Читать книгу The Merlin Conspiracy - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 13

I overslept. I dragged myself up and over to the food-tent, yawning. I had just got myself some juice and a cold, waxy-looking fried egg, when Grundo appeared, looking worried.

“There you are!” he said. “There’s a message for you from the chamberlain”.

The Chamberlain had never noticed my existence before. Before I got over my surprise enough to ask Grundo what the message was, Mam dashed up to me from the other side. “Oh, there you are, Roddy! We’ve been hunting for you all over! Your grandfather wants you. He’s sent a car for you. It’s waiting for you now outside the castle.”

My first thought was that this was an answer to my prayers. Then I looked up at Mam’s face. She was so white that her eyes looked like big black holes. The hand she put on my shoulder was quivering. “Which grandfather?” I said.

“My father, of course,” she said. “It’s just like him to send a demand for you to the Chamberlain. I’m surprised he didn’t send it straight to the King! Oh, Roddy, I’m sorry! He’s insisting that you go and stay with him in that dreadful manse of his and I daren’t refuse! He’s already been dreadfully rude to the Chamberlain over the speaker. He’ll do worse than that if I don’t let you go. He’ll probably insult the King next. Forgive me.”

Poor Mam. She looked absolutely desperate. My stomach plunged about just at the sight of her. “Why does he want me?”

“Because he’s never met you, and you’re near enough to Wales here for him to send and fetch you,” Mam answered distractedly. “He’s told the entire Chamberlain’s Office that I’ve no right to keep his only grandchild from him. You’ll have to go, my love – the Chamberlain’s insisting – but be polite to him. For my sake. It’ll only be for a few days, until the Progress moves on after the Meeting of Kings. He says the car will bring you back then.”

“I see,” I said, the way you say things just to gain time. I looked at my fried egg. It looked back like a big, dead, yellow eye. Ugh. I thought of Grundo all on his own here, and Sybil discovering that he hadn’t drunk her charmed water. “I’ll go if I can take Grundo,” I said.

“Oh, really, my love, I don’t think…” Mam began. “Listen, Mam,” I said. “Your problem was that he’s a widower and you were all on your own with him…”

“Well, that wasn’t quite…” she began again.

“…so you ought to allow me to take some moral support with me,” I said. As she wavered, I added, “Or I shall go to the Chamberlain’s Office and use their speaker to tell him I won’t go.”

This so horrified Mam that she gave in. “All right. But I don’t dare think what he’ll say – Grundo, do you mind being dragged along to see a fearsome old man?”

“Not really,” Grundo said. “I can always use the speaker in his manse to ask for help, can’t I?”

“Then go and pack,” Mam told him frantically. “Take old clothes. He’ll make you go for walks, or even ride – Hurry up, Roddy! He’s sent his same old driver who hates to be kept waiting!”

I didn’t see why Mam needed to be scared of her father’s driver as well as her father, but I drained my juice, snatched a piece of toast and rushed off eating it. Mam rushed with me, distractedly reminding me to remember a sweater, a toothbrush, walking shoes, a comb, my address book, everything… It wasn’t exactly the right moment to start telling her of plots and treason, but I did honestly try, after I had rammed things into a bag and we were rushing up the steep path to the castle, with stones spurting from under our feet and clattering down on Grundo, who was bent over under a huge bag behind us.

“Are you listening to me?” I panted, when I’d told her what we’d overheard.

She was so upset and feeling so strongly for me getting into the clutches of her terrible old father that I don’t think she did listen, even though she nodded. I just had to hope she would remember it later.

The car was drawn up in front of the main door of the castle, as if the driver, or Mam’s father, imagined that I was staying in there with the King. It was black and uncomfortably like a hearse. The “same old driver”, who looked as if he had been carved out of a block of something white and heavy and then dressed in navy blue, got out when he saw us coming and held out his big stony hand for my bag.

“Good morning,” I panted. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

He didn’t say a word, just took my bag and stowed it in the boot. Then he took Grundo’s bag with the same carved stone look. After that, he opened the rear door and stood there holding it. I saw a little what Mam meant.

“Nice morning,” I said defiantly. No answer. I turned to Mam and hugged her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m a very strong character myself and so is Grundo. We’ll see you soon.”

We climbed into the back seat of the hearse and were driven away, both of us feeling a little dizzy at the speed of events.

