Longbow Girl (13 page)

M
erry surfaced, gasping, almost delirious with relief. In the gloom, she gazed around.

She was in a pool, in a cave, identical to the one she had just left.

The relief turned to confusion. It
had
to be the one she'd just struggled so hard to leave. But how could it be?

Dazed, she swam on towards the source of light. Flickering at the edge of the mouth of the cave was the waterfall. She wondered if her brain
had
been starved of oxygen and if she hadn't gone forward, but backwards in some weird way. She exited the cave, blinking in the sudden brightness. Her feet slipped on the smooth pebbles as she walked through the mossy shallows.

She paused, looked around. She felt a crushing disappointment.
She had got nowhere. She'd risked her life to end up back where she started. How was that
possible
?

Yet it was odd. It was the same place but somehow different. The bushes lining the banks of the stream looked thicker, more impenetrable. She'd be scratched to bits getting through in her swimming costume. She shivered.

She needed the fleece in her backpack, a cup of her sugary tea. She pushed through the thicket, exclaiming sharply as the thorns raked her skin. Why had it been so much easier coming through in the other direction? And where
was
her backpack?

It was gone. Jacintha was gone. The trees were different. There were more of them. The smell was different.
Greener
. She was going mad. Jacintha must have broken free, galloped home without her.

She stumbled downhill through the undergrowth, feeling horribly exposed in her swimming costume. Without her eye patch. Should have come out on to open ground by now. Too many trees. Too many bushes. This was a forest, not a copse! Heart pounding. Something was
very
wrong. She ran on. Froze.

Thirty feet from her, picking something from the forest floor, was an old lady wearing a long dress and a weird bonnet. The woman straightened. Her face creased in concern.

Standing in her swimming costume, Merry felt naked, but what was worse was not having her eye patch. She didn't allow anyone to see the ruined socket underneath. Not her mother, not her father. Only Gawain had seen it when he pulled off the patch one day when tugging her hair, though he hadn't
minded one bit. In twenty-four hours, first the countess and now this stranger had seen her exposed.

‘Who are you? Where are your robes!' demanded the woman in Welsh.

Merry wasn't fluent, but understood enough. She could tell too that the woman was more bothered by her near nakedness than by her eye. She replied in English; her Welsh wasn't good enough.

‘Someone stole them.' She wondered about Jacintha. ‘And maybe they took my pony too. I left her tethered.'

‘There are thieves abroad. And worse,' replied the woman in an odd, stilted English. She shook her head. ‘Come, quickly, you would not want the Earl de Courcy and his men to find you disrobed so.'

‘His
men
?'

The old lady gave her an odd look. ‘Let us not tarry, girl.' She picked up a basket and with her other hand, grabbed Merry's arm. ‘Come.'

Merry felt light-headed, disconnected, as though she were stuck in a dream. She let the old lady hurry her along. The wood seemed to go on for ever. Merry gazed around in disbelief. Finally they emerged from the trees beside a tethered pony – black but not Jacintha – and a ragged cart.

Merry gazed around. She couldn't breathe. There was Sarn Helen, cutting along the high plain, and the standing stone, Maen Llia. But where there should be just the rolling grasses of the plain, there were thick clumps of trees. And no telegraph poles, no tarmac cutting through the valley like a black scar.
The scene swirled before her. Merry let out a sob as dizziness closed in.

Swaying motion, clicking hooves, rough blanket covering her. Smelling of herbs and the oily, animal tang of unbleached wool. Almost gagging, Merry came around. Pushed off the blanket. She was lying in a cart, being pulled by the black pony and driven by the old lady.

She sat up, wrapped the blanket around her, scrambled forward, balancing precariously on the swaying cart.

‘Where am I?' she hissed at the old woman, looking around desperately.

