White Trail (10 page)

At that point two men entered the room. Two familiar faces.

‘Graid son of Eri...' Cilydd said, surprising himself with the memory. He remembered typing this boy's profile as though it were yesterday, except now he wasn't a boy any longer – but a young, smart-looking man. At his side was Cubert son of Dere – the man who'd taken his wife's clothes and yet hadn't left her so much as a note to say where he was going. He remembered their miserable skeleton smiles staring back at him from greying photos. Both had put on weight. Both were beaming. They grabbed hold of his arms and pulled him to a standing position. His legs felt like rubber.

‘Don't worry about the weakness,' said the man whom he now realised was Ysbaddaden, the one and only. ‘It's only temporary. It's just that parts of you are still asleep. Told you those birds were good. You see, even if every single shopper in that supermarket had woken up – they still wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop us. Because the kind of sleep they drive into you, it takes the body a long time to shake it off. But most people don't even notice they've been asleep. You certainly didn't, that day at the supermarket.'

Cilydd was carried down a narrow, white corridor. Ysbaddaden disappeared down a staircase, beckoning them to follow. Cilydd's feet were hoisted up silently by the two guards, and he lay back in their arms feeling like an invalid. He tried to speak to them but they were positively mute, serene like monks, wearing pacific smiles as they looked down at him. Once they got to the bottom of the stairwell he saw another long strip ahead of them – longer, whiter, dotted with several black doors, like a hotel corridor. Outside one of these doors, Ysbaddaden came to an abrupt halt.

‘This is one of our best corridors. Reserved for those that are – shall we say –
wel connected
. Special clients of the organisation. Goleuddydd had a room here. And I think someone else here could shed a light on some things for you.'

He slid a metal card into a slot by the side of the door. The door opened.

‘No need to knock, you see,' he said. ‘He's expecting you.'

As Graid and Cubert ever so gently released him from their grasp, he heard a voice telling him to enter. He stumbled forward, grabbing on to the walls as he went, feeling the energy slowly drifting back into his legs. His first thought was how meticulous and pristine everything seemed. A little black desk. A white lamp in the corner. A silver sheen on the corner of every surface. Everything tucked away. No clutter. There was no colour anywhere. But there was life in the room. A man hunched at the far end of it, turned his head.

‘Doged,' he gasped.

‘Hello Cilydd,' Doged said. ‘I know this must be a shock.'

Cilydd looked away. It was Gwelw who came to his mind at that moment. Pragmatic, stoic Gwelw, who had dealt with the loss of this man in her own, quiet way. Cilydd felt the anger surfacing, and before he knew it he was lunging at Doged with all the fury he could muster. But he had misjudged the distance between them, and it left him clutching the edges of Doged's jacket rather pathetically, with Doged holding him around his waist to support him.

‘Get off me!' Cilydd shouted. ‘Just get away from me! How could you do this? To Gwelw? To your wife? Leave her like that! And let me take the blame for everything... I could have gone to prison for killing you!'

‘It never would have happened, Cilydd, I assure you. We have ways of making sure those things don't happen... listen, I can explain it all. Just hear me out.'

Cilydd felt sick. Goleuddydd had meant to leave him. Doged had no intention of killing himself. He was in a house full of people who wanted to abandon their loved ones and play games with their emotions.

‘I don't want to hear it. I want to get out of here. Back to my wife – your wife!'

He grappled to try to find a door handle. It seemed there wasn't one. He banged on the cold, white door. Nothing. Doged had taken a seat, now, as though he were warming himself up for the telling of a tale no one wanted to hear.

‘Cilydd, you have to calm down. I urge you, sit here with me. There's no point in banging – they won't open the door. They decide when we get to come out, not us. That's the way of things. It's a way of keeping everyone in order, you see. What we agree to is a controlled freedom. I mean, when you think about it, freedom can be a little overrated. Too much freedom and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble, believe you me. It's not quite the same as being locked up in some cell somewhere. I mean, I've got everything I could possibly want in this room. When the door opens, I go out. If it doesn't open, I stay here. It's as simple as that. So please, Cilydd – step away from the door.'

