by N. M. Browne
With that, Rhonwen bowed graciously and swept from the Great Hall. Ursula followed her, not daring to look at Cerdic and Gwynefa. Rhonwen did not turn to check that Ursula followed, but strode purposefully past the guards, through the village and over the bridge into the meadow beyond.
Ursula did not know what to think. This Rhonwen was so unlike the screaming witch she had last seen at Baddon Hill, it was hard to grasp the change, harder still to interpret it. Was she still in danger from this woman? Then she remembered. Rhonwen did not know that she no longer commanded the magic.
‘Are you ready?’ Rhonwen’s question was both abrupt and incomprehensible. She fixed Ursula with unreadable emerald eyes. Ursula would have liked to have known what emotion Rhonwen was projecting. Should she trust a woman who hated her?
‘Ready for what?’ Ursula asked.
‘For me to raise the Veil. Surely that is why you have come? I assume you spoke to Taliesin.’ She managed to squeeze venomous dislike into the four syllables of his name.
‘I don’t know,’ Ursula said flatly. ‘I don’t understand why you should want to go – you didn’t before.’
‘I didn’t want to do what Taliesin wanted.’ Rhonwen tossed her head. ‘A princess is not to be brought back through the Veil by a bard, like some errant puppy. I have been a Heahrune here and consort to a king. I have made my mark on the world. I have proved that I could win without Macsen. Now I want to go home. Now it is my choice, on my terms. I want to see the hills of home again, speak my own language, see Macsen – isn’t that enough?’
Ursula had to admit that it was.
‘Why do you hate Arturus?’ Ursula had never understood that.
‘He is a Raven. He fights the Raven way. He seeks to remake the Combrogi in the Raven image. They no longer hear the Goddess. We Combrogi have more in common with the Aenglisc than with the Ravens: I will not make a common cause with Ravens. Why Taliesin thinks Arturus is keeping the Combrogi alive I do not understand. The man is no Macsen.’ With that, too, Ursula had little quarrel. This was not the way things should be with Rhonwen. Rhonwen was not reasonable.
‘It seems wrong that Gwynefa should betray Arturus,’ Ursula said thoughtfully.
‘Gwynefa? Oh, she just longs for death – it’s in her eyes. She’s just going to take them all down with her – a tortured soul, Gwynefa.’
She said the last matter of factly, without noticeable compassion.
‘And you?’ Ursula was intrigued. What was going on inside the head of this woman she had so long regarded as her enemy?
Rhonwen’s eyes were as cold and clear and hard as the emeralds their colour resembled.
She spoke softly. ‘I am not your friend, Ursula. I pulled you from your world and you have repaid me for that first unkindness many times over.’ Honesty obliged her to add, quickly, ‘Oh, I know you saved me once, back home when the Ravens took me, and I have repaid that debt.’
Ursula nodded. She had always suspected that it was Rhonwen who had called to her and helped her return to her senses after she had shape-shifted into an eagle, back at Macsen’s fortress – she did not know how long ago.
Rhonwen continued. ‘Have no illusions about me. I don’t like you, I would have killed you – would have made you pay for the times you’ve belittled me. However, one thing a Combrogi princess learns early is that life is compromise. I need you, that is all, if you can tell me how to get home.’
Ursula thought hard and tried to describe the indescribable. Manipulating the Veil was to do with the will and with belief and power. She was sure that even without magic, once inside the Veil she would find the knack again, but to describe it was an impossibility.
‘It’s how you let the power flow – I don’t have the words. I would have to show you.’
‘Then you’d better show me or the Goddess alone knows where we’ll end up.’
Rhonwen knelt to raise the Veil. She had already prepared herself for the task. A dead chicken had already been laid out on the earth as the blood sacrifice; it had not been necessary after the Battle of Baddon when the earth was gorged with blood. Rhonwen began to sway and chant and Ursula suddenly panicked.
‘Not now? I can’t go now!’
‘Why else are you here?’
‘To talk about it!’ Ursula knew it was a lame answer but she could not think with Rhonwen’s magic calling to her as it built, pulling at her, weakening her resolve. She wanted the magic, wanted it more than anything, maybe more even than she wanted to go home. The unnatural dirty yellow mist began to form like smoke from an unseen fire as Rhonwen’s power called the Veil into being.
