Vaughan raised a hand, making motion towards the church. I looked at Thomas Jones and he nodded: we might as well take this opportunity to leave the pines and reach the cover of the church wall, for if Gethin rose now and moved ahead of us, he’d have an open view of the whole valley and might well mark us.
We moved, as before, one by one. I waited another minute before running in a crouch, half blinded by the blood-flow, to join the other two behind the low trees and bushes which enclosed the church on three sides. Below us to the left, the village lay lightless and silent.
We approached the church itself with greater caution this time, but a window of plain glass showed that there was still no one inside, only a sheet of moonlight over the altar. The raised churchyard gave us a plateau from which we could watch Prys Gethin, still as a monument and far enough away for us to commune in whispers as we crouched among outlying tombs behind a loose wall of bushes.
‘You might almost imagine that he knew he was watched,’ Roger Vaughan said.
‘I doubt that.’ Thomas Jones prodded the earth with the butcher’s blade. ‘It seems more likely that he’s waiting for someone. We could be here until sunrise. Let me think on it.’ He sat down on a low tomb, the blade across his knees. ‘Go and bathe your head in the well, John. If he moves we’ll come for you.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Vaughan said. ‘It’s on the dark side of the church, and the steps to the well are worn.’
An owl’s call across the valley was returned, as I followed Vaughan around the body of the church. The area of the well was darkened not only by the tower but the line of tall pines on the other side. Vaughan stopped, stood with his back against the church wall. I could not see his face, only hear the desolation in his voice.
‘The truth is, I must needs pray to the holy mother.’
‘Vaughan—’
‘I’ve no confidence in surviving this night.’
I stopped under the grey diamond panes of the steep end window, and sighed.
‘Because of what you saw down by the tump.’
‘And felt. And smelled.’
‘A man?’
‘Mabbe. Came and went. In a blinking.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Sometimes we throw pictures from our thoughts into the night air, and in some places the air is more receptive. If the ancient Greeks and the Egyptians before them were so far ahead of where we are, even now, in matters of the Hidden… then we mustn’t be too quick to dismiss the ancient Britons with their standing stones and their rough, earthen monuments. More than just graves.’
It seemed a rare madness, delivering a lecture on antiquities to a gathering of one in a moonlit churchyard. But it was clear to me now that the skin of this valley and the fabric betwixt the spheres must be rendered muslin-thin.
‘It would have…’ Vaughan held his back against the church wall. ‘If I’d died from the fear of it… I felt it would’ve relished that. Do you see?’
No, I did not see.
But I nodded.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Pray to the Lady. If you dip your sleeve in the holy well and wipe the grime from her brow, she might even respond.’
If his glance at me was in search of irony, he’d find no sign of it this night.
‘Roger,’ I said. ‘Don’t dwell on it and it won’t reach you.’
He nodded and picked his way to where the sad, smirched Virgin stood atop her ridge of rubble-stones, watching over the stone-lined vault in the earth which held the holy well. A well older than Christianity, where the heads of dead enemies would have been sunk in veneration of some forgotten druidic deity later, perhaps, invoked by Owain Glyndwr and Rhys Gethin.
And then Prys Gethin, too, on one of his dark pilgrimages to Pilleth, betwixt cattle raids. No one more likely to have murdered and mutilated the man twice buried by Stephen Price, in grotesque and would-be magical re-enactment of the events of 1402. What I could not yet imagine was how the unknown man’s unquiet spirit had been invested with the base instincts of his killer.
My split head could hold no more. All logic and learning was collapsed into the midden of superstition, as we returned to the tomb. Watching Prys Gethin, so still on the hillside below us, small as a toad from here, as Venus gleamed, first signal of the coming dawn.
In my old life, which surely had ended this night, ghosts were neither good nor bad, and all they could give me was the knowledge of their existence. Fear had no role to play, for I’d not been able to understand fear of the unknown which, to me, was a wondrous thing which I’d approached eagerly with my arms spread wide.
I looked at Thomas Jones, the butcher’s knife betwixt his knees, his hands on its string-wound wooden hilt.
He leaned back, stretched, sighing.
‘He doesn’t know, boy. Doesn’t know where they are. He’s waiting for them to find him. That’s why he made no attempt to conceal his arrival. When they know he’s free, they’ll know it’s not a trick and their side of the bargain can be met without fear of reprisal.’
‘Meaning Dudley yet lives?’
‘Who can say? We don’t know where they might have him. We don’t know how many of them are holding him. If we wait for them to find him and take him to the place, yes, we can follow them. But how do we stop them putting an end to it? Prys’s moment of blood-drenched triumph. What do we do about this, John?’
‘Can only wait,’ Vaughan said, returning from his prayers. ‘What other choice do we have?’
‘The other choice is to make sure they never find Prys. Go down there now, three against one. And this…’
Thomas Jones thumbed the butcher’s blade. Roger Vaughan drew back in alarm with a rattling of bushes.
‘I’m a man of the law.’
‘So’s Legge.’
‘Master Jones, it’s one thing for a man to be legally hanged—’
‘Heroes we’d be, in Presteigne.’
‘Jesu!’
Only a hiss from Vaughan, but it was too loud, and I thought I saw Gethin’s head move, though he was too distant for me to be sure.
Thomas Jones held out a dagger to me. I took it. I saw Roger Vaughan’s eyes close momentarily.
‘Roger, you know this place. Go around the church, into the pines, wait for a while to be sure you’re not seen, then quietly follow the path back.’
‘To Nant-y-groes?’
‘Indeed,’ Thomas Jones said, catching on. ‘Fetch Price and however many sons he has over the age of six.’
‘What about you?’
‘Just do it, eh?’
Vaughan hesitated for a moment and then turned and was gone. Thomas Jones took a long breath, parted the bushes separating us from the pale hillside, peered through for a moment then let the bushes swing back and picked up his butcher’s knife from the tomb.
‘This is it, then, boy. Don’t forget your magic.’
White and amber strands in the east suggested that the moon’s dominion would end before long, and I was glad of this. The moon might be your friend on a night ride, but it meddles too much with your mind and senses.
We’d moved about fifty paces to the other end of the churchyard before easing ourselves through the bushes, so that he would not at first see us. Walking slowly towards him, for a swifter pace might have implied an attack.
Thomas Jones plucked off his green hat.
‘Bore da, Prys.’
Good morning.
A thin white line on the horizon, but the morning must be more than an hour away.