Kitabı oku: «Blood Royal», sayfa 4
‘What will you paint on top of the blue?’ Owain asked, but she only rumbled with laughter. ‘Listen to the boy!’ she chortled. ‘We’re not there yet. Do you know how long this will take to dry?’
He felt abashed. Malouel had told him. ‘Ten days,’ he said.
She nodded; gave him a twinkle.
‘Learning already,’ she replied; then, play-reproachfully, ‘and that’s just one coat. So it can take a good couple of months to do the purple of a cloak or the green of a wood properly. But it’s important to get it right. The beauty is in the brightness. And it’s important to make it as beautiful as you can.’
‘May I …?’ Owain essayed, growing bolder. ‘May I see something you’ve already finished?’
She put her big hands on her big hips, gave him her bold stare, and burst out laughing. ‘You’ve got the bug, all right,’ she said. ‘Madame Christine; you’ve infected this one, good and proper.’
Christine was smiling too, from her corner. ‘Show him this,’ she said; and pulled out another book from the shelf. She brought it forward to the table. Owain hardly noticed the text. His eyes were drawn only to the picture under Christine’s pale fingers: another little square full of more moving, breathing vitality than seemed possible. It showed a woman in a modest blue dress, whose white kerchief was pulled up in imitation of a proper fashionable two-horned court headdress. The woman was kneeling in the centre of a group of women, and handing over a book to a magnificent red and gold lady with a green and gold silk sash and a rich jewelled headdress and ermine sleeves; a lady sitting with two attendants on scarlet and green cushions by a mullioned window, hung with fleur-de-lys cloths in blue and gold, and with the sky outside glowing the azure blue Owain now knew how to prepare. There was so much to look at; so much to take in.
‘That’s you,’ he said, turning to Christine. ‘Giving your book to the Queen.’
The painted Christine looked just as she did in real life: alert, watchful, ready both to fight and charm. But the Queen of France had deteriorated since this picture was made: the painted Queen was still a beautiful woman, with traces of kindness lingering on her face; though you could also see in her set eyes that she’d brook no one else’s nonsense. The much fatter, older person he’d seen in the flesh yesterday had become a spoiled, glinty-eyed monster. He’d smelt the selfishness, the wilfulness, coming off her; he’d known her at once for the kind of woman who’d stop at nothing to get her own way.
‘I knew at once,’ Owain said warmly, ‘what a picture.’ But he was wondering as he spoke, and saw Anastaise dimpled with pleasure, whether she’d deliberately made the Queen seem younger and kinder – she didn’t seem the type for flattery. Instead, he asked, ‘How do you get the gold so bright?’
Anastaise was breaking open one of Christine’s packages to show him the wafer-thin sheet of beaten gold and beginning to explain that you took beaten egg-white, without water, and painted it over the place the gold was to go, then, moisturising the end of the same brush in your mouth, you touched it on to the corner of the leaf, ready cut, then lifted it very quickly, put it on the prepared place and spread it out with a separate dry brush. ‘And whatever you do, don’t breathe; or your piece of gold will fly off and you’ll have the worst trouble finding it again. And then it’s the same as the painting. You let it dry. You put another layer on. You let it dry. You put another layer on. It’s all just patience.’ When the gold was ready, you polished it – with the tooth of a bear or a beaver; or with an agate, or an amethyst stone – first quite gently, then harder, then so hard that the sweat stood out on your forehead.
Christine slipped away. Owain was so enthralled he didn’t notice.
Jehanette’s maid was in the kitchen, preparing a meal. The children were playing with their grandmother upstairs; while Jehanette was at the Halles market. ‘Take some meat and bread and wine out to Anastaise,’ Christine directed. ‘But tell the boy to come here and eat with me.’
She didn’t think why. It was an instinct: like warming yourself at the fire, or opening your shutters when the sun was bright. Usually she liked her quiet meals with Anastaise: everyone else out of the house; hearing the idle talk the beguine brought with her from the convent where the sisters worked in the cloth trade of Temple New Town, or tending the poor. The beguines knew everything; and no one more than Anastaise. But today she wanted some time alone with this boy with hope in his eyes and hunger in his mind. It was a waste of his intelligence to let him go back to soldiery.
He came quickly, eagerly, glowing as if someone had applied gold leaf to him.
