It has snowed in the night. Lizzie wakes just before dawn as the coldest air comes down. Myfanwy has been awake all night, listening to the roof slates shifting and the iron nails contracting and the rafters creaking, breathing the cold air almost liquid in her lungs. The stone in Myfanwy’s heart is Lizzie. The stone in Lizzie’s heart is Myfanwy. For it has snowed in the night.
They meet outside the cwtch door and see the bed inside is still empty. Lizzie checks the side door and yes it was unlocked all night, and the kitchen door too. Myfanwy is silent and furious at Lizzie’s implication, and backs against the sink, arms hanging loose; like a challenger at a fairground boxing booth, she shifts her balance, poised for a fight she doesn’t know how to win, or lose.
Lizzie stands stalled and uncertain in the middle of the doorway, bird-frail, an incumbent champion equally bereft of action. But being in the same room is intolerable. Lizzie hauls on her boots, grabs the oilskins and the wolf’s head walking stick, and heads for the door. She has had nothing to eat for eighteen hours, but:
‘The sheep need checking.’ She closes the door behind her, faces into the glassy, fractured morning. She is too old for this weather, but she doesn’t remember that now.
‘I’m calling the police’ says Myfanwy to the empty doorway. But she does not. She is in pain, and Lizzie’s tacit rejection of food or tea has left Myfanwy without tasks or targets. She goes down to stand outside Sarah Maud’s bedroom door but cannot say why. Away from the kitchen fire, carefully banked in case Jenner came home in the night, the house is as chill as the deeps of a mountain lake.
Out beyond the shelter of the clustered sheds, Lizzie sees the valley spreading like an upturned palm, spilling the snow downwards to the sea lying flat and cloud-grey in the thin light. The drifts below the house are thick, and make little deathly mounds of the bushes, turn the cowslip and celandine petals translucent, press down the daffodil heads. The hen coop is still; a ruffling and burring of sleeping birds is faint on the air. Sarah Maud’s garden in the snow looks like a pencil sketch, black-lead scribbles of hedge and beehive, cinnabar dashes of still-leafless witch hazel stems, and the smudged charcoal of low plants rounded down by late snow on tender new shoots. Sarah Maud’s bits of statuary—her passion, years ago, but abandoned before Jenner was born—look like huddled homeless rough-sleepers, and Lizzie imagines Jenner hiding under each frozen shroud. Everything is uncertain, unclear, across the valley. But Lizzie could find her way in the yard with her eyes closed, so familiar are the slate stepping-stones and gravel paths, and the muddy tracks of the farm vehicles.
The sheep are down from the hills, in anticipation of birthing but still outdoors yet. Lizzie heads up the lane and as she comes to a gap in the stone wall, the full cold of the morning hits her. Without the shelter of the garden walls, iron-hard crusts of ice cover the grass. The air at ground level is like a scythe across the fields. The sheep are huddling where the hedge and stone wall meet, their yellow eyes are alarmed. There is little she can do here alone, but the relief to be out and away from Myfanwy and the empty cwtch keeps her here. The house feels clogged with anxiety, and Myfanwy’s need to blame her is undermining her own instinct to accuse Myfanwy. The mirroring of their responses to grief only highlights the barrier she feels, like silvered glass standing between them. Lizzie wonders if she were strong enough to break it, would she find Myfanwy taping it back in place again just as quickly. What’s happening to my family… She falls into the past tense: happened…
She leans against the wall and makes useless soothing noises to calm the sheep. A few childish cries echo across the sharp still air, from the toboggan slope beyond the school. Where is the child?
The cold finally forces Lizzie to move.
She feels the need for warmth now, and retraces her earlier steps, showing black on the white snow. If only all paths were as clear. She stomps the slush of mud and snow on the doorstep, blusters inside, head down and forcing a chatter, faking a shiver.
‘Is there tea? Du, du, du, but it’s cold.’ She stops, sighs, shakes her head. The kitchen is empty. What is she making all this noise for? She’s not even listening to herself. She falls into a chair.