Then we drove and drove and drove, until we were dizzy with that too. I still have not the least idea where we went. Grundo says he lost his sense of direction completely. All we knew were astonishingly green hills towering above grey, winding roads, grey stone walls like cross-hatching on the hillsides, grey slides of rock, and woods hanging over us from time to time like dark, lacy tunnels. Dad’s good weather was getting better and better, so there was blue, blue sky with a brisk wind sliding white clouds across it, and sliding their shadows over the green hills in strange, shaggy shapes. Under the shadows, we saw heather darken and turn purple again, gorse blaze and then look a mere modest yellow, and sun and shade pass swiftly across small roaring rivers half hidden in ravines.

It was all very beautiful, but it went on so long, winding us further and further into the heart of the green mountains – until we finally began winding upwards among them. Then it was all green and grey again, with cloud shadows, and we had no sense of getting anywhere. We both jumped with surprise when the car rolled to a stop on a flat green stretch near the top of a mountain.

The stone-faced driver got out and opened the door on my side.

This obviously meant Get out now, so we scrambled to the stony green ground and stood staring about. Below us, a cleft twisted among the emerald sides of mountains until it was blue-green with distance, and beyond those green slopes were blue and grey and black peaks, peak after peak. The air was the chilliest and clearest I have ever breathed. Everything was silent. It was so quiet, I could almost hear the silence. And I realised that, up to then, I had lived my entire life close to people and their noise. It was strange to have it taken away.

The only house in sight was the manse. It was built backed against the nearest green peak, but below the top of the mountain, for shelter, though its dark chimneys stood almost as high as the green summit. It was dark and upright and squeezed into itself, all high narrow arches. You looked at it and wondered if it was a house built like a chapel, or a chapel built like a house and then squeezed narrower. There was no sign of any garden, just that house backed into the hillside and a drystone wall sticking out from one end of it.

The stone driver was trudging across the grass with our bags to the narrow, arched front door. We followed him, through the door and into a tall, dark hallway. He had gone somewhere else by the time we got indoors. But we had only been standing a moment wondering what to do now, when a door banged echoingly further down the hall and my mother’s father came towards us.

He was tall and stiff and cold as a monument on a tomb. His black clothes – he was a priest of course – made his white face look pale as death, but his hair was black, without a trace of grey. I noticed his hair particularly because he put a chilly hand on each of my shoulders and turned me to the light from the narrow front door. His eyes were deep and black, with dark skin round them, but I saw he was a very handsome man.

“So you are the young Arianrhod,” he said, deep and solemn. “At last.” His voice made echoes in the hall and brought me out in gooseflesh. I began to feel very sorry for Mam. “You have quite a look of my Annie,” he said. “Did she let you go willingly?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to let my teeth chatter. “I said I’d come provided my friend Gr—er… Ambrose Temple could come too. I hope you can find room for him.”

He looked at Grundo then. Grundo gave him a serious freckled stare and said “How do you do?” politely.

“I see he would be lonely without you,” my grandfather said.

He was welcome to think that, I thought, if only he would let Grundo stay. I was very relieved when he said, “Come with me, both of you, and I will show you to your rooms.”

We followed him up steep, dark stairs, where his gown flowed over the wooden treads behind his straight back, and then along dark, wooden corridors. I had a queer feeling that we were walking right into the hill at the back of the house, but the two rooms he showed us to had windows looking out over the winding green hills and they were both obviously prepared for visitors, the beds made up and water steaming in big bowls on the washstands. As if my grandfather had known I would be bringing Grundo. My bag was in one room and Grundo’s was in the other.

“Lunch will be ready any moment,” my grandfather said, “and you will wish to wash and tidy yourselves first. But if you want a bath…” He opened the next door along and showed us a huge bathroom, where a bath stood on clawed animal feet in the middle of bare floorboards. “I hope you will give warning when you do,” he said. “Olwen has to bring up buckets from the copper.” Then he went away downstairs again.

“No taps,” said Grundo. “As bad as the bath-tent.”

We washed and got ready quickly. When we met in the corridor again, we discovered that we had both put on the warmest clothes we had with us. We would have laughed about it, but it was not the kind of house you liked to laugh in. Instead, we went demurely downstairs, to where my grandfather was waiting in a tall, chilly dining room, standing at the head of a tall, black table.

