Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2016

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Cristina Lichti / Arcangel Images (castle in fog); Shutterstock.com (flowers and berries).

Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007513161

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780007513185

Version: 2017-10-23

Praise for Barbara Erskine:

‘Evocative and haunting. [I was] every bit as captivated as I was when I was swept away by Lady of Hay. I have loved the journey and the history’

Sunday Times bestseller, Elizabeth Chadwick

‘Barbara is a master storyteller who knows just how to weave the twists and turns of a gripping thriller, with that unique and spell-binding blend of history and the supernatural … Every new book by Barbara is an event to be pleasurably anticipated’

Acclaimed historian and novelist, Alison Weir

‘The author’s storytelling talent is undeniable. Barbara Erskine can make us feel the cold, smell the filth and experience some of the fear of the power of evil men’

The Times

‘Captivating storytelling, vivid, passionate characters, beautifully evoked and impeccably researched historical settings, and, best of all, those terrifying but beguiling ghosts that whisper to us from the past … You’ll be transfixed’

Richard and Judy bestseller, Rachel Hore

‘I was utterly absorbed and swept up in Sleeper’s Castle … I was totally immersed in the landscape of the border Marches. The characters will live on in my imagination for a long time’

Author Sophie Duffy

‘I cannot believe it is thirty years since Lady of Hay introduced me to a whole new interpretation of my favourite genre – historical fiction with a twist of ghostly thriller’

Joanna Hickson, author of First of the Tudors

Time

The past, present and future regarded as a continuous whole

Collins English Dictionary

A space of continued existence, as the interval between two successive events or acts, or the period through which an action, condition, or state continues

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Oneirology

The science or subject of dreams, or of their interpretation

Oneiromancy

Divination by dreams

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Barbara Erskine:

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Author’s Note

Historical Note

About the Author

Also by Barbara Erskine

About the Publisher

In the never-ending battle between the principalities of Wales and their aggressive, acquisitive neighbours, the victorious king, Edward I of England, having subdued the native princes had banned the bards, recognising their power, their ability to remember, their position in society as the keepers of memories of freedom and power. To be a bard was to be the inspiration of a people; to be the instigator of longing for freedom; it was a position of enormous influence.

To be a bard was now punishable by death.

Bards had come back of course. Or never gone away.

For two hundred years the Welsh people lay under the English yoke, their impatience growing, their dissatisfaction ever increasing, their bards and poets studying the dream of independence. They were waiting for Y Mab Darogan, the Son of Destiny, who would come to liberate them and make them a great nation once more.

In the middle of the fourteenth century such a man was born, his arrival heralded by a comet in the sky. By the year 1400 he was ready for his destiny.

Prologue

In their dream they smelt smoke. Far below the hillside where they stood the castle nestled within the angle of the great river, a black silhouette against the green of flood-meadow grass. The keep stood four-square, the stone walls massive cliffs pierced by slit windows, lit from without by the dying sun and from within by fire. The moan of the wind and the yelp of circling kites were broken by the occasional thunder of cannon fire and they thought they could hear the screams of injured men. Creeping closer to the edge of the wood, heart in mouth, they watched the topmost battlement crumble and heard the crash of falling stone. The cannon fell silent and there was a roar of cheering, though from here they could see no men, no banners, no rippling standards. The smoke grew thicker as the green-cut oak of the ceiling beams began to burn, the smell sweet on the air until, slowly, insidiously, it was flavoured with a rancid undertone of smouldering fabric and burning wool, as ancient dusty wall hangings and cushions, banners and silks from a bygone age flared and collapsed into the conflagration. Then, a sharp thread winding through the smell, the scent of cooking mutton and beef as the animals, herded into the shelter of the curtain walls, began to roast alive; and with the burning flesh of animals outside the walls was mingled the scent of the burning flesh of men.

Horrified, they watched, hidden in the trees, hands clutching the mossy trunks, fingernails clawing at the lichen-stained bark. Far below they heard the crash as the roof of the keep fell and they saw the sparks fly up in the wind, a curtain of shimmering red against the smoke-filled sky.

When they woke, suddenly, with the sweat of fear icy on their bodies, they lay staring up at the ceiling in the dark and then slowly moved their heads, still hardly daring to move, to look towards the window where the sky was growing light behind the shoulder of the hill. They climbed from bed and padded to the window, leaning on the cold stone of the sill, looking out between the mullions, shivering, knowing that it had been a dream, seeing the sky clear, watching the silver crescent of the moon lying on its back above the trees.

Two women.

Two ice-cold silver dawns, centuries apart.

One endless nightmare.

1

The present day
Towards the end of September

‘Take care of Pepper! Tell him I love him!’

Sue handing her the keys. Laughing. Giving her a quick hug then running down the steep uneven stone steps to the gate and her waiting car. ‘You remember where everything is? Enjoy.’

The engine revs. She is gone.

Andy stands listening as the car takes the succession of Z bends down the steep single-track lane with its high banks and its wild hedges until the sound of the engine is swallowed by the silence. She is alone.

Slowly she turns and surveys her new home. A year, rent-free, in exchange for looking after an ancient house with mullioned windows and a moss-covered slate roof and an old and grumpy cat called Pepper. Overwhelmed with unexpected happiness she begins to smile.

‘He’s too old to go into a cattery, Andy. It would kill him. He needs to stay at home. He needs someone to feed him regularly and make sure the house is warm. That’s all. He won’t need anything else. He’s his own man. Well, his own cat! And he knows you.’ Sue’s voice was pleading, though she had already known that Andy would say yes.

Yes, the cat had met her. Once. For a couple of weeks when she and Graham had stayed here with Sue four summers ago. Andy’s smile faded at the memory, then it returned. In her head, for a moment, the house was full of the sound of Sue’s irrepressible laughter and Graham’s deep guffaws.

Exhausted after the long drive, she sat down on the cold stone slab of the top step and, hugging her knees, stared down over the almost vertical wild rock garden which fronted the ancient stone building, down towards the parking space, no more than a lay-by really, off the narrow lane, occupied now only by her old Passat. She could see the low sun glinting on its dark blue roof, almost hidden by the tangle of autumn flowers. The car contained almost all she owned in the whole world.

She hadn’t expected this – to be suddenly and irrevocably homeless.

‘It’s your fault he died!’ Rhona Wilson, Graham’s widow, shouted at Andy. ‘If he had never met you we would have been happy. He would be alive now.’ It took Rhona’s sister, Michelle, to drag her away as Andy stood there, numb with shock, too overwhelmed with grief to move.

‘Get out of our house!’ Michelle almost spat the words at Andy. ‘Go. Haven’t you done enough damage here, stealing Graham away from us? Killing him!’

Andy backed out of the room, turned and ran down the stairs. She shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew Rhona hated her. The woman had left Graham long before Andy had come into his life, run off with another man, left him as well and moved in with a second, followed that one to the States, come back with someone quite different, but never had she lost her sense of ownership. She didn’t want Graham, but she didn’t want anyone else to have him either and she obviously didn’t intend to let anyone else benefit, if that was the right word, from his death. In the past she had contented herself with the odd vitriolic phone call, occasional nasty letters and postcards, but in the past Graham had been there to protect Andy. Now he was gone and Rhona had found allies in her war of attrition.

Andy’s life had been idyllic. She had lived with Graham for nearly ten years in his beautiful detached house in the quiet tree-lined street in Kew. She wrote her column for the local paper. She illustrated his books, fulfilling her contractual duties as his co-author by providing exquisite, tiny watercolours of the exotic rare plants he wrote about. That was how she had met him; his publisher had contacted her with a suggestion that she might be the person to illustrate his next book. She was happy. He was happy. Then the cancer came, swift and deadly, diagnosed far too late.

Within days of his death his ex-wife, technically still his wife, and her family had made it clear that Andy had no place, no rights, no security, no home.

She didn’t even know they had keys to the house; they were in before she realised it. They tried to stop her taking even her own things, this vicious greedy cabal of women, his wife, her sister, her friends. They had supervised her packing, had checked everything as she threw her cases and bags into her car. They grabbed her sketchbooks and paintings. Graham had paid for them, they screeched, though technically they had not yet been paid for; she was contracted to his publisher. She didn’t argue. Didn’t fight back. Did not care. He was gone. She doubted she could live without him anyway.

