My head felt hollow but I lifted it and cleared my throat to find my voice. "He needs a doctor," I told Owen, thickly. "He's been drugged."
The older man looked from the still-sleeping baby held warm in his arms to his wife's face. "You didn't."
"He might have cried," she said. "It's only Marzine."
"My God." Owen lowered his head, and in the moment of silence that followed I watched his anger fold inwards. "I should have stopped it sooner. When I found that key in the old upstairs door, I should have stopped it then. But I thought no, you're only looking at him, seeing he's all right. I thought, my Dilys wouldn't ever harm a child."
"You're right, I wouldn't."
"No, you'd only fill him full of drugs and sell him off to perfect strangers. And did you spare a thought for how the boy would feel tomorrow, waking up without his mother there, how terrified he'd be?"
"He's just a baby. He'd forget her."
"Would he, now? And what of Elen? You're so quick to call her mad when she says someone's after Stevie, but an empty cot's an empty cot. You couldn't call her bar then." And then he stopped, eyes narrowing. "Or did you mean to call her something else?"
"Of course not. Don't be—"
"You thought everyone would think she'd killed the boy," he said, and from his face it looked as though the words had left a foul taste on his tongue. "Another mad mother who kills her own child, such a pity that nobody noticed the danger. God, I can hear you now, telling the press all about it." He shook his head slowly. "What did she ever do to you, for you to hate the girl so much? She's such a loving person ..."
"Yes," said Dilys, rising very calmly to her feet. "Yes, she's like her mother that way, isn't she?" And gathering her dignity around her like a blanket, she gave Owen one last icy look and walked straight past him, out the stable door.
He stood with his back to me, rigid and still, for so long I thought he must have forgotten I was there, but then the black mare banged against her stall and Owen roused himself, his shoulders lifting in a sigh. "I'm sorry."
I wasn't sure who the apology was meant for, or for what, but he looked so alone that I felt I should answer. "It isn't your fault."
He turned then, and his reaction to my own appearance made me glad I didn't have a mirror. "Christ," he said, and setting Stevie very gently on the bale of straw beside me, Owen knelt to take a close look at my shoulder. I was sitting forwards now. The dizziness had faded to a hollow-headed throbbing at my temples, and with the protective effects of adrenaline starting to wear off I felt every move of those fingers against my bruised flesh. I couldn't help the indrawn breath.
"Sorry, lovely. Here, you hold that on there," he said, handing me a handkerchief. "Hold it good and tight now, lots of pressure. That should stop the bleeding." He eased one arm round my back, helping me onto my feet. I nearly trod on Chance, but he stepped smartly to one side as Sovereign arched her head above the stall a second time, soft nostrils flaring questingly towards the sleeping baby.
Following her gaze I looked at Stevie on his bed of straw, surrounded by the warmth and the smells of the stable and animals watching. And then Owen cocked his head and said, "Listen," and I heard it, too, rising over the wind: the sound of the church bells, the Christmas bells, ringing out pure and clear through the turbulent night.
Owen's smile was slow to come, but it transformed his weary face. He tightened his arm round me, glancing at Stevie, his eyes very gentle. "Perhaps we ought to wait here for a minute," he suggested, "just in case the Magi come.”
XXXIII
For this my son was dead, and is alive
again; he was lost, and is found.
Luke, 15:24
Bridget, in a rare show of concern, came up to see that I was safely tucked in bed. "I've brought you something warm to drink." She handed me the mug and sat beside me while I hitched myself a little higher on the pillows.
"What is it? Cocoa?"
"Not exactly."
My eyes swam from the alcohol fumes as I took the first sip. "God, Bridget, that's strong."
"Yes, I know, but it's wonderful stuff. It's an old family remedy. Helps you to sleep."
"I've no doubt. But the question is, will I wake up?"
"Of course you will." Curling her legs underneath her, she settled back against the bedpost. She looked, I thought, astonishingly alert, considering it was just gone four in the morning and she'd been drinking all night. "So how are the stitches?"