He said, with genuine warmth: ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ and, taking a piece of bread and a slab of meat and a slice of onion on his knife, without waiting to be asked, as if he felt at home, while munching, ‘This has been the best day …’ Then he paused, and she saw the thought he couldn’t name begin to take form on his brow: ‘I only wish …’
She said, a little brusquely, cutting him off: ‘Eat up. I find I have some time today after all. When we’re done, I’ll take you over the river if you like. We could look at the university districts. I can see you’re interested.’
The look on his face was reward enough. It encouraged her to go on.
‘Tell me,’ she said, leaning forward, supporting her little heart-shaped face with both her hands, and caressing the boy with the gentlest look imaginable, ‘you’re a bright boy; I can see you want knowledge; and, as I understand it, your family history means you aren’t encumbered by estates that would take up all your time either. So why haven’t you thought of giving a bit of time to educating yourself?’ She nodded hypnotically at him, willing him on. ‘You could, you know …’
She saw him stop looking happy. His face got a pinched, miserable expression she didn’t like at all.
‘What, go to the University, you mean?’ he said in a small voice. ‘In England?’
He didn’t know how to explain it to her. He didn’t know how to summarise all those years of snubs and sneers from beefy English pageboys and knights and even servants – the jokes about being a wild man from Wales, an eternal outsider – in a voice that wouldn’t betray his feelings. ‘I never thought about it, because I don’t think I could. You see, I’m foreign …’ He gave her a desperate look. ‘Welsh,’ he added.
She looked bewildered. ‘So?’ she said; ‘I’m Venetian by birth; and Guillebert de … well, no point in making a list. But there’s hardly a native-born Parisian at the University here, or in the world of letters at all. We’re all some sort of foreigner. What difference would it make to you, being foreign?’
Owain tried to keep the memory of the sneers he was so used to out of his ears, the mocking of his singsong intonation in English. But he couldn’t quite stop tears prickling behind his eyelids.
He took a moment to compose himself. He managed a smile. ‘In England,’ he explained, striving for a lightness that still somehow eluded him, ‘since the uprising in Wales, you can’t even marry an Englishwoman if you’re Welsh, not without a special dispensation allowing you to be considered an Englishman, which is impossible to get. We’re a conquered race, you see …’
He looked warily at Christine from under his lashes. Once he’d believed there would be two Welsh universities; they’d been ordered into existence by Owain Glynd?r when he’d been crowned at Machynlleth ten years before. How could he explain all the details of that history? He thought she’d think he was making excuses. He thought she might get angry.
But Christine wasn’t angry. To his surprise, he thought she looked strangely sympathetic. She was gently nodding her head. ‘So you’d have to teach yourself,’ she said slowly. ‘Like I did.’
Then she laughed; and she was laughing with him, not at him, he could see. ‘My God,’ she said, with grim satisfaction, as if she’d been proved right yet again. ‘I don’t know what would become of our University if there were no foreigners! How provincial the English are …’
In this respect, at least, Owain found he was guiltily enjoying her contempt for his adopted country – so much he almost nodded.
She put a sympathetic hand on his, and looked deep into his eyes again. ‘Shall I tell you how things are here?’ she went on. ‘Norman, Picard, English, German, Fleming, Provençal, Spaniard, Venetian, Roman, you name it, they’re all here. The colleges have bursaries, too, so good students don’t have to pay for their own studies. You just have to enrol at a college that deals with your nation – they count four nations, and the one that’s called the English nation takes the English and the Germans and Flemings and Dutch too. Why ever wouldn’t they take the Welsh? If you were ever to want to go to university in Paris, there would be no problem. And if they turned you down, it certainly wouldn’t be because of your nationality.’
There was a deliberately comical look of astonishment in her eyes at that outlandish notion. She was shaking her head.
‘Eat up,’ she said, suddenly purposeful, and he let himself be drawn to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’
It was late when they came back from the University. But Owain’s eyes were still shining.
She said: ‘I’ll put another book out for you. For when you’ve finished this one. It’s one of my early ones, something I wrote when Jean was going to go away to England. Advice to a young man; on how to learn to learn. I thought it might appeal.’
His face lightened even more; then suddenly darkened with memory. He said: ‘But I’ll have to go …’
She said: ‘How long can you stay?’
