The Warrior’s Princess. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the 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 СКАЧАТЬ