Named of the Dragon (26 page)

I assured him I'd been mingling. "I just thought I'd better get some food, before it disappeared."

He glanced at Bridget, grinning. "I was thinking the same thing myself," he said, taking two plates from the stack at the end of the sideboard. "Weren't there cheesy things here just a minute ago?"

Bridget smoothly deflected the question. 'Two plates, Owen?"

"Well, I thought I'd make one up for Elen. A shame that she couldn't be here."

"Mm," said Bridget, keeping a critical eye on his choices. "I don't think she's keen on smoked salmon."

"Who, Elen? She loves the stuff." Owen forked a third slice on to the plate, added lemon, and turned. "Now, I'll just run this over ..."

"I'll take it," I offered, my gaze still fixed on Christopher.

"That's nice of you, lovely. I'm sure she'd rather see your face than mine."

"Don't be daft. I just want to see she's all right, that's all." Setting my empty glass down on the sideboard, I took the plate. "I won't be long."

Seen from outside, through the long narrow windows, the party looked strangely surreal, bright and glittering, laughing white faces that floated about in their own private world behind glass. With the wind blowing bitterly cold up my skirts and my elbows hugged close to my sides, I chattered past in my high heels, wishing that I'd thought to wear my jacket.

Elen didn't answer when I knocked—she likely couldn't hear me for the wind, I reasoned—and after a minute of waiting I let myself into the porch and then, when she still didn't answer, I opened the inner door, poking my head round. The hall was in darkness, but just round the corner I saw light spill out from the sitting-room. "Elen?"

I waited. It didn't feel right, going in uninvited, but then I remembered she hadn't been well and concern overrode any qualms about manners.

"Elen?" I called again, coming right in this time, swinging the door shut behind me. Stepping out of my shoes, so as not to leave marks on the polished wood floors, I went to look in through the sitting-room door. She was curled on the sofa, half-sitting, one hand tucked beneath her pale cheek like a child's. The remnants of her supper tray still littered the low table in front of her—a soup bowl, two browned apple slices, biscuit crumbs, a teapot. As I came into the room, her lashes fluttered, lifted, fell again.

"Didn't you hear me?" I asked.

"Too sleepy."

"I've brought you some food from the party."

She murmured and tried to sit up.

"No, don't bother. I'll just put it down on the table."

She mumbled again, and I leaned closer. "What?"

"Knew you'd come. Margaret said... Margaret told me ..." Her voice trailed away as her head sank again to the cushions. Her breathing came deeply—too even and deep for a woman who'd just been awake. Either she was very ill, I thought, or she had taken some sort of medication. Leaning over, I joggled her shoulder.

She didn't respond.

As I looked round, trying to decide what I should do, my gaze fell on the homemade crib set out across the mantelpiece—the stubby little walnut sheep, the Magi made from pinecones wrapped in moss, the painted pebble Christ Child in his manger. The child ...

A knot of apprehension twisted slowly in my breast. A cold draught gusted down the empty chimney and it seemed to breathe the warning of the old man at St. Govan's:
Take you care of the boy . ..

"Stevie." I took the stairs two at a time, but I needn't have panicked. The nursery was filled with his smell and the sound of him sleeping, curled snug in his cot. Relieved, I stood and watched him for a moment, then I lightly, very lightly, stroked my hand across his curls and tucked the blankets in around him, as I'd never had the chance to do with Justin.

My hand was still holding the blankets when I heard the first scrape of the key in the lock.

The sound brought my head up and sharply around to stare, transfixed, at the cupboard built into the comer, and as I stared the doorknob started turning.

What I did next went well beyond reason, beyond conscious thought. Reacting from instinct much older than memory, I picked up the baby and ran.

XXXI

And through back wayes, that none might them espy,

Covered with secret cloud of silent night,

Themselves they forth convayd.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

I really don't know why I chose the back door. Maybe because I'd come in that way, and like an animal whose path had brought it face to face with danger I'd blindly doubled back upon my tracks and made a bolt for safety.

I'd have gone right round the back of the houses again if I hadn't seen the shadow slanting suddenly in front of me, and then the flash of dark blond hair above it. I didn't stop to reason that the devil couldn't be behind me and before me all at once—I turned and darted up the ankle-breaking flight of steps behind the shed, my stockinged feet making no noise on the stone, gathering Stevie against me and ducking my head as the gnarled branches of the fig tree scrabbled and clawed at us. One caught my hair but I tugged myself free and pushed on, up the hill to the shed.