He fell silent. He scuffed one toe against the other foot. She could see him remembering his pointless existence; waiting in palace corridors; being left out by English pageboys and aides with a proper claim to their lords’ time. ‘My lord of Clarence will be off in a day or two,’ he said eventually. He eyed her for a moment, as if thinking.
What Owain was fumbling towards articulating was that he wanted to find a way to stay on after Clarence left. These Parisians – fearful as they all seemed, with the memory of their conflict so recent on them that you could practically smell the blood on them, so fresh that they didn’t yet have words to talk about it – were, at the same time, full of a joy he didn’t know: the pleasure of being here, where they were, doing what they did. They knew something that made it almost irrelevant if the great men of the day destroyed each other over their heads. They might tremble at the profound crisis they were caught up in, and mourn the passing of the established order of the world they knew. But they believed in something universal that couldn’t be destroyed. They were putting their hope in beauty. Owain had never had a day when so many enticing futures opened up before him. He didn’t know whether he wanted to go and enrol at the University, or just stay in this house with these warm, kindly people and read himself into the life they lived. But he wanted to be here.
‘Did Anastaise tell you?’ she asked, as if she were changing the subject. ‘She took a poultice this morning to an old woman with sores under her arms that Anastaise said looked like plague sores.’
She saw the flicker on his face; she didn’t think it was fear. ‘I’m wondering,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps I should tell my lord of Clarence you’ve been exposed to the miasma, out here in the town. Perhaps I should suggest you stay on until a doctor gives you the all-clear.’ She poured him a cup of wine. ‘You could rejoin them at Calais later,’ she murmured; the voice of temptation. Then, realising that the Duke of Clarence might well be heading straight back to Normandy to go on making war, she added, with asperity, ‘or wherever the Duke prefers.’ She put the jug down. There was a hint of mischievous laughter in her voice when she said: ‘After all, it would be a service to him to make sure his men didn’t get ill.’ She could take Owain to meet a friend or two from the University in the next few days; set wheels in motion.
‘But,’ Owain said, hesitating naively, ‘there wouldn’t be a risk of illness. I haven’t really been exposed to any miasma, have I?’ Hastily, he added: ‘Though I would love to stay …’
She caught his eye – a challenge. She raised her eyebrows. Cheerfully, she said: ‘Well, then – lie! It would be in a good cause. I can’t imagine God would mind.’ And when she saw the disbelieving grin spread over his face, she knew he would.
FIVE
The English hunted for a day with the Queen. The next day, they invited Catherine and her ladies to hunt with them. Queen Isabeau said no. Perhaps she didn’t want to goad Louis any more. Perhaps she just didn’t want to be reminded that her daughter had no ladies to speak of – that the two youngest royal children, more or less forgotten on the edge of the court, lived the peculiar, twilight, scrounging existence they did. So the English left by dusk that night, in the purposeful flurry of green and brown that seemed to be their way. And, a day later, everything was back to normal – at least, back to the upside-down normal of the times of the King’s illnesses.
Catherine and Charles sat idly in the garden together. It was too hot to be inside. Their mother’s door was shut. The servants weren’t there. There was no food. As usual, there was nothing to do.
Charles threw a pebble into the fountain, trying to make it skim and bounce. It went straight down. But he was whistling. She could see he was glad the English had gone, with their marriage proposal.
‘I tell you what,’ he said, a few failed skims later. ‘I heard Mother and Marguerite whispering away together earlier. Planning something. Both looking really excited.’ He did an imitation of evil busily on the loose: hunching his shoulders forward in a one-man conspiracy, jokily narrowing his eyes into devil slits, darting them furtively from side to side, smacking his lips and leering. ‘Of course they shut up when they noticed I was listening. But I bet I know what they’re up to. They’re going to get their own back on Louis for being rude to the English Duke.’
Catherine sighed. They were both scared of their mother’s temper; and her plots.
But there was nothing else to look forward to. ‘I wonder what they’ll do to him?’ she said, a little apprehensively. Charles didn’t reply. After a long moment’s silence, she picked up a pebble herself.
They were lying under an apple tree in the orchard, flicking twigs up at the unripe fruit, when Christine appeared an hour later, calling for them.
She had a basket on her arm. She had a young man with her.