There was the Black Castle, standing in stark isolation. But all the laurel bushes, all James's mother's soft landscaping was gone. Her eye swept to the other side of the valley. But where her home should have been, there was another house, a different, smaller, less well-tended house. The extension her father had built was gone. She rubbed her eyes.

‘Where am I? What is this?' she yelled, confusion making her wild. ‘Take me home! Now! I am Merry Owen! Take me home!' She felt the need to say who she was, as if saying it would make sense of what was happening.

‘Merry Owen?' asked the woman. ‘The Owens of Nanteos Farm?'

‘Of course! Caradoc Owen is my father.'

‘Glyndŵr Owen, you mean. And Rhiannon is your mother?'

‘No!' screamed Merry. ‘Elinor is my mother. Caradoc is my father. Gawain is my brother!'

Was
she
mad, or was the woman? Was she kidnapping her? Had she drugged her?

They continued on up the hill, to where Seren's house should be. But this too was different. Seren's house had roses and lavender and quince trees, not firs. And it was two storeys, not one. And the stone was whitewashed, not plain. Seren's house had a slate roof, not thatched.

The woman climbed down from the cart, tethered her pony. ‘Come on, girl. Get within before you catch your death.'

‘This is Seren's house!' shouted Merry.

The woman scowled at Merry. ‘It is
my
house, girl, and I am Mair, not Seren.'

Merry looked at the woman in horror. She must be demented or lying.

Piercing the silence, a distant hound gave a blood-curdling call. Merry shivered, pulled the blanket tighter. But driven by curiosity and by the cold, and by a desperate desire to see Seren, Merry got down from the cart and followed the woman inside.

The door shut. A bolt slid home. Then another.

Merry let out a low moan. ‘This is wrong,' she said. ‘This is Seren's cottage, Ty Gwyn,' she repeated. This was where she spent two hours each week, sitting at the kitchen table as Seren taught her botany. Only it wasn't.

The woman shook her head. She bent over a trunk, pulled out a bundle. ‘Put these on,' she said, handing Merry a pale linen shirt, a brown wool tunic and a shawl.

Merry looked at them in puzzlement. ‘These look like they
belong in a museum.'

The healer gave her a look of sheer incomprehension. ‘They are serviceable and warm and better than nakedness!'

Merry pulled on the clothes. They were rough against her skin, but she immediately began to warm up.

She looked around, her mind rebelling at what she saw. At what she did not see. Where the terracotta-tiled floor should have been was a rough stone floor, with gaps revealing the earth below. Where the oven should have been was a huge open hearth where hunks of wood burnt. A basic-looking oven was built into the side.

Her mind spun. She could
not
be seeing what was before her. She must be concussed, oxygen-starved, mad in some unknown, terrifying way.
Had she died?
Another wave of dizziness broke over her. She reached out, grabbed the rough-hewn table, steadied herself. Sucking in deep breaths, desperately trying to get back to herself, to
normal
, she watched the woman busying herself.

She took a log and fed the fire; then she swung a large, iron kettle, suspended on an iron arm, over the flames. She took a stick, stuck its tip into the fire till it caught; then she lit a thick candle. A horrible stench wafted up.

Merry wrinkled her nose.

The woman, Mair, paused, planted her hands on her hips, eyed Merry with a mocking look. ‘Used to expensive beeswax candles, are you?' she asked.

Merry shook her head. Nothing made sense. ‘What's that made from, then?' she asked, nodding at the candle, desperate
to get her bearings, to understand even a bit of what seemed to be going on in this alien but familiar place. ‘Why does it stink of rotting fish?'

‘Tallow. And glycerine,' said the woman. ‘Not what
fine ladies
have to put up with,' she added tartly. She poured a thick broth from a pot on the fire into a cup, and handed it to Merry. ‘Drink.'

‘It might be poison,' said Merry belligerently.

The old lady narrowed her eyes. ‘It might be. A herbalist must know the killing plants as well as those that cure.'

She bent forward towards Merry, anger in her eyes.

