by N. M. Browne
‘You have to tell her. It is her choice not yours. What you are doing is wrong.’
The quavering voice was Brother Frontalis but his strength of feeling was clear.
Taliesin’s response was low but his bard’s voice carried his words to Ursula’s ears: ‘She doesn’t understand. She just wants to go home. I have spoken to men who know about these things and I believe their prophecies, this world needs Arturus and the Combrogi and Arturus needs Ursula, perhaps more than he needed her at Baddon.’
‘I don’t doubt you, Taliesin, but you are not God. When will you learn to submit to his will, and not constantly try to force him into a corner? Ursula will choose what she will choose and you must let her.’
‘Let me what?’
The two men looked up like guilty schoolboys at her voice.
‘Good morning, Ursula.’
‘What are you keeping from me, Taliesin?’
Taliesin sighed and spoke reluctantly.
‘It’s Rhonwen, Ursula. She is prepared to raise the Veil. It’s possible that you might be able to get home.’
‘What!’ It was so exactly what Ursula had hoped to hear that she was instantly suspicious. Surely, after all she had been through, it couldn’t be so simple?
‘I don’t understand, Taliesin, why would she do that?’
In spite of her argument with Dan, Ursula had not honestly expected Rhonwen to help her.
Taliesin rested his weight on a tree stump before answering her. ‘She came to see me when she emerged from the Veil back in the autumn. The Battle of Baddon Hill had frightened her – the carnage was more than she could deal with. I don’t know that she had realised how many men would die. She is a princess and she did not shirk her share of the responsibility. She’d given up the dress of a Heahrune and was very much Combrogi royalty again – demanding my aid. She had planned to go home see, back to Macsen’s world, but I think whatever I did to twist the Veil to bring you here has made it more difficult to leave. She can raise the Veil all right but she can’t direct it – she never could, actually. She wanted me to help her. I said I would but … not yet. I really believe Arturus is the Bear of the prophecy and that I must help him.’
‘And?’ Ursula could not quite see the point.
‘Rhonwen got angry. Her temper hasn’t improved. She knew you had followed her. She said if I wouldn’t help her, she was prepared to make her peace with you and ask your help to get home. I don’t think she knows that you can no longer raise the Veil, as you once did. She thought you were pursuing her into the Veil to punish her for her attempt on your life. She still fears you as the sorceress you were in Macsen’s world.’
Ursula was silent for a moment – wondering if that could be true, if Rhonwen could not sense the presence of magic in this world, as she herself could. Perhaps it was possible that she did not know the truth of Ursula’s incapacity. After a while, Ursula said slowly, ‘And knowing how much I wanted to go home you weren’t going to tell me this?’
Taliesin looked away. ‘I thought you cared about this world – it is after all your own world too.’
‘No you didn’t, you thought I’d opt to go home.’
‘And will you?’
She could not say no, not with Taliesin looking at her so intently, and she did not want to say yes. She said nothing and then asked, ‘So where is Rhonwen?’
‘I can take you to her.’
‘As a merlin?’
Taliesin nodded. ‘I have improved with much practice – I find it less tiring now. It is a long way – a two-day ride. We could make a start after breakfast.’
Ursula nodded, distractedly, and resumed her walk to the stream. She felt the eyes of the men on her as she walked. Rhonwen could be persuaded to help her get home or, at least, back to Macsen’s world where she would have magic again. Her experience in the Veil this last time had convinced her that the power to manipulate the Veil had not entirely left her; she might, after all, actually be able to do as Rhonwen wanted. She shut her eyes as she washed in the cool stream. Her body thrilled at the never-to-be-forgotten memory of the thrum of magic coursing through her again. She knew she had made her decision.
After Ursula had breakfasted on bread and goat’s cheese and warm milk, she saddled her horse, accepted Frontalis’s generous gift of food for the journey and followed Taliesin’s darting merlin form. She said goodbye to Frontalis, uncertain whether she would ever see him again.
‘Thank you, Brother Frontalis, for your hospitality and for standing up for me.’
