The Warrior's Princess

  He turned back to his desk and they rose without a word. It was only after they had gone that he looked up from his scroll and thoughtfully stared at the window. Marcia Maximilla was a powerful enemy. Her greedy fingers clawed their way throughout the Roman world from her power base behind the temple of the Vestals. Even here in furthest Gaul they had heard of her and quailed at her name. He smiled and wondered idly for a few delightful moments if he was up to the challenge of thwarting her. It was tempting. It was hard to decide which way to jump.

  ‘Where are you, Titus, you bastard?’ Dan thumped the steering wheel with his fists. He was sweating hard and he could feel his shirt sticking to his back. He lowered the window, swerving round a cyclist with a vicious curse as he steered one-handed down the narrow road and pulled up at last in a lay-by. In the distance he could see the line of hills behind Ty Bran.

  ‘What do I do if she’s here?’ he asked out loud. ‘You want her dead, don’t you, you sicko bastard, but you won’t do your own dirty work! You want to watch me do it!’

  Pushing open the door he climbed out. His legs were shaking and he could feel a wave of nausea building somewhere at the base of his stomach. He stood by the hedge staring out across the valley, waiting to see if he was going to vomit. There in the distance he could make out the cottage nestling just under the ridge below the woods. From here he could see just how far those woods stretched, hundreds of acres spread like a soft green rug over the tops of the hills and down into the next valley with the higher, treeless mountain peaks rising far behind them. Someone could get lost in there and never be seen again even in this day and age! He gave a cold smile, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. The nausea was passing.

  He could still hear the scorn in Nat’s voice echoing in his head. It had followed him up the road and round the corner and he had felt a hundred middle-class suburban eyes looking at him from behind their hedges as his car accelerated through the peaceful streets. He pushed the sound away. That part of his life was over. He could never go back now. And why would he want to? Even the children were lost to him already, little clones of their mother who probably secretly despised him. He shook his head, pushing away the memory of his little son’s arms clinging round his neck, and his mouth downturned into a vicious sneer. Forget them. They had always stood in his way. Now he was free to go wherever he wanted and to do all the things he had dreamed of. He glanced at his watch. Tonight, for a start, he would find himself a comfortable bed. He was damned if he was going to spend another night in some cheap motorway lodge or worse still in the car. Tonight he would have all the luxuries, but before that, Titus and he were going to pay Jess a visit, a visit which he was planning to enjoy enormously.

  32

  ‘Jess, wait!’ Rhodri was hurrying up the track behind her. He had arrived at Ty Bran shortly after nine that morning to find Aurelia and Steph had put breakfast on hold until Jess got back from her walk. He had volunteered to go and meet her.

  She paused, smiling. ‘You sound out of breath. Surely the maestro should have better control of his lungs than that!’

  ‘Even the stage at La Scala hasn’t got a rake on it like this hill!’ he retorted. ‘That’s where it matters that I keep my breath controlled. Not here. Where are you going? Not back up to those rocks, I hope.’

  She shrugged. ‘I just needed to get outside. Mummy and Steph were acting so normal, getting breakfast, going on with life as though nothing had happened. I can’t get it out of my head. That little boy all by himself.’

  ‘I understand, Jess.’ His voice was gentle. ‘So you think it’s the boy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘Yes. It is. I’m sure. A little lost boy, knowing there has been a massacre of his father’s army just down there.’ She waved her arm. ‘Knowing there are enemy soldiers looking for him and his sisters. Knowing they will be skewered on Roman swords if they are found.’

  ‘I don’t think he did know that, Jess,’ he said quietly. ‘His sister told him it was a game, remember? You told me that. She was trying to protect him from that knowledge.’ He studied her face. ‘You have to put this out of your head, Jess. It is too painful to think about otherwise. Imagine him cuddling up in the dry under those rocks and going to sleep. Perhaps it was a cold night and he got hypothermia. He would have known nothing about it. He would have sunk deeper and deeper into sleep. It would have been a kind death.’

