The Hunted Hare Page 3

  “You don’t have to do the cooking as well, I hope.”

  “Oh, no. We’ve got Josef, from Poland. He’s brilliant. Well, you’ll taste for yourself. And all our food is local. This is new season Welsh lamb. And the vegetables are grown within five miles from here.”

  Aidan looked around the spacious dining room, at the blue linen napkins, the pottery bowls for butter, the fresh spring flowers, the floor-length folkweave curtains. He was obviously making the same calculations Jenny had.

  “This place must have cost a mint to build. And you’ve furnished it to the highest standard. The menu looks great. But how are you paying for it?”

  Sian’s face tightened in a defensive mask. “We were almost full at Easter. It’s early days yet. But youngsters like Harry and Debbie are worried that we charge too much.” Her eyes shot a look of alarm at the door.

  Jenny sensed his presence behind her before she saw him. The large, confident figure of Thaddaeus Brown strode into view, followed by the lesser shadow of his niece.

  “Hello, there.” He paused by their table with a broad smile. “Have you settled in? Is everything to your liking?” Again, those wide brown eyes found out Jenny’s.

  “Yes, wonderful,” she smiled back.

  “Great food,” Aidan agreed. “These lamb chops are out of this world.”

  “Josef’s a star, isn’t he? I want only the best for the House of the Hare.”

  He moved on. “Hi, Harry, Debbie. How was your walk?” to the young hikers.

  “I see you’ve been exploring the neighbourhood,” to the older couple.

  The Browns, uncle and niece, settled themselves at the table reserved for them by the window. Lorna had her back to the Davisons.

  Jenny watched her, thoughtfully. Aidan had had some idea that the girl looked frightened of her uncle. It was true that her body language was a little tense. She spoke too quietly for Jenny to hear, though Thaddaeus’s voice rang cheerfully across the room as he discussed tomorrow’s weather forecast, for anyone who wanted to listen.

  Just teenage gaucheness, Jenny decided. Awkwardness in front of an older man who was so much in charge of the situation. Perhaps she didn’t know him very well. Was this the first time they had been away alone together?

  She put down her knife. Maybe there was something odd in their relationship. Did Thaddaeus have a wife? How many other girls as young as Lorna would go away with an uncle, without an older woman or a companion of her own age?

  She shook her head slightly. It was none of her business. Thaddaeus was obviously thrilled with his new House of the Hare. He had poured into it not only a lot of money, but loving attention to detail. No doubt he would want to keep it in the family. If he had no children of his own, he was probably schooling Lorna to take a share in the business.

  “Mummy, you’re not eating. I’ve finished all of mine,” Melangell said.

  Jenny smiled quickly. “Sorry, love. It’s delicious, but I don’t have much appetite these days. I hope Josef won’t think I’m insulting his cooking. He knows his job. That combination of garlic and rosemary… I can still savour it after I’ve eaten it.”

  “The wine’s not bad, either,” Aidan said. “I think I’m going to enjoy it here.”

  Jenny’s eyes strayed back to the hunched shoulders of Lorna, and the beaming smile of Thaddaeus opposite her. Would it work? Could this diffident teenager ever step into the shoes of her extrovert uncle?

  But maybe she wouldn’t need to. Sian was the warden of the house. And she had all the warmth and energy needed for the job. Lorna might just need to handle the money side.

  She turned to Melangell. “Have you seen the desserts?”

  “What’s caramel fudge torte?”

  “It’s sweet and brown and sticky.”

  “Yup. That’s the one.”

  Jenny toyed with a lime sorbet. She raised her eyes to Aidan. “Thaddaeus says the weather will be fine tomorrow. A bit cooler than today, but not much chance of rain. I think you should take Melangell to the waterfall while it holds.”

  “Pistyll Blaen-y-cwm? Are you sure? It’s our first full day here, and we’d be gone for several hours.”

  She read the concern in his green-flecked eyes. She knew that, even now, he was counting the precious hours left to them.

  “It’s what we agreed. Life doesn’t have to come to a stop because I can’t do all the things I used to. You go. I might take Sian up on her offer of archery. And that’s something I didn’t think I’d be able to do again.”

