Candlenight by Phil Rickman

district.
        "We were going to drive
out there this weekend," Giles was saying. "Make a few political
contacts and have a little drool over our cottage at the same time. Won't be
ours for a couple of months yet—legal red-tape—but it's a wonderful feeling,
just standing in the lane gazing at it through the trees, making plans."
        Berry noticed the grey circles
under Giles's eyes had shrunk and his freckles were aglow.
        Look,
you put the arm on young Giles .
        "Only we can't go because
Claire's saddled with this job for the Observer in East Anglia—"
        "Too bad." Berry
said.
        "Unless . . . Hey look. Berry,
what are you doing next weekend?"
        Playing with Miranda.
"Nothing fixed," Berry said.
        "Feel like taking a drive
out there?"
        "To Wales?" She'll
kill me, he thought.
        "You could get it on exes,
surely? Bit of research?"
        "Well, I—"
        "And you could come and
see our cottage, see Y Groes—and then you'd realise why we're so excited about
it.
        Persuade him to get the bloody place sold.
        "Come on. Berry, WW be
fun."
        Not meant to be there, the English .
        "What do you say?"
        Stop him. I mean it .
        "Yeah, OK," Berry
said. "Why not?"

Chapter XII
     
    WALES
     
    "Miss Sion!'
        Bethan turned at the school
door, the key in her hand.
    "You decided you'd better come
back then, did you Sali?"
        She was small for her age, Sali
Dafis, and looked more fragile than other members of her family. Her father, Dilwyn,
and her nain had coal-black hair, but
Sali's was wispy brown. A legacy from her mother, the secretary from Essex whom
Dilwyn had met on holiday at Butlins, Pwllheli.
        "It's a bit late now,
though, isn't it?" Bethan said. "And I'm not Miss Sion any more,
remember?"
        They were alone in the yard. It
was a gloomy afternoon now. Overcast. A reminder of how rapidly the days were shortening.
Locking the school door. Bethan had heard a child's shoes tripping across the
yard towards her and wondered if it would be Sali.
        "See me after school,
please," she'd finally written in the exercise book, but Sali had gone off
with the others half an hour ago. Now she was back, alone. An indication that
she didn't want her friends to know she was seeing the teacher.
        "But Miss Sion, your
husband is dead."
        Bethan breathed in sharply, as
if stabbed. Children could be vicious.
        "Mrs. McQueen, if you
don't mind. I won't tell you again. We don't go back to our old names just
because—" Bethan had a thought. "Who told you to start calling me
Miss Sion again?'
        Sali Dafis looked at her feet
and said nothing.
        "Never mind," Bethan
said. "I think I can guess. Look, why don't we talk to each other
tomorrow. We don't want your nain wondering where you are." Or the old hag will put a curse on me, she
thought, then decided that wasn't funny.
        Sali looked up at Bethan very
solemnly and seemed about to say something.
        "Well?"
        "Mrs. McQueen." said
Sali innocently, "would you like to see a dead body?"
        Bethan put the key in her bag
and snapped it shut. "All right, we'd better have our talk right now. You
wait there while I put my things in the car, then we'll go for a walk."
        She was definitely not in the
mood for this.
     
    They followed the river from the rear of the school towards the oak
woods, most of which were coppiced by Meirion, the forester whose father had
done it before him. It was like entering a huge, entimbered medieval cathedral.
Awesome in the right light, but dim and heavy now, the trees immense and
gnarled, prickly bushes in the shade of some of them. The river entered the
woods and then went off on its own. away from the path.
        "So whose was the dead
body—the one you thought I might like to see?"
        Bethan knew very well that
nobody had died in the village recently, except for the antiquarian at the