do you do it?’ she asked after yet another greeting by animals who seemed to think of him as an old friend.
He laughed. ‘Ignore them; don’t show you are afraid. Greet them when they come to you as you would a friend. Then ignore them again. They must learn you are not creeping into their house. You are here by right, to greet their masters, and you greet them as well.’ He fondled the ears of the huge wolfhound which was standing in front of him. Catrin smiled. She was not sure it was quite that easy, but she was prepared to try.
As they moved north up the March her dreams had moved with her. At night as she climbed into yet another strange bed under yet another unfamiliar roof she slipped almost gratefully into the darkness, aware that she would return in her dreams to Sleeper’s Castle. But once there her dreams were not always kind. Insistently, again and again she found she could hear the distant call of the drums, the blast of war trumpets and the scream of horses. The ground would shake beneath heavy hooves and in her sleep she would toss and turn and whimper in the dark, and she would wake and sit up, and gather her cloak around her shoulders and try to still the anxious thudding of her heart.
It was not meant to happen. On a well-organised journey it would not have done so, but one night in June they found themselves too far from their destination as night fell and Edmund insisted that, rather than travel on in the darkness, luminous as it was, they find a sheltered spot to stop. The high moorland was deserted; with light still persisting in the north-west as he tethered the three animals, Edmund removed their saddles and the packs and lit a fire in the shelter of a steep gulley.
Catrin glanced around nervously. ‘Are you sure we will be safe?’
‘As sure as I can be.’ Edmund watched as Dafydd wandered off a little way, trying to ease the stiffness in his bones. Even here, in the dark, they saw him reach for the tightly stoppered inkhorn and quill at his belt and scribble something on the scrap of parchment he pulled from his pouch. ‘Better this than have a horse trip or your father fall from his saddle with exhaustion. We’ll move on early in the morning. Come, sit here.’ He patted the ground near him. ‘I have oatcakes and cheese enough for us all and we have warm cloaks. We’ll be fine.’
Hesitantly Catrin lowered herself onto a flat rock near him and watched as he coaxed a fire into life. He produced the food and horn mugs from one of the saddlebags.
Catrin smiled. ‘Do you always travel prepared for every eventuality?’
He nodded. ‘On a journey like this it is sensible. See, I have put the saddles here in the shelter of the rocks. You and your father can lean against them to sleep and be reasonably comfortable. I have ale which we can mull if you wish.’ He had unpacked a leather flask.
The horses were already grazing the short sweet mountain grass; as it grew darker Catrin looked round for her father. ‘Where is he?’ she cried. He had been sitting some distance from them, squinting down at his notes in the firelight, but now as the moon rose slowly on the horizon she realised he had disappeared.
Edmund scrambled to his feet. ‘You stay here. Don’t move. I will go and find him.’
She peered after him into the darkness, relieved as the moon rose higher to see the soft light flood the broad valley below. There was no sign of anything moving, but she was still nervous. They shouldn’t have stopped. It would have been safer to continue to their next destination; the moonlight would have kept the trackways safe, safer than this, anyway, camped here in the mountains with her father missing. She stood up and stepped away from the fire, scanning the countryside. There were great black pools of darkness where the moonlight couldn’t reach, shadows, ravines, deep hiding places behind rocky outcrops. In the distance she heard the lonely whistle of peewits from the high moors and she shivered. There was no sign of Edmund, no sound at all apart from the birds. She glanced at the animals. If there were anyone out there, close at hand, they would hear. In Elfael they had heard wolves in the distance once. They were relaxed, happy, nibbling the grass. Then as she watched them all three stopped eating and raised their heads, ears pricked as they looked down towards the shoulder of the hill where the track disappeared into the deep shadow. Catrin took a step backwards and pulled her cloak more tightly round her shoulders, straining her eyes to see what it was the horses had heard, then she saw two figures appear in the distance. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Her father was not happy. ‘I needed to be alone,’ he grumbled as Edmund handed him a mug of ale. ‘I cannot think, always in company! Either we sit in busy halls or I am with you two and your endless chatter, chatter, chatter!’
Edmund and Catrin glanced at each other, both aware that they never chattered, that there was more often than not an uneasy silence between them as they traversed the lonely roads. Edmund winked at her and Catrin found herself responding with a smile. ‘I am sorry, Tad, but you should have told us, then we wouldn’t have worried. I thought you might have been lost in the dark.’
Dafydd threw himself down on the ground beside her and accepted a hunk of cheese and an oatcake from Edmund, who then went and sat at a distance away from them, near the horses, which had resumed grazing. The moon faded into darkness behind a wall of cloud and the only light came now from the embers of the fire. Edmund did not attempt to revive it.
‘Edmund and I will not say a single word now, so you can think in peace,’ Catrin said after a long pause. ‘Goodnight, Tad.’
Her father grunted. He hunched himself deeper into his cloak and sat with his back to her.
It was several hours later when Catrin awoke. The moon had moved across the sky and there was a line of light on the eastern horizon. The fire, she realised, was burning again and a hunched figure sat beside it. She was stiff and cold and the ground felt very hard as slowly she sat up and dragged herself to her feet. She went across and knelt near the warmth, holding out her hands.
‘Did I wake you?’ Edmund was huddled in a horse blanket, sitting cross-legged, his eyes on the flames.
‘I’m glad you did. I am frozen.’ They were both speaking quietly. The hunched figure of Dafydd lay with his back to them without moving.
‘It will soon be light,’ Edmund went on. ‘Then we can get back on the road.’
‘Are you sorry you agreed to come with us?’ Catrin asked after a short silence.
‘No.’ There was a short pause. ‘I am enjoying it.’
‘Really? Two mad poets with no sense of time or direction!’
He laughed softly. ‘Two talented people who need me to set them right. But it was no one’s fault we were delayed yesterday. The road was hard and steep and the horses are tired. If we rest for a while at our next stop we will be back on schedule. Your father wants to travel all the way up the March beyond Oswestry and Chirk.’ He glanced up at her. ‘Has he mentioned to you that he wants to go so far?’
Catrin nodded. ‘We always go that far. We usually visit the same people each year, so he doesn’t have to tell me. One of his chief patrons is the Lord of Glyndŵr, whose lands lie in that direction. His family have been friends to us and beg us to return each time we go and see them.’ She smiled. ‘This is a good way of life.’
‘In spite of the trouble between Wales and England?’ He hugged his knees, staring into the smouldering ashes.
‘There is always unrest somewhere. We manage to avoid it.’
She heard him sigh. He rested his forehead on his knees. ‘Have you heard different?’ she asked after a moment.
