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Not possible, there’d never been a rookery at the manor, nobody knew why. Madoc slid out of bed, cautiously so as not to wake Janet, and slipped over to the window in his bare feet. The floor was cold as banished hope, the fire was down to a few ashy coals. Outside, the mist was thick over the ground; he couldn’t see any birds, but they were out there, squawking their beaks off.
    Janet hadn’t been able to sleep much on the plane, but Madoc was trained to nod off when and where he could. He’d had all the rest he needed, no sense in going back to bed; he’d only start fidgeting and wake the ladies. No need to make up the fire, the room would get warm enough once the sun was up. He dragged on trousers and an anorak over his pajamas, stuck dry socks in his pocket, slung thick-soled brogues around his neck by their laces. He let himself out the window, pulled it shut after him, and climbed down the ivy for auld lang syne.
    The noise was coming from up beyond the farmhouse, the separate dwelling where Uncle Huw and Aunt Elen lived. Over among the ruins, Madoc guessed. Only the chapel had been kept in some kind of repair, it still had a door and most of its roof. He headed that way and was right to have done so. Now he could see them through the mist, great black birds, bigger than any blackbird, flapping in and out through the unglazed windows. Too big for rooks, not big enough for ravens. A flock—no, a murder of crows. Carrion crows, fighting each other to get in, flying back out with dripping red gobbets in their beaks.
    He’d seen them like this at highway kills, swarming over each other to get at the carcass, tearing at the open wounds with their powerful black beaks, not budging from their feast until the next car was almost upon them. He ran to see what they were eating.
    Only a sheep, thank God! Or what was left of one. Blood and wool were all over the floor, black wings filling the chapel with their frenzied beating. As he entered, stepping carefully to avoid what he could of the mess, the clever, cautious marauders took flight and went streaming and squawking out through the windows and the hole in the roof. Madoc could see it clearly, the mangled body on the eroded stone floor, the blood puddled deeper in the low spots. It was mainly at the neck they’d been pecking; the head was off by itself, standing up on its stump atop the altar, with a tatty brown cloth cap cocked over its left horn and a badly charred briar pipe stuck in its mouth.
    Padarn’s cap, Padarn’s pipe. Madoc would have known them in Tierra del Fuego, he’d never seen Uncle Caradoc’s oldest sheepman without them. Padarn couldn’t be many years younger than the baronet whose liege man he’d been since the day he was born, in a thatched stone cottage beyond the ruins where his father and grandfather and not a few before them had lived and died in the service of the Rhyses.
    Padarn could never have committed this outrage, not with one of Sir Caradoc’s sheep. His ram, rather, the huge curled horns and the splotch of ruddle on its exposed left hip—distinguishable from a bloodstain, though only just—told Madoc that. Padarn would not have destroyed his patron’s animal unless by his patron’s orders. Padarn would not have desecrated even an abandoned chapel, he was strict Chapel himself. Padarn would never, not ever, have lent his own cap and pipe to so impious a display. Nor would he have parted from them willingly in any case. What in God’s name had happened to him?
    There was hardly any place to search. Madoc found the old shepherd in a matter of seconds, down behind the carved stone altar. He was lying on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his head as if to protect it from the crows. Crows liked to peck out eyeballs, Padarn would know that. Madoc drew a shuddering breath and knelt beside him.
    “Padarn! Padarn, it’s Madoc. Madoc Rhys, can you hear me?”
    He got no answer, he took hold of the