White Trail (13 page)

‘But what... I mean, what happens then? After he dies? I mean all these people... and his body, and...'

Arthur looked away from him.

‘I'll sort it. It'll be fine. I'll make sure they all get out. I'll find a way. Just take care of yourself Cilydd. And the boy. Be happy. Let yourself be happy now. It'll be fine. Everything will be fine.'

He knew from Arthur's voice that it would not be fine.

The front door was wide open, brimming with birds. On seeing him they all started to fly upwards towards Olwen's bedroom, as though they, too, were keen to see what Arthur would do. The forest outside somehow seemed smaller than the night before. There was a chill in the air, the fir trees sheathed in a frosty fog. Olwen leaned against the doorframe, her eyes meeting his for the first time. Cilydd almost felt the blade, as though it were cutting through his own neck.

‘Arthur!' he shouted, panic seizing him. ‘Arthur!'

There was no noise at all. No sign of Arthur. The house seemed completely still. Even the chattering of birds seemed to have stopped.

Olwen clutched a single feather in her hand. She rolled it back between thumb and forefinger.

‘So the birds have a new owner,' she said, smiling. Her fingers trailed around the doorframe. She shut her eyes. ‘It won't be long now before everything changes. Before it all comes crashing down.'

‘Please Olwen...' said Culhwch, trying to coax his pregnant lover through the door. ‘Look, I think it's best we go now. You can come back here. We'll bring you back, after all this is over.'

She laughed.

‘There's no going back Culhwch. He's dead. If he's dead, and I leave, then this house – this house will fall, don't you understand? It's my presence here that's been keeping the place on its feet. I've given it life, new hope. That's why he had to have a child here. Only a child's presence could give the place hope. Nothing to do with him wanting to be a father. You were his first hope, of course, but like you know, that didn't work out. You had too much darkness inside you. Children are feral beings. They know the circumstances of their own birth even if they don't have the means to express it. He had to get rid of the ill feeling from the house, it was too potent, too destructive. Then I came – a second chance. And for so many years I knew nothing of pain, of separation, loneliness. This was just the way of things. Until things happened. Until I started to lose belief. And then they needed another child... that's when they sent Ffercos son of Poch to me. Poor old Ffercos.' She went quiet, as though sparing a thought for him. ‘You could see in his eyes he hated every second of it as much as I did. Every time he was sent to me, you'd see that reluctance in him, it took him ages to... well, you know. Poor, poor Ffercos.'

Olwen finally stepped out into the light. Culhwch took her hand to steady her.

‘Don't be too hard on those parents of yours, Culhwch, your guardians, whatever you want to call them. Your mother, you know, she was very kind to me when I was at the farm. She was such a gentle woman, really. Ysbaddaden couldn't have taken too kindly to her letting you go like that. From what I hear the farm's been packed up and deserted now. It's like they were never there. It's because of me, Culhwch, that you can never go back, you do understand that? You can never go back. Neither one of us can.'

She leaned into him and kissed him gently on the mouth.

‘I don't want to go back,' Culhwch said. ‘I want to go forward. With you and my family. I need to get back on track, follow the path I should have been on in the first place. My father will make sure we both get back on that track, won't you Cilydd?'

All Cilydd knew at that moment was that he felt increasingly uneasy under the shadow of the great house. Something told him that whatever the undoing of the operation would be, it was already at work behind those towering walls. He wanted to leave, right now, before the past toppled on them and buried them forever. He slung Olwen's right arm over his shoulder and motioned to his son to take her left. They trudged slowly back through the forest. Neither one of them looked back. Cilydd wondered whether it really was falling behind them, brick by brick, the foundations crumbling to dust. What would become of all those who lived there? Would they, as Olwen put it, ‘fall' too? When they got to the road, they helped Olwen into the car. She stared at it as though it was a wondrous creation, her fingers leaving dirty smudges on the windowpane. Cilydd climbed into the driver's seat.

‘Where now?' Cilydd said, more to himself than to anyone else.

