BARBARA ERSKINE
Daughters of Fire

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition 2007

Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2006

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

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.

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Source ISBN 9780007174270

Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN 9780007279449

Version: 2017-09-12

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Dedication

For Diz, who started the hare.

Epigraph

The lamps now glitter down the street;

Faintly sound the falling feet;

And the blue even slowly falls

About the garden trees and walls.

Now in the falling of the gloom

The red fire paints the empty room:

And warmly on the roof it looks,

And flickers on the backs of books.

Armies march by tower and spire

Of cities blazing, in the fire;

Till as I gaze with staring eyes,

The armies fade, the lustre dies.

Then once again the glow returns;

Again the phantom city burns;

And down the red-hot valley, lo!

The phantom armies marching go!

Blinking embers, tell me true,

Where are those armies marching to,

And what the burning city is

That crumbles in your furnaces!

‘Armies in the Fire’

A Child’s Garden of Verses

Robert Louis Stevenson

‘The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones …’

Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

Postscript

Postscript Two

Chronology of the Story

Keep Reading

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Map

Prologue

She had demanded initiation. Without it she could not be queen.

And now she was afraid. For the first time in her life she was really afraid.

Not of the ancestors amongst whose bones she sat in the dark, but of the others, the shadows, the voices, the faces from the future. Those, she had not expected.

As the last remnant of light disappeared she had crouched quite still, the only sound in the silence beyond the settling of the stones and earth with which they had blocked the entrance tunnel behind her, the thudding of her heart. She had imagined she would hear the Druid priests’ footsteps as they withdrew, perhaps their whispered voices dying away in the distance, but there was nothing save an awareness of the weight of rocks and soil over her head and of the presence of the bones somewhere near her feet. Cautiously she stretched out her hands, feeling around her in the darkness. As her fingers at last met those of the woman with whom she shared the grave there was no sound but the rattle of dried bones.

Taking a deep breath she sat down, her back against the wall of limestone, and closed her eyes, waiting for something to happen. What. She didn’t know.

Outside, the moors grew dark. There was no guard outside the living grave. There was no need. No one sane would stray there by day or night. It was the place of the ancestors. A place of the gods. When she was released, if she was alive and in her right mind, she would be an initiate. A member of the élite. A woman who could mediate the gods and rule the people. A woman fit to be queen. If she was dead her bones would join those around her and her spirit would roam the fells until it was called to the place of rest beyond the western seas, the land of the ever young, and thence once more to the world of men to live again.

At first the voices were indistinct – a mumbling out of the darkness. She clenched her fists in terror, straining her ears to make out the words. Slowly the meaning came and with the meaning, pictures. She saw men with war chariots forming up on the edge of the hills, their eyes cruel, their hard bodies cased in armour; she saw women weeping. She saw swords and fire and blood. She saw the landscape change – from forest to heather moor and back to forest again. She saw men plough the land, their ploughs pulled and pushed by men, and then pulled by oxen, then horses, and then strange chariots which smoked above their huge wheels. She saw flocks of gulls following the furrows age after age through famine and plenty; through war and peace. She saw her people live. She saw her people die. She saw them laugh and she saw them weep. And one voice above all others came to her clearly out of the shadows. It called her name, Cartimandua, Sleek Pony, with an accent strange to her ears. She shook her head, trying to see more clearly in the swirling mists and a woman’s face swam into focus. A woman who held out her hands. Who stretched out across aeons to touch her mind. Who wanted to know who she was and what she had done. A woman who had chosen her above all others as a lesson and a story.

The tomb was growing colder. Outside, the sun was sinking into a bank of cloud. Soon it would be dark. She shivered suddenly and the mind that had reached out to touch hers drew back.

‘Where are you?’ Carta called out. ‘Wait. Are you one of the gods?’

There was no reply.

Somewhere near her feet she heard something rustle and click amongst the bones and she gritted her teeth against a scream. For the first time she wondered if anyone would come back to release her, or would they leave her here to lie amongst the dead whilst another took up the mantle of leadership?

Another, more fitted for the role because he was a man.

