Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller

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.’

‘It’s certainly atmospheric,’ Andy reached for her glass and took a sip.

‘And utterly beautiful.’

‘But you find it spooky?’

‘Sorry, that was a silly thing to say. I meant, it’s a bit isolated if you’re on your own. No, I don’t think it’s spooky. If there ever was a ghost here I think it would have been far more afraid of Sue than she would be of it. She would swear roundly in Australian and tell it where to go.’ Sian laughed again and ran her finger round the rim of her glass. ‘So, do you believe in them?’ The question was almost too casual.

‘Ghosts?’ Andy pulled a noncommittal face. ‘Actually, I made a bit of a study of them once.’

Once. She caught herself using the word with something like shock. Before Graham. So much that she had once thought important in her life had been before Graham. Their life together had absorbed her totally, taken up every second, monopolised her existence. She hadn’t been aware of how much. For the first time since his death she realised that in every sense she was free now. Was she frightened or exhilarated by the thought? She wasn’t entirely sure.

Sian was still studying her and Andy looked away, embarrassed that her face had betrayed too much. ‘One of those things one pursues frenziedly in one’s youth and then life and perhaps a certain cynicism kick in and the books get put away.’ She gave a rueful smile.

Ghosts had been her father’s passion and she had grown up enjoying his stories, his theories, the frissons they had shared on ghost-hunting trips. She had never been quite sure whether she believed in them herself, but the study of phenomena of a ghostly kind had absorbed her for a long time. Those books had been left with her mother. Graham had not liked ghosts. They gave him the creeps and therefore could not be discussed even in the abstract. Ghosts and meditation and psychology and anything he considered even remotely out of the ordinary on the paranormal scale of things had been out of bounds.

Sian nodded sagely. ‘It’s sad how one’s early enthusiasms wane.’ She changed the subject abruptly. ‘That’s Sue’s strength and blessing. She has retained her childlike passion for her herbalism.’

That was how Andy and Sue had met originally. Sue was an old friend of Graham’s, a plant contact and fellow author. Andy and she had liked each other instantly and become great friends. Although they had only ventured here, to Wales, once, Sue used to stay with them whenever she was forced to visit London and they had exchanged many long phone calls over the years.

Andy gave a wistful smile. ‘I’m surprised she can bear to leave her garden. Especially to me. I paint flowers, I don’t grow them.’

‘You won’t have to. She has someone to help her; I would imagine he will still be coming?’ Sian glanced up at her again. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘No.’ Andy felt ridiculously cross. She had thought she would be here alone; safe. Unbothered.

‘Maybe I got it wrong.’ Sian was backtracking hastily again. She seemed to be able to read Andy’s every thought.

‘No. I hope she has. I am not fit to be trusted with her garden. When the subject came up she just said it could look after itself for a while.’ It was Andy’s turn to study her visitor’s face. ‘Was it a herbal potion she was making for you?’

‘For my dogs.’

‘If I find anything, I’ll let you know.’

Sian seemed to take the words as a dismissal. Draining her glass, she stood up. ‘I should be on my way. It will start getting dark soon and I’ve a long walk home.’

Andy watched from the window as the woman ran down the steps and out of sight. The rain shower was over as soon as it had come. Sian’s dogs, she saw, had been waiting for her outside, a border collie and a retriever. She wondered what Culpepper made of them.

Andy decided against taking over Sue’s bedroom even though it had obviously been made ready for her. She and Graham had shared that room on their holiday and she didn’t think she could bear to sleep there again, alone. A small neat indentation on the counterpane showed where the cat had made himself comfortable earlier in the day, unaware that his beloved Sue was about to abandon him for a whole year. Instead she chose one of the spare rooms. It was in the oldest part of the house, dark with ancient beams, its window mullioned in grey stone, facing across the valley where the sun was setting into the mist. There was a brightly coloured Welsh blanket on the bed and a landscape on the wall of the hills she could see from the window, the racing shadows picked out in vermilion and ochre and violet. She looked round the room with a sense which she realised after a moment was a feeling of coming home. The room felt relaxed and safe; it smelt of wood and something indefinable – herbs and polish and maybe, a little, of dust. Circling once more, and giving a final glance out of the window, she laid her hand on one of the crooked beams in the corner, then she trailed her fingers across the ancient stones of the wall. What memories they must hold.

It took for ever to lug her cases and boxes upstairs and spread some of her belongings on the chest and along the shelves. Finally she threw her jacket on the chair, an almost symbolic gesture to take possession of the room before she went back downstairs, hungry for the first time in ages. Tomorrow she would drive down to Hay and stock up the fridge. For now Sue had left her milk and bread and a pasty with salad. Outside it was dark. She drew the curtains and turned on the light. Behind her the cat flap opened and closed with a swish and a click as Pepper pushed his way through and leapt onto his chair. He sat and gazed at her. She felt that mentally at least he was tapping his wristwatch to make sure she knew that the hour for supper was approaching. She smiled at him broadly. ‘I think we’re going to get on fine, Culpepper, my friend. But if I make mistakes, you will have to tell me.’