He caught a glimpse of Culhwch and Olwen in his rear-view mirror. Their bodies were turned away from each other, staring out of separate windows. Culhwch opened the door and got out.

‘I should get Arthur,' he said. ‘He brought me this far. I owe him.'

‘Culhwch, we really haven't got time for this and...'

‘Take her home with you. Arthur and I will be with you soon.'

Before he had time to protest, his son was gone. Gone as he had feared in the forest, gone like a pregnant woman from a supermarket. Olwen's reflection smiled uncertainly at him. The only certainty he had at that moment was that Arthur's squeaking carpentry van would deliver them safely back into the town, and so he put the keys in the ignition and drove, trying not to think of anything at all, clearing a white space in his mind like the one in Arthur's flat. Cilydd watched Olwen taking it all in, the flurry of activity in the town, the peculiar noises, the huff and puff of city life – her translucent eyes darting about wildly in her head, while the dome that was her body remained entirely still. He drove and drove until he found himself back at the house. Even when he got there, he could not quite fathom that the house he saw in front of him was his home. It seemed unreal to him now; a stranger's abode, for the person he had been when he left was now absent.

Curtains flickered. He saw Gwelw's face look confusedly at him through the patio doors. She came out in her slippers.

‘Where on earth have you been? I was worried about you! The way you were acting before we left I was worried you might have... might have,' she paused, suddenly noticing the figure in the back of the car. ‘Is that... is that a girl? Cilydd, there's a girl in the back of your car.' Gwelw squashed her face up against the glass. He knew that she'd spotted the stomach. That big, round stomach that was like some accusing eye. ‘Oh my God, Cilydd what have you been doing?'

‘I've... I've...' he looked behind him. Olwen was asleep. Mouth open, head lolled back. He wished he had something to cover that exposed neck of hers. He got out of the car. Much to his surprise, the air that had been cool a few hours ago was now soupy and hot, and he felt suddenly as though his whole world were melting. In front of his eyes he saw tiny little snow-like flecks. Except he knew it couldn't be snowing, not at this time of year.

‘Get inside, will you,' Gwelw said bluntly. ‘And get the girl in too. Whoever she is. I'm not going to be held responsible for damaging that baby, no matter what you've done. The advice is to stay indoors.'

‘What do you mean... whose advice?'

Lleuwen was standing in the doorway, watching him with a bemused look.

‘Who's Dad got there?'

‘Your guess is as good as mine, cariad. But right now we must deal with the task at hand and get everyone back inside.'

Olwen was ushered in without a further word. Cilydd stood in the garden looking up at the sky. By now the white flecks were coming in fast, falling on his face, irritating his eyes. When he entered the house, he found Olwen sprawled on the sofa in front of the television, bulging out of the upholstery – an elephant in the room if there ever was one. Lleuwen was not subtle in her disgust; her eyes curved all the way around Olwen's stomach, before looking back at Cilydd with a mixture of confusion and condemnation. Gwelw had her back turned to him. God knows what she must think, Cilydd thought. The way he'd been acting when she left, his nervousness, his panic. Now she'd returned to find him practically monosyllabic with a pregnant teenager on his hands, what should she think?

Lleuwen finally stopped staring at Olwen and turned back towards the screen.

‘Dad, I think you better look at this... it's totally mad...'

On the twenty-four-hour news channel there was footage of a forest in flames. The blaze was ravaging the fir trees, each one alight, their tall heads softening swiftly, turning in on themselves. Next there was footage of a building, where the fire was said to have started. Cilydd froze. It was Ysbaddaden's mansion. Outside the building, there were several clusters of people, all looking shell-shocked, being helped to their feet by the emergency services. The cameras zoomed in on them. There they all were. Glittering like fish in their foil blankets – Cadwy son of Geraint, Fflewddwr Fflam Wledig, Rhuawn Bebyr son of Dorath, Bradwen son of Moren Mynog, Dalldaf son of Cimin Cof, and many, many others, thrust from obscurity back into the light of day. In their midst he saw a gaunt, albino woman who looked like an older version of Olwen. A little to her left, four fire-fighters were trying to restrain a creature of some sort. Cilydd could make out the icy glint of a fang, the grey stump of a snout, and something went through him; he had to turn away.

