Child of the Phoenix

by Barbara Erskine

  Eleyne turned back towards the far shore, trying to pick out the cluster of stone and wooden buildings low on the hillside which made up the great llys of Aber, but before she could make them out she was distracted by a flotilla of small ships which had appeared on the sea between them and the mainland. She watched, her eyes screwed up against the glare, seeing them wallow in the heavy swell which had developed near the shore.

  ‘We’re nearly there.’ Luned’s voice at her elbow startled her. ‘I can see Cenydd with the others waiting on the quay!’

  Cenydd was Rhonwen’s cousin, the only one of her relatives to have kept in touch with her after the scandal of her mother’s defection from Christianity and the lonely woman’s death. He was seneschal at Llanfaes. Both little girls adored him.

  Distracted from the boats, Eleyne studied the low shoreline ahead, where a group of figures stood waiting on one of the busy quays. A shadow had fallen across the glittering sea, and she shivered. The boats had vanished in the glare.

  Impatiently Eleyne waited, listening to the laughing cry of the gulls and the shouts of the ferrymen as the horses were unloaded down the long ramps. As soon as Cadi was led on to the quay she ran to her. The horse whickered at her jauntily and within seconds Eleyne had jumped into the saddle.

  Rhonwen and Luned watched in astonishment as pony and rider galloped up the track away from the port and along the shore towards the east. Rhonwen frowned and turned to Cenydd who had been waiting for them. ‘You see?’

  He smiled, accepting naturally the continuation, as if it had not been interrupted, of a conversation he and Rhonwen had commenced weeks before.

  ‘She is wild still, certainly – and much loved for it. Shall I go after her?’

  ‘She is a danger to herself, Cenydd. I am less and less able to control her. And now –’ She broke off abruptly at the sight of Luned’s eager face at her elbow.

  ‘Now?’ prompted Cenydd. He looked at her curiously. ‘Is it as you feared?’

  ‘Later.’ Rhonwen glared at her kinsman, irritated at his lack of tact. ‘You take the others up to the manor and settle them in. I shall go after her.’ She mounted her own mare quickly and neatly and, kicking her into a hand canter, set off after Eleyne.

  She was relaxed. There was no danger on this rich, gentle island, the heart of Llywelyn’s principality, populated by loyal and true men and women, and yet it was wrong for Eleyne to ride off like that. It looked as if she had deliberately abandoned Luned and thumbed her nose at her escort and her companions. Rhonwen frowned. Almost certainly it hadn’t been like that at all. She suspected that Eleyne had merely forgotten that the others existed. And that was where the problem lay. She should not have forgotten.

  Cadi’s hooves had cut deep holes in the sand, and already they were filling with water. At the shore’s edge the oystercatchers and sanderlings, only momentarily disturbed, had returned to their patrolling. Inland from the low hill behind her came the whistling of a curlew.

  Long gold streaks stained the tide race now. Ahead, in the distance, the huge hunched shadow of Pen y Gogarth lay, a sleeping giant in the sea. Somewhere on the shadowed lee of its shoulder lay Degannwy where tonight Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, the eldest son of the Prince of Aberffraw, would spend his first night as his father’s prisoner.

  Rhonwen scowled, reining in her horse to a walk. If Gruffydd were going to succeed his father as prince, he was going to have to learn to curb his temper.

  She scanned the beach ahead. It was deserted. But still the hoof prints led on. Anxious suddenly, she kicked her horse on. A flight of gulls skimmed up the water beside her, easily overtaking the trotting horse, then she saw Cadi, riderless, her rein trailing. The pony was nibbling at the short salt-grass above the tide line.

  Rhonwen felt a tremor of fear. ‘Eleyne!’ Her shout was lost in the empty air. ‘Eleyne!’

  She reined in and stared around. Then she saw her. Eleyne was standing at the sea’s edge, her thin leather slippers in the water where the slowly rising tide had touched them. Her skirt, usually tucked up into her girdle, had fallen to its full length into the water and floated around her, a swirl of red. Eleyne was looking across the strait.

  Rhonwen dismounted. Leaving her own horse to graze with Cadi, she walked towards the sea.

