Czytaj książkę: «Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller»

1

The present day
Towards the end of September

‘Take care of Pepper! Tell him I love him!’

Sue handing her the keys. Laughing. Giving her a quick hug then running down the steep uneven stone steps to the gate and her waiting car. ‘You remember where everything is? Enjoy.’

The engine revs. She is gone.

Andy stands listening as the car takes the succession of Z bends down the steep single-track lane with its high banks and its wild hedges until the sound of the engine is swallowed by the silence. She is alone.

Slowly she turns and surveys her new home. A year, rent-free, in exchange for looking after an ancient house with mullioned windows and a moss-covered slate roof and an old and grumpy cat called Pepper. Overwhelmed with unexpected happiness she begins to smile.

‘He’s too old to go into a cattery, Andy. It would kill him. He needs to stay at home. He needs someone to feed him regularly and make sure the house is warm. That’s all. He won’t need anything else. He’s his own man. Well, his own cat! And he knows you.’ Sue’s voice was pleading, though she had already known that Andy would say yes.

Yes, the cat had met her. Once. For a couple of weeks when she and Graham had stayed here with Sue four summers ago. Andy’s smile faded at the memory, then it returned. In her head, for a moment, the house was full of the sound of Sue’s irrepressible laughter and Graham’s deep guffaws.

Exhausted after the long drive, she sat down on the cold stone slab of the top step and, hugging her knees, stared down over the almost vertical wild rock garden which fronted the ancient stone building, down towards the parking space, no more than a lay-by really, off the narrow lane, occupied now only by her old Passat. She could see the low sun glinting on its dark blue roof, almost hidden by the tangle of autumn flowers. The car contained almost all she owned in the whole world.

She hadn’t expected this – to be suddenly and irrevocably homeless.

‘It’s your fault he died!’ Rhona Wilson, Graham’s widow, shouted at Andy. ‘If he had never met you we would have been happy. He would be alive now.’ It took Rhona’s sister, Michelle, to drag her away as Andy stood there, numb with shock, too overwhelmed with grief to move.

‘Get out of our house!’ Michelle almost spat the words at Andy. ‘Go. Haven’t you done enough damage here, stealing Graham away from us? Killing him!’

Andy backed out of the room, turned and ran down the stairs. She shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew Rhona hated her. The woman had left Graham long before Andy had come into his life, run off with another man, left him as well and moved in with a second, followed that one to the States, come back with someone quite different, but never had she lost her sense of ownership. She didn’t want Graham, but she didn’t want anyone else to have him either and she obviously didn’t intend to let anyone else benefit, if that was the right word, from his death. In the past she had contented herself with the odd vitriolic phone call, occasional nasty letters and postcards, but in the past Graham had been there to protect Andy. Now he was gone and Rhona had found allies in her war of attrition.

Andy’s life had been idyllic. She had lived with Graham for nearly ten years in his beautiful detached house in the quiet tree-lined street in Kew. She wrote her column for the local paper. She illustrated his books, fulfilling her contractual duties as his co-author by providing exquisite, tiny watercolours of the exotic rare plants he wrote about. That was how she had met him; his publisher had contacted her with a suggestion that she might be the person to illustrate his next book. She was happy. He was happy. Then the cancer came, swift and deadly, diagnosed far too late.

Within days of his death his ex-wife, technically still his wife, and her family had made it clear that Andy had no place, no rights, no security, no home.

She didn’t even know they had keys to the house; they were in before she realised it. They tried to stop her taking even her own things, this vicious greedy cabal of women, his wife, her sister, her friends. They had supervised her packing, had checked everything as she threw her cases and bags into her car. They grabbed her sketchbooks and paintings. Graham had paid for them, they screeched, though technically they had not yet been paid for; she was contracted to his publisher. She didn’t argue. Didn’t fight back. Did not care. He was gone. She doubted she could live without him anyway.

But then the phone calls had started and the threats had continued even though Andy had left the house. Rhona was sure she had stolen things. But, if there had been theft it was not on Andy’s side. Graham’s will, and Andy had seen his will, leaving his house and garden and books and manuscripts to her, had disappeared. The solicitor, Rhona’s sister’s husband, as it happened, said he had no copy and knew nothing of it. Andy gave up. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, fight them.

To escape Rhona’s vicious calls she kept her phone switched off. She slept on sofas and floors and drank a great deal of wine with her mother and her wonderful loyal friends as she tried to come to terms with the fact that she had no home, very little money, no future and, it seemed, no past. Without her friends to steady her, replace the rock which had been Graham, she would have been a wreck, if she had survived at all.