Myfanwy and Sarah Maud enter together and suddenly the room is crowded. Sarah Maud’s hands shake as she pours herself a tea, adds too much sugar, gulps it down while still scalding and pours a second, repeats the scalding.
‘How are the sheep?’ asks Sarah Maud, reaching for her jacket as she clambers sockless into the nearest pair of boots. ‘And where are they?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer but goes out into the wind and straight up towards the field. Her blue summer dress is wind-flattened against her trousered legs.
Lizzie cannot move from her chair. ‘Did you call the police yet?’ she addresses the wall ahead of her. To her left, Myfanwy lifts the porridge saucepan from the stove, and straightens up.
‘No.’ Myfanwy looks across the table at Lizzie’s face in rigid profile. ‘I don’t know where to start, what to say. I don’t want them thinking the worst of us. You can phone them if you want to. It’s your fault, after all.’
‘You’re a cruel woman, Myfanwy.’
‘I’m not cruel. I’m stupid. It’s you that’s cruel.’ The saucepan drops onto the table. ‘And selfish. Do you think no-one else cares for the girl? Do you think I don’t care for her and look after, every day of her little poor life, and you there too busy with money and cleverness, and just too important for your own family? Me cruel? You don’t know what it’s like living with you forever and ever. By the living god I don’t know what you want from us... Any of it... Jenner is ...’ Myfanwy has run out of words, she has never spoken of what Jenner is, even to herself.
Her thin experience of family love—overlooked child of parents too devoted to each other, half-orphaned by a sickly father dying ‘when he shouldn’t have’ as if early death showed a failure of character, and an etiolated adulthood in the shade of Lizzie’s matriarchy; left to bring herself up when a child and treated like a child in her widowhood—is too narrow for Myfanwy to name what she is now feeling. A balance has been broken by the runaway child. Myfanwy’s heart is at its rope’s end for missing Jenner. She’s ashamed of herself, and of her mother; it’s all become a hideous jumble in her head. All of it: the shame of her daughter Sarah Maud an unwed mother, the shame of her sour marriage, the shame of her first love. The shame of the birthday just two days back. She could cover these old walls with words for a year and still not get to the end of her shame. Earlier she felt invisible; now she feels opened on an examining table for all the world, the neighbours, to poke and prod at.
But for now, Myfanwy has run out of anything to say. Falling silent, she spoons some of the near-cold porridge into a bowl, stands looking at the fire and eats her portion without tasting a bit of it.
Lizzie is still looking at the far wall. Lizzie’s hands tremble as she cradles the teacup in her lap. Seeing this, Myfanwy returns the pan to the heat again until the contents are hot, scoops some into a clean bowl, places it near Lizzie with a spoon on one side.
‘You better eat something. You’re too thin,’ says Myfanwy and leaves the room.
Lizzie takes up the bowl. For a moment it’s poised in her raised hand like a shotput aimed at the wall in front of her: ‘how dare she…’. The burst of anger burns instantly into ashy collapse. Lizzie eats the porridge for she is truly empty. It’s good, and hot.
Dydd Mawrth. Mars’s day. Over the Dyke, in England this is Tiw’s Day: the Vikings’ god of single combat, victory and glory. But Roman Mars, so much more nuanced: yes, battle, but victory can only be prayed for, not guaranteed. Passion is a certainty, and energy, and endurance. Stamina, staying power. The Old Ones thundered over the limestone hills and crawled through the low marshes in defence of—literally and figuratively—home and hearth, swinging their soft bronze-tipped weapons against the iron-shielded invader whose language and writing they melded into their own, even as they yielded their native heroes to the foreign gods. Lizzie has the stamina of Mars in her narrow old veins, and it carries her yet.
Sarah Maud can be heard, now, in the yard. Sarah Maud lacks stamina. But she has an instinct for the sheep; indeed, it’s the only thing she’s good for, according to Myfanwy and the neighbours.
