The Warrior's Princess

  There was no reply.

  When at last she went back to bed she fell asleep at once.

  31

  So Eigon’s Isle of the Blest was a real place after all.

  Julius lay staring up at the ceiling above him in sleepy wonder. He could see trees and children and wild animals and mythical beasts frolicking and entwining around each other up there. Now and then a flaxen-haired child came and bathed his head with muslin cloths soaked in something that was cold and soothing and smelled of exotic herbs. He dozed and woke again. The scene was the same but instead of sunlight above his head there were shadows and he could hear the wind blowing through the cracks in the door. Time had passed, he knew that, but how long? The effort of thinking was too much. He tried to move and winced with pain. His shoulder was on fire and something stabbed at his gut as though it had been pierced with a bodkin.

  He frowned. He had been wounded. He vaguely remembered the fight. Figures pouring out of the darkness. Screams. The clash of iron. The awful gurgling of someone dying at his feet from a throat sliced through. He shuddered and again the wave of pain cut through him. ‘In the name of Jesus Christ –’ It had been Marcellus. He had risen from the fire to greet him with a smile and a hug and his blessing had been drowned in a froth of blood. Julius groaned. Immediately a light appeared. The shadows raced up across the ceiling making the animals writhe more terribly and a figure appeared at his side. ‘Are you awake, my son?’ An old man peered down at him. Not his grandfather. A stranger. The stranger laid a gentle hand on his forehead and nodded. ‘I think I see improvement at last.’

  Julius tried to smile. His lips were cracked and sore. His voice husky. The effort was too much for him. His eyes closed and everything went black.

  When he next woke it was daylight again. He frowned, staring round the room. Compared to the ceiling the walls were relatively plain, painted with columns and arcades with the occasional tree for relief. Somewhere he could hear something scratching. A pen racing across parchment. Licking his lips experimentally he tried to call out. The result was no more than a croak but it had the desired effect. The scratching stopped and he heard a stool being pushed back. The old man appeared in his field of vision. ‘Awake? Good.’ He smiled. ‘Now, don’t try and talk this time until I have managed to get some medicine down you!’ Whatever else was in the medicine there was poppy juice to make him sleep away the pain. He felt himself sliding once more into blackness. It was a warm, safe place to be. In wakefulness there was too much anguish to bear.

  Jess woke to the sound of rain beating down on the roof of the studio outside her window. She lay still trying to gather her scattered dreams. Had she seen Eigon? No, it was Julius. Julius who had somehow escaped the slaughter at the farm and who didn’t know that his sister and his grandfather were dead, or that the woman he loved had in despair left Rome to go back to the country of her birth. And Will. Why had she dreamed about Will? She would ring him in the morning. She glanced at her watch. It was just after five. Too early to get up. Too early to think about the day to come and the decision that had to be made about the bones of the child.

  She turned over restlessly, pulling the sheet over her head. Rhodri thought they ought to bury them somewhere nearby. Not in the churchyard, the child was a pagan, but somewhere special. Somewhere sacred. ‘There are loads of special places on the farm,’ he had said as he left. ‘They are two a penny in Wales. The whole country is sacred!’

  They had said goodbye outside the front door and he had stooped and kissed her quickly on the cheek. With a wink he had turned away. ‘Don’t worry, lovely, we’ll find somewhere for her.’

  Snuggling down on her pillow she smiled, wrapping her arms around herself, thinking about his handsome face, his strong muscular body. Steph couldn’t stand him, but Jess was finding him more and more attractive. And he was a comfort. With him there she felt so much less afraid. With him in the next valley, if Dan turned up again, she could cope.

  Sleep had deserted her. Climbing to her feet with a groan Jess wrapped herself in her bathrobe and went downstairs. Her glass from the night before still stood on the draining board where she had left it. She ignored it, going instead to the kettle. She was sitting sipping the tea at the kitchen table, listening to a thrush tuning up outside the door when she heard the little voice in the distance.

  Can we stop playing now? I want to go home.

