The Warrior's Princess

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘No!’

  Jess ran to them and crouching down, touched the shards of delicate broken pottery with gentle fingers. She looked up, gazing round. No windows seemed to be open. The studio was ice cold but there was no draught now, nothing which could have knocked the box off the table where it had been standing. Biting her lip sadly she stood up. Perhaps an animal had got into the studio. A cat or a bird. She stared round again, more carefully this time, listening, but the sound of the rain drowned out any other noises there might be. She could feel herself growing more and more nervous as she forced herself to walk slowly round the entire building, staring onto the shelves, peering into the shadows behind the kiln, trying the outside door into the yard to make sure it was securely bolted, standing on tiptoe to scan the higher shelves of tins and bottles, running her finger over the pale terracotta clay dust on the table. There was no one there. No sign of any intruder. Nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. Pausing at last she turned full circle, staring round one last time. Outside the windows the lightning flickered. The rain was easing off. Conscious suddenly of the absolute silence in the studio she hastened over to the door, gave one last look round, flicked off the lights and pulling the door closed behind her, locked it.

  Back in the warmth of the kitchen she found she was shivering violently. Pulling down the bright flowered blinds, she blocked out the blackness of the night behind the windows. She was reaching for the kettle when a voice whispered from right behind her,

  Can we stop playing now?

  Jess froze. The voice from her dream was in the room with her.

  It’s cold and wet out here. Let me in.

  No, she wasn’t in the room. She was outside the door. Jess ran to the door into the yard and put her hand on the bolt, then she hesitated. ‘Hello?’ she called. She listened. There was no reply. ‘Are you there?’ Slowly she turned the key. There was no chain on the door like the one she had in London. Steph would have laughed at such an idea out here in her country idyll. Nerving herself with a deep breath Jess pulled the door open a crack and peered out. The night was still wet and full of wind and rain. She could hear the thrash of tree branches, the slap of leaves against a wall, the drip of water into an overflowing butt. Groping on the wall near her she reached for the switch to the outside light. The courtyard was deserted, the windscreen of her car plastered with ash leaves torn from the trees on the track, a puddle reflecting the light shattered by raindrops. A broken slate lay on the ground near the door. She looked round, scanning the darkness for several seconds. There was no one out there. How could there be? Slamming the door shut again quickly she locked it once more, hugging her robe around her against the cold. The child had been part of her dream, nothing more.

  Back upstairs in her room she climbed into bed leaving the light on, and lay miserably back on the pillows. She had never felt more alone. It seemed like hours before her eyes closed and she drifted off into an uneasy sleep. In seconds she had plunged back into the dream.

  ‘Hurry, children!’ Eigon, the eldest daughter of King Caradoc, could hear the panic in her mother’s voice. It terrified her. Her mother was never frightened; Cerys was a courageous, calm, beautiful woman, idolised by her husband and her three children, respected by her husband’s people, loved by her servants.

  The messengers, trembling with fear and exhaustion, had scrambled up the steep side of the hill fort from the broad river valley below bringing with them the news they already dreaded. There had been a terrible defeat. The screams of battle, the shriek of horses, the gleam of fires had reached them from the distance as they had watched from the palisades and waited and prayed. Up to now she had been strong; always sure of her husband, Caradoc’s, victory. He was a warrior. He was the idol of his people.

  His rise from being the younger son of the king of the Catuvellauni to that of leader of all the remaining opposition to the Roman invaders had been swift and spectacular. His prowess as a general and the death of his elder brothers had catapulted him to kingship first of his own people, then as the head of the confederation of the tribes of the west who were still holding out against the Roman yoke. Up to this moment he had seemed invincible. He was going to lead them to victory and throw the Romans out of the land. Always he had succeeded. He was the greatest king the British tribes had ever seen.

  White with shock, Cerys listened to the messenger’s stammered report. The battlefield, in the gentle curve of the arm of the great River Sabrina had seen bloodshed that night on a scale never before experienced by the men under Caradoc’s command. The Romans had won the day, the king, her husband, had fled into the night and a cohort of Roman veterans had left the field of death and the stripping of the dead and turned towards the hill fort where Caradoc’s wife and children were awaiting his return.

