40

Charles stood up from his desk with a sigh and stretched his arms above his head. He had been sitting at his laptop for what felt like hours attending to the form-filling that persisted after the damage to his car and everything else he had had with him at Annabel's. He looked round the room. It was comfortable and familiar, his own space in his own flat, conveniently near the university, somewhere he had always felt supremely at home.

He had had a partner once, a lovely lady he had adored. They had lived together and planned to marry, to buy a house and have a family. It hadn't seemed so outrageous a dream, but it was not to be. Cancer had taken her only a few months after the first diagnosis and he had been left alone to rebuild his life. Since then he had avoided any close relationships. He was not ready, he told himself, not the marrying type, not even the ‘let's live together and see how it goes' type. He had never even considered it until now. And now that he had felt himself drawn to someone, felt himself caring hugely and wanting to protect someone who was obviously in real danger, what had he done? He had fled.

But, he told himself, he had had to come home to see to the insurance.

Rubbish, he thought. Everything was being sorted out online. He didn't really need all those paper files he had carefully lined up on the floor at his feet. He hadn't had to come home.

He walked over to the window and looked out. He was missing Cadi, and worried about her. He took out his phone and scrolled down, looking for missed calls. There were none from her. Two from Steve though. He pressed the number.

‘Ah.' Steve's voice rang out loud and clear. ‘I wondered where you'd got to. When are you going back?'

Charles gave a rueful smile. Unwittingly, Steve had come straight to the point.

‘Not sure,' he replied slowly. ‘What's the news over there?'

‘You know the police arrested John Davies. He's back in hospital, under guard.'

‘Yes, I heard. I hope they've got him chained to the bed.'

There was a moment's silence. ‘Not sure about that. Any news from Cadi?'

‘Not since I left.'

There was another fractional silence. Enough to be meaning-ful. ‘OK. Well, the news here is that there is an indefinite hold on any planning applications, obviously, but once the police have given us the all-clear over the dagger used to threaten Professor Jones, we're still hoping to dig out the burial pit and a trench or two to establish if there really is a villa there. Have a look for the mosaic floors you mentioned. I'll bring in a team of students to speed things up and carry on until we're told otherwise. Exciting possibilities.'

And what about the wormhole?

Charles almost said it out loud.

‘So, when will you be back?' Steve repeated, pointedly waiting for an answer this time.

‘I've just got some insurance stuff to be sorted,' Charles replied. ‘I'll let you know.'

He stood staring out of the window at the quiet urban street for several minutes after Steve hung up. Deep in thought, hewas studying the house across the road with its Edwardian curlicue gables and the pretty rowan tree, its berries beginning to ripen, the solid lines of parked cars, down both sides of the road. Abruptly he turned away and, reaching for his phone again, he scrolled down to Cadi's number, his thumb hovering over the screen. It was several seconds before he pressed it.

‘Charles!' He couldn't make out from that one word what her mood was. Pleased to hear from him? Cross? He even wondered if she had been crying.

‘How are you, Cadi? Sorry I haven't been in touch. I was knee-deep in this bloody paperwork.'

‘That's OK. I've been busy. I've had visitations from the local vicar and from the police. It turns out they're an item.'

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

She laughed. ‘Just that. The vicar and the detective inspector. They've both been very kind and understanding and I feel between them they've got my back. You know Ifan is in hospital again?'

‘Yes. Let's hope they can keep him there.'

‘He's under arrest, so I suspect I'm safe for the time being.'

‘I hear the planning application has been put on hold,' Charles went on after a moment. ‘I only hope they don't stop the dig as well. As things are, Steve thinks they can get back on the meadow as soon they get the final OK from the police.'

‘That's good.' Cadi sounded more cheerful now. ‘Kate, that's the vicar, and I went over there and climbed over the gate so she could bless the site of the grave. It was really rather lovely. Oh, and Charles, she sensed the wormhole.'

‘Interesting.'

There was a short pause. ‘Will you have time to come back?' she asked at last.

‘Would you like me to?'

Another pause. ‘You know I would. But I feel so guilty about all the damage he did to your stuff. That was awful.'

‘Nothing the insurance couldn't fix.' He had turned back to the window, watching a car trying to back into an -impossibly short space. ‘I could come back tomorrow if that's OK with you?'

‘I'd like that.'

As he switched off the phone, he found he was smiling.

It was a favourite spot with Meryn, a place he came to meditate on the hillside behind his cottage, a place where he was confident no one could find him and yet, with its vast views across the Wye valley towards the Radnor Forest and beyond he could see anyone or anything coming from several miles away. He could feel her probing and that impressed him. She was powerful, of that he was sure, and very skilled.

Turning, he made his way into the natural shelter of the rocks, jumping down below the skyline to where a thorn tree, one of the few trees that grew on these upper slopes, angled over a shadowed corner to form a private space out of the wind. He thought of it as his chapel.

Sitting down on the carpet of dried lichen and drifted leaves, he closed his eyes and waited.

Branwen was watching. He intrigued her, though she was still deeply suspicious. She drifted closer. He was waiting for her, he and the woman from his own time, who in her turn was watching Elen. Could they be spies in the pay of Theodosius? She thought not. They came from a different time, but they were based in the land of the Silures; if they were paid by anyone it would be the sons of Macsen, Constantine and the elder Victor, following the daughter of the high king, testing her loyalty to her dead husband. And she was on her way home, to the palace where she was born, the palace that had been destroyed by the vicious men of Hibernia. Did this man and woman know that the palace had gone? Of course they knew. She had watched them walking in the horse paddock near the spot where the palace had stood. Branwen had seen a man die there. The faithful servant of the old king who had fled from the pirates across the grass and somehow vanished as they reached out to kill him. He had been buried by a young man and a girl and had lain undisturbed until his bones had been dug up and removed without ceremony. In their time there was no palace, no villa, not even a sign of ruins. The grass was sweet and rich, the hay mown, gathered and wrapped up in shiny black bundles.

She knew it was possible to move between worlds. Her teachers had mentioned it; the scholars of past ages had always known it; it was described in the stories of the bards of old, but no one had been able to tell her how. There in the horse paddock was a place where it could be done, and apparently it wasn't a case of knowing the right words, using the right formula of smoke and reflections; there was an actual corridor through which one could pass. She had walked down there in the dark of the evening, picking her way amongst the burnt ruins, trying to find the spot, but as yet it eluded her. Elen's little dog had found it easily, but dogs were clever when it came to scents. She had followed that dog's path later when she was alone, but there had been no trace of where it had gone. She had wondered if it would return but although she had noticed how all the horses avoided that area, however rich the grass, there had been no sign of little Gemma again.

She became aware gradually that the man, Meryn, had turned his attention in her direction. She saw his gaze sharpen and she shrank back, drawing a veil around herself. She feared him and his power almost as much as she was intrigued by his obvious knowledge.

‘I know you're there, Branwen,' he said softly. ‘We are on the same side, you and I, the side of the truth. The side of peace.'

She stepped back, wondering if he could see the grasses move under her feet. She could understand what he said though they spoke different languages.

‘You followed me here, and you know I mean no harm to any of our friends. We have no influence over Elen, we merely want to know the truth of her life, to ensure the poets tell the truth of her story. She holds the history of this land in her hands.'

And perhaps the mystery , he added under his breath.

A breeze swept over the mountainside, bringing with it the scent of gorse and wild thyme and there, always in the background, of sheep dung. She had gone. Had she heard his words of reassurance? He had no way of knowing. Perhaps she had already returned to Elen's side.