Child of the Phoenix (32 page)

Isabella’s scream cut the music short in mid-sweep, and there was total horrified silence in the hall. Then it was repeated, echoing eerily in the smoky rafters as Isabella half slipped, half threw herself from her chair, clutching her belly.

It took five agonised hours for her to lose the baby, during which time no corner of the palace seemed free of her screams. Rhonwen, her pot of healing salve in her hands, ran at once to help, but Isabella took one look at her and screamed again.

‘Murderess! Sorceress! You did this.
You!
You did it for her. You hag! You witch!’ Words failed her and once more she clutched in agony at the bed rail above her head. Rhonwen stood staring at the suffering girl, then slipped without a word from the room.

She put the pot of salve on the coffer near Eleyne and regarded it sadly. ‘She is blaming me,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘She claims I did it for you.’

Eleyne grew cold. ‘For me?’ she echoed. They stared at each other in the shadowy room. The only sound was the moan of the wind. ‘Did you?’ Eleyne’s whisper was barely audible.

IX

The snow started in earnest that night: soft, thick, silent snow, whirling in from the north, smothering mountains and valleys alike in deep feathery drifts which, as the grey dawn came, turned from shadow-white to grey and then to blue. The water of the river slowed to a sluggish crawl, held back by icicles and frost-hard tree roots, and in the stables the water in the horses’ buckets was solid ice.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Rhonwen said quietly. Her breath was a cloud in the clean air. The horses too breathed dragon plumes in the silence. ‘What happened to Invictus?’

Eleyne sighed. ‘I left him at Chester. It would have been wrong to bring him back here. Lord Huntingdon will take care of him. He’s a valuable horse.’ The words sounded as though she had been trying to persuade herself. ‘How is Isabella?’ She hadn’t turned from the door on which she was leaning, watched from a distance by her father’s grooms.

‘She’ll live to bear more children, never fear.’ Rhonwen pursed her lips. ‘She’s strong, that one.’

Eleyne shook her head: ‘There will be no more children, not for Isabella.’

Rhonwen closed her eyes. ‘So. Then that is the will of the gods. You saw that in the fire,
cariad
?’

Eleyne shrugged. ‘No, there are some things I just know.’

‘And what do you see for yourself, girl? Or is it just for others you have the Sight?’

Eleyne rested her chin on her folded arms. ‘I have never seen anything for myself. Perhaps there is no future for me.’

‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

‘I’m sorry. I am not very cheerful today.’ Straightening, Eleyne looked at her directly and Rhonwen frowned, sensing yet again the new determination there, strengthened by the prince’s lingering coldness. ‘Where is Einion?’

‘There was some scandal. The prince heard it and suggested Einion leave his court for a while. If you want to see him I’m sure I can find him –’ Rhonwen looked doubtfully at the whirling whiteness in the courtyard.

‘No!’ Eleyne’s voice was sharp. ‘I don’t want to see him!’ She turned her back on the horses and pulled her cloak hood over her veil. ‘Come. I want to speak to Isabella.’

X

‘Keep away from me!’ Isabella huddled beneath her covers, her eyes huge in her white face. ‘You have bewitched me, all of us. You have the evil eye! First papa, then Cousin John, and now me! Everyone you go near dies!’ Her lip trembled and two huge tears welled up in her eyes.

‘That is not true.’ Eleyne had stopped near the doorway, conscious of the half-dozen pairs of eyes turned in her direction. At least two of Isabella’s ladies crossed themselves and one, she saw, made the sign against the devil. ‘I wish you no harm; I am your friend – ’

‘You are not my friend!’ Isabella’s voice was heavy with bitterness. ‘You’re jealous! Jealous of my marriage; jealous of my happiness; jealous of my baby –’ She started sobbing loudly and was immediately surrounded by her women. One stayed behind and said: ‘Please leave, Lady Chester. You see how upset the princess is.’

