Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine

Rhonwen could feel the waves of panic rising. How she hated this man who now had absolute control over Eleyne’s fate – and her own. ‘You can’t make me leave. You can’t – ’

      The clerk came forward and bowed. ‘Shall I call the guard to remove her, my lord?’ he asked, bristling with disapproval.

      ‘I am sure there is no need.’ John stood up. He put his hand on Rhonwen’s arm and she felt with a vindictive shock of pleasure the physical weakness of the man. ‘Madam, please.’

      With a sob, she turned and fled from the room.

      VII

      Eleyne was with the Countess of Chester, sitting nervously beside her new aunt, watching as the old woman checked some household accounts. They both looked up as Rhonwen burst in.

      ‘Eleyne, you can’t let him send me away. You can’t! I have to stay with you. I have to.’ Ignoring Lady Chester, etiquette long forgotten, Rhonwen sank to her knees next to Eleyne and, putting her arms around the child, began to sob.

      Eleyne stood up, frightened. She had never seen Rhonwen cry before. ‘What is it? Who is going to send you away?’

      ‘Your husband.’ She did not bother to hide the loathing in her voice. ‘He is sending me, all of us, back to Gwynedd.’ Rhonwen steadied herself with difficulty, suddenly aware of the Countess of Chester’s eyes fixed on her face.

      Lady Chester stood up stiffly. She was a small elegant woman in her mid-sixties like her husband, her blue eyes faded, but still shrewd as she looked at the sobbing woman in front of her. ‘I am sure you are mistaken, Lady Rhonwen,’ she said.

      Rhonwen shook her head. ‘He gave me a bag of gold and told me to go. I can’t leave her. Please, my lady, I can’t leave her among strangers like this –’ She felt the waves of panic rising. Eleyne was her life; her child; her whole existence.

      Eleyne’s face was tense with fear. ‘I am sure it is a mistake, Rhonwen. Lord Huntingdon seems so kind …’ She hesitated, with a nervous glance at her husband’s aunt, uncertain what to do. ‘Perhaps I should speak to him – ’

      Lady Chester shook her head. In the short time Eleyne had been with her she had grown extraordinarily fond of the girl. Childless herself, she felt endlessly guilty that she had not provided her husband with heirs to succeed him in his great inheritance. ‘Later,’ she said firmly. ‘Never run to your husband to query anything he has ordered, Eleyne. That is one of the first lessons you must learn. If a wife wishes to get things her own way,’ she tapped the side of her nose with a little smile, ‘she must do it with subtlety. Let things remain as they are for a while. Then later, when you and he are alone and talking, and perhaps becoming closer acquainted – ’ she paused imperceptibly. Her husband had complained to her every evening for the last fortnight that his nephew was a weak-willed, soft-hearted, green-sick, womanly invalid who spent too long talking to the child and hadn’t, as far as he could see, so much as kissed the girl’s hand – ‘then,’ she went on, ‘you can perhaps say to him how lonely you will feel if all your followers are sent away. Persuade him gradually. I know he doesn’t want you to be unhappy.’

      VIII

      ‘Let’s run away!’ Eleyne pulled Rhonwen into the window embrasure; a heavy tapestry hid them from the body of the room where the Countess of Chester and her ladies were busy about their tasks. ‘You and me and Luned. We could run away and no one would find us.’ She was talking in a frantic whisper.

      Rhonwen tried to suppress the quick surge of hope the child’s words raised. ‘But where would we go?’

      ‘Home, of course.’

      ‘Eleyne, cariad. We can’t go home.’ Rhonwen put her arms around the child and rested her lips against the veil which covered Eleyne’s head. ‘Don’t you understand? Your father has forbidden you to return. Aber is no longer your home.’

      ‘Then I shall go to Margaret at Bramber. Or to Gruffydd.’

      ‘No, Eleyne, they will obey your father. They have to. They would only send you back to Lord Chester.’ She closed her eyes to try to hold back her tears. She had written to Einion, smuggling the letter out of the castle the day after they had arrived at Chester, begging him to do something. He would think of something. He had to. Eleyne was sworn to the goddess.

      ‘We could hide in the forest.’ Eleyne looked up hopefully. Her eyes were feverishly bright. ‘When Lord Huntingdon sends you all away, you go, as if you were doing as he commanded, and I shall hide in one of the wagons. Once we are out of the castle you and I can slip away. Oh Rhonwen, it would work. I know it would work.’

      Rhonwen bit her lip. ‘Cariad …’

      ‘We can do it … I know we can.’

      ‘And you would rather live as an outlaw in the woods than with Lord Huntingdon? Here you will be a very great lady.’ It couldn’t work. And yet she found herself seizing the idea, as if there were a chance they could escape.

      ‘I hate it here.’ Eleyne leaned against the wall, pressing her cheek against the cold stone. ‘I don’t want to be a great lady and I don’t want to – I don’t want to be anyone’s wife. And I don’t want to live in a city. Ever. I want to live with the mountains and the sea. And I want to stay with you, Rhonwen. I can’t live without you.’ Her eyes flooded with tears once more.

      Rhonwen hesitated. So often in the past she had tried to curb Eleyne’s impetuous ideas, but now every part of her wanted to fall in with this crazy plan and run away from the great castle with all its riches, this alien English stronghold, run by its arrogant English masters. But would it work? Could it work? The consequences if they failed did not bear thinking about.

      She glanced into the shadowy room where the countess and her ladies talked quietly over their sewing and their spinning. Lady Chester was kind and understanding; Lord Huntingdon, whom she loathed and mistrusted, was a different matter. And it would be Eleyne who would suffer. Eleyne who would be punished. She pictured the handsome stern face of the earl with his fair skin and his intense intelligent blue eyes. What would he do to her if she were caught? Her child, her baby who had never been beaten in her life?

      So little time … no time at all to plan. His mind made up, the earl had arranged for the baggage train and its escort to leave after mass, in three days’ time.

      Eleyne touched her hand. She smiled coaxingly at Rhonwen. ‘I’ll find a way,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll see. I’ll think of something.’

      IX

      That night Eleyne lay awake for hours, her stomach cramped again into tight knots of fear. Just before dawn she rose from her bed at last and crept down the stairs. It took her a long time, wandering through draughty corridors and cold stone passages, to find a way out into the courtyard where the stables were, and once there to creep between the horse lines to find her own particular friends. She found Cadi first and spent a long time with the gentle little mare, kissing her soft nose. Then she crept on, looking for Invictus. He was harder to find. He was already with the earl’s horses, a groom constantly on hand should the animals become restless. Silent as a shadow, Eleyne slipped into the box and put her arms around the horse’s huge head. She kissed his nose and his cheeks and felt her hot tears drip on to his coat. Walled up in the corner of her mind was the picture of the man who had loved this horse and of the noose around his neck. It was something she could not face.

      The idea came with the dawn. As the castle came to life with the opening of the gates and the arrival of the first wagons loaded with produce from the city, Eleyne peered silently into the courtyard from the warm darkness of the stall. The stables were near the gatehouse. The guards were at ease, barely checking the incoming wagons, ignoring the men and women who bustled past them into the streets beyond the gates. The place was crowded, chaotic. No one paid any attention