1
I

‘Have you any idea of what you have done to this department?’ Professor Hugh Graham threw the magazine down on the desk in front of him. It was folded open at an article entitled, ‘Cartimandua, the First British Queen?’ ‘You’ve made us a laughing stock! And me! You’ve made me a laughing stock in the academic community.’ He spoke with the soft lilt of the Scottish Borders, usually scarcely noticeable but now emphasised by his anger.

Behind him the sun, shining in through the office window which looked out onto Edinburgh’s George Square, backlit his thick, unruly pepper-and-salt hair and cast the planes of his weather-beaten face into relief. ‘I don’t think you and I can go on working together, Viv. Not when you clearly hold my views in such low esteem.’

‘Rubbish!’ Viv Lloyd Rees was thirty-five years old, five foot four, slightly plump and had short fiery red hair which had been cut to stand out in a hedgehog frame around her face, emphasising her bright green eyes. In spite of the Welsh name her accent was cut-glass English, another fact that irritated intensely the nationalist that resided deep in the professor’s soul.

‘Are you telling me that suddenly no one is allowed to have their own opinions in this place?’ she went on furiously. ‘For goodness’ sake, Hugh! We study Celtic history. We are not a think tank for some politburo!’

‘No.’ He leaned forward, his hands braced on the shambles of papers and open books which lay strewn across the desk behind his computer monitor. Somewhere under there, presumably, lurked a keyboard and mouse. ‘No, you are correct. We study. We examine facts. We spell them out –’

‘That’s all I’ve done, Hugh. I’ve spelled out some facts. Interpreted them …’

‘Your own interpretation, not mine.’

The atmosphere crackled between them.

‘Mine, as you say. It is my article, Hugh. Not yours.’

‘Fictional twaddle!’

‘No, Hugh. Not fictional.’ Her temper was rising to match his. ‘Intuitive interpretation.’

But there was more than that, wasn’t there, if she was honest. He was right.

‘Intuitive!’ He spat out the word with utter disdain. ‘Need I say more! And your book. Your much vaunted – hyped – book. Do I assume it will be along these same lines?’ He gestured at the supplement lying on his desk.

‘Obviously. Haven’t you been sent a copy to review yet?’ She met his eye in a direct challenge.

She had fought it. She had fought it so hard, that strange voice in her head, the voice she had conjured from her research. The voice that had wanted her to write the book, and now wanted her to write a play. The voice she could not tell anyone about. But its promptings had been too subtle, its information too specific to pretend it wasn’t there. She hadn’t managed to catch the information, to keep it out of the book, the book which was going to be published in exactly four weeks’ time on 14th July. She had tried to sieve the facts, separate the known from the unknown. She had failed.

She waited miserably to see what he would say next, as she did so staring fixedly at the small box lying in a ray of sunlight in his in-tray. She did not want to meet his eye.

There was a long silence as Hugh tried, visibly, to calm himself. In his early fifties, of middle height and with deep-set, slightly slanted hazel eyes, he was a strikingly handsome man. Today he was also formidable as he glared at the woman who stood before him on the layered threadbare rugs which carpeted the floor of his small, overcrowded, first-floor study.

‘Your by-line here,’ he went on at last, ignoring her question, ‘ ‘‘Viv Lloyd Rees of the Department of Pan-Celtic History and Culture at the University of Edinburgh’’,’ – the last dozen words, normally abbreviated to DPCHC by its members and students, were heavily emphasised – ‘I trust that will not be appearing on this famous book of yours. I am withdrawing the funding for your research facilities. And your post here will not be renewed at the end of the year.’

Viv stared at him. ‘You can’t do that!’ She was paralysed with shock.

‘I am sure I can find a way.’ He folded his arms. ‘This department prides itself in scholarship, not guesswork. There is no room here for fantasists.’ Leaning forward, he picked up the Sunday Times magazine by one corner and tossed it across the desk towards her. ‘You may as well take this. I shall not be looking at it again.’ He refolded his arms and sat watching her from beneath frowning sandy brows.