  Ordering everyone left in the fort to flee, Cerys seized Eigon’s hand and slipped between the great oak gates, followed by two of her women, Alys, the children’s nurse and Blodeyn, one of her ladies. Between them they half carried, half dragged Eigon’s younger sister, Gwladys and their baby brother, Togo. Wrapped in cloaks, with nothing but what they stood up in, the women ran down the hillside, panting, slipping and sliding in the darkness.

  ‘This way!’ Cerys veered sideways towards the deeper safety of the trees which covered the western flank of the hill and filled the valley at its foot. ‘They won’t find us here.’ She breathed a prayer to the goddess of these woods that it might be true.

  A summer storm had blown up out of nowhere. The wind was rising. The sound was like the thunder of waves crashing on the beach as the three women and three children ran into the shifting roaring shelter of the thrashing leaves. Almost at once they had to stop, snared by brambles.

  ‘Which way?’ Alys was trying to see through the darkness. She glanced over her shoulder. The enemy was already at the gates of the fort. The sudden flare of flames from the burning stockade was out of sight now. Over the moaning of the trees they could no longer hear the shouts of the soldiers.

  ‘Mam!’ Eigon clung to her mother’s cloak.

  Cerys looked down. Stooping, she dropped a kiss on her daughter’s dark head. ‘Be brave, sweetheart!’

  ‘Is Papa dead?’

  The child felt her mother’s hand tighten for a moment on her arm as Cerys fought back her tears. ‘No, I’m sure he is alive. He has to be.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t run away. He wouldn’t leave us alone! So, where is he?’ Eigon clung more tightly.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s hiding, like us. Waiting for the Romans to go away.’ Once again Cerys glanced over her shoulder. ‘Come on. We need to go deeper into the forest.’

  ‘Mam?’ Togo was whimpering, near to tears. At five years old he was the youngest, named for Caradoc’s elder brother, killed two years before by the invaders. Gwladys was seven, Eigon nearly ten. Eigon and Togo had the dark hair, pale colouring and clear grey eyes of their Silurian mother; Gwladys was fair with her father’s piercing blue eyes.

  ‘It’s all right. Come on, children. We’ll find somewhere to hide. We’ll be fine.’ Cerys could no longer keep the fear out of her voice. Blindly she plunged on and the others followed as best they could.

  They were climbing again now, up through the woodland which cloaked the steep hillside as behind them the orange glow flared gradually brighter into the sky, reflecting off the clouds. The Romans had reached the fort itself now and fired every building within the palisade. ‘Let us pray that everyone else escaped,’ murmured Cerys. ‘Those soldiers will give no quarter.’

  They moved on, more slowly now, pushing their way through dense tangled undergrowth. The two younger children were crying with fear and exhaustion and Eigon was still clinging to her mother when Cerys fell with a cry of pain as her foot slipped over the edge of a foxhole in a muddy bank and her ankle turned sharply over.

  ‘Mam?’ Eigon tried to drag her mother to her feet in desperation. They were all glancing behind them.

  ‘Wait!’ Blodeyn helped th
e fallen woman to sit up. ‘I’ll find you a stick to lean on.’

  ‘I’ll manage somehow!’ Cerys was struggling to stand. ‘We can’t stay here.’ She spoke through clenched teeth. ‘We have to find somewhere to hide. But not yet. We can’t stop yet!’

  They found shelter at last in a stone-built hut on the far edge of the woodland. The roof had partially collapsed and the warm darkness smelled of dry bracken and hay and sheep dung, but it was out of the roar of the wind. Exhausted, the women and children collapsed onto the ground, desperately trying to regain their breath. It was pitch dark in the hut but for the time being they felt safe.

  Pushing the three children down into the comparative warmth of the hay, Alys crawled towards Cerys, feeling her way in the darkness. ‘Let me have your foot. I’ll see if it’s broken.’