Then Sue had phoned. She had heard what had happened on the grapevine. ‘I’m not sure if this would be a port in a storm, Andy. If you like the idea it would surely help me. I planned this trip to Australia to go to my brother’s wedding and then spend time visiting the folks, blithely assuming I could get a tenant in time. I’d much rather it was you than a stranger, and Rhona will never find you in Wales.’

And so, here she was. Rubbing her face wearily Andy stood up, conscious of the roar of water from the brook that ran along the edge of the garden, plunging over rocks and between deep overhanging banks thick with moss and fern, under the bridge in the lane and on down towards the valley.

The house, with its wonderful romantic name of Sleeper’s Castle, was in the foothills of the Black Mountains, a few miles from the nearest town. The countryside was huge and empty and the contours on the map had been, as she reminded herself on her way here, suspiciously close to each other, a clue to the presence of steep hills and deep secluded valleys. Sue called it her retreat. She had no neighbours. None close by, anyway.

Andy turned her back on the endless view of misty hills and the turbulent sky and she made her way towards the front door, past the rough wooden bench which stood with its back to the stone wall, facing the view.

Sleeper’s Castle was not, never had been, a castle, but it had once been a much bigger house. The name Sleeper’s, Sue had told her vaguely, came from something in Welsh. It didn’t matter. It was perfect. Wild, unspoilt, magical, built on the eastern fringe of the Black Mountains, the remote, mysterious range at the north-easternmost end of the Brecon Beacons National Park, on the Welsh side of the border between England and Wales. Andy took a deep breath of the soft sweet upland air and infinitesimally, without her noticing, the first of her cares began gently to drop away.

Nowadays the downstairs of the house comprised only four rooms, the largest by far, which had once been the medieval hall, paying lip service to its duties now as a sitting/living room only by the presence of an enormous baggy inelegant sofa and a couple of old, all-enveloping, velvet-covered armchairs. Smothered with an array of multi-coloured rugs they had been arranged in a semicircle around a huge open fireplace built of ancient stone, topped by a bressummer beam, split and scorched from countless roaring fires over many centuries. At the moment the fireplace was empty and swept clean of ash but the sweet smell of woodsmoke still clung in the corners of the room and hung about the beams. The rest of the room, with its oak table, bureau bookcase, ancient kneehole desk and scattered multi-dimensional chairs served Sue as a potting-shed-cum-office. Andy gave a wry smile. She had lived with a plantsman for years, but never once had he allowed his garden to encroach on the elegance of his home. His wellies – and hers – stayed firmly in the utility room at the back of the house. Where hers still were, she realised with a pang of misery. Here, judging by the state of the threadbare rug, Sue still wore hers indoors. The fact that there was a mirror on the wall was somehow counter-intuitive.

Andy caught sight of herself and briefly she stood still, staring. Her shoulder-length wild curly light brown hair stood out round her head in a tangled mass, her eyes, grey and usually clear and expressive, looked sore and reddened with exhaustion and misery. Her face, which Graham used to describe as beautiful, was drawn and sad. She was not a pretty sight. She stepped back with a grimace, turned her back on the mirror and with a last, affectionate glance round the room made her way through to the kitchen.

It took several seconds to absorb the shock of what she saw there. When she and Graham had stayed with Sue four years ago the kitchen had more or less matched the living room. Used. Scruffy. Barely, to be honest, even remotely hygienic. She remembered the ever-watchful cat strolling along the worktop to lick the butter when someone left the top off the dish, and Sue laughing at Andy’s consternation when the same dish turned up on the table at lunch. But now it had all changed. Sue’s kitchen had transformed, to Andy’s astonishment and disbelief, into the epitome of every woman’s dream. There was a butler’s sink with brass taps, a large scrubbed refectory table and, joy of joys, an Aga like the one she and Graham had had in his kitchen in Kew, with next to it, a rocking chair, the only concession to comfort in the room and on the chair a large tabby cat.

‘Hello, Pepper,’ she said. Pepper, short for Culpepper, the herbalist.

He narrowed his eyes briefly then closed them, his expression bored but proprietorial. She got the message at once. His chair, his kitchen, his Aga.

She smiled as she walked slowly round the table, admiring every detail. On the dresser were two bottles of Merlot with a note.