I told the truth. "Hurting like hell."
"You know, James feels just awful for leaving you locked in that shed."
"I know."
He had apologized a hundred times while driving me to hospital to have my shoulder seen to. "But you see," he'd said, "I didn't think that anyone was in there. I only went to shut the door, because the wind was banging it. And then Christopher came along and we saw that blasted cat..."
"I thought you were looking for me," I'd confessed.
"I was, as a matter of fact. Only not in the shed. Owen said you'd nipped over to Elen's," he'd said. "You couldn't have had worse timing, really. I was just getting ready to make my announcement. I needed you back at the party."
I'd frowned. "What announcement?"
"Well, question and announcement, actually," he'd qualified the statement, and in a terribly casual tone he'd explained, "I had meant to ask Bridget to marry me, you see, but I'm afraid that with all the distractions ..."
"Oh, James. I am sorry."
He'd glanced at me, reading more into those words than I'd intended. "You don't think she would have said 'yes'? It's all right," he'd gone on, as I'd floundered, "I know all about her aversion to marriage, she's told me herself enough times. But I really do love her, you know. And I've learned the trick of handling her."
"You have?" I'd smiled. "I don't suppose you'd tell me what it is?"
"Freedom," he'd said. "Give her absolute freedom to do as she likes. It's rather like letting a child run loose in the house, you just keep all the dangerous things out of reach." His gaze had slid sideways, to mine. "I'm afraid I've made use of you there, this past week."
"Really? How?"
"Well, shunting you off on to Gareth, like that. When you asked about the prophecies of Merlin," he'd elaborated, to my blank expression. "I knew them myself—I'd have had to be bloody deaf not to, the way that my mother went on—but I thought, if I sent you to Gareth and you kept him occupied, Bridget might not have a chance then, to get him alone."
He had used me in other ways, too, I thought. All the attention he'd shown me, the smiles and the charm, that had all been for Bridget. Nothing held her interest like the threat of competition. But I hadn't called him to account. Instead, because I'd thought he ought to know, I'd told him he needn't worry about Gareth. "Bridget thinks that he's boring."
"Does she? Saves me throwing down the gauntlet, then. A pity," he'd remarked. "Pistols at twenty paces would have been very dramatic, and you know how Bridget likes drama."
I recalled his words now, as I lifted the rum-scented drink for another lung-searing sip, thinking that his observation might explain why Bridget looked so pleased tonight. From what I'd been told she'd had drama in spades.
There had been some sort of scene, I knew, with Christopher. "He thought you'd snapped," had been Bridget's succinct way of putting it. And who could have blamed him? Finding Elen as I'd found her, drugged and unresponsive ... finding Stevie gone, and me nowhere in sight, and knowing—thanks to Bridget—that I'd lost a child ...
No, I thought, I couldn't blame Christopher. In his place I'd have reached the same conclusion. And I had to admit his suspicion of me made a good deal more sense than my distrust of him.
At any rate, he'd had it out with Bridget, who'd defended me—from all accounts—spectacularly. James had confessed his decision to get in the car and come look for me had had less to do with his wanting to find me than with wanting to get clear of Bridget's wrath.
She looked harmless enough at the
moment, twirling a fiery strand of hair round her fingers and thinking. "I wonder what will happen now, to Dilys."
"I'd imagine that depends on whether Elen wants to lay a charge."
"Rather creepy, really, having someone coming into your house without you knowing. I gather that Dilys had done it a few times—sneaking into Stevie's room while Christopher and James were at the pub. Apparently she thought it was unhealthy, Elen keeping Stevie's window closed."
I'd missed all this, earlier. Bridget must have had it from Owen, while I was in Pembroke Dock having my arm stitched. "I wonder why she bothered reporting Elen to the social services, then, if she'd planned all along to take Stevie?"
"Well," said Bridget, linking her hands round her knees as she plunged ever deeper in hearsay, ' 'James thinks that she probably didn't plan it."
I disagreed. "She drugged Elen and Stevie beforehand. I don't know how she did it, but—"
"Chicken soup."
