10

Had she meant to put Gemma into the story? Cadi read through her notes with a smile of recognition. She didn't think so, but after all, the meadow was the last place the little dog had been seen, and it was comforting to imagine that she might have somehow traversed one of the thin places in the meadow to which Meryn had alluded and turned up in the palace of the high king. She sat back in her chair staring out of the window into the garden where a brisk breeze, coming seemingly out of nowhere, was shaking the hedges, scattering a white confetti of petals from the seringa bushes across the lawn. A palace. Not a villa, but the state residence of a king. And yet in her imagination the building looked like a Roman villa, with a classical pediment, statues and fountains, an atrium, mosaics on the floor. The native tribes-people were living up on the hill in the fort, firmly dated in her own mind and in the description of the place inscribed on the sign at the bottom of one of the footpaths up the hill, as Iron Age, but obviously still surviving into the late fourth century AD.

She reached for her research notebook, the place she had begun to write down anything she thought relevant to her story as she read up on the actual history behind the legend of Macsen Wledig and his Welsh princess. As far as she could see he had entered the historical record in the late 360s early 370s as a senior officer under the Count Theodosius, father of the man who would later be emperor of the East. About Macsen's wife there was very little information. His second wife, and the mother of most of his children, was only ‘probably' called Elen... or maybe Helen... and was often confused with another Helen of an earlier generation, Helena the mother of Emperor Constantine I. Cadi sighed. So little certainty about this woman who had been, surely, one of the most important in the early history of this island.

She flipped through her pages of notes. The Iron Age, she had noted, came after the Bronze Age and before the Romans. The Romans had arrived with Julius Caesar in 54 BC and left Britain in the early 400s AD. Magnus, she had written, had become emperor in AD 383. Or not emperor. Or sort of emperor, elected by his own men to be emperor in Britain, then emperor of the West. Her notes were wildly conflicted. He was popular, elected by general acclaim. He was not popular. His name was on the list of proper emperors; his name was not on that list, and he had never been recognised by historians as anything more than a usurper. She shook her head. Too much. Too much history. Too much history that contradicted itself. The original story was a Romance. In the original sense of the word. She was not writing an academic treatise. She was a poet, like the original bard who had first recited the tale, probably centuries before it had ever been written down in the Red Book of Hergest which dated from about 1375. Perhaps the story had been doing the rounds within living memory of the protagonists. In which case, it was the poet's story that held the truth, and she by her very calling was entitled to expand on it or to redact bits as she saw fit. Facts as they related to her meadow. And they did relate to her meadow, she felt it deep inside herself, just as she felt that once in a dream she had seen Elen out there face to face.

Surely it was possible to find out whether in reality a villa– a villa large enough and beautiful enough to be a palace– had ever stood there?

* * *

There were bats flitting across the grass in the dusk. She had a torch in her pocket but she didn't need it. The luminous dusk was light enough to show her the outline of the meadow and the trees along the brook. She could hear the faint burble of the water in the silence. The wind had dropped as darkness approached and she could see the diamond-bright glitter of the evening star above the distant mountain peaks. Soon it would have dipped out of sight. Somewhere nearby an owl hooted and she shivered. She wished she had asked Sally to come with her. The night was very lonely and she was feeling nervous. She stopped, listening hard. Supposing she heard, or felt, the drumbeat of the horse's hooves? Was someone out there watching her? She felt very exposed. There was nowhere to hide and presumably, if she could see the trees from here, anyone lurking at the field margins could see her. Her mouth was dry as she slowly turned full circle, straining her eyes against the encroaching darkness.

And then she saw it. The horse was grazing only twenty metres away, its head lowered to the grass; she could hear the crunch of its teeth as it pulled up mouthfuls of lush meadow grass. She froze as it took a few steps forward and raised its head, ears forward. It wasn't looking at her. She followed its gaze and saw a man standing on the far side of the meadow. He was opening the gate. He stepped into the field and called softly. The horse whickered in reply and trotted towards him. She saw the man hand it a titbit as he reached out with a halter, pulling it over the animal's ears. For a moment it seemed to resist, then it gave in gracefully and turned to follow him as he led it out through the gate and up a broad track. She could see it all clearly, the man and the horse, the distant huddle of buildings, a barn, and the great house itself, the villa, two storeys high, with a lofty roof, the pointed architraves, the flaring torches that lit the driveway and flickered shadows onto the red tiles and the grey slates of the rooftops, a line of stone statues... And was that a little dog, trotting out of the shadows? With a visceral shock of recognition, Cadi took a step forward. ‘Gemma?' she called.

The night shivered and froze, and the scene was gone, but not before she recognised the man who turned towards her, desperately trying to pacify the frightened, rearing horse, his face rigid with fear. It was Rhys.

‘Sally!'

Cadi rang the bell again, then thumped on the door with her fist. A light came on inside the house and after a few moments the door opened. Sally, her hair rumpled, wearing cotton pyjamas, had obviously been asleep. ‘What is it? What's wrong?'

‘I saw her, Sal. I saw Gemma!'

She saw the incredulous blank of shock on Sally's face too late, and then the leap of joy. ‘Oh my God! Where is she?'

Cadi shook her head. ‘No. No, I'm sorry. She's not here. She's... she's out there in the meadow. I saw her with the horse Emrys, with Rhys.'