On her past experience with cats she was sure he would.

She tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Climbing out of bed she pushed open the small casement in the mullioned window. Through it she could hear the sound of the brook hurtling over the rocky ledges at the side of the house and cascading down towards the road. Staring out into the dark she was very aware of how black the night was. She was used to streetlights and the headlights of cars probing through the curtains and crossing the walls of the bedroom she’d shared with Graham.

She had left her door open a crack so that Pepper could come and sleep on her bed if he felt so inclined, but when she turned off the kitchen light he had stayed where he was on the chair beside the Aga. If she had been at home in Kew she would have crept out of bed, careful not to wake Graham and gone out into the garden. She could do that now but she felt strangely intimidated at the idea. The garden here was huge and full of noise and wind and water; she hadn’t got her bearings there yet.

Climbing back into bed she sat, propped against her pillows, her hands clasped around her knees, gazing into the darkness. In her mind she let herself travel back to Kew. She knew she shouldn’t. She should put Kew behind her, but she couldn’t stop herself. She pictured herself opening the French door which led from the kitchen and walking down the short flight of wrought-iron steps onto the decking of the terrace where they so often used to sit in the evenings or at lunchtime to drink wine and eat and talk and laugh.

The garden below the terrace had a pale reflected light from the lamppost in the road, diffused through the branches of the trees. It smelt fresh and cool and it was very still. In her imagination she stood for a long time looking round, listening. In the distance she could hear the faint drone of traffic on the nearby A307 and, once, the closer sound of a car engine as it turned into their road. It stopped nearby and after a minute a door slammed. She took a step or two onto the lawn, which was wet with icy dew. It soaked into her shoes. She was aware, as she always was at night, of how close Kew Gardens was, dark and deserted behind its high walls. From there sometimes she could hear the call of owls.

Behind her a light came on in the house. It was in one of the spare rooms on the first floor. She watched as the curtain twitched and moved and the silhouette of a head and shoulders appeared peering down into the garden. How strange. Was Rhona living there? She shivered and in her imagination she turned away and strolled towards the high wall at the back of the garden where a collection of shrubs and climbers wove their magic of autumn colour, leached to silver by the lamplight.

She heard the window behind her rattle upwards. ‘Who’s there?’ Rhona’s voice echoed into the silence. ‘I can see you!’

The vision vanished and abruptly Andy opened her eyes. Her memories had been interrupted and spoilt by the intrusion of Rhona’s harsh voice; Rhona had no place in her daydreams, Rhona whom she had only ever met once before that awful day when she had walked into Andy’s life and blown what was left of her composure apart. She was someone best forgotten as soon as possible.

Andy grabbed her dressing gown and made her way downstairs and into the kitchen. The rocking chair was empty; there was no sign of Pepper. Pulling the back door open she overcame her misgivings and stepped outside. The contrast to the silent enclosure in the moonlight in Kew could not have been more marked. This garden was full of noise; the rustle and clatter of autumn leaves, the howl of the wind and always, above all else, the sound of rushing, thundering water. Shivering she stepped away from the comparative shelter of the back door and felt the push of the wind, the furious tug at her hair as she turned to face it. It was exhilarating, elemental, exciting. Deep inside herself she felt something stir, something that in her ordered, neat and organised life with Graham had not surfaced for a long time. It was a sense of freedom.

When, breathless and cold, she let herself back into the kitchen she found herself laughing. There was still no sign of Pepper. Well, he could look after himself. She put on the kettle and made herself some tea, leaning against the Aga rail as she sipped from the mug, cupping her hands around it for warmth.

She did not sense the silent figure in the corner of the room, watching her from the shadows, the figure which between one breath and the next had faded into nothing.

2

March 1400

The door banged shut in the wind, the latch rattling with the force of it, the draught sending up showers of sparks in the hearth. ‘I made sure Betsi had locked up the hens.’ Catrin kicked off her pattens, pulled off her shawl and hung it on the back of the door. She was a delicately built young woman with fine attractive features and grey-green eyes. Her hair, swathed in its linen coif, was rich chestnut. ‘Is my tad still working?’

‘He’s not come out of that room all day.’ Joan was bending over the pot hanging from the trivet over the fire, her face red from the heat. Sturdily built with muscular arms, she padded her hands against the hot metal of the handle with a cloth and unhooked the pot, thumping it down on the table. ‘Did she find any eggs?’

