The Winter Witch (27 page)

The door of the neighboring cottage is dragged open and an elderly woman pads out into the sunshine. Cai recognizes her as Mrs. Roberts, who was a witness at their wedding.

“Morgana,
cariad
? Is that you?” Her voice is feeble, cracked not just with age, but with anxiety, too, Cai is sure of it.

Morgana hurries to her neighbor, taking her hands, searching her face for answers.

“Oh,
cariad.
My poor
cariad.
” The old woman is close to tears. Morgana stares at her, openmouthed. The moment is filled with horror at the story that is about to be told. “She was so poorly, your mam,” says Mrs. Roberts. “We thought she should send for you. Bryn Talsarn offered to fetch you, he did, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Even when she was fading…”

Morgana snatches her hands away and takes a step backward, shaking her head.

“She didn’t want to pull you from your husband, from your new life. She told me,
cariad,
she told me she wanted the best for you. Didn’t want to be a burden, see? She’d known for many months that she was unwell. She knew her time had come. Said there was nothing to be done. No point in the both of you suffering … oh,
cariad,
don’t take it so hard. I stayed with her, see? She wasn’t alone at the end…”

Morgana runs to the door, pulling at the handle, hammering on the wood fit hard enough to break her hands. Cai jumps from the saddle, looping Angel’s reins over the gatepost.

“Morgana, stop…” He hurries to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, but she shrugs him off, her expression wild, desperate, refusing to accept the truth of what she hears.

Mrs. Roberts steadies herself on the low garden fence.

“I planted flowers for her, Morgana. I’ll not let her lie untended,” she says.

Morgana backs away, staring at her neighbor as if she were a madwoman. Cai reaches out to her, but she swings round on her heel and runs for the chapel.

“Morgana … wait!” She is away before he can stop her. He takes Angel’s reins once more. The horse is unnerved by the commotion and will not stand for him to remount.

Mrs. Roberts struggles to her gate.

“She wouldn’t even let us fetch Morgana for the funeral. ‘Let her be,’ she told us. ‘Let her be in her new life’—she was adamant…”

The old woman falters at the look on Cai’s face, for he is recalling the
toili,
the ghost funeral he witnessed, the vision the old man had told him was a portent of the death of someone close to him. Not Morgana, then, but Mair!

“When did she die?” he asks.

“A week last Tuesday” comes the reply.

Just two days after he had witnessed the spectral coffin being carried to its phantom resting place. Cai shivers as he pulls a fidgeting Angel down the road at a run.

He finds Morgana prone atop a new grave. It is marked by a small bed of pansies and a simple wooden cross. The earth shows brown between the inadequate patches of turf. Morgana’s whole body shakes, convulses almost, with silent sobs. She clutches and claws at the ground, digging her hands into the dry soil, pulling at the gritty surface as if she would dig her mother up and cradle her body in her arms. Cai hesitates. He cannot bear to see his dear wife in such pain, but still, even after all these weeks, even though a closeness has built up between them, he does not know how she will respond to his attention and care. Gingerly he kneels beside her.

“Morgana,
cariad.
Don’t … Morgana, I am so sorry. Please, stop…” He takes hold of her hand. She shakes him away, and then starts beating at him, furious, despairing, her mouth open in a soundless scream of anguish, her face awash with tears. “Oh, Morgana…” he says, his own vision blurring. She flails with her fists, shaking her head, her hat fallen from her head, her hair escaping its ties and falling wild about her shoulders, her eyes unfocused. Cai wonders if it is true a person can be driven mad with grief. He recalls all too clearly how close to insanity he came after losing Catrin. It tears at his heart to see Morgana suffering so and to be powerless to help her. So he lets her beat him. Lets her rail and thrash and throw herself about until she is spent and exhausted. Then he takes her in his arms and rocks her back and fore, back and fore, murmuring her name into her tangled hair. Slowly her sobs subside and the two of them stay where they are, huddled on the pitiful mound of earth, clinging to one another until the light of the day goes out and the more fitting darkness of evening envelops them.

