The Wrong Rite by Charlotte MacLeod Read Free Book Online

sugared it well, filled a stoneware jug with the rest of the hot water and slipped it into the bed.
    Padarn must have been tough as an old boot. By the time Madoc’s fire was up to a good blaze and Huw had got a few spoonfuls of sweet, strong tea into him, the patient had begun to stir.
    “Ah, that’s the way of it. Can you talk, bach? ” Huw begged. “Can you tell us what happened, then?”
    “Witches.” A frightened whisper. “Witches, coming at me through the air. Great flapping things with eyes of fire and terrible cries. It is doomed I am surely.”
    “No, Padarn. It was crows you saw, only crows. It is the old ram from the lower pasture that is dead, and the crows coming to peck at him. Only the crows, bach, you know I would never lie to you. Is it hungry you are? Could you eat something?”
    “It is more tea I could be drinking.”
    The voice was stronger, not much, but enough to wipe the anguish off Huw Rhys’s face. “Here you are, then. Hot and strong, to put the heart back into you. Can you hold the cup yourself?”
    Padarn could, and did. He handed it back empty with a small sigh of content, and closed his eyes. The other two men stayed just long enough to make sure his breathing was regular, the kettle unplugged, and the fire drawing well; then they hurried back to the chapel carrying what they could find in the way of cleaning tools.
    The crows were back. Madoc felt a savage impulse to pelt them with stones from the ruins, he fought it down. One could barely blame wild creatures for snatching their chance at a square meal. No doubt the best solution from the crows’ point of view would have been to carry the ram’s remains to some secluded place and leave them to be picked clean. Huw wasn’t having that.
    “Among the ruins is an old well that went dry and was boarded up long before you were born. We’ll dump the body there and cover it over with stones. As for Padarn’s pipe and cap”—he shrugged—“I’ll wash them off, and perhaps he won’t remember.”
    “We ought to carry it in a tarpaulin or something so we shan’t get bloody ourselves and give the show away,” said Madoc. “And something to soak up this mess on the floor.”
    “Sawdust. I’ll go.”
    Huw strode off toward the big barn, vigorous and hale despite his sixty-odd years. He was still a tall man, broad-shouldered and fair-skinned; this was the way Madoc remembered Sir Caradoc from earlier visits. Huw was looking more and more like his father as time passed, taking on his guise as well as his responsibilities.
    Madoc had responsibilities, too. A policeman couldn’t just destroy the evidence of a crime without first trying to learn what he could from what there was. Could this have been the work of one person alone? A big ram would have been hard to handle, even an old one, Madoc knew that from painful firsthand experience. One experienced sheep handler with a well-trained dog might have managed it, he supposed, or a psychopath in a frenzy of blood lust; but he wouldn’t care to bet on either just yet. More likely a pack of necromantic nuts celebrating some rite of spring.
    Thinking of dogs, where was Padarn’s? He’d always had one of his own, always a female called Fan after his long-dead wife. Last time Madoc and Janet were here, the most recent Fan had been fairly gray around the muzzle. Perhaps she’d died and Padarn hadn’t yet replaced her. He’d ask Uncle Huw later on; just now he’d better scout around for clues, if any.
    He did find a few bloody footprints, but they didn’t tell him much. From the crude shapes and fuzzy texture, he deduced that the culprit or culprits must have been wearing the sort of cheap cloth scuffs that could have been bought almost anywhere and discarded once the gory deed was done. Wear disposable gloves as well, strip yourself otherwise naked, wash off the grue after the slaughter was over, under the pump or in Aunt Elen’s lily pond, get dressed and go home, and who’d be