"One more thing," Berry said in the doorway.
"No. No more things."
"You have a flashlight I could borrow?"
Aled did not reply but went behind the bar and fumbled about and then presented a long black torch to Berry.
"Rubber," he said morosely. "Bounces, see."
The crescent moon was curling from the tower like a candle flame. A huge, symbolic corpse candle, Bethan thought.
The smell in the December air was a little like the summer night smell of wild flowers, but heavier, sweet with decay, as though the flowers had sprouted unnaturally from the dead earth, like bodies in rotting shrouds thrusting their hands through the grave dirt. The ground, with its thin veneer of snow, had a blueish, sometimes purplish tint, like the cheeks of the newly-dead.
Bethan felt sick. She felt Y Groes closing around her. Bloated with blood, greasy with human fat.
"I want to leave," she said. "Now."
"Not till we take a look at the church."
"I will not go in there."
"I'll go in then."
"Did you realise what he was saying just now? About sacrifices?"
"I'll think about it later. Right now, I need to see that tomb."
Bethan cried out, "What good will it do now?"
She stood at the top of the deserted street, her back to the bridge, white raincoat drawing in the unnatural incandescence of the night so that it turned mauve.
Irradiated, Berry thought. He felt love and fear, and he almost gave in, hurried her back over the bridge to the cars.
Foot down, out of here.
Then they heard voices from the other side of the bridge and he took her arm and pulled her into the alley between the Tafarn and the electricity sub-station which tonight had no electricity to dispense.
Laughter.
"… hey Shirl, you can't be cold now."
"No, but it's awfully dark — Whoops!"
"Shit," Berry whispered. "What the hell are they doing here?"
"Guto," Bethan whispered back. "I can hear Guto's voice, and isn't that—?"
"Christ," Berry said. "It's Miranda."
The bunch of people crossed the bridge and they heard a banging on the pub door and Dai's voice. "Come on then, Aled. It's gone seven."
"And don't tell us the beer pumps don't work," shouted an English voice. "Won't affect the Optics."
The snow in the street seemed to sweat, and there was a kind of liquid hum in the air, as if the dead sub-station was a church organ and there was a hidden choir somewhere poised to sing out into the night.
Voice thick with growing nausea, Berry said, "What's the Welsh for fee fi fo fum?"
Chapter LXVI
Aled did not like this.
Every Friday night was more or less the same, summer or winter. By seven-fifteen, Glyn Harri would have come in, or maybe Dilwyn. Morgan, with or without Buddug, around eight.
These were the constants.
Others were regulars, not bound to a time: Dewi Morus, Mair and Idris Huws. Meirion. Dr. Wyn. And then the occasionals, who included the rector.
Tonight, gone eight now, and none of them had arrived.
There was no precedent for this.
Nearly a dozen people in the bar, but none of them locals and half of them English. Reporters. Loud people, practised drinkers.
"What's that stuff?"
Man in an expensive suit, well-cut to hide his beer-gut. Late forties, going unconcernedly to seed, leaning over the bar by the spluttering Tilley lamp, pointing to the bottle of Welsh Chwisgi.
"Whisky." Aled said. "Like any other. Blended over in Brecon."
"Welsh whisky? You're bloody joking."
"Try some." Aled said neutrally.
"Is it cheap? It should be."
"Cheaper than some. Dearer than others. There is also the Prince of Wales twelve-year-old malt. What you might call Wales's answer to Chivas Regal."
"Stone me. Better just give us a single then, Alec. No soda. Got to savour this one. Bloody Welsh whisky, Ray! One for you? Make it two then, Alec."
"We'll have the bottle," Alun, of Plaid, said generously. Put it on my tab."
Aled brought the bottle of Prince of Wales twelve-year old malt over to the cluster of tables. A brass oil-lamp hung from a great brown beam above them. A log fire blazed.
"Isn't this cosy?" a woman said. The chubby one, not the glamorous red-haired one.
Shirley Gillies had had two gin and limes very rapidly.
"Yeh, if you like the rustic bit," Gary Willis said, looking uncomfortable. "Not very into the primitive, personally."
"Trouble with you, Gary, is you have no soul." Shirley said. "A nice body, but no soul. I think it's rather wonderful, all the power lines down, the mobile phones useless."
"And in a pub!" said Ray Wheeler.
"I told you," Alun whispered to Guto. "I told you it would be an adventure for them."
"You know," Ray said. "This reminds me in a way of poor old Winstone Thorpe."
"Winstone's Welsh Experience," said Charlie Firth. "Miserable landlady, every bugger speaking Welsh, all the pubs closed 'cause it's Sunday, and only Jack Beddall to talk to."
Bill Sykes leaned into the lamplight. "You know I really think it's time I scotched this one for good."
"Belter than Welshing it." said Charlie Firth. "Although actually, this stuff's not bad. I reckon what it is, somebody bought a case of Glenfiddich and switched the labels."
"Sod off, Englishman." Guto said. "One of my mates, it is, makes this. But I shall pass on the compliment."
"Go on, Bill." Ray Wheeler topped up Sykes's glass with twelve-year-old Welsh malt. "Winstone Thorpe."
"Well… I suppose he told you he'd been sent out on a story about two Welsh farmers who'd been shot by their housekeeper."
"Back in the sixties," said Ray.
"Definitely not in the sixties, old boy. Long, long before that. And he only had Jack Beddall on the story because Beddall's been dead twenty years."
"Oh, wonderful!" Shirley Gillies finished her drink. "A mystery story. Can I have one of those?"
"On top of gin, Shirley?" Gary passed over the Prince of Wales bottle, two-thirds empty already.
"It did happen. The shooting. One of those peculiar rural ménage-a-trois situations. The housekeeper was an English girl who innocently answered an advert and found herself sharing a bed with two hairy yokels smelling of sheepshit. Most distasteful."
"Oh, I don't know. Shirley giggled and looked across at Guto, who had an arm discreetly around Miranda's waist. Shirley spotted the arm and looked disappointed.
"Anyway, the girl inevitably got pregnant and the farmers, being unable to decide which of them was the father, resolved the argument by throwing her out."
"Typical," Charlie Firth said.
"Only, when she left, she took their shotgun with her and returned that night and re-plastered the bedroom wall with the pair of them."
"Heavy," said Gary Willis.
"Quite a controversial court case in its day," said Bill Sykes. "She got off very lightly, perhaps because of the baby. I can't remember whether Winstone was actually born in the prison hospital or whether she was out by then, but he certainly—"
"You're joking!" Ray Wheeler put down his glass in astonishment.
"Hated the Welsh all his life," said Sykes. "Had it instilled into him at his mother's knee that no self-respecting English person should ever venture over Offa's Dyke. Been recycling the story as a sort of parable ever since."
"Just a minute," Miranda said. "Where exactly did all this happen?"
"Oh, somewhere up North. Snowdonia way. I imagine. I think I was the only one he ever told, but he didn't go into details, even with me."
"You mean this Winstone never actually came around here?"