‘Two.’ Catrin produced them from her basket and set them carefully in the wooden bowl on the table. ‘I’ll go and see if he’ll come and eat. He’ll get ill if he goes on like this.’ Another gust of wind shook the house and both women looked towards the window. Sleeper’s Castle stood full square and solid on its rocky perch beside the brook but when the wind roared up the cwm like this from the north there was nowhere to hide. The shutters were rattling ominously. Only weeks before one had torn free and gone hurtling off into the brook. It had been days before they could find one of the men from the farmstead down the valley willing to come up and fasten it back into place. She hated this time of year. Even the patches of snowdrops growing in the lee of the stone walls could not make up for the wild gales screaming over the mountains and the patches of snow still lying on the high scree. There were no real signs yet of spring; the deep impenetrable cold of winter was still implacable within the stone of the house.

Crossing the large empty hall and pushing the door open, Catrin peered into the shadows of her father’s study. The candles on his desk guttered and spat throwing shadowed caricatures of his hunched figure over the walls. ‘Go away!’ He did not look up. His hand was racing across the page, the pen nib spluttering as he wrote and crossed out and wrote again. ‘I need more ink,’ he added.

Catrin sighed. ‘I’ll fetch it from the stillroom. Please, could you not stop to take some pottage? Joan has made your favourite.’

He did not bother to answer. She turned away. At the door she hesitated and looked back. He was seated on a high stool in front of his writing slope, bent low over his work, his weary figure illuminated into flickering highlights by the candles. He had a thin ascetic face with dark lively eyes, narrowed now with exhaustion and eyestrain. His hair was white, long and tangled. ‘What is it, Tad?’ Again he was furiously scratching out with his knife the words he had just written, almost tearing the thin parchment in his agitation. He ignored her. With a sigh she left him.

Joan glanced at her. ‘Is he still working?’

‘And still irritable. I need to fetch him more ink.’

They called it the stillroom, but it was really the buttery. That and the pantry led off one side of the hall, the main living space of the house, while her parlour and her father’s study led off the other. The kitchen had originally been built separately, behind the house, but now it was joined into the main fabric of the building as a solid extension with behind it the bakehouse with its stone oven. Beyond it lay the high castellated wall of the yard.

Drawing her cloak around her against the cold, Catrin went into the buttery to find the ink. Besides overseeing the storage of their ale and beer and cider casks, she made her simples and receipts and remedies in this room. They were a small household; she and her father with their cook housekeeper Joan, Betsi the maid of all work and Peter the outside boy and scullion. Joan did her best but she was worked off her feet in the old house, which had grown increasingly shabby and neglected over the years.

When Catrin’s father and mother had first come here there had been a steward and other servants and farmworkers but one by one they had been sent away. Catrin’s father did not tolerate people around him; they distracted him from his poetry and from his dreams. And they cost money. Now all that was left of the livestock were a few sheep, a pig and a cow and they still had two horses and a mule. They were all looked after by Peter, who added to his long list of duties that of fisherman, keeping Joan’s kitchen stocked with trout and grayling and crayfish, which he pulled from secret pools in the brook. He also had made himself responsible for training the two corgis – the short-legged cattle dogs that followed him everywhere – and, from time to time, cosseting the barn cats; her father did not tolerate cats or dogs indoors either.

The buttery was Catrin’s special domain, full of the rich smell of herbs and the precious spices she brought back sometimes from the market. The stoppered jug which contained the ink she made several times a year was stored on a high shelf. Carefully she set the candlestick down and reached for one of the spare inkhorns, filling it from the heavy jug. The black liquid glistened in the candlelight. She glanced at the basket of oak apples on the shelf and next to it the jar of precious gum arabic and the dish of blue-green copperas crystals bought from a pedlar who called in from time to time as he travelled between the fairs and monasteries. If he didn’t call again soon she would have to make the long arduous journey to Hereford to visit the only mercer there who stocked the items she needed. Her father was particular. He wanted his ink to be the best quality and he wanted it to last on the page. Early autumn was the best time to make the ink, the galls strong and full of acid after the worms had crawled out and left them empty. She had thought she had collected plenty; now there was but half a small basket left.

When she returned to her father’s workroom he wasn’t there. The candle flames guttered as she made her way across to his desk. The page he had been working on was still lying where he had left it, the lettering cramped and heavily crossed out. She set down the inkpot and leaned closer, squinting in the flickering light, reading what he had written. It was the draft of a poem. She loved her father’s poetry. It was clever, intricate, perfectly written with the complex rules on metre and rhythm and rhyme as laid down by the bards of old, exactly as he had taught her but, as she looked at the page, her eyes widened in dismay. This was no poem.

The words were scratched angrily across the page. The point of the quill had split and splayed with the force of his hand and had spattered ink everywhere. She could see where his knife had tried to excise the words, angrily scraping the surface of the parchment scrap on which he was writing until it thinned so much it tore. At that point he had obviously thrown down his pen and walked out of the room.