  She sniffed. ‘My thoughts sometimes race out of control.’

  He laughed fondly. ‘You’re telling me!’

  She looked up. ‘Have I been a pain?’

  ‘I’d say that was an understatement, but it has certainly been a different kind of summer for me, that’s for sure.’ He pulled her against him and kissed her forehead. ‘I was sent to bring you back for brunch.’

  For a moment they stood without moving. She held her breath. If she looked up he would kiss her again, properly. She knew it and she wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted. Part of her ached to stay in his arms for ever, it felt so safe, but part of her was tugging impatiently away from him, wanting to go back to the world in another time and place.

  ‘Jess –?’

  She broke away. ‘Rhodri, no. I’m sorry! I can’t.’

  He didn’t move. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because – I’m a disaster at the moment. I’m confused and muddled and frightened.’

  He paused. ‘I want to stop you being frightened,’ he said softly. ‘I want to protect you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘While we’re getting things clear I need to know. Is it Will?’

  She shook her head. ‘Will and I are finished.’

  ‘Does he know that?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘So, it’s Eigon.’

  She nodded. ‘I can’t inflict her on you, Rhodri. I’m a total mess because of her. I don’t understand why I’m so involved, but I can’t get her out of my head day or night. There is something I have to do for her.’

  ‘Bury her little brother?’

  She looked at him, startled. ‘You understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand. We all understand. Your mother and Steph know exactly what you are thinking. I am probably thinking the same thing. Don’t bottle it up, Jess. And give us some credit for knowing how you feel. In fact give us some credit for having feelings too. You seem to think you have the exclusive right to them!’ Suddenly he was angry. ‘For goodness’ sake, let us in!’ He turned and stamped away. A few paces further on he stopped. ‘Well, are you coming?’

  She gave a penitent smile. ‘OK.’

  ‘Good! Because I’m getting a bit fed up chasing after you all the time.’

  There was a pause. She knew she should say something. Anything to delay him. She should tell him she wanted him to go on chasing her. She should run to him and kiss him. She did nothing. Paralysed by indecision, she stood still and watched as after half a second’s hesitation he turned and walked away down the track. In a few moments he had turned the corner and was out of sight.

  The postman in London had just pushed a handful of letters through the letter box when he paused. From somewhere behind the door he thought he heard a groan. Normally he would have ignored it, but he had got to know Will Matthews over the months he had been on this round, often running into him on the doorstep as he left for school and he liked the guy. ‘Hello?’ He stood at the door and called up at the windows, then he crouched down and pushing open the flap put his eye to the letter box.

  The ambulance arrived at the same time as the police. They forced the door and went in. Nothing seemed to have been touched. There had been no robbery that they could see, just the man lying on the floor only feet from the front door, in a pool of blood, his head smashed in by some kind of a blunt instrument. He had obviously regained consciousness for long enough to cry out when he heard the post hit the doormat. He had also regained consciousness for long enough to scrawl one word on the wall in his own blood:

/>   DAN ~

  But by the time the police rang Brian Barker, headmaster of the local sixth form college whose name and number they had found on Will’s desk, he was dead.

  Steph took the call from Catherine in the kitchen at Ty Bran. They had given up waiting for Jess and settled down to a late leisurely breakfast and were lingering over their coffee. Jess had still not reappeared and Rhodri was about to leave as the phone had rung. One look at Steph’s face halted him in his tracks. He sat down again as they all waited in silence for her to finish, staring at her in horror as they listened to her end of the fragmented conversation.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Aurelia asked as Steph tipped the phone back onto its cradle. Steph’s face was white with shock.

  ‘It’s Will.’ Steph’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He’s dead.’ She swallowed, groping her way back to her chair and throwing herself down. ‘Apparently the postman found him this morning. He had been bashed over the head. He…’ She paused, unable to speak for a moment. ‘He had written a name in his own blood. They asked Catherine and Brian if they knew anyone called Dan.’ Her voice faded to a whisper.

