Child of the Phoenix

drifting closer, lapping around the gossamer-hung bushes, curling among the old rotting vegetation which hung over the path. Both dogs had disappeared, eagerly exploring the scents of the morning. The birds were silent, the mist drifting closer, and with it came the cold, suffocating aura of menace.

She hesitated, then firmly she walked on a few steps and stopped again. She pulled her cloak tighter still, glancing up at the hillside. The earlier patches of thin sunlight on the high western flanks of the mountain had gone – all she could see was the mist.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The mist was all around her, touching her face, soaking her clothes. Someone was near her, but she could see nothing. The silence beat against her eardrums.

‘Who is there?’ She spun round, holding out her hands in front of her. ‘Who is it?’

But already she knew. She could feel him trying to speak, feel the frustration beating round her head, feel the cold air vibrating against her mouth, her eyes, her ears.

‘Einion?’ She turned round and round on the path, her feet slipping on the mud. ‘Please leave me alone.’

A wind had arisen from nowhere. The air was alive, and near her the trees began to bend and creak, their branches thrashing the water, whipping it into spray, shredding the mist.

She had lost the path now. She could feel brambles catching at her skirts; nettles whipped across her face, and a briar wound itself around her arm, tearing her gown and leaving a long bleeding scratch. With a scream she lost her footing and fell on her knees among the flat pebbles on a shingly strip of beach where the low summer river had left the margin dry. The wind was still tearing at her head; she felt the hood of her cloak fall, felt her hair pulled free, tangling. Desperately she closed her eyes and crouching down she wrapped her arms around her head.

It was then that she saw him: tall, his white hair blowing in the wind, his eyes a piercing fury in his head. ‘My prophecy was true!’ The words exploded in her mind. ‘It was true! The child. The child. Your daughter. Your child…’ The words were fading. ‘Your child…’

‘No!’ Eleyne screamed. ‘Leave me alone!’ She flailed out desperately. ‘Go away.’ Frantically she tried to regain her feet, sobbing. ‘I don’t believe you, I don’t want to know. Go away, leave me alone.’ Her feet kept slipping on the pebbles as, blindly, she tried to find the steep bank. Her hand closed over a tree root and she tried to pull herself up. She was panting, unable to catch her breath. Clawing at the soft earth, she found a foothold, then another, and, hampered by her skirts, she pulled herself up on to the path once more. The mist was thinner there. Stray rays of sunlight filtered through the trees and she could see a figure running towards her.

‘Cariad!’ Rhonwen’s breath was rasping in her throat, her hand pressed to her side. Behind her were the two dogs. ‘I heard you scream! Dew! I couldn’t go any faster. What is it? What’s happened?’ She stared in horror at Eleyne’s torn stained clothes and her tearful face. ‘What is it? Did you fall?’ Rhonwen looked down the bank at the shingle. Wisps of mist still floated over the river between the trees. Somewhere nearby a dove had begun to croon, high in a treetop where the sunlight was suddenly strong.

Eleyne seized her arm. Her teeth were chattering. ‘Einion!’ she gasped.

‘Einion?’ White-faced, Rhonwen peered around. All she had seen was the silent white mist drifting down the hillside until it enveloped Eleyne and she had vanished from sight. ‘What did he say?’ She put her arms around Eleyne and held her tightly.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t understand. He said the prophecy was true. He talked about a child.’ She was crying.

Rhonwen could feel her whole body shaking. ‘You must look in the fire, cariad, you will see the future there. Yours and little Alexander’s. You never look in the fire now. You avoid it. I’ve seen you. You keep away from it, even when the east wind blows at Kildrummy.’ She tried to smile. ‘Almost as though you were afraid of it.’

Eleyne shook her head. ‘I don’t want to see the future. I don’t want to know what happens next.’ She bent and put her arms around Sabina’s neck.