‘You'd be dead already if I wished it. That's if the earl and his men hadn't got you first . . .'

Her voice tailed off as a great bugling of horns sounded in the valley, followed by the pounding of galloping hooves.

Merry put down the cup and crossed to the window. Where there should have been glass there was just a thin sheet of pale linen. It was hard to see through, but she could see enough.

‘What the . . .'

A troop of men and a sole woman, all of them in costume, were riding with a pack of wolfhounds, pursuing a herd of Welsh Mountain ponies that galloped from them in terror. Merry shuddered. This was how her stallion had died, pursued by the earl's wolfhounds.
This couldn't be happening
.

The ponies got to the stream. The stallion led them across, the mares followed, but two of the foals couldn't make it. They were small, the water deep and fast. The dogs got them as they struggled in the current. One of the mares stumbled. The men
drew back their spears and threw. The mare took a spear in her flank.

The surviving ponies jumped a stone wall and galloped on. A wild-looking man with long fair hair came running out of what should have been
her
house, had it not been smaller, different. Then a woman and two children rushed out.

The man was shaking his fist, shouting at the hunters, gesticulating at the fleeing ponies. One of the riders reined in, drew back his whip and lashed at the protester. Merry watched as the fair-haired man grabbed the whipcord and pulled his attacker off his horse. Quickly, and brutally, some of the other hunters leapt from their horses and began to beat the man. He fought back ferociously, though he was heavily outnumbered. It took a while for his attackers to drive him to the ground with boots and fists.

Merry wheeled from the window, ran to the door. She hauled back the heavy bolts, rushed out, preparing to scream at them to stop. A rough hand slammed over her mouth.

‘Silence! Fool!' hissed the old lady. ‘Want to get yourself whipped or worse?'

Mair's fear was real, and contagious. Merry shook her head and the old lady removed her hand. The escaping ponies galloped by, tails streaming out behind them as they fled up the hill to safety.

Merry turned back to the huntsmen and their victim on the ground. With a sense of horror, confusion and disbelief, she watched the scene unfold.

‘This is our king, vermin,' yelled one of the velvet-clad
huntsmen, so loudly his clipped tones carried up the hill. ‘You would order him off your land?'

‘What, this peasant is the owner of this land?' asked another man, incredulous. He looked huge, with an elaborate plumed hat, a fur-and-velvet jacket, a riot of scarlet and ruffles. He had a broad face with small, beady eyes. His horse was huge and black, one of the finest Merry had seen. He was very obviously the leader of this weird pack. He looked vaguely familiar. Were they actors, wondered Merry?

‘Blame the Black Prince, my Liege,' the first man replied. ‘This man's forebear saved his life at the Battle of Crécy. In return, he was granted this farmhouse and this land.'

‘Saved the life of his prince, did he?' asked the big man. ‘Well, a healthy precedent, one might say,' he added, provoking a chorus of laughter. He eyed the man on the ground and his voice turned harsh. ‘You will remain in the Earl de Courcy's dungeons while we decide your fate. If it weren't for your sporting forebear I'd have decreed already.'

‘Your Majesty, you must forgive me,' said the man, getting to his feet, wiping the blood from his face. ‘I did not know it was you. All I knew was that these ponies were on my land, where they should be safe from the reach of the Black Castle.'

‘
Your land?
' boomed the huge man. ‘There is no land in the kingdom that cannot become mine if it is my wish!'

‘But, Your Majesty,' the man continued, ‘there is a pledge! The Black Prince himself decreed—'

‘Silence!' screamed the first man. ‘Do not dare to address His Majesty. To the dungeons! And if you break your silence
again, your woman and children will join you!'

The fair-haired man said no more. Merry watched him being dragged off, hands bound, the rope tied to one of the mounted horses. Four men on horseback accompanied him, while the other five and the one woman dug their spurs into their mounts and galloped off after the ponies, who now had a sizeable lead.