Chapter 22 Dragon Hoards
Dragon Hoards
I had confused dreams that night, of being lost in a dark wood.
I could hear Rhys’s voice calling my name, but whether he was rescuer or something more sinister, I had no idea.
I was following a hare that hopped ahead, glowing an amber gold, just as Rhys’s eyes had done last night when he’d kissed me …
I woke later than usual, with the dream fading away like dissolving mist. It must have been sparked off by Rhys’s kiss under the mistletoe, which of course meant nothing. I mean, who hasn’t ever been kissed under the mistletoe?
I banished it from my mind and instead dwelled in pleasant anticipation on the day ahead: a proper family Christmas of the kind I’d never experienced before.
Christmas in the cottage had always been cosy and enjoyable, even when it was just me and Mrs Snowboots, but this would be different.
I dressed in one of my new drapey jersey tunics, this one a dark emerald green, a much nicer colour than the snotty pale greens the twins favoured, black velvet leggings, a pair of green malachite earrings and a smidgeon of make-up. After all, as Cariad had said, it was sort of a party day!
I assumed Cariad would have woken up hours ago, too excited about her stocking to sleep late, but there was no sound when I opened the door, other than that of the other guests stirring in their rooms, the running of water down pipes and wardrobe doors closing. It was almost brunch time.
I carried all my little Christmas parcels downstairs with me and arranged them under the tree, whose lights had already been switched on. There were a lot more parcels there now than when I had gone to bed last night.
As I straightened up, I could hear Cariad’s voice from the direction of the kitchen, which grew louder when I opened the door to the refectory. There I found Tudor laying the breakfast table.
We wished each other Happy Christmas and then I said, ‘I hope I’m not down too early. I don’t want to be in the way.’
Before he could reply, the door to the kitchen swung open and Cariad whirled out like a small hurricane, followed by the equally overexcited Snookums.
‘You are up!’ she said. ‘Daddy wouldn’t let me come and wake you to show you my stocking, but I thought everyone must be up by now because it’s so late and they won’t get anything to eat if they don’t hurry up!’
Then, seizing my hand, she dragged me into the kitchen, which smelled of grilling bacon and fresh bread.
Bronwen was cooking and Rhys sitting at the long table, drinking coffee.
‘Happy Christmas, Ginny!’ he said, the exact words he’d spoken last night before he had kissed me. I felt my face glow.
‘Sit down and have some coffee,’ invited Bronwen, who was flipping sausages over in a large pan.
‘Only if I’m not in the way?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Sit here, between me and Daddy,’ invited Cariad, plumping herself down in front of a disembowelled Christmas stocking, ‘so I can show you what I’ve got!’
The coffee was hot and strong, which was just as well, because I’d suddenly had an out-of-body experience where I seemed to be looking down on myself, sitting at a kitchen table on Christmas morning, in a big house in the middle of nowhere, and with Rhys Tarn pouring coffee for me.
I came to, realizing I was staring at Rhys, because he now grinned at me with that familiar quirk of his lips, and patted the seat of the chair next to him.
‘Sorry, I’m still half asleep,’ I said, sinking down and taking the cup. ‘This should wake me up, and I’d love to see what was in your stocking, Cariad.’
She displayed her treasures, including the smallest member of the stuffed toy dragon family, the gingerbread pig, made by Bronwen, and the large chocolate penny in a bronze tin Rhys had told me about, plus a bag of chocolate coins.
‘And this bag of coal, too,’ she said, exhibiting a Cellophane cone of black lumps. ‘It’s for naughty children really, but it isn’t actually coal. It’s crunchy like the cinder toffee Bronwen makes sometimes.’
The rest of the contents were an assortment of small novelty stationery items, a Horrible Histories book, a pack of replica Victorian Happy Families cards and a Chinese paper dragon made in a honeycomb way and mounted on two sticks, so you could make it wiggle about realistically.
‘I love that – I’ve never seen anything like it!’
‘Nerys found it. She said she’d had them when she was a little girl and actually, we have some fold-out Christmas decorations dating from then, too, but they’re in the family sitting room,’ explained Rhys.
‘I want to open my other presents,’ Cariad said. ‘But I always have to wait for everyone else to eat breakfast first!’
‘The anticipation makes it more fun,’ said Rhys, but she didn’t look convinced.
‘Did you have a Christmas stocking when you were little, Ginny?’ asked Cariad, carefully stowing everything back into the long, woolly sock.
‘Yes. I had a nanny called Liv, who is now my mother’s housekeeper and PA, and she always made me one.