He looked at us, pointed to two chairs and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language. I was suddenly very ashamed not to understand a word of it. Grundo looked on calmly, almost as if he did understand, and sat quietly down when it was finished, still looking intently at my grandfather.

I was looking at the door, where a fat, stone faced woman was coming in with a tureen. I was famished by then and it smelled wonderful.

It was a very good lunch, though almost silent at first. There was the leek soup, enough for two helpings each, followed by pancakes rolled round meat in sauce. After that, there were heaps of little hot griddle cakes covered in sugar. Grundo ate so many of those that the woman had to keep making more. She seemed to like that. She almost had a smile when she brought in the third lot.

“Pancakes,” my grandfather said, deep and hollow, “are a traditional part of our diet in this country.”

I was thinking, Well, at least he didn’t starve my mother! But why is he so stiff and stern? Why doesn’t he smile at all? I’m sure my mother used to ask herself the same things several times a day. I was sorrier for her than ever.

“I know this is an awkward question,” I said, “but what should we call you?”

He looked at me in stern surprise. “My name is Gwyn,” he said.

“Should I call you Grandfather Gwyn then?” I asked.

“If you wish,” he said, not seeming to care.

“Might I call you that too, please?” Grundo asked.

He looked at Grundo long and thoughtfully, almost as if he was asking himself what Grundo’s heredity was. “I suppose you have a right to,” he said at last. “Now tell me, what do either of you know of Wales?”

The truthful answer, as far as I was concerned, was Not a lot. But I could hardly say that. Grundo came to my rescue – I was extremely glad he was there. Because Grundo has such trouble reading, he listens in lessons far more than I ever do. So he knows things. “It’s divided into cantrevs,” he said, “each with its lesser kings, and the Pendragon is High King over them all. The Pendragon rules the Laws. I know you have a different system of laws here, but I don’t know how they work.”

My grandfather looked almost approving. “And the meaning of the High King’s title?” he asked.

It felt just like having a test during lessons, but I thought I knew the answer to that. “Son of the dragon,” I said. “Because there is said to be a dragon roosting in the heart of Wales.”

This didn’t seem to be right. My grandfather said frigidly, “After a fashion. Pendragon is a title given to him by the English. By rights, it should be the title of the English King, but the English have forgotten about their dragons.”

“There aren’t any dragons in England!” I said.

He turned a face full of stern disapproval on me. “That is not true. Have you never heard of the red dragon and the white? There were times in the past when there were great battles between the two, in the days before the Islands of Blest were at peace.”

I couldn’t seem to stop saying the wrong thing, somehow. I protested, “But that’s just a way of saying the Welsh and the English fought one another.”

His black eyebrows rose slightly in his marble face. I had never known so much scorn expressed with so little effort. He turned away from me and back to Grundo. “There are several dragons in England,” he said to him. “The white is only the greatest. There are said to be more in Scotland, both in the waters and in the mountains, but I have no personal knowledge of these.”

Grundo looked utterly fascinated. “What about Ireland?” he asked.

“Ireland,” said my grandfather, “is in most places low and green and unsuitable for dragons. If there were any, Saint Patrick expelled them. But to go back to the Laws of Wales. We do not have Judges, as you do. Courts are called when necessary…”

He went into a long explanation. Grundo was still fascinated. I sat and watched their two profiles as they talked, Grundo’s all pale, long nose and freckles, and my grandfather’s like a statue from classical antiquity. My grandfather had quite a long nose too, but his face was so perfectly proportioned that you hardly noticed. They both had great, deep voices, though where Grundo’s grated and grunted, my grandfather’s voice rolled and boomed.

Soulmates! I thought. I was glad I’d brought Grundo.

At the same time, I began to see some more of my mother’s problem. If my grandfather had been simply cold and strict and distant, it would have been easy to hate him and stop there. But the trouble was that he was also one of those people you wanted to please. There was a sort of grandness to him that made you ache to have him think well of you. Before long, I was quite desperate for him to stop talking just to Grundo and notice me – or at least not disapprove of me so much. Mam must have felt exactly the same. But I could see that, no matter how hard she tried, Mam was too soft-hearted and emotional for her father, and so he treated her with utter scorn. He scorned me for different reasons. I sat at the tall table almost in pain, because I knew I was a courtier born and bred, and that I was smart and good-mannered and used to summing people up so that I could take advantage of their faults, and I could see that my grandfather had nothing but contempt for people like me. It really hurt. Grundo may have been peculiar, but he was not like that and my grandfather liked him.