  “You’d use a wheelchair?”

  Jenny made a face. “Other people have to. It would be less tiring than standing up.” She made herself smile for Aidan’s worried face. “And you can show me your new photos of the waterfall when you get back.”

  They took their coffee in the lounge. Melangell gave a cry of delight when she discovered a stack of jigsaws.

  “Mount Snowdon, 2,000 pieces. Great!”

  In a moment, she was lying on her stomach, with pieces strewn across the beechwood floorboards.

  The older man and woman stopped beside Jenny and Aidan.

  “Do you mind if we join you?” The man’s loud voice had the confidence that did not consider the answer “no”.

  “Of course not. Please do.”

  They lowered themselves into the deep leather settee opposite. The man’s frame seemed to take up twice as much space as his smaller wife’s. Jenny judged them to be in their sixties. They had the unseasonable tan of people who had sought winter sunshine on a foreign holiday. But the woman’s pinched face spoke of chronic pain. She had trouble settling her body even in the comfortable leather seat.

  The man held out his hand.

  “Colin Ewart. And this is my wife, Rachel.”

  Introductions made, they paused while the ubiquitous Sian set jugs of coffee down in front of them.

  “Have you been here long?” Aidan asked.

  “This is our second day.” Rachel Ewart managed a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve got a bit of a back problem, so I can’t walk as far as I used to. But we’ve been enjoying ourselves, visiting the shrine, and pottering round the neighbourhood.”

  Jenny knew a flash of fellow-feeling. She hesitated. Would it be too much of a conversation-stopper to say, “I’ve got terminal cancer”?

  Instead, she smiled back and settled for, “I know. I’ve been ill myself. I’ll be taking it easy too.”

  “Ran into some of the locals,” said Colin. “A lot of Welsh-speakers around here. Load of nonsense, if you ask me.”

  Beside Jenny, Aidan bristled with indignation. “It’s a funny thing. Lots of English people can manage a few words of French or German or Spanish. But Welsh is the national language of this island, or was once. And most people can’t even say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Thank you’.”

  “No need for them to have a chip on the shoulder,” Colin snorted. “We came across one of them who chewed our ears off – Caradoc Lewis. You met him yet?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Wait a minute,” Aidan exclaimed. “Didn’t Sian say something about him? ‘Maybe Caradoc Lewis had a point.’”

  He looked round suddenly, but the warden was nowhere in sight.

  “Spitting fire and brimstone, he was, about this House of the Hare. Said Brown should never have been given planning permission. He led the antis, by all accounts,” Colin said.

  “We told him we thought it was a lovely place,” Rachel put in. “And so close to the healing shrine, for people like me.” She shot a sympathetic look at Jenny. “But he wouldn’t listen.”

  “I think if he had his way he’d put a bomb under this place,” her husband agreed.

  A flare of indignation surprised Jenny. It wasn’t fair. If her oncologist was right, she had about five months left. She had so much wanted to bring Melangell here. This was meant to be such a special week. A bittersweet goodbye for her. A time of healing, spiritually, if not physically. A golden time for Aidan and Melangell
to remember. The last thing she wanted was for the atmosphere of this place to be made ugly by antagonism. It was a place she had fallen in love with for its aura of peace.

  She looked over her shoulder. Thaddaeus Brown and Lorna were still in the dining room behind her.

  “That’s wrong. Mr Brown seems to have done everything to make this place blend in. And he’s using local materials and local produce as much as he can. You’d think the people who live here would be glad of that. A boost to the economy.”

  “But even Sian has her doubts,” Aidan reminded her. “Extreme sports? City types on away days?”

  “I can’t imagine he means that,” Jenny argued. “Pennant Melangell’s just not that sort of place. It’s for people like us.”

  “Got it!” Melangell cried from the floor. “That’s the whole of the bottom edge in place. Look, Daddy.”

  “You can’t wait to get into shorts, can you?” Jenny laughed.