  Eigon heard her mother’s gasp of pain minutes later as the woman’s questing fingers probed the swollen flesh above her shoe. ‘It’s just a sprain. I’ll tear a strip from my tunic and bind it for you.’ The ripping sound as Alys wrenched at the linen hem stopped Cerys’s protest in its tracks. ‘When it’s morning, I’ll find some shepherd’s purse and dog’s mercury to make a poultice to bind round it to bring down the swelling,’ Alys went on. Her voice was strong. It comforted them all.

  They fell asleep at last as rain began to seep into what remained of the rotten roof thatch, too exhausted to feel cold or hunger, the two girls huddling under their mother’s cloak, the little boy curled up in Alys’s arms.

  It was Eigon who heard the horses. Her eyes flew open. She could see the torchlight, the reflection of the flames flickering on the wet wall near her. ‘Mam!’ she screamed. ‘We must run!’

  Four riders had stopped in full view, some twenty paces from the hut. Cerys stared at them, appalled, then turned towards the huddled children. ‘Go! Run! Time to play hide and seek, children. Into the trees now. Don’t come out till I call you!’ She was bundling the three sleepy children towards the hole in the tumbled down back wall before Alys and Blodeyn had begun to sit up.

  Two of the men were dismounting, one holding his torch high above his head so smoke and flame streamed past his face, illuminating the detail of his helmet, the cheek pieces framing the mud-stained, tanned face, the bedraggled crest of red fur. The light had not yet reached into the depths of the hut. When it did all he could see was the three frightened women as they rose to their feet, brushing straw from their clothes. The children had gone.

  Eigon ran deep into the darkness, clutching her brother and sister by the hand. Her brother let out a wail of fear. She dragged his arm. ‘Be quiet! Here, Glads, hold my hand. We have to hide!’ They slid down a slope and lay panting in the muddy shelter of a sheep scrape beneath a clump of hazels. Eigon closed her eyes and waited. The rain had started again. In the distance she heard a rumble of thunder. Miserably she drew her brother and sister into her arms. ‘We’re playing hide and seek,’ she repeated more to herself than to them, ‘must wait till we’re called. We’re playing hide and seek. Must keep quiet.’

  They waited for a long time. The rain was heavier now. All three children were shaking with cold. At last she could bear it no longer. She sat up. ‘Wait here,’ she told them. ‘Don’t dare to move till Mam says it’s safe to come out, do you hear me! I’m going to see what is happening.’

  It was hard to retrace her steps in the dark but after several false starts and detours she recognised the darker shape of the hut against the dark hillside beyond the forest’s edge; from where she stood, hiding behind a tree, she couldn’t see any horses. Soaked to the skin and shivering violently she crept onto the track and made her way closer to the hut.

  ‘Mam?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Mam, where are you? Are we still playing the game?’ She tiptoed closer and peered in. The hut was empty. ‘Mam?’ She turned round, staring out into the darkness. ‘Mam?’ Her voice was a trembling whisper.

  Somewhere close by a horse whinnied in answer and she froze. The sound came from a stand of trees behind the tumbled stone wall. She crept towards it and then she saw them. The men had thrust one of the torches into a crack in the stone. The hissing flickering light showed her mother, lying on the ground, her gown pushed up above her hips as one of the soldiers lay across her. He was holding her wrists above her head, forcing himself again and again into her unconscious body. Her face was cut, one eye swollen. Nearby Alys was kicking and screaming as two of the soldiers took turns to hold her down. Of Blodeyn, there was no sign.

  ‘Mam?’ Eigon’s whisper was soundless with horror. ‘Mam, are we still playing hide and seek?’ She had not seen the man behind her.

  ‘Well, well, what have we here? Another little Brit!’ Two hands had seized her and she was swung off her feet into the circle of the torchlight and tossed onto the ground beside her mother.

  The child’s desperate endless scream woke Jess. She lay staring up at the ceiling, the sound of Eigon’s voice reverberating round and round the room. Outside it was barely light. She could hear the raw joy of the dawn chorus echoing from the woods beyond the gate below her bedroom window. She was shaking with fear and her bed sheets were soaked in sweat as she sat up.

