The Silver Witch (16 page)

‘The body near the surface is prone, not supine.' He waits, clearly hoping one of them will ask what that means. Eventually he saves them the trouble. ‘It was buried facedown, not faceup. Hardly a respectful and dignified way to treat a corpse. And as if that weren't enough, a very large, very heavy flat stone was placed on the back of the deceased.'

‘To hold him or her in place?' Dylan gives a light laugh. ‘Hardly seems necessary if they were dead.'

‘But very necessary if they were still alive,' Lucas points out.

‘
What?'
Tilda is aghast. ‘You mean that the person who was executed was punished not just by being killed, but by being buried alive?' All at once she can feel her appetite fading.

Lucas shrugs and tucks into his meal with enthusiasm. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn't it, just what crime they must have committed to have deserved such a fate?'

A thoughtful silence descends on the table, during which Tilda attempts to rekindle her appetite. The steak and kidney pudding is delicious, and soon the nourishing food, the heat from the fire, and the small amount of alcohol in her shandy soothes her into a more pleasant state of mind and body than she has experienced for quite a while. Even so, the notion of such a gruesome execution taking place so close to home disturbs her. Could the ghost be the spirit of the body the archeologists are so intent on unearthing?

It would explain why my visitor is so angry.

‘Will you be able to find out who exactly it is you've dug up?' she asks Lucas as he polishes off the last of his pie.

He shakes his head. ‘Highly unlikely. Very few written records exist for tenth-century Wales, and a lot of what there is would have been written sometime after the events, so it's pretty unreliable. At least if you want specifics. So, no, basically, we are not going to be able to give you name, rank and serial number. What we hope to do—what lovely, lovely science now enables us to have a stab at—is to say male or female, age, cause of death, health and diet during life, and, possibly, position in their community. Given that this looks like an execution, we may get more clues when we reach the coffin below.'

‘Would the two deaths necessarily be connected?'

‘There is a precedent. There was a grave in the southeast of England found with a similarly dispatched guilty party on top, and studies strongly indicate that the body below was the victim of the crime. So, it's possible our upper-level remains are those of a murderer, and the body in the coffin was murdered by them. But we are getting ahead of ourselves,' he warns her, washing down his food with some mineral water. ‘Lots to search for yet. Lots to prove, or disprove.' He might have been about to say more, but Molly looks up from her laptop on the next table and calls him over to see something.

Thistle, relaxed at last, begins to show an interest in the food. She gets up and stretches lazily, before reaching up to sniff the edge of the table, her nose twitching. Tilda smiles at her.

‘I'll save some for you, I promise,' she says, handing her a chip to keep hunger pangs at bay.

Dylan watches. ‘She's looking better. You've done a good job of getting her right.'

Tilda considers the corner-shop diet she has been feeding the dog, the irregular hours of sleep and the erratic exercise patterns she has been subjected to. ‘I think she pretty much got better by herself,' she says. ‘Though I can see why the men who had her gave up. No way is she ever going to catch a hare.'

‘She looks built for it.'

‘Maybe so, but when we came across one the other day she bounced after it and then just played with it. Had no intention of catching the thing. And the hare knew it too.'

‘Really?' Dylan raises his eyebrows.

‘I swear, it just sat there, washing its face. It knew it wasn't in any danger. Thistle didn't even bark.'

‘Well, she wouldn't. Proper coursers don't. They hunt silently. That's why they make rubbish guard dogs. They don't track by scent either—they're sight hounds. Though yours is probably just shy 'cause she's embarrassed about wearing that collar.'

Much as it irks her to admit it, the pink band does look all wrong around Thistle's neck. Tilda leans forward and unbuckles it. ‘I don't think you really need this, do you, girl?'

‘Much better,' Dylan says.

Tilda looks at him. ‘Why are you helping with the dig, if you really don't like what they're doing? And don't tell me it's for the money. Your uncle said you go all over the world diving for people. Doesn't sound like you're short of work.'

He smiles, shaking his head. ‘To be honest, I jumped at the chance of an excuse to come home for a while. I miss the place. ‘Away' is not always all it's cracked up to be.'