  Rhodri stood up, pushing the chair back so violently it fell with a crash onto the floor. ‘The bastard! The absolute bastard!’ He clenched his fists. ‘Where is he, do they know? Have they caught him?’

  Steph shook her head. She glanced at her mother who was sitting staring at her in shocked silence. ‘Catherine didn’t know. She wanted Jess to hear about Will from us. She said the police might come and question her.’ She hesitated. ‘I gather they saw Will. He went straight there when he got back from Rome and he told them he had been to see the police. He warned them about Dan.’

  Rhodri bent to pick up the chair. ‘I’ll go and meet Jess. She must be on her way back by now. I thought she was following me.’ He paused on his way to the door. ‘Shall I break the news to her? Or would it be better coming from you two?’

  ‘You tell her,’ Steph whispered. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

  Rhodri retraced his steps to the spot where he had last seen Jess and stopped, looking round. There was no sign of her, but he had hardly expected her still to be there.

  ‘Jess?’ he called. ‘Where are you?’

  The woods were completely silent. Not even a bird answered him. He sighed. He knew where she would be. He started to climb the track towards the summit, but when he reached the rocks there was still no trace of her. He crouched to peer into the hollow space under them. ‘You there, love?’ he called softly. After a few seconds as his eyes became used to the darkness he could see the faint outlines of the bones lying exactly where they had left them on the ground and beside them the pale limp shape of the foxgloves Jess had put there. Otherwise the space was empty. He sat back on his heels with a puzzled frown. In the far distance he could just hear the drumming of a woodpecker. The sound echoed through the trees, emphasising his sudden loneliness. Jess hadn’t been back here. He could sense it; the little boy wasn’t here in any sense either; his spirit had long ago gone elsewhere. He sat down with a sigh on an old moss-covered tree stump. Poor Will. They should have seen this coming.

  Where was Dan now, that was the question. He felt himself tensing uncomfortably. Where would Dan go after killing Will? He would want to get out of London, that was for sure. There would be two things uppermost in his mind. Avoiding the police and silencing Jess. And he would guess that if Jess was not with Will, then she would have come back to Ty Bran. He exhaled sharply. Could he be here already? A wave of panic hit him. Jess had been up here alone. He might already have found her.

  He gazed round wildly. ‘Jess!’ His shout echoed across the rolling hills unanswered and as far as he knew, unheard.

  Julius was sitting in a chair staring at the fire. There was a rug around his knees; his hands shook. He tried to steady them around a cup of warm wine, lifting it cautiously to his mouth, aware that he was dribbling it down his front as the woman came in. He looked up and tried to smile, horribly aware that half his face felt as if it were paralysed. He had asked for a mirror. It had not been forthcoming, but even with hands as shaky as his he could feel the raw jagged scar which ran from just below his eye to his chin.

  ‘The wine is good,’ he said, articulating the words with difficulty. ‘Strengthening.’

  ‘Good. That is what it is intended to be,’ she said as she came over and began tidying the table, casually relieving him of the half-empty cup before he had time to drop it as had happened only the day before when its predecessor had smashed to pieces on the elegant floor tiles. ‘Are you comfortable?’

  He managed a nod. She was a striking woman, tall, in her mid-forties perhaps, with dark hair already greying at the temples, swept back into a serviceable knot which seemed to hold itself in place without the need for any ornate comb or pins. She had the gentle capable hands of a born nurse. He forced his mouth into a smile. ‘When are you going to let me see the doctor who cared for me?’

  She returned his gaze calmly. ‘You are looking at her.’

  He stared. ‘No. I saw a man. An old man with white hair.’

  ‘My pharmacist.’ She smiled briskly. ‘He makes my remedies and copies the recipes to circulate amongst other doctors in the city. But don’t worry. I am properly trained. The stitches in your cheek are the neatest you will find anywhere for the money.’