But then the phone calls had started and the threats had continued even though Andy had left the house. Rhona was sure she had stolen things. But, if there had been theft it was not on Andy’s side. Graham’s will, and Andy had seen his will, leaving his house and garden and books and manuscripts to her, had disappeared. The solicitor, Rhona’s sister’s husband, as it happened, said he had no copy and knew nothing of it. Andy gave up. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, fight them.

To escape Rhona’s vicious calls she kept her phone switched off. She slept on sofas and floors and drank a great deal of wine with her mother and her wonderful loyal friends as she tried to come to terms with the fact that she had no home, very little money, no future and, it seemed, no past. Without her friends to steady her, replace the rock which had been Graham, she would have been a wreck, if she had survived at all.

Then Sue had phoned. She had heard what had happened on the grapevine. ‘I’m not sure if this would be a port in a storm, Andy. If you like the idea it would surely help me. I planned this trip to Australia to go to my brother’s wedding and then spend time visiting the folks, blithely assuming I could get a tenant in time. I’d much rather it was you than a stranger, and Rhona will never find you in Wales.’

And so, here she was. Rubbing her face wearily Andy stood up, conscious of the roar of water from the brook that ran along the edge of the garden, plunging over rocks and between deep overhanging banks thick with moss and fern, under the bridge in the lane and on down towards the valley.

The house, with its wonderful romantic name of Sleeper’s Castle, was in the foothills of the Black Mountains, a few miles from the nearest town. The countryside was huge and empty and the contours on the map had been, as she reminded herself on her way here, suspiciously close to each other, a clue to the presence of steep hills and deep secluded valleys. Sue called it her retreat. She had no neighbours. None close by, anyway.

Andy turned her back on the endless view of misty hills and the turbulent sky and she made her way towards the front door, past the rough wooden bench which stood with its back to the stone wall, facing the view.

Sleeper’s Castle was not, never had been, a castle, but it had once been a much bigger house. The name Sleeper’s, Sue had told her vaguely, came from something in Welsh. It didn’t matter. It was perfect. Wild, unspoilt, magical, built on the eastern fringe of the Black Mountains, the remote, mysterious range at the north-easternmost end of the Brecon Beacons National Park, on the Welsh side of the border between England and Wales. Andy took a deep breath of the soft sweet upland air and infinitesimally, without her noticing, the first of her cares began gently to drop away.

Nowadays the downstairs of the house comprised only four rooms, the largest by far, which had once been the medieval hall, paying lip service to its duties now as a sitting/living room only by the presence of an enormous baggy inelegant sofa and a couple of old, all-enveloping, velvet-covered armchairs. Smothered with an array of multi-coloured rugs they had been arranged in a semicircle around a huge open fireplace built of ancient stone, topped by a bressummer beam, split and scorched from countless roaring fires over many centuries. At the moment the fireplace was empty and swept clean of ash but the sweet smell of woodsmoke still clung in the corners of the room and hung about the beams. The rest of the room, with its oak table, bureau bookcase, ancient kneehole desk and scattered multi-dimensional chairs served Sue as a potting-shed-cum-office. Andy gave a wry smile. She had lived with a plantsman for years, but never once had he allowed his garden to encroach on the elegance of his home. His wellies – and hers – stayed firmly in the utility room at the back of the house. Where hers still were, she realised with a pang of misery. Here, judging by the state of the threadbare rug, Sue still wore hers indoors. The fact that there was a mirror on the wall was somehow counter-intuitive.

Andy caught sight of herself and briefly she stood still, staring. Her shoulder-length wild curly light brown hair stood out round her head in a tangled mass, her eyes, grey and usually clear and expressive, looked sore and reddened with exhaustion and misery. Her face, which Graham used to describe as beautiful, was drawn and sad. She was not a pretty sight. She stepped back with a grimace, turned her back on the mirror and with a last, affectionate glance round the room made her way through to the kitchen.

It took several seconds to absorb the shock of what she saw there. When she and Graham had stayed with Sue four years ago the kitchen had more or less matched the living room. Used. Scruffy. Barely, to be honest, even remotely hygienic. She remembered the ever-watchful cat strolling along the worktop to lick the butter when someone left the top off the dish, and Sue laughing at Andy’s consternation when the same dish turned up on the table at lunch. But now it had all changed. Sue’s kitchen had transformed, to Andy’s astonishment and disbelief, into the epitome of every woman’s dream. There was a butler’s sink with brass taps, a large scrubbed refectory table and, joy of joys, an Aga like the one she and Graham had had in his kitchen in Kew, with next to it, a rocking chair, the only concession to comfort in the room and on the chair a large tabby cat.

‘Hello, Pepper,’ she said. Pepper, short for Culpepper, the herbalist.

He narrowed his eyes briefly then closed them, his expression bored but proprietorial. She got the message at once. His chair, his kitchen, his Aga.

She smiled as she walked slowly round the table, admiring every detail. On the dresser were two bottles of Merlot with a note.

To be taken x 2 daily with food. Enjoy. Sue xxxxx

It took several trips to drag her belongings up the steep steps from the car. Rhona’s family had not been interested in her clothes, or the books she had time to rescue or, in the end, most of her painting gear. She had little jewellery, but what there was – seeing which way the wind was blowing – she had hidden in a flower pot, to be tipped later straight into the boot of her car, and after that into a drawer in her mother’s house. Only two or three of those pretty things had been gifts from Graham; he didn’t see the point of jewellery when a live flower tucked into Andy’s hair was so much more perfect. The rest of the rings and bangles had come from her family, but she doubted the Wilson clique would listen and believe her.

‘Go to the police!’ her friends had said, or ‘For God’s sake find a solicitor,’ but she had shrugged and shaken her head and now, please God, hidden away here in the Welsh borders she would at last be free of Rhona and her family. Only three people knew where she was and they had sworn to keep her secret: her mother, obviously, and two of the friends who had come to her rescue, James Allardyce, a former university pal of Graham’s, and his wife, her former school friend, Hilary, to whom Andy had introduced him. Oh, and her father, but he lived far away in Northumberland.

The thought of her mother and father sent her reaching into her pocket for her mobile but then she pushed it back. She was on her own. This was her new life. She had promised the others she would stay in touch, but she was not going to ring the second she got here. She had to establish herself, make herself at home and somehow retrieve her confidence and her sense of identity. The unaccustomed and overwhelming wave of happiness and relief that had swept over her on her arrival had been a first step in the right direction.

Andy’s full name was Miranda Annabel Dysart. Don’t Go out of Sight, Miranda had apparently been the title of one of her grandmother, Petra’s, favourite books and when her mother, Nina, was a child, Petra had read it to her repeatedly. Nina had in turn read it to her daughter after saddling her with the name of the heroine. Andy couldn’t remember the story at all – maybe she had blocked it, but the name Miranda had left her with a sense of overwhelming melancholy. Not a good reason to endear it to her. Someone at school had named her Andy (after experimenting with Mandy and, even more unfortunately, Randy) and it stuck. She liked it. And so did her father. It was a neutral name, slightly ambiguous, rugged. Strong. It distracted people from the fact that her initials spelt MAD, something which her scatty parents had not considered at her christening but which mercifully she had learned to enjoy.

She couldn’t remember either the time her parents had split up. It had been while she was very small and they seemed to have managed it without rancour or complications. They had remained friends as far as she, their only child, could tell. Her mother lived in Sussex, her father, long ago remarried and father to three more children, had settled in Northumberland. Perhaps the distance between the two counties made it easier for them.

The knock at the back door took her by surprise. She had just poured herself a glass of wine as prescribed and was wandering round the kitchen, finding her way around, touching things lightly, proprietorially, opening and shutting drawers, shuffling through the books on the dresser – all cookery or herbs – when the sound broke the intense silence of the house.

Nervously she glanced at the cat. He hadn’t moved. If this was an unexpected or threatening sound surely, like her mother’s cat, he would have bolted off upstairs to hide. She set down the glass and went to the door.

The woman on the step was of middle height, slim, middle-aged, she guessed, with a rugged wind-burned complexion and greying hair. She was wearing a heavy pullover against the autumn chill and muddy rubber boots with shabby cords. She stared at Andy in surprise. ‘Sue around?’

‘She left for the airport a couple of hours ago. I’m sorry.’

The woman sighed.‘Ah, I saw her car wasn’t there. Australia, right? Hell and damnation! I hoped she wasn’t going for a while yet.’ She half turned away, staring up at the racing clouds as though seeking inspiration, then turned back. ‘I don’t suppose she left anything for me, did she?’

‘You being …?’ Andy let the question hang.