The padlock hung loose from its hook—Elen never did shut it properly, Owen had said. Grateful for her carelessness, I jiggled the lock free and pulled the door open, then jumped as the wind grabbed it, flinging it hard to the side so it banged on its hinges. I stopped. Held my breath. Looked at Stevie.

He slept like a stone. He hadn't moved once since I'd lifted him into my arms, but the sound of his breathing came rapid and soft and the warmth of it brushed on my fingertips as I folded the trailing corner of his blanket over him to shield him from the cold, to keep him quiet.

Below me, the man's shadow stopped in a hard square of windowlight, head turned to listen. And then I saw the angle of it change and knew that he was starting to look up, that any second now he'd see us, and I couldn't let that happen.

I slipped sideways through the open door that blew again and sharply banged behind me with a force so great it shook the shed's four walls. And then the wind, as though it tired of the game, released the door and let it swing back slowly, creaking, sealing me in darkness. There were no windows here, and the air had the thick, musty smell of a cellar. Forced to grope my way into the tangle of furniture, I curved my body round Stevie's to give what protection I could, holding him with one arm while the other strained forwards, my hand feeling into the blackness.

I might have been moving through some sort of nightmarish forest, with creatures and trees grabbing at me from all sides. Hard corners stabbed me and upturned legs pummelled me, bruising my ribs as my fingers raked surfaces greasy with dust. At one point I touched the face of a carved beast—a lion, I think—and I snatched back my hand without thinking, only to have something slash at my shoulder, a searing swift pain like the pass of a knife. I cried out and caught myself, biting my lips into silence.

He was coming.

I heard the hard ringing footsteps on stone climbing steadily closer, unhurried. And then he was there, at the door, and with a silent prayer I crouched and huddled in among the table legs, cradling Stevie warm against my heart.

The door creaked open.

In the moonlight he was featureless, the outline of a man and nothing more, but I could tell it wasn't Christopher. I felt myself relaxing and I might have called his name if someone hadn't done it for me.

"James?"

He turned. "Up here."

More footsteps, this time running, and another shadow joined him in the doorway. "What are you doing?"
That
was Christopher. Panicking, I tried to scuttle deeper into my hiding place as James spoke again.

"The shed door was open. I thought that I'd better.,. hold on, did you hear that?"

I froze in my awkward position, not daring to draw back the leg that had just kicked the corner of something.

Christopher listened. "It might be a cat."

"Where's your torch?"

The beam clicked on smartly. It found a wardrobe up against the farther wall and steadily, methodically, began its sweep towards me. My mouth dried as I looked from the light to the shadows that held it, knowing if I could see them, they'd see me when the torch swung my way. I couldn't think of anything to do. Dear God, I couldn't think of anything ...

Already the beam was beginning to broaden and dazzle, the edge of it misting against the cold darkness. I saw the wooden lion's head gleam briefly on a newel-post, and then for an instant the shape of a dragon flashed sharply in silhouette, wings furled behind it and talons outstretched. I flinched before I saw the thing for what it really was—a sheet metal ornament perched on the top of a weather-vane. Feeling the wetness of blood soaking into my sleeve from my now-throbbing shoulder, I realized that this must have been what I'd bumped against, slicing myself on its razor-like edge.

The light left the dragon's contemptuous sneer and came on, growing brighter. I was turning my head from it, closing my eyes, when it suddenly stopped.

"There," said Christopher. "That's your intruder."

The little grey jumping cat, pinned in the torchlight, arched up with a plaintive meow. "Bloody nuisance," James pronounced it. "Come on, then, we're wasting time."

He switched off the torch and the darkness rushed in once again to fold round me as my forehead slowly sank to rest on Stevie's. I heard them shuffling round the door, and heard the door swing shut.

And then something rattled. I lifted my head as the padlock shot home with a small, final click, as though someone had just cocked a gun. It rattled again as he checked its strength, locking us in.

"And remember," said James, fainter now, "I don't care about Elen. It's Lyn that we're after."

Their footsteps moved off, down the stairs to the East House.

Blind, I felt the flutter of hysteria rise steeply in my chest, and pushed it back. No time for that. I had to think. From the dark came a scrabble and thunk as the cat, unperturbed, leapt down on to the floor, padding past me on soft, certain feet. A square of moonlight flashed low in the door and I watched the small pale form slip through before the flap slapped down again.