To be taken x 2 daily with food. Enjoy. Sue xxxxx

It took several trips to drag her belongings up the steep steps from the car. Rhona’s family had not been interested in her clothes, or the books she had time to rescue or, in the end, most of her painting gear. She had little jewellery, but what there was – seeing which way the wind was blowing – she had hidden in a flower pot, to be tipped later straight into the boot of her car, and after that into a drawer in her mother’s house. Only two or three of those pretty things had been gifts from Graham; he didn’t see the point of jewellery when a live flower tucked into Andy’s hair was so much more perfect. The rest of the rings and bangles had come from her family, but she doubted the Wilson clique would listen and believe her.

‘Go to the police!’ her friends had said, or ‘For God’s sake find a solicitor,’ but she had shrugged and shaken her head and now, please God, hidden away here in the Welsh borders she would at last be free of Rhona and her family. Only three people knew where she was and they had sworn to keep her secret: her mother, obviously, and two of the friends who had come to her rescue, James Allardyce, a former university pal of Graham’s, and his wife, her former school friend, Hilary, to whom Andy had introduced him. Oh, and her father, but he lived far away in Northumberland.

The thought of her mother and father sent her reaching into her pocket for her mobile but then she pushed it back. She was on her own. This was her new life. She had promised the others she would stay in touch, but she was not going to ring the second she got here. She had to establish herself, make herself at home and somehow retrieve her confidence and her sense of identity. The unaccustomed and overwhelming wave of happiness and relief that had swept over her on her arrival had been a first step in the right direction.

Andy’s full name was Miranda Annabel Dysart. Don’t Go out of Sight, Miranda had apparently been the title of one of her grandmother, Petra’s, favourite books and when her mother, Nina, was a child, Petra had read it to her repeatedly. Nina had in turn read it to her daughter after saddling her with the name of the heroine. Andy couldn’t remember the story at all – maybe she had blocked it, but the name Miranda had left her with a sense of overwhelming melancholy. Not a good reason to endear it to her. Someone at school had named her Andy (after experimenting with Mandy and, even more unfortunately, Randy) and it stuck. She liked it. And so did her father. It was a neutral name, slightly ambiguous, rugged. Strong. It distracted people from the fact that her initials spelt MAD, something which her scatty parents had not considered at her christening but which mercifully she had learned to enjoy.

She couldn’t remember either the time her parents had split up. It had been while she was very small and they seemed to have managed it without rancour or complications. They had remained friends as far as she, their only child, could tell. Her mother lived in Sussex, her father, long ago remarried and father to three more children, had settled in Northumberland. Perhaps the distance between the two counties made it easier for them.

The knock at the back door took her by surprise. She had just poured herself a glass of wine as prescribed and was wandering round the kitchen, finding her way around, touching things lightly, proprietorially, opening and shutting drawers, shuffling through the books on the dresser – all cookery or herbs – when the sound broke the intense silence of the house.

Nervously she glanced at the cat. He hadn’t moved. If this was an unexpected or threatening sound surely, like her mother’s cat, he would have bolted off upstairs to hide. She set down the glass and went to the door.

The woman on the step was of middle height, slim, middle-aged, she guessed, with a rugged wind-burned complexion and greying hair. She was wearing a heavy pullover against the autumn chill and muddy rubber boots with shabby cords. She stared at Andy in surprise. ‘Sue around?’

‘She left for the airport a couple of hours ago. I’m sorry.’

The woman sighed.‘Ah, I saw her car wasn’t there. Australia, right? Hell and damnation! I hoped she wasn’t going for a while yet.’ She half turned away, staring up at the racing clouds as though seeking inspiration, then turned back. ‘I don’t suppose she left anything for me, did she?’

‘You being …?’ Andy let the question hang.

For the first time her visitor smiled. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Sian. Sian Griffiths.’ In spite of the Welsh name her accent was English. She paused as though expecting the name to mean something. ‘I live over in Cusop Dingle.’

‘Ah?’

Cusop Dingle, Andy remembered vaguely from their holiday, was a narrow, thickly wooded valley to the east of the range of hills where Sleeper’s Castle nestled, separated from it by a high ridge and then a vertiginous plunge down to a fast-running brook. It was on the outskirts of the nearest town, Hay-on-Wye, and seemed to consist of a long winding country road, heading up towards the open hillside and lined with houses, a few of them large, secluded behind high hedges and ancient trees. They had visited someone there with Sue on that wonderful summer holiday, but not, as far as she could remember, this woman.

