Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller. Barbara Erskine
pulled a face. ‘I don’t much like the idea of someone like that wandering round the garden up here with you when you’re alone.’
‘Don’t be silly! I may not know him, but Sue obviously does. And so do my neighbours, so there’s nothing to worry about. And for goodness’ sake don’t rush out there and antagonise him or he will walk out on me and I’ll be left in the most awful hole!’
‘Literally,’ her mother commented with grim humour. ‘I won’t say a word, darling. But asking him about how he expects to be paid will give you an excuse to go out and have a word with him. Why not take him a coffee?’
‘I offered before and he said no.’
‘He might not say no this time.’ Nina was in management mode. She stood up, reached for a clean mug. ‘Does he look like a man who takes sugar? No. I would say not.’ She pushed the mug towards Andy. ‘Go.’
It wasn’t worth arguing. Andy pulled open the door and walked out into the wind and sunshine. ‘Bryn?’ He was pruning a hedge on the far side of the nearest bed to the house. She walked towards him and pushed the mug into his hands without giving him the chance to refuse. ‘I’m sorry if my mother is parked in your space. We weren’t expecting you. I have no way of knowing which days you come unless you tell me.’
He stared at her as if debating whether to reply or walk off, then he cupped his gloved hands round the mug and blew on it. ‘I don’t have a regular day. I come when the weather is right,’ he said. ‘If that bothers you, we can arrange something I suppose.’
‘Do you garden for other people round here?’ Andy asked curiously. ‘Is that the way you work it out with them?’
He nodded. He took a sip from the mug. ‘I work two or three days for Sue, then two days for Colonel Vaughan up at Tregarron Farm and one for the Peters on the far side of Capel-y-ffin. None of them mind when I turn up.’
‘Then I don’t either.’ Andy ventured a tentative smile. ‘I was just worried about your parking.’
‘There’s plenty of room, no problem. If people park carefully.’ Draining the mug, he handed it back to her. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s a pleasure.’ She turned away then remembered. ‘By the way, I’m not sure what the arrangement is about paying you?’
‘Don’t worry about that either. Sue pays me by direct debit.’
She laughed. ‘I might have known she would be efficient. Good, I’m glad that’s all taken care of.’
‘So you should be. I’m expensive.’ He almost smiled, then he turned back to the pruning.
‘There,’ Nina said as she went back indoors. ‘That didn’t seem to hurt too much.’
Andy sat down at the table. ‘No. Not too much. Sue pays him by direct debit.’ She couldn’t contain another peal of laughter. ‘He’s probably a limited company!’
Catrin enjoyed that summer more than she would have thought possible. They had moved on as soon as the horse was sound, riding slowly and carefully now, sometimes through gentle well-tended farmland, sometimes through wilder hills, each evening stopping at a farm or manor house or a castle, sometimes moving on daily, sometimes staying a week or more in one place.
Realising that Dafydd often rode in a daze of inattention, rehearsing new rhymes and ideas in his head, Edmund took to leading the pack mule beside him, watching where the cob put her feet; sometimes though there were tracks where the going was easy and he would drop back beside Catrin and they would fall into stilted conversation. She was intrigued by his knowledge of healing, his way with animals. They discussed herbs and the making of salves and potions, something that was more often than not the job of the women in a household. At each outpost on the road guard dogs would race out barking and snarling but within a short time they would be clustering round him, making friends, tails wagging, begging for his attention, all hostility forgotten. It was a boon. Catrin remembered only too well previous trips with the hapless Roger Miller when she had cowered on her pony, terrified of the dogs until they had been called off.
‘How do you do it?’ she asked after yet another greeting by animals who seemed to think of him as an old friend.
He laughed. ‘Ignore them; don’t show you are afraid. Greet them when they come to you as you would a friend. Then ignore them again. They must learn you are not creeping into their house. You are here by right, to greet their masters, and you greet them as well.’ He fondled the ears of the huge wolfhound which was standing in front of him. Catrin smiled. She was not sure it was quite that easy, but she was prepared to try.
As they moved north up the March her dreams had moved with her. At night as she climbed into yet another strange bed under yet another unfamiliar roof she slipped almost gratefully into the darkness, aware that she would return in her dreams to Sleeper’s Castle. But once there her dreams were not always kind. Insistently, again and again she found she could hear the distant call of the drums, the blast of war trumpets and the scream of horses. The ground would shake beneath heavy hooves and in her sleep she would toss and turn and whimper in the dark, and she would wake and sit up, and gather her cloak around her shoulders and try to still the anxious thudding of her heart.
It was not meant to happen. On a well-organised journey it would not have done so, but one night in June they found themselves too far from their destination as night fell and Edmund insisted that, rather than travel on in the darkness, luminous as it was, they find a sheltered spot to stop. The high moorland was deserted; with light still persisting in the north-west as he tethered the three animals, Edmund removed their saddles and the packs and lit a fire in the shelter of a steep gulley.
Catrin glanced around nervously. ‘Are you sure we will be safe?’
‘As sure as I can be.’ Edmund watched as Dafydd wandered off a little way, trying to ease the stiffness in his bones. Even here, in the dark, they saw him reach for the tightly stoppered inkhorn and quill at his belt and scribble something on the scrap of parchment he pulled from his pouch. ‘Better this than have a horse trip or your father fall from his saddle with exhaustion. We’ll move on early in the morning. Come, sit here.’ He patted the ground near him. ‘I have oatcakes and cheese enough for us all and we have warm cloaks. We’ll be fine.’
Hesitantly Catrin lowered herself onto a flat rock near him and watched as he coaxed a fire into life. He produced the food and horn mugs from one of the saddlebags.
Catrin smiled. ‘Do you always travel prepared for every eventuality?’
He nodded. ‘On a journey like this it is sensible. See, I have put the saddles here in the shelter of the rocks. You and your father can lean against them to sleep and be reasonably comfortable. I have ale which we can mull if you wish.’ He had unpacked a leather flask.
The horses were already grazing the short sweet mountain grass; as it grew darker Catrin looked round for her father. ‘Where is he?’ she cried. He had been sitting some distance from them, squinting down at his notes in the firelight, but now as the moon rose slowly on the horizon she realised he had disappeared.
Edmund scrambled to his feet. ‘You stay here. Don’t move. I will go and find him.’
She peered after him into the darkness, relieved as the moon rose higher to see the soft light flood the broad valley below. There was no sign of anything moving, but she was still nervous. They shouldn’t have stopped. It would have been safer to continue to their next destination; the moonlight would have kept the trackways safe, safer than this, anyway, camped here in the mountains with her father missing. She stood up and stepped away from the fire, scanning the countryside. There were great black pools of darkness where the moonlight couldn’t reach, shadows, ravines, deep hiding places behind rocky outcrops. In the distance she heard the lonely whistle of peewits from the high moors and she shivered. There was no sign of Edmund, no sound at all apart from the birds. She glanced at the animals. If there were anyone out there, close at hand, they would hear. In Elfael they had heard wolves in the