“You’ll come to a bad end, my girl, with those stuck up ways. You mark my words.”
The harsh statement rang in Sarah Llewellyn’s ears as she drove through the blustery spring night. The rain beat down like a funeral drum on the roof of the black Little Austin. She was headed for the Abbey. Sarah reached for the radio knob then checked herself.
“Darn,” she muttered, “It’s not working.” The radio had been dead for almost a week. Sarah brushed her long, curly red hair out of her face.
The weather was certainly in tune with her mood. As if the poor visibility wasn’t bad enough, tears filled the lovely girl’s sea green eyes. She thought back to the last few days. It wasn’t easy for a twenty year old single female in the early nineteen fifties to leave a busy city like London and settle into the relatively bucolic lifestyle of the North Wales coast. After the sudden death of her mother, Sarah had nowhere to go except the home of her elderly father, a rather conservative small town doctor, and his very bitchy second wife  now Sarah’s stepmother. The young woman was an only child, and the frigid Vivien, a hopeless and vindictive alcoholic if ever there was one, vented all her rage, jealousy and impotence on Sarah. Her father did not appear to see it. Sarah mentally shrugged her shoulders. Maybe he did not want to see it. Sarah relived the whole nightmare. Earlier that evening Vivien had literally poured scorn on Sarah’s first love, her paintings of old Druid ruins and her love of Welsh history. The woman had actually gone out of her way to accidentally on purpose spill her fix-of-the-hour glass of “medicine”  a half full bottle of sherry  all over Sarah’s latest composition, completely destroying the water color.
“So sorry,” Vivien drawled. She awkwardly tottered forward, careening into the canvass and easel, knocking the whole set up on to the floor.
Sarah walked up to her stepmother.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Nonsense, child,” said Vivien. She waved an imperious arm around aimlessly. “The mess can be cleaned up.” The woman narrowed her glazed eyes. “Maybe it’s rather an improvement.” She slowly and unsteadily nodded her head. “Yes, I think a decided improvement.”
Sarah was furious, and would have lunged at the drunken hag in front of her but for her father’s voice.
“Sarah! Vivien! Whatever is this noise? What is going on in here?”
Her father had entered the room.  Angry tears filled Sarah’s eyes. She brushed past her father and ran up the narrow staircase right to her room. She slammed the door behind her. In the dark the young woman threw herself on the bed and gave herself up to a fit of crying.  It was so unfair. She had been here almost a full month. She was due to start a job working for her father as his office secretary, but things had just got worse and worse. The more Sarah had tried to befriend Vivien the nastier the woman became. Sarah was beginning to feel like Cinderella oppressed by the proverbial evil stepmother.
She had tried to face her father with the truth about his wife, but the arrogant old man had just dismissed the problem.
“Vivien is just a highly strung lady,” he said, “Surely you understand that, Sarah?” His whole attitude was one of contemptuousness.
Sarah stared at her father. The girl understood very well. She understood that there was a yawning chasm separating her father from herself. He had conceived her late in life. Sarah’s mother had married very young. Then came the divorce, the separation from her father. After her mother’s recent death her father had felt it was his duty to take her in. But he did it out of guilt. She was here under sufferance. Her presence was only tolerated. The small town doctor had made it very clear that he did not enjoy his young daughter’s company.  It had been a terrible mistake. But coming to North Wales, even with it’s wild, haunting beauty seemed to be the biggest mistake of all. Did it ever stop raining here?
Sarah drove on through the downpour to her one place of refuge: the ruins of the world-famous Saint Owen’s Abbey. In its day it had been an ancient Druid stronghold, long before it’s reputation as an abbey. Sarah was fascinated by the myths and stories of the old ruin and had just begun to study the history of it’s dramatic and bloody past.  Sarah had been trying to capture some of that history on canvass. That had ended abruptly with the painting Vivien had so effectively destroyed this very evening. Her stepmother’s harsh words screamed after her as she had snatched up her coat and ran out of the house.
“You’ll come to a bad end, my girl. Mark my words.”
Sarah mentally shuddered at the thought.