  III

  Eleyne had slowed her first wild gallop as soon as she was out of sight of the crowds and houses around the harbour. The strange need to be alone had come upon her quite suddenly, as it always did, and unthinking and unquestioning she had obeyed it.

  She walked Cadi gently up the tide line, listening to the cries of the curlew – the messenger of death, the emissary of warning – and again she shivered. It was several minutes before she noticed the boats again. They had drawn nearer, out of the lee of the land, and were heading through the mist towards the island. She frowned. The mist had come suddenly, unnoticed, drifting over the water. The boats were crowded with men. She could see them clearly now – unnaturally clearly. They wore breast plates, gilded armour, helms. Spears glinted where the evening sun pierced the mist. There were more ships now – ten or fifteen abreast – and between the boats there were horsemen, hundreds of horsemen swimming their mounts towards the shore where she stood. Somewhere from across the water she could hear the beat of a drum, low and threatening in the echoing silence.

  Suddenly afraid Eleyne turned, wishing that she hadn’t ridden off alone. She gathered her reins more firmly as Cadi laid back her ears and side-stepped away from the sea. She must ride back. She looked over her shoulder, her mouth dry with fear, and to her relief she saw that she was no longer alone. Two women stood near her and beyond them a group of men. She frowned at their strange garb. Both men and women wore black robes, and all had long dishevelled hair. The woman nearest her wore a gold circlet around her arm, another around her throat. In her hand was a sword. Beyond her were crowds of others; the shore was thick with people now, all armed, all keening threateningly in their throats. They were staring beyond her towards the sea. The drumbeat filled Eleyne’s ears. She felt the hairs on her arms rising in fear. She wasn’t aware that she had dismounted, but then she was standing shoulder to shoulder with the women at the edge of the sea and all around them there were others, women, men, even children.

  She looked for Rhonwen, for Cenydd, for some of the men of her escort, but she recognised no one. The crowd was growing and with it the noise. The sound of a hundred, perhaps a thousand voices raised in menace as, from the sea, she heard the soft shush of keels on sand as boat after boat beached and the armed men began to jump into the water.

  She whirled around, wanting to run, trying to get away, but hundreds of people surrounded her, wielding weapons, and with a terrifying clash of metal they were fighting hand-to-hand. She felt the warm slipperiness of blood on the sand, heard their screams, smelt their fear and hatred. She couldn’t breathe. They were being driven back, back from the shore. She found herself backing with them, stepping over the bleeding body of a woman. She spun round, panic-stricken, retreating with them towards the dark woods on the ridge behind them. The leaves of the oaks were russet and golden in the misty sunshine as the people broke and ran towards the trees and she knew, as they knew, that if they reached them they would be safe.

  Then she saw the smoke.

  The invaders from the sea were firing the trees, turning the ancient oaks into flaming torches and with them the people who were sheltering between them. She heard their screams, the crackle of flames as the air turned thick and opaque. Desperately she stretched out her hands, trying to reach a woman near her. If she could reach her, take her hand, she could guide her out of the smoke. Sobbing piteously, she reached forward but her hand passed through that of the woman as though it were a breath of air. Again she tried and at last she clutched it…

  ‘Eleyne! Eleyne! Wake up! What’s the matter with you!’ She felt a stinging slap on both cheeks and a shower of cold sea water caught her full in the face.

  Stunned, Eleyn
e opened her eyes and stared around her. She was on the lonely beach with Rhonwen. There was no one in sight. No ships; no soldiers; no men and women and children, dying in their blood on the shore. Fearfully she gazed up the beach to where the oak forest had stood. There was nothing there now but scrub and a few stunted thorn trees.

  She found she was gripping Rhonwen’s arm with every ounce of strength she possessed. She released it quietly. ‘I’m sorry, I hurt you.’ Her voice was shaky.

  ‘Yes, you did.’ Rhonwen sounded calm. She rubbed her arm. Beneath the cream wool of her sleeve, her flesh would later show ten livid bruises, the marks of Eleyne’s fingers.

  ‘Tell me what you saw.’ She put her arm around Eleyne and hugged her close. ‘Tell me what you saw, cariad.’