They hardly noticed him. They flew at her; two raggedy children, calling in thin, eager voices, ‘Christine! Christine!’ and ‘What’s in your basket?’ and ‘I’m starving!’ They dived at the basket and, with tremendous animation, began laying out the food she’d brought. Very ordinary food. Early strawberries. Some cheese in a cloth. Last night’s beef leftovers. A couple of eggs. A hunk of bread.
‘Can we eat now?’ Charles was begging, hanging on Christine’s arm. ‘Please?’ A funny little thing, Owain thought: eleven or twelve, but undersized, like a much younger boy, with a white face and a rabbit’s red eyes and a big, bulbous nose. His voice was squeaky and babyish. And why was a prince of France dressed like that? In old rags that Owain would have been ashamed of wearing; dirty, too?
Then he turned to the little Princess, who was sitting on the long grass, unwrapping the cloth from round the cheese with the tender excitement of someone who’d never seen food before. Like her brother, she was also in plain, old, crumpled clothes, with her skirts so much too long for her that they seemed made for someone else. She’d tied a knot in one side, perhaps to let her run or climb trees without tripping up. Her hair was loose; he could see a kerchief lying on the ground not far away. It was pretty hair; long and thick. But it was all tangles with bits of grass in it. She’d looked a young woman in the royal chambers, in her finery; but now she was nothing more than a scruffy child. Owain was wondering, rather disapprovingly, how these children came to look so neglected, when Catherine absent-mindedly lifted one hand, twisted her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, and turned to smile up at him.
And all at once Owain was lost for breath. How slim and long her neck was, how lovely the line of it, rising from her soft shoulders.
The sun was behind him. She was blinking a little, trying to focus her eyes on the tall shape before her; but he didn’t think she could really see him. He didn’t think she recognised him, or was remembering her own kindness in sparing his blushes at his Duke’s audience with her mother. She was only smiling that blind, vulnerable, enchanting smile out of a child’s pleasure at the presence of Christine, and the picnic, and something to do to relieve what he could see had been boredom.
But thinking those sensible thoughts didn’t stop the soft sense of wonder stealing through him as he stood and stared back, entranced by the sight of her, feeling his heart swell with joy.
It was Charles who broke the spell: Charles, wriggling and giggling around Christine, until she put firm arms on his skinny shoulders and said reprovingly, ‘Of course you can’t eat yet; not till I’ve introduced my guest. Where are your manners?’
That got the child’s attention all right. He turned straight to Owain, staring. Rudely, Owain thought; but then, whatever he was wearing, he was, after all, a prince of the blood, and allowed to stare at anyone he chose. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I know you!’ he cried, almost accusingly. ‘You’re the one who held the casket while the English Duke gave my sister a jewel. Aren’t you?’
Owain nodded, and bowed. ‘The very same,’ he said easily, doing his best to charm. ‘Owain Tudor.’ He’d half-turned to face the little boy; but he was blissfully, agonisingly aware, at the same time, of the girl looking up at him from below, muttering, with pink cheeks and a prettily awkward air, ‘I remember you now, of course, it’s just that you look different, out here in the sun.’
You must be informal, Christine had said; just call them by their names; no bowing and scraping. In the gardens they’re just children; they’re very quiet; shy; it’s wrong to scare them with formalities; we’re old friends. All the same, he wished now he’d put on something better than the simple tunic he was wearing. For reasons he didn’t understand, he wanted to cut as elegant a figure as he could.
Christine, also visibly keen to make the introductions go smoothly, said, in a special child-voice whose gentleness surprised Owain, ‘Owain is from a noble family of Wales – the kings of Powys Magog.’ She pronounced the Welsh words strangely, but he was surprised and flattered that she’d even tried to reproduce the unfamiliar name; flattered, too, that she was describing his lineage with such respect, when he’d got used, almost, to being all but invisible among Englishmen; to sitting below the salt; to being ignored. ‘I thought you’d enjoy showing him the gardens, and the lion.’
Little Charles didn’t look as though he’d enjoy that at all. For someone supposedly so shy, there was a definite aggression in his expression. He was scowling. He said: ‘But the English party is supposed to have gone. They told us in the kitchens. Why are you still here?’
Owain opened his mouth to make a soft reply. But he wasn’t sorry when Christine got there first. The truth was that he wouldn’t have been sure what to say about why he was still in Paris, or, indeed, at the Hotel Saint-Paul. Christine had suggested he come with her so he could see the famous gardens at the King’s favourite Paris home, though he’d had a feeling she really just wanted to show off her friendship with the King’s children. Not everyone was on such intimate terms with princes; and he’d begun to see that Christine, magnificent though she was, wasn’t above vanity.
