Well, hell. Mr Edwards blew out his lips. What on earth did it
matter if he was? Not like there was a surfeit of mild-mannered, sensitive
fellows around these parts.

      
He separated his hands, as if measuring. 'Now, what we have to
imagine here, see. Vicar, is the scene in the mid-twelfth century.'

      
The sun, making a speculative foray from behind a clump of
clouds, had lit the vicar's pale hair, giving him a halo. And why not, indeed?

      
'There would've been a keep, like that new tower, same sort of
shape and in fact on that very same mound. But all the rest of the buildings
inside the walls would've been little more than wooden sheds, with maybe
thatched roofs. Protection, it was about, see, not grandiose architectural
statements.'

      
He opened out a white leaflet to a simple plan of the castle
ruins 'Now.' Pointing to a one-time three-storey section with a tree grown up
in the middle. 'That's the south-west tower, OK? So therefore ...' marching
along the inside of the perimeter '… the great hall would have been just about
…'

      
Mr Edwards stopped, beamed.
      
'Here.'

      
There was grass and a workman's hut, and a lower area where a
kind of cellar had been. The vicar seemed relieved somehow that there was not
more to see.

      
The last time Eddie Edwards had been here he'd still been an
education adviser, planning another of those inter-school projects designed to
take history out of the classroom.

      
How time did go by.
      
'So, Vicar, we'll imagine that we
are in 1175.'

      
'Eddie.' The vicar was leaning against one of the castle
walls. 'As I'm off duty today …'

      
He was wearing an old sheepskin jacket and patched jeans. Mr Edwards
had to admit he did not look much like a vicar this morning.

      
'... Why don't you just call me Simon?'

      
'Well ...' Simon? Simon? He was a married man! Mr Edwards took
a couple of swift paces to the right. 'Well, as you like, Vicar. Now, this
castle was built by the Norman invaders for the purpose of controlling the
Welsh hereabouts, who had never quite adjusted to the idea of being conquered.
And in 1175, the castle was still pretty new, and so was the owner. The Norman
baron William de Braose.'

      
'Ah, yes.'

      
'Who, not to put too fine a point on it, Vic ... Simon ... was
a bastard of the first order.'
      
'Quite.'

      
'Cruel, greedy, arrogant. If there'd been jackboots in 1175,
rest assured he'd have had a pair or two made to size.'

      
'Bet he went from strength to strength in Norman Britain,'
said Simon, flicking back his fair hair.

      
'Indeed. Now, before this, the castle was owned - and when I
say owned, in those days, owning it was matter of getting up an army and
evicting the current tenant - it was owned by a local Welsh chieftain, chap
name of Seisyll, brother-in-law of the Prince of South Wales, so well connected,
in his way. Now, this man Seisyll had taken it by force from the Norman in
charge at the time whose name I forget, but he doesn't matter.'

      
Simon St John, Mr Edwards thought suddenly. Was St John
perhaps a Norman name? Better be careful how he angled this story.

      
'Anyway, on agreeing to give back the castle, Seisyll was
granted a royal pardon by the English king, Henry II.' Mr Edwards sniffed.
'Bloody good of him, give a man a royal pardon after you've pinched his lands,
subjugated his ... anyway, Seisyll moves out, William de Braose moves in, and
they agree there will be a banquet at the castle, Normans and Welsh together,
to celebrate their new-found friendship. All this old ground for you, Simon?'
      
'No, we were told very little. The
idea was that we ... The vicar stopped; a hunted look flitted across his smooth
features. 'I'm sorry, I ... It's very interesting, Eddie. Go on.'

      
What was all this about?
Duw,
there was more to this fellow than met the eye, all right. Mr Edwards walked to
the centre of a grassy area, the high perimeter wall to his right.

      
'So a strong wooden building stood just about here - the great
hall, enclosed by the high walls, looked down on by the keep. The banquet is
prepared, the wild boar, the venison, whatever. And when Seisyll's party
arrive, they have with them an entertainer, a harpist - Aelwyn.'

      
Mr Edwards paused for effect. Sun flashed through the branches
of leafless trees.

      
'Aelwyn, now, he already was a well-known figure in the land,
if not to the Normans. A bard, a chronicler, in poetry, of the times ... and an
individual, this is the important thing. Most bards, see, in those days were
what you might call hacks. Earned their money glorifying the deeds of whichever
land-grabbing scoundrel would become their patron. But nobody owned Aelwyn, it
had been written ... except the land itself.'