The knowledge that he was right in many of his criticisms, and that she was already in an agony of guilt about them, made her angrier than ever.

She had been overjoyed when he had asked her to come back to Edinburgh to work with him and accepted the lectureship and research post with eager optimism. It was a chance to put the past behind her, to start again and forward her career under the guidance of the man she most respected in their field.

The past was in Dublin. His name was Andrew Brennan and for four years she and he had had a passionate affair, an affair which she, in her perhaps deliberate naïveté, had assumed would lead if not to marriage, at least to a live-in relationship once he had obtained the divorce which he promised was only a matter of time. It never happened. Of course it never happened; had never even been on the cards. When she finally brought herself to accept the fact, she had broken it off and written to Hugh in response to a rumour that a lectureship might be coming up in his department. He had invited her to join him and she had bought a tiny flat in the Old Town with a monstrously large mortgage and put Andrew and his protestations behind her with sufficient alacrity for her to wonder just how much she had really loved him. Even so, at the beginning it was hard in many ways. Harder than she expected. She had friends in Edinburgh from her student days but the gap in her life was huge. She missed Andrew’s close companionship, his unquestioned lien on her spare time, and it was this newly raw loneliness which led her to see more of Hugh Graham and his wife than perhaps she should.

Alison Graham became one of her closest friends. They confided in one another; she told Alison about Andrew; she told her about her sadness after her brother David, like their father a respected consultant paediatrician, had emigrated to Australia with his wife and their baby and she told her about her sense of utter bewildered loss after her parents had followed them five years later to Perth. Alison and Hugh had been there for her. They had supported her. They had all seen a great deal of one another and gradually she had begun to suspect that she was falling in love with Hugh. She drew back. Nothing would persuade her to threaten her friends’ marriage. She went to see them less often and avoided Hugh where possible. Puzzled and hurt by her sudden rejection without suspecting its reason, Hugh had become angry. Then unbelievably, heart-breakingly, Alison had died.

His anger had not abated after she had gone, far from it, and his easy friendship with Viv had deteriorated into something like enmity in their professional relationship. She found that he had an unbearable, overweening ego. He refused to acknowledge that the study of history had changed its emphasis; that maybe scholasticism should nowadays allow itself a more popular, approachable face, and above all he refused to admit that anyone else could be good at it! The man who had been the youngest, most ambitious professor ever to head the department appeared to have sunk into staid orthodoxy.

He was returning her gaze steadily, studying her as though she were some kind of strange specimen he had found in a bell jar in a laboratory. Every line of his face was set with disapproval. The look stung.

Taking a deep breath she launched back into the fray. ‘You are calling me a fantasist!’ Her voice was shaking suddenly. ‘May I remind you that you are the one who gave me a first-class honours degree, Professor.’ She emphasised the word sarcastically. ‘You thought my standard of work good then. You helped me get into Aberystwyth to get my Masters and then my doctorate from the University of Wales. You underwrote my application to go to Dublin and you helped me to get the position at UCLA. Then you, you,’ she repeated, ‘offered me a research grant and a lectureship here! You encouraged me to write the book!’

‘And you were an excellent student. Otherwise I would never have offered you the job in my department.’ He shrugged. ‘And you were a first-class historian when you first came back here. My friendship and my trust in you has obviously gone to your head. In your anxiety to gain recognition and self-publicity you have lost touch with reality. So you are no more use to me. I suggest you go and write romances somewhere where your claims to all this inside knowledge of Iron Age life can do no harm and leave the writing of serious history to those of us who know how to do it!’

Staring at him as he sat there Viv felt, for a moment, as she was surely supposed to, like a naughty school girl who had been caught cheating and knew it, and had then been called up before the head. She drew in a shaky breath to ward off the hurt, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘So that’s what this is all about. At last!’ She was deliberately disingenuous. ‘You’re writing a book as well! Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, I was supposed to guess, was I, that that is what you are doing?’

‘Indeed you should, as this period is my speciality.’ He threw himself back in his seat. ‘It would have been a fairly easy assumption to make.’ She was wearing a baggy magenta sweater and tracksuit bottoms. Just looking at her gave the professor a headache. Especially when she was angry.