Lizzie goes out, swinging the old coat over her bony shoulders and thick wool shirt, cramming the shapeless felt hat back on her head. The ruby necklace glints inside her collar, flaring in the bright glare of the snow and the lifting sunlight. Sarah Maud has the sheep down from the field and they are just crossing the road into the yard. Lizzie scuttles over to the barn, opens a door and helps herd the ewes inside. She wouldn’t have bothered since the thaw is probably due in a few hours, but...
‘Best safest inside’ says Sarah Maud, her voice purring in the cold air, and Lizzie nods; at least the sheep can settle into the new space in advance of lambing. When their time comes to drop, they’ll feel more accustomed. Lizzie suspects Jenner has already added some herbs to the straw bedding; there are bunches of dried field flowers knotted to some of the nails on posts and rafters. Out of the cold wind, the flock trundle into the pens and begin to defrost, feed and socialise. They’re slow and swollen with lambs.
‘Jenner be needed soon.’ Sarah Maud is still trembling; now her teeth are chattering as well. ‘It’s her favourite time, this, when the lambs come.’
‘When did you last see Jenner?’ asks Lizzie.
‘I ... was it ... at your party? Yes, the party ...’ Sarah Maud has a haunted look now; she finds time is just too slippery and she doesn’t like to be expected to have a grip on it. But more than time, her thoughts about her baby Jenner have always been hard to grasp, tangled between love and distress and too many secrets. As she’d held the new breathing baby, touched the black hair and white skin and red birth blood with trembling fingers, she’d felt her own sense of self slipping out of reach. She’d not been able to grasp it back; alcohol helped to cloud memory, but alcohol was indiscriminate and took good as well as bad.
‘Myfanwy hasn’t told you, then.’ A statement, not a question.
‘Told me? No. She’s not told me anything, Mamgu.’
Again, the use of a familial term—Mamgu, Grandmother—within Ty Merched sounds startling to Lizzie’s ears; that the term now sounds strange in this old house of so many generations overawes her, knocks down a defence or two.
‘Can you help me, Sarah Maud? I think I need your help, bach.’
Now it is Sarah Maud’s turn to be startled. Her ability to help is seldom tested, never yet proven. ‘Sure,’ she says, but her voice is anything but. ‘What can I, how?’
‘If you were Jenner; let’s say you were Jenner and you wanted to hide. Where would you go?’
‘Oh now, Mamgu. There’s a question.’ Sarah Maud frequently wants to hide, and succeeds, if only from herself and the shadows in her head; but she’s never looked at it from Jenner’s view. ‘Oh, now. Hiding. In the lake? Under a field? In a foxglove!’ Sarah Maud nods her head affirmatively, yes indeed, for Sarah Maud would have hidden in a foxglove had it ever been necessary. Only, that one time they were needed no foxgloves were available... Sarah Maud’s face falls; the bad thoughts are stronger today and she’s frightened; she feels more her old, horrible, soiled self today.
Oblivious to Sarah Maud’s turmoil, Lizzie smiles, almost laughs; it’s amazing that Sarah Maud’s mother was the stolid Myfanwy. And that farmer they found for Myfanwy to marry, after the rumours of the valley; God knows, maybe Sarah Maud’s father had been touched by the fey folk after all. Or maybe it was just his old seed.
‘Come and have some food, Sarah Maud. Then we’ll go looking for foxgloves.’
There’s no sign of Myfanwy inside, but the fire’s good; a quick raddle gets it blazing. Lizzie pushes a chair close to the heat, puts Sarah Maud into it, serves her some of the reheated porridge. Sarah Maud heaps sugar on and gulps the sweet gluey mass down almost in one; Lizzie is reminded of a baby bird feeding. The police station will be open by now, but Lizzie doubts that is where Myfanwy has gone; the gossip would be horrendous. Myfanwy would do anything to avoid the attention if she could. And, worse, it would be an admission of someone’s guilt; whose, Lizzie isn’t sure. She only knows they agree on this: it’s a family matter. Family will fix family.
