Daughters of Fire. Barbara Erskine

and Pete were staring in the direction of the child’s pointing finger.

      ‘What do you mean? What woman?’ Cathy said, puzzled.

      Tasha scowled. ‘There! Behind her.’

      Viv put down her knife and fork. She felt a trickle of icy fear between her shoulder blades.

      ‘There’s no one behind her, Tash, don’t be silly,’ Cathy said sternly.

      ‘There is.’ The child looked confused. ‘I saw!’

      ‘Get on with your food, Tasha,’ Pete put in. ‘Stop making things up. It’s boring.’

      ‘No!’ Viv leaned forward. ‘Tell me. What did you see?’ She put her hand on Tasha’s wrist.

      Tasha pulled her hand away. ‘Nothing!’ She had gone scarlet.

      ‘Please, Tasha.’ Viv said anxiously. ‘Tell me!’

      ‘I didn’t see anything! It was a joke!’ Tasha stood up and ran out of the room.

      ‘Take no notice, Viv,’ Pete said. ‘Don’t let her upset you.’

      ‘No.’ Viv gave an uncomfortable smile.

      ‘She was winding you up. You know she was.’

      ‘Was she?’ Viv glanced at Cathy. Suddenly she was pushing back her chair and, leaping to her feet she headed for the bathroom. Slamming the door behind her, her heart pounding with fear, she stared hard at the mirror.

VI

      ‘That dog will never be good for anything again. Why not have it knocked on the head. It would save a deal of trouble!’

      The arrogant young voice behind her made Carta spin round. She had been encouraging Catia to walk slowly round the compound in the gentle sunshine.

      ‘Mind your own business, Venutios!’ Her cheeks flared with anger at the sight of her brother’s friend lounging against the wheel of a wagon drawn up at the side of the kitchens. He was chewing the end of a piece of straw.

      He laughed. ‘Sorry. I forgot your new game. Still playing at healers, are we – instead of warrior queens? Your mother must be pleased to see her little girl doing that!’

      The taunt was expertly aimed. Carta’s anger was instantaneous and violent. Forgetting the dog, who sat down wearily where she was, Carta flew at the boy, more than a head taller as he was, her fingers clawed ready to scratch his eyes out. With a shout of laughter he dodged easily out of reach, dancing backwards away from her, jeering until he collided with the two carters emerging from the fragrant darkness of the baking rooms to collect two more sacks from the wagon.

      One of them grabbed Venutios by the back of his tunic. ‘Prince or no prince, you watch where you’re going young man or I’ll tan your backside for you!’

      Venutios’s strangled expletives were drowned by Carta’s crow of laughter as her tormentor was held helpless within her reach.

      Before her small fists connected, however, the angry voice of her mother from the doorway of the house behind her froze her in her tracks.

      ‘Cartimandua! Come here now!’

      The two waggoners dropped their captive and stood back as Venutios regained his feet and scrambled out of sight.

      Carta scowled. For a second she contemplated running after him, but one look at the queen’s face changed her mind. Meekly she followed her mother indoors.

      Sighing, Fidelma surveyed her daughter. Of the queen’s twelve children only four had lived beyond babyhood. Triganos, Fintan and Bran, the three boys and this the only surviving girl. The child had torn her gown yet again. Her face was grimy, her hair a bird’s nest and the vivid grey-green eyes were blazing with anger.

      ‘I want you to send Venutios back to his father. I hate him!’

      Fidelma sat down on a stool beside the fire and drew her cloak around her shoulders. She sighed. ‘The king of the Carvetii has sent his son here to learn how to be a warrior and a prince. We can’t send him away,’ she said patiently. ‘His presence here, as you should know, seals the friendship and brotherhood between our two tribes.’ It was hard to believe that at this moment her husband and their Druid guest were continuing to discuss this girl’s destiny as a matter of the highest importance for the tribe, or that it was more than likely that she and not Venutios would be the one to be sent away. Fidelma, usually at her husband’s side at all the important meetings with his advisers, had left them to it not long since, curious to find out what the young woman in question was actually doing with her time. Carta was too often, she had ruefully realised, out of sight and out of mind. ‘Have you completed your tasks for the day, child?’ She noted without comment that the dog had followed her daughter in and was now leaning trustingly against Carta’s legs.

      Carta shrugged. ‘Mellia said she would do them for me.’

      Fidelma bit back an angry retort. The child wasn’t even remotely repentant that her convenient arrangement should be discovered. Somehow she managed to smile. ‘Mellia is far too kind for her own good, Carta. It is you who needs to practise your skills with the needle and spindle.’ She glanced across the room where Carta’s companion, the daughter of one of Bellacos’s senior warriors and almost the same age as Carta, had appeared. Neat, tidy, nimble-fingered and biddable the child was everything that Carta was not. Nor was she strictly speaking Carta’s friend. Fidelma knew perfectly well that her daughter preferred the company of her brothers and their companions – barring Venutios – to that of this gentle child. She suffered her, no more, and, it appeared, exploited her as well. Fidelma shook her head wearily. Secretly she admired her daughter’s spirit and her ambition if not her endless rebellion. As Bellacos’s daughter she could look for a rich and powerful husband – almost certainly the heir to one of the neighbouring tribal kings – but she would need a modicum of education and restraint.

      Eyeing her daughter’s mutinous face, Fidelma gave a wry smile. The husband would need the blessing of the gods and the strength and determination of a bear to manage Cartimandua – but then the gods, their decisions interpreted by the Druids of the tribe, were going to choose her husband and so would presumably send her somewhere she would meet her master!

      3

I

      ‘Viv! Let me in. Are you OK?’ Cathy was banging on the bathroom door.

      Viv clenched her hands on the edge of the basin, her face sheened with icy sweat. Narrowing her eyes, she leaned forward trying to see past her own profile, past the wild hair, the pale, strained face. What had Tasha seen? She had described her as a lady. Not a child; not the young girl of those first deleted chapters Viv had seen just now in the depths of the cloudy mirror. No, Tasha had seen the shadow of the queen herself. ‘She’s real!’ Viv whispered to herself shakily, her eyes wild. ‘Somehow she’s escaped from my dreams. She’s appeared to someone else. I’ve created her!’

      Her sense of dislocation was absolute. She was shaking, feeling intensely cold. Dear God in heaven, what had happened to her? She was standing surrounded by large unforgiving mirrors shrouded with Cathy’s amazing tropical plants, but she had been there, at Carta’s side. Seen the jeering waggoners, smelled the strange musky scent worn by the woman who was the child’s mother, noted Carta’s muddy shoes, seen how neat and docile Mellia seemed beside her.

      The smell of brewing coffee drifted slowly through the flat as she stood paralysed with fear, staring at her own reflection. Only when Cathy rattled the handle and shouted again did she turn slowly and, unlocking the door pull it open.

      ‘What happened?’ Cathy passed her a mug of black coffee. Tasha had been sent to watch TV in the next room.

      Viv shrugged. ‘Sorry. Tired and emotional, I believe is how it’s described.’ She looked down at her hands, refusing to meet their eyes.

      ‘Tasha didn’t really see anything,’ Cathy said gently. She reached forward and put her hand over Viv’s.

      ‘Didn’t