‘And you’re writing about Cartimandua in spite of the fact that it was no secret that she is my subject!’ Viv narrowed her eyes.

He shrugged. He did not mention the fact that his book was as yet barely more than a few files of notes, an outline and a chapter or two, and that it was unlikely that anyone at all beyond his editor at the university press knew about it as yet. ‘No,’ his tone was disdainful, ‘as it happens I am not writing about Cartimandua. She would hardly merit a serious study. Whatever you claim, not enough is known about her. No, my book will be – is – a treatise on the British opposition to the Roman invasion with Venutios as its central figure.’

‘Cartimandua’s husband.’

‘Indeed.’

She took a deep breath, trying to retrieve the situation. ‘But surely that doesn’t matter? There is room for both books.’ She eyed him with a quizzical lift of the left eyebrow. ‘And whatever you think of my article,’ she glanced at the magazine lying on his desk, ‘I can assure you that mine is a serious study.’ That at least was true. More or less. She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Can it be that you are afraid my sales will so eclipse yours that you will be embarrassed? Surely the great Professor Hugh Graham wouldn’t worry about that?’

‘No, strangely, I do not fear that.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘My book will be published by the university press. Yours, I understand, is being produced by a commercial publisher. That means you are bound to sell more copies than I do, I am sure. To an ignorant public who are not concerned with intellectual probity. No, I have given you my reason for my objections. Your research and writing are not of the standard I expect and require from someone in my department. Now, if you would excuse me, I have work to do.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ Viv tried and failed to keep the irony out of her voice. ‘I won’t keep you.’ She turned to the door, still shaking with anger. Then she paused. God! She had completely forgotten why she had come to see him in the first place. Turning back, she forced herself to smile. ‘Before I go, I need to ask you a favour.’ Not an auspicious moment, but it was the purpose for which she had walked so unsuspectingly into the lion’s den twenty minutes before. ‘I wanted to ask you if I may borrow the Cartimandua Pin before you return it to the museum.’ It had been a while before she had realised that was what was lying there in its box, in his in-tray. ‘You won’t grudge me that, at least. I am appearing on History Discussion Night on Channel 4 next month and I would like to show it when I talk about my book. It would interest the viewers to see a piece of jewellery contemporary with the period.’

Hugh folded his arms. ‘Impossible.’ It was an instant response. Unconsidered. Automatic.

‘Why?’ She held her temper in check with an effort.

‘I’ve given an undertaking to the museum not to let it out of my sight.’

‘But it’s your property. You only loaned it to them in the first place. And it’s already been out of your sight!’

‘Exactly. It is a priceless artefact so I do not propose to lose track of it again.’ He bristled. The pin had been presented to his archaeologist father by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the 1950s after the excavation of the fortifications at Stanwick.

‘So priceless in fact that rather than keep it in the department safe, you’ve chucked it in your in-tray next to your stapler.’ Gesturing towards it, Viv took a deep breath. ‘I’d take better care of it than that, Hugh! After all, I’m not contemplating melting it down.’ She reached over and picked up the transparent Perspex box in which the enamelled pin nestled in its protective packing.

‘Put it down!’ Hugh’s voice was like acid. ‘Don’t touch it!’ His father had hated the brooch. A scientist to his core, he had nevertheless had a superstitious horror of this beautiful object and refused to let anyone in his family handle, or even look at it.

‘I’m not hurting it.’ The naughty child in Viv had surfaced again in spite of her anger and she fought an absurd urge to stick out her tongue and dodge away from the desk out of his reach, waving the box under his nose. ‘Do you think Venutios really gave it to Cartimandua?’ Carefully removing the lid, she studied it closely. The light from the desklamp caught the coloured enamels and the exquisitely engraved gold as she turned it this way and that. It exuded an aura of richness and power.

‘I doubt it.’ Hugh’s tone was repressive.

‘It’s very beautiful. And expensive. And the right date.’

‘Put it down.’ He was becoming more and more agitated.

