The Warrior’s Princess. Barbara Erskine

of anger bent to tear off the covers. He fell to his knees and pressed his face into the sheets, inhaling the faint scent of her body, almost masked by the odour of whatever laundry rinse had been used in Steph’s washing machine. Digging his clawed fingers into the pillows he groaned. The silence of the room seemed to thicken as he knelt there and he shivered. And after a moment or two he looked up.

       Where are you? Can we come out now?

      The child’s voice was very faint.

      He clenched his fists into the sheets.

       Where are you?

      ‘No!’ His face a rictus of fear and anger, he staggered to his feet. Hurling the pillow across the room, he threw himself at the door and out onto the landing.

      In the kitchen he paused, trying to calm himself. Imagination. That’s all. Stupid imagination. A reaction to Jess’s insane behaviour. For a moment he had felt as though some alien force had gripped him. An anger like nothing he had ever experienced. He walked over to the sink and bent over it, splashing some cold water onto his face. He had to get out of there. Fast. And get back to Shrewsbury before Natalie became suspicious again.

      As he headed for the door his fingers brushed against the bunch of keys in his pocket and he drew them out. Jess had gone for good. That much was obvious. He was not going to need them again. Better to hang them back where they were on the hook. Leave no sign that he had been here. He walked over to the notice-board and stood staring at it. Someone had left a note there he hadn’t noticed before. KIM ‘S NUMBER, it said. Followed by a string of figures. Kim. He smiled grimly. Was that where Jess had gone? It was obvious when he thought about it. She thought she could run away from him. Hide. Tell her sister a pack of lies about him. She had forgotten he had known Kim almost as long as she had; that Kim had even fancied him once, long ago, when they were all at college together. He scowled and reaching for the phone put it to his ear. The dialling tone confirmed that it had been reconnected. Only one way to tell where Jess was now and how much she had told them. Slowly he began to punch in the numbers. If she could get an invitation to Rome, so perhaps could he. He looked down at the keys, still in his hand. Perhaps he would keep them after all. Who knew when he might need them again.

      ‘So, where do you suggest I start my research?’ Jess directed her question at Kim as the four of them sat down to eat that evening. She helped herself to a chunk of focaccia from the bread basket.

      Kim shrugged. ‘How on earth would I know? Have you looked on the net? Libraries? Museums? Roman remains?’ She reached into the oven with her padded gloves and produced a bubbling dish of cheesy pasta. ‘We do all those in spades in Rome.’ She slid the dish onto the table and chucked the gloves onto the worktop behind her. ‘OK. Eat, bambini!’

      ‘Have you heard your ghostly voice since you’ve been here?’ Will asked thoughtfully.

      Jess glanced at him suspiciously. ‘No. Or, only in a dream.’

      ‘So, she hasn’t followed you.’

      Jess shook her head. ‘Ghosts don’t do that, do they? Aren’t they tied to specific places?’

      They all shrugged.

      ‘We need an expert on ghosts,’ Steph said with a smile.

      ‘Carmella!’ Kim exclaimed. ‘She knows all about this sort of thing. We could have a séance. Ask your little girl what she would like you to do.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Jess shook her head. ‘Aren’t séances supposed to be dangerous?’

      ‘It might be fun,’ Will put in. He grinned. ‘You must have done table turning and stuff when you were students. “Is there anybody there?” sort of thing. We scared ourselves witless a few times if I remember.’

      ‘We don’t want to scare ourselves witless, Will,’ Steph retorted. She was watching Jess’s face. ‘This is serious. And rather tragic. And I suspect it could be dangerous, yes. The little girl who haunts my studio is not above breaking a few things from time to time.’

      Jess dropped her fork. She stared at her sister, stunned. ‘So you do know more about her than you let on! It has happened to you! I thought I was going mad! She broke some figures in your studio and I blamed myself. I blamed a bird or a draught or something. Then she came into the house after me. She tore up my paintings and smashed a bottle of wine.’

      ‘You’re kidding!’ Kim stared at her. ‘No wonder you didn’t want to stay there on your own.’

      ‘I thought you said she didn’t frighten you,’ Steph put in quietly. ‘That all sounds a bit frightening to me.’

      Jess shrugged. ‘It was frightening. I thought maybe someone else, I mean someone real, had come in and done it. It didn’t occur to me that it was her to start with.’

      ‘And someone real would be better than a ghost? Who on earth would do that?’ Steph stared at her, shocked. ‘Jess!’

      Jess shrugged again. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. But what was I supposed to believe? A burglar in the middle of nowhere? Or the resident ghost. Either way I was beginning to feel freaked out!’

      She was aware of Will’s eyes fixed on her face. She stared down at her plate, refusing to meet his gaze.

      Kim stood up. ‘Let’s ring Carmella!’

      ‘What? Now?’ Steph shook her head dismayed.

      ‘Why not? If she can summon your wayward child we can sort all this out and find out what is bugging her.’

      ‘I don’t know, Kim.’ Jess looked from her sister to Will for support. ‘This isn’t a game. She is unhappy. Angry. Lost.’

      ‘And we can help her. Find out what happened in Rome. Oh, come on! It will be fascinating.’ Kim picked up the phone.

      Steph leaned back in her chair and shrugged her shoulders at Jess. ‘You are not going to stop her, I’m afraid.’

      ‘And I doubt if anything will happen,’ Will added. ‘I don’t see our Italian signora finding it easy to contact a two-thousand-year-old child from some weird British tribe!’

      They fell silent as Kim’s voice rose behind them in a torrent of excited Italian.

      ‘Steph’s right, you’re not going to stop her now,’ Will said quietly, with a rueful smile at Jess. ‘I suspect we have to give in gracefully!’

      The conversation on the phone had concluded with a fervent ‘Ciao, a presto!’ and Kim turned to them flushed with triumph. ‘She’ll be here in half an hour. Just time to finish supper. Eat up, bambini. It’s going to be a long night!’

      * * *

      ‘First, I read the cards.’

      They were seated round a low coffee table in Kim’s cosy sitting room, Steph and Will on the sofa, Jess and Kim on cushions, Carmella on a low chair at the head of the table. Behind her a cluster of candles flickered on the bookcase, otherwise there was no light in the room. The windows stood open onto the dark courtyard below with its gently trickling fountain. Theirs was the only one showing any light. Most of the occupants of the other apartments in the palazzo had left Rome for their summer residences in the hills or on the coast. Jess gave an involuntary shiver.

      ‘OK. I start.’ Carmella smiled at them. Her dark hair was tied back with a bright red scarf; the style emphasised her vivacious dark eyes.

      This time she had her own deck of cards with her. She brought them out of her bag. They were wrapped in a length of black silk and reverently she unwound it and began a slow shuffling of the pack.

      Carmella glanced up at Jess. ‘Do you have something belonging to this child?’ she asked.

      Jess shook her head. ‘She lived nearly two thousand years ago!’

      ‘Ah.’ Carmella was seemingly unfazed. ‘No matter.