‘God, no! I cannot go now. Not without Dan. I promised!’
Ursula turned and, checking that Braveheart was at her heels, ran for the trees, her horse, and the means to put miles between her and the terrible, unearthly, seductive call of the Veil.
Chapter Thirty-six
Bryn disappeared from Larcius’s hall late in the evening of Arturus’s first night at Caer-Baddon. Without the situation ever being properly discussed, both Dan and Bryn had assumed that they would leave with Arturus in the morning, and Bryn had his whole life to rearrange. Dan sat uncomfortably while Larcius and the High King discussed strategy. Arturus was determined to put an end to the threat from Medraut in the east as soon as possible. It seemed that Rhonwen’s re-emergence from the mist had been the catalyst necessary to turn Medraut from a political adversary, to a full-blown enemy. Dan listened with growing dread as they discussed the detail of troop movements. Something was wrong.
Arturus was intending to move his troops from Cado along the Icknield Way to reinforce his base at Camulodunum and then to march on Medraut’s stronghold at Dumnoc. Larcius would meet him at the border between his land and that of Arturus’s ally, King Dewi, who ruled that land around the former Roman city of Calleva Atrebatum, as it was marked on Arturus’s map. They would mobilise at once.
Dan was not interested in the minutiae of rations and camp sites, though it seemed to him that the whole business was even more complex than it had been when they had marched to the fortress at Baddon Hill. The Icknield Way bisected many territories, and safe passages for even the High King’s troops had to be negotiated with the rulers of each and every territory. The number of small kingdoms had proliferated over the years, and although the High King had a right to levy men and provisions from each of the client kingdoms, the process was by no means straightforward. The High Kingship was maintained only by a complex balance of debts and favours, and an assault on Medraut, the former Count of the Saxon Shore, related by blood to many of Arturus’s allies, was no mean enterprise. It was obvious to Dan that Arturus had been engaged in preparations for months and that most of the agreements and arrangements had already been made. Arturus’s political skills must have improved over the years to hold the many disparate rulers and interest groups together. This ought to have reassured Dan that Arturus knew what he was doing and yet it did not. He could not ignore his own unease. Larcius was difficult, his mood unpredictable. His dominant emotion was one of shame. Dan could not work it out and went to his bed that night disturbed and fearful.
That night he dreamed of death. He saw heaped corpses rotting in the hot sun, skies swarming with fat flies and the recurring vision of a figure with pale blonde hair, who both was and was not Arturus, being hewn down again and again by mounted men. The scream of the almost-Arturus reverberated through the nightmare. As each blow fell, he screamed out, ‘Dan!’ while a merlin falcon hovered overhead.
It was a relief when dawn broke and Dan rode with Bryn in the first rank of Arturus’s company towards Fort Cado. Bryn was quiet, his feelings muted. He appeared to Dan to feel surprisingly little regret for the position he left behind. Dan found it difficult to adjust to Bryn’s changed status. The boy he had known just days before was now older than he was. It was hard to know how to begin again. Dan encouraged Bryn to talk of the intervening years to fill up the awkward silences between them. It helped break the monotony
of the journey and distracted Dan from worrying too obsessively about Ursula. Dan prayed she would be safe. He could do nothing else.
They rode hard and arrived at Arturus’s military stronghold at dusk. Fort Cado was far from being the Roman castle Dan had expected. It was a Celtic hill fort in which the broad, flat top of the hill had been entirely enclosed by a huge wooden palisade. Within that defensive circle a whole Combrogi village was laid out with dedicated blacksmiths, farriers, potters, weavers, leather workers, and stabling for several hundred horses. Everyone but Dan and Bryn knew where to go. They dismounted, rather overawed by the military efficiency. Grooms took away their horses, and they were led to Arturus’s hall.
