Longbow Girl (9 page)

‘You did,' she replied. ‘So you'd better keep it safe,' she added. ‘If anything happened to it, you'd be the number one suspect, wouldn't you?' she added with a smile, as if she were joking.

S
he filed out of the library with James. They said nothing as they walked down the hallway, waiting until they could be certain they would not be overheard. They paused at the sound of rapid footsteps coming up behind them. It was Professor Parks.

‘Dr Philipps wanted me to give you this,' he said, eyes on Merry. He held out a sheet of paper. ‘He's already made a start on some of the pages he photographed on his phone.' He paused. ‘It's all rather intriguing.'

‘Thanks,' said Merry, holding out her hand. She took the paper from the professor. With a nod, Parks strode back to the muniments room, leaving Merry and James alone in the hallway.

They read the words together, so that they sounded like
some kind of invocation:

This is the tale of a warrior bold, who comes from far away, from vale of green through deadly cold, seen by bird and watcher fey. Though spoken of in stories hidden, the warrior comes when time is right, by whispered words are they now bidden, through darkness deeper than the night. The warrior saves both man and king, fighting through the deathly knell, uniting foes with golden ring, this is their story read it well . . .

‘There's a lot about death, isn't there,' observed James. ‘I seem to remember the first bit he translated said something about
many have tried, many have died . . .
' He gave Merry a meaningful look.

‘Yes,' she replied vaguely. ‘Something like that.'

‘And now all this
deadly cold
and
deathly knell
.'

‘Mm. Let's read the next bit,' said Merry quickly, hiding behind her curiosity, and they read on:

The warrior seeks the ancient path where emperor walked with queen, far away from home and hearth into realms unseen. Where legions marched with armour bright and old stones marked the way, where watchers saw who have the sight but nothing did they say. And grievers waited in their home for the warrior brave, to come into their land alone from far beyond the grave
.

Merry stared at the words, heart pounding.
The ancient path
. . .
where emperor walked with queen
. . .
Where legions marched
. Roman legions . . . The Roman road, Sarn Helen! It had to be! She struggled to tamp down her excitement, to keep
her face bland. She felt bad, especially after James had so cleverly helped her outmanoeuvre his parents, but the instinct that made her think the book was dangerous made her want to keep James well away from its enchantments and riddles.
She
had no choice. She'd found it, and her family needed whatever treasures it promised. James had his own issues to deal with.

‘
More intrigue,' she mused. ‘Right then, I'd better get back. And you need a chance to think. Decision time tonight.'

James nodded. They walked in silence to the huge oak door, each preoccupied. James opened it for her.

‘Ring me! As soon as you've made up your mind,' said Merry.

‘I will. So keep your phone on!'

She laughed. ‘I never break a promise. 'Specially not to you!'

‘Be careful,' he said, eyes grave. ‘Whatever it is you're up to.'

It was the first time he'd cautioned her, slowed her down. Normally they egged each other on to greater risks. Maybe he had the same instincts about the book as she did.

‘Don't worry about me,' she answered, trying to sound light. ‘I'll be fine.'

M
erry got home five minutes before her parents.

‘Those roads,' exclaimed Elinor, hefting Gawain on her hip as she got him out of the car. ‘Still banks of snow on either side where the snowploughs've been. Like the Cresta Run!'

Merry laughed. ‘Welcome home!' She paused. ‘I've got some news.'

Sitting at the kitchen table ten minutes later, she told them about selling the book, showed them the contract James had written out.

Caradoc Owen opened his eyes wide. ‘You moved fast, didn't you?'

‘Might have consulted us, darling,' said her mother.

‘There wasn't time,' said Merry. ‘Dr Philipps was leaving. I wanted to get this sorted. Sixty-seven thousand pounds, Mam!

It'll pay off the mortgage!'

‘Brilliant,
cariad
!' exclaimed her father, coming around and dragging Merry to her feet, crushing her in a bear hug.

‘It
is
brilliant,' said Elinor carefully, ‘but we haven't got it yet. If I understand you right,' she said to Merry, ‘we can hope to get it within twelve months, if the museum raises enough money.'

Merry nodded. She felt a flicker of irritation. Her mother
was
right, but this was a dampener they didn't need. To see her father joyous again had been wonderful, but short-lived. His smile had already faded.

‘Seven thousand pounds will buy us time, but your mother's right. We're not out of trouble yet.'

‘Maybe we could have got more selling it to someone else, another museum, just waiting a while to drum up interest,' said Elinor. ‘It seems to me that you've been a bit hasty.'

‘Maybe I have; maybe we could have waited and got more money. But I saw a chance and I took it!' she cried. Upset by her mother's criticism, worried she would say too much, Merry strode across the kitchen and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

She headed past the barn and the stables to the bench in the top field. She sat down heavily and gazed across the valley. She thought about the intruder, about him hitting her, leaving her lying in the snow just a hundred yards away. She could easily have died of hypothermia and the attacker must have known that, but he'd just left her there. That's how ruthless and psychopathic he was. All he cared about was the book, not a
living, breathing person. If she told her parents about him then they'd understand her urgency . . . but that would shatter her mother's peace of mind, send her father into a kind of dangerous vigilance and curb her own freedoms. All for nothing. She'd got rid of the book. She felt sure he wouldn't come back again.

