Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ could see the gallows; see the crowds standing around its foot. The people were excited, rowdy, in the mood to be entertained; as she watched, unable to tear her eyes away, she saw them surge forward, shouting. He was there in their midst, surrounded by guards, his short tunic open at the neck, and already he wore the noose. She could see the rope against the softness of his skin, see the artery in his throat beating, throbbing with life. He half turned towards her and she strained forward, trying to see his face, but the crowds seethed round him cutting off her view.

      ‘Wait! please wait!’ she cried out loud. ‘Oh, please …’

      Behind her the door opened and the guard peered into the door.

      ‘Dew!’ He hurled himself across the floor as Eleyne sprawled forward into the fireplace, clawing at the burning logs. She was crying.

      ‘Please, come back! I can’t see you! Please!’

      She let out a scream as the man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Behind them, Luned sat up in bed, frightened.

      ‘What are you doing, princess?’

      The man-at-arms half shook her, slapping in panic at her bed gown, which was covered in ash. ‘Dew! You nearly set yourself on fire! Did you drop something?’

      Eleyne was trembling. Suddenly she began to cry. ‘Rhonwen, where’s Rhonwen?’

      ‘She’s gone to see the princess, your mother,’ he said, and he found himself stepping back sharply as she pushed past him and ran out of the room.

      Barefoot, she ran towards the ladies’ bower and her mother’s bedroom. She threw open the door into the solar and peered in. It was deserted. The fire had burned low and the candles were guttering. She stopped, panting. ‘Rhonwen?’ she whispered. Tears were streaming down her face. Then she heard the murmur of conversation from the bedchamber. Tiptoeing towards her mother’s door, she lifted the latch and pushed it open.

      The fire in the hearth leaped up at the sudden draught, sending red-gold lights sliding up the walls and across the bed where the two naked bodies writhed together on the tumbled sheets. Eleyne stared. She saw her mother’s face contorted with some strange emotion, her back arching towards the man who knelt between her legs, his broad shoulders shiny with perspiration in the leaping firelight. They laughed exultantly and he bent forward to smother her face with kisses, his powerful hands kneading the full white flesh of her breasts. Totally wrapped in their pleasure, the two did not hear the door open or see the small figure in the doorway.

      Frozen to the spot, Eleyne stared at them for several seconds before she backed out of the room and pulled the door closed.

      Blindly she turned. She did not seem surprised to see Rhonwen and her companions standing behind her. The three women had heard the outer door open and run into the solar in time to see Eleyne creep white-faced from her mother’s room.

      Eleyne stared from one to the other, wild-eyed. ‘Did you see?’ Her lips were stiff. She could barely speak.

      Rhonwen nodded.

      ‘It was Sir William.’ Eleyne’s voice was tight and shrill. She felt utterly betrayed. How could he? How could he do that with her mother? Her mother who had looked ugly and wild and like a sweating, rutting animal.

      ‘Your father must be told,’ Rhonwen said quietly at her elbow. She was suddenly, secretly, exultant. Sir William and Princess Joan. The two people she hated most in the world, trapped by their own lust. She bit back her triumph, anguished by the raw pain on the child’s face. ‘He has to know, Eleyne. What you saw was treason.’

      Eleyne stared at her for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘But he will kill them,’ she whispered.

      Then she nodded.

      XX

      Prince Llywelyn had fallen asleep in his great chair by the fire on the dais in the main hall. A half-finished cup of wine stood near him. Most of the men around him lay sprawled asleep across the tables.

      Eleyne flew across the great hall and threw herself at him in a storm of tears.

      It took Llywelyn a minute or two to understand what his distraught daughter was saying, then, white-faced, he stood up. Striding between his followers, all now awake and staring, he seized a burning torch from one of the sconces and made his way out of the hall, dragging Eleyne with him by the wrist.

      ‘If you have made this up, I’ll have you whipped,’ he hissed at the terrified child. She had never seen her father like this. His eyes were huge and hooded, his mouth a thin line of pain. Frantically she cast around for Rhonwen, but there was no sign of her amongst the silent curious crowd pushing after them.

      Llywelyn strode across the courtyard and into the ty hir. Climbing the stairs, he crossed the women’s bower in long strides and flung open his wife’s bedchamber door, holding the torch high.

      Eleyne saw the two figures sit up in the bed, their faces rigid with shock; she saw Sir William snatch the bedcover and wrap it around his naked body as he leaped up, saw her mother’s white skin gleaming with sweat, flaccid, exhausted, before Joan too grabbed at a sheet and pulled it over her. Then she found herself spinning across the room as her father, with an animal howl of grief and anger, pushed her away and threw himself on to Sir William, reaching for his throat. For a moment the two men grappled together by the bed, before the prince’s men rushed forward and dragged Sir William aside. He had lost the sheet and for a moment he stood completely naked, his arms gripped by his captors, as he was dragged out of the room.

      Llywelyn stood, panting, looking down at his wife. She stared back, rigid with fear, her beautiful hair matted with sweat.

      ‘Whore!’ Llywelyn shot the word at her with loathing. ‘Slut! Harlot! You will die for this!’

      Eleyne let out a little sob. Scrambling to her feet from the corner where she had fallen, she stood not daring to move, staring at her mother who was rocking backwards and forwards on the bed, moaning with a strange, high-pitched wail.

      In the doorway Marared and Ethil hovered, not daring to approach her. It was Ethil who beckoned the frightened child and pulled her from the room. ‘Go to your bed, princess, and don’t say a word to anyone,’ she whispered. ‘Quickly now.’

      Of Rhonwen there was no sign.

      Eleyne fled to the stables. For a long time she stood staring at Invictus as he nuzzled her empty hands, then she put her arms around his neck and wept.

      Rhonwen found her asleep in the hay between his great hooves several hours later. One of the grooms carried the still-sleeping child to her bed.

      XXI

      The world to which Eleyne awakened had changed forever. The palace was in shock. Sir William and his followers had been imprisoned, as had the Princess Joan. The prince’s anger and grief had hardened into the need for revenge. Llywelyn’s wife and her lover were to die. He refused to see Eleyne; he refused to see Dafydd; he refused repeatedly Joan’s frenzied pleas for an audience. He closeted himself in an upstairs chamber of the new stone keep, admitting only Einion and his trusted friend and counsellor, Ednyfed Fychan.

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