‘It’s not true.’ Eleyne was still staring at Isabella. ‘I’m not jealous. I wished her no harm – ’

‘Of course you didn’t. Please go, my lady, please.’ She ushered Eleyne to the door. ‘Let my princess sleep now. I am sure she will be calmer later.’

The corridor was dark, lit by a single rush lamp at the corner of the passage, and for a few minutes Eleyne was alone.

The figure was barely a shadow, a darker place on the darkness of the wall. She looked at it and it was gone.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked sharply. There was no reply. From Isabella’s bedchamber behind her, there was no sound. There was nothing to hear but the wind.

She made her way down the passage to the staircase and peered down. The steps vanished into darkness. ‘Who’s there?’ she called again, her voice steadier now. Almost without realising, she began to descend the stairs, her shoes silent on the wood, the only sound the soft swish of her skirts as they followed her, dragging a little down each steep step, catching now and then on a rough, splintered edge.

At the bottom she stopped again. The stairs ended in an inner hallway. To her right a curtained archway led into the great hall where the bulk of the household sat or sprawled, listening to a recitation by a poet from Powys. To her left a dark wooden passageway linked the hall with the other scattered buildings of the palace complex. Again without realising why, she turned down it. It was dark; from the far end she caught the unsteady flicker of light from the torch one of the watch had thrust into a sconce on the wall, perilously near the roof thatch. Beyond it a barred door led into the courtyard. There was no sign of the guard as she turned the corner. The whole of the building was silent, save for the wind which moaned in the roof timbers and howled in the doorways and passages before roaring on up the steep valley away from Aber.

She reached the door and looked around; there was still no sign of the watch. The passageway was empty. The kitchens beyond seemed deserted. The cooks, too, after scouring their pans and damping down the great cooking fires, had crept into the back of the hall to hear the poetry.

She turned to the door and, as if obeying some distant call, raised her hands to the bar which held it closed. It was heavy, cut from a plank of seasoned oak and slotted into two iron hoops, one on either side of the frame. She grasped the bar and pulled; it didn’t move. She frowned, her head slightly to one side as if still listening to a voice in the wind, which moved her skirts around her ankles and made the torch behind her hiss and smoke. Was there someone there? Someone calling her? She listened again and the small hairs on the back of her neck stirred.

At her second fierce tug the door bar came away from one of its slots, rattling back and then, the end too heavy for her to hold, falling with a crash from her hands. With a determined effort she eased the other end free, and jumped back as the whole bar fell to the ground. Immediately the door swung inwards, opened by the pressure of the wind, and the torch behind her went out. Eleyne stood quite still, feeling the wind tearing at her clothes, listening to the roar as the trees on the hillside bent and streamed before it, then cautiously she stepped over the bar and slipped into the snow-covered courtyard.

There were two men on guard at the river gate, huddling for shelter beneath the wooden stockade which guarded the lower end of the palace.

‘Open the gate!’ Eleyne heard the words whipped from her lips and torn spinning into the distance. Her veil dragged at her hair, fighting to be free under the hood of her cloak.

‘My lady?’ One of the men held up his dark lantern. ‘We have orders to allow no one in or out after dark.’ His shadowed, angular face was highlighted by the faint glimmer of the burning candle behind the polished horn screens. There was a naked sword in his other hand.

Eleyne drew herself up. ‘Those orders do not apply to me. Open the gate and close it behind me. I shall knock when I return.’

She saw the man glance uncertainly at his companion, saw the other nod, and saw the superstitious fear in the eyes of both. She didn’t care; she didn’t even know why she wanted to leave the palace so badly or where it was she was going in the deep, frozen snow. She waited as the gate was pulled back and walked through it, not glancing at the men as she passed. Then the gate was closed behind her and she was alone in the darkness.

