The Brothers of Gwynedd by Edith Pargeter Page A

latch of the high chamber, to be sure if they breathed and lived. For sleep and silence draw very close to death.
      There was a wick burning in a dish of fat, paling now that a little light came in from the sky. My mother lay open-eyed, high on the pillows, her face turned towards me as though she had known before ever I touched the latch that I was coming. She held that great lady cradled asleep on her breast like a child, and over the greying head she motioned to me, quite gently, to go back and close the door. And so I did, and in a few moments she came out to me.
      At this time I was already taller than she, but she was so slender and straight that she had a way of towering, not rigidly or proudly, but like a silver birch tree standing alone. She had only a long white shift on her, and her arms were bare, and all her long, fair hair streamed down over her shoulders, and hung to her waist. In this harsh frost, now twelve days old, she seemed to feel no chill. And I have said she was beautiful, and strange.
      "Make no sound," she said in a whisper, "but let her sleep, she has great need. Samson, I am not easy, I cannot see clear. Somewhere there is a death."
      Daily there is a death waiting for someone, for one who departs and others who remain to mourn. But she looked at me with those eyes that missed what others see and saw what others miss, and I knew that this was very near.
      I was afraid, for I understood nothing, though something I did suspect. I asked her: "Mother, what must I do?"
      "Take your cloak," she said, very low, and peering before her with eyes fixed as it were on a great distance, "and go and look if there is anyone stirring about the keep, or under Lord Griffith's windows."
      So I wrapped my cloak about me, and crept out shivering into the icy morning, where the light as yet was barely grey, though very clear, and still full of fading stars. It was too early for anyone to be abroad but the watch, and I knew their rounds, even if they kept to them strictly, and on such mornings I had known them none too scrupulous about patrolling every corner, preferring the warmth of the guardrooms. I went softly, keeping under the walls of the houses, and left their shelter only when I must. I could see the great, square hulk of the tower outlined clear but pale against the sky, and beyond it, across the open ground, the tooth-edged summit of the curtain wall, and the ruled line of the guard-walk below its crest. All the grass was thick and creaking with rime, the bushes that stood silent and motionless in the stillness rang like bells when I brushed too close, and shed great fronds of feathery ice on my hose and shoes. I drew closer, circling the rim of the ditch and avoiding the main face where the great doorway was, and the ditch was spanned. There was such a silence and stillness that I should have heard if another foot had stirred in the crisp snow, but there was nothing to hear. I was the only creature abroad.
      The Lord Griffith's apartment was very high at the rear part of the keep, with two small windows at the base of one of the corner turrets. I made my way round by the rim of the ditch, which was deep and wide, and for the most part kept clear of briars and bushes. Everything was quiet and nothing strange, until I came under the part where his dwelling was, and looked up at those two round-beaded windows, set deep in the stone. And hanging from the ledge of one of them I saw a dangling line of knotted cloth, no more than two or three yards long, that seemed to end in a fringe of torn threads, light enough to stir in the high air while the coil above hung still. My eyes were young and sharp, and this frayed material I knew for a piece of brocaded tapestry such as might furnish the covering of a bed, or wall-hangings.
      Then, halfway to understanding, I looked below, and at first saw nothing stranger than a stony outcrop breaking the level of the ditch's grassy bottom, under the