Child of the Phoenix Read online

  Einion was waiting by a bend in the river where the water hurtled over a small waterfall. Wrapped in his black mantle neither of them saw him until they were within a few feet of him. Rhonwen let out a small scream of fright, the sound all but drowned by the rush of water.

  Eleyne stared at the tall man, paralysed with fear as he rose to his feet in front of her.

  ‘Your next lesson, princess, will have to be here, as you are no longer at Llanfaes.’ He held out his hand to her and she took it, unable to stop herself.

  ‘Go.’ He looked over her head at Rhonwen. ‘I shall return her safely at dawn.’

  ‘Dawn –’ Rhonwen was scandalised.

  ‘Dawn.’ He nodded. ‘Go.’

  VI

  They seemed to have walked for hours. At first the woods were thick and the sound of water filled her ears, then they turned away from the river on to the open hillside and the noise of the water receded into the distance. Then they were near it again. Eleyne could see little in the darkness, but the man ahead of her must have had the eyes of a cat as he threaded his way onwards, sure-footed however steep and difficult the climb. When they stopped at last at the head of the valley, she was panting; he was calm, his breathing quiet and even. They had reached, she knew, the great waterfall which hurled itself down the cliffs below Bera Mawr.

  ‘Here,’ he called exultantly above the roar of the water. He released her hand. ‘The spirits are come to greet you and make you theirs.’

  Eleyne stepped back frightened. Her eyes strained into the darkness. In the starlight she saw the luminous flash of water as it hurtled from the falls high above them; felt the sudden cold striking at them from the cliffs.

  ‘Take off your shoes.’ She heard his voice dimly as he shouted against the noise of the water. She saw he was removing his own, so she followed suit, unable to defy him; still unable to run. He smiled. ‘You’re not afraid?’

  Stoutly she shook her head, although she was, desperately afraid.

  ‘Come.’ He took her hand again and began to lead her nearer the foot of the falls. She could feel the spray; feel the ground shaking. ‘Here, princess, drink this.’ He produced a flask from beneath his cloak. ‘It will warm you.’

  She took the flask and, hesitating, sipped: it was mead. She drank eagerly, feeling the sweet warmth in her mouth and in her veins. Then she frowned. There was another taste in the mead beyond the sweetness of the honey. Malt and wine and bitter herbs. She spat some out, but it was too late. She had swallowed enough for the draught, whatever it was, to do its work.

  ‘Is it poison?’ she heard herself ask him. Her head was spinning. The roar of the water was all around her and inside her head and part of her.

  He shook his head. ‘Not poison. Nothing to harm you, princess. Herbs from the cauldron of Ceridwen and water from the everlasting snows. Come.’ Again he took her hand. They seemed to be walking out into the deep pool at the foot of the falls. Stepping from stone to stone with bare cold feet, she felt their rounded smoothness, slippery with moss. He let go of her hand and as he moved away from her she saw him raise his arms. She heard him calling – calling the spirits and gods of the river and of the mountain, the incantation rising and falling with the roar of the water.

  She stood still, her feet aching as the icy mountain water splashed over them, feeling her skirts grow wet, her hair soaked with spray. Her head was thick and woolly; she could not think or move and yet she could see. She could see as if it were daylight.

  The moon was rising above the falls, its clear light falling through the spray, down the rock face on to the man and the child. She saw the moonlight touch his fingertips, his hands, his arms where the sleeves of his mantle had fallen back. It stroked silver into his hair and touched his face with cold lights. She felt the silver light touch her own skin and wonderingly she raised her hands to it and felt it warm.

  As if in a dream she found herself wading deeper into the icy water. Her gown had gone. She was naked, but the water was warm. She felt it lap her body like milk. Then she was on the turf bank and amongst the trees, floating, her feet off the ground; flying up the waterfall, spinning like thistledown in the spray before she found herself again amongst the trees, her back against an old oak. She could feel its bark like soft velvet against her skin. She could not move; her limbs would not obey her. The tree was enfolding her, the moonlight in her eyes.

  She saw the man in front of her, naked as she was. He carried water from the falls in a wooden bowl. He raised it to the moon and then dipped his hand in it and traced the secret sign upon her forehead and upon her chest where the small unawakened nipples stirred; then on her stomach and lightly, barely touching her, between her legs.