  She had been dreaming about a rape. Not hers. Someone else’s. A horrible vicious murderous rape. The rape of a child. With a sob she staggered to her feet and ran to the bathroom where she was violently sick. The outrage of what she had witnessed was everywhere. She couldn’t get it out of her head. The men’s faces. The smell of lust. The cruel jeering. The casual way one of them drew a dagger and pulled it across Alys’s neck as desperately she tried to throw herself between him and the child, leaving her slumped on the ground like a broken doll, her head half-severed from her body. And the child, the girl whose screams filled Jess’s ears. One of them had held her down, another of them hitting her mother so hard as she tried to crawl to help her daughter that the woman fell back in a huddle at the base of the wall and stopped moving. It was the third man who had viciously raped the child.

  Again and again Jess splashed her face with cold water, shuddering. It was the most graphic dream she had ever had. She had been there. She had watched, unable to help, paralysed by fear, as the men tossed the child’s body aside like a rag doll, turned away to find their horses and rode off.

  ‘Sweetheart? Are you all right?’

  Had she really spoken out loud in the dream? She wasn’t sure. Had she reached out to cradle the child in her arms? She wasn’t sure of that either.

  With a groan she turned on the shower and stood under the cleansing water feeling it beating down on the top of her head until she was numb all over. Only then did she turn it off and reach for her bathrobe.

  She was halfway down the stairs when the image flashed through her consciousness. A man’s arm across her body, holding her down. She was in the bedroom of her flat; she couldn’t see anything but the pillow half across her face and she could hear music. One of her own CDs. Soft. Reassuring, and then an arm, across her breasts pushing her back onto the bed.

  That was all. The memory had gone as soon as it had begun to form. She stood still, clinging to the handrail. That wasn’t part of the dream about the child. That was her flat, her bed. The doctor had said her memory might start to return; she had said there might be flashbacks, nightmares, as the longterm effects of whatever drug he had used on her began to wear off.

  Unsteadily Jess made her way down to the kitchen. On automatic pilot now, she plugged in the kettle and assembled mug and coffee pot. Her hand was shaking as she measured the coffee into the pot. Outside the window the yard was already bathed in sunshine. The geraniums in the tub next to the studio door were almost luminous as the light caught their petals. The rough stones of the wall threw a pattern of irregular shadows where the original byre met the more modern infill. She frowned. She could recognise the shape of the older stones. Sunlight. Torchlight. The kind of torch that trailed flames and tarry smoke. This was the scene of her dream. Slamming d
own the mug, she opened the door and walked out into the yard. The air was soft and fragrant, mountain air with the scents of grass and wild thyme and gorse and sheep. Walking across the still-damp flags to the wall in her bare feet she ran her hand over the sun-warmed stones. With the sun at this angle it was easy to see where the new wall had taken over the old, transforming the ruined byre into a modern studio workshop. Unlocking the door she walked in and stared round. The huge room was very silent.

  ‘Hello?’ Jess approached the work table. There was no one there, of course. A bumble bee flew in through the open door, did a couple of quick circuits and flew out again. ‘Hello? Are you here?’ She wasn’t sure who she was expecting to answer. The little girl of her dream, perhaps, because this building had been at some time in the past the scene of the rape she had witnessed in her sleep. Of that she was certain.

  The phone rang as she walked back in through the front door.

  ‘Jess, you OK?’ It was Steph. ‘I got no answer from your flat so I guessed you were already at Ty Bran. Oh, Jess! I can’t tell you how wonderful it is here! I am having such a fantastic time!’

  Jess turned to look out of the window at the sun-drenched yard. ‘Me too.’ She gave a wry grimace. ‘So, do I gather you’ve got some gorgeous man out there you haven’t mentioned?’

  There was a snort from the other end of the line. ‘I’ve told you before, Jess, I’ve given up on men. I love them at arm’s length, but that’s all from now on. They make for far too many complications if you let them get too close.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You’re not lonely? If you need anything, don’t forget you can go and ask Megan Price. She would love to see you and she’ll look after you.’