On cramped legs, I cautiously felt my way forwards, gritting my teeth as I shifted the baby's weight on to my uninjured arm. The cut in my shoulder was deep and still bleeding. I could smell the blood now, feel it sticking warm against my skin, feel it running down my arm to trickle wet between my fingers. I bumped the door and leaned against it, letting it support me as I slid down to the ground again, my knees against the cat flap.

In my right mind, I would never have attempted it. Even with the enlargement that Owen had made, it still looked a very tight squeeze. But I wasn't in my right mind, I was running still on instinct, and I knew we couldn't stay here trapped and freezing in the shed.

I pushed the flap out a few inches and listened.

A dim sliver of light angled through the square hole, touched a small chest of drawers not two feet from me. Struck by a sudden idea, I shifted the baby again and reached with my good hand to yank one drawer free, skidding it over the ground till its edge nudged the door to one side of the cat flap. Wrapping the blanket more tightly round Stevie, I lowered him carefully into the small makeshift cot. Safer for me to go first, if I could, and bring Stevie out afterwards.

I dropped to my belly and, pressing my cheek to the flap, looked out towards Elen's house. Nothing was moving. It had to be now, I thought Reaching both arms out, I forced myself into the hole. The rough wood scraped painfully under my arms as I thrust myself through, and my shoulder caught fire. Gasping, I managed to slide six more inches ... and stuck.

Below me, a light went on in Elen's kitchen window. They were searching the house, I thought. Looking for me.

With one last desperate surge I exhaled all the air in my lungs and kicked out with my legs. Something scraped at my hip and I felt my legs sting as I laddered my tights and tore the softer velvet of my dress, but I'd come through the hole. I was out.

Scrambling round on my knees, I reached back for Stevie. My hands shook as they closed round him, easing him out. I nearly had him through when at my back the night exploded with a sudden boom, like cannon-fire, and a flash of red set fire to the sky above the Haven. It startled me so badly that I lost my grip and fumbled to regain it. Stevie slipped sideways and bounced against the hole's edge, but he didn't wake. He didn't make a sound.

Pulling him on to my lap, I looked down at his face in the light of the flare. Surely it couldn't be natural for a baby to sleep so soundly. Whatever drug they'd given Elen, they must have given some to Stevie, too, so that he wouldn't wake and start to cry. His breathing sounded normal still, but that no longer reassured me. I knew how quickly things could take a turning for the worse, without a warning.

I had to get him somewhere safe, and soon.
Gareth,
I thought, on a rush of relief. I could trust him, he'd know what to do. I'd take Stevie to Gareth.

Lifting the baby and holding him tightly, I turned and picked my way across the drive. Without shoes, I would never be able to run fast enough on the gravel. I'd have to get into the field. The fence by the dovecote was easy to climb. As my feet came down soft on the grass of the pasture, the sound of a second boom rolled down the hill and a second flare traced a bright arc through the sky, but I paid no attention.

What worried me more were the sounds I could hear from the back of the house now, the human sounds—voices and footsteps, confusion.

I ran.

I might have been back in the dream, racing over the field with the child in my arms, only this time I knew I had no hope of waking. The danger behind us was real. Behind Gareth's cottage the warm amber light of the Globe Hotel shone like a beacon to show me the way, spinning a shimmering thread down the length of the long wire fence at the foot of the pasture and guiding me over the obstacle. Then, stumbling over the pebble-rough lane and through shivering grass I ducked round the stone wall into Gareth's back garden.

Panting, I flung myself hard at the door, pounding on it like a madwoman.
Hurry,
I silently urged him.
Please hurry.

But nobody came.

Biting my lip, I half-turned on the doorstep and noticed the window a few feet away, with the light seeping out at its edges behind the thick curtains. Surely that was the room we had sat in, the one where he did all his writing. He must be in there, and unable to hear me because of the wind.

I banged on the glass. Called his name. No one answered.

But I did hear a sound, rather faint, from behind me. The roar of a car motor revving to life. Glancing over my shoulder, towards Castle Farm, I saw headlights flash at the top of the drive. They dipped towards the tower and I held my breath. Perhaps they'd go the other way, across the bridge...

The headlights reached the gate, and turned.

"Oh, God." They'd see me if I tried to run. I left the window, shifting Stevie higher on my shoulder as i darted through the shadows of the garden to the shelter of the wall. Crouching there among the bins, I wrapped my body round him, closed my eyes and turned my face against the frozen stone to listen as the Merc came crawling down the lane towards us.