  Dan had been driving all night, hurtling up the M40, stopping at a service station to grab a couple of hours’ sleep in the car park and yet more coffee. It was just after eight when, almost too tired to function properly, he turned into the gate of Natalie’s parents’ house in the outskirts of Shrewsbury.

  ‘Daddy!’ Georgie must have seen him from the window. The front door opened and a small figure hurled herself out to greet him. He caught her in his arms and swung her off her feet.

  ‘Hello, my darling! How are you? Where is Jack? And Mum? And Granny?’ Carrying her, he made his way into the house. His mother-in-law was standing in the hall. ‘Hello, Belle. Good to see you!’

  She was a tall graceful woman in her sixties with overly darkened hair, too strong a colour for her complexion which made her look hard, an expression which he knew hardened even more in his presence. Belle Foxley did not like her son-in-law and went to very few lengths to hide the fact. He bent and grazed her cheek with his own. ‘There are some Italian goodies in the car for everyone. Where is Nat?’

  Belle looked at him quizzically. ‘She is upstairs with Jack. He had a bad night. Get down, Georgie. Go and tell Mummy that your father is here.’

  As the child scampered up the stairs she walked ahead of Dan into the kitchen where her husband, Stephen, was sitting behind the Daily Telegraph. He glanced round the side of the paper. ‘Dan.’ That was the sole greeting he warranted as the older man went back to the cricket reports. His father-in-law intimidated him even more than Belle. The tall patrician figure, the upper-class, cut-glass vowels which made him feel like an upstart from the gutter immediately antagonised him as always.

  He walked over to the teapot and shook it experimentally, helped himself to a cup and saucer from the cupboard above the worktop and poured himself a cup without asking. After all, no one had offered and to him that seemed the greater insult. ‘I’ve been driving most of the night.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wait till morning?’ Belle said, eyebrow raised.

  ‘I wanted to see you all. I’ve missed you.’ Dan tried a smile. He didn’t like the way she surveyed his face, the long cool stare as always cutting him down to size. Had Nat ever told her what went on, he wondered, in the privacy of their bedroom? He felt himself break out into a cold sweat at the thought of just how much he had to hide. And how much he had to lose. And how much worse he had made things in the last twenty-four hours.

  The landslide arrival of young Jack relieved the silence. ‘Daddy! We went to see a cow yesterday. It leaked lots and lots of milk into a bucket!’ The little boy with his long wild golden curls clambered onto his knee and threw his arms around Dan ‘s neck. ‘I drank some and it was warm and disgusting!’

  Dan smiled. ‘So where was this?’ He glanced over his son’s head towards Belle.

  She shrugged. ‘Natalie took them out to some farm open day. They came back with lots of things, didn’t you, Jack. Cheese and eggs.’ She wasn’t actually looking at the child. She was still studying her son-in-law. He grew more uncomfortable as Jack tried to wriggle down off his knee.

  ‘Why not stay with Daddy for a minute.’ He clung to the little boy. ‘I’ve missed you both.’

  ‘Hello, Dan.’ Nat appeared in the doorway behind him. Her ethereal beauty was worn now, her face beginning to show the strain of marriage and children and exhaustion. Her face was white. She didn’t come forward to kiss him.

  ‘Hi, darling.’ He smiled at her. ‘How are you? It’s so good to see you all.’

  ‘Really?’ Her expression was cold, her eyes shuttered.

  He licked
his lips nervously, holding on tightly to Jack who was beginning to wriggle in protest.

  ‘Give him to me!’ Nat moved towards him suddenly. She held out her arms to Jack who reached up to cling to her. ‘Why didn’t you go back to London, Dan, to wait for us there? I am sure you have a lot to do with preparing for the new term. You need to get in touch with the headmaster, too. And the police.’ There was an infinitesimal pause. ‘Why are the police looking for you, Dan?’ She pushed her long shiny hair back from her face impatiently.