"Sorry?"
"On her way to our party she took Elen chicken soup— you know, for her 'flu. And she very kindly heated Stevie's bottle."
"Well then, how could James believe it wasn't planned?''
"What he means is, she probably started out just wanting to see Stevie taken into care, and with Elen going on about dragons in the nursery, Dilys saw her chance to get the social workers to make a care order. But when they came and didn't do anything, that's when she decided that she'd do the deed herself. Well, not entirely herself," she said. "She had her son to help her."
Owen thought so, anyway. He'd found tyre tracks down by the little stone bridge, deeply impressed in the soft mud to show where somebody had pulled a car over and waited, without getting out. Presumably Dilys had planned to take Stevie down there, a short walk from the house, hand him off to her son and return to the party before we had noticed her missing. She'd likely have got clean away with it, too. I, for one, hadn't seen her go upstairs, and even Owen had thought she was still in the room somewhere, talking to someone.
She'd been at his side minutes later, when Christopher had burst in on the party with the news that I'd stolen the baby. But in the confusion she'd slipped out the back door, determined to run me to ground before James did. She hadn't expected that Owen would follow.
"Poor Owen," said Bridget. "Why is it that nice men can sometimes have such horrid wives?"
"I don't know." The mention of wives made me glance at her left hand, but seeing no ring there I kept my mouth closed. James still hadn't asked her... or else he had asked her and she'd told him "no." Either way, I should mind my own business. Even though, in a way, it was my business too what she answered, because if she said "yes" then I'd have a new client...
She looked at me. "What?"
"Sorry?"
"Well, you're wearing that look, so—"
I cut her off, raising my eyebrows. "What look?"
"The one that means you're weighing something."
I shook my head. "It's nothing."
"Ah."
"You shouldn't be so sensitive to how I look," I told her, and then cringed because that sounded so exactly like my mother.
"If you say so. God, is that the time?" She checked her wristwatch, yawning. "I ought to be getting to bed myself, or Father Christmas won't come." She stood and stretched and shuffled to the door, and turning, said, "You're sure you'll be all right?"
"I'm sure."
"I'll see you in the morning, then. And Lyn?"
"Yes?"
"Happy Christmas."
I returned the words and smiled with an effort through the alcoholic fog that had begun to wrap around me. I was half-asleep already when I reached to put the light out. Through my window I could see the stars revolving in the still-dark sky. The morning star, I knew, was out there too, somewhere towards the east. I tried to find it in amongst the others but my eyelids felt too heavy to hold open and I couldn't focus properly. I murmured "Happy Christmas" once again, though, for good measure. And I thought I saw one eastern star gleam brighter than the rest before my lashes drifted closed.
*-*-*-*-*
The dream came, as it always did, just before dawn.
I was standing alone at the edge of a river that wound through a valley so lush and so green that the air seemed alive. The warble of songbirds rang over the treetops from branches bent low with the weight of ripe fruit, and everywhere the flowers grew, more vivid and more fragrant than any flowers I had ever seen before. Their fragrance filled me with an incredible thirst, and kneeling on the riverbank I cupped my hands into the chill running water and lifted them dripping, preparing to drink.
A shadow swept over me, blocking the sun.
Beside me the grass gave a rustle and parted, and out came a serpent, quite withered and small. The shadow behind me moved swiftly. I saw the bright flash of a blade and the serpent's severed body writhed a moment on the riverbank and then lay still, and lifeless.
The shadow moved again, and looking up I saw a young man of perhaps twenty-five, with a lean handsome face and blue eyes. He might have stepped out of a Renaissance painting, in his black velvet gown belted low on his hips and cut above the knee, with a cap of black velvet to cover his red-tinged fair hair.
"Be not afraid," he said. "It is but me."
I shook my head. "I do not know you."
"Yes, you do." He lowered his sword to the ground and a woman stepped out of the wood. A pale woman in blue— not so young, now. She smiled. "You have given me my son. Now I give you yours."