Not that it has done so for a very long time, but then it’s not been so undeniably broken for a very long time. Sarah Maud finishes her food, and Lizzie tends the fire.
‘Let’s go find those foxgloves, bach’ says Lizzie gently. Sarah Maud looks puzzled, towards Jenner’s doorway then towards the kitchen door. Lizzie has been increasingly mystified by her granddaughter these past years, and today is no different; she gets hat and walking stick again and slips a few slices of bread and butter into the poacher’s pocket of her coat. Sarah Maud goes hatless but is now, as always, crowned by bits of flower and leaf in her hair. Today she wears frosted may-tree buds entangled from the hedgerow where the sheep had sheltered.
As they head out the gate Sarah Maud takes the lead, east to the small junction with the top lane, then turning up a narrow path, climbing west now, over the shadowy trench of the rail line and up towards a gully of trees near the ridge. The snow is deep in dips of ground, thin and glassy on exposed patches. Sarah Maud takes this path as if pulled by string. Lizzie follows as best she can. Suddenly Sarah Maud turns back to her:
‘You breathe like an old man’ she says. ‘Or. Like a bad man.’
‘I am old, Sarah Maud bach. But I’m not a man, I’m your mother’s mam aren’t I. And I’m not bad. Am I?’ says Lizzie when she can catch her breath. They climb further up. Why a bad man? Lizzie thinks of the Velvet Soap box in her closet, promises herself that she’ll speak to Myfanwy when they get back home. But she won’t mention the box specifically.
Lizzie is aching by the time they reach the trees, and she pauses, breathless, to look back. They’re at the top of the valley now, with a clear view south to the threading smokes of Swansea town, the Old Ones’ burial mounds on Gower, and the sea beyond. To the west, the green waves of hills crest higher and higher until they break on the flanks of the Black Mountain. Over to the east, Panteg delineates the close horizon. The sky is clear above, but there’s a nasty look to the clouds behind her and to the east, and she’s anxious for Jenner and Sarah Maud and herself, all away from the house in this sudden bad spring weather. Where Myfanwy is, is only Myfanwy’s business as far as Lizzie is concerned today.
Immediately below, almost under her boots, are the lichen-blushed slate roofs of Ty Merched and the barns, sheds and gardens. Someone, foreshortened so only the top of a knobbly head and a pair of highly polished shoes are visible, is walking up to the door of the house. It looks like the vicar and Lizzie wonders for a moment if he has news about Jenner, takes an instinctive step towards him. But no, he won’t know that Jenner’s missing; he’d be the last person Myfanwy would tell. Lizzie steps back, her foot hits a lump of ice and skids sideways. She starts to fall. A flash of panic, the fear of bones and blood; time slows, and she feels the ice take her boots away from beneath her. She goes rigid, tensing for the crash of her hips or spine on the iron-hard ground.
A strong hand grips her arm, nearly jerking it from her shoulder as another arm scoops round her waist to pull her upright. Lizzie steps backwards, stumbles as she tries to find solid ground behind her, slips again, is held secure against a body. Sarah Maud is yelling, somewhere behind her. Lizzie, poor old woman, slumps in the rescuer’s arms. So vulnerable, again, she feels undermined. Life has become so much riskier this week. If she could, she would find it funny that turning one hundred has made her feel old, as if a few days could make all the difference. But just now she can’t breathe. The arms hold her tighter. She can’t even see who has her and wonders about spirits, or fairies, or the oaks themselves. Maybe she’s dead, this could be what dead feels like: a freezing space, a squeezing entrapment, and nothing solid to stand on. But, no; Hell wouldn’t have quite so much of Sarah Maud’s screaming, would it?
‘I. Can’t breathe. Thank you,’ Lizzie tips her head back, addresses the sky in lieu of turning to the person she’s pinned against. The grip around her waist shifts a little, the hand on her arm adjusts its hold. She is lifted clear of the ground and spun round to land lightly on the flat gravel of the path; the arm round her ribs is removed and she draws a deep breath. Her torso, shoulders, one ankle, hurt: but less than a plummet down the hillside. Oh, William bach! ‘Thank you,’ Lizzie repeats.
