The Warrior’s Princess. Barbara Erskine

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      Stephanie Kendal was seated at the work table, painting designs onto a tray of small ornate mugs ready for the final glaze. Glancing up at the window, she frowned. The sunlight had gone from the garden. Long shadows were advancing across the grass towards the studio where she sat listening to the radio. Leaning forward she turned it off. In the sudden silence she could hear a thrush singing in the distance through the open door. Slightly shorter, slightly plumper and slightly older than her sister, Jessica, there was a definite family likeness in the two women, inherited from their mother. From Aurelia Kendal they also took their love of literature, their artistic talent, their charm and their unconventionality. As a reaction against their mother’s decision to live as a hermit in a small cottage in the wilds of the Basses-Pyrénées when she was not bestriding the world in her capacity as travel writer and journalist, both her daughters had gravitated to inner London after graduation and teacher’s training college. Jess was still there. Steph had caved in, turned her back on the bright lights and spent her latest divorce settlement on this Welsh dream, a small mountain farmhouse not very far from the place where her mother had once lived before she had decided to swap the hills of Wales for the mountains of France.

      But she wasn’t sure any more if she had done the right thing.

      Setting down her brush she reached for a paint rag and wiped her fingers, frowning a little as she did so. The sound had been so small she had barely heard it over the music on the radio. A click, no more, from the far side of the studio.

      She scanned the shelves of pottery, the bags of clay, the jars of glaze, the tins of paint on the table by the wall. The rough stones of the old byre were white-washed, the medieval window slits glazed, the crook beams high above her head brushed, with here and there an ornate iron hook from which were suspended the light fittings and a glass mobile which jingled faintly in the draught, a gift from one of her many admirers. There it was again. A click, followed by a rattle. A bird or an animal must have come in through the open door while she was working and be poking around on the shelves. Quietly she pushed back her tall stool and stood up.

      Several minutes of careful searching produced no clue as to the source of the noise but she was feeling more and more uneasy. She could sense something or someone there. Watching her. She could feel the stare of eyes on the back of her neck.

      ‘Hello?’ Her voice even to herself sounded nervous.

      Going to the door she stared out. The byre sat at right angles to the house with its white-washed walls and roof of old Welsh slate, joined to the kitchen by a newly built passageway. The door at which she was standing led directly outside into the L-shaped former farmyard where her car sat surrounded by terracotta pots of lavender and rosemary. She frowned. The total isolation of this old mountain farmhouse had been one of its attractions when she bought the place and mostly she adored the quietness, though admittedly the peace was often short-lived as a succession of friends came through her doors. But lately, when she was on her own, something had begun to unsettle her. This feeling that she was being watched. That someone or something was in the house with her. Not a human being. She could deal with that, she reckoned. No, it was something more subtle. More sinister. It wasn’t the noises, although she found herself listening constantly, aware of them even over the sound of the radio. No, it was something else.

      She turned back into the studio and caught her breath. Just for a fraction of a second a shadow had moved near the back table. She blinked and it was gone. Or had never been there at all.

      Outside she heard a crow calling as it flew across the valley, its shadow a swift flick across the warm stones of the yard. That was what she had seen. The shadow of a bird. Relieved, she turned to go back into the house just as in the kitchen the phone began to ring.

      ‘Steph, it’s Kim.’ The bubbly voice seemed to fill the place with sunshine. ‘Have you thought about my invitation? Come to Rome, Steph. Please. You can work here! Whatever you like. I’m rattling round in this apartment on my own. All my friends have gone away for the summer, it’s weeks before I’m leaving for the Lakes and I need you!’

      Steph glanced uncomfortably over her shoulder at the door which led to the studio. When Kim had first issued her invitation she had hesitated. Rome in summer would be unbearably hot and noisy. Kim, widowed after less than ten years of marriage to her wonderful, too-good-to-be-true, adoring older man and ensconced in her beautiful flat in a palazzo, no less, and with his considerable fortune all to herself, just could not be as desolate as she made out. But then again perhaps she was and perhaps the lure of Rome was too exciting to ignore. After all, what had Steph to lose? At most a week or so’s production of her pots. Less, if she and Kim no longer got on as they had in the old days when they were all at college together. Half an hour later she had switched on her computer, booked her flight and was already rifling through her cupboard for her case.

      Jess smiled ruefully as her sister’s voice rattled on until finally there was a pause.

      ‘Jess? Are you there? Aren’t you pleased for me? You knew Kim and I had kept in touch, didn’t you.’ Already there was a lilt of Wales in Steph’s voice.

      ‘That’s fantastic, Steph. Only …’ Jess grimaced. ‘Only, I was going to ask if I could come to Ty Bran to stay for a bit over the summer. I’m fed up with London and a bit desperate for a break. I want to go somewhere no one can find me. I want some peace to do some painting. Maybe rethink my lifestyle. I’m considering a career change. See if I can hack it as a painter.’ No point in telling her the real reason, spoiling Steph’s day; no point in making her feel she should cancel her holiday.

      ‘But that’s brilliant!’ Steph’s excitement dulled her usually perceptive reading of her sister’s moods. ‘Come here and welcome. In fact I’d be really pleased to have someone look after the place. My pot plants will need watering. If you come, that’s perfect! You can have some peace to do all the painting and thinking you want!’

      Putting down the phone Jess sat for a moment staring towards the window. Was she doing the right thing? She was allowing someone to chase her out of the job she loved; out of the flat she adored, out of the city she had come to enjoy and she was allowing him to think he had got off Scot free. He had got off Scot free. There would be no police. No identification. No repercussions for him at all.

      As the sunlight shone in through the window, focusing on her pale green patterned rug, illuminating in minute detail each small criss-crossed shape of the design, she heard the downstairs door bang and footsteps on the stairs. She held her breath. Slowly the steps grew closer, steady, loud, masculine. She swallowed, sweat breaking out between her shoulder blades. Had she locked her front door? Surely she had. She had become obsessive about it. She sat, unable to move, her eyes fixed on the door handle, hearing the sound reverberate round the flat. The steps reached the landing outside and she heard them stop. For a moment there was total silence, then slowly the steps began again, walking up towards the next flight. Only then did she realise that she had stopped breathing altogether. She was shaking from head to foot. Jumping to her feet, she went out into the hallway and checked the chain on the door. It was safely in place, as was the bolt and the deadlock. It was then, as usual, that her fear was replaced by anger. He had done this to her! No one … no one had the right to terrorise her like this, to make her feel vulnerable, threatened, in her own home! It was outrageous. She hated the man who had done this to her, and she hated herself for having been made a victim. She would not be a victim. Somehow she had to regain her confidence.

      It was better outside. She felt safe on the bustling, noisy street and in the crowded shops and sitting over СКАЧАТЬ