The Warrior’s Princess

‘Mam!’ Eigon pulled at her mother’s hand. ‘I can hear Glads calling.’

Cerys looked down at her and her eyes were like flint. ‘Don’t mention your sister’s name!’

‘But Mam! Please! She’s calling. She’s lost and frightened!’

Cerys pulled her hand away sharply. ‘You’re lying!’ She turned away to hide her tears. ‘Don’t think about them. They’ve gone.’

‘But Mam, Glads is still there. She is waiting for us. She’s lost Togo.’

Cerys let out a wail of anguish and violently pushed Eigon away. The child didn’t try and tell her any more about what she had heard. Instead, quietly in her bed at night, she prayed, pouring out her heart to the goddess Bride, begging her to look after her brother and sister.

The goddess did not reply.

When Jess woke it was full daylight and she was so stiff she could hardly move. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was, then wearily she sat up and peered round, her dream receding, memories of the events of the day before flooding back. Hungry, thirsty and frightened she climbed to her feet and tiptoed to the door. The yard was deserted.

A second circuit of the farmhouse and its outbuildings confirmed the fact that the place was empty. Driven by hunger, she opened one of the old freezers which sat in a shed behind the barn and was confronted by a frozen mountain of various cuts of lamb. With a shudder she closed it. Megan’s kitchen garden was much more help. Late raspberries and strawberries, blackcurrants, peas and a carrot or two brushed free of mud, restored her strength and confidence and by the time she had eaten her fill she had worked out a plan. She would go home, retracing her steps until she could look down at Ty Bran from the woods on the hillside above. If Dan was still there she would bypass the house, make her way down towards the road and the distant village.

Perched on the hillside above the house she had a good view of the courtyard and the lane outside the house. There was no sign of Dan’s car. Cautiously she made her way down towards the gate and paused, scanning every corner of the yard, every tree and bush, every angle of the house. The place felt empty. The lean-to garage was empty. Her own car still stood uselessly in the middle of the courtyard. There was nowhere else his car could be. No space round the back; no hidden places up on the track. He had gone. She was sure of it. The blackbird was on his favourite perch on the roof of the studio. She smiled. If anyone had been here in the last few minutes the bird would have flown away, surely. As quietly as possible she pushed open the gate and tiptoed around the courtyard. The front door was closed. Silently, flattened against the wall, she edged towards the kitchen window and after a moment’s hesitation, peered in. The room was empty. Ducking under the window she made her way round the side of the house. To her surprise the back door was ajar. She shrank back, frightened, and waited, holding her breath. Was he still there after all? It was a long time before she crept forward again and cautiously pushed the door open as far as it would go. There was no sound from inside. It took a lot of courage to go in; more to search the house. He had gone. There was no sign of him anywhere save the broken window in the dining room where he had forced his way in.

Her heart thudding with fear she stood in the kitchen again, trying to decide what to do. She couldn’t stay here now. She was too much of a threat to him. She frowned. Where had he gone? Why had he left? Had Nat phoned him and demanded he go back? Perhaps his alibi had run out. She gave a grim smile at the thought, but she wasn’t going to stay and wait for him to come back. He must realise she would tell someone about his threats. Or was he going to bluff it out; tell the world she was deluded. After all, he was right, there was no proof of what had happened, either yesterday or back in London. No proof at all. She had told no one. There was no evidence, she had seen to that. Miserably she paced up and down the floor, aware in some part of her that the blackbird was still singing outside from the studio roof, his reassurance her only comfort.

Where are you?

The words floated through the window suddenly, a child’s voice from far away.

Jess shivered.

Where are you? Don’t leave me!

‘Oh God! I can’t stand this any more!’ Her mind made up, Jess turned towards the door.

Her handbag, the bag that Dan had presumably rifled through, was sitting on the kitchen table. She glanced through it. Her mobile was in there. He had put it back in the bag. And her passport, tucked into a side pocket. He had moved nothing. She found the name of a builder on Steph’s list of emergency phone numbers and picked up the phone to get him to come and fix the window. The phone was still dead. Her mobile battery was still flat. Dan had unplugged it from the charger. Swearing, she tore off the piece of paper and put it in her pocket. She glanced round the house one last time to make sure she had forgotten nothing, as an afterthought scooped up Rhodri’s CDs and tucked them into her bag, then she went outside, banging the door behind her. Unlocking the car she pulled one of her cases towards her. She needed a few things. She would put them in a carrier and lug them down to the village where she would find someone who would let her borrow their phone. It hardly seemed worthwhile to try to start the car again but she did it anyway.

It started first go. With a sob of hope she slammed the door and began to ease the car out of the yard. Pulling out onto the track she put her foot down and headed downhill. If Dan was still lurking in the lane and about to accost her as she drove past she intended to be travelling so fast he couldn’t catch her. The car bucked and groaned as it lurched through the potholes but the engine seemed fine. She glanced in the mirror back towards the trees. The sun was glinting on the puddles, slanting through the branches throwing a network of shadows across the deep ruts.

