Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine

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      ‘No, no torches.’ She stepped out on to the wooden staircase which led down from the only door in the keep to the courtyard below.

      ‘You should not go out alone, lady.’ The gentle voice was persistent.

      ‘I am not alone if you are there!’ she retorted. Swishing her skirts in irritation, she ran down the staircase. At the bottom she stopped and turned. ‘You may come with me if you wish. If not, you may return to the great hall and pretend you haven’t seen me. I intend to ride Invictus.’

      ‘In the dark, princess?’

      ‘There is enough light. I do not want my husband to know about this, Cenydd. I do not wish to worry him. If you betray me I shall have you sent back to Gwynedd.’ Her imperious tone left him in no doubt that she meant it.

      ‘Very well, princess.’

      She gave him a quick smile. ‘Just this once, Cenydd, before I die of suffocation.’ The charm had returned, and the small wheedling smile he could never resist – nor, he guessed, could any man. ‘Please.’

      If the grooms were surprised at being asked to bridle the great stallion for their small mistress, they hid the fact. He was led out and Cenydd lifted Eleyne on to the high back of the horse. He hastily mounted his own fast gelding, afraid she would gallop off into the dusk, but she walked the stallion demurely towards the gatehouse, beneath the portcullis, and reined in, waiting for the postern in the main doors to be opened, before urging the animal on to the track outside. The storm was drifting closer, imperceptibly, a deeper blackness in the sky to the south-west, sliced now and then by zigzags of lightning. Invictus sidled uneasily and snapped bad-temperedly at the horse beside him.

      ‘If we take the road across the heath, we can gallop,’ Eleyne said at last. The huge flat distances, mysterious in the moonlight, depressed her, as did the vast unbroken canopy of the sky, this infinite eastern sky which rendered the land so insignificant and featureless.

      ‘What of the storm?’ Cenydd could smell the rain, sweet and cold, in the distance. Like the horses, he was ill at ease.

      ‘I want to ride in the storm.’

      ‘No, lady, think of your position. Think of your safety. Please come back.’ He knew she should not be there. If anything happened to her, he would be blamed. He sighed, loosening his sword in its sheath for the umpteenth time. Her wilfulness was Rhonwen’s fault. The child had never been disciplined and now she had a husband as weak-willed as the rest.

      Invictus bared his teeth spitefully and Cenydd’s gelding sidestepped.

      ‘Come on. We can see well enough here.’ She was gathering her reins and the stallion was on his toes.

      ‘Why, princess?’

      The forceful disapproval in his voice stopped her, fighting with the bit, holding the horse back on its haunches.

      ‘What do you mean?’ She raised her head defensively.

      ‘Why must you ride like this? A countess, a princess, should behave like a lady …’

      Even in the moonlight he could see the colour darken her cheeks. ‘There are many kinds of lady, Cenydd. My husband has taught me that. I am the kind who rides like Rhiannon on her white horse, whom no man can catch.’ She pronounced the soft Welsh name wistfully.

      Cenydd stared across at her. ‘Your husband told you this?’

      She nodded emphatically.

      She had been reading to him as he lay, his eyes closed, on the daybed they had arranged for him on the dais in the great hall. At first she had resented these hours at John’s side, longing to be out in the sun, longing to be riding. Seeing this, he had kept her with him for short periods only, lengthening them infinitesimally until, one day, when the rain teemed down outside, sluicing off the roofs and pouring in waterfalls from the stone gutters jutting out from the parapets of the keep, he drew her down near him and with a smile handed her a packet wrapped in a piece of linen.

      ‘A present.’

      She looked at it with a sinking heart, knowing already from the feel that it was a book. Slowly she began to unfold the wrapping. To her delight the book was in Welsh, and as she turned the richly decorated pages she gasped in wonder.

      ‘I asked your father if he could send a book of Welsh stories to cheer you up, Eleyne, and he had this made especially for you. The stories are as old as time. His bards and storytellers have been collecting them and writing them down for many years, I gather.’ He waited, half amused, half anxious as she leafed through the pages spelling out the titles: The Dream of Maxen, the Countess of the Fountain, Peredur. She looked up at John, her eyes shining. ‘I know these stories – ’

      ‘Of course you do.’ He smiled. ‘And I want to know them too. Will you read them to me?’ He was watching her as he so often did, this strange child, the daughter of a Welsh prince, descendant perhaps of the ancient gods of the stories in the book she held. Maybe the stories would help him understand her better, and maybe they would help to relieve the homesickness which still robbed her cheeks of colour and filled him with such guilt whenever she came, trying so hard to hide her reluctance, to his side.

      ‘Even so, princess,’ Cenydd went on grudgingly, ‘I am sure he did not mean you to ride without escort like this. These heaths and fens are full of robbers and thieves and outlaws.’ He examined the still, moonlit landscape with its brooding shadows and the deeper pools of blackness beneath the trees, big enough to have hidden an army, and he shivered.

      Eleyne laughed lightly. ‘If there are any robbers here, we can outride them. And I have you and your sword to protect me.’ Behind them a low rumble of thunder echoed around the horizon.

      She waited for him in a patch of streaming moonlight, her hair wildly tangled on her shoulders, her blood singing with exhilaration, she and the horse tired at last. Then out of nowhere a bolt of lightning hissed out of the sky near them and exploded into the ground, making the stallion rear.

      She had not seen the castle as she approached, but as she gentled the great horse she could see it clearly in the green eldritch light. The lightning vanished into blacker darkness leaving flames running along the walls, licking across the roofs, strung along the scaffolding poles like bright flags at a tourney. Dear God, the lightning must have struck the roof. Horrified, she watched, hearing the shouts and screams of the men and women trapped at high windows too narrow to let them push their way free. On the roof leads she saw a figure outlined by fire. As she watched, the man turned from the flames and climbing into the battlements hurled himself out into the smoke, his cry lost in the tumult below.

      Dimly she was aware of Cenydd beside her now. ‘Look. Oh, Holy Mother! Oh, the poor people! Can’t we do something?’ But there was nothing they could do; nothing anyone could do. They were surrounded by the roar of the flame and the rolling smoke, white and grey against the blackness of the night, sewn with a million sparks.

      Another flash of lightning showed the broad band of the river between them and the castle and the line of armed men who stood unmoving between the castle and the water which could have saved it. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see the banner of the man at their head, but the smoke rolled down to the river once more and she could see nothing.

      The rain came, as though a giant bucket had СКАЧАТЬ