  Stephen lowered the paper slowly and began to fold it with quiet precision. All eyes were fixed on Dan as even the children seemed to be waiting for him to speak. For a moment he panicked. ‘I’ve no idea. None at all.’ His palms were sweating. ‘It must be about something at school. One or other of the kids is always getting into trouble.’ He glanced from one to the other with a look of astonished innocence. ‘Don’t tell me you thought it was me that had done something?’ He managed a laugh.

  Stephen stood up, his lips pursed. ‘That would never occur to us, Daniel. I’m afraid I have to go out. I am sure that Natalie will be very sad that you have to go straight back to London to deal with this problem, whatever it is, but I assure you, we can take care of her and our grandchildren for the rest of the summer.’

  Dan watched his father-in-law walk out, his face set in a mask of dislike. Glancing at Belle, he realised with a start that his expression had probably betrayed him. He forced himself to smile. ‘Perhaps you could look after the children, Belle, for a little while, and give Nat and me a chance to catch up before I go back.’ He had no intention of going back, but it would be Natalie who was going to change their minds and beg him to stay. ‘Darling, why don’t we go upstairs so we can talk on our own for a bit?’

  Her face was still white. ‘I’d prefer us to talk in the garden, Dan,’ she said quietly. ‘Come and look at Mummy’s plants. They are so beautiful.’ She walked ahead of him out of the kitchen door.

  The second they were out of sight of the window he grabbed her wrist. She gasped with pain as he pulled her towards him, his fingers like a vice round her slender bones. ‘What the hell has been going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She looked guilty. ‘I just think it would be boring for you here and I am sure they need you in London.’

  ‘They don’t need me. My family needs me. I arrive back, having slogged through the night to get here as soon as possible imagining in my naïveté that they will be pleased to see me and I am more or less instructed by your father to go back to London!’

  She flushed uncomfortably, hopelessly trying to wriggle her wrist free of his grasp. ‘Dan, Daddy just thought you would have to go back and call the school –’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He can’t stand the sight of me and he wanted to tell me to get the hell out from under his roof. Well, I am going to disappoint him. I am staying. And I am staying in the same room as my wife, and if the children are still in the room with you, you will ask your mother to put them somewhere else so we can have some privacy. Do you understand?’ He pushed his face close to hers.

  Two specks of colour appeared on her cheekbones. ‘Stop bullying me, Dan.’ She finally managed to wrench her wrist free. ‘I am not a slave or a chattel for you to order about –’

  Dan stared at her. A slave. Titus had used slaves for whatever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. Where was Titus? He stared at his wife blankly, suddenly distracted by the thought, then he smiled. The vision of his oh so posh, well bred wife in chains was thoroughly appealing.

  She saw the expression and for a moment panic showed in her face, replaced at once by steely reserve. ‘Get out, Dan,’ she hissed at him. ‘Go back to London. I am not going to do as I’m told like some scared child. I am the mother of your children and an independent woman and I have no desire at the moment to see you ever again. I may change my mind, I don’t know, but for now I would like some peace this summer.’

  He grabbed at her again. ‘What are you talking about? Have you been speaking to Jess?’ His eyes were blazing.

  She looked genuinely astonished for a moment, then she sighed. ‘So, it is Jess. I did wonder who. I can’t say I’m surprised. You’ve always fancied her, haven’t you?’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Jess. Did you hurt her badly?’

  ‘What?’ He was suddenly incandescent with rage. ‘I haven’t hurt her at all! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  The look she gave him was one of utter pity as she turned away and walked back into the house. He stood where he was for a moment without moving, then he threw himself towards the side gate. In seconds he was back in his car and reversing out of the drive. With a scream of tyres he had turned the car and was heading back the way he had come. It wouldn’t take him long to reach Ty Bran and if that was where she had gone he would find her and make her sorry she had spoken to Nat. He would make her sorry she had ever been born.

  * * *

  Togo? Togo? Where are you? Don’t leave me alone!

  Jess was standing at the open window of her bedroom looking out across the yard.

  She bit her lip. ‘Was it Togo in the tomb, sweetheart?’ she whispered. ‘Did you go and look for your sister, then when you went back you couldn’t find him either?’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  Togo! Togo!