London John is there, smiling and frowning at the same time. ‘Are you OK? Like, really, are you alright?’ Behind him a youngish woman and a large black dog stand just under the trees. Sarah Maud is shivering and hugging her ribs, she’s got tears on her face.
‘Oh, Du, thank you, yes I’m fine. Well, a bit shaken I am. But less than a plummet down the hillside. Thank you. I said that already didn’t I. Sorry.’
‘John it is, Mamgu.’ Calls Sarah Maud from the trees. ‘This is Llundain John, and Mish and Jessie, these are my friends, see.’
‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ says Lizzie and does now laugh shakily at the misplaced formality of her words, in such a moment. ‘No, I mean it really is. Du! How lucky. You were here.’ She feels like her head is made of cotton wool; she’s mumbling words that seem to make no sense. Just stop, just stop shaking, she thinks. She can’t look into anyone’s eyes, she’s embarrassed, foolish; old. Just wait a bit. Stop shaking!
-oOo-
Way down below, the vicar has given up waiting for an answer to his knock on the front door of Ty Merched; guessing he has lost the privilege of going round to the yard, he walks away. Convinced that he has been deliberately refused entry, Morgan converts the foolishness he’s feeling into something harder and darker and more acceptable. He is not a forgiving man. He never asks himself ‘what would Jesus do?’ because he knows enough about his faith to be assured the answer would prove to be inconvenient.
He has thought to come and warn the family about the mood of the neighbours; not that he’d put it that way. He has been practising the best way to put it but has come to no definite conclusion other than to deflect the blame from himself. He is certainly laying all the responsibility for resolving the hostility firmly at the Ty Merched door; not that he’d put it that way, either. Old family like this, they should set an example. I go to the birthday, I deserve respect. Superstitions and wild men. They were like this long before I … Really, the child is … deserves what she… Like this before I… What might happen to Jenner is a following thought; after all, he isn’t an evil man.
But now his pride has been hurt by an unanswered door. The Reverend Twdr Morgan’s pride is a bare, vulnerable thing, and today inflamed by doubt and inner debate. Well, I did my best. Not home, not my fault. Out, all out… or pretending… His momentary human instinct to redress the damage of his own making has been thwarted by his fragility; Jenner is without sanctuary. Name in the baptism books but I never saw it. Well, now she is cast out… her actions, not mine. Has she ever been cast in, really; who could say?
Myfanwy is not in the house. She has been. She was sitting, immobile with bitterness in the grim front room while Lizzie, and later Sarah Maud, ate porridge. Lizzie might arm her anger with words; Myfanwy uses silence as her weapon… a two-edged sword. She saw them leave, Sarah Maud leading on the path up the hill. Then Myfanwy wrapped up in two jumpers and two pairs of socks, and took a blanket, and now she is out in the barn. The house is choked with anger, and the hens had given her such comfort the day before. But the hen coop is cold, the old girls are all up on their perches, preening and crwwwing to each other, and they won’t come out even for Myfanwy’s sake. So, she has gone to the barn to sit among the sheep. She never hears the door knocker being knocked, nor the gate latch being unlatched. She never hears the vicar’s self-conscious steps on the muffling snow of the front path. For she is only listening for a child’s tread, and that would be at the back door.
In the house, the ghosts huddle round the dying fire. A piece of cold ash, the size of a walnut, falls through the uncleaned grate and onto the hearthstone. They anxiously rub their hollow hands together. A second piece of ash falls, this time not so cold.
-oOo-
Jenner is far away from all these people, their falling and their pride, their loneliness. She is shivering, despite the blanket and Smalldog snuggling close, in an abandoned hardware store on the last of the shopping streets. The ponies were chased away by boys. She can’t get home.