  He was frowning with concentration, trying to get his head around her comments. ‘You charge? I don’t know if I have any gold –’

  She shook her head. ‘That was a joke, fine lord.’

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to assimilate what she was saying but her voice was receding on a tide of noise inside his head, washing slowly back and forth, the words jumbled and incomprehensible. ‘Where is this?’ he managed a sensible question at last.

  ‘We are near Tibur,’ she said. She saw his struggle and hiding the worried expression in her eyes, came to put a practised hand on his brow. He was slightly feverish. ‘But half a day’s ride to the east of Rome. You were brought to me many weeks ago, lying in the back of a cart. You were in so many pieces, I thought they had brought me a test case for my students to practise their stitchery on.’

  ‘You teach as well?’ He was faintly incredulous.

  ‘There is no end to my skills, lord.’ She smiled again. Her smiles were, he decided, of incredible warmth. Just to look at her was healing.

  ‘What I can’t tell you,’ she went on, ‘is your name or what happened to you.’ She shook her head. ‘That is a mystery. The man who brought you found you unconscious in his wagon. As you could not possibly have walked there someone must have put you there. There was a coin and a note asking for you to be brought here.’ She paused, her head a little to one side. ‘Don’t think about it if it’s too painful.’

  He was breathing deeply through his nose, trying to recollect his scattered nightmares, the flashes of noise and pain, the fear and the stench of death. ‘They came out of the darkness. They must have followed me.’ He paused in anguish. ‘There are screams in my head. My friends –’ He could feel tears trickling down his face. ‘My sister. They killed my sister.’

  ‘That’s enough for now.’ She came over and laid a cool hand over his burning wrist. Calmly she snapped her fingers in front of his face. ‘Remember the elephants!’

  He stared at her, trying to understand. ‘Elephants? What elephants?’

  She smiled. It always worked, breaking the train of thought. Every patient she had seen knew about the elephants in the Emperor’s collection. Giant gentle creatures and a total distraction if only for a moment from whatever memories were pouring through out of the darkness.

  Nothing would stop his memories returning in the end, though. She had sat at his bedside hour after hour as he raved and screamed and sobbed. In his dreams he remembered it all: the massacre, the blood, the death. She knew only too well what had happened to him for she had listened to his horror and his fear and his helplessness. He had lost his sister and hi
s grandfather and his friends. He had seen them spitted and butchered in front of his eyes and then he had watched the descent of the vicious two-handed blow which had been intended to cleave his own skull and divide his body in half. It very nearly had. She had guessed they were a Christian family. It had happened to too many of them. His beliefs did not bother her. She saw him as an interesting case with not only a body but a mind to heal. She was more confident of managing the former and in the interests of the latter she had no intention of informing him that one of the leaders of his faith, if that indeed was his faith, Peter, had been arrested, in Rome, and sentenced to death.

  ‘My children are here,’ she said quietly. ‘They will bring you some more wine. I’ll put a sleeping draught in it for you so you can rest now.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to sleep.’ He looked at her pleadingly.

  So, he did remember his dreams. ‘Then I will ask Portia to come and play for you a little. You like her music.’

  He nodded. He had always loved music.

  She used to sing to him.

  She.

  Who?

  Her face hovered just beyond the reach of his memory. All he knew was that it belonged to the person he loved most of all. And that he had lost her.

  Whoever she was she was dead with the others. Everyone he loved was dead. He should rightly be dead himself.

  Rhodri and Aurelia were once more seated at the kitchen table listening to Steph. She was on the phone to Nat. When she hung up and turned to face them at last her face was grim.

  ‘Dan left them first thing this morning. He had driven there overnight, straight from London. Presumably straight from killing Will.’ Her voice shook. ‘She told me he’s been violent before. He’s beaten her up several times in the past. They had a row and he left. She doesn’t know where he went. The police have been there though, asking for him. She said they told her it was urgent and asked her to contact them the moment she heard from him. They told her to be careful.’