Her mother wanted more money and faster. The book spoke of treasures. Now Merry knew where to go to look for them. For some reason, it had fallen to her to protect her family, and more than that, to save their heritage, so she'd stay silent, take the flak.

She looked up to see her father walking towards her. He sat down beside her. He said nothing for a while, then he put his hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him.

‘You did well,
cariad
,' he said.

Merry nodded.

‘Why don't you clear off for a bit, go for a ride?'

Merry smiled. ‘Yeah, Da. Think I just might.'

U
nder-exercised over the past few days, Jacintha was fresh and keen.

Merry rode across her family's fields on to the common lands, on to a short stretch of tarmacked road that took her higher up the hillside, then on to the high plain and the rough track of the old Roman road, Sarn Helen . . .
Where emperor walked with queen
.

Merry loved the story of the road, built by the Roman emperor and governor of Britain, Magnus Maximus, at the request of his wife, Helen, nearly seventeen hundred years ago. The story of Maximus's love for Helen, and how they met, was one of the stories of the
Mabinogion
.

On stormy nights, as a young girl, Merry had sat in her father's arms in the rocking chair in her bedroom, the wind
whistling through the oak tree as he told her the tales. He told them so well and they felt so real that when she woke in the morning she felt as though she'd been there.

‘The Dream of Macsen Wledig,' Maximus's name in Welsh, was Merry's favourite tale. Macsen Wledig, emperor of Rome, dreamt one night of a lovely maiden in a far-off land. When he woke, he sent his men all over the earth to search for her. After many trials, they found her in a rich castle in Wales, daughter of a chieftain. They led the emperor to her. Everything Macsen Wledig found was exactly as in his dream. The maiden, whose name was Helen, fell in love with and married him. And he built her this road so she could travel faster and more easily to visit her family.

Feeling a pulse of excitement, Merry rode the ancient path. She couldn't quite get over it, the thought that back in the year AD 383, Helen and Macsen walked this road, shared this same view. It was as if the road were a thread of time connecting her with Helen, with Macsen, with a thousand other forgotten travellers who never made the history books.

Here be dragons
, thought Merry, the line popping into her head, making her laugh. Welsh dragons, maybe . . . Riding deeper into this wilderness, it
did
feel as if she had crossed a border.

Dense forests flanked the lower hills, giving way to the sparse moorland grass on the bleak plain where the snow still lay unthawed. It was a remote, inaccessible path, a byway through the savage hills, connecting the lush valleys on either side of the pass.

After a few minutes she came up to the standing stone, Maen Llia, placed there by Neolithic people nearly five thousand years ago. It was a huge, hexagonal sliver of rock, about eleven feet tall, nearly as wide, but less than two feet thick. Her mother liked to paint pictures of the stone and they'd picnicked here a few times. Elinor had told Merry that the rock was believed to have some strange inner warmth. Merry reined in Jacintha and reached out to touch the stone. Despite being aligned north–south, despite the cold, the side of the rock was warm to her touch. Like it was alive.

This part of the Beacons had always felt mysterious to her. She was aware that there was much she didn't know about her homeland, secrets, mysteries . . . things that went beyond science and logic.

Merry urged Jacintha on further along Sarn Helen; then she headed off the road approaching the cleft in the valley where a shallow stream ran. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the lowering sun. It was only a small stream, not promising. She couldn't imagine it pooling into anything deep enough to swim in. But as she looked something about it caught her eye. It glistened silver against the emerald grass. She felt her blood quicken.

She rode closer. The ground grew rougher beside the stream, lots of rocks and stones, so she dismounted and led Jacintha by a long loose rein, allowing her to pick her own way. They walked higher. The air cooled. The gurgling of the running water, the sharp calls of a curlew punctuated the rhythmic puffing of Merry and her pony.

The stream disappeared into a copse of trees. Merry reached into her backpack, took out a rope and tethered Jacintha to a tree on the edge of the copse.

‘I'll be back soon,' she said, patting the mare's neck. Jacintha was warm from the effort of climbing. Merry didn't want to leave her for long or she could get chilled.

She turned and pushed her way through the bushes. Thorns scratched her hands, drawing pinpricks of blood. A bird flew overhead and landed on a high branch. But Merry was looking down, and didn't see the nightingale.

The ground sloped steeply to the unseen stream. She slipped and landed on her bottom, muddying her jeans. She got up, pushed on, emerged into a small clearing.

And there was the stream, pooling out before her, bordered by marshy, spongy grass. In which were spooling coils of colour. She'd seen these before; her father had told her what they were: petroleum seeps, where liquid or gas hydrocarbons escape the lower geological layers through fractures and fissures in the rock, then slowly ooze or bubble up to the surface. He'd told her how sometimes these could ignite, burning away in an eternal flame. Early peoples thought it was the work of magic; they were drawn to these places and terrified by them. Merry suddenly thought of the
Mabinogion
, of the tree that burnt on one side and was green leaf on the other. Maybe it was a petroleum seep, just like this one burning . . .