‘Are you... are you going to come back, is that it? You're ready to take my place...'

He thought of the portrait in the hallway, the one Arthur had painted. How absurd it would all seem if Doged walked in through that front door again.

‘I had no intention of ruining things for you, I promise. Gwelw and Lleuwen, the life I left behind – the one you inhabited, it's yours. At least it was. I would never take it away from you. You've done a marvellous job. Caring for them the way you did. I was sceptical at first of course, I never thought it was going to work – I never thought it would turn out the way it did. But you seemed to fit the bill better than I ever could.'

‘But how do you... how do you know? I mean, have you been watching us?'

‘No, of course not. But we get reports. It's all part of the deal. Except in my case, you and Gwelw... well it was Ysbaddaden's idea. There was no question about it, I had to disappear. I'd made a real mess of things at the Assembly. All those hospitals I'd shut down, all those medical botches I'd had to cover up – things were going to unravel very soon and they would take my family down with them. Night after night Gwelw would come into my study and see me hunched, crying, tearing myself to pieces over the stress of it all. You know too well what she's like – no-nonsense, seeing every problem like a bone which just needs slotting back into place, a reduction as she calls it – she just couldn't understand how much I wanted to leave it all behind. She warned me – don't do anything silly, or I will never forgive you. But I had to. As much as I loved my wife and daughter I simply had to. But in leaving them, the best I could do was make sure that they would be looked after. That's where you came in. I had to make sure someone would care about what happened to them. That's when Ysbaddaden thought of it. I know it might seem as if nothing can touch that man, but I rather think he felt quite bad about the way things turned out with your wife. That's when he came up with this – a solution – a simple act of kindness. And when he showed me your file I remembered meeting you, at the Assembly, that day. I remembered liking you. You weren't like those others – you seemed to wear your losses better somehow. I mean, I couldn't have just anyone filling my role. You seemed to be, well, determined, I suppose. A survivor. I knew she would like that about you. Not a quitter, like me.'

‘But I was about to kill myself...' Cilydd said, wishing, at that particular moment, he'd succeeded.

‘No, you were never going to do that. You had suicidal thoughts, of course, those were your own – but think about it – you weren't really going to do it, were you? Not until we put you right out there, on the far edge of that ledge. When you found yourself there you thought that the end had come, naturally enough. You thought there was nothing else for it but to jump. But then I came along. And you saw what a horrible thing it was – something you didn't want after all – am I right? The tumble in itself didn't actually happen like you think it did –what you witnessed as one continuous movement would not in fact have been that at all. In fact, it took us hours to manoeuvre the whole thing. I was freezing by the end of it, seemed like I'd been in that water for ages.'

Doged shivered with the memory of it. Cilydd saw the whole thing again himself, the black, dark birds coming at him on the cliff. Turning his head. Making him sleepy, making him think there was nothing for it but to jump. And then of course there had been Doged's wilful, helping hand. The hand that was offering him a new life.

‘But Gwelw, and Lleuwen. I mean... I love them. I truly, truly love them both. You couldn't have... you couldn't have organised that... you just couldn't have...' As if it had just happened he saw his hand sliding between Gwelw's legs in the community-hall car park. The passion he had felt at that moment. Was that unreal too? Was it those birds? He tried to recall if there had been any dark shadows twittering above him.

‘The love, no. The passion, certainly not. That was genuine – a stroke of luck. I mean, the marriage, we anticipated. With my death on your conscience, and her turning up at the Missing Persons' Network – it was bound to drive you together. But the love you talk of now – I mean, I didn't realise you felt like that. It's... well, it's even more of a comfort I suppose. Or at least it was. Until you turned up here. I mean, I don't know what will happen now. To Gwelw and Lleuwen. I'm sure Ysbaddaden will have someone lined up for them, so I shouldn't worry about it too much.'

‘What do you mean, lined up for them? As soon as I get out of here I'm...'