For the first time her visitor smiled. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Sian. Sian Griffiths.’ In spite of the Welsh name her accent was English. She paused as though expecting the name to mean something. ‘I live over in Cusop Dingle.’

‘Ah?’

Cusop Dingle, Andy remembered vaguely from their holiday, was a narrow, thickly wooded valley to the east of the range of hills where Sleeper’s Castle nestled, separated from it by a high ridge and then a vertiginous plunge down to a fast-running brook. It was on the outskirts of the nearest town, Hay-on-Wye, and seemed to consist of a long winding country road, heading up towards the open hillside and lined with houses, a few of them large, secluded behind high hedges and ancient trees. They had visited someone there with Sue on that wonderful summer holiday, but not, as far as she could remember, this woman.

‘Come in.’ Introducing herself, Andy held the door open.

Kicking off her boots and leaving them outside, Sian accepted a glass of wine and pulled up a chair at the table.

‘I’d better explain,’ Andy said, reassured that Pepper seemed to know her visitor and had still not moved from his chair. ‘This was a last-minute piece of serendipity. As you probably know, Sue hadn’t found a tenant and was beginning to think she would have to cancel her trip, and I was in need of a roof. I’m self-employed with no immediate ties …’ Her voice wavered but she managed to go on. Just give enough information to explain her presence here, no more. ‘We made a lightning decision. I didn’t give myself time to think.’

‘Brave.’

Now she was inside and sitting opposite her, Andy could see that the woman was probably in her mid to late fifties, older than she had first thought. Her face was weathered with deep laughter lines at the corners of her eyes, eyes that were bright Siamese-cat blue. ‘I’ll leave you my phone number,’ she said. ‘If you need anything, you have only to ring. This house is pretty isolated if you’re on your own. Your nearest shops and signs of civilisation are in Hay, did she tell you? You’ll get most things you need there.’

‘I’m looking forward to exploring.’ Andy took a sip of wine. ‘I have been here before, for a holiday. But it was in the summer.’

Andy had a momentary flashback to those warm, seemingly endless days strolling on the hills and mountains, happy evenings in local pubs, excursions down into the local market town of Hay, attractive, compact, famous for its bookshops and its castle and of course for the majestic, beautiful River Wye which cradled it in a constantly changing backdrop. It had been a glorious summer.

Now it was late September, with winter already a hint in the air, and she was on her own. She didn’t say it out loud. It made her sound pathetic and needy, which she was not. She glanced towards the window where high clouds were streaming across the sky. ‘What was it Sue was going to leave for you? Maybe it’s here and she forgot to tell me.’

‘Maybe.’ Leaning back in the chair, Sian was watching Andy with an interested, narrowed gaze. ‘Is she still planning to stay away for a year? She was afraid she would have to cut the visit short.’

‘A year is what she told me,’ Andy agreed. ‘I hope Pepper can cope with that.’

Sian smiled. ‘I’m sure he can. She had two main concerns when she was planning this trip: Pepper and her car. Last I heard, the idea was that she would leave the car with a friend who lives down south. He was going to pick it up from Heathrow and take care of it for her. And you have clearly solved the Pepper problem.’

Andy smiled as a spatter of rain rattled against the window. ‘So no worries then. I can just imagine her saying those words! She was gone the second I arrived. I think she had more or less resigned herself to changing her plans then someone told her I might be in the market for a new home urgently, she rang and we settled it then and there. She got a cancellation on a flight. There was virtually no time to discuss anything.’

‘The gods were with you both.’ Sian gave a thoughtful smile. ‘There are very few people she would entrust Pepper to.’

They both looked at him. As if overwhelmed by the unexpected attention he stood up, stretched and jumped off his chair. He walked to the door and with great dignity pushed out through the cat flap. ‘I hope she’s left food and instructions for feeding him,’ Andy said. ‘We didn’t even have time to talk about that. It took longer than I remembered driving here, so I was very late. She was terrified of missing the plane.’

‘I’m sure she made it.’ Sian smiled again. She stood up, walked over to the dresser and pulled open one of the drawers. Inside were boxes of tuna and rabbit biscuits, little trays of gourmet cat food and a couple of cartons of cat milk.

‘So Pepper is catered for.’ Andy was relieved.

‘And here are your instructions.’ Sian had found a piece of paper on the worktop. Pepper, it said. Breakfast, lunch and supper. ‘Quite the spoiled brat, our Culpepper.’

Andy took the paper, grateful that her visitor seemed to know her way round. ‘This kitchen has changed so much since I was here last. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.’

Sian gave a snort of laughter. ‘She was left some money by an ancient relative and she couldn’t decide what to spend it on. Sue is one of those incredible people who has everything she wants in life. Her herbs are her life. She is extraordinarily self-contained. I think she consulted Pepper, who decided an upgrade of kitchen would be good.’

‘I can believe that.’

‘And you’re not regretting coming up here, now you’ve had time to reconsider your impulsive decision?’

Andy shook her head. ‘Hardly. I’ve barely been here a few hours.’

‘Not everyone is as independent as Sue.’ Sian hesitated. ‘Old houses can be a bit spooky.’

‘It’s certainly atmospheric,’ Andy reached for her glass and took a sip.

‘And utterly beautiful.’

‘But you find it spooky?’

‘Sorry, that was a silly thing to say. I meant, it’s a bit isolated if you’re on your own. No, I don’t think it’s spooky. If there ever was a ghost here I think it would have been far more afraid of Sue than she would be of it. She would swear roundly in Australian and tell it where to go.’ Sian laughed again and ran her finger round the rim of her glass. ‘So, do you believe in them?’ The question was almost too casual.

‘Ghosts?’ Andy pulled a noncommittal face. ‘Actually, I made a bit of a study of them once.’

Once. She caught herself using the word with something like shock. Before Graham. So much that she had once thought important in her life had been before Graham. Their life together had absorbed her totally, taken up every second, monopolised her existence. She hadn’t been aware of how much. For the first time since his death she realised that in every sense she was free now. Was she frightened or exhilarated by the thought? She wasn’t entirely sure.

Sian was still studying her and Andy looked away, embarrassed that her face had betrayed too much. ‘One of those things one pursues frenziedly in one’s youth and then life and perhaps a certain cynicism kick in and the books get put away.’ She gave a rueful smile.

Ghosts had been her father’s passion and she had grown up enjoying his stories, his theories, the frissons they had shared on ghost-hunting trips. She had never been quite sure whether she believed in them herself, but the study of phenomena of a ghostly kind had absorbed her for a long time. Those books had been left with her mother. Graham had not liked ghosts. They gave him the creeps and therefore could not be discussed even in the abstract. Ghosts and meditation and psychology and anything he considered even remotely out of the ordinary on the paranormal scale of things had been out of bounds.

Sian nodded sagely. ‘It’s sad how one’s early enthusiasms wane.’ She changed the subject abruptly. ‘That’s Sue’s strength and blessing. She has retained her childlike passion for her herbalism.’

That was how Andy and Sue had met originally. Sue was an old friend of Graham’s, a plant contact and fellow author. Andy and she had liked each other instantly and become great friends. Although they had only ventured here, to Wales, once, Sue used to stay with them whenever she was forced to visit London and they had exchanged many long phone calls over the years.

Andy gave a wistful smile. ‘I’m surprised she can bear to leave her garden. Especially to me. I paint flowers, I don’t grow them.’

‘You won’t have to. She has someone to help her; I would imagine he will still be coming?’ Sian glanced up at her again. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘No.’ Andy felt ridiculously cross. She had thought she would be here alone; safe. Unbothered.

‘Maybe I got it wrong.’ Sian was backtracking hastily again. She seemed to be able to read Andy’s every thought.

‘No. I hope she has. I am not fit to be trusted with her garden. When the subject came up she just said it could look after itself for a while.’ It was Andy’s turn to study her visitor’s face. ‘Was it a herbal potion she was making for you?’

‘For my dogs.’

‘If I find anything, I’ll let you know.’

Sian seemed to take the words as a dismissal. Draining her glass, she stood up. ‘I should be on my way. It will start getting dark soon and I’ve a long walk home.’

Andy watched from the window as the woman ran down the steps and out of sight. The rain shower was over as soon as it had come. Sian’s dogs, she saw, had been waiting for her outside, a border collie and a retriever. She wondered what Culpepper made of them.