He wondered whether the families of the missing were watching.

What would they think, when they saw those little faces crinkling up against the light, trying to avert the camera's gaze?

Oh God, he thought, suddenly.
Doged.

He forced himself to look again. The camera seemed to be zooming in closer and closer to the crowd. Lleuwen's eyes were glued to the screen. He saw the tip of one shiny forehead that could be Doged's, one camera shot away. He knew he was a moment away from exposure, the rest of his life hanging by a thread.

‘Lleuwen, cariad. Switch it off now.'

‘Don't be stupid,' she slapped his hand away from the remote. ‘I want to hear more about the bodies.'

‘What bodies?'

‘They've recovered two bodies. They think one of them is the millionaire guy. They're not sure who the other one is. One of the partygoers.'

‘Partygoers?'

‘Keep up with the story, Dad.'

Partygoers. So that would be the official police line. Ysbaddaden was having a party. It may have lasted years, but it was really only just a party. No harm done.

Apart from the bodies. Two bodies. Something inside him crimped and crumbled, like the tops of the trees he saw blackening in front of him.

A pretty news reporter was now telling them that people in the surrounding area were being advised to stay indoors and place towels under their doors. The fire was fierce, and it was spreading quickly. Firefighters were tackling the building. Cilydd stared at the television. There it was, in all its glory – the mansion, smoke billowing out of the windows, those tiny windows, one by one, cracking in the heat. White bulbous eyes exploding.

‘Turn it off,' he said again.

‘I know what you're doing Cilydd,' his wife whispered, pulling him aside. ‘Don't think you can distract us from this. Are you going to tell me who the hell that girl is?'

‘It's very hard to explain right now,' he said, keeping one eye nervously on the television screen.

‘Well you have to try, Cilydd, because from the looks of her she's going to give birth any time now, and if I'm going to have to deliver a baby in my own home I at least deserve an explanation as to how that baby got there in the first place. Is it yours?'

‘No, don't be ridiculous... look, just give me a moment, OK?'

The room seemed to be caving in on him. Against his wife's wishes, he removed the damp flannel by the front door, and walked out into the street. Whiteness abounded, but it was the wrong kind of whiteness, a greying, fetid matter that poured from the sky, settling on his eyelids, penetrating his hair, making him feel dirty. Smoke snaked into his lungs. Ysbaddaden's awful stench was around him everywhere. It reminded him how close he had always been to his son – that mansion was close enough for anything that happened within it to be felt here. Its stillness and quietude had been around him all that time, suffocating him, and now so was the devastation, the destruction. But he felt further away than ever. Wherever Arthur and Culhwch were now, they were not with him. Possibly he would never see either of them again. Two bodies. It was an awful equation he was trying to work out. If they were both dead: Ysbaddaden could still be alive. But no, he had seen the certainty in Olwen's eyes when she left the house. One of them was definitely Ysbaddaden. He suddenly resented the girl on his sofa, the girl he could hear, even now, groaning and huffing as his wife, ever the doctor – even through gritted teeth –was giving her words of encouragement. Telling her she was doing really well and that she shouldn't try to fight the pain, but give in to it.

‘Don't let it be Culhwch,' he said, the words escaping into the air.

He peered in through the window. Watching the TV from a distance, with the muted effect of the windowpane, was somehow easier. It gave the whole thing a feeling of unreality, of pure fiction, and yet the heat outside and the smoke – making him cough, probably doing irreparable damage to his lungs – tugged at his insides and told him it was really happening. He didn't want to be protected from the smoke. He didn't want to wait for it to pass. He wanted to breathe in the whole sorry situation.

Olwen had her head against the lounge wall; Gwelw was stroking her back. Lleuwen was glued to the television. Suddenly, like a bolt, two faces appeared on the screen – the identities of the two men that had been recovered. Ysbaddaden was there, eyes ghoulish and dark, staring back at him. But the second face threw him off guard completely. He tried to stop the rise of the awful joy within him.