‘Come in.’ Introducing herself, Andy held the door open.

Kicking off her boots and leaving them outside, Sian accepted a glass of wine and pulled up a chair at the table.

‘I’d better explain,’ Andy said, reassured that Pepper seemed to know her visitor and had still not moved from his chair. ‘This was a last-minute piece of serendipity. As you probably know, Sue hadn’t found a tenant and was beginning to think she would have to cancel her trip, and I was in need of a roof. I’m self-employed with no immediate ties …’ Her voice wavered but she managed to go on. Just give enough information to explain her presence here, no more. ‘We made a lightning decision. I didn’t give myself time to think.’

‘Brave.’

Now she was inside and sitting opposite her, Andy could see that the woman was probably in her mid to late fifties, older than she had first thought. Her face was weathered with deep laughter lines at the corners of her eyes, eyes that were bright Siamese-cat blue. ‘I’ll leave you my phone number,’ she said. ‘If you need anything, you have only to ring. This house is pretty isolated if you’re on your own. Your nearest shops and signs of civilisation are in Hay, did she tell you? You’ll get most things you need there.’

‘I’m looking forward to exploring.’ Andy took a sip of wine. ‘I have been here before, for a holiday. But it was in the summer.’

Andy had a momentary flashback to those warm, seemingly endless days strolling on the hills and mountains, happy evenings in local pubs, excursions down into the local market town of Hay, attractive, compact, famous for its bookshops and its castle and of course for the majestic, beautiful River Wye which cradled it in a constantly changing backdrop. It had been a glorious summer.

Now it was late September, with winter already a hint in the air, and she was on her own. She didn’t say it out loud. It made her sound pathetic and needy, which she was not. She glanced towards the window where high clouds were streaming across the sky. ‘What was it Sue was going to leave for you? Maybe it’s here and she forgot to tell me.’

‘Maybe.’ Leaning back in the chair, Sian was watching Andy with an interested, narrowed gaze. ‘Is she still planning to stay away for a year? She was afraid she would have to cut the visit short.’

‘A year is what she told me,’ Andy agreed. ‘I hope Pepper can cope with that.’

Sian smiled. ‘I’m sure he can. She had two main concerns when she was planning this trip: Pepper and her car. Last I heard, the idea was that she would leave the car with a friend who lives down south. He was going to pick it up from Heathrow and take care of it for her. And you have clearly solved the Pepper problem.’

Andy smiled as a spatter of rain rattled against the window. ‘So no worries then. I can just imagine her saying those words! She was gone the second I arrived. I think she had more or less resigned herself to changing her plans then someone told her I might be in the market for a new home urgently, she rang and we settled it then and there. She got a cancellation on a flight. There was virtually no time to discuss anything.’

‘The gods were with you both.’ Sian gave a thoughtful smile. ‘There are very few people she would entrust Pepper to.’

They both looked at him. As if overwhelmed by the unexpected attention he stood up, stretched and jumped off his chair. He walked to the door and with great dignity pushed out through the cat flap. ‘I hope she’s left food and instructions for feeding him,’ Andy said. ‘We didn’t even have time to talk about that. It took longer than I remembered driving here, so I was very late. She was terrified of missing the plane.’

‘I’m sure she made it.’ Sian smiled again. She stood up, walked over to the dresser and pulled open one of the drawers. Inside were boxes of tuna and rabbit biscuits, little trays of gourmet cat food and a couple of cartons of cat milk.

‘So Pepper is catered for.’ Andy was relieved.

‘And here are your instructions.’ Sian had found a piece of paper on the worktop. Pepper, it said. Breakfast, lunch and supper. ‘Quite the spoiled brat, our Culpepper.’

Andy took the paper, grateful that her visitor seemed to know her way round. ‘This kitchen has changed so much since I was here last. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.’

Sian gave a snort of laughter. ‘She was left some money by an ancient relative and she couldn’t decide what to spend it on. Sue is one of those incredible people who has everything she wants in life. Her herbs are her life. She is extraordinarily self-contained. I think she consulted Pepper, who decided an upgrade of kitchen would be good.’

‘I can believe that.’

‘And you’re not regretting coming up here, now you’ve had time to reconsider your impulsive decision?’

Andy shook her head. ‘Hardly. I’ve barely been here a few hours.’

‘Not everyone is as independent as Sue.’ Sian hesitated. ‘Old houses can be a bit spooky.’