She walked slowly, feeling the force of the wind trying to push her forward, her cloak flapping around her like a live thing. There was sleet in the wind out here – icy, hard in the blackness, stinging her cheeks, freezing her knuckles as she clutched her cloak, and somewhere in the distance she heard the howl of a wolf. She was on the slippery track, the road which bypassed the cluster of cottages around the church and mill, and had led up the river and across the mountains since before the Romans came; since the days of the old gods. She followed it easily in darkness made luminous by the snow.

Einion was waiting for her at the water’s edge where the trees made it dark again. For some reason she was not afraid. She could see nothing, her eyes slitted against the sleet, but she knew he was there. His cloak was blacker than the blackness around him, his beard a white blur. Beneath her cloak her fingers touched her crucifix for reassurance – the crucifix John had given her.

Standing beside Einion on the bank of the river, she could not see the water, save for the occasional glint of foam as it roared down towards the sea, but the ground beneath her feet vibrated with the strength of it.

‘You summoned me here?’ She spoke at last, her voice loud against the wind. Beneath the sharp cold of the sleet, she could smell the scents of the earth: the bitter incense of the leafmould soaked with melted snow beneath her feet, the cold green smell of fern and moss, the tang of wet rock.

‘It was you who wished to see me, princess.’

She could see his face now, his piercing eyes. Had she wished to see him? In those long days and nights when she had lain ill at Fotheringhay and the memory of her visions had spun in and out of her mind – had she wanted the reassurance of knowing how to control her dreams? When she walked so close to that other world – the world beyond the veil of the present – had she not wanted to know how to lift the veil and realised that Einion was her only key?

‘I do need your help,’ she said at last. ‘I saw things, but I couldn’t stop them happening …’

For a long time there was no reply, and she wondered if he had heard her over the roar of the trees and the water. At last he turned and held out his hands. She put her own into his without hesitation.

‘Your path no longer runs through the mountains of Eryri, princess,’ he said slowly. ‘Your destiny lies far away. The day you left Aber to go to your husband you changed, as the hare changes to a cat or the doe to a horse. You no longer tread the path I hoped for you. But that is the will of the goddess and she has given you her blessing. She will allow you to see what you need to see and she will help you to understand if that is her intention. It is her path you follow now.’

‘And where does my path lead? Can you see?’ She stared into his face. His eyes were barely visible in the darkness; she could see nothing of his expression.

Again the silence. She felt the energy flowing through his hands into hers, felt his eyes looking deep into her skull.

‘Your destiny lies in the far north,’ he said at last. ‘In the forests of Caledon, in the land of the Scots. It is there you will live the greater part of your life and there you will die.’

The ice-cold needles of sleet penetrated her cloak, soaking through her gown, making her shiver.

‘And my husband will be king?’ She whispered the question but he heard her.

‘I see you at the king’s side. I see you as the mother of a line of kings. You will be the life of a king and you will be the death of a king. The Sight will be yours and it will be denied you.’ He stopped, his words snatched away into the darkness, and she felt the strength of his hands die away. He released her fingers and turned from her. ‘Tomorrow I return to Mô n. I have asked your father’s leave to end my service with him. I wish to spend the last of my days alone, preparing myself for the next life.’

‘Then who will I turn to for a guide?’ She felt a wave of panic as she tried to grasp the things he had told her.

He smiled for the first time. ‘That I cannot see. But it will not be me. I shall be dead before the snows have melted on Yr Wyddfa in the spring.’

‘No!’ Her cry was anguished.

‘It is the will of the gods, child,’ he replied gently. ‘We cannot question their decisions. I have lived more than eighty summers in these hills. My business here is over. I waited only to speak to you and now that is done I shall rest in peace. Go now, back to your father’s hall.’

‘Will I see you again?’

‘I think not in this life.’ He smiled sadly. ‘My blessings on you, princess, and on all you love. Now go.’

She raised her hand, but he had turned away. Huddled in his cloak, the hood pulled up over his hair, he was part of the shadows, part of the night. In a moment he had gone.

‘Lord Einion?’ Her voice was sharp and frightened. The wind howled around the spot where he had stood and the river hurled itself down between the boulders. She was alone.