Dan’s nagging concern that there was something very wrong darkened and deepened to conviction. He could feel it as soon as he walked into the Great Hall. Gwynefa had not yet arrived. Arturus was desperate. He was afraid that she had been taken by the Aenglisc for ransom, or worse. None of her bodyguard had returned either and there was no hint as to what might have become of her. Arturus’s confessor, a pale, young man dressed in monk’s robes, hovered behind him intoning prayers for Gwynefa’s soul, while Arturus cursed uncharacteristically and ordered someone to send for Taliesin. Bryn sat very still and watched and waited as he had obviously learned to do with the volatile Larcius. Dan’s concern for Ursula grew. If Gwynefa with her coterie of well-armed bodyguards could be taken then Ursula could be in trouble too. Perhaps he should have taken more notice of Larcius’s concerns. Dan could not find Ursula’s thoughts. Though he tried, he could sense nothing beyond Arturus’s complex distraction, a hard to disentangle combination of worry, guilt and fear. Arturus’s cool exterior hid passions on a massive scale. Dan felt the terrible sense of oppression, which had afflicted him so badly after Baddon. He was no better equipped to deal with it now than he had been then.
Ursula ran, all but blindly. She would have closed her eyes and stopped her ears if it would have reduced her awareness of the magic, but nothing did that. Braveheart led her to her horse. She patted his rough head and with her chest still heaving with the effort of running and breathing and doing the opposite of that she most desired, she freed her mount and rode, back the way she’d come, as if the devil were at her heels.
No magical apparition followed her. Maybe Rhonwen dared not use the power, or maybe she had entered the Veil alone. Ursula needed no retribution from Rhonwen, she could not feel worse than she already did. She had ridden away from the magic. She felt insane with the need to feel the magic again. She could taste the magic on her tongue. It buzzed as if she had bitten chilli peppers or sucked on cloves. She began to tremble convulsively. She spurred the horse on until her nerves no longer jangled and she could simply sob at her loss. If only Dan had been with her – they both could have gone home. Braveheart whined in distress when she cried. She had never known him do that before but she stopped because he sounded so pitiful. What did she do now?
Slowly, as her wild grief subsided, she began to think again. She had to find Dan and warn Arturus. She rode listlessly, bearing west, searching for some landmark that she might recognise. In the end it was Taliesin who found her. His merlin form soared above her several times before settling high in the topmost branches of a distant tree and cleaning his feathers. It seemed a self-satisfied gesture to her. Fighting her irritation with Taliesin, and indeed the whole world, she turned her mount to follow the brown speck that was all she could see of the falcon as he winged his way, far ahead of her into the setting sun.
That night she didn’t sleep at all but, when she didn’t dream of murderous Aenglisc, her night was haunted by images of the Veil and all it meant to her. By the second day of her journey she was tired and irritable and by the time she was discovered in late evening by a group of Arturus’s men searching for Queen Gwynefa, she was in no mood to be toyed with. An officious-looking Sarmatian wished to arrest her but Braveheart bared his teeth and Ursula drew her sword.
‘Listen, I fought with your father and all your uncles at Baddon. Don’t you dare touch me – or my dog. If you are returning to the High King Arturus I will ride with you, but you really wouldn’t like to take me on in a fight.’
Ursula saw by the man’s reaction that he believed her. She probably looked half crazed. She certainly felt it. She did not add that she knew where the Queen was. It did not seem politic to reveal the extent of Gwynefa’s perfidy until she had informed Arturus himself. She hoped he would not feel inclined to shoot the messenger who bore such bad news.
Later, when the light faded she felt better disposed towards the Sarmatian. It was too dark to follow the merlin falcon, who had loyally remained in sight, and without the torches of the search party she would have been hopelessly lost. Unfortunately, even though the Sarmatian knew where he was going Ursula still felt hopelessly lost. Rhonwen would never help them now and she was stuck until death in this time that was not her own. In the darkness, hot, bitter tears rolled down her cheeks unchecked. Bloody Dan. It was, after all, his fault.
Chapter Thirty-seven
The atmosphere in the Great Hall was very tense when Ursula was finally ushered in front of Arturus. Gwynefa had been missing for four fraught days. Braveheart, lightly restrained by Ursula’s hand on his collar, launched himself first at Dan and then Bryn.
‘Ursula, you’re safe!’ Dan’s voice in Ursula’s mind rang with relief.
‘Dan, we could have gone home. Rhonwen would have raised the Veil. I could have got us home. Why didn’t you come with me?’ Dan could hear her distress, her frustration and the tremulous emotional aftershock of her close contact with magic. What could he say?
‘Lady Ursa.’ Arturus got at once to his feet.
