‘But, he will remember nothing of… of us? Of our time together?’
‘He will not.’ The old man’s expression became serious. ‘If you give your pledge it is binding unto death. You will never be free of the work we want you to do. You will make it your vocation. But, you will not face the future alone. Your sister witches will help you when they are able. You will establish your own coven who will serve you down the years. And, in your sweet knight, you will have your guardian.’
‘I will have him by my side? Truly?’
‘Truly. Do you pledge your life to us?’
Rhiannon moved back to the low cot and took Tudor’s cold hand in hers. Her heart was breaking at the thought that she had already lost him. The thought of never seeing him again, of never having him hold heragain, was unbearable. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it tenderly. ‘Farewell for now, my love, but not forever,’ she whispered, letting one more tear fall onto his beloved face. ‘I will wait for you. I will find you, and we will be reunited.’ She let go his hand, laying it gently on his heart and then stood straight, taking a slow, steadying breath. She looked directly at the old man then. ‘Hear me, my fellow witches, sisters, grand witches, elder witch. I, Rhiannon, pledge you my allegiance, my dagger hand, my magic, and my life. You have my oath.’
Beside her she heard Mamgi give a tiny sob. The voices raised into a crescendo until their words became song, and their song became bells, and the bells became the rain and the wind and the cracking of ice and the rumble of thunder and the cracking of lightening.
And then they were gone. And all was silent.
It took them two days to bury their dead. The villagers were greatly shocked and saddened to lose so many of their loved ones. The community had shrunk, and the surviving members would carry the scars of those losses with them always. Tudor was the last to be buried. Rhiannon could not bring herself to part withhis body, and sat in vigil beside him until the last possible moment. During that time, she thought deeply about what her future might hold. About what it was that had been asked of her. She knew that her people needed her, and she was grateful to Mamgi for keeping everyone away while she spent those last hours with her lover’s body. There would be time ahead to tend to them, for she knew they could no longer hide on the mountain. All had changed. Her people needed to return to their homes, and it was up to her to see to it that they could.
When the moment could be put off no longer, Rufus and Owain and Ifan and Rhiannon herself became pallbearers, carrying Tudor on his litter to his resting place. All the others who had been lost that day had been buried beneath the shade of a broad oak tree behind the barn. Headstones would be made and crosses carved and inscribed for them over the coming weeks. To everyone’s surprise, Rhiannon had chosen a place apart for Tudor. Those who knew her well thought she might want him placed in the river glade, that soft, sheltered spot that she loved so well. But this was not her decision. Instead, the funeral party walked away from the croft and the barn, further up the mountain, until they reached a broad stretch of open moorland. Rhiannon picked up his wolfskin cape that covered him anddraped it around her shoulders. They took his shrouded body from the carrying litter and laid it on the wiry grass. The whole village then set to work selecting stones. One by one, rock by rock, they built a cairn over him, higher and higher, until there was a sturdy cairn to protect his remains and act as monument for their fallen friend.
All present stepped back and Mamgi uttered ancient prayers over the grave.
There was no music, no singing, only a respectful silence then, and the sad moaning of the wind, as if it too were grieving.
Little Bronwen came to stand close to Rhiannon and tugged at the wolf cape she now wore.
‘Why did you choose to put him here?’ she asked, the child bolder than her elders, voicing the question they were all curious to hear the answer to. ‘It is so wild and bleak and bare.’
Rhiannon crouched down to talk to the girl.
‘Up here he can see for fifty miles in any direction. Up here he can listen to the wind singing him to sleep. Up here he can be serenaded by skylarks and buzzards. Up here the sun can warm his soul.’ She stood up then, addressing Mamgi. ‘From up here, he can find his way back to me,’ she told her. Next, she stepped over to the cairn and placed a hand on the cool stones. Closing hereyes, she murmured words too quiet for anyone else to properly hear. She breathed in a long, deep gulp of the sharp mountain air and then blew it gently out onto those stones, opening her eyes. As she did so, a tiny plant appeared at the base of the cairn, bright and green and vigorous. And then another and another, clambering and scrambling over the grave. And as the plant grew so it blossomed, bursting into bright, golden flowers as the honeysuckle engulfed the cairn and the air was filled with its fragrance. She stood back and smiled down at Bronwen.
‘Better?’ she asked.
The child nodded, smiling back.
Rhiannon tugged the lace from her hair and undid her braid, allowing her hair to flow free in the wind. She slowly and carefully looked at all those present, taking time to look into the eyes of each and every one of them. And then, just when they thought perhaps she might have something to say, she turned and strode off across the hilltop.
Mamgi called after her. ‘Cariad, where do you go?’
Without pausing she called back, ‘To see the king!’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
London, 2019
Deborah Chowdhury set her refilled glass of Burgundy down on her desk and switched on her computer. In the half hour since Tudor had left her flat, something had been going round and round in her mind, and she knew she would not sleep until she had checked it out. She punched the keyboard, accessing the database of cctv footage in the city. Her status as a DI with the Met gave her all the clearance she needed, even from home. She put in the day and time she wanted to look at and the specific location: the street cameras for the Begovich restaurant. There were two cameras that covered theJagoda. The one from the end of the slightly curved street showed the parking space in front of it. The one on the opposite side of the road gave an excellent view of the restaurant front. Deborah began to click through the hour Tudor had told her he was there, waiting to see his car pull up. Nothing. She clearly remembered him telling her he had parked directly opposite the front door. She fast forwarded and rewound twice. Nothing. Frowning, shetook another swig of wine. Maybe he had misremembered his exactly parking spot. She scrolled through the footage from the second camera. Still nothing. Could he have got the date wrong? She knew him well enough to know that couldn’t be the case.