More than the hunger, and the cold in her fingers and toes, Jenner is thinking about her mother. Sarah Maud isn’t getting the medicine Jenner would slip into the glass of water every night. And Jenner had learned through silent watching that Sarah Maud’s pain had something, unstated, to do with herself. It felt like a haunting, this scrap of grievous knowledge. So then: Jenner could ease her own mind when she soothed her mother. But now: no.
Jenner sits all day, waiting for the shops to close and the bins to go out, so she can eat without thieving; without being seen. She could light a fire, the stove is still standing and there’s enough rubbish around for some life-saving heat, but Jenner dare not risk the smoke being seen in this derelict part of the town. More than the cold or the hunger and thirst, she fears strangers. Soon it will be dark, and soon after that the shops will close. Jenner waits.
Her heart sinks when she hears rain on the roofs. She has no coat. And to walk around in the blanket would only draw adult attention.
-oOo-
Over the ridges of the Black Mountain, back in the oak forest, Lizzie has figured out which of the woman and dog is Mich and which is Jesse. Sarah Maud is drinking cider.
The women are in John’s bus, fitted out with bed and cupboards and a few books and papers, parked in the lee of a ruined farmhouse. A basin outside collects rainwater for washing, says Mich. There’s toilet paper hanging on a rope by the door, and a spade against the front bonnet if anyone needs. There’s a fire in the stove and a flame in the lantern.
Lizzie is drinking cider too. It’s Mich’s own brew: cloudy, meaty and fearsome strong. Lizzie can feel it beginning to rearrange her insides and she takes smaller sips. After the shock of the fall, the sleepless nights and the deep chill, the alcohol has free rein, and the last bit of Lizzie’s consciousness is hanging on by its metaphorical fingertips; the now-slurring voice in her head is warning her not to drink any more. Soon the slurring voice will fall asleep, and Lizzie will be adrift while Sarah Maud and Mich talk lazily about poetry, and brewing, and sheep.
Sarah Maud has come where she has always found help. Earnest and eternally hopeful, John has gone over the ridge to other friends outside the valley, kind-hearted fringe-dwellers like himself. They’re moving around the area, with black Jesse and other dogs leading, looking in sheds and streets and barns, unlocked cars and open caves. The homely people of the valleys are disturbed to see these gentle, weaponless hunters; respectable people are always distrustful of strangers, and more so now that their imaginations have been given the blessing of the vicar’s sermon.
It begins to rain. The converted bus that is the London escapees’ home is holding the north wind at bay. Once Lizzie would have loved the adventure of this place, but now she feels sad and cold. John hasn’t returned. A whole day has been wasted, for an early twilight has arrived. She attempts to stand up. She loses her balance, for the second time. London John is not there to catch her, and she closes her eyes against impending pain. Here, a quarter of a mile above her home, Lizzie falls.
-oOo-
Under the same vast clouds, miles to the north Jenner needs to find food. It’s dark. The rain has blurred the streetlights and fractured their glow so that she can’t see her feet in front of her for the miasma of bright raindrops and shiny pavement. She has tried to get Smalldog to stay in the hardware store with her blanket and the precious book she has tucked away there, but he is following her, dashing in and out of doorways and across the mouths of alleys, a pale disconnected shadow passing along behind her. She can’t find her way, and as she steps across a gutter in the footpath, one knee buckles; Jenner's instinctive attempt to right herself sends the other leg skidding to the side. Someone calls out, but they are too far away, and she closes her eyes.
Here, over the mountain, Jenner falls.
When she looks up, Jenner is the focus of a small crowd. Around the streetlamp the misting rain falls as if from a yellow rose of light, but the child can’t see whether the shadowy faces are looking kindly at her or not. She is wet through; her clothes stick to her shivering skin, and a pool of water freezes her backside and trickles into one shoe. Her dark hair looks like paint on her scalp.
‘She’s not from round here.’ The observation is repeated round the circle of concerned heads; no, she is not.