‘Oh but you do, cariad. All your life, destiny has marked you for her own. Whatever is to happen to you, you are special. You must have courage, you must look.’

Eleyne shook her head again. Sunshine shone obliquely over the shoulder of the hill and caught the water, setting diamonds amongst the shadows. ‘I used to think Alexander was my destiny,’ she whispered. ‘That I would marry him and be a queen… When he died, I wanted to die too. I couldn’t bear to live without him.’ She was talking to herself.

‘And you didn’t have to,’ Rhonwen said softly.

‘Then Donald came,’ Eleyne ignored the interruption, ‘and the shadows receded and I no longer thought about destiny. Our love was too strong to question. No other man could have been my destiny, only Donald.’

Rhonwen shook her head. ‘No. Lord Donald stole you from the king.’

‘No one stole me, Rhonwen.’ Eleyne was feeling calmer now. The sun’s beams had strengthened, and she could feel the heat of one striking through the soft leather of her shoe on the path.

‘Oh, but he did,’ Rhonwen insisted. ‘Alexander was your destiny and somehow, something went wrong. Your life and his did not run parallel; destiny was out of line. And now the gods are trying to put things right. Lord Einion is their messenger. How can you still be happy with Lord Donald, when you think of the grief he has caused you?’

‘That’s over.’ Eleyne was still trembling. With her hand on Sabina’s head, she turned slowly back towards the village. ‘Now his mother has gone, it will be different. We are happy again. He won’t leave me any more.’

‘I hope you are right.’ Rhonwen walked ahead slowly. ‘Because if ever he makes you unhappy again, I swear I shall kill him and give you back to your king.’

Eleyne stood still, staring at Rhonwen’s retreating back. She was cold with horror at the flat note of certainty in Rhonwen’s voice and, as if she heard them for the first time, Malcolm Fife’s words rang in her head. It was your nurse that did it. She’s a killer by instinct.

‘Rhonwen!’ Her voice was sharp.

Twenty yards ahead of her along the track, Rhonwen stopped and turned.

‘Did you kill Robert de Quincy?’

Rhonwen smiled. ‘Oh yes, cariad, I killed him. For you.’

VII

The August sun was unremittingly hot. The mountains baked; the earth dried and cracked. Grass and crops shrivelled and the trees began to shed their leaves as though it were autumn. In the lush orchards of Aber the trees carried small hard apples, red before their time on branches crackling with dryness. The air was heavy, laden with dust and carried the acrid scent of a hundred scrub fires.

Donald and Eleyne lay together in their bedchamber after lunch. They were both naked. They had made love then slept. The whole world slept. The servants who usually shared their room had made their way to the hillside behind the castle where the trees and the bracken shaded them and a slight breeze blew from the strait.

Eleyne awakened suddenly and lay looking at the tester above the bed. She had been dreaming about Colban, and tried to recall the dream, but it had gone. Leaning on her elbow, she gazed down at Donald. At twenty-eight he was, if anything, more handsome than he had been at eighteen. His face had matured as his body had hardened and the small laugh lines at the corners of his eyes gave promise that he would grow more attractive still. Smiling secretly to herself, she kissed him lightly on the mouth and felt her body respond with instant excitement as, still half-asleep, he reached up and pulled her down.

The letter for him came that evening. He read it sitting at the high table beside the Prince of Wales, and at his exclamation of horror and anger Llywelyn turned to him.

‘Bad news from Scotland, my friend?’

Eleyne leaned forward. ‘What is it, Donald? what has happened?’

‘Father!’ Donald slammed the letter down on the table amongst the trenchers. ‘He has remarried.’

‘Your father is still an active man,’ Llywelyn said. ‘Surely you wouldn’t deny him the comfort of a wife.’

‘Who is it, Donald?’ Eleyne put in. ‘Who has he married?’

‘Muriel, Malise of Strathearn’s daughter.’

Eleyne forced a smile. ‘I’m glad. She’ll be good to him.’