Longbow Girl (7 page)

M
erry awoke with the sure sense that
something
had awoken her. Not the sound of the wind screaming or the windows creaking, but a deliberate, unnatural sound. Her skin tingled with a kind of charge, like the electricity of another person, the nearness of them, or their glance, sliding over you. She opened her eye, blinked in the darkness, heart pounding.

She reached out, making sure she didn't knock over her glass of water, and grabbed her Maglite torch. She always kept it handy, as power cuts were common. It was heavy and powerful and a good weapon. With a quick pulse of terror at what she might see, she switched it on.

No one. Nothing out of place. Her bedroom looked normal. Her door wasn't closed, but pulled to, with an inch or two of space, just as she'd left it. But something was different. A
disturbance in the air. An echo that lingered in the memory banks of her mind: a sound like a drawer opening and closing, slowly, softly, covertly.

Brandishing her torch, she got out of bed. She thought later that she should have just pulled the covers up over her head, but that wasn't her way.
Never turn from a challenge
, said her father's voice in her head. Maybe it had been her parents and Gawain, she thought, returning home after all. She glanced at her clock. Four thirty. Not a chance.

Holding her breath, heart pounding, she crossed her bedroom, feet soft on the wooden floor. Then one of the floorboards creaked as she put her weight on it, and, from downstairs, she thought she heard another creak above the roar of the wind.

She pushed open her door, sidled into the hallway, scanning the darkness with the beam of her torch. Everything looked normal. Down the stairs, step by step, down to the phone she had left on the kitchen table.
Call for help
, said the voice in her head. But downstairs was where whoever it was lurked . . .

Another step, and another, breath trapped in her throat with a lump of fear that grew with each second. And then a waft of pure cold and a click. The bottom step . . . the open hallway was before her, but there was no one. Not a hint of anyone, not there or in any of the rooms. Merry hurried through each one, checking wardrobes, the pantry, the broom cupboard.

There was no sign of any disturbance, just that buzz in the air.

But Merry, with her limited vision, didn't see the tiny patches of damp on the hall rug that stood by the front door, the melted flakes of snow that had blown through in that quick second while the door had opened and closed again.

Last, she checked the boot room. Clear. She bit her lip, glanced around, peered through the window into the snow-strewn darkness outside. She thought she saw something moving, a large shape. She pulled on her boots, her hat, her long down coat. She pushed open the door, aimed the torch.

It was Jacintha, sheltering under a tree in the garden, shaking snow from her mane. How the heck had she got out of her stable, wondered Merry. Hadn't she secured the bolt properly? Or had the wind worked it free? Was that what she had heard? The banging of the stable door?

Concern for her pony trumped her earlier fears. She shut the house door behind her and hurried over to her pony.

‘Hey, Jac. You little escape artist. Let's get you back inside again.'

She took hold of her pony's halter and, leaning in against the pummelling wind, she led her from the garden, across the concrete forecourt and towards the stables. A great bang sounded and Merry saw the stable door thud shut. She walked Jacintha up to it, pulled it open, sheltered her pony inside.

Her fingers stuck to the icy metal as she pushed home the bolt. She made sure it was all the way in. She'd been so cold when she stabled Jacintha hours earlier, maybe she just hadn't secured the bolt properly?

She shivered again, cold despite her layers, but chilled too
by leftover fear. She turned and hurried back towards the farmhouse. But she was moving too fast and suddenly her feet shot from under her as she skidded on the ice-covered concrete. She fell awkwardly, putting out her hands to brace her fall, let go of the torch which clattered to the ground. And went out.

Darkness closed around her. Merry felt a pulse of fear. She pushed herself up, blinked, wiped the snow from her face. She should have waited until her eye adjusted to the night, but she was scared and cold and desperate to get back inside, so she hurried on, hardly seeing where she was going. And then she hit something, or something hit her, slicing through the air, and she was falling again, too hard, too fast. With a thud, she fell backwards against the ground. Her head hit first. The blow knocked her unconscious. The snow spiralled down, covering her.