  ‘An army attacking Mô n; the men and women on the shore; then the fire, up there –’ She waved her arm. ‘Fire, everywhere.’

  ‘You were thinking of the fire when you were born – ’

  ‘No!’ Eleyne shook her head emphatically. ‘No, this wasn’t a hall. It was the trees. There on the ridge. A great grove of trees stood there, and they set fire to them with all the people sheltering there. The soldiers herded them there to burn – even women, even children, like me …’

  ‘It was a dream, Eleyne.’ Rhonwen was gazing over her head at the empty sea. She was completely cold. ‘A dream, nothing more.’

  ‘Am I going mad, Rhonwen?’ Eleyne clung to her.

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ Rhonwen pulled her closer. ‘I don’t know why it happened. Too much excitement this morning perhaps. Come, let’s catch the ponies and go back to the others. The wind is getting chill.’

  Behind them a line of cats’ paws ran down the channel and high on the misty peaks the dying sun brought darkness to the high gullies.

  IV

  ‘You are sure she has the Sight?’ Cenydd leaned forward and refilled Rhonwen’s wine goblet. He frowned down at the fire which burned between them. Behind them in the body of the hall men and women busied themselves at their various tasks. The children had retired to their sleeping chamber and Rhonwen had just returned from seeing that Eleyne was all right. She and Luned lay cuddled in each other’s arms, dead to the world. Rhonwen had stared down at them for several minutes in the light of her candle before she turned away and returned to the hall.

  ‘What else can it be? I don’t know what to do, Cenydd.’

  ‘Why must you do anything?’

  ‘Because if she has this gift from the gods, she has to be trained. I have to tell Einion that she is ready.’

  ‘No!’ Cenydd slammed his goblet down on the table at his elbow. ‘You are not to give her to those murdering meddlers in magic. Her father would never allow it.’

  ‘Sssh!’ Rhonwen said. ‘Her father would never know. Listen, if it is her destiny, who are we to deny it? Do you think I haven’t been praying this wouldn’t happen again?’

  ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘When we were at Hay. She saw the destruction of the castle.’

  ‘Does she realise –?’

  ‘I told her it was a dream. The first time I think she believed me. This time, no. She knows in her heart it was no dream, at least no ordinary dream.’

  ‘Did she see past or future?’

  Rhonwen shrugged. ‘I didn’t like to question her too far. That’s for the seer. He’ll know what to do.’

  She had struggled with her conscience for months, ever since the vision at Hay. If Eleyne had powers, they had to be trained, for the sake of her country and its cause under Gruffydd of freedom from England; she knew that. But once the seers and bards heard of Eleyne’s gift Rhonwen would lose her to them and to her destiny.

  ‘You’re a fool if you tell him. He’ll never let her go.’ Cenydd reached for the flagon of wine. ‘You wouldn’t bring him here?’

  ‘I must. I dare not defy the princess again. Anyway, there’s too much unrest and unhappiness at Aber. Later – I don’t know. It will be for him to speak to the prince if he thinks she has been chosen.’

  ‘And her husband? What of the child’s husband? He will surely not approve of his wife being dragged into paganism and heresy; I hear the Earl of Huntingdon is a devout follower of the church.’

  ‘The marriage can be annulled.’ Rhonwen dismissed the Earl of Huntingdon as she always dismissed him, with as little thought as possible. She groped surreptitiously for the amulet she wore around her neck beneath her gown. ‘Everything can be arranged if it is the wish of the goddess, Cenydd.’

  He frowned. He saw his cousin’s passionate faith as alternately amusingly harmless and extremely dangerous. He did not like the idea of that pretty, vivacious child being turned into a black-draped, sinister servant of the moon. On the other hand, he shuddered superstitiously, if she had the Sight, then perhaps she was already chosen.

  V

  Eleyne was sitting at her embroidery lesson three days later when a servant brought the message that Rhonwen wanted to see her. She threw down her silks with alacrity. Although already a neat, accurate sempstress, with a flair for setting the colours on the pale linen, she soon grew bored with the lack of activity when she was sewing. Any variation of the routine was to be seized with enthusiasm.

  Rhonwen sat at the table in the solar with an old man. There was no sign of Cenydd. Disappointed, Eleyne closed the door and went to stand near them.

