The Warrior’s Princess - Barbara Erskine

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her in this cosy haven. There was nothing to be afraid of except possibly her sister’s wrath if some precious piece of work got broken. Making her way to the door she paused, her hand on the latch, her ear pressed to the wooden panels. The rain was rattling on the roof, splattering out of a gutter somewhere onto the stones below in the yard. Slowly she reached for the key and turned it. It was several seconds before she could make herself pull open the door. The passage was in darkness. She could feel a damp chilly draught on her face. Somewhere a window must have blown open. Taking a deep breath she ran the few steps along the passage to the studio door, unlocked it and groped for the light switches. The sudden flood of cold light from high in the old beams revealed at once a box of finished figures which had been packed ready for delivery, lying on the floor. The box had splintered and broken open and the figures inside were smashed into a thousand pieces.

      ‘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

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