Brother Frontalis turned wise eyes on her. ‘Trust to God, Ursula, and obey your conscience. I know that you will do God’s will. I will be praying for you.’ He thrust a package at her and she was surprised to see that it contained the helmet Arturus had given her. She accepted it gratefully and understood that he expected her to encounter trouble.
To her surprise she found that his words helped. They rang in her ears as she rode off, Braveheart trotting, panting by her side. It promised to be a hot, summer day and she rode in full armour. Under her helmet her hair was plastered to her head by sweat, which trickled down her face. It was not a comfortable ride. As soon as it grew too dark to continue she found a sheltered spot to eat, care for the animals and sleep. She slept lightly, trusting to the merlin, Braveheart, and her own instincts to keep her safe.
By late afternoon of the next day she was stiff and thoroughly tired of riding. When Ursula stopped to rest, the merlin watched her intently and somehow made her understand that caution was needed for the next stage of her journey. She watered her mount and hobbled it in a shady spot close to a brook. Having drunk their fill of the clean water both she and Braveheart set off more cautiously, following the merlin.
Braveheart smelled it first, the scent of habitation. He growled a low threat from the back of his throat. Ursula drew her sword and gripped Braveheart’s collar with her left hand. She knew they were in enemy territory. The land opened up into tended fields and limited cover. Ursula was acutely aware that her armour glinted in the sun. She felt her heart begin to pump like a piston, and tightened her grip on both her sword and Braveheart. They could both be dead in the time it took to fire an arrow, hurl a spear or fire a stone from a slingshot. None of those things happened. As she got closer she could see that the village was ringed by a series of ditches and embankments bristling with sharpened stakes. There was no obvious way in. Keeping as low as possible, which, due to the size of Braveheart and her own sometimes inconvenient height, was not very low at all, she circled the village until she came to a guarded wooden bridge. Two young warriors stood on either side of the bridge, sweating under the weight of their helms. Ursula still did not speak a word of Aenglisc. She did the only thing she could think of and marched confidently up to the boys. They looked at each other in consternation.
‘Rhonwen!’ Ursula said. ‘Heahrune, Rhonwen.’
One of the boys unhooked a horn that was fastened to his belt and blew the alarm. Ursula stood her ground. She had not yet been threatened. She had to hold Braveheart back and make him sit without snarling. The response to the horn was immediate; twenty-five heavily armed and bearded Aenglisc warriors emerged from nowhere. Ursula prayed that one of them spoke Latin.
One of them did – it was Gorlois Cerdic, Arturus’s half-brother. She clearly recalled twisting his arm until her own ached with the strain the day Arturus was elected High King. Why had Taliesin not warned her? Ursula swore elaborately and inventively to herself while keeping her face impassive.
Cerdic stepped in front of her.
‘Lady Ursa?’ He spoke wonderingly, unable to take his eyes off her youthful face.
‘Cerdic.’ She nodded at him as if to confirm her own identity. She hoped her discomfort did not show. She saw him glance down at her hands that had so nearly strangled him and knew that in all the twenty-one years that had passed he had neither forgotten nor forgiven her for belittling him at Arturus’s court.
There was a lot of mutte
ring from the assembled men. She heard the word Waelcryrige more than once.
‘My Aenglisc friends remember you from Baddon – they believe you are a Valkyrie, one whom their great god Woden has given the power to choose who should die on the battlefield. They do not think you very selective. You needn’t fear them. They would not kill you – you are too connected with their wyrd, their destiny as warriors. The same cannot be said of me. You are just a young and interfering woman.’ Cerdic had aged, but age had brought dignity and a certain gift for contempt. He all but spat out the last remark. He would have liked to have killed her. She had known that even when they had both served Arturus. She kept her voice as emotionless as her face.
‘I came to talk with Rhonwen. She is here?’
‘She sits in council with another of Arturus’s women – Queen Gwynefa.’
It took a lot of self-control not to react to that. But Ursula did not show surprise by so much as a flicker of an eyebrow, nor did she loosen her grip on her sword.