‘So where is your precious Audi?’ she asked the darkening emptiness of her flat. She tried again. Frame by frame. He definitely had not parked on the far side of the road from the restaurant. She repeated the exercise looking at the front of theJagoda,one frame at a time. There was a black Range Rover parked a little off centre, but it didn’t move. No other cars came or went. Which in itself was strange. This was, after all, a fairly busy street in the middle of the day. More and more the only explanation was that the footage had been tampered with or changed. Which was pretty near impossible. This wasn’t film from a private security camera. This system belonged to the Metropolitan Police. Which meant, if it had been fixed, a police officer had to have fixed it. She peered harder at the slightly pixelated film, frame by frame again, looking for signs of a jump or glitch that might suggest a clip had been cut and rejoined.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. What she did notice, though were some unusual symbols, carved into the frame above the door. They seemed oddly familiar.She zoomed in. There was something about them that rang a faint and distant bell. She reached across her desk and picked up the copy of the file on the Aurora killings. Flicking through it, she came to some of the crime scene photographs. The graphic images of the victims stirred her half digested pasta so that she had to close her eyes for a moment. She had never become accustomed to the gore either of her career choices subjected her to. When she felt steadier she searched on until she found what she was looking for. One of the photos showed the weird little shrine that had been in the apartment where the second killing had taken place. There were wooden carvings, and a framed print. Both had curiously shaped patterns. And those patterns were the same as the ones on the door of the restaurant. She moved the mouse and took a screenshot of the frame before clicking on print. Her printer reluctantly came to life and spat out two copies. She went back to staring at the screen, trying to make sense of that door, those symbols, and the lack of Tudor’s car, or indeed Tudor himself, anywhere in the footage.
She was taking another gulp of wine when what she saw made her gasp. She spat Burgundy over her keyboard, spluttering. Cursing, she grabbed a tissue and mopped wine up as she fought to ignore the prickling sensation she was experiencing all over her scalp. Shetook a breath and looked again at the frozen frame. At first glance it just showed the restaurant front, with the Range Rover slightly off to the left. Closer inspection, however, revealed a figure standing in the window, looking out. A woman. Dark. Striking. Staring. And it was the stare that had made Deborah choke on her wine. Even through the fuzzy quality of the cctv cameras, those eyes were remarkable, and their gaze felt as if it locked on to the observer. To her. Holding her. If asked, DI Chowdhury would have said she considered herself a spiritual person, and wasn’t coy about it. Her mother had been a lapsed Church of England Anglican, but her father’s Hinduism had been what shaped her growing up, and what sustained her still. In that moment, had someone pressed her to describe what those eyes made her feel, she would have said it was as if evil had washed over her. Pure. Powerful. Terrifying.
She shivered, then, cross with herself for being so fanciful, putting it down to too much wine, too much work, and the tension of seeing Tudor again. She got up from her chair and switched off the computer, her heart rate returning to normal as the screen went black and the tower powered down. As she left the room she started humming her dad’s favourite song in an attempt to shake off the mood that had gripped her, heading for the bathroom and a hot shower. Which meant that shedidn’t hear the slight click that came from the computer. Nor did she see the tiny green light flashing, or the brief message that appeared on the screen:camera on.
Gloucester, 1086
It had taken four days’ riding to reach the outskirts of the city. Rhiannon was thankful that this year the king had decided to break with tradition. Customarily, the crown resided at Winchester for Easter, visiting Kingsholm Palace only at Christmas. For reasons the monarch did not see fit to share with far flung outlaws, he had changed his plans and would be celebrating the festival at the old Saxon stronghold. Rhiannon had travelled light, favouring speed over comfort. Mamgi had questioned the wisdom of this, but she had been resolved to go at once. Part of her was aware she was trying to run away from her grief, even though she knew that was impossible. Another part of her feared she might lose her courage if she spent too long considering her chosen course of action. The reason for herhaste that she gave to Mamgi and the villagers, however, was that she did not want word of de Chapelle's killing to reach the king before she did. The story had to be presented from their viewpoint. If she was known as some wild Welsh murderess before she so much as spoke a single word, all would be for nothing.
Preparations for the journey had, therefore, been completed with great urgency. She and Rufus had descended to the village, pausing at the periphery only long enough to reassure themselves the place was still unoccupied. They hurried to the great house and found their way inside with little difficulty. This was not, after all, their first visit. On this occasion, they had a highly specific mission. Rhiannon had led the way, even though Rufus knew it as well as she did, to the top right corner of the solar, and the old wooden chest that sat beneath a pile of sheepskins. It was here that her mother had stored dresses she no longer wore, but that she had kept for when Rhiannon was wed. Rufus helped drag the chest from its hiding place. One advantage of having a populace terrified of its new rulers was that few dared try to steal from them. While the contents of the great house at Cwmdu should in all conscience belong to Rhiannon, they were in fact the property of the crown, and more recently, gifted to the new Lord of Brycheiniog. Rhiannon reasoned that ashe himself was now dead, the moment was right to reclaim what was rightfully hers. The hidden gowns were a fair place to begin. There was a dress of red velvet, cut to follow a woman’s form, with gold braid at the neck and cuffs. There was also a dress of pale green linen, which draped more freely, but was nonetheless flattering for that. She and Rufus repacked the gowns into shoulder bags, along with a floor length cloak of dark green wool. She had not thought it useful, but he had sensibly pointed out that Tudor’s wolfskin cape would hardly be suitable attire for a woman at the royal court. On their return to the mountain settlement, Mair and Mamgi had set about cleaning and repairing the gowns.