  ‘Eleyne, this is Einion Gweledydd. As you know, he is one of your father’s bards,’ Rhonwen said.

  Eleyne dropped a small respectful curtsey but her curiosity already had the better of her. She loved the bards with their constant supply of stories and music, their recitations of history and the tales of her ancestors. She peered at him, not immediately recognising him. He was a tall, thin-faced, ascetic man, with brilliant intelligent eyes. His long hair was grizzled, as was his beard, and he wore a heavy, richly embroidered gown of the deepest blue.

  He held out his hand to her, and hesitating she went to him.

  ‘So, child. The Lady Rhonwen tells me you have had some strange dreams.’ His hand was cold as marble. It grasped her hot fingers tightly. Frightened, she pulled away. ‘Tell me about them,’ he went on. He had not smiled and she felt a tremor of fear.

  ‘They were nothing – just silly dreams.’

  This time he did give an austere smile, visibly reminding himself that this was a child. ‘Tell me all the same. I like dreams.’

  She told him haltingly, her shyness slowly evaporating as she realised that he was listening with flattering concentration to every word she said. By the end of her story he was nodding.

  ‘What you saw, child, was something which happened here more than a thousand years ago, when the Roman legions marched across our land. Their leader, Suetonius, gave orders that the Druids were to be killed. The Romans came here, to Anglesey, which was, as it still is, a sacred island. At first they were too afraid to cross the strait and attack, for they saw the Druids waiting on the shore. Do you know who the Druids were, child?’ He waited a second, then seeing her nod, he went on. ‘Even their women were there, ready to fight with their men, and the sight terrified the Romans. But at last they embarked across Traeth Lafan, just as you did when you first saw their ships, and they killed all the Druid people, burning the survivors of that battle in their sacred oak groves. They went on and destroyed every oak tree on the island.’

  He was watching Eleyne closely. She had gone pale, her eyes fixed on his. It was several seconds before she whispered, enrapt, ‘Was no one left at all?’

  ‘Very few.’

  ‘Why did the Romans do it?’

  ‘Because they were afraid. The Druids were wise and fierce and brave and they did not want the Romans in Wales.’

  Still she had not questioned the fact that she had seen these things.

  Breaking eye contact with him with an effort, Eleyne walked across to the narrow window. She could see across the pasture to the shore where it had happened and from there across the s
trait. The mountains of Eryri were shrouded in cloud today; the tide high, the water the colour of black slate.

  ‘Are you not curious, Eleyne, as to why you saw these things?’ he asked gently.

  Rhonwen sat watching them both, her fingers twisting nervously in her lap.

  ‘It’s because I walked in the place where it happened,’ Eleyne answered simply.

  ‘But why did you see it, and not the Lady Rhonwen?’ he persisted.

  She turned to face him and at last he saw a puzzled frown come to her face. ‘Perhaps she wasn’t looking.’

  ‘And you were looking?’

  ‘No. But sometimes I know things are there to see if I want to. I always thought it was the same for everyone, only no one talked about it, but now … now, I’m not sure.’ She looked unhappy.

  It had never happened to Isabella. When Eleyne had told her friend about her strange feelings at Hay, Isabella had laughed. She had never dared tell anyone else. Save Rhonwen.

  ‘It’s not the same for everyone, Eleyne. You have a precious gift.’ He smiled again. ‘I too can see into the past and into the future.’

  ‘You can?’ Her relief was obvious.

  ‘It’s a gift of our race. We are descended, you and I, from the survivors of those Druids you saw. Some of them escaped. Some of them lived to lead the opposition to Rome which finally chased out the legions. Your father descends from the ancient kings of Britain, and I from the Druid priests. And you, amongst all the children of your father, have been chosen for the gift of the Sight, for you are his seventh child.’

  Eleyne’s mouth had gone dry. Suddenly she wanted to run away. His seriousness oppressed her. The room was airless and hot. She glanced past Rhonwen to the driftwood fire which smouldered low in the hearth. The flames flickered up: red-blue fingers, beckoning, licking the wood they consumed. The smoke was acrid – salt from the old plank remnants of a boat thrown up by the gales.