‘I have come here alone.’
‘But for that hell hound.’
Ursula ignored him.
‘I have come here alone to see Rhonwen. There is unfinished business between us. I served her brother. I would see her now.’
Cerdic seemed surprised at that, and in spite of his declared lack of belief in her supernatural powers, he was clearly deeply uncomfortable in her company. He turned to one of his companions and spoke rapidly to him in some Aenglisc language, sending him off with a message.
Ursula waited. While the sweat trickled down her chin, she did not move a muscle and did not take her eyes off Cerdic. He looked away first.
The companion returned and whispered something into Cerdic’s ear.
Cerdic appeared displeased and said grudgingly, ‘The Heahrune is prepared to see you in the Great Hall, Lady Ursa. We will resume our war council later.’
The men watched silently as Ursula walked forward as proudly and as confidently as she could, Braveheart at her heel. Her back prickled with perspiration and the awareness of many frightened eyes upon her. She walked through the village along a path of baked earth strewn with straw. The buildings were triangular with their steeply pitched thatched roofs almost touching the ground. They smelled of goose fat and sour milk, bread and hops and charred wood. The Great Hall stood out as the only rectilinear building. The lintel of the door was decorated with runes and brightly painted pictures, but Ursula sensed no magic. She followed calmly in Cerdic’s agitated steps.
There was no sign of the merlin, though she knew with a strange certainty that somewhere he watched her. If they killed her there would be a witness to let Dan know. It was not a comforting thought.
Chapter Thirty-five
Ursula noticed how the guards who waited outside the door of the Great Hall bowed to Cerdic and flinched away from her. If her allies had chosen to forget her, her enemies had not.
It was dark, dank, but pleasantly cool inside the hall after the blinding brightness of the summer daylight. Rhonwen sat at a plain wooden table in a pool of slatted sunlight and shadow. She was unchanged and while the distorted, shiny skin of her burnt cheek remained red and raw looking, the rest of her face remained unblemished and lovely. It took Ursula a moment longer to place the plump dark-haired woman next to Rhonwen. She was wearing some kind of moulded breastplate of archaic design, gilded and encrusted with coloured glass, and a highly decorated golden spangelhelm, from which her long black hair hung loose to her waist. She made a stunning, if extraordinary, figure. It was only when Ursula noticed her pale green, kohl-rimmed eyes that she recognised the parody of a warrior woman as Arturus’s young wife, two decades on.
Cerdic stepped forward into the wide space between the door and the table.
‘Well?’
‘The Lady Ursa is here, Heahrune. We shall talk further of our plans when she is gone.’
‘Let us be clear, Cerdic’ – Rhonwen was very much the Combrogi princess here, her new relationship with Medraut clearly entitled her to respect, and she had never taken kindly to being told what to do – ‘I come with an offer of an alliance with Medraut. I have invited Gwynefa to discuss a further alliance with the High King’s enemies. We will finalise an agreement now. I want the Lady Ursula to know how all her efforts to prop up Arturus, the Raven usurper, will come, in the end, to nothing.’
Cerdic swallowed hard as if his pride or his anger stuck in his throat. Dan would have known which. Ursula struggled to guess at the nature of their relationship. Cerdic signalled for a serving woman to hand him a fine golden goblet of Roman design and ostentatiously drunk from it. Ursula guessed it was intended to serve as a small reminder to Rhonwen that Cerdic was as Roman as his brother Arturus. He waved his arm expansively and the two women were also furnished with drinks. Only then did he seat himself at the table. Ursula remained standing. No one had yet divested her of her weapon. She had a suspicion that none of the Aenglisc would have dared try.
Cerdic signalled to another servant and a vellum map was spread across the wooden table.
‘Ursula Alavna ab Helen.’ Rhonwen used the title Ursula herself had used when she took Rhonwen’s brother King Macsen’s oath. It was a blatant reminder of what they had in common. ‘Come and see how Arturus will be crushed.’