Merry awoke with a blaze of pain. Cold pain burning her. She let out a low moan, pushed herself to sitting. Had to get inside, in the warm. She got up, walked very slowly, on shaking legs. The snow still fell and the wind still howled. She walked, hands before her, checking for obstacles. The house was fifty yards away, but this was a route she should have known blindfolded. She blundered through the snow, and then there was the dark bulk of her house, looming through the blizzard.

Almost sobbing with relief, she yanked open the back door, got inside, pushed the door shut.

This time she locked it.

Still wearing her boots and her sodden clothes, turning on lights as she went, she hurried to the front door, locked that too. She climbed the stairs, went into the bathroom, ran the bath, hot tap only.

Shivering violently while it filled, she ran through her home, turning on every light. How could she have been so stupid, she chided herself. No one was there. No one in their right mind would be out on a night like this. Nor could they be. All the roads were impassable. Nothing had been disturbed. Money lay in plain sight on the hall desk where her father had left it. Silver photo frames stood untouched.
The book!
she thought then, panic gripping her. She fell to the floor in her bedroom, pulled out the chest, hauled up the floorboard, dragged out the plastic bag. And there was her book, safe and wholly undisturbed. Fingers shaking, she replaced it, hauled back the chest.

It had all been her imagination, that and her failure to secure the stable door properly. Nothing but her own fault. It must have been a gust of wind that pummelled into her, or maybe a broken branch, flying through the air, knocking her over. She could have died of hypothermia out there in the blizzard. Her parents would have returned to find her frozen body. Stiff and blue and dead. She let out another sob, then, leaving all the lights blazing, as if that way she could keep the darkness at bay, she lay down in the scalding bath.

A trick of her body made the water feel cold against her freezing skin. Only when she swirled it around her could she feel its warmth. She lay there, letting out water as the bath
cooled, refilling it with hot water again until finally, she had stopped shaking. She got out, quickly towelled herself dry, put on her warmest pyjamas, turned on her heated blanket and got into her bed. Through the haze of exhaustion and relief, her mind turned in on itself, posing the same questions over and over. Was it the chieftain's ghostly spirit, a living breathing thief, or just a figment of her imagination?

T
he next morning there was an odd, sinister silence. No bird-song, no wind, just a kind of muffled, dense quiet. No Gawain, chortling or yelling. It was like the world was dead and she was the only survivor. Merry pushed off her duvet, pulled on her eye patch and hurried across the wooden floor of her bedroom. Everything ached.

She drew back her thin cotton curtains and gazed out. White, everywhere. She squinted. The blizzard had stopped, but light snow still drifted down. In the distance, the Beacons loomed, snow-shrouded, with horizontal striations of rock drawn like grey pencil lines across the white. Spindrifts of snow blew off the summits like smoke from a frozen fire. The mountains looked bigger than usual, beautiful but menacing. This was their cold face. And it often brought death. To
unwary climbers caught on the summits, to newborn lambs and their old mothers. So nearly to her if she hadn't come round in time.

Merry shivered, pulled on thick socks and her fleece dressing gown and headed downstairs. She went through into the boot room and opened the back door. A good two feet of snow was piled up behind it and she had to put her shoulder against the door and push.

The cold stung her nose. Snowflakes blew in and coated her eyelashes. She blinked them away, gazed out at the fields. It looked like a foot of snow had fallen. Huge drifts lay banked against the hedgerows. She felt like she'd been transported to a different place. It even smelt different. The damp bracken scent of the Beacons, the grassy muddy whiff of the fields had gone, replaced by the crisp, metallic tang of snow. She saw no sign of footprints. Told herself that she wouldn't have even if there had been any. The snow would have covered them.