‘Think how it would capture the viewers’ imagination on the telly.’

‘No!’

‘But you lent it to Hamish for his lecture tour.’

‘That was a personal favour.’

‘I only want it for one evening before you return it to the museum. It would be a personal favour to me.’

‘No.’

‘Because you don’t like my style of writing?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s childish!’

‘No, it’s an academic judgment. Put that box down, please.’

Her face flushed angrily. ‘Do you know what – that’s petty and vindictive!’ Gently, almost reverently, she touched the brooch with the tip of her little finger. The enamels felt ice cold. Unnerved, she hastily fitted the lid back on and tossed the box onto his desk, where it skidded down a heap of papers and vanished into the scholarly detritus. For a second, as she touched it, she had felt an almost overwhelming sense of unease.

His visible relief when she put it down was replaced by a scowl. ‘Please don’t let me detain you.’

‘You’re being a bastard, Hugh.’ She shuddered and without quite knowing why rubbed the palms of her hands on the seat of her tracksuit as though to rid herself of the cloying feel of the brooch.

‘Please go, Viv. I don’t think we have anything else to say to each other.’ Standing up angrily, he walked over to the window and stood with his back to her.

This was insane. Unbelievable! ‘You can’t sack me, Hugh, and you know it,’ she said quietly.

‘As I said, I’m sure I’ll find a way.’ He did not turn round.

Leaning forward, she picked up the discarded magazine supplement. Beneath it the gleam of gold and red and green caught her eye again. She glanced up at the taut shoulders of the man by the window and gave a small smile. It took a tenth of a second to slip the box into her bag.

‘Goodbye, Hugh.’

He did not deign to reply. Nor did he turn round after he heard the door bang. When at last he sat down once more at his desk he did not look for the brooch; he didn’t notice it had gone. He shivered. The room was suddenly very cold.

II

‘I walked out at that point, Cathy. If I hadn’t, I would have throttled him!’

Completely exhausted, Viv threw herself down on the sofa in the living room of Cathy French’s shambolically elegant maisonette in Abercromby Place. She had not mentioned her last defiant action, the removal of a valuable artefact from the professor’s study. She still could not believe that she had done it. She shook her head as she went on. ‘He’s turned into an utter total and complete bastard! And to think how long I’ve spent marking exam papers for him this last couple of weeks.’ She reached out for the glass of wine Cathy had poured for her. ‘What am I going to do?’

The two women sat in companionable silence for a couple of moments. Normally noisy and humorous, the dejection which had replaced Viv’s fury was completely uncharacteristic.

Cathy was her complete opposite in looks. Tall and slim, her dark hair swinging just above shoulder length, dressed in a long skirt and cotton shirt, she sat facing her friend, wine glass in one hand, spectacles dangling from the other.

‘Is this really irreconcilable? It sounds to me more as if he has had his nose put out of joint.’

Viv grimaced. ‘Can the psychology, Cathy. I’m not one of your patients. Even if Hugh and I could agree on the history – any fragment of the history – we seem to have become incompatible personalities.’ She took another sip from the glass. She loved this sprawling, two-floor flat with its beautiful large rooms, its views over Queen Street Gardens with their lovely trees in full summer leaf and its air of controlled chaotic creativity. It relaxed her. Normally. ‘If he is serious my career is over. Kaput. Finished.’

‘Right.’ Cathy gave a rueful smile. ‘I take it that’s a ‘‘no’’ then? So,’ she took a deep breath, ‘you carry on to what, the end of term? The end of the academic year? Then what?’

‘The semester is already over; the exams are finished. And to be honest, he can’t actually sack me. Not without a specific and very good reason and he doesn’t have one.’ Viv sighed. ‘But he can make my life impossible. He has already said he will withdraw funding for my research. Or at least make sure it’s not renewed. He can do that. And he can change his mind about promoting me. I was hoping to be made Reader next year after Hamish Macleod retires. That would mean a hike in my salary which I badly need. Some of us have huge mortgages.’