‘Are the gypsies around? Are you a gypsy, then, bach?’ No, she shakes her head, and the speaker is chided for their silliness: the travelling folk aren’t due for another month. Someone wants to call the police, but the police sergeant is there already, and he doesn’t want the responsibility of a child in the cells.
‘Take her to the Carmelites,’ he suggests, ‘they’ll be the ones.’ Everyone knows that’s just the sergeant pretending to be a bystander, because he doesn’t want the responsibility, or the paperwork. But it’s a good suggestion, for she is shivering beyond any ability to speak. Once it’s re-established by consensus that Jenner is indeed not from round here, she is lifted into a car, and driven to the convent’s side door.
In the street, a small posy of leaves and flowers has fallen from Jenner's pocket and been stepped on by the people crowding round her. As Jenner leaves in the police car, and people disperse, a woman steps forward from the edge of the crowd and picks up the posy, shakes it into some order, and considers the plants it contains. The woman puts in in her raincoat pocket, turns and walks quickly into the night. It must be the rain, for it’s impossible to tell her age, or height, or the colour of her hair and eyes and skin. She is certainly wearing a raincoat. She is certainly walking towards the old hardware store. Whistling softly, she has now acquired a small pale shadow that follows her, dashing in and out of doorways and across the mouths of alleys.
At the convent, an amount of negotiation is carried on while Jenner leans against the door post; she hears ‘… not from round …’ as she slides to the floor unnoticed. Eventually she is taken inside and warmed, and fed. A bed is prepared. Jenner is startled by the strange decoration she’s noticed: tiny gaunt men have been nailed to crossed strips of wood and put to hang in every room. She’s seen farmers string up dead crows to warn off the living crows from their crops. Since she has only seen women in this house, is the tiny man meant to warn away the men: don’t come here or we’ll starve you, nail you?
But there are no men in her house either, and yet no household gods or nailed mannikins. She is now shivering hot, and too tired to think any more about it. Worry about getting home, about Smalldog, and about Sarah Maud, spin her into darkness.
-oOo-
Lizzie is fretful and awake. Her back and shoulder ache where she hit the furniture in John’s bus. Her dignity aches where she was helped down the hill in the gloomy rain by John and his friends, come back to report sightings of Jenner a day ago in Ponty, but nothing since. They don’t mention that rumours of a tiger at Ty Merched are going round the pubs. They don’t mention that wilder stories of Jenner seen riding the mountain ponies, with a small dog in her lap, are heard on street corners.
Sarah Maud is in bed too, withdrawn and febrile; Mich is sitting by her, crooning a folk lullaby in her west country accent, and wondering how she can help. Mich has been a rare find in Sarah Maud’s life: tall and capable, with a sharp mind and a quick tongue for most humans but with a patience that made Sarah Maud feel —without any protest— that she was one of Mich’s rescue animals. They had bonded within a few days of the hippies arriving in the valley, when Sarah Maud wandered into their camp, needing to talk about art and music and the old night sky. Mich for her part found Sarah Maud such a generous relief from the villagers’ entrenched suspicion of newcomers, she is ready to invest time and understanding in her damaged, gentle friend. ‘There’s no need to feel alone,’ she once said, and Sarah Maud knows she meant it. Mich is noticing a change in Sarah Maud: darkness round her usually misty eyes; tightness round her usually soft mouth.
Lizzie can hear John and Myfanwy talking in the kitchen in guarded voices. What are they talking about, the fussy widow and the hippie? Lizzie feels left out of her own life, tonight. Her house is full of strangers, but only two of them don’t live there.
-oOo-
Unbeknown to Lizzie and all inside Ty Merched, the garden is also occupied. Two strangers—one, more strange than anyone suspects—pass by the long side fence. Had Lizzie’s ears been sharper, she would have heard a conversation suggesting they’re here to see the fey folk, in the midnight shade of the ruined back road. There’s a stumble in the dark, a puzzled call. A scuffle; a cracking beyond hearing. A falling. Later, just silence and ghosts.