She closed the door, hurried back to the warmth of the kitchen, busied herself at the Aga, pouring milk into the saucepan, whisking in generous helpings of chocolate powder, melting it in, getting the cream, adding a swirl. It was a snowstorm, just a snowstorm and a poorly secured barn door.

The phone rang, making her jump. Her mother.

She took a deep breath, blew it out, rubbed her face, pasted on a smile even though her mother could not see her.

‘Hi, Mam!'

‘Hi, Spinner. You OK? Everything all right last night?'

‘I'm fine, thanks, Ma. Just woke up. Making myself some
hot chocolate. How're you guys?'

‘Oh, we're fine. I was just a bit worried about you is all.'

‘Well, don't be.' She wouldn't tell her mother about what had happened. She wasn't even sure herself. No point worrying her parents unnecessarily.

‘Listen, the snowploughs're out but it'll take them a good day to clear the snow and it's still falling. We're going to be stuck here till tomorrow at the earliest. You're going to be on your own for another night.'

Merry felt a stab of fear. She looked at the boot room door.
Lock it!

‘I'm really sorry, love,' her mother added, into the silence.

‘Ma, really, I'm fine!' Merry belted out too forcefully, over-compensating. ‘I'll go to Seren's if I feel in need of company or better food than I can concoct,' she said, voice softer, trying to make up for it.

‘Please do,' said her mother, slightly stiffly.

‘Promise. Now, I've gotta go, Ma. Got to break the ice on the troughs and take out hay.'

The warmth came back into her mother's voice. ‘Merry, you're an angel. Don't know what we'd do without you.'

Her words, rather than comforting Merry, sent a tremor through her.

‘Love you. Bye.'

Merry hung up. And froze. She stared at the tallboy. They kept it locked.
Always
. They kept the key in a blue glass vase.
Always
.

But there it was, in the lock.

A current of pure terror washed through Merry. She ran to the door, locked it, stood with her back against it breathing hard. It wasn't her imagination. Somebody
had
been in here last night.

Navigated his or her way through the darkness and the cold and the snow, pushed in through an unlocked door, entered the house while she slept. She rushed across to the tallboy, checked through it, hands shaking. Nothing had been taken. They'd fled empty-handed.

She knew without any doubt what they'd been looking for: her book. The fact that they'd ignored anything else of value proved that.

A thief had come, someone who wasn't put off by blizzards and sub-zero temperatures. Who wasn't put off by the fact that Caradoc Owen, a trained, seasoned killer from his years in the special forces, should have been at home. Unless, of course, they'd been watching the farmhouse, saw that Caradoc had left but had not returned.

Merry sat down at the kitchen table, drank her now cold chocolate. She stared at the stove. She knew she should cook something but she had no appetite. She got up, sat down again. Paralysed by indecision.

She was in danger. The thief could still be watching, might come back. But she had to go out and tend to the ponies. As she so often did when she was frightened or lost or challenged, she conjured her father's voice.

If you can, run. If you can't run, then fight. But fight clever. Fight dirty
.

She'd think, she'd plan, she'd fight dirty. She'd neutralize that danger. But first of all, she had to go out. She would not call her parents back, tell them about the invasion of their home, steal her mother's peace of mind, trip the safety on her father's hair-trigger readiness for a fight. She would not ring James, secretly confide in him, ask for his help. She'd face this alone. She would
not
be trapped in her house by fear.

She pulled on her warmest boots, down coat, hat and gloves, and she took from the chest of drawers in the boot room the present her father had given her for her thirteenth birthday. A flick knife. It was a typical Caradoc Owen gift: unique, useful and, to gentler minds, wholly inappropriate. But not on a farm, when there were always a hundred uses for a knife: twine on bales of hay to cut, snagged ropes to free, feed bags to slice open. And now there was another use.

Merry slipped the knife into her pocket. Would she ever be able to stab someone, she wondered, as she unlocked the door, stepped out into the dazzling whiteness, locked the door behind her. She hoped it would never come to that. Another voice slipped into her mind:
Survival has rules of its own
. She jolted. Where had
that
come from?

