Warriors of Camlann (28 page)

Unexpectedly, Taliesin did pick up his harp from where it was carefully stowed and began to play. He did
not choose the melody he'd played at Baddon, as she thought he might, or even the saga of Boar Skull and the Bear Sark. He played instead the tune he'd played the night she'd given her warrior's oath to King Macsen, the Combrogi leader. It was a clever choice. That night she had been accepted into a select and much-valued band, a girl who had not often been accepted. She found her eyes watering from more than the sweet smoke.

‘Taliesin, you are a manipulative old goat,' she said when he had finished. ‘Arturus isn't Macsen and you know it.'

‘He's not as tall or as handsome.'

‘Don't patronise me,' Ursula snapped. ‘He is not a worthy leader. He tricked me into bearing his shield at Baddon, then he claimed that he'd led the battle charge and killed my friends who might have contradicted him. Why in God's name should I lift a finger to help him?'

‘You are very well informed.'

‘I also heard that you pretended that Dan and I had never existed. Thanks, Taliesin. Haven't you messed with our lives enough?' Ursula felt ashamed to have lost her temper again in front of Frontalis. She sipped her drink and tried to calm down in the long silence before Taliesin spoke again.

‘After Baddon – it was confused. Arturus thought you were dead. Cynfach saw you ride out with Dan and we couldn't find you. A small Aenglisc war band survived
the charge down Baddon Hill – they were the Bretwalde's men, Aelle's hand-picked warriors, they set up an ambush. They picked up various Combrogi shields and helms that were lost in battle and scattered them round some Aenglisc bodies and when our men went to check that none of ours were fallen or injured, they killed them. We lost twenty men that way and somehow your helmet and faceplate got mixed up with them.'

‘I tied it to my horse's bridle.'

‘Well, it must have come loose and fallen and in all the celebration it was some time before Cynfach noticed that you had not returned. When Arturus saw his own face-mask that he'd given you at the ambush site – we all assumed the worst. Then some of the Sarmatians seeing him with the face-mask assumed it was he that had led the charge along with you.'

‘And he did not deny it?'

‘He is High King of a contentious, territorial, ambitious, self-serving, envious, power-hungry group of men. Would you deny you were a hero if it would help you keep that lot united?'

‘What about Cynfach?'

‘I don't believe Arturus killed him. I don't think Arturus set out to lie either, but he did not discourage the lies and neither did I, Ursula. Arturus's position was not completely secure – Cerdic, Larcius and Medraut all
had claims on the title and so I too just stopped talking about you. You were only with us a short time. You were remembered, but many of those who fought at Baddon are dead now, it's been twenty years.'

‘And this is good – this is a reason to help Arturus?'

‘He is “the Bear”, Ursula – I do believe it, though I don't believe he would have come into his own without your help. I justify what I have done with that thought, Ursula. “The Bear” is on the hillside and you helped put him there.' He touched her hand, demanding that she look at him, and she saw in the firelight that his face was damp with tears.

‘Ursula, my dear, brave friend, I have been to many worlds, seen many atrocities, the tribes are not perfect but they are my people, they are Macsen's people, your people. Would you see all that they are, die for ever? Would you let all the songs die for ever?'

As he spoke he started to play again, a song of home. Ursula could not prevent the tears from running silently down her own cheeks, but it was not Macsen's people that she cried for but her own: her mother and her classmates and the lost heart's ease of her own home.

There was no one in the hut when Ursula woke. Bright beams of sunlight bored through the gaps between the wooden slats of the shuttered window and she could see silver dust motes whirling in the air. Instinct said it was late morning, later than she had ever slept since leaving home. She got up quietly and slipped out of the hut to go and bathe in the stream. It was hot and insects buzzed around the outbuilding where her horse, Braveheart and Frontalis's livestock had been housed for the night. She heard Taliesin and Frontalis arguing as they fed the chickens.

‘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 muttering 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.