It was an enormous relief to me when we were allowed to get up from the table and leave the tall cold room. My grandfather took us outside, through the front door, into a blast of sunlight and cold, clean air. While I stood blinking, he said to us, “Now, where would you say the red dragon lies?”

Grundo and I looked at one another. Then we pointed, hesitating a bit, to the most distant brown mountains, lying against the horizon in a misty, jagged row.

“Correct,” said my grandfather. “That is a part of his back. He is asleep for now. He will only arouse in extreme need, to those who know how to call him, and he does not like to be roused. The consequences are usually grave. The same is true of the white dragon of England. You call him too at your peril.” The way he said this made us shiver. Then he said, in a much more normal way, “You will want to explore now. Go anywhere you like, but don’t try to ride the mare and be back at six. We have tea then, not the dinner you are used to. I’ll see you at tea. I have work to do before then.”

He went back into the house. He had a study at the back of the hall, as we learnt later, though we never saw inside it. It was a bit puzzling really. We never saw him do any religious duties or see parishioners – there were no other houses for miles anyway – but as Grundo said, dubiously, we were not there on a Sunday or any other holy day, so how could we know?

We did find the chapel. It was downhill to the left of the house, very tiny and grey, with a little arch of stone on its roof with a bell hanging in it. It was surrounded in green, and there was a hump of green turf beside it like a big beehive, that had water trickling inside it. The whole place gave us an awed, uncertain feeling, so we went uphill again and round to the back of the house, where we came upon a stone shed with the car inside it. Beyond that, things were normal.

We found a kitchen garden there, fringed with those orange flowers that grow in sprays, and a yard behind the house with a well in it. The water had to be pumped from the well by a handle in the kitchen. Olwen, the fat housekeeper, showed us how to do that. It was hard work. Then we went out beyond the yard to a couple of hidden meadows. One meadow had a pair of cows and a calf in it, and the other had a placid, chunky grey horse.

By this time, our feelings of strangeness had worn off. We were used to being in new, unknown places and we began to feel almost at home. We leant on the gate and looked at the placid mare, who raised her chalky-white face to look back at us and then went calmly on with grazing.

I think her lack of interest irritated Grundo. He went into one of his impish moods. “I’m going to try riding her,” he said, grinning at me.

“Your funeral,” I said. To confess the truth, I almost looked forward to seeing Grundo in trouble with my grandfather. I was feeling mean, and depressed about my personality.

Grundo looks soft, but he is surprisingly wiry and this makes him a much better rider than I am. I have never got much beyond the basics. In a soft-hearted way that is annoyingly like Mam’s, I am sorry for the horse for having me sit on its back making it do things. Grundo says this is silly. It’s what horses are bred for. He can make most horses do what he wants.

He nipped over the gate and went calmly across to the mare. She took a quick glance at him and lost interest again. She took no notice at all when Grundo put his hands on her. She was not very tall. Grundo had no difficulty hoisting himself on to her back, where he sat and clicked his tongue at her to make her go. She swung her head round then and looked at him in astonishment. Then… I have no idea what she did then, and Grundo says he doesn’t know either. She sort of walked out from underneath him. I swear that for one moment Grundo was sitting on her back, and for another moment Grundo was sitting up in the air, on nothing, looking absolutely stunned, and the next moment the mare was ten feet away and going back to grazing. Grundo came down on the grass on his back with a thump.

He picked himself up and came hobbling over to the gate, saying seriously, “I don’t think I’ll try again. You can see by all the white on her that she’s very old.”

That made me scream with laughter. Grundo was very offended and explained that the mare was old enough to have learnt lots of tricks, which only made me laugh more. And after a bit, Grundo began to see the funny side of it too. He said it felt very odd, being left sitting on nothing, and he kept wondering how the mare did it. We went scrambling up to the top of the hill behind the manse, laughing about it.

There were mountains all round as far as we could see up there. The peaks we had thought might be a dragon were lost among all the others.

“Do you think they really are part of a dragon?” I asked, while we went sliding and crouching down the other side of the summit. “It was rather mad, the way he said it.” The thought that my grandfather might be mad really worried me. But it would certainly explain why my mother was so terrified of him.