The rain had let up at last. Sarah switched the wipers off and peered through the windshield. In the car headlights she watched the damp sea mist of the cold spring night swirling around her. Slowly, the grey-black silhouette of the Abbey ruins began to take form as she drove the car forward.
Sarah stopped the car a few yards away from the sea cliffs. She switched off the headlights and got out. Immediately the heavy roar of the Irish Sea filled her ears. It took a full minute for her eyes to adjust to the accompanying darkness. The young woman turned from gazing at the outline of the gray and white foaming surf. She faced the Abbey ruins. The clouds parted for a moment.
Sarah started. She abruptly realized that she was not alone.
As her eyes got used to the pale moonlight, white against the damp vapor, she turned back to face the cliffs. There she saw him. A tall, dark, youngish looking man stood by the cliff’s edge. He had turned his back to the churning waves, and seemed to be contemplating the ruins. Something in Sarah’s nature felt immediately drawn to the stranger. He appeared to be reciting something in Welsh. It was a language with which Sarah was not familiar. He did not seem at all startled by the young woman’s presence. Indeed, in some strange way, she didn’t know why, Sarah felt that he had almost been expecting her. He turned around and faced her.
At that moment Sarah felt as if she had been hit by a bolt of lightning. In the flickering moonlight, intermittently concealed by a volley of angry storm clouds, the man appeared to be beyond handsome, almost beautiful. Yet it seemed strange and eerie at the same time. He was dressed in clothes that actually appeared not of this century. They had the look of something old and noble. Sarah was almost paralyzed with shock when the man suddenly advanced towards her. He stopped as he came right up to the young woman and stared down into her lovely green eyes. Sarah, mouth wide open in surprise, gazed up at a full red mouth, high, wide set cheek bones, long wavy dark hair, and a pair of soft, brown eyes glinting with a hint of steely determination.
“You have the Gaelic features of a beautiful Welsh maiden,” he whispered in English, tempered by a heavy Welsh accent.
Sarah jumped at the sound of his voice.  Before she could utter a reply, the man bent down. Instantly she felt herself swept her off her feet. The young man, his arms locked around the warmth of her body, then proceeded to plant a passionate kiss on the young woman’s lips. Sarah’s heart beat wildly as she felt her breasts pushed tightly against the tall man’s frame. She felt almost faint with the power of the man’s virile lust. The stranger slowly disengaged himself and gently put her down. Sarah was far too stunned to move. She could not even begin to process what she had just experienced. Her head was spinning. This could not be happening to her, she thought. But it was happening to her  it really was…
She remained speechless, out of breath. The handsome stranger gravely bowed to her then turned away. He slowly walked into the ruins of the Abbey. The roar of the Irish Sea heralded his departure.
Gradually, Sarah came to her senses. She felt that she had to find out what all this was about.  She gasped and made a mad dash into the ruins.
“Sir! Sir!” Sarah called out to the stranger. But he was nowhere to be seen. It was beginning to rain again. Sarah started to run back to the car and seek shelter. All at once, out of breath, the girl tripped on a protruding stone in the semi-darkness. She felt herself slip. She was falling, falling down. She put out a hand to protect herself. It was to no avail. A blinding flash of light exploded in her head. She hit the damp ground. Everything went black. Sarah passed out.
It must have been a short while later. Sarah opened her eyes. She felt a dull throbbing in her head. She felt groggy. She slowly became aware that a hand was helping her ease into a sitting position. Sarah looked around her. In the moonlight she could see that she was propped up against an old stone wall among the Abbey ruins. The handsome stranger was bending over her with a concerned expression on his marvelous countenance.  Sarah shivered and clutched her shoulders. She was wearing a heavy shawl. A shawl made of velvet. No, she realized. It was a cloak. A velvet cloak. It smelled a little musty.
“It must belong to the young man,” she thought to herself. Sarah looked back into the soft liquid eyes of the handsome stranger. Despite her headache, her heart began to beat again wildly.

Who was this mysterious stranger? What was he doing here in the Abbey ruins wearing such ancient clothes? And why did he kiss her so passionately? See the next exciting installment in Chapter 2 of Sarah Llewellyn and the Druids’ Curse!

Read Chapter 2: The Guardians of St. Owens Abbey
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