‘Goodbye, Eigon, Glads, Togo,’ she whispered.

There was no reply.

She didn’t stop until she reached the garage in the next town where an obliging mechanic found the loose connection within minutes. Within half an hour she had filled up with petrol, bought some sandwiches and called the builder to go up to the house and fix the window. She plugged her phone in to charge, then she leaned forward to select a CD.

The first that came to hand was Elgar’s cantata Caractacus with Rhodri in the title role. She looked down at it thoughtfully, then pulled out the booklet tucked into the front of the case. Yes, Caractacus was the man she knew as Caratacus and his daughter was here too. Eigen, she was called. Jess frowned, looking down the cast list. Orbin. Who was Orbin? She read on swiftly. He was, apparently, Eigen’s lover. Jess shook her head. No, that wasn’t right. Eigon was a little girl. There was an Arch Druid in the cast, and of course the Emperor Claudius. She read on thoughtfully. The scene had been set by Elgar in his beloved Malvern Hills. She slid the first disk from its case, slipped it into the player and as she pulled out of the garage forecourt she turned up the volume. Behind her, in the distance, the true site of Caratacus’s defeat lay in the summer sunlight, gentle now beneath the distant escarpment of the hills, sleeping in the arm of the river, the site chosen with such care for his great confrontation with the forces of Rome and which had in the event served him so badly in the face of the greatest fighting force the country had yet seen.

The last leg of their journey took them from Verulamium to Camulodunum. Altogether, they had been some fourteen days on the road. This town had been the centre of the confederation of the two great tribes of the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes. Cunobelinus, the father of Caratacus, Cerys’s Caradoc, had been king here before the Romans came. Now it was the centre and the military base of the new province of Britannia. It was here, while she was lodged with her daughter in the legionary fortress, that Cerys learned their fate. As soon as her husband was brought south to join them all the captives were to be taken to Rome to be paraded as vanquished enemies before the people of Rome and before the Emperor in person and then consigned to their doom. Cerys did not need to read the expression in the eyes of the commander of the legion to know that he expected that they would be sentenced to a horrible death before the baying crowds, or that while waiting for her husband to be brought south from his incarceration by the queen of the Brigantes she and Eigon would be kept in close imprisonment. Their time as honoured captives was over, their new lives as prisoners and probably slaves about to begin.

She stared at the letter in his hand as though willing it to disappear; as though praying he would reread it, say he had made a mistake, but his eyes pitilessly confirmed what he had just read out loud. Already he had beckoned the guard forward. Already she was being led from the room, Eigon at her heels.

‘Mam? Mam, where are we going? What is happening?’ The child caught at the skirt of her tunic. Cerys ignored her. She clenched her fists in the folds of her cloak and straightened her shoulders. She would not show fear. She would not show grief. She would not betray the honour of her tribe or the royal bravery of her husband before these men. And nor would her daughter.

‘Be silent, Eigon,’ she snapped. ‘Remember you are a princess. Do not show them you are afraid!’

Eigon shrank back. Bewildered, she bit back her tears. One of the legionaries of their escort noticed the exchange. He glanced at his officer, noted he was looking the other way and smiling down at the little girl in an attempt at reassurance he winked. ‘Courage!’ he whispered.

The last chorus of the first CD came to an end with a flourish. With a start Jess realised she had driven miles without being aware of where she was, buoyed up by the passion of the music. She glanced round, looking for a signpost. She was still on track heading down towards the motorway and London. While Eigon’s life had been unfolding inside her head some other part of her consciousness had been steering the car, turning corners, negotiating roundabouts and villages, heading away from Wales.

Pulling in at last at Warwick Services on the M40 she took stock of the situation as she queued up for coffee and a toasted sandwich, forcing herself to put Eigon and her family out of her mind and bring herself back to the present. She couldn’t go back to her flat; her tenant wouldn’t appreciate her sudden return and it would anyway be the first place Dan would look. She shivered, glancing in spite of herself at the crowds of people around her. No, she would stick to her plan. She had her passport, her credit cards, all she needed in the car with her. She would follow Steph – and Eigon – to Rome.

9 (#u90907c20-6df2-52a2-a1c6-6b23225d6a1e)

The gods were with her. She managed to get a flight that same evening. Leaving most of her belongings locked in the car in the long term car park at Heathrow, she settled into her seat with a huge sigh of relief as the plane took off and angled sharply over London.

She arrived at last at the palazzo in the early hours of the morning. When she climbed out of the taxi, paid the driver and dragged her case to the door the street was, she noticed wearily, as busy as it would be at midday at home. She had no time for any other observations. In seconds she was being enveloped in hugs and escorted up the great marble staircase which led to Kim’s front door on the first floor. Minutes after that she was seated in front of a crisp glass of Frascati and a bowl of pasta in the echoing old-fashioned kitchen.