  The voice was drawing away now, up the track.

  ‘So, what happened to you, my darling?’ Jess called in a husky whisper. Turning away from the window she opened her door silently. The others were up now. She could hear their voices from the kitchen. Steph giggling, then her mother’s deep throaty chuckle. She couldn’t face them. She needed to be by herself. It was all too much. Those tiny bones, the thought of the child, creeping away, lost, frightened, exhausted, all alone in the woods where he could have heard the lonely howl of a wolf and the croak of a raven or the wild cry of an eagle scanning the ground below for prey, hiding, even perhaps hearing the calls of the people looking for him, but too frightened to come out because his big sisters had told him to hide.

  Walking softly down the stairs she went out of the front door and across the yard. She could see them in the kitchen through the window. Steph was doing something at the cooker while Aurelia was laying the table.

  Staring ahead at the cool sweet-smelling shadows under the woodland canopy she let herself out of the gate and slowly she began to walk back up the track and into the trees.

  Something was pressing her neck, just below the ear. For a moment Eigon lay staring up into the darkness, wondering what had awakened her, then she heard a whisper. ‘Ssh! Listen.’ It was Commios. He was kneeling beside her bed, his hand on the pillow next to her head. He had used the old soldiers’ trick to wake her gently and completely without a sound. ‘Titus is in the village. He has been asking about us at the mansio. Three Roman travellers. We were easy to spot. We have to make a run for it.’

  ‘Drusilla?’ Eigon sat up, her heart thudding with fear.

  ‘She’s awake. She’s packing our stuff. There must be no trace that we were ever here. We can’t go near the river. They have the boat stations covered and there are men on the road at both ends of the village. We have to go now, over the back wall into the woods and pray they don’t think of using dogs till we can cross water and break the trail.’ He had pulled off her bed covers. ‘Dress quickly. Wrap yourself in your cloak. We’ll be waiting by the kitchen door. And don’t light the lamp!’

  ‘What about Felix?’ she whispered as they crept across the garden only minutes later. They had all grown very fond of their patient plodding mule.

  ‘Our hostess can keep him. She will make good use of him. We carry our own bundles from here on.’ He had explained to the woman that it would be best for her as much as for them if she forgot that her guests had ever been there, and she had accepted the mule in payment for their stay. He was pretty sure she would not betray them.

  He had spied out an easy place to climb the wall and one by one he helped hoist Eigon and Drusilla into the pear
tree which had been trained across the stones and helped them scramble and slither over into the nettles on the far side. He tossed their bags after them, quickly and carefully tidied away any traces of their passing from the leaves and moss, scattered fresh leaves over the scene and vaulted over himself. Faraway at the western end of the village they heard a burst of sudden shouting. Flames flared up into the night.

  ‘They are searching every house,’ Commios muttered. ‘I’m sorry for the families that resist. Come on. We can’t spare time for prayer. That can come later! Luckily when I sang for my supper I left in the other direction and doubled back in the dark. No one knows we were staying here.’

  He plunged ahead of them, sure footed, somehow sensing where the tracks led between the trees. There had been no time for consultation; no thought of which way they were going as long as it was as faraway from the village as possible.

  On they went into the depths of the forest. There was no sound of pursuit, no flare of fire in the sky, nothing save the sudden alarm note of a bird as they put it up and the scattered panic of a herd of deer sleeping by a deep hidden pool. It was a long time before Commios allowed them to stop. The two women could hear nothing above their own laboured breathing, but Commios seemed to be alert to the sounds of the forest in a way that escaped them. He held up his hand and they both held their breath, straining their ears.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ he asked at last. He spoke in a normal voice which was somehow shocking in the silence of the trees. ‘Water. There is a stream near here, running in spate.’ Eigon realised suddenly she could see his face; the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. Without her noticing it was gradually growing light. ‘We’ll cross the water, perhaps wade in it a bit, so our trail is broken, though I’ve heard no dogs behind us.’ Already he was on his way again. The two women glanced at each other in mutual sympathy, picked up their bundles and struggled on in his wake.