Warriors of Camlann (29 page)

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.

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 auspicious 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.'

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.

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.