Free Candlenight by Phil Rickman

the school by everyone
except the county education officials who'd appointed Bethan.
        " Eisteddwch !" Buddug commanded, and the children squeezed into
their seats and snatched a final few seconds of chatter as Buddug strode across
to the piano for the morning hymn which was only changed once a week and was
limited to the three tunes Buddug could play, except at Christmas when carols
were sung unaccompanied.
        "Buddug," said Bethan
in her ear, "can you spare me a couple of minutes during playtime?
Something is bothering me."
        Buddug beamed and nodded and
crashed her stiffened fingers down on the keyboard like a butcher cleaving a
side of beef.
     
        "It's this," said
Bethan determinedly, and opened the child's exercise book to reveal the drawing
of the corpse and the corpse candle over the grave.
        "Yes, isn't it good?"
said Buddug. She turned over the exercise book to read the name on the front.
"Sali Dafis. Her writing has improved enormously over the past few weeks, and
look at the detail in those drawings!"
        "I'm not objecting to the
quality of it." said Bethan. "It's more the content. I asked them to
pretend they were working for the papur
bro and to write about something which had happened in the village."
        "Excellent," said
Buddug. "And were any of the others as good as this one?" She stared
insolently at Bethan out of dark brown eyes.
        "Oh, Buddug, what are you
trying to do to me?"
        "I don't understand. What
are you objecting to? What sort of ideas have you brought back from the city?
Would you rather the children wrote about one-parent families and lesbians?"
Buddug laughed shrilly.
        Bethan snatched back the book
and turned away, blinking back angry tears. Seeing, out of the window, the
children in the playground, seeing a certain corruption in their eyes and
their milk-teeth smiles.
        "I accept," she said
carefully, still looking out of the window, her back to Buddug. "that a
child has to learn about death. I don't believe that being taken to view a
neighbour in her coffin and being informed that her dying was foretold by the
corpse candle is a particularly healthy way of going about it."
        She gathered her resolve and
whirled back at Buddug, who was wearing an expression of mild incomprehension now,
like a cow over a gate.
        "I don't believe."
Bethan said furiously, 'that little children should see the woods not as the
home of squirrels and somewhere to collect acorns but as the place where the Gorsedd Ddu hold their rituals. I don't
believe that when they hear the thunder they should think it's the sound of Owain
Glyndwr rolling about in his grave. I don't want them looking at storm clouds
and not seeing formations of cumulonimbus but the Hounds of Annwn gathering for
the hunt. l just don't believe—"
        "You don't believe in anything!"
Buddug said, smiling, eyes suddenly alight. "And this is not a place for
people who do not believe in anything. Playtime is over. Time to bring them
in."
    She rang the brass handbell with powerful twists of an old milkmaid's
wrist.

Chapter XI
     
    ENGLAND
     
    The rolling countryside of the Cotswolds was turning out to be good
therapy for Berry's car, which had been a mite bronchitic of late.
        He drove an old Austin Healey
Sprite of a colour which, when the Sprite was born, was known as British Racing
Green. He loved this car. It coughed and rattled sometimes and was as
uncomfortable as hell, but it was the fulfillment of a dream he'd had since seeing
an old detective show back in the States called Harry O, whose hero drove a
British MG sports car and was, even by Californian standards, very laid back.
        The Cotswolds, also, were laid
back, often in a surprisingly Californian way: rich homes sprawled languidly behind
lush foliage which was not so lush that you couldn't admire the beautiful
bodies of the houses and their gorgeous Cotswold tans. Was this what remained
of olde