  Then he was gone and she was alone. She tried to move, but the tree held her; the moonlight filled her eyes and she saw the gods of the forest dancing by the waterfall, their bodies half hidden in the spray.

  VII

  ‘Eleyne, for the love of the Holy Virgin, wake up!’ Luned was shaking her shoulder. ‘Come on, Rhonwen has been calling you for hours!’

  Eleyne opened her eyes. She was in her own bed in the small chamber in the ty hir which she shared with Luned and Rhonwen. Luned was fully dressed and sunshine poured through the window and across the floor.

  ‘Come on!’ Luned pulled the covers from her. ‘Have you forgotten you are going to ride Invictus today?’

  Eleyne climbed slowly to her feet. She was still enfolded in her dream, still bemused by the roar of water and the numbing cold of her limbs.

  There had been faces in her dream: men, women, children, people she had known through aeons of time. There had been love and death and fear and blood. Whirling pictures; laughter and tears; the crash of thunder and splinters of lightning in the black pall which had darkened the sky.

  How had she come home? She remembered nothing of the journey back. She raised her arms above her head and lifted her tangled hair off her neck wearily. Her head ached and she felt far away.

  She was standing naked in front of the window staring out at the hillside of Maes-y-Gaer, where the russet and gold of the bracken caught the morning sun, when Rhonwen appeared, a heap of green fabric over her arm.

  ‘Eleyne, what are you doing? You’ll catch your death!’ she exclaimed, shocked at the blatant nakedness. ‘Here. The sempstresses sat up all night to make you a new gown.’ It had helped to pass the time while Eleyne was away; helped to quiet her conscience; and she too had noticed the previous day Eleyne’s shabbiness as the child stood next to her mother.

  Chivvying her impatiently, she dressed her charge in a new shift and slipped the gown over the girl’s head.

  ‘Say nothing to her,’ Einion had said, the unconscious girl still in his arms. ‘She will think it all a dream. The gods have marked her. She’s theirs. In due time they will claim her for their own.’

  ‘And you will make her father annul the marriage?’

  Einion had nodded and smiled. ‘Have no fear. I shall speak to him when she is of an age to choose a man. Then she will take whoever she wishes amongst the Druids. She will belong to no man and to any man as the goddess directs.’

  ‘No!’ Rhonwen pleaded. ‘She must remain a virgin – ’

  ‘Virginity is for the daughters of Christ, Lady Rhonwen, for the nuns. The followers of the old gods worship as they have always worshipped, with their bodies.’ He looked at her with piercing eyes and for a moment his gaze softened. ‘If you have kept yourself a virgin, Lady Rhonwen, it was to assuage your own fears, not to please the Lady you serve. Do not wish the same fate on this child.’

  Less than an hour of the night remained when Rhonwen tucked Eleyne, still deeply drugged, into her bed, her ice-cold body rigid next to Luned’s warm relaxed form. Looking down at the two girls as Luned turned and put her arm over her friend, Rhonwen felt her tears begin to fall.

  It was as Rhonwen was brushing her hair that Eleyne remembered. ‘You knew he would be there, didn’t you!’ She jerked her head away f
rom Rhonwen’s hands and stood up. ‘You knew, and you took me to him!’ Behind her Luned, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her stockings, looked astonished at the sudden vehemence. ‘How could you! I thought you loved me, I thought you cared. You betrayed me!’

  Eleyne had thought she was safe at Aber. She had thought he would not dare to follow her. She stood up, pushing Rhonwen aside: ‘What did he do to me?’

  ‘He gave you to the goddess.’

  ‘Father Peter and the bishop would not like that.’ Father Peter was one of the chaplains at Aber.

  ‘You mustn’t tell them. You mustn’t tell anyone, ever.’

  Rhonwen had realised that Luned was all ears. She turned towards her. ‘Nor you, Luned. No one must ever know, no one.’

  ‘What will happen to me now?’ Eleyne still had her back to them. Her hands were gripping the stone sill of the window as she tried to clamp down on the horror and fear which had broken through the barriers and flooded through her. She was shaking.

  ‘It means you can stay here in Gwynedd. When you are old enough Einion will tell your father what has happened.’ Rhonwen’s voice was calm and soothing.

  ‘I won’t have to go and live with Lord Huntingdon?’