She headed out into the falling snow. Wondering if there were eyes watching her even now, she looked over her shoulder, turned in circles, scanned the bushes in the garden, peered behind corners, checking. Rechecking. But there was no one around. No footprints, just the smooth untrampled snow, and her.

She released Jacintha from her stable. The pony'd be bored
alone, would welcome the company of the herd, and was well able to handle the cold and the snow. But, more than that, Merry didn't want Jacintha penned up, vulnerable. When she cast her mind back, she felt pretty sure she
had
secured the stable bolt properly. She had the strongest sense that the thief had freed Jacintha to lure her outside. It hadn't been the wind that slammed the branch into her, knocking her over. It had been the thief, taking their chance, buying time to rush back into the farmhouse and finish their search for the book while she lay unconscious in the snow.

Jacintha shadowed Merry as she went to the barn, grabbed a bale of hay and heaved it on to her back. It was as if she gauged Merry's mood, her jumpiness and wanted to comfort her. The pony snuffled at Merry, then walked by her side as she trekked across the snow to the field where the herd huddled together.

She stopped every so often, turning circles. Saw no one. She dumped the bale of hay, pulled out her knife, released the safety and with a satisfying click, the blade sprang open. She cut the twine and pulled free armfuls of hay, scattering it on the rick for the grateful ponies. She closed the blade, grasped the hilt firmly and used it to break the ice on the frozen troughs.

She headed back to the farmhouse. Still no sign of anyone, no movement in her peripheral vision. But she took no comfort from that.

Inside, she drank coffee, warmed up, then set to cleaning the cottage, top to bottom. She broke for lunch, forced down a
bowl of soup and three pieces of toast covered with peanut butter; then she finished cleaning. Still the time crawled. She felt sick. She decided to bake. She made fairy cakes, forty-eight of them. She put them in the oven. She paced. She listened. Swore. She felt like a caged animal. She peered out. It had stopped snowing at last.

If anyone was still out there, waiting, she'd give them something to watch.

She layered up with loose, flexible fleeces, unlocked the tallboy, took her bow, grabbed her quiver and headed out.

She removed the tarpaulin from the straw target, strode back seventy paces. She didn't turn circles this time, not wanting to appear a victim, as if she were scared. But she still checked. She just made it look natural, as if she were merely walking back and forth to mark a line from which she would shoot.

She had her knife in her pocket, would always carry it with her now, but the longbow was her
real
weapon.

Whoever had come into her home last night had changed something in her. Bubbling up through the fear, through the sense of vulnerability and violation, was a growing fury. Whoever had broken in, whoever had slammed her with the branch and left her lying unconscious in the snow, had declared war on her, her home and her family.

She strung her bow, nocked an arrow, eyed the target. She took in the rings of colour: white, black, red, blue and dead centre, the golden bullseye. For the first time in her life, she conjured another image, replacing the straw target. She visualized a man. The faceless thief.

Then she hauled back the string and let her arrow fly. In quick succession she shot ten arrows. Every single one hit the gold. Every single one was a kill shot. In her quiver, she had kept two spare arrows. Just in case . . .

Now she turned a full circle. Not a circle of fear. Not an invitation. But a declaration of her own. She was not a helpless victim. She was a trained archer with lethal skills.

Another of her father's favourite sayings slipped into her head. He'd told her how he and his army comrades used this one when they were lost and frightened. It was their own version of the Twenty-Third Psalm:
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I am the meanest son of a gun in the valley
. Merry amended it further:
I will fear no evil, because I am the Longbow Girl
.

She headed back into the farmhouse, locked the doors behind her, pulled shut all the curtains against the darkening sky, spent the evening deep in thought. The threat was still out there, she knew that. She could and she would defend herself, but what she really needed to do was make the threat go away. Neutralize it completely. And that meant getting rid of the book as quickly as possible.