*   *   *

When I awake I am in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar room. I sit up, gasping as if drowning, throwing the covers from my sweltering body. The soft glow of moonlight through the open window gives dull illumination to the room, and slowly my eyes adjust, bringing shapes into being. A simple bed, in which I lie alone. A roughly made table and stool. A worn rug on the floorboards. In the corner a low armchair, and in it Cai, sleeping, his chest rising and falling slowly, a comforting rhythm. Now I recall the events that brought me here senseless, and the pain knocks the breath from me as surely as if I’d been kicked by a carthorse. Mam. Dead. Gone. Forever. Just like Dada. One day a living, breathing, warm person. The next a cold corpse. At least this time I have a grave to visit. Why did she not send for me?
Why?
Could she really have believed she would save me suffering by allowing me to find out about her passing this way? Did she not think I would want to be at her side, to comfort her, to hold her one last time? It seems she did not even want me at her funeral, and what a pitiful affair that must have been. Were there any mourners present save for old Mrs. Roberts? Of course I knew she was ill. And her illness was the reason she agreed to give me to a stranger. She was thinking of me, of what was best for me. For my future. But I had always imagined she would call me back … when she neared the end. That she would want me to be with her.

I cannot recall getting here. My last clear memory of yesterday was weeping as Cai held me. Weeping until I’d no more tears left in me, and I fell past sense in his arms. He must have brought me here. Taken off my boots and my heavy skirts, and laid me in this bed. He, at least, has not abandoned me. He sleeps but a few paces away, my slumbering guardian. He is all I have left.

There is a persistent buzzing inside my head. Ordinarily I would succumb to it, drift from my sleep-heavy body, and travel to another place. Somewhere free and open. But I have not the heart to do it this night. For where would I go? Could I step in a single place of my childhood hereabouts and not think of Mam? Would I not wait to see her rounding the bend at the top of our lane on the way back from milking? Or emerging from the cottage with a basket of cheeses for market? Or calling for me in the woods behind the house? Or find her sitting in her wooden rocker by the fire? And yet, she will not be there. Not now. Not ever again. She is lost to me, as Dada is lost. I searched for him for so many years, witchwalking the hills and meadows, visiting inns in my phantom form, in a restless quest to find him in whatever guise he chose to present himself. But he is not on this earth anymore, I convinced myself of this fact a long time ago. Will Mam find him now, I wonder. There is some solace to be had in believing she will.

A distant growl of thunder momentarily distracts me from my sorrowful thoughts. I shake away another difficult memory. Climbing from my bed I stand at the window. We are lodged in a scruffy inn beside the enclosures, and from here I can see the herd resting peacefully. Tomorrow was to be a day spent with my mam; a day of togetherness and joy. Instead I shall be at a loss. Will Cai change his mind about tarrying here and order us to move on? If Prince’s foot is recovered I hope he chooses to do so, for what point is there in lingering now? How can I hide my grief when I am surrounded by whispers from the past and see only an absence where there should be the one person left in this world who loved me. No. That is not quite true. Looking back from the window, standing aside to allow the moonbeams to drift across the room, I contemplate the warm, strong figure of my husband. What a confusion of emotions stirs within me! Even as I am swamped by a wave of loss and sadness, I cannot deny that the realization that I am yet loved, yet wanted, yet cared for, heartens me. I will prove myself worthy of him. I will apply myself to the task ahead and put aside my grief. There will be time enough to revisit it later.

A grey morning greets us when we emerge from the inn, with a sky as heavy as my heart. Cai is sensitive to my mood and does not subject me to pointless chatter. We examine Prince’s hoof and I am relieved to find him sound. Cai gathers the company and informs them that we will not be having a rest day as planned. There is a token resistance to this news, but no one is able to raise any sensible objection, and we set about our duties to prepare the herds for the off.

While I am tacking up Prince, Edwyn Nails finds his way to me. He shuffles his feet, whipping off his battered hat before he is able to find any words.

“I was sorry to hear of your loss, Mrs. Jenkins,” says he. “It must be terrible, to find out a parent has passed like that … My own parents are both dead,” he tells me suddenly.

I stop what I am doing and face him. Such a revelation, of such a personal nature, demands my full attention.

“Oh, it wasn’t sudden, mind,” he goes on. “Not like … well, Mam died of the scarlet fever when I was seven. Caught it from us, she did. Rare for an adult to go like that, the doctor told us, but there it is. My father, well, he had a weak chest. Saw one too many hard winters…” He stops stretching his hat out of shape and looks me steadily in the eye. “I know it’s not the same, not the same as it is for you, but … well, I wanted you to know that I understand. How you feel. How it is to be without parents, Mrs. Jenkins. Morgana … can I call you that? Morgana?”