Andy decided against taking over Sue’s bedroom even though it had obviously been made ready for her. She and Graham had shared that room on their holiday and she didn’t think she could bear to sleep there again, alone. A small neat indentation on the counterpane showed where the cat had made himself comfortable earlier in the day, unaware that his beloved Sue was about to abandon him for a whole year. Instead she chose one of the spare rooms. It was in the oldest part of the house, dark with ancient beams, its window mullioned in grey stone, facing across the valley where the sun was setting into the mist. There was a brightly coloured Welsh blanket on the bed and a landscape on the wall of the hills she could see from the window, the racing shadows picked out in vermilion and ochre and violet. She looked round the room with a sense which she realised after a moment was a feeling of coming home. The room felt relaxed and safe; it smelt of wood and something indefinable – herbs and polish and maybe, a little, of dust. Circling once more, and giving a final glance out of the window, she laid her hand on one of the crooked beams in the corner, then she trailed her fingers across the ancient stones of the wall. What memories they must hold.

It took for ever to lug her cases and boxes upstairs and spread some of her belongings on the chest and along the shelves. Finally she threw her jacket on the chair, an almost symbolic gesture to take possession of the room before she went back downstairs, hungry for the first time in ages. Tomorrow she would drive down to Hay and stock up the fridge. For now Sue had left her milk and bread and a pasty with salad. Outside it was dark. She drew the curtains and turned on the light. Behind her the cat flap opened and closed with a swish and a click as Pepper pushed his way through and leapt onto his chair. He sat and gazed at her. She felt that mentally at least he was tapping his wristwatch to make sure she knew that the hour for supper was approaching. She smiled at him broadly. ‘I think we’re going to get on fine, Culpepper, my friend. But if I make mistakes, you will have to tell me.’

On her past experience with cats she was sure he would.

She tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Climbing out of bed she pushed open the small casement in the mullioned window. Through it she could hear the sound of the brook hurtling over the rocky ledges at the side of the house and cascading down towards the road. Staring out into the dark she was very aware of how black the night was. She was used to streetlights and the headlights of cars probing through the curtains and crossing the walls of the bedroom she’d shared with Graham.

She had left her door open a crack so that Pepper could come and sleep on her bed if he felt so inclined, but when she turned off the kitchen light he had stayed where he was on the chair beside the Aga. If she had been at home in Kew she would have crept out of bed, careful not to wake Graham and gone out into the garden. She could do that now but she felt strangely intimidated at the idea. The garden here was huge and full of noise and wind and water; she hadn’t got her bearings there yet.

Climbing back into bed she sat, propped against her pillows, her hands clasped around her knees, gazing into the darkness. In her mind she let herself travel back to Kew. She knew she shouldn’t. She should put Kew behind her, but she couldn’t stop herself. She pictured herself opening the French door which led from the kitchen and walking down the short flight of wrought-iron steps onto the decking of the terrace where they so often used to sit in the evenings or at lunchtime to drink wine and eat and talk and laugh.

The garden below the terrace had a pale reflected light from the lamppost in the road, diffused through the branches of the trees. It smelt fresh and cool and it was very still. In her imagination she stood for a long time looking round, listening. In the distance she could hear the faint drone of traffic on the nearby A307 and, once, the closer sound of a car engine as it turned into their road. It stopped nearby and after a minute a door slammed. She took a step or two onto the lawn, which was wet with icy dew. It soaked into her shoes. She was aware, as she always was at night, of how close Kew Gardens was, dark and deserted behind its high walls. From there sometimes she could hear the call of owls.

Behind her a light came on in the house. It was in one of the spare rooms on the first floor. She watched as the curtain twitched and moved and the silhouette of a head and shoulders appeared peering down into the garden. How strange. Was Rhona living there? She shivered and in her imagination she turned away and strolled towards the high wall at the back of the garden where a collection of shrubs and climbers wove their magic of autumn colour, leached to silver by the lamplight.

She heard the window behind her rattle upwards. ‘Who’s there?’ Rhona’s voice echoed into the silence. ‘I can see you!’

The vision vanished and abruptly Andy opened her eyes. Her memories had been interrupted and spoilt by the intrusion of Rhona’s harsh voice; Rhona had no place in her daydreams, Rhona whom she had only ever met once before that awful day when she had walked into Andy’s life and blown what was left of her composure apart. She was someone best forgotten as soon as possible.

Andy grabbed her dressing gown and made her way downstairs and into the kitchen. The rocking chair was empty; there was no sign of Pepper. Pulling the back door open she overcame her misgivings and stepped outside. The contrast to the silent enclosure in the moonlight in Kew could not have been more marked. This garden was full of noise; the rustle and clatter of autumn leaves, the howl of the wind and always, above all else, the sound of rushing, thundering water. Shivering she stepped away from the comparative shelter of the back door and felt the push of the wind, the furious tug at her hair as she turned to face it. It was exhilarating, elemental, exciting. Deep inside herself she felt something stir, something that in her ordered, neat and organised life with Graham had not surfaced for a long time. It was a sense of freedom.

When, breathless and cold, she let herself back into the kitchen she found herself laughing. There was still no sign of Pepper. Well, he could look after himself. She put on the kettle and made herself some tea, leaning against the Aga rail as she sipped from the mug, cupping her hands around it for warmth.

She did not sense the silent figure in the corner of the room, watching her from the shadows, the figure which between one breath and the next had faded into nothing.

2

March 1400

The door banged shut in the wind, the latch rattling with the force of it, the draught sending up showers of sparks in the hearth. ‘I made sure Betsi had locked up the hens.’ Catrin kicked off her pattens, pulled off her shawl and hung it on the back of the door. She was a delicately built young woman with fine attractive features and grey-green eyes. Her hair, swathed in its linen coif, was rich chestnut. ‘Is my tad still working?’

‘He’s not come out of that room all day.’ Joan was bending over the pot hanging from the trivet over the fire, her face red from the heat. Sturdily built with muscular arms, she padded her hands against the hot metal of the handle with a cloth and unhooked the pot, thumping it down on the table. ‘Did she find any eggs?’

‘Two.’ Catrin produced them from her basket and set them carefully in the wooden bowl on the table. ‘I’ll go and see if he’ll come and eat. He’ll get ill if he goes on like this.’ Another gust of wind shook the house and both women looked towards the window. Sleeper’s Castle stood full square and solid on its rocky perch beside the brook but when the wind roared up the cwm like this from the north there was nowhere to hide. The shutters were rattling ominously. Only weeks before one had torn free and gone hurtling off into the brook. It had been days before they could find one of the men from the farmstead down the valley willing to come up and fasten it back into place. She hated this time of year. Even the patches of snowdrops growing in the lee of the stone walls could not make up for the wild gales screaming over the mountains and the patches of snow still lying on the high scree. There were no real signs yet of spring; the deep impenetrable cold of winter was still implacable within the stone of the house.

Crossing the large empty hall and pushing the door open, Catrin peered into the shadows of her father’s study. The candles on his desk guttered and spat throwing shadowed caricatures of his hunched figure over the walls. ‘Go away!’ He did not look up. His hand was racing across the page, the pen nib spluttering as he wrote and crossed out and wrote again. ‘I need more ink,’ he added.

Catrin sighed. ‘I’ll fetch it from the stillroom. Please, could you not stop to take some pottage? Joan has made your favourite.’

He did not bother to answer. She turned away. At the door she hesitated and looked back. He was seated on a high stool in front of his writing slope, bent low over his work, his weary figure illuminated into flickering highlights by the candles. He had a thin ascetic face with dark lively eyes, narrowed now with exhaustion and eyestrain. His hair was white, long and tangled. ‘What is it, Tad?’ Again he was furiously scratching out with his knife the words he had just written, almost tearing the thin parchment in his agitation. He ignored her. With a sigh she left him.

Joan glanced at her. ‘Is he still working?’

‘And still irritable. I need to fetch him more ink.’

They called it the stillroom, but it was really the buttery. That and the pantry led off one side of the hall, the main living space of the house, while her parlour and her father’s study led off the other. The kitchen had originally been built separately, behind the house, but now it was joined into the main fabric of the building as a solid extension with behind it the bakehouse with its stone oven. Beyond it lay the high castellated wall of the yard.

Drawing her cloak around her against the cold, Catrin went into the buttery to find the ink. Besides overseeing the storage of their ale and beer and cider casks, she made her simples and receipts and remedies in this room. They were a small household; she and her father with their cook housekeeper Joan, Betsi the maid of all work and Peter the outside boy and scullion. Joan did her best but she was worked off her feet in the old house, which had grown increasingly shabby and neglected over the years.