It was a bit more basic than yours, though: a tangerine, a handful of nuts in their shells, a candy cane and a book.
That was about it. Liv and Evie usually gave me book tokens as presents too, so I could hardly wait for the bookshops to open after Christmas. ’
‘I like reading too, but if I only got book tokens for Christmas, I’d be disappointed,’ said Cariad.
‘It was what I was used to,’ I said, and then Bronwen announced that everything was ready and we helped Tudor carry it all out to the long serving table, where there were two hotplates waiting for the covered dishes.
As if summoned by the smell of cooking – which perhaps they were – the others all came in together.
When we’d all wished each other a Happy Christmas, we heaped our plates with scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages. There was a dish of vegetarian sausages too, as well as beans and grilled tomatoes.
‘What a treat, to have a full cooked breakfast,’ said Noel. ‘Although I don’t suppose my arteries could take the cholesterol overload more than once a year.’
‘What’s cholesterol?’ asked Cariad, who was, against all the rules, slipping bacon rinds to Snookums under the table.
‘It furs up the inside of your arteries,’ he explained.
‘It serves everyone right for eating animals,’ said Opal severely. She had come down to breakfast, but didn’t appear to have any appetite. She nibbled at a piece of toast and drank coffee, her usually pale face flushed and slightly heavy-eyed.
Nerys looked at her now with some concern. ‘You really don’t look well, Opal. Don’t you think you really might be going down with a cold or flu?’
‘I’m fine!’ she snapped. ‘I told you last night, I’m never ill.’
‘But you’ve hardly eaten a thing,’ pointed out Verity.
‘I’ve never seen any reason to stuff myself with more food than I need, just because it’s there in front of me,’ Opal said, looking pointedly at her sister’s full plate of vegan sausages, tomato and beans on toast.
‘But today is special, because we won’t have dinner till about two, and we need something solid to keep us going,’ said Noel.
‘I’m all for any excuse for a big cooked breakfast,’ Evie said, and Kate, her mouth full, nodded enthusiastic agreement.
Nerys cast another doubtful look at Opal’s flushed face, but said nothing more.
When everyone but Verity had finished eating, Cariad told her to hurry up.
‘We can’t open any presents until we’ve finished and everyone’s there, and you’re such a slowcoach!’
‘Cariad, that’s hardly polite!’ objected Rhys.
‘Oh, I don’t mind. I can see she’s excited to get at her presents,’ Verity said, laying down her half-eaten toast with a slightly martyred expression.
‘Do finish eating, Verity,’ said Timon. ‘We can help Tudor clear the table while you do.’
But Verity, still looking martyred, refused to eat any more and, with Cariad’s enthusiastic assistance, the table was cleared in no time at all and Bronwen was shooing the helpers out of her kitchen, where she was beginning to prepare the Christmas dinner.
‘Now, at last, we can have our presents,’ cried Cariad and, as the lovely sound of the Seren Bach Male Voice Choir filled the air, we went through into the pine-scented hall, where the lights on the tree danced, sending flickering colours over the parcels heaped beneath.
*
We all gathered in a half-circle around the tree as Timon handed out the presents. Even Bronwen and Tudor popped out briefly to be given theirs.
Like me, I don’t really think the other guests were expecting anything at all – I’d already had my book from Ma and toiletries from Liv – but to my surprise, we all received two or three, my little gifts included.
Of course, Cariad had the biggest heap and needed help to carry them into the sitting room, where she settled herself on the rug in front of the fire for a frenzy of unwrapping.
The rest of us sat down more sedately to delve into our mysterious parcels and I discovered, to my delight, that we had all been given one of the smaller porcelain figures from the Winter Solstice ceremony range.
Mine was the Druid – tall, dark-haired and bearing more than a passing resemblance to Rhys. Evie’s was Old Winter. Opal got the Green Man, her twin St Melangell, with a hare nestled against her blue robes; Kate, the antlered hunter and Toby, the hobby horse.
Verity, as slow to unwrap as she was to eat, received St John.
‘We wrapped them all up in identical paper and, of course, the boxes are the same size, so we had no idea which one was which when we put your names on them,’ said Nerys. ‘We hope you like the ones you’ve got.’
‘I love mine,’ said Pearl, glowing.
‘Yes, thank you so much,’ Toby said. ‘The modelling of them is exquisite.’
‘The model of mine is exquisite too,’ said Evie, holding up Old Winter, which was clad in a silvery robe that matched his small, pointed beard, his head topped with a frosted twig crown. ‘It’s definitely you, Noel!’