‘So you're okay with them opening a grave?'

‘I can't really disapprove, can I? It is more or less what I poke around in too, a lot of the time. Not formal graves, maybe, but wrecks often end up being the final resting places for many people. Some of them have been there a very long time too.'

‘You're surely not expecting to find a wreck in the lake?'

He laughs. ‘No. This is more of an exploratory bit of diving. The lake has been fairly thoroughly searched over the years, but now they've found something new so near to the water, well, it's worth having another look. The changing levels of the water, particularly if there have been floods as well as droughts, can shift things. New stuff becomes visible. Just! It's pretty murky down there.'

‘I read that the lake has its own water horse.'

‘Gorsie, you mean?'

‘Gorsie?'

‘That's what the locals call it. Nessie in Lock Ness: Gorsie in Llangors. Everyone around here has heard about our very own deep-water monster.'

‘Have there ever been any … sightings?'

‘A few claim to have seen it, mostly after a late night in the pub. I think there are a couple of dodgy-looking pictures circulating' He grins. ‘I'll let you know if I find it.'

Tilda forces herself to return to her list of reasons for venturing out. Despite Lucas's insistence that it is too early to be certain about the find, she feels there may be something there which will provide answers to what she feared were unanswerable questions. Something connecting the body in the grave to her frightening visions. Even if those answers do involve words like
ghost
and
murderer
, and the terrible idea of burying someone alive. It is a start. She glances over at the professor. He is sitting next to Molly, and they are all very busy with something on the laptop. She had been going to ask him for his help, but the thought of fusing that computer, with everyone there, so close. Just because she fixed the lights doesn't mean she can be certain she won't adversely affect things again. Instead she turns to Dylan.

‘I wonder, could you do something for me?'

‘Bring you the head of the water horse, perhaps?'

‘Ha ha,' she responds mirthlessly. ‘A bit simpler than that. My … my computer isn't working, and I need a couple of books. Any chance you could order them for me online? Here, I've written down the sort of thing I'm after. I need to build a wood-fired kiln. That is, I
want
to build one. I'm trying out a new technique. And new glazes. That's the name of a ceramicist who works this way. If you search his name, other potters and authors should come up. I did build something similar years ago, at art school, but, well, I could do with more information. I was going to ask the professor…'

‘Happy to help,' he says, taking the piece of paper from her.

‘Thanks. Let me know how much they cost and I'll give you the cash.'

‘No problem. But you should get your PC fixed. Can't be easy living up there without the Internet, especially as you don't drive.'

‘I do. I mean I can drive. I just … don't have a car at the moment.'

He appears to be waiting for her to explain further, but she does not, so that the silence between them becomes a little awkward. Tilda begins to feel stupidly tired. Lack of regular sleep, the shock of the visions, the pace at which she had been working, all have combined to leave her feeling drained and lacking in stamina. On top of which, she is unused to spending time in company, and feels the need to be on her own again. She gets to her feet and begins putting on her outdoor clothes.

‘Leaving us so soon?' Dylan asks.

‘I need to go to the shop. Catch the post before it goes. Thanks for the drink, and for offering to get the books for me.'

‘Like I said, happy to help.' He watches her replace her hat and glasses. ‘Let me know if you fancy going out on the lake any time,' he tells her. ‘I've got a boat.'

Now it is her turn to smile.

‘The one with the dodgy motor?'

‘It's got oars too.'

She shakes her head. ‘I prefer dry land, remember?'

Before he can keep her talking further, she waves good-bye to the others, whistles to Thistle and slips out of the pub. Tiredness aside, she feels more human and more normal than she has in weeks. At the village shop she buys as much food as she can carry in her backpack, including some proper dog food, but not forgetting plenty of soup and chocolate. She pauses at the post office counter, selects a picture postcard, and pens a few cheerful lines to her parents. As she puts it in the letter box she sends a silent wish with it that her parents will be convinced she is all right and that she will be able to talk them out of a visit. Much as she would enjoy seeing her father, there is so much that needs her attention right now, there are so many things she knows she has to face up to and deal with, she really does not want to have to manage their worry about her on top of it.