‘Oh, Cilydd.' Doged lowered his eyes and seemed genuinely to sympathise with him. ‘There's no getting out of here, once you're in. I thought you'd have understood that much. I think that's the mistake your wife made.'

‘What happened to my wife?' Cilydd asked quietly.

‘They never told me what happened to her.'

‘From what I gather she completely changed her mind once she was here, and demanded to be let out. Of course no one lets you go once you're here. But she convinced one of the doctors who was looking after her to let her go and before anyone knew it she was halfway through the forest. That's when they set Ysbaddaden's wild boar on her, poor thing. I mean, you can only imagine how frightened she would have been. But it's the only way if someone makes a dash for it like that. Ysbaddaden never meant to kill her. I think he was hoping that the boar would just scare her, hunt her down, keep her cornered in that pigsty until someone came to retrieve her. He did everything he could to make sure she was brought back safe and well, rushing both those doctors to the site. But they were too late. It's amazing the boy survived, to be honest. And although I doubt they could have done much to save her, he was still furious with those doctors, I tell you. I've never seen him so angry. You can see why – I mean, no one had died on his watch before. The operation isn't about killing people off. It's about saving them, providing them with a haven. So those doctors had really damaged his reputation. Not that they had meant to, of course. I remember them – quite lovely people. Quite brilliant too. A man and a woman. They both used to have a room on this floor. I gather both wanted to disappear because of some medical scandal or other. Always blame the doctors, don't they? But they couldn't stay here. Not after that. He had to get rid of them.'

‘Did he... did he kill them?'

‘No, no, nothing like that. I gather he sent them away to the farm to run things there. I think... I think perhaps the boy went with them.'

So that's who Cilydd's parents were. Not even a couple, just two people driven together by a terrible mistake.

‘I can't believe they just left her there, though... it's just so... so barbaric.'

‘Well, she was dead. This isn't a house for the dead.'

‘Isn't it? Aren't you all pretending to be dead?' Cilydd asked. He was angry now. Those doctors, Culhwch's makeshift parents, had left his beautiful Goleuddydd lying on her back in that pigsty. Wrenched her open like an animal. But they'd done it to save his son. He saw now the logic in Goleuddydd's command: don't remarry. She had known, in running away, what these people were capable of. What they knew about her, of him; possibly she guessed how they would interfere in his life. How they would try to fix things, and only make things worse. Like leaving her bleeding in an empty pigsty.

‘We can't control what those left behind will think of us, they write their own little narratives, they believe what's best, what's easiest for them to believe. Some will keep the fire alive. Others won't. A rational, sensible woman like Gwelw will accept the facts, and won't rely on flimsy conjecture to keep her going. That's the kind of woman she is. She buried me in her mind the day they found my wax jacket, I know that much. So I'm not pretending to be dead. It's just that my absence is open to inter-pretation. And certainly here I don't feel dead, either. I may not have the freedom I once had, but what I've got is a new life. It's a quieter one. But it's a new start. Without all the usual drudgery or responsibility that life brings. Without the risk. Without the hurt. It's a perfect life in many ways.'

But your voice is dull and lifeless, Cilydd wanted to tell him. A life where you care for nothing, risk nothing, is exactly that – nothing.

Doged let out a heavy sigh and turned his head.

‘I think you should go now,' he said. ‘I get very tired these days when I have to talk for long periods of time. I honestly don't know how I managed it all that time in the Assembly. I'm just not used to it now. I fear it's too much for me. I'm sure they'll come for you soon.'

As soon as he'd finished the sentence the door opened and Ysbaddaden and his guards re-entered.

‘I hope you enjoyed your little tête-à-tête, gentle-men. You're looking a little more enlightened now, Cilydd, less in the dark, shall we say. Thank you Doged, for saving me the trouble of explaining all that – such things really can get a little complicated, and one often forgets the exact sequence of events. Now, I think it's time we got you settled in, don't you? I think you're going to like it here, Cilydd.'