Dark Angels. Katherine Langrish
compared with the richness of sixty men and boys chanting in unison at the abbey, he repeated the third psalm and the ninety-fourth, which were always sung at the Night Office.
He rose and dusted off his knees. He’d done his best. The chapel was full of silence. Accepting or rejecting him? He didn’t know.
He turned to go. He had knelt for a long time. The candles on the south wall were guttering low. Between them was an alcove he hadn’t noticed before. In the darkness of the alcove — Wolf drew a cold breath of quivering shock — a woman lay motionless on a low bed.
It wasn’t a bed, he realised after the first stab of horror. It was a tomb. And the woman — he crept closer — wasn’t real. She was a stone statue, an effigy; so cleverly painted that she looked almost alive. She lay staring upwards, her head propped on a small stone pillow. Her dark hair was covered with a white veil, her hands were crossed on her breast, and her toes poked stiffly from the folds of her rust red dress.
Wolf let go his breath with a sigh. The saints on the walls leaned over him, the air over the candle flames seemed to dance with invisible angels, and their heat struck him under the eyes. Around the base of the tomb, words had been painted. He bent to spell them out.
HOC+SEPVLCRVM+HUGO+WARINI+FILIVS+ VXORI+ELVNEDI+FACIENDVM+CURAVIT
Hugo son of Warin had this tomb raised for Eluned his wife.
Wolf was very still. Everything he thought he had worked out about Hugo fell down like a child’s tower of wooden bricks, and lay scattered. ‘Eluned his wife!’
So, when Hugo had called so desperately into the darkness of the cave for a woman named Eluned, he had been calling the name of someone he knew to be dead.
One of the guttering candles went out, leaving all the shadows twice as dark. The flame on the other flared and then shrank to a wobbling blue blob. Wolf felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He bowed to the altar and scuttled for the door, half expecting the stone woman to sit up and beckon him.
He blundered night-blind into the yard.
The moon was up behind the clouds, lighting them to watery vagueness. The wind blew farmyard smells. After the strangeness of the chapel, it was a perfectly ordinary night. Wolf leaned his cheek against the cold, iron studs in the thick door, his teeth chattering. Nothing had happened! There was nothing to fear — but, even if the men sleeping in the Hall weren’t exactly friendly, he wanted to be back in the middle of them, in the safety of the walls and the glow of the fire.
In the faint moonlight he could see the yard — an expanse of greyish mud. He hurried across, and was about to slip around the corner of the Hall, where the huddled buildings made a darkness as intense as ink —when instinct made him pause, and a woman stepped around the corner from the opposite direction. She saw him and held up a warning finger. At the same time, part of the blackness at his feet stirred and grunted. An ear flapped — a trotter twitched. Wolf had been saved from falling over the pig for the second time that night.
“Thanks!” he gasped. His rescuer was wrapped in flimsy clothing for this time of night: fluttering white garments with a light veil pulled across her face. She must be a lady of the household, one of Lady Agnes’ women, though he hadn’t noticed anyone like her at supper. Mist blew around her as she swayed towards him and murmured in a melancholy, musical voice: “Dwi methu mynd i mewn.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Welsh…”
Plainly disapproving of his ignorance, the lady shook her head sadly. After a moment she tried again, in the same mournful voice, but this time in Latin. Her accent was strange, but Wolf understood her. “I can’t get in,” she said softly, clasping her hands.
“You can’t get in? You mean, into the chapel?”
“I can’t get in.
“But it’s not locked. Look, it’s easy.” Wolf retraced his steps across the yard and the lady followed. It was certainly getting colder; damper too: the mist was rising all around them like pale breath. He twisted the handle, pushed the heavy door ajar and stepped back politely for her to enter.
She peered in, twisting her hands together, but drew back and turned entreatingly towards him.
“I can’t get in.
“But of course you—”
Wolf paused. Perhaps she was mad… Through the transparent veil he glimpsed a sweet, wild face. “What’s your name, lady?” he asked gently. But the question appeared to distress her. “I can’t remember,” she moaned, swaying in a sort of absent-minded dance. “Gwae fi! I can’t remember!”
Wolf stared at her feet. She had crossed that dirty yard right behind him. His own shoes were clotted with mud. Yet there wasn’t a single stain on her little white slippers.
He looked up. She was gazing at him through the veil with owl-black eyes. Surely eyes shouldn’t be so round and so big — like dark coins? He began to back away.
“I can’t get in!” she wailed.
“Sorry — sorry,” Wolf gabbled. “I don’t know what to…” It wasn’t just the lady’s fluttering clothes that were almost transparent. He could see the dark stones of the arched chapel doorway curving right through her body.
“Help!” Wolf shouted, stumbling away. “Help!”
From the other side of the bailey, a guard dog barked, deep and echoing. Someone shouted from the ramparts, “Shut up! Stop that racket! How-ell-ll!” And a nearby door creaked open, disclosing a glimmer of firelight. A white-haired old man limped out into the yard. The priest who had said the blessing at supper!
Wolf rushed at him. “Help me!” He clung to the old man’s arm. “A ghost! She spoke to me! She wants to get into the chapel!”
The old man nodded as though he expected this. “No, no, that’s no ghost, that’s just our little ladi wen, our White Lady. No, she can’t get in, the poor child. Don’t worry, I’ll soon deal with it.”
He stepped forward so briskly that Wolf felt compelled to follow. Billows of mist floated across the yard, and the pale lady was still moaning and wringing her hands at the chapel door. “Hush now, hush!” the old man called in a soothing voice. The lady turned to him like a frightened child.
“I can’t remember my name…”
“Dear, dear.” The old man put on a pretence of surprise; Wolf got the impression he had done this many times before. “But that’s all right, because, you see, we have a name for you. Dame Blanche; our White Lady. Our sweet Ladi Wen.” He dropped into musical Welsh, and the lady listened very attentively. When he finished, she bowed her head in sorrowful consent, and walked smoothly away. The mist followed her. Her feet moved a fraction above the ground, and she drifted at a slight angle to the way she was facing, as though the wind had caught her — and when she reached the dark corner where the pig lay, Wolf wasn’t sure if she went around it, or just vanished.
“There’s better, now,” said the old man cheerfully. “I suggested she takes a bath, see? She loves to have a splash in the cistern, and it’s still an hour or two from daybreak.”
Wolf wetted his lips. “But — but—”
The old man patted him. “Come in and see if my Hunith can make us both a nice hot drink.”
Wolf followed him into a small, homely room containing a bed, a hearth, a few pots and pans hanging on the walls, and a tiny little woman. She was as wrinkled as a walnut, and gave him a toothless smile of pure delight as she drew him warmly to the fireside, patting and stroking his hand and murmuring some Welsh greeting.
“This is my Hunith,” said the old man, “she cannot speak a word of French or English, but she wants me to tell you how happy she is, see? — to welcome you to our house.”
Hunith