How can I deny him this small thing when he has gone out of his way to help me carry my burden of grief? I nod, and he relaxes his grip on his hat a little more before shoving it back on his head.

“Very good. Well, best get to it,” says he. He pauses to do nothing more than look at me for a long minute. It is a look not wholly appropriate to the moment, and something in the way he regards me, so boldly, so intently, unsettles me. And then he is gone, lost among the throng of cattle and people as the drove is mustered once more. Only then do I notice Cai has been watching our exchange.

By the time we are heading east once more it is to the accompaniment of steady drizzle. We stand for what seems like an age whilst Cai pays the toll for the drove. I see now why he wishes to avoid as many turnpikes as possible, for they are ruinously expensive. There is talk about that if something is not done to lower these tolls, many of the poorer people will be unable to pay them, unable to travel or trade, and many will know hunger and real poverty this winter.

The pace is slow and the mood of the drove somber without the sun to cheer us. Gone are the bright kerchiefs and headscarves, replaced by stout hats and oilskin coats that give the drovers their distinctive outline. I insisted on being given just such a coat and am glad of it now. It is a weight, and I feel Prince adjust his pace to accommodate the heavy material. At least it keeps the rain off his back, too. Rain that, before we are out of sight of Abergavenny, has become forceful enough to beat out the sound of hooves and bellowing and bleating, so that soon we progress only to the music of water. Water falling upon us. Water falling upon the road. Water falling upon the cover of Dai’s wagon. Water falling upon the beasts. Water flowing in ditches beside us, and swelling the streams and rivers along the way. I think of the raindrops as tears for my mother, and try to imagine the sadness I feel washing away from me with each passing mile. But it is a vain hope, for there is now within me a cold misery that I must carry no matter where I go. I cannot imagine, at this moment, that there will ever come a time I am free of it.

13.

Even as we leave Wales and cross the border into England the rain follows us. I recall setting off with such excitement inside me at the prospect of leaving the one country I have known all my life, but when the moment comes all the color of it is washed out by the grey light of the weather and by the manner in which my heart shrinks within me, as if to hide from any further blows. Cai sees my suffering, I know he does. I should allow him to comfort me, but how can I risk exposing myself to more pain? Everyone I have ever cared for has been taken from me. Am I a jinx, then? Would caring for Cai, would letting myself feel for him what I had begun to believe I could feel, put him in danger somehow? Perhaps, after all, he would be better with one of the awful Cadwaladr girls. Perhaps he was right when he said calamity surrounds me. For have I not also brought the wrath of Isolda into his life? If he had never met me, never chosen me, he might have settled upon her as a wife, and then she would have had no call to harm him. But, no, the idea is unthinkable, for then she would have access to the well and the
Grimoire
. I cannot let that happen. The second we return I must find a way to explain everything to Mrs. Jones. If I am not to be beaten by Isolda, I will need her help.

I am numb to the prettiness of the landscape, or the curious construction of the houses, or the novelty of hearing an unfamiliar language spoken around us. Cai manages English well enough, as he must, but few others among us are so able. I have heard Meredith mutter a few blunt words when called upon to do so, and Spitting Sara converses with surprising fluency, a talent no doubt acquired on her many droves. The rest are content to keep to themselves. It is not until we are nearing the end of our second week that the sky brightens. Watson fancies himself something of a weatherman, and warns this is but an interlude, and yet more rain will follow shortly. All the more reason for us to take advantage of the warmth. Cai calls a rest day, so that we might all succeed in drying our clothes, and, indeed, our damp bones.

We find good grazing for the stock and settle them into two generous enclosures. There is even a capacious barn the farmer is prepared to let everyone bed down in. It is decided that during the next day, Dai and Edwyn will attend to the feet of those cattle and ponies who need it. There is a grassy paddock leading down to a broad stream behind the barn. After a deal of activity a campfire is soon burning, stew pot bubbling, various items of clothing draped in the low sun or steaming as close to the flames as is sensible. Everyone eats together, making the most of extra ingredients bought at market that afternoon as we passed through a small town of redbrick houses. Spirits are lifted by the sunshine and the prospect of a few hours of rest, so that the atmosphere in the camp is convivial. Were I not nursing my own chilling grief, there would be much to enjoy.