  Aidan’s bearded face grinned as he laced up his walking boots. “Never mind May Day. Summer’s officially a-cummin’ on the day I pack away my long trousers.”

  Melangell came running into their room in jeans and trainers. “Come on, Mummy. Sian said she’d help you choose a bow before we start.”

  “You don’t have to wait for me if you want to go. It’s a long way to the waterfall.”

  “Only two miles, Daddy said.”

  “And two miles back.”

  “Pooh. That’s nothing. And I want to see the bows and arrows.”

  Aidan raised his sandy eyebrows at Jenny above Melangell’s head.

  Sian led them to a wooden hut at the start of the archery range. A remembered joy sprang to Jenny’s heart as she saw the targets at the far end. The familiar circles of gold, red, blue, black and white. She measured the distance with her eye. Could she still draw a bow at 70 metres and send her arrow speeding across that space into the bullseye? In the freshness of the morning, after a fairly good night’s sleep, she felt a surge of hope that she could.

  She heard Melangell’s scornful voice behind her. “Is that what you call a bow?”

  She turned, and felt her eyebrows rise. They were not playing at archery here, in a Robin Hood theme-park sort of way. This was a serious competition bow Sian was holding out to her. Not wood, but a recurve design in carbon fibre and aluminium alloy. It had a red central riser, with back-curving upper and lower limbs. Circular holes in the metal made for lightness as well as strength.

  Sian’s usually cheerful face looked a little put out at Melangell’s disparagement. “These are the top Olympic design. Thaddaeus only buys the best.”

  Jenny took the bow and tested it tentatively. A moment before, she had felt strong and confident. Now, her weakened arms told her she would not be able to exert this strain for long.

  “I’m sure it’s top-class kit,” she said. “But I’m not sure I’m in top-class form.”

  Sian flushed. “I didn’t want to insult you. I mean, if you were a good shot, before… But if you’d rather, I can find you one with a lower draw strength. We have an assortment of bows we give to first-timers and children.”

  From the back of the shed, Melangell gave a cry of delight. “This one!”

  She emerged with the sort of bow that might have come straight out of the pages of a history book. The golden wood of the stave glowed. The shape was clean: a single curve that would bend along its whole length, without the complicated joints of the three-part recurve. The string, Jenny saw, was natural fibre too. Flax, perhaps, not a modern polymer.

  Aidan took it from Melangell. His hands caressed the polished wood.

  “Yew.” The sandy brows rose again as his eyes met Jenny’s.

  “Let me.” Her arms were reaching out. She had fallen in love at first sight. Her hands ached to hold it. She was suddenly sure she could find the strength to draw this one. Already she could feel the lie of the arrow along her cheek, see the point aimed at the target, gauge the tension in her elbow before she let fly.

  “That’s funny,” Sian said. “That’s the one Lorna likes to use.”

  Chapter Five

  AIDAN HANDED HER THE WEAPON. She had been an archer before he met her. It had not been a hobby they shared.

  He watched her string the bow and test it. A shaky laugh escaped her, as she showed it to Melangell.

  “If this was a full-size medieval longbow, you’d need to be one of the strongest men in the village to draw it. You had to train from when you were a young boy. Everybody looked up to an archer. English longbow men were the most feared of any soldiers on the battlefield. If the enemy captured you, they’d cut off your fingers so you’d never shoot again.”

  “You’ll be able to manage this,” Sian assured her. “I gave it to a couple of kids last week, to get them started. Really, you don’t need to be that strong.”

  Jenny gave her an understanding smile. “I know that. It’s right for me. And I don’t underestimate it. It’s still a lethal weapon. Can we start?”

  She faced the target.

  Aidan’s fists tightened as he watched. Could she still do it?

  The first arrow fell some ten metres short. He shot an anxious glance at her face, but she looked calmly determined. He saw that knowledge was returning to her hands and eyes.

  The next arrow rose higher. It thwacked into the target, hitting the red inner circle, close to the yellow bullseye.

  “Yes!” Jenny’s laugh rang across the clearing.

  Aidan and Melangell applauded.

  “I’ll get you that wheelchair,” said Sian. “So you don’t get tired too quickly. Is that all right?”