And from out of the trees came the sound of a small baby crying. Bewildered, half-hoping, I rose to my feet.
"Go now," she said, and I went where she pointed, uncertain at first, and then starting to run, plunging deep in the wood with its green dappled light spilling soft all around me. The undergrowth dragged at my feet as I ran and the branches and leaves tangled into my hair but the crying grew stronger and beckoned me on till I came all at once to a clearing.
At its centre grew an ancient, gnarled oak, and in the shadow of the oak there stood a man with wild eyes and whitened hair, and in the man's arms lay a baby.
The man stepped forwards, and his eyes were very knowing, very wise. He held the baby out towards me. "It is time."
With trembling hands I took him then and felt my baby living, felt him warm against my breast, and as I passed my hand over his hair he stopped crying. And in that whole wood nothing stirred.
All was silent.
XXXIV
'Tis time that I were gone.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Morte d'Arthur"
He's quiet this morning," said Elen. I slid a little forwards on the sofa, shifting Stevie higher on my lap so that his curls just brushed my chin and I could smell the warm, freshly bathed baby scent of him. All the excitement last night didn't seem to have bothered him any. Head bent, he was deeply absorbed in the red curling ribbon and bow that his mother had given him.
"It isn't much," I told her as she carried on unwrapping the gift I had brought. "It's only a book, and far too old for him right now, of course. But I thought that when he starts to read, you know, it might be nice." I wished that Lewis had thought to include a picture book in the package he'd made for me.
Elen slid the gift wrap off and looked. "Oh,", she said. "It's one of Bridget's."
"Yes, that's the first book she ever had published. And I had her inscribe it, right there in the front, so it might be worth money some day."
"Thank you." She said that with sincerity. "I wish that I had something I could give you, in return."
"I really don't need—"
"I know," she interrupted, brightening a little. "I could let you have a look around the shed, and see if there's anything you like in there."
"You don't have to give me a gift."
' 'Please. I want to. I want to do something to thank you, for all that you've done."
"It was nothing."
But Elen refused to be convinced. She looked at her son, sitting happily there
on my lap with his tangle of ribbon clenched tight in one fist. He fluttered it up and down, clearly impressed by the rustling noise, before cramming it into his mouth. "Da!" he told us, triumphant.
"He's safe, now," Elen told me. "Owen said I needn't worry about Dilys, anymore."
Remembering the words that had passed between Owen and Dilys last night in the stable, I couldn't help casting a curious eye over Elen's frail features, seeking some trace of the older man there. Finding none, I said simply, "He seems very fond of you."
"Owen? Oh, yes. He takes care of me," was how she put it, in a tone that didn't question his affection. "It's because of my mother, you see. They were friends. He took care of her, too."
Stevie, apparently liking the taste of the ribbon, held it with both hands now, chewing more lustily, leaning his heavy head back on my shoulder and watching his mother with wide-open eyes.
Elen reached across to touch a finger to his cheek. "He's Owen's namesake, Stevie is. His proper name is Owen Stephen Anthony—I named him before he was born—but he looked like a Stevie, so that's what I called him. The Anthony's after his father," she said, as an afterthought.
I caught the fleeting upwards glance she sent me; saw her bite her lip and look away, as though there were something she wanted to tell me but couldn't. I tried to make it easier. "I thought you told me Tony wasn't Stevie's father. Don't you remember? You said Merlin tricked you."
"Yes," she said, as her head came round gratefully. "Yes, I was tricked. I would never have done it, otherwise. I loved my Tony."
"I know."
"But I'd been drinking, you see. There was wine, and I'm never too clear when I'm drinking. And he kept refilling my glass..."
I waited a moment, debating the wisdom of saying the name, but I had my own idea as to who here would have wanted to seduce her, and in the end my intellectual curiosity won out. "You mean Christopher, don't you?"
Biting her lip even harder, she nodded. "I wouldn't have done it, you know, only ..." Sighing, she folded her hands in her lap, and looked down. "I just made a mistake."