The winter sun is weakening fast as it dips toward the jagged horizon of the Brecon Beacons. Tilda and Thistle make their slow and steady way back up the hill to Ty Gwyn.

 

9

SEREN

I wait inside my house. The fire is lit but I keep it burning low to avoid too much smoke in the small space. Today I have fed the short flames with rosemary stalks to aid my memory of the vision, and to lift my dulled senses. I am always weary after a quest. The causes of this lie in some measure with the poisonous nature of the fairy toadstool. Its effects linger in the body a day or more sometimes. But there are other origins to my low spirits and lethargy. Journeying in my other guise tires me upon my return, for my limbs and sinews have been used in unfamiliar and unpracticed ways, so that now my body aches. More, I am downcast by the clear meaning of the vision. Wenna will not bear a child. That much is plain. I do not care for the woman, but I pity her. As a princess her position is now all but untenable in these politically unstable times. As a woman, she will face a barren future, and I would not wish that upon anyone. There is more at stake here, however, than Wenna's happiness, for the vision foretold the possible death of Prince Brynach. To those uninitiated in the ways of reading a seeing, it might appear that all is lost. A hundred or more charging horses bearing soldiers sharp with weapons seen driving him into the lake … that must surely foretell nothing less than his enemies' triumph, his own defeat, his very death. But it need not be so. Had he fallen to a sword, or an arrow, or an axe, then yes, I would have read the vision no other way. But he went into the water. He was taken by the lake. In this way he entered that liminal realm where two worlds meet, and from which it is possible to return. So, I pray the seeing shows not his ultimate demise, but a battle lost from which he may,
may,
recover.

I have sent a shepherd boy with a message for Nesta. If the princess wishes to hear my words herself she can choose to come, but I think she will not. It is important for her to keep her fears and her desires to herself, and whilst a visit from Nesta would go unremarked, anyone seeing Princess Wenna calling upon me would be suspicious of her motives. And when people are suspicious they want to find the truth, even if it means gouging out someone else's secrets. Or perhaps, making up truths of their own. Either way, Wenna will not want tongues wagging on account of her business. Nesta will come to me as one wise woman to another, under guise of exchanging remedies, perhaps. She will listen to what I have to say and if her mistress trusts her to repeat my words faithfully, then so must I.

Soon I feel her heavy footsteps thudding through the ground, and moments later she knocks on my door. I bid her enter and she comes to settle herself close to the fire. She is a little out of breath, her short legs having worked hard to carry her stout body over the frostbitten ground at some speed, it seems. I give her a moment to arrange her skirts and remove the hood of her gray woolen cloak. I notice she is wearing a silver broach, pinning her kirtle. It is a pretty thing, a ring of oak leaves and acorns finely worked. A present from the princess I should imagine, and worn today to remind me of the esteem Nesta is held in. Of her position on the crannog. I need no such reminder. I know which one of us is trusted to wash Princess Wenna's small clothes and which one of us is trusted with seeing her future.

‘You are well, Seren Arianaidd?' Nesta asks. The sound of my formal name spoken in her voice is unfamiliar to us both. It amuses me. I imagine it pains her.

I merely nod, not wishing to encourage an unnecessary exchange of pleasantries. My head is too sore, my belly too hot, my limbs too cramped, to be bothered with such things. Nesta should know this, if she calls herself healer and follower of the old religion. She should understand. But, in truth, she is an altogether different manner of witch from me. It is true, her remedies have helped those with small ailments and base longings. She does not, however, tread the path of true magic, nor would she dare to seek a vision. There are better hedge witches a day's ride from here, I'd wager. She does the name no service, for though her skills are passable, her heart is greedy. This is not the way of a true witch. Her lack of talent has driven her to follow a dangerous path, a road where dark magic is used for personal gain, each successful spell a stain upon her own soul and that of whoever it is pays for her services. She is seen as a vain and silly woman, I think, but people do not fear her. Their judgment is off. She is more dangerous than they could imagine.