When Catrin’s father and mother had first come here there had been a steward and other servants and farmworkers but one by one they had been sent away. Catrin’s father did not tolerate people around him; they distracted him from his poetry and from his dreams. And they cost money. Now all that was left of the livestock were a few sheep, a pig and a cow and they still had two horses and a mule. They were all looked after by Peter, who added to his long list of duties that of fisherman, keeping Joan’s kitchen stocked with trout and grayling and crayfish, which he pulled from secret pools in the brook. He also had made himself responsible for training the two corgis – the short-legged cattle dogs that followed him everywhere – and, from time to time, cosseting the barn cats; her father did not tolerate cats or dogs indoors either.

The buttery was Catrin’s special domain, full of the rich smell of herbs and the precious spices she brought back sometimes from the market. The stoppered jug which contained the ink she made several times a year was stored on a high shelf. Carefully she set the candlestick down and reached for one of the spare inkhorns, filling it from the heavy jug. The black liquid glistened in the candlelight. She glanced at the basket of oak apples on the shelf and next to it the jar of precious gum arabic and the dish of blue-green copperas crystals bought from a pedlar who called in from time to time as he travelled between the fairs and monasteries. If he didn’t call again soon she would have to make the long arduous journey to Hereford to visit the only mercer there who stocked the items she needed. Her father was particular. He wanted his ink to be the best quality and he wanted it to last on the page. Early autumn was the best time to make the ink, the galls strong and full of acid after the worms had crawled out and left them empty. She had thought she had collected plenty; now there was but half a small basket left.

When she returned to her father’s workroom he wasn’t there. The candle flames guttered as she made her way across to his desk. The page he had been working on was still lying where he had left it, the lettering cramped and heavily crossed out. She set down the inkpot and leaned closer, squinting in the flickering light, reading what he had written. It was the draft of a poem. She loved her father’s poetry. It was clever, intricate, perfectly written with the complex rules on metre and rhythm and rhyme as laid down by the bards of old, exactly as he had taught her but, as she looked at the page, her eyes widened in dismay. This was no poem.

The words were scratched angrily across the page. The point of the quill had split and splayed with the force of his hand and had spattered ink everywhere. She could see where his knife had tried to excise the words, angrily scraping the surface of the parchment scrap on which he was writing until it thinned so much it tore. At that point he had obviously thrown down his pen and walked out of the room.

‘Tad?’ she called. ‘Where are you?’ With another horrified glance at the page she turned to run back into the great hall. The front door of the house was standing open and, despite the heavy screens set up to keep it at bay, the large room was full of the wind. Sparks and ash flew in all directions from the fire. There was no sign of her father.

The garden was dark and reverberated with the noise from the trees beyond the high walls thrashing in the gale. As she stood on the step looking round she could see nothing. The sound of the brook hurtling down over the rocks vied with the wind and the trees to drown out any sound her father might make. She peered round desperately and then as her eyes grew used to the fitful starlight she thought she could see him, a darker shape against the shadows. She made her way cautiously down the path. He was indeed there, staring out across the cwm towards the mountains.

‘Tad?’ She came to a standstill beside him and timidly she reached out and touched the sleeve of his robe. He didn’t react. ‘Please, talk to me. I saw what you had written.’

He turned abruptly and stared blindly down at her. Her father was a tall man. She barely came up to his shoulder and he seemed to be looking out over the top of her head into the distance. ‘You saw nothing.’ His voice was dull and heavy. ‘Do you understand me, Catrin? You saw nothing at all.’

‘But, Tad—’

‘No!’ He seemed to awaken as though the dream of which he had written had slipped like a heavy burden from his shoulders. He straightened and stepped away from her. ‘It was nothing. It’s gone. I will burn the page. It was the result of an ague. Tell Joan her food is too rich. It lies on my stomach like a stone; make me something in your stillroom to settle it.’

She watched his dark shape as he strode back towards the house and disappeared through the door. It closed with a bang and she was left outside alone.

She drew her cloak round her. Her beloved father had been trembling. She had felt it in those few seconds as she touched his arm before he shrank away from her. He had been trembling not because he was cold but because he had been afraid.

Sleeper’s Castle had been her mother’s inheritance. She had been the only daughter of a wealthy well-connected local Welsh family – uchelwyr was the Welsh word for their class – and her grandfather had settled the old fortified manor house on her when she had married, with its farm and its supplement of servants. What he thought of her choice of an itinerant bard, albeit of impeccable descent, as a husband, Catrin never knew. Perhaps his decision to give them an isolated, ancient house hidden in the mountains and already the custodian of years of legend about its magical past and far from his own fertile acres in the Wye Valley, was a witness to his hidden thoughts. When Marged died in childbirth the house remained with Catrin’s father, who bit by bit had sold off what land it had until very little remained. What moneys they owed each year he paid from the earnings he brought home from his summer tours around the houses of his rich patrons.

Bards were popular. The people loved them and their visits were eagerly awaited. They were poets but they were so much more. As well as the genealogies of the principalities and the history of the land of Wales, the myths, the legends, the ancient stories, they also knew all the latest gossip. That had made them dangerous once, in the reign of King Edward I, passionate supporters of their princes as they were in their desperate battle for independence from England; and that could make them dangerous again. The bards sang and played the harp. But their business was words. Words are powerful; words can soothe or inflame. Words can inspire loyalty or treason. Words can incite revolt. Edward may have recognised their power and ordered their execution, but they had never been exterminated.

They toured the houses and castles of the land, staying a week here, a month there, eating at the table of anyone who would pay them with food and shelter. Some had no homes of their own, no roof save the roof under which they were staying. They owed their allegiance to the man who fed them. Thanks to his marriage, Catrin’s father was one of those who had a home and he had both a family and a bloodline of which he was intensely proud. But Dafydd was the most dangerous kind of bard of all. He was also a seer, a soothsayer; he saw the future in his dreams.

A succession of nurses and housekeepers had reared Catrin. They had mostly proved loyal and kind to their small charge, but when she was old enough her father dismissed them, taught her himself and left the running of the house to the few servants who were trusted with the remaining farm animals, their ponies, the vegetable gardens and the kitchen. Catrin did not seem to notice. She loved this place. It was in her blood. She did not know or care that her mother’s family had turned their back on her father and forgotten her.

This land in the border Marches of Wales was a place of beauty and magic and danger. Successive Marcher Lords, supported in their greed for land by their king, had built their great castles and made dangerous or at best uncomfortable neighbours to the local Welsh families over the centuries, but hidden away in this fold of the hills, cradled in the crooked elbow of a torrential brook and lulled by the cry of the birds, Sleeper’s Castle, Castell Cysgwr, had seemed safe to Catrin. Until now. For her father’s dreams of late had been frightening and full of ominous clouds.

She knew her father’s fathers had been bards and soothsayers from the days of the ancient Druids. Poetry was in his blood, the inheritance of his family, the gift of his ancestors. His name was Dafydd ap Hywell ap Gruffydd ap Rhodri – his line stretched back through time like a bright ribbon of silk. And there she was, Catrin ferch Dafydd, Catrin, the daughter of Dafydd, the latest born and perhaps the last of that line.

She didn’t remember her mother, Marged, but in her dreams, those dangerous sparkling dreams she never mentioned to her father, she could see her clearly, her eyes the colour of smoke, her face gentle and loving as she smiled at her little daughter, the daughter she had never met, the daughter who had inherited all her father’s talents and more.

Dafydd taught his daughter all he knew. She could read at the age of four; she could play the harp at the age of six; she could recite the long histories of her father’s family and their patrons and princes by the age of eight. She could write poems and stories of her own and at her father’s dictation, and from the age of twelve she had been sufficiently confident to sing to the harp in front of her father’s patrons. Once or twice, in the solar of an indulgent group of women, she had sung her own poems, cautiously diffident, embarrassed by their applause. The poems were a secret and even now she was a woman she had not confessed to her father that she wrote and dreamed just as he did. She sensed he would not approve. He was proud of his daughter’s talents but subtly and firmly he had made it clear he would not tolerate competition, especially not from a woman. Things might have been different had he had a son.

