The Warrior’s Princess. Barbara Erskine

all right. Come on, children. We’ll find somewhere to hide. We’ll be fine.’ Cerys could no longer keep the fear out of her voice. Blindly she plunged on and the others followed as best they could.

      They were climbing again now, up through the woodland which cloaked the steep hillside as behind them the orange glow flared gradually brighter into the sky, reflecting off the clouds. The Romans had reached the fort itself now and fired every building within the palisade. ‘Let us pray that everyone else escaped,’ murmured Cerys. ‘Those soldiers will give no quarter.’

      They moved on, more slowly now, pushing their way through dense tangled undergrowth. The two younger children were crying with fear and exhaustion and Eigon was still clinging to her mother when Cerys fell with a cry of pain as her foot slipped over the edge of a foxhole in a muddy bank and her ankle turned sharply over.

      ‘Mam?’ Eigon tried to drag her mother to her feet in desperation. They were all glancing behind them.

      ‘Wait!’ Blodeyn helped the fallen woman to sit up. ‘I’ll find you a stick to lean on.’

      ‘I’ll manage somehow!’ Cerys was struggling to stand. ‘We can’t stay here.’ She spoke through clenched teeth. ‘We have to find somewhere to hide. But not yet. We can’t stop yet!’

      They found shelter at last in a stone-built hut on the far edge of the woodland. The roof had partially collapsed and the warm darkness smelled of dry bracken and hay and sheep dung, but it was out of the roar of the wind. Exhausted, the women and children collapsed onto the ground, desperately trying to regain their breath. It was pitch dark in the hut but for the time being they felt safe.

      Pushing the three children down into the comparative warmth of the hay, Alys crawled towards Cerys, feeling her way in the darkness. ‘Let me have your foot. I’ll see if it’s broken.’

      Eigon heard her mother’s gasp of pain minutes later as the woman’s questing fingers probed the swollen flesh above her shoe. ‘It’s just a sprain. I’ll tear a strip from my tunic and bind it for you.’ The ripping sound as Alys wrenched at the linen hem stopped Cerys’s protest in its tracks. ‘When it’s morning, I’ll find some shepherd’s purse and dog’s mercury to make a poultice to bind round it to bring down the swelling,’ Alys went on. Her voice was strong. It comforted them all.

      They fell asleep at last as rain began to seep into what remained of the rotten roof thatch, too exhausted to feel cold or hunger, the two girls huddling under their mother’s cloak, the little boy curled up in Alys’s arms.

      It was Eigon who heard the horses. Her eyes flew open. She could see the torchlight, the reflection of the flames flickering on the wet wall near her. ‘Mam!’ she screamed. ‘We must run!’

      Four riders had stopped in full view, some twenty paces from the hut. Cerys stared at them, appalled, then turned towards the huddled children. ‘Go! Run! Time to play hide and seek, children. Into the trees now. Don’t come out till I call you!’ She was bundling the three sleepy children towards the hole in the tumbled down back wall before Alys and Blodeyn had begun to sit up.

      Two of the men were dismounting, one holding his torch high above his head so smoke and flame streamed past his face, illuminating the detail of his helmet, the cheek pieces framing the mud-stained, tanned face, the bedraggled crest of red fur. The light had not yet reached into the depths of the hut. When it did all he could see was the three frightened women as they rose to their feet, brushing straw from their clothes. The children had gone.

      Eigon ran deep into the darkness, clutching her brother and sister by the hand. Her brother let out a wail of fear. She dragged his arm. ‘Be quiet! Here, Glads, hold my hand. We have to hide!’ They slid down a slope and lay panting in the muddy shelter of a sheep scrape beneath a clump of hazels. Eigon closed her eyes and waited. The rain had started again. In the distance she heard a rumble of thunder. Miserably she drew her brother and sister into her arms. ‘We’re playing hide and seek,’ she repeated more to herself than to them, ‘must wait till we’re called. We’re playing hide and seek. Must keep quiet.’

      They waited for a long time. The rain was heavier now. All three children were shaking with cold. At last she could bear it no longer. She sat up. ‘Wait here,’ she told them. ‘Don’t dare to move till Mam says it’s safe to come out, do you hear me! I’m going to see what is happening.’

      It was hard to retrace her steps in the dark but after several false starts and detours she recognised the darker shape of the hut against the dark hillside beyond the forest’s edge; from where she stood, hiding behind a tree, she couldn’t see any horses. Soaked to the skin and shivering violently she crept onto the track and made her way closer to the hut.

      ‘Mam?’

      There was no reply.

      ‘Mam, where are you? Are we still playing the game?’ She tiptoed closer and peered in. The hut was empty. ‘Mam?’ She turned round, staring out into the darkness. ‘Mam?’ Her voice was a trembling whisper.

      Somewhere close by a horse whinnied in answer and she froze. The sound came from a stand of trees behind the tumbled stone wall. She crept towards it and then she saw them. The men had thrust one of the torches into a crack in the stone. The hissing flickering light showed her mother, lying on the ground, her gown pushed up above her hips as one of the soldiers lay across her. He was holding her wrists above her head, forcing himself again and again into her unconscious body. Her face was cut, one eye swollen. Nearby Alys was kicking and screaming as two of the soldiers took turns to hold her down. Of Blodeyn, there was no sign.

      ‘Mam?’ Eigon’s whisper was soundless with horror. ‘Mam, are we still playing hide and seek?’ She had not seen the man behind her.

      ‘Well, well, what have we here? Another little Brit!’ Two hands had seized her and she was swung off her feet into the circle of the torchlight and tossed onto the ground beside her mother.

      The child’s desperate endless scream woke Jess. She lay staring up at the ceiling, the sound of Eigon’s voice reverberating round and round the room. Outside it was barely light. She could hear the raw joy of the dawn chorus echoing from the woods beyond the gate below her bedroom window. She was shaking with fear and her bed sheets were soaked in sweat as she sat up.

      She had been dreaming about a rape. Not hers. Someone else’s. A horrible vicious murderous rape. The rape of a child. With a sob she staggered to her feet and ran to the bathroom where she was violently sick. The outrage of what she had witnessed was everywhere. She couldn’t get it out of her head. The men’s faces. The smell of lust. The cruel jeering. The casual way one of them drew a dagger and pulled it across Alys’s neck as desperately she tried to throw herself between him and the child, leaving her slumped on the ground like a broken doll, her head half-severed from her body. And the child, the girl whose screams filled Jess’s ears. One of them had held her down, another of them hitting her mother so hard as she tried to crawl to help her daughter that the woman fell back in a huddle at the base of the wall and stopped moving. It was the third man who had viciously raped the child.

      Again and again Jess splashed her face with cold water, shuddering. It was the most graphic dream she had ever had. She had been there. She had watched, unable to help, paralysed by fear, as the men tossed the child’s body aside like a rag doll, turned away to find their horses and rode off.

      ‘Sweetheart? Are you all right?’

      Had she really spoken out loud in the dream? She wasn’t sure. Had she reached out to cradle the child in her arms? She wasn’t sure of that either.

      With a groan she turned on the shower and stood under the cleansing water feeling it beating down on the top of her head until she was numb all over. Only then did she turn it off and reach for her bathrobe.

      She was halfway down the stairs when the image flashed through her consciousness. A man’s arm across her body, holding her down. She was in the bedroom of her flat; she couldn’t see anything but the pillow half across her face and she could hear music. One of her own CDs. Soft. Reassuring,