“He’s not mad,” Grundo said decidedly. “Everyone’s heard of the Welsh dragon.”

“Are you sure?” I said. “He doesn’t behave at all the way people usually do.”

“No, but he behaves like I would behave if I hadn’t been brought up at Court,” Grundo said. “I sort of recognised him. He’s like me underneath.”

This made me feel much better. There was a huge, heathery moor beyond the manse hill, and we rushed out into it with the wind clapping our hair about and cloud shadows racing across us. There was the soft smell of water everywhere. And no roads, no buses, no people, and only the occasional large, high bird. We found a place where water bubbled out of the ground in a tiny fountain that spread into a pool covered with lurid green weeds. Neither of us had seen a natural spring before and we were delighted with it. We tried blocking it with our hands, but it just spouted up between our fingers, cold as ice.

“I suppose,” Grundo said, “that the well in Sir James’s Inner Garden must fill from a spring like this. Only I don’t think this one’s magic.”

“Oh, don’t!” I cried out. “I don’t want to remember all that! It’s not as if we can do a thing about it, whatever they’re plotting to do.” I spread my arms into the watery smelling wind. “I feel free for the first time in a hundred years!” I said. “Don’t spoil it.”

Grundo stood with his feet sinking into squashy marsh plants and considered me. “I wish you wouldn’t exaggerate,” he said. “It annoys me. But you do look better. When we’re with the Progress you always remind me of an ice-puddle someone’s stamped in. All icy white edges. I’m afraid of getting cut on you sometimes.”

I was astonished. “What should I be like then?”

Grundo shrugged. “I can’t explain. More like – like a good sort of tree.”

“A tree!” I exclaimed.

“Something that grew naturally, I mean,” Grundo grunted. “A warm thing.” He moved his feet with such appalling sucking noises that I had to laugh.

“You’re the one who’s rooted to the spot!” I said, and we wandered on, making for a topple of rock in the distance. When we got there, we sat on the side that was in the sun and away from the wind. After a long time, I said, “I didn’t mean that about not wanting to remember Sir James’s garden – it’s just I feel so helpless.”

Grundo said, “Me too. I keep wondering if the old Merlin might have been killed so that the new one could take over in time to go to the garden.”

“That’s an awful thing to think!” I said. But now Grundo had said it, I found I was thinking it too. “But the Merlin’s supposed to be incorruptible,” I said. “Grandad found him.”

“He could have been deceived,” Grundo said. “Your Grandfather Hyde’s only human, even if he is a Magid. Why don’t you try telling this grandfather?”

“Grandfather Gwyn?” I said. “What could he do? Besides, he’s Welsh”.

“Well, he made a fair old fuss to the Chamberlain’s Office just to get you here,” Grundo replied. “He knows how to raise a stink. Think about it.”

I did think about it as we wandered on, but not all that much because, after what seemed a very short while, we saw that the sun was going down and looked at our watches and realised it was after five o’clock. We turned back and got lost. The moor was surrounded by green knobs that were the tops of mountains and they all looked the same. When we finally found the right knob and slid down the side of it to the manse, there was only just time to get cleaned up before tea was ready.

“I love this food!” Grundo grunted.

The table was crowded with four different kinds of bread, two cakes, six kinds of jam in matching dishes, cheese, butter and cream. Olwen followed us into the dining room with a vast teapot and, as soon as my grandfather had thundered out his grace, she came back with plates of sausage and fried potatoes. Grundo beamed and prepared to be very greedy. I had to stop before the cakes, but Grundo kept right on packing food in for nearly an hour and drinking cup after cup of tea. While he ate, he talked cheerfully, just as if my grandfather was a normal person.

My grandfather watched Grundo eat with a slightly astonished look, but he did not seem to mind being talked to. He even answered Grundo with a few deep words every so often. I was fairly sure Grundo was being this chatty so that I could join in and tell Grandfather Gwyn what we had overheard in Sir James’s Inner Garden. But I couldn’t. I knew he would give me that look with his eyebrows up and not believe a word. I seemed to curl up inside just thinking of speaking.

I was wondering how often my Mam had sat silent like this at meals, when Grundo helped himself to a third slice of cake, seriously measuring off the exact amount. “I have room for twenty-five degrees more cake,” he explained, “and then I shall go back to soda bread and jam. Does Olwen do your cooking for you because you’re a widower?”