Cerdic opened his mouth to say something but closed it again when Rhonwen flashed him a venomous look.
Ursula moved forward awkwardly, indicating for Braveheart to stay. She was surprised how little she wanted Arturus to be crushed at all. She had offered the man Dan’s sword, Bright Killer, she had risked her life for his dream. He was King Arthur of legend even if he wasn’t all she might have wished. Her residual loyalty surprised her. She moved forward and saw that the map was an old Roman one, of fine quality, showing all the Roman roads and forts, written in a good though fading hand. The more recent additions, the effective boundaries of Aenglisc occupation and the more recent names for places were less elegantly written but it was still a very good map.
Gwynefa spoke for the first time. ‘Arturus recognises Medraut’s threat. He is riding to Cado to mobilise the body of the troops – to reinforce the small force that remain in Camulodunum. He will use the Icknield Way – it is the only road suitable for Cataphracts.’ Rhonwen sketched a line with her finger from Cerdic’s own base, marked by a disproportionately large star, and the Icknield Way.
‘It is Medraut’s intention to ambush him here.’ Rhonwen placed an imperious finger at a spot on the map. ‘In the crooked valley.’
Gwynefa traced a further line from Caer-Baddon to the chosen valley. ‘That will do,’ she said quietly.
Rhonwen looked at the apparently older woman with her piercing emerald green look. Rhonwen had abandoned her mantle of skulls for something more conventionally regal, sewn with feathers and semi-precious stones. Even so, Gwynefa flinched from her intense gaze and made the sign of the cross, surreptitiously.
‘I do not understand you, Queen Gwynefa, and so I find it hard to trust you. Why do you choose to betray your husband? I have never heard that he beats you or mistreats you, only that he has failed to give you a child – but then your lover has not succeeded there either. Why do you want Arturus destroyed?’
Those present who understood Rhonwen’s words winced at her bluntness, Gwynefa merely paled. Her voice was bleak, emotionless, without the bitterness Ursula would have expected.
‘It is over for the Combrogi. Arturus still believes we can hold out against the invaders for ever. It is not so. We need a leader who will negotiate, who will compromise, who will preserve something of our ways. Arturus would see us dead in our beds before he’d shake an Aenglisc hand.’
The reason did not quite ring true for Ursula; it would not have motivated Ursula herself to such a massive betrayal, but Rhonwen appeared to be satisfied. She nodded and moved on.
‘I, Rhonwen, speak for King Medraut. He and I, and our Aenglisc allies, will be there at the crooked valley in six days. That is the a
uspicious day on which the auguries predict our victory.’
Rhonwen turned to a tall, well-armed Aenglisc behind her. He was obviously her messenger as she slipped a large garnet ring from her finger and gave it to him. Ursula noticed that she was quietly instructing him in the wording of her message in a corrupt form of the language of the Trinovantes. Her servant, like Medraut and like Rhonwen, was Combrogi. That depressed her greatly. Here, just as in Macsen’s time, Combrogi would kill Combrogi. When Rhonwen had finished giving her orders she returned abruptly to Cerdic and Gwynefa.
‘I have business now with – what do you call her? – “the Lady Ursa”. She has had too many names. If I do not return, rest assured that the outcome of this battle is secure. Written in the stars, carved in every rock, carried in the life-blood of every living thing. Arturus will die and Britannia, our Island of the Mighty, will be left for those who dare to forge a new alliance between its peoples.’ Rhonwen’s voice rang with the prophetic confidence of an Aenglisc Heahrune and Combrogi princess. Ursula shivered at the words; they sounded too much like truth to her.
‘If you are in danger from this, this Valkyrie, I will send an escort.’ Cerdic regarded Ursula with both dislike and suspicion.
Rhonwen dismissed his concerns with a casual flick of her jewelled hand.
‘Lady Ursa will not harm me. We have a common goal. I hope you find what you are looking for, Cerdic. You, too, Queen Gwynefa. Do not worry, Cerdic, the Lady Ursa will not betray your plans – the outcome is certain. Arturus will die.’