‘So?’ Steph sat down opposite her and leaned forward on her elbows. ‘What happened?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jess took a mouthful of the fettuccine allamarinara, savouring the flavours with delight. She had not eaten since her motorway stop, so long ago it seemed like another era. A warm fuzzy sense of security was beginning to drift over her.

Kim spooned the last of the sauce onto Jess’s plate. She glanced at Steph. ‘No questions now, Steph,’ she said sternly. ‘Jess is exhausted. We’ll catch up on all her news in the morning.’

In less than an hour Jess had taken a long relaxing bath and fallen into bed. Almost before her head touched the pillow she was asleep. But her sleep was restless and it wasn’t long before she woke suddenly and lay staring into the dark. Her head had been full of music. Elgar. The voice of Rhodri Price, filling the dark spaces of her brain. Except it wasn’t Rhodri Price, it was Caratacus.

* * *

Tall, his strong weather-beaten features drawn with pain, his hair threaded now with silver amongst the thick auburn locks, he was standing in the doorway, his shoulder and upper arm still bandaged from his battle wound, his wrists shackled with heavy iron manacles, staring in towards his wife and daughter. ‘Where is he?’ he asked. ‘Where is my son?’

Cerys clasped her hands in anguish as he stepped into the room. Behind him the guard slammed the door and they heard the bolt slide across.

‘We searched. We searched everywhere. The Romans searched. They put the whole legion to the search –’ Her voice rose in anguish. ‘Eigon hid them in the wood above the battlefield. To keep them safe. But when we looked they had gone.’

Eigon had started to tremble. She stared at her father in terror, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I told them to hide. I told them not to come out.’

For a brief second his face was consumed with anger; with an enormous effort he controlled it. ‘They told me. Can we hope our own people found them? Can they be keeping them safe?’

‘That is my prayer,’ Cerys said softly. ‘I pray every day to the goddess Bride to keep them safe. You must not blame Eigon. She did what she thought was right.’ Her voice was softened by a smile as she turned towards her daughter but there was a hard edge of pain to it that Eigon heard with a small whimper of unhappiness.

Caradoc studied his wife’s face. ‘I had no intention of blaming her. Come here, child.’ He held out his arms, awkward because of the chains and Eigon ran to him, leaning against his knees, worming her way into his embrace. ‘You did what you thought was right, sweetheart, and you were very brave.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘And who knows,’ he glanced up at his wife, his face strained. ‘It may be that Togo and Glads are the ones who will survive to fight another day.’

The music faded and Jess slept again. Next time she woke she went and stood by the window looking out into the darkness, listening to the noises of the night. Her window faced away from the noisy street outside. From somewhere she could hear a tinkling of water, but behind it there was still a distant subdued hum of traffic. She smiled to herself. The Eternal City. She remembered how excited they had all been when Kim had announced her engagement to her Roman aristocrat. They had all vowed to keep in touch for ever, vowed with her, to learn Italian. Jess grimaced at the memory. Kim had become fluent over the years, of course she had. Her own and Steph’s attempts at the language had flagged almost at once. Her promises to herself that she would one day read La Commedia Divina in the original had been ignominiously shunted aside, along with her recognition that her mastery of the language would probably be limited to a few useful phrases mostly involving food.

When she woke again it was late and she lay staring with delight round the large room to which she had been shown the night before. Too tired to take much notice of the room lit only by a shaded bedside light, she had taken in very little of its detail beyond the fact that it was comfortable and had its own en suite bathroom. Now she found she was lying in a baroque four-poster bed, its curtains open, tied back against the posts with brocade swags; at the windows the threadbare damask curtains were only half-drawn and sunlight poured through onto exotic old rugs filling the room with rich warm light. Climbing to her feet she went over to look out and found she was staring down into a courtyard garden somewhere in the quiet inner heart of the palazzo. The tantalising sound of water she had heard in the night, came, she discovered, from an ornate fountain at the centre of an intricate pattern of formal beds and gravelled paths.

‘Are you awake?’ Steph appeared in the doorway behind her. She was carrying two cups of coffee.

Jess turned away from the window and faced her, pushing her hair back from her face with both hands. ‘This is heaven! I hope Kim really doesn’t mind me turning up at such short notice.’ She realised that for the first time in ages she felt completely safe.

‘Kim is delighted. She rattles round in this apartment.’ For a second Steph frowned. ‘I think she is genuinely lonely, you know. It was fabulous when Stefano was alive but now I suspect she only has a few real friends here and most of them bugger off in the summer to go somewhere cooler. I met some of them the other night but most of them were about to leave Rome for the holidays.’ Cradling her own cup she sat down on the bed, swinging her legs. Her feet were bare. ‘I am so pleased you decided to come, Jessie. We’re going to have such fun.’

Jess eyed her sister speculatively knowing it was only a matter of time before the cross questioning started. Ruefully she was remembering her recent enthusiasm for Wales, her pleas to go to Ty Bran, her longing to paint, knowing how illogical her sudden arrival in the middle of the night must seem. One thing was certain. She was not going to tell Steph and Kim the true reason.