  ‘No.’

  No, you will be given to the Druids; who will use your body for worship; for a temple; or for their plaything. Oh, great goddess, have I done right? Would she have been happier married to Huntingdon, living far away …?

  ‘I don’t want to see the future, Rhonwen.’ Eleyne was looking out at the russet hillside. There the old gods lived; the stones of their temple lay there still, tumbled on the hillside.

  ‘You have no choice, child. You have the gift.’

  ‘Einion would never have known if you hadn’t told him.’

  ‘I had to, Eleyne,’ Rhonwen said guiltily. ‘It would have destroyed you. Don’t you see? He will tell you how to use your powers for good. To help your father, to help Gruffydd and perhaps Owain and little Llywelyn after him. For Wales. Besides, don’t you see? I have saved you from marriage. I have saved you from going to a stranger like your sisters.’

  There was a long silence. Then Eleyne turned back to her. ‘I am not going to stay here. I never want to see him again.’

  ‘Eleyne! You have no choice, cariad. You belong to him now.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of – ’

  ‘No!’ Eleyne was silent, then she turned back to the window. ‘I will never belong to Einion. Never. You should not have allowed him to give me to the gods. My father is a devout follower of holy church, Rhonwen. I know he favours the canons of Ynys Lannog, who follow the way of the old anchorites, and he welcomes the friars and the Knights Hospitaller to Wales. Many feel he is too broad-minded, but he will not want me to turn back to the old faith.’ She said it quietly and with absolute certainty.

  Rhonwen felt a clutch of fear. The child had grown up overnight. Far from being more docile, there was a confidence in Eleyne’s voice which brooked no argument. ‘Nonsense,’ she said uncertainly, ‘he reveres the old ways in private.’

  ‘No, Rhonwen. He respects them and he listens to the bards and the wizards of the mountains, but he had me baptised in the Cathedral of St Deiniol at Bangor. It was you who told me that.’ Eleyne gave a tight little smile. ‘And he will want my marriage to go on. The alliance with the Earl of Chester is vital. I heard him tell my mother. Lord Huntingdon will be Earl of Chester when his uncle dies. Father wants no more wars with Chester.’

  ‘The days when Gwynedd and Chester were at war are over, Eleyne.’

  ‘Exactly! And to seal that peace, father married me to Lord Huntingdon. He will not put that treaty at risk because Einion wants me for the old faith. Einion won’t be allowed to take me.’

  Rhonwen closed her eyes. ‘It’s too late, Eleyne. He already has you, cariad. You are his.’

  Eleyne spun round. ‘Never, I told you, never!’ Suddenly she was a child again. She stamped her foot, then ran across the room and pulled the door open. ‘And if you won’t save me from him,’ she sobbed, ‘I must save myself!’

  VIII

  Rhonwen caught Eleyne in the stables as she was watching Sir William’s groom throw the saddle up on to Invictus.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Degannwy. I shall be safe there with Gruffydd.’ The tears had gone. The girl’s face was set and determined.

  ‘You can’t go without your father’s permission.’

  ‘Then you must get his permission, Rhonwen. Now. Quickly. I’m not going to stay here.’ Eleyne’s hands had started to shake and she clutched them together, waiting impatiently as the groom fitted the sharp bit between the stallion’s teeth and settled the elaborate reins over his neck.

  They both jumped as Cenydd appeared from the shadows. He was frowning as he saw the preparations for the ride. ‘I gave your father my word that I would guard you, my lady. I must come with you if you are going out.’

  Eleyne smiled uncertainly. ‘Just as long as you don’t try to stop me. My father gave me permission to ride Invictus.’

  ‘I’ll not try to stop you.’ Cenydd threw a glance at Rhonwen. ‘Is the Lady Rhonwen coming too?’

  ‘No.’ Eleyne scowled.

  ‘Eleyne, please, cariad, wait,’ Rhonwen cried. ‘You can’t go to Degannwy. You will only get Gruffydd into more trouble.’

  Eleyne paused. ‘Very well then, you go and ask papa if I can go. But I am going to ride on ahead. Now.’ Any moment, she was sure, Einion would appear and manage to stop her.

  Rhonwen had put her hand on Invictus’s bridle. ‘Lord Einion would want you to stay,’ she whispered.