At this, my grandfather turned to me. I could tell he was not pleased. It breathed off him like cold from a frozen pond. “Did Annie tell you I was a widower?” he asked me.

“She said she had never known her mother,” I said.

“I am glad to hear her so truthful,” my grandfather replied. I thought that was all he was going to say, but he seemed to think again and make an extra effort. “There has been,” he said, and paused, and made another effort, “a separation.”

I could feel him hurting, making the effort to say this. I was suddenly furious. “Oh!” I cried out. “I hate all this divorcing and separating! My Grandfather Hyde is separated from his wife and I’ve never even seen her or the aunt who lives with her. And that aunt’s divorced, and so’s the aunt who lives with Grandad, which is awfully hard on my cousin Toby. Half the Court is divorced! The King is separated from the Queen most of the time! Why do people do it?”

Grandfather Gwyn was giving me an attentive look. It was the sort of look you can feel. I felt as if his deep, dark eyes were opening me up, prising apart pieces of my brain. He said thoughtfully, “Often the very nature of people, the matter that brought them together, causes the separation later.”

“Oh, probably,” I said angrily. “But it doesn’t stop them hurting. Ask Grundo. His parents are separated.”

“Divorced,” Grundo growled. “My father left.”

“Now that’s one person I don’t blame!” I said. “Leaving Sybil was probably the most sensible thing he ever did. But he ought to have taken you with him.”

“Well now,” said Grandfather Gwyn. He sounded nearly amused. “The ice of Arianrhod has melted at last, it seems.”

I could feel my face bursting into a red flush, right to the top of my hair and down my neck, because my grandfather had so obviously seen me the same way as Grundo did. So I was a puddle of ice, was I? I was so wrought up by then that I snapped at him, just as if he had been Alicia. “You can talk! If ever I saw a marble iceberg, it’s you!”

Now he looked really amused. His face relaxed and he very nearly smiled.

“It’s not funny!” I snarled at him. “I can see you made my mother terrified of you by behaving like this! Most of the time you’d make her think she wasn’t worth noticing, and then you’d make fun of her!”

Then I gave a gasp and tried to hold my breath – but I couldn’t because I was panting with rage – knowing that a strict person like my grandfather was bound to jump to his feet and order me thunderously out of the room.

In fact, he just said musingly, “Something of that, but Annie brought her own difficulties to the situation, you know.” The mild way he said it surprised me. I was even more surprised when he said, “Come now, Arianrhod. Tell me what is really upsetting you so.”

I almost burst into tears. But I didn’t, because I suspected that Mam would have done and Grandfather Gwyn would have hated it. “If you must know,” I blurted out, “there’s a plot – in England – and most of the Court have been given bespelled water, even the King. The Merlin’s in it!”

“I know,” he said. “This is why I asked for you to come here, before the balance of magic is disturbed even further.”

For a second, I was thoroughly astonished. Then I thought, Oh! He’s a wizard! And that made me feel much better. I could tell by the way Grundo’s face snapped round to look at Grandfather Gwyn, and then went much pinker, that Grundo had had the same thought.

“Tell me in detail,” my grandfather said to us, “every word and sign and act that you remember.”

So we told him. It took a while and Grundo absent-mindedly ate two more pieces of cake while we talked. He probably needed to. It couldn’t have been pleasant for Grundo, having to describe what his mother did. Otherwise, I’d have called him a pig. Grandfather Gwyn leant forward with one forearm stiffly among the tea-things and seemed to drink in everything we said.

“Can you help at all?” Grundo said at last.

To our dismay, my grandfather slowly shook his head. “Unfortunately not,” he said. “I am about to become vulnerable, in a way I very much resent, and will be able to do nothing directly for a while. You have just shown me the way of it. But there is something you can do, Arianrhod, if you think you have the courage. You will have to work out most of it for yourself, I am afraid. It is magic that is not mine to deal in, and it is something your mother never could have brought herself to do. But, if you think you are able, I can put you in the way of it tomorrow.”

I sat in silence in that tall, cold room, staring at his intent white face across the plates and crumbs. Grundo looked to be holding his breath. “I – I suppose I’d better,” I said, when the chills had almost stopped scurrying up and down my back. “Someone has to do something.”

My Grandfather Gwyn could smile, after all. It was an unexpectedly warm, kind smile. It helped. A little. Actually, I was terrified.