Cathy leaned back and crossed her legs, ignoring the jibe. Her flat had been left to her by her father, a renowned Edinburgh doctor and former colleague of Viv’s father, a bequest which made her, according to Viv, nothing more or less than a trust fund kid. ‘If you give him his heart’s desire and leave, what could you do instead? What has happened about the radio documentary you’re writing?’

Viv let out another deep sigh. ‘I’ve screwed that up as well. I showed my first draft to Maddie Corston at the BBC and she thinks it’s rubbish.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘Not exactly, but she implied it. She thinks I need help getting it finished by the deadline.’

‘Ah.’ Cathy frowned. ‘Help from who? Hugh?’

‘Good God, no! He doesn’t know about it. If he did it would be another nail in my coffin. No, she’s suggested that I meet up with an experienced producer she knows who she thinks would help me write it.’ Viv was defensive. ‘Some stranger who knows nothing about Cartimandua. Who has probably never even heard of her. Someone who’s going to waltz in and wave her wand and make it work even if she knows sod all about the subject.’

‘If she knows about radio, Viv,’ Cathy put in mildly, ‘perhaps it’s good advice.’

‘Maybe.’ Viv was still doubtful.

‘Who is she? Would I know her through Pete?’

Pete was Cathy’s partner and they had been together for four years. He was a travel writer and independent TV documentary producer and came with baggage: a daughter and an ex. Viv envied Cathy her easy relationship with this lovely, supportive man, but not the complications his family appeared to cause in her life. His former wife, as tall and thin as he was, compounded her many faults, apparently, by being exquisitely blonde, beautiful, elegant and clever. Her only advantage, according to Cathy, was that she had decided to live once again in her native Stockholm. Viv had never met her.

Being in the world of TV and film, Pete might well have come across the woman Maddie was suggesting. Viv rummaged in her bag for the piece of paper with the name on it.

‘She’s called Pat Hebden. She lives in London.’

Cathy let out a shout of laughter. ‘Small world! I do know Pat. And your editor is probably right, she would be helpful. She’s got a lot of experience. She’s been in radio for years. She does a bit of writing and producing and she’s an actress as well. She’s even stayed here once or twice when she came up for the Festival.’

Viv took another sip of wine. ‘It sounds like a conspiracy! So you think I should meet her? Would I like her?’ She was still apprehensive.

Cathy hesitated for only a second. ‘She’s quite a character. I think you’d get on. And meeting would do no harm, Viv. Who knows? It might be a huge success. Why don’t I ring her, or has Maddie done it already? Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think it would be a fantastic idea. OK, so writing this drama is one thing you can do to earn some money. What else?’

Viv thought. ‘Well, there is the book of course, but that’s not going to make me a fortune. Otherwise not much. I work in a small world, Cathy. Hugh could pretty much scupper me. All he needs to do is put the word round that I’m trouble or unreliable or a useless historian and no department would look at me.’ Putting down her glass she slipped off the sofa onto the floor and reaching up for a cushion, wedged it behind her head. ‘I can’t believe this has happened, Cathy! I can’t believe just reading an article can turn him into an enemy like this!’ Purring, the large tabby cat which had been watching the proceedings from the arm of the sofa leaped heavily into her lap and settled down.

Cathy eyed him fondly. ‘Pablo knows success when he sees it. He is giving you his seal of approval.’

‘Soft old thing.’ Viv scratched the cat’s ears.

‘Surely there’s more to this than just an article.’ Cathy raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure you haven’t antagonised Hugh in some other way?’

Viv shrugged. ‘I suppose I might have, inadvertently.’ She had been so pleased for her parents when they had left Britain. Envied them their new exciting life, had even been out to see them twice. That was the problem. They never stopped trying to persuade her to follow them down under, but how could she? Her career, her interests, and her obsessions were all tied to the world of the Ancient Celts. Hugh had understood. They had been close, then. It was her fault she had fallen in love with him; and it had been her decision to erect a barrier between them.

‘We used to get on well,’ she said wistfully, ‘but if I’m honest we haven’t for a while now.’ She didn’t elaborate