Band of Angel by Julia Gregson

mouthand looking toward Father. “Sketching, riding, rushing about all over the place. An excess of anything is not good. Now where is my remedy?”
    Quite worn out with her own importance, she rooted around the dresser drawer until the packet was found. “Do you need magic hand?”
    “No thank you, Aunt,” said Catherine quickly. Magic hand meant aunt’s damp hand dragging seaweedlike across the temples while she murmured “poor child” and “dreadful business” or “it’s all for the best whatever.” It usually appeared when Father or some other worthy male was around.
    “Well, tomorrow,” her aunt decreed, “a nice lie-down in the afternoon and no sketching”—she made it sound like a disease—“and no rushing about all over the place mind. Don’t you agree, Huw?”
    He shrugged, and in that moment Catherine knew that he would not lift a finger to get her back. She looked at him miserably, wondering when they had lost each other. More than anything she wanted a sign from him. There was a clock on the wall above Father’s head, with Davies of Caernarfon written on its face. It was five-thirty now. In a matter of hours she would be gone.
    “Sit down by me,” said Eliza. “Mair will bring you some tea.”
    Her sister’s anxious face made tears rush to Catherine’s eyes. Her dear, sweet sister deserved none of this.
    “You mustn’t worry about me, darling,” she said. “I’m all right . . . a little tired maybe.”
    “Tired?” Auntie Gwynneth’s face expressed the disbelief of one who had risen early, bottled ten pounds of black currants and four of gooseberries, and still found time to dispense advice and medicine to Blodwen Williams of Aberdaron. “Are you tired, Huw, with all that harvesting?” Father gave another sulky little shrug and walked stiffly toward the door.
    “Go upstairs and lie down for a while,” said Eliza. “I’ll bring you up some of Aunt’s splendid physic and some mint tea.” Poor Eliza, always the peacemaker.
    After supper, Catherine went upstairs to pack but, instead, threw herself on her bed. Then, remembering Rob’s instructionthat she should make a will before she left, she got up again and paced about. She looked at her three dresses, her cameo brooch, the bracelet of silver and coral her grandmother had given her. In the end, how laughably little she possessed. Her most precious possession? The lapwing that Deio had carved for her out of driftwood, which she wore around her neck.
    Underneath her bed was a dark wooden box where she’d kept the five sovereigns her father had given her—it seemed like years ago—to buy the dress at Sarn. She was putting her money into a leather pouch when Eliza walked in with her tea and saw her on her hands and knees.
    “What on earth—?”
    “Eliza,” Catherine straightened up, “put the tray down; sit beside me on the bed.” Eliza sat down, hands folded like a child’s on her soft cotton dress. Catherine could have wept.
    “Eliza,” she said in a low voice, “do you love me?”
    “Of corth I do.” Eliza, at seventeen, still had a slight but endearing lisp.
    “Do you trust me?”
    “Yes, oh yes. Catherine!” She grabbed her arm. “What is it?”
    “Eliza, please don’t be too upset, but I’m leaving home soon, very soon.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I’m leaving because if I don’t I’ll go mad. I can’t stand that woman and I can’t stand my life. I have to find more to do than this.”
    She could see Eliza wanting to leap in with words of comfort, new ways of looking at Gwynneth, but knew she must finish in one rush.
    “So I am going to London.”
    “To London!” Eliza’s face was almost comically aghast. “Across Snowdon? To England?”
    “Oh Eli,” said Catherine, smiling through her tears, “you sound like Mair.”
    “And what if Black Fedu be there?”
    They cried together for a while, Eliza’s tears trickling down the neck of Catherine’s bodice and her dear, pink