Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller. Barbara Erskine

than the men they watched, not in her own cwm but on a hillside somewhere, witnessing the horror unfolding beneath them.

      Then between one breath and the next Catrin had awoken and the dream had faded as dreams always will and with it her companion, but not before she had noticed that the woman had light brown hair, wild and unkempt, with no coif or veil. As they looked at one another in horror at what they had seen, she saw the woman had clear grey eyes. For a moment they had held one another’s gaze, then she had gone with the dream into the mist.

      The next day it was raining and cold.

      Andy yawned and, dropping her paintbrush, stretched out her fingers to relieve their stiffness. After ringing Sian to thank her for the supper party she had settled down at the table in the living room and had been painting for several hours. She gave a wry smile, noticing the plants she was painting – a small posy of hastily gathered yellow tormentil and St John’s Wort – had drooped slightly in their glass of water. Instead of looking cheerful, they seemed exhausted and depressed, which was pretty much what she felt too.

      She sat staring into space, allowing herself to think again about the figure from her dream the night before, the figure she’d imagined seeing standing in the kitchen doorway. Almost without realising she had done it, Andy pulled her sketchpad towards her, reached for her pencil and began to touch in the details of the woman’s face. It was clear in her mind: sharp, fine-featured with expressive grey-green eyes, her hair hidden by a hood, her hands strong and capable. The rest of her clothes were indistinct. Andy remembered only the long heavy cloak, which swept the ground. The woman had been a remnant of a dream that had been particularly vivid, easily explained after months of stress and unhappiness. Hadn’t she?

      Pushing back the chair, she stood up and walked over to the hearth.

      Apart from the pool of bright light focused on the table where she had been working, the room was full of shadows. She looked round as the curtains stirred in the draught from the windows which were streaming with rain. A puff of ash shifted from the long-dead fire. This was the oldest part of the house, its great hall, she now realised. She thought back to what Roy had told her last night about its ancient and historical origins. The heavy ceiling beams emphasised its age, solid, brooding, throwing off the light from the lamp with something like disdain as the weight of ages overwhelmed the room. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir. There had to be ghosts here. How could a house this old, steeped in history, lived in by generations of people long gone, not have ghosts? Ghosts, whatever they were, would be in the DNA of ancient plaster and oak; they were part of the fabric of time, as real as the pegs that held the joints of wood together.

      She didn’t feel afraid at the thought. The house was friendly; it seemed to welcome her, but it was easy to imagine a sense of its former life, watching, waiting, comfortable she hoped in the knowledge that she was here as the new caretaker.

      She sat down on the edge of the sofa and closed her eyes, wondering if she could conjure up anything of the house’s past. She used to do this with her father when she was a child, always hoping something would happen. Nothing ever had, but maybe this time it would. She was hoping, she knew, that the woman from the kitchen would appear again.

      She thought back to her father’s explanation and the theories she had read so often in her books, the ones she liked best, that ghosts were memories, moments in the past which had caught in the fabric of a house like a moth in a spider’s web, clinging, fluttering briefly then gone back into the dark. Sometimes it was more than that; sometimes someone had left a trace of themselves anchored by their emotions, and those would be the strongest impressions. She remembered once or twice, ghost-hunting with her father, when there had been a subtle shift in the air as though someone or something had moved on stage while they watched from the darkened auditorium, prompting her to open her eyes, frightened and excited, clutching at her father’s hand. Sometimes a slight flicker of light would catch their attention, but that was all that happened.

      As far as she recalled there were solid scientific explanations for all this stuff, something to do with quantum physics, but she never became an expert. Graham had come along and scoffed and shuddered and mocked, and she had put it all behind her.

      She hadn’t encountered any of these memories, fragments of the past, in the old days when she had been so keen on doing this, but maybe there was something here, in this house with its dreams and its shadows and its memories.

      Slowly she emptied her mind, allowing it to rest, open, receptive, ready for any impressions that might come as the silence of the room wrapped itself around her.

      Five minutes later she tensed. Was that a change in the atmosphere? She could feel someone there watching her. Someone was ready to communicate. Her eyes flew open.

      Culpepper was sitting in the doorway gazing at her in silence, his expression enigmatic.

      She laughed out loud. ‘You caught me,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you can see them, the people who used to live in this house.’

      The cat’s expression remained unchanged.

      The knock at the front door made her jump. The sound of the rain on the flags outside had muffled the noise of the car engine as an old muddy Volvo drew up outside the gate. Holding her coat over her head Sian ran up the steps and huddled under the stone lintel of the porch until Andy pulled open the door.

      ‘Had a wonderful thought,’ Sian spluttered, running her fingers through her rain-soaked hair as they headed into the warmth of the kitchen. ‘Let’s go and find Meryn. Not only does he know about the history of this house and this area in general, but I think he’s writing a book about herbs. Maybe you could illustrate it for him. I’m going to drive you up to his cottage, show you where he lives and we will see if there’s any sign of him.’

      Andy stared at her, shocked at this sudden explosion of energy. ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Of course I’m sure. He might even be there! Do you want to come?’ Sian was laughing.

      Andy thought for a moment then she smiled. ‘That sounds good to me. I’ve been cooped up all day painting and I could do with a bit of fresh air.’ She cocked an eye towards the window. Rain was streaming down the panes, rattling on the flags outside. ‘Does he never answer the phone?’

      Sian shook her head. ‘Often not. He’s an amazing character, Andy. I think you would like each other. He may not be there – he does travel a lot – but it’s worth a look. If the cottage is all locked up then we’ll just have to wait until he returns. But if it looks as though he’s around I can leave a note and get him to ring me. Then I can engineer a meeting.’ She was studying Andy’s face. ‘You do look very tired.’

      Andy bit her lip. ‘I’ve been dreaming a lot.’

      ‘Ah.’ Sian went to lean on the Aga.

      ‘You sound as though you were expecting me to say that,’ Andy said slowly.

      ‘This house is not called Sleeper’s Castle for nothing, as Roy told you. People do dream here.’

      ‘Did Sue ever mention it to you?’

      ‘I think she had nightmares occasionally.’ Sian’s reply was cautious.

      ‘About Catrin?’

      ‘Who’s Catrin?’

      ‘A woman who I think might have lived here once. I’ve heard her name in my dreams.’

      ‘I don’t remember Sue telling me what the dreams were about.’ Sian frowned. ‘She just shrugged them off. Are you telling me you’re dreaming about a ghost?’

      ‘No.’ Andy reached for her coat. ‘No, not a ghost. It doesn’t matter. You know how some dreams linger. And I don’t think I’m sleeping very well, if I’m honest. It’s odd, but I suppose I’ll get used to the silence. The brook is a strange bedfellow. I’m beginning to see how it works. Now it’s raining it will start to roar over the rocks again; when the weather has been dry for a day or two, the roar will subside to a pleasant ripple. I like it.’

      ‘Good.’