Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine
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BARBARA ERSKINE
Child of the Phoenix
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1992
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1992
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007280797
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2009 ISBN: 9780007320936 Version: 2017-09-07
CONTENTS
Afterword
Author's Note
The Warrior’s Princess Sample Chapter
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Barbara Erskine
About the Publisher
LLANFAES, ANGLESEY
The full moon sailed high and cold above the streaming clouds, aloof from the rising tide and the white-whipped waves. At the door of the hall a woman stared out across the water towards the glittering snows which mantled the peaks of Yr Wyddfa. Near her a man stood waiting in the shadows, silent, still, his hands clasped on his staff. Einion Gweledydd was tall, white-haired, austere in his patience. Soon the child would be born; the child whose destiny he had foretold; the child whose hands would hold three crowns; the child he would claim for the ancient gods of Albion. He smiled. The English wife had been in labour for three long days and soon she would die.
Behind the woman, in the hall, the fire had been banked up against the cold. A dozen anxious attendants crowded around the bed with its heaps of fur covers where their princess lay, too tired now even to cry out as the pains tore again and again at her frail body.
The men of the Illys had gone, sent out to allow women’s work to be done.
Rhonwen turned from the door at last and went to stand before the fire. She watched it hiss and spit, contained in its pit in the centre of the hall, the smoke spiralling up towards the hole in the smoky roof beams which led it out and up towards the wind-blown clouds. Dawn was near.
Behind her Princess Joan screamed. Rhonwen stooped and picking up a handful of oak twigs she threw them into the flames where they flared blue and green, salted by the wind off the sea which tortured and twisted every tree on the island’s edge. She watched them for a while, then she turned and went towards the bed.
Behind her a spark flew outward and lodged amongst the dampened rushes which carpeted the floor. It hissed a moment as if undecided whether to die or burn, then caught a frond of greenery and ran crackling along it to the next.
By the bed the women tended their exhausted princess and the tiny girl her body had spewed on to the sheets. In the hall already wreathed with smoke they did not smell the extra bitterness.
The fire ran on across the floor away from them and leaped towards the wooden walls with their embroidered hangings. The rustle of flame turned to a hiss and then a roar. When the women heard it and turned, it had already taken hold, devouring the wall, leaping towards the roof beams, racing back across the floor towards them.
One of them ran to ring a tocsin to summon the men, but they would be too late to save the hall. The others bundled the unconscious princess into her bedding and carried her as fast as they could towards the door. Outside Einion frowned: it seemed the princess would live; yet it was foretold that she would die.
Rhonwen was to be the child’s nurse. She stood for a moment looking down at the baby crying on its sheepskin blanket. So little a mite, the last daughter of the Prince of Aberffraw; the granddaughter of John Plantagenet, King of England.
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