There were other secrets in her life. After her mother died, in his first frenzy of grief and anger, Dafydd had hidden or destroyed everything that would remind him of his beloved wife. When the nurse who was taking care of this new scrap of life had seen what was happening she had rescued the one thing Marged had treasured above all else and which the loyal woman was sure would end up in his vengeful pyre: a small coffer in which was stored Marged’s tiny, beautiful book of hours, another book of poetry and a collection of notes and recipes for herbs and cures and remedies, copied for her from the family of healers who lived in the village of Myddfai, on the banks of Llyn y Fan Fach on the far side of the mountains. Each successive nurse had been sworn to secrecy and promised to keep the coffer safe until Catrin was given charge of her mother’s legacy by the last of the women employed to look after her. Her father now felt she had no need of female company beyond the servants and cooks who remained. By then Catrin already knew this small coffer and its contents was something else she had to keep hidden.

Her second secret she had found for herself. Half a mile up the valley, through a wood and across a brook she had stumbled upon a small cottage, lost in a tangle of wild herbs. The widow who lived there, Efa, was motherly and kind, full of stories of her own. Catrin told no one of her friend. It seemed important that she should be as secret from her father as the coffer full of her mother’s treasures.

Woven into the stories Efa told were ancient legends and magic spells. Sometimes when Catrin climbed the bank towards the cottage she saw gifts which had been left outside, a skinned rabbit, a jar of cider, a pot of honey, and when she asked, Efa told her about the service she rendered to the community. She magicked the weather. It seemed natural for her to teach the wide-eyed child some of the simple spells. She knew where Catrin lived, she knew the stories about Sleeper’s Castle. She guessed the girl would have a natural aptitude, and so it proved.

The farmers who came to see Efa needed fair weather for ploughing and harvest, they needed rain and then sun for ripening the crops; their wives came to seek good weather for markets and fairs and festivals. And then for fun Efa showed her some of the more powerful magic, the magic that would command the elements, conjure thunder and lightning over the high tops of the mountains, rites which commanded the mist and fog to wrap itself around the trees and drift into the cwm. It was all secret. When men or women came and asked for lightning to strike a neighbour dead or for weather to cause their cattle to sicken and die, Efa refused. Such magic was black and a mortal sin, but she taught Catrin that it could be done and how. That was the greatest secret of all.

‘He has called for new candles.’ Joan looked up as Catrin walked into the kitchen from the garden next day. She was chopping onions and leeks and tossing them into the pot.

‘I’ll take them in to him.’

Joan straightened her back, tucking a wisp of her blonde hair under her hood. The house was full of the smell of her rich fish stew. ‘He’s not well. You must make him eat.’

Catrin nodded.

‘I heard him shouting again in the night.’ Joan held her gaze challengingly before looking away. She reached for a dishclout and wiped her hands.

‘I know. I know he’s worried.’ Catrin pulled a stool from under the table and sat down with a heavy sigh.

Her relationship with Joan was a difficult one. The two young women were of a similar age with but two years between them, and in the lonely valley with few neighbours they had become friends. But Joan was her servant; she was paid to cook and clean.

Joan’s father, Raymond of Hardwicke, was a wealthy yeoman farmer and such work should have been beneath her, but his farm had struggled to survive over the last decades like so many others after the last great wave of pestilence had swept across nations far and wide, destroying towns and villages, leaving land depopulated and barren. Raymond had two sons, the eldest had married and was slowly taking over the running of the farm; his second son had also married and had left home with the idea that he would one day take over part of his wife’s father’s land. Raymond’s only daughter, Joan, was expected to marry and marry equally well. But she had stubbornly refused every suitor her father picked for her. In the end, in a fit of vindictive spite, he told her to go and live off someone else’s charity. She did.

Working for Dafydd ap Hywell had a cachet all of its own – besides, he paid well. His patrons were generous and he had realised almost too late that if he dismissed every servant on the place he and Catrin would be left to cope alone. Joan liked it at Sleeper’s Castle. It had once been far grander, a fortified manor house in a scattered parish in the hills above Hay. Some of the walls had crumbled and it had little land left, but it still had a fine slate roof, Catrin was educated and her gowns had been made by a skilled seamstress. They were serviceable and these days Catrin patched them herself with neat clever stitches, but nevertheless they were of good expensive cloth, and her cloaks were warm and lined with miniver. Joan liked her and was sorry for her. She must be lonely. She needed a friend.

Joan glanced at Catrin, who was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. ‘He’s had these moods before,’ she said. Her voice was gentler now. ‘He’ll come out of it. You’ll see.’

Catrin looked up. ‘I know.’ Wearily she stood up. ‘I’ll go and see if he wants to eat. Perhaps if you throw more logs on the fire in the parlour and serve us there it will cheer him up.’ She didn’t notice Joan’s tightened lips or her exaggerated sigh. Usually they all ate together in the great hall, or she ate here in the kitchen with Joan and Betsi and Peter after placing her father’s food on a tray and taking it to him in his study. That was the way he liked it.

It was as she left the kitchen and walked back into the shadowy hall she thought she caught sight of a woman’s figure standing near the window. Behind her the kitchen door banged and the draught sent a wave of cold air across the room, scattering ash, blowing out the candles. She blinked and stared and rubbed her eyes and the figure had gone.

Andy woke with a start. The morning sun was shining into the room and she lay quietly staring at its path across the black-painted floorboards. She had been dreaming, a gentle homely dream about cooking and putting logs on the fire downstairs, and then in the dream a door had banged and all the candles had blown out, leaving her in darkness. She had woken, aware that somewhere a conversation had been left unfinished, the words still echoing in the quiet of the room.

Sitting up, she groped for her slippers with her feet and pulled on her dressing gown. Pushing her hair back off her face she made her way downstairs to the living room. The bang of the door slamming shut in her dream had seemed so loud and so real it was as if it had been in here.

The room looked huge and shadowy at this time of the morning, living up to its title of great hall. She smiled, remembering that was the way Sue referred to it, her only concession to the house’s medieval antecedents.

The sun hadn’t come round yet to any of the windows. The papers on Sue’s desk by the front-facing window with its ancient mullions had been blown onto the floor. Had that happened last night when she came in? She couldn’t remember. She gathered up the papers and as she did so she noticed two tightly stoppered bottles of dark brown liquid standing there. Tucked under them was a torn sheet of paper which said simply: For Sian.

Neither she nor Sian had thought to look on Sue’s cluttered desk the night before. Andy surveyed the chaos with a smile. If she had been going away for a year she felt sure she would have tidied her desk at the very least. She groped in her pocket for her phone and turned back to the kitchen to look for the note on which Sian had written her number.

‘You don’t look as though you slept much.’

They had arranged to meet in The Granary in Hay. Sian’s dogs lay quietly under the table as Andy brought the two cups of coffee from the counter and set them down.

Andy gave a rueful grin. ‘I suppose I didn’t. I was exhausted, but my head was whirling all night. The silence is so different from London.’

She must have slept though. After all, she had dreamed.

‘Silence? Didn’t you hear the brook?’

‘It is a bit noisy, I admit, but it’s not cars and planes. My house – where I used to live,’ Andy amended hastily, ‘was under the flight path to Heathrow.’

‘Ah.’ Sian took a sip from her cappuccino and licked the froth from her top lip. ‘Not in the same league, noise wise.’

‘There are people who use the sound of water to send them to sleep,’ Andy smiled again, ‘but this is a constant roar. Not all that soothing. I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.’

‘I think you will soon find it wonderful in comparison to the early morning jet to New York.’ Sian laughed. She watched as Andy rummaged in her shopping bag for the bottles she had found in the house.

Sian reached for one; unscrewing it, she sniffed the liquid and grimaced. ‘As far as I can tell, that’s the right one. Rosehips and nettles with burdock, plus one or two other secret ingredients no doubt. To build them up before the winter.’

Andy looked down at the dogs under the table. ‘They look pretty fit to me.’

‘They are. Thanks to Sue.’ Sian sipped her coffee again. ‘Was Bryn there this morning?’ She reached down and scratched a dog’s ear.

‘Bryn?’

‘The gardener.’

‘I didn’t see anyone.’

‘I expect he will come when he’s good and ready.’ Sian looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Remember, a lot of Sue’s herbs are what you probably call weeds. Don’t go rooting about without checking with him first.’

‘I’m not going to touch the garden.’ Andy picked up her spoon and stirred her coffee. ‘That was part of the agreement. I’m in charge of the cat and keeping an eye on the house, that’s all.’

‘So, what are you going to do up there all day on your own?’ There was a long pause. ‘Sorry. None of my business.’

‘No. It’s not that.’ Andy sighed. ‘The truth is, I haven’t really thought. I’m a professional illustrator. I specialise in painting flowers, so I suppose I will go back to doing that.’

Go back.

It made it sound as though she had stopped.