Her heart began to pound. She reached down, touched the coils of rainbow-coloured ooze, shimmering. She looked up, and off to the right, hidden from the hillside by the thicket,
was a waterfall. A small one, only five feet or so, not enough to attract attention in a country with many more dazzling specimens, but the water fell perfectly straight, just like a veil.

There is a cave where the green turns blue, where the earth beside does shimmer. A veil of water guards it well, of its secrets not a glimmer
.

She fell silent. She thought she felt something. A quickening of the air. Hands trembling, without thinking what she was doing, just following some sudden compulsion, she took off her boots, her muddy jeans, her helmet and eye patch, her jacket. Wearing just her T-shirt and underwear, she walked into the water.

The cold was like an assault. She forced herself on. Quickly the water deepened. And became colder still. She sank down to her chest, swam against the current to the waterfall. The water,
the veil
, was thick; it was hard to see anything beyond it. Heart racing, she dived and swam underneath the falling water. And came up into a cave.

It was dark. The water was a deep, midnight blue. Merry wished she had a head torch. She wished she had a wetsuit. She was chilled already. She knew she wasn't prepared.

There is a hole in the stone of sand at the back in the gushing flow; follow it through to another land and all treasures will you know. Twenty strokes have many tried, turning them to blue, of those venturers many have died, only the strong pass through
.

She paused, swam to stay still in the running water.

Two urges warred inside her: one, never to turn from a
challenge, and two, to heed her father's ruthless mantra –
Proper Prior Planning Prevents Pitiful Performance
– the creed of the SAS. She could not afford Pitiful Performance in the mountains with the sun going down.

But she had to find out if there was a hole in the back of the sandstone cave. There was nothing above the waterline. She sank back under the water, pushed forward in a powerful breaststroke. Her eye had adjusted and she could just about make out the back of the cave about fifteen feet away. She kicked on, fighting the current, which seemed to be getting stronger. Maybe she was getting weaker, she thought. Chilled and tired. She pushed on till she could touch the sandstone wall at the back of the cave. Rising up out of the water, she traced her hands over the rock, trying to grip on as the water gushed against her. No hole.

It
had
to be here. She felt sure. She dropped down, sucked in a deep breath, went under. Holding her arms in front of her, she kicked out as hard as she could, fingers tracking the wall all the way to the bottom. Then there was nothing – a gap. Her heart lurched. She'd found the hole.

She came up for air, sucked in another breath, pushed down again, kicked hard, hands out in front, protecting her head. She found the hole again, traced it down to just above the floor of the pool. It must have been around five feet high and six across.
This
was it, she knew with a blood-deep certainty. This
was
the riddle pool, leading to the other land, leading to treasures. But the current was pushing her back into the cave, away from the hole, and she needed to breathe. She let the
current take her back, out from under the waterfall, to the other side. She rose into the frigid air, gasping, exultant.

She kicked something hard in the water, on the bed of the pool. Curious, she dropped down into the water, felt around for it. Her fingers closed around a long, smooth object. She drew it out of the water, gasped. Dropped it in horror.
Many have died . . .
She'd seen enough medical diagrams in her biology module to know the thigh bone she held in her hand belonged to a human.

That should have warned her, slowed her down, but Merry was on a high, exultant with her find and driven by her mother's fears and the sense that time was running out. So many people knew about the book. Dr Philipps had done the translation himself. He would be bound to come searching, and send a younger, fitter person into this same pool, to make this same discovery. Merry had sold the book, but she felt overwhelmingly that the treasures it referred to were
hers
. Her family's. If she found them, then maybe she could secure the future of their farm for ever. If she got to them in time . . .

She plunged back into the deeper water, swam under the waterfall, came up into the cave. She breathed deeply, trying to get in as much oxygen as possible. Then she dived underwater, pushed down. Into the hole.

Merry reached up and felt rock pressing down through the water: it was a tunnel. She swam on, staying deep, wary of bumping her head, the current pressing against her.

Twenty strokes have many tried, turning them to blue
.

How many could she manage before she turned blue? She
struck out in a powerful breaststroke.
One, two, three
. With every stroke the current seemed to grow stronger.
Four, five, six
. She had to fight harder.
Seven, eight, nine
. She was cold, she was tiring.
Ten, eleven, twelve
. The flickers of fear began.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen
. Fear became terror.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . .
Oxygen gone. Vision blurring, body spasming.
Many have died
. . . Decide or die!

She jackknifed, let the current spin her back around. It ran with her, pushing her along, but she still had to stay low or risk bashing her head on the rock ceiling. The current ran so fast it was like nothing she had ever felt. Where was the air? Couldn't last much more. Dizzy, so dizzy . . . Was this what dying felt like?