‘Owain was only temporarily attached to the Duke of Clarence,’ Christine told the pouting little boy reassuringly. Owain could tell from the practised way she patted at him that this suspicious, feral child must often take a lot of reassuring. ‘He’s not with them any more. The rest of the English have gone, darling. I doubt they’ll be back.’ She patted again. The little boy’s eyes lost their fierce look. ‘But Owain wanted to stay on in Paris for a while to see if he’d like to study at the University. He’s my guest. And he’s reading my modest collection of books while he’s here. Racing through them. An example to all of us. An example to you!’ she finished brightly.
Little Charles wasn’t quite satisfied yet. But he put his concerns, whatever they were, to one side; nodded briefly at Owain, and said again to Christine, even more plaintively: ‘So can we eat now?’
Owain’s heart leapt. He saw that Catherine was still watching him from her place on the long grass, catching his eye so he’d be sure to notice her. She was shrugging slightly and casting her eyes upwards, in a quiet, friendly apology for her brother’s awkward manners.
He smiled back at her, grateful for the thought; wondering why she had her hand clamped, as she did, across her mouth. It looked like a gag. She didn’t seem conscious of it. It was an ugly gesture. Then she forgot him. She was hungry too. And she was still a child. As Charles threw himself down beside her, ready to snatch at the food she’d set out, she moved her hand, freed her mouth, turned a teasing grin on her brother, and plucked the bit of bread he was aiming for off its cloth. ‘Too late,’ she mumbled with it in her mouth. Charles pouted; then, seeing Christine smile, he started to laugh too.
There was a breadcrumb on the side of her lip. There was a mischievous glint in her eye. There was sun in her hair. Owain, who’d thought he was excited and happy before, seeing the world, caught up in adventure, could hardly believe the trembling intensity of the joy he now felt just watching her, as he and Christine slid down to their knees to join the picnic.
Charles led the way to the lion cage. Food had improved his mood. So had the exchange he’d begun as soon as he had an egg inside him and a slice of beef and most of the strawberries.
‘Does the King of England really want to marry Catherine and take her away?’ he’d asked Owain, and his eyes had had both fierceness and a kind of mute plea in them.
‘Yes,’ Owain said kindly, understanding what was making the child look so glum – fear of losing his playmate if she married – and feeling sorry for him.
‘No,’ Christine said at the same time, with much more force. ‘He knows we’ll say no – we already said no to him as a husband for Princess Isabelle, because he’s a …’ Looking at Owain, she refrained from saying ‘usurper’, but only just. ‘In any case, he doesn’t want a marriage. He wants war. He’s already started harping on about English claims to France. He’ll just use any marriage negotiations to pick a quarrel with France. He’s looking for a grievance. It would be naive to think anything else.’
There was a short pause. Owain, feeling shocked that he hadn’t understood how hostile some of the French might feel towards his King and, trying not to resent Christine’s sudden brusque rudeness, looked carefully away. But he saw little Charles nodding, clearly believing Christine. ‘Let’s go to the lions,’ Charles piped up, looking suddenly much more cheerful. He bounded off through the bowers and trellises and artful fountains and sprays of roses.
Owain brought up the rear. The royal gardens were so extraordinary that he quickly forgot the sting of Christine’s tongue and was soon turning his head from side to side, admiring statues; views; flowers; nightingale cages; fountains gleaming with silver fishes. Miracles.
Everyone stopped when they got to the great wrought-iron cage. Inside, a matted, maddened lion paced, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, over its droppings, snarling. It was menace in animal form. It was golden; it was stinking; a king humiliated. It never stopped trying to escape. Even now, in this heat, it was pulling the chain that ran from its collar to the stake in the ground as taut as it could, testing the possibilities, following its instinct, feeling for a way out.
A silence fell on them all as they admired its powerful shoulders and the magnificent lines of its muzzle and its tawny, deadly eyes.
‘Has it ever got out?’ Owain asked, in a dazed voice.
No one answered.
Charles whispered: ‘They feed it a whole dog, or a pig, or a sheep, every day.’ He added, without expression: ‘The animals always scream before they die.’