Sally studied her face and Cadi saw the hope fading in her eyes. ‘Who is Rhys?' she asked at last. She turned away from the door and Cadi followed her inside. Sally turned on the kitchen lights and automatically reached for the kettle. ‘Go on,' she said with a sigh. ‘Tell me.' She hitched herself up onto a stool at the worktop.

‘I couldn't sleep and I thought I'd go for a stroll in the -meadow. They're going to close it off any day now.' Cadi stopped, aware that she hadn't spoken to Sally for several days, and why. Her friend was avoiding the painful -reminders of walks in the fields around their houses. ‘I assumed there wouldn't be anyone there so late and I wanted to clear my head.' There was a long pause. ‘Have I ever told you about my eccentric uncle Meryn?' she ploughed on. Another moment's silence. Sally didn't react. ‘No, perhaps not, but I asked him to come over a couple of days ago. I wanted to ask him to do some dowsing. He's an expert on the subject. I told him about Charles Ford, my mystery man dowser, and his experience in the field.' She hoped to see a smile on Sally's face at the reminder of her crack about the virgin poetess, but there was no response. ‘He thinks it's the type of place one might see ghosts, and that a villa might have left traces. He could feel strange energies out there, memories perhaps from the past.' It was no use. Sally didn't believe in this stuff. How could she explain the leap of joy she had experienced when she saw Gemma running towards her, heard the little dog's yelp of recognition before her own shout had brought the moment crashing out of time. ‘Sorry. It was stupid of me to come rushing round like this. I shouldn't have got your hopes up.'

Sally shook her head. She slid off the stool as the kettle boiled and reached for a couple of cups. ‘No. I'm glad you came. I've missed our walks and our chats. It's been busy at school and I suppose I've been burying myself in work to distract me.' She gave another deep sigh. ‘It's just the house is so empty.'

Cadi leaned forward and put her hand over Sally's for a second. ‘I know.'

‘Thank you for looking for her.'

‘I will always look for her, Sal. You know I will.'

They sat together in silence, sipping tea. ‘So,' Sally said at last. ‘Do you really believe in these memories from the past? How do you know it wasn't a dream?'

‘I know it's not logical, but I think I do believe it, yes.' Cadi caught a glimpse of the scepticism in Sally's eyes and looked away. ‘Besides I was outside in the meadow, so I can't have been dreaming. I can't explain it, and perhaps that is part of it. I love the thought of the unexplained being all around us. My uncle has studied the subject all his life. He practises what he preaches. He does dowsing and deals with intrusive ghosts and things, and studies all the supernatural stuff which is so mocked today. My dad thinks he's completely dotty, but his brother is a proper professor.' She smiled. ‘They haven't talked for a long time. Which is sad as I love them both.'

‘I thought your father lived in France.'

‘He does. And Uncle Meryn lives over near Hay. So they can co-exist in the stratosphere quite happily.'

‘Wow. What an interesting family.' Sally didn't sound particularly sincere.

‘It does it for me.' Cadi surveyed her friend's face. ‘I know it wasn't a dream. I was outside in the meadow and my feet were wet with dew and freezing.' She was making things worse with every word, she realised. ‘I'd better go, Sal. It's late and I woke you up.'

‘She's dead, isn't she. If she's a ghost?'

Cadi didn't have to ask who Sally meant. ‘I suppose she might be. I'm so sorry.'

‘Did she look happy?'

‘She did, yes. And she recognised me. Stupidly I called out to her and the whole...' she hesitated, searching for the right word, ‘the whole dream or vision, whatever it was, just disappeared. If any of it is true, be comforted that it looked as though someone was looking after her.'

She stood in the street outside for several minutes before walking the few steps next door to her own gate. The night was very still. There was a faint streak of pale light on the far horizon but otherwise the village lay in total darkness.

Cadi couldn't sleep. She lay for a long time staring up at the ceiling, her thoughts whirring back and forth from the meadow with its dark sweet scent of mown hay to the appearance of the horse, so real, so wild, so– smelling of horse– the glimpse of Rhys the groom, and of Gemma, her joyous bark of recognition and then of the total blankness of the scene as she found herself once more alone in the empty field. She rolled over and picked up her phone. It was 3.20 a.m. With a groan she sat up and dragged herself out of bed.

It was strange how different the living room looked at night, the darkness, the emptiness, the silence holding no echoes of the previous day. She made her way over to her desk and turned on the lamp, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. She was half afraid of hearing the soldiers marching in the night, but there was no sound outside. Or inside either. She recalled the grandfather clock in her father's old house, always ticking, that slow monotonous steady sound counting away the hours and days, chiming every quarter, revving up to chime extra loudly on every hour. She'd hated it as a child. It was somehow too inevitable, too full of doom. She wondered briefly what had happened to it. Had her father taken it with him to France to continue to count down his days for the rest of his life? Maybe it had been company in its own way. Here, there was nothing but silence. Clocks didn't tick anymore.

If she couldn't sleep, perhaps she could write. She reached for her notebook. ‘So, Elen, princess of Britain and soon to be empress, what happened next?' she whispered. ‘Presumably you left our beautiful meadow with its sprawling villa that was more like a palace, with its mosaic floors and its fountains, and you headed off for a new life with your soldier husband.'

Could she even follow Elen once she had left this, the land of her birth?