  ‘No.’ Eleyne shook her head.

  Cenydd raised an eyebrow. ‘I told you, Rhonwen. You were a fool to meddle. You had best make a clean breast of all this to his highness. Then at least the prince will thank you for saving his daughter for her husband.’

  ‘But I am not. I don’t want her to marry – ’

  ‘I am married, Rhonwen.’ Eleyne stamped her foot again. ‘Nothing can change that.’

  ‘But it can, don’t you see? The marriage is not consummated. It can be annulled. It must be annulled!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Rhonwen! The prince would never allow it.’ Cenydd stepped forward, narrowing his eyes against the cold wind which whistled across the courtyard and into the stables. ‘Accept the facts, woman.’ He drew Rhonwen aside, his face angry. ‘You didn’t just do this to give her to your gods; or to save her from marriage. You did it to keep her for yourself, didn’t you? But you won’t keep her. The seer will get her unless you help her.’

  Eleyne was staring at Rhonwen, her face white and pinched. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘No, of course it’s not true.’ Rhonwen held out her hands in anguish. ‘I love you, Eleyne. I want only what is best for you.’

  ‘Then you’ll help me go to Degannwy.’ At Degannwy she would be with Gruffydd and Senena whom she loved and the two little boys she adored. She signalled the groom to lift her on to the horse. ‘I shall be safe with Gruffydd,’ she said firmly, ‘he won’t let anything happen to me.’

  Cenydd and Rhonwen looked at each other. Gruffydd was in no position to help her, but neither of them reminded her of the fact. Rhonwen reached up and touched her hand. ‘Very well then, cariad. But wait. Wait for your father’s permission. Otherwise you’ll be in more trouble.’

  Eleyne’s face grew mutinous. ‘I shall write to papa. He will understand.’ She turned the horse, still terrified that Einion would be lying in wait for her in the shadows outside the gate.

  The valley beyond the village lay in silence, sheltered from the wind and still bathed in mist as Invictus trotted on to the track which curved beside the river. Cenydd rode a few paces to the rear, his hand upon his sword; behind him were two of the prince’s grooms, hastily beckoned from their work.

  In the stable yard, Rhonwen, her heart in her mouth, turned to find the
prince.

  IX

  Llywelyn frowned. ‘You want to take her to Degannwy?’

  Joan smiled. ‘A good idea. Why not? She can stay with Gruffydd and Senena.’ Her face betrayed the unfinished end to her sentence: three trouble-makers together, out of harm’s way.

  Rhonwen nodded, deciding to make the most of her unexpected ally. ‘She can continue her studies there as Lord Gruffydd already has tutors for little Owain. They could help her.’ Behind her a figure had entered the hall and was walking towards them. Her heart turned over with dread. She did not need to turn to know that it was Einion. She looked beseechingly at the prince, cold sweat suddenly filming her palms. ‘May I go, your highness?’ she whispered.

  Llywelyn frowned. ‘I see no reason why not. In fact, I shall give you a letter for Gruffydd. I don’t want the boy to think I have forgotten him entirely.’

  Joan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Surely that will merely encourage him to make more trouble.’

  ‘He is my son.’ Llywelyn silenced her firmly. He turned to Einion. ‘Good morning, Sir Bard. You are welcome.’

  Einion, leaning heavily on his staff, bowed before the prince but he was studying Rhonwen’s face with narrowed black eyes. ‘How is the princess, your charge, this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ Rhonwen murmured. Her mouth had gone dry.

  ‘We have decided to let her go to Degannwy,’ Joan put in, pulling her cloak more tightly against the cold of the hall. She eyed Einion with dislike.

  Einion frowned. ‘No, she must not leave Aber.’

  Rhonwen felt her cheeks grow pale.

  ‘Why not, pray?’ Llywelyn frowned.

  ‘Her place is with you, sir. At your side. It would be unwise to let her go to her brother at this stage.’ Einion spoke with authority. He looked again at Rhonwen and it seemed to her that his eyes were sharp with suspicion.

  ‘Why, my friend?’ Llywelyn asked again.

  Rhonwen held her breath. As the two men looked at each other Rhonwen felt the power of the older man’s mind reaching out to his prince, trying to sway him. Llywelyn shook his head slightly as if feeling the pressure as a physical pain.