‘Your Highness.’ Ursula barely bowed her head. She had not forgiven him.
She was uncomfortable, though only Dan, knowing her so well, could read the subtle signs, the tense way she gripped the hilt of her sword. For some reason she had not been disarmed.
‘I have news of Gwynefa, but I would prefer to speak to you alone.’
Foolishly, Arturus spoke chivalrously. ‘I cannot imagine that you might have any news of my wife that could not be aired in public.’
Dan watched Ursula discreetly readjust her weight to be ready for trouble and take a deep breath. From the corner of his eye he noticed Bryn perform a similar manoeuvre. A number of servants and men at arms present in the Great Hall chose that moment to look away. That should have told Arturus something but he seemed impervious to it all. It was clear to Dan that Gwynefa’s indiscretions were common knowledge.
‘I went to talk to the Aenglisc Heahrune, the Princess Rhonwen. She alone has the power to return Dan and myself to our proper place. I found Rhonwen in Cerdic’s stronghold where she was holding war council on Medraut’s behalf with Cerdic and with …’ She visibly steeled herself. ‘With Queen Gwynefa.’
‘You lie! Guards, seize that troublemaker!’
As two men approached Ursula she unsheathed her sword and they backed away, and Gwynefa chose that precise moment to make an entrance. She was still splendidly dressed in her gilded, jewelled armour. Dan thought she looked ridiculous, like some aging opera singer trying to look like a warrior queen. Ursula looked at her in consternation and surprise. No one else seemed to know what to do.
‘Gwyn!’ Arturus caught himself, before he rushed to her side. Feeling the waves of love and relief that emanated from the High King, Dan was horribly aware that Ursula was unlikely to be believed. His hand unconsciously found his own sword while he found his eyes drawn to his much superior surrendered blade at Arturus’s hip.
‘She has besmirched my honour,’ Gwynefa said melodramatically. ‘Arturus, will you do nothing?’
Arturus gave Ursula his coldest, most calculating glance.
‘And what would you have me do with our finest fighter on the day before we march to battle?’ Arturus’s tone was reasonable.
‘Someone must fight her. Someone must champion my honour.’ Dan won
dered if Gwynefa had forgotten who Ursula was. She had bested everyone she fought against prior to the Battle of Baddon Hill
‘I choose him.’ Gwynefa’s glittering, wild eyes picked out Dan.
Dan got to his feet.
‘Queen Gwynefa, I regret to say that I cannot be your champion.’
‘Arturus, make him!’
‘Gwyn, you may have forgotten Gawain. He does not fight.’
‘He fought the Aenglisc at Camulodunum – I’ve forgotten nothing. And he fought Gorlois Cerdic. What kind of fool do you take me for?’
Dan felt everyone’s eyes on him. He felt their excitement building.
‘Let’s give them a show, Dan. Stop at first blood.’
He realised then that Ursula wanted to know; could she be as good as the former Bear Sark? She still felt she had something to prove to him, and he to her.
Dan stood up. Arturus threw him his sword, Caliburn, that was once Bright Killer, and Dan caught it easily. It was good to hold it in his hand again. It had melded to the shape of his hand, through Ursula’s magic, back in Macsen’s land. He was horrified at how suddenly complete holding it still made him feel.
Bryn called Braveheart to his side. Dan had removed his helm some time ago. Ursula removed hers so that her damp hair fell to her shoulders, dark with perspiration. He could feel her sudden excitement, her exhilaration. She had too much frustrated energy to unleash. She needed this.
She attacked, he parried. She was frighteningly strong. His sword arm felt the impact of the blow at his shoulder. He attacked, switching hands to confuse her, but she met every attempt to get past her guard. She was quicker than he remembered. He could feel how good it felt to her, the pleasure she took in her strength, and in her speed. She saw herself as a lioness swift and powerful. Her back ached a little from the ride. She was saddle sore, and lightly bruised, but shifting her weight to thrust her sword forward, it did not matter to her. A part of Dan was becoming alarmed, not only did he begin to feel what she was feeling, he began to know what she would do a moment before she did it. All Arturus’s court, his servants and his guards had gathered round the combatants. They began to shout and stamp, even Arturus yelled for his wife’s champion. Dan noticed the rumpus peripherally.