After a while, Catherine asked, just as quietly: ‘Does the King of England keep lions?’
As she spoke, she glanced up towards Christine, who was standing well back from the cage. She was looking past the lion into the distance; lost in some private thought of her own, which, to judge from the tragic expression on her face, wasn’t a happy one.
Catherine turned her steady gaze back on Owain.
Owain had no idea if there had ever been a lion in England. And his head was too full of lion-stink and heat to be able to think straight. But there was nothing he wanted more than to feel her eyes on him. ‘There’s an elephant at the Tower of London,’ he said. He’d heard the story, even if he hadn’t seen the elephant on his few brief trips to London. And he’d seen a picture of an elephant once. It was the most impressive thing he could think of to say.
‘What’s an elephant like?’ Catherine asked.
‘Huge and grey,’ he said boldly, describing the picture he remembered, beginning to enjoy his story. ‘Like a giant dog. And instead of a nose it has an extra limb – curving up, in the shape of a horn.’
He’d hoped to astonish her with his fabulous beast. But she just nodded, matter-of-factly, as if she saw elephants every day. Perhaps being among miracles at all times took away the edge of shock.
Then, after another furtive glance at Christine, she added in a whisper: ‘And what’s Henry of England like?’
She moved a little closer.
Owain paused, trying desperately to marshal his thoughts. She smelled of roses.
‘Honest,’ he muttered, thinking defiantly that he could at least do something to right the damningly wrong impression Christine had given of his King. ‘Straightforward. Good-tempered … A good planner … And an excellent master: everyone who serves him loves him …’
He glanced up at Christine himself, hoping she was still staring past the lions, thinking her thoughts and not listening to him.
Catherine was so close now that she couldn’t help but catch the movement of his eyes and know what he was thinking. She bit her lip; but the breathless beginning of a giggle escaped anyway. She nodded conspiratorially at him. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘Christine’s not listening.’
For a moment they stood too close, exchanging glances, not quite laughing. He was dizzy with the intimacy of it; dizzy with the bees buzzing around him. Then she went back to prompting him: ‘And the court, the English court? What’s that like?’
Owain hardly knew anything of the court, either. He’d served at banquets – three hours of silent eating. He’d ridden behind hunts. But he didn’t know if any of that would impress her, any more than the elephant had. He let the smell of roses and warm skin drift delightfully into his nostrils. He hesitated. He wanted to make England attractive. But he wanted to tell her the truth, too.
Hesitantly, he began: ‘Not as magnificent as this … and London isn’t a quarter the size of Paris.’ His head cleared. Suddenly he knew what might appeal to someone brought up in times as uncertain as those Catherine had known here – times, he thought, with sudden understanding, that had perhaps been almost as uncertain as those he’d known, in a different way. He’d tell her what had appealed to him about coming to England – it had been exactly the same thing. He went on, with greater confidence: ‘But it’s very orderly. Dignified. Decorous. Calm. The King and his brothers and his three Beaufort uncles rule together, wisely and in perfect unison … and the people love them all.’
She was nodding now; looking thoughtful; wistful even. He’d been right. She was impressed by that.
Louder, because it would be foolhardy to expect Christine not to come out of her reverie sooner or later, and seriously, because he wanted the pleasure of watching Catherine’s lips move and eyes dance and neck sway as she considered her reply, he asked: ‘And what about here? The French court … what’s that like?’
She thought. Her forehead wrinkled enchantingly.
But it was Charles who, turning away from the lion at last, broke in with an answer. ‘Dancing and debauchery!’ he shouted, throwing out both arms as if taunting a mob.
Catherine laughed, a little uneasily. ‘He doesn’t know what it means,’ she told Owain. ‘It’s just something they were shouting in the street … last year … when there was …’ Then, as Owain’s startled look sank in, she turned crossly to her little brother and reprimanded him: ‘You mustn’t say that! I’ve told you so many times!’
‘I do know what it means. There was a ball here once when four men dressed up as hairy savages,’ Charles piped up stubbornly. ‘They were supposed to jump out and scare the ladies. But their costumes caught fire on a torch, and two of them burned to death before everyone’s eyes,’ he added with ghoulish relish. ‘You can imagine the screaming.’
‘Did that really happen?’ Owain couldn’t help asking. You never knew, here. Perhaps it had. ‘Were you there?’
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