  Aidan saw the knowledge of her mortality return to Jenny’s face. He felt it in the pit of his own stomach. For a heady moment, they had forgotten it. But Sian was right. Jenny must husband her strength, spin out these moments of enjoyment. Make each day count.

  He felt a wave of longing. He should not be leaving her, even for a few hours. They had so little time left. But she had made him promise.

  Jenny turned to him and Melangell. Her face shone now with genuine happiness. “I’m going to enjoy myself.”

  Still he hesitated.

  “If you’re sure.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

  She caught his hand. “Enjoy the waterfall. Bring me some photos.”

  He heard the thud of another arrow as they rounded the corner of the house.

  In spite of himself, he felt his spirits lift, and he and Melangell swung out along the lane. It felt adventurous to be setting off on foot along the last strip of tarmac past Pennant Melangell. A sign warned motorists that there was no turning place beyond. At the head of the valley, the road ended.

  Before they reached it, they came to a sign saying “WATERFALL”. It pointed them off the road and up the hillside.

  “Sorry, kid. You used to be able to walk straight up the valley. Looks like we have to make a detour now. This road runs out at a farm, so we have to go up and round it. We can’t just walk to the foot of the fall.”

  The path angled them away from the road, up through fields where sheep grazed. The steep gradient slowed even Melangell’s eager feet.

  They came out on to the bracken-covered crest. The footpath sign pointed forward, away from the river’s source.

  Aidan consulted the map. “The bad news is that there’s no public footpath marked the way we want to go. The good news is that I can see a track on the ground that does lead towards the head of the falls. Do you want to give it a go?”

  The pointed face with its dusting of freckles had a determination that mirrored his own. “Of course.”

  The path through the bracken followed the lip of the valley. Far below them, miniature cows grazed the meadows at its foot. A ribbon of trees marked the course of the young river.

  “Is that it?” Melangell pointed ahead.

  Scarves of white came cascading down from the skyline, leaping sideways as they hit the rocks.

  “Pistyll Blaen-y-cwm. Th
e Waterfall at the Head of the Valley.”

  “Why are we going to the top and not the bottom?”

  “Because there’s no public path down there. I expect we’ll be able to scramble down to the foot once we’re past the farm.”

  It was like walking with a puppy. Melangell was forever darting off to one side of the narrow path or another. Early bilberries caught her eye, their jewelled fruit just beginning to turn from green to purple. She found the bleached skull of a dead sheep. She tipped back her head to search for a skylark, whose song was pouring from overhead.

  Suddenly she stopped. Aidan almost bumped into her.

  They were on the edge of an almost-dry stream bed. In the winter, this little tributary would come rushing past to hurl itself down the almost vertical slope.

  Melangell looked at its stony course. “Couldn’t we get down this way? It’s a sort of path.”

  “If you’re lost on the hills, the first rule is never to follow a stream. You could find yourself on the edge of precipice.”

  “Are we lost?”

  “Well, put it this way. I know where we are. But I’m not sure how to get where we want to be. Down there.”

  They went on. Walls of gorse were growing higher on either side. The thorny branches were dark. They had yet to break into golden flower.

  Aidan paused. He was beginning to have doubts. The route was proving more difficult than he expected. But a streak of obstinacy would not let him admit defeat.

  “Sorry, kid. It doesn’t look as though too many people come here. We’ll just have to make our way down to the river as best we can.”

  “I don’t care,” Melangell said. “It’s a real expedition, isn’t it? Like David Livingstone finding Victoria Falls in the middle of Africa.”

  “Mosi-oa-Tunya. The Smoke that Thunders.”

  “Will it be like that?”

  “Wait and see.”

  They broke out into open sunshine. A rare patch of grass was speared with the bright green fronds of young bracken still uncurling.

  “Look!” cried Melangell. “There’s someone down there.”

  The steeply plunging slope hid the nearer foot of the valley, but across the stream Aidan made out two small figures making their way along what looked like a green path towards the waterfall. The white top of one shone out like the flash of a gull’s wing.