But she had. She had worked with Graham for years. They had been a partnership in so many ways, kindred spirits, lovers, flower geeks. She smiled quietly as she recalled the term given to them by one of her half-brothers.

And now all that had gone.

Sian reached over and touched her hand. ‘Sorry. I can see I’m treading on painful ground.’

Andy took a gulp of coffee. ‘I have to get used to it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I illustrated the books my partner wrote. He died two months ago. That part of my life is over and I have to rethink myself. I thought …’ She paused. ‘Sue thought coming here would be a good way of doing that, and I agreed with her.’

‘It will. A complete change of scene is the best possible medicine.’

Andy laughed. ‘Painting nettles and burdock would be a tonic on its own. I was painting rare orchids for Graham’s last book.’

A woman at the next table stood up and began to manoeuvre her child’s buggy out of the narrow corner. Andy and Sian grabbed for their table as their coffee cups rocked and slopped into the saucers. They waited in silence for the woman to extricate herself and then settled back down. ‘You’d think she would have apologised,’ Sian said quietly. She poured her coffee back into the cup from the brimming saucer.

Andy was chewing her lip. Babies were another thing to tug the heartstrings. Graham had not wanted any. She did not even have a child to comfort her in her loss.

Sian accompanied her back to the car park then waved goodbye. She had walked down to Hay from her house and firmly refused the offer of a lift back. ‘Good for me and the dogs to walk.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll ring you. You must come to supper soon.’

For a few minutes Andy stood staring wistfully after the retreating figure as Sian set off across the car park, through a gate in the far corner and into the field behind it, her dogs racing round her in delight as soon as she let them off their leads. Andy watched until she had vanished through a hedge on the far side of the field then she turned back to unlock her car.

There was an old mud-splashed Peugeot van parked in her spot outside the house. She edged her own car in beside it and ran up the steps to the front door. Letting herself in she glanced round. Presumably the mysterious gardener had at last put in an appearance and she wasn’t sure if he had a key. There was no sign of him indoors however. Nor could she see him from the kitchen window.

He was digging in a bed at the far end of the garden. She watched him for several minutes before approaching him, aware that Pepper was sitting on the path near him, apparently intent on studying his digging technique. About six feet away from him she stopped. He went on digging, seemingly unaware of her presence. Losing patience she cleared her throat. ‘Bryn, I presume?’

He paused in his work then, thrusting the fork into the ground, turned to face her. He was tall, his hair an unruly tangle, his eyes clear light grey, almost silver, his face weathered. Over a dark plaid shirt he wore a leather waistcoat. He didn’t smile nor did he say anything. He surveyed her in silence, presumably waiting for her to speak again. Determined not to be wrong-footed, Andy narrowed her eyes. ‘You are Bryn?’ she repeated firmly.

He pushed his sleeves up to the elbow, revealing muscular arms, one of which bore a small tattoo. She couldn’t see what it was from where she was standing. He nodded in answer to her question. ‘I’m Andy Dysart,’ she went on. ‘I presume Sue told you I was coming to stay here for a few months.’

‘A year, she said.’ His voice was strong with a slight lilt.

‘A year,’ she confirmed.

‘She left me instructions on how to run the garden,’ he said. ‘I won’t need to bother you.’

‘Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea while we talk about how it is going to work?’ From his expression she could already guess his answer and as she expected he declined.

‘I have a flask, thank you. As I said, I won’t need to bother you.’ And with that he turned away. He pulled the fork out of the ground, and swinging it over his shoulder he walked off towards what looked like an orchard on the far side of the herb beds.

Andy glanced at Pepper, who was looking inscrutable. ‘So, that went well,’ she said out loud. The cat raised a paw and cursorily swept it over his ear. ‘You’re right,’ she added. ‘My fault for even starting the conversation.’

Heading back towards the kitchen she let herself in and pulled off her jacket. If she had been looking for the occasional chat to relieve the solitude of this house she would not find it in Bryn, whose second name she didn’t even know and whose timetable she would no doubt find out by seeing which days he turned up. She felt a flash of irritation.

She spent the afternoon unpacking. Tidying the desk and putting all Sue’s papers in a drawer out of sight, she surveyed the empty space with satisfaction before turning to lay out her paints and brushes and sketchbooks on the large table. It was a gesture to stake her claim on the house, she realised, as she lovingly touched the tools of her trade. Up to now she had not been able to bear even the sight of them; somehow she had felt she could never paint again without Graham’s encouragement, his compliments, his quiet certainty in her skill but seeing them lying there on an unaccustomed surface in a different setting, she felt the lure of the paint again. When the time came her brushes would feel right in her hands once more.

Leaving them in place, ready for action, she turned away and began a tour of the house, slowly visiting every room, reminding herself of her previous visit with Graham. The house hadn’t changed since that summer, except for the wonderful cat-inspired kitchen. The great hall downstairs was large, the walls of whitewashed stone, the ceiling white-painted between old rugged beams. The kitchen led off it in the far left-hand corner, while to the right were two smaller rooms, one of which was laid out as a dining room overlooking the front garden. It felt unused and slightly damp. Behind it was what Sue called the parlour, a small living room with its own inglenook fireplace, also unused. In the far right-hand corner of the main living room in the alcove beside the hearth, the broad stone-built staircase climbed to the first floor behind the huge chimney, a heavy rope doing the job of a banister. Upstairs, to the right, above the parlour were two bedrooms, one of which she had claimed as her own, and to the left was the much bigger room which was Sue’s – Pepper’s, she corrected herself – and the modern bathroom. At the opposite side of the landing were two more bedrooms. She lugged her remaining bags and boxes into one of those spare rooms. She would unpack the rest of her stuff as and when and if she needed it. As she closed the door on it all, her phone rang.

She groped in her pocket and warily eyed the screen. To her relief it was her mother.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Have you arrived safely, darling? How is it going?’ Her mother was obviously outside in the garden of her home in Bosham in Sussex. She could hear the scream of seagulls in the background and the lonely whistle of an oystercatcher.

‘It’s fine. A lovely place, just as I remembered.’

‘And the cat?’

They had discussed the cat at length before Andy set off for Wales. Her mother’s cat was a wild, unsociable and slightly vicious Siamese whom her mother, unaccountably, doted on. He was the complete opposite of Culpepper in every way. ‘He’s enigmatic and I think a little puzzled as to why I am here. But he has graciously accepted all his meals so far.’

Her mother laughed. ‘That’s what matters. Have you stocked up with lots of food for you as well?’

‘Of course. And Sue has left me plenty of wine.’ Besides the two bottles on the dresser, Andy had found a wine rack in a pantry off the kitchen.

‘And you’re not going to be too lonely?’

Andy thought for a second before replying. ‘No. I’ve already met one neighbour who seems very nice. We had coffee in Hay together this morning, and there’s a gardener here as well.’ Her eye was caught by the sight of Bryn through the window. He was walking back to the bed where she had first accosted him. He began to fork the ground again and as she watched she saw Pepper reappear to sit in almost the identical spot on the path to watch him. ‘This house has a wonderful feel. I’m going to be very happy here.’ To her relief her mother didn’t ask about the gardener. They exchanged brief family news and then she hung up.

Andy did not find out what, if anything, Bryn did for lunch. After establishing that he was still digging round the back she opened the front door and went out to collect flowers from the front garden. Bringing them back indoors almost guiltily she put them in a glass and took them through to leave on the table. Later she would sketch them as an exorcism of the orchid period and a welcome to the new, wild, herbal Miranda Dysart experience. The thought of outwitting Bryn pleased her enormously. She doubted he would have minded her picking a few flowers, but she was not going to give him the chance to comment either way. He left at about five o’clock. She heard the engine of his van start up as she was sitting painting by the light of a powerful desk lamp which she had found in a corner of the room.

Bryn threw his tools into the back of his van, climbed in and sat back, closing his eyes with a sigh. Part of him had been dreading meeting the new tenant. He replayed his last conversation with Sue in his head. ‘OK. I’ve found someone to look after the house, so I’ll be off tomorrow.’ She had looked at him with a quizzical smile. ‘Now don’t you bully her,’ she said with feeling. ‘She’s been through a tough time. All she needs is peace and quiet.’

Bryn had given a snort of laughter. ‘Wrong place to come then, I would have thought.’

‘Yeah, well luckily you’re here to dig, not think!’ She had punched him affectionately on the arm. ‘Look after the place, Bryn.’

When he arrived this morning there had been no sign of a car outside the house and Bryn had felt his spirits rise. Perhaps the new tenant had not materialised after all. He had been hoping in a way he would find a message: Sorry, Bryn. She couldn’t make it. Can you look after Pepper. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. When he had heard a car pull in later he had felt real disappointment. He studied Andy’s car thoughtfully. It was a dark blue VW Passat. At least ten years old. He sighed. Sue had given him nothing to go on. ‘Been through a tough time’ could mean anything. It was typical of her to give him the minimum of information. She wasn’t interested in the detail of people’s lives. He doubted if she even knew where he lived. She never asked questions, she gave instructions. In another person he might have assumed she was shy or maybe arrogant, but neither word applied to Sue. Single-minded described her best. She was focused. Small talk did not form part of her DNA, but that suited him. He had been through tough times too and a gossipy, gushing woman was the last thing he needed. He pictured the new arrival again. Appearing in the garden when he was digging over the beds she had given him a shock. She had moved quietly, almost creeping up on him. She was tall, slim, no, perhaps thin described her better; on the edge of gaunt. She was an attractive woman, or had been, her clothes casual, no make-up, her hair wild in the wind. He wondered why she was moving here to the deep country, seemingly alone.

She hadn’t pushed him for information, although he could see she was curious to know about him. How much had Sue told her? Probably nothing. Presumably they were both as in the dark as each other. He opened his eyes and stared ahead across the lane towards the hills, then with a sigh he reached forward and turned the ignition key.

Andy gave him ten minutes to drive down the lane and then cautiously went outside and checked the parking space. Her car was now alone. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The next hour she spent exploring the back garden, every inch of it. The terrace outside the back door sported huge tubs of rosemary and lemon verbena and scented geraniums, plants which she guessed would have to go into the greenhouse come the really cold weather. Beyond the terrace was the first of the patches of grass. The garden rose quite steeply behind the house, just as it fell away steeply in front. It was large, unorthodox, laid out to favour Sue’s herbs rather than any aesthetic plan. There were small areas of lawn and borders with what might be described as flowers rather than herbs, but on the whole the paths wound between islands of medicinal plants. The bed on which Bryn had been working was now neatly dug and raked. Other beds were obviously stock beds for herbs which Sue used often: marigolds, their flowers almost luminous in the fading light, and trimmed lavender. Beside these were more decorative beds, with old roses, and there was a vegetable garden, neat and well stocked. There were two sheds, one for garden tools and the other Sue’s drying shed. As she opened the door Andy was swamped with the rich scent of herbs. Bunches hung from lines of hooks on the ceiling and there were drying racks ranged against the walls. The racks were empty, but the hanging herbs looked fresh.

Culpepper accompanied her on her tour and she found herself addressing him again. ‘Look, I don’t want you telling him I came out the moment he had gone, do you understand? We’ll work something out once I know which days he comes.’ She stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh God, I hope he doesn’t come every day. That would be the pits!’

Culpepper did not reply.

Andy went indoors at last and, making herself some tea, sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper she had picked up in Hay that morning. Unexpectedly the aching loneliness that had overwhelmed her after Graham’s death began to envelop her again. It wasn’t being alone that she minded, it was being here without him. He would have loved the life here. He would have enjoyed every aspect of this house: the architecture, the history, the garden, even her discomfort with the presence of a gardener who, let’s face it, had intimidated her. He would have hooted with laughter and turned the whole episode into a huge joke.

Putting the paper down, she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. Almost without realising it she found herself thinking again of Graham’s garden; their garden in Kew.

Rhona Wilson woke with a start. She was still sitting in her chair by the window but it had grown dark outside and she was very cold. She sat there, her head back against the cushions, trying to work out why she was there. She had been tidying the room, going through the drawers of Graham’s desk. She was a tall woman, well built, attractive still. She had looked after herself: her carmine-dyed hair cut into elfin spikes, which, satisfactorily, made her look years younger than her actual age; her manicured nails always immaculate; her complexion carefully preserved from the sunlight; her muscles toned from an hour a day at the gym. Why then did she feel so utterly exhausted and old? Then she remembered. She had been methodically going through his desk, pulling out drawer after drawer, staring at the contents, slowly allowing her rage to build. She remembered this desk. It had been given to them by her aunt shortly after they had married. She had thought of it as a hideous old-fashioned blot on the landscape. She hated old furniture. She wanted to fill their house with modern designer items which she had envisaged choosing with Graham on weekend forays to Habitat or Heal’s or even New York. They did weekend forays all right. To places like Stow-on-the-Wold and Burford, and they returned to Kew with car boots full of yet more ghastly old stuff which he crooningly referred to as antiques.

She had already had a man in from the auction house in Richmond. He had looked round at Graham’s stuff and almost visibly shuddered. ‘Brown furniture,’ he had said, as though it was contaminated with the plague. ‘Valuable once, but worth almost nothing these days, I’m afraid.’ She gave a grim smile, wishing Graham could have heard those words. How they would have annoyed and hurt him!

Their first quarrel had been over furniture, and probably their last as well. He would stroke it with those long sensitive fingers of his as though it was alive, touching it in a way he never touched her. ‘Think where this has been,’ he would say. ‘Think, Rhona, how many generations of people have sat at this desk and written down their thoughts and their dreams.’ She shivered at the memory. Well, that desk was due for a whole lot of new memories. When the auctioneer sent in his valuations she would tell him to take it away with all the other furniture, whatever it was worth. They could burn it for all she cared, as long as she was left with a clean, empty house. She hadn’t had any choice with buying the house either. Graham had inherited this large Edwardian monstrosity from an old aunt. However she shouldn’t complain too much about that now. The estate agent had told her the house was worth well over two million pounds. She licked her lips.

She had tipped the contents of the desk drawers out into a heap on the carpet and that was when she had grown so angry this afternoon. It was full of her stuff. Miranda’s. After all that, there was nothing of Graham’s in the desk to speak of. Her letters, her sketchbooks, her pencils. There were old lists, Christmas cards addressed to them both: Graham and Andy; Andy and Graham; Andy and G. Who the hell called him G? There was no trace of anything addressed to Graham and Rhona. Nothing of Rhona’s anywhere in the house. In her own mind she had blanked details of the day long ago when she had walked out on her husband. In her mind she had elided the years of absence into a monochrome period of loss and mourning for a marriage which had in reality gone sour soon after it had begun – and who was going to contradict her now, when she claimed to be the grieving widow, wronged and cheated by the bitch of a mistress?

Since she had left, Graham had converted the top floor of the house into his office. It was a large room, with windows facing both directions, always full of light. In there, strangely, he did have modern furniture. A serviceable desk, bookshelves, a large table covered in neatly arranged piles of papers and proofs, large old books, too large for the shelves, full of hand-coloured plates of flowers and plants, which the auctioneer said might be worth a bit. He would need to bring in an expert to look at those, he had said. Books were not his speciality. She – Miranda – had a studio on the first floor. Again, a large room, with double aspect. She had taken most of her paints and stuff when she had left. Rhona and Michelle could see they were not worth anything on their own. The drawings and paintings for his book she had left behind and Rhona had told his publisher to come and take them away. A girl had come and collected them, tight-lipped and barely polite as she went methodically through the portfolios and shelves, separating each illustration with sheets of tissue as though they were something infinitely valuable and special. Rhona shuddered at the memory and glanced down at the heap of stuff on the floor. She planned to burn it all.

With a groan she hauled herself up out of the chair and walked over to the window, raising her hands to draw the curtains against the dark. It was then that she froze. There was a bright half-moon in the sky and the garden was flooded with light. A figure was standing on the grass again, staring at the house. It was a woman; at first she couldn’t see her clearly. A tall, slim figure, a tangle of unkempt hair. How the hell had she got in? Rhona was sure she had bolted the side gate. Overwhelmed with anger, she turned and ran through to the dining room. Fumbling with the key she pulled open the French doors and ran out onto the veranda. ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Get out!’ she screamed. Her whole body was suffused with rage. The doors swinging behind her, she leaned over the wrought-iron railings, her knuckles white as she gripped the icy metal and scanned the garden below her. There was no sign of anyone. The garden was empty, the grass, wet with dew, showed no footmarks in the moonlight.

Andy pulled herself out of her reverie, startled. The telephone was ringing. She groped in her pocket for her mobile and then realised it was the landline.

Sian had come up with a plan for a dinner party. ‘On Friday, if that suits you. I’m asking a few people who I think you would like.’

Replacing the receiver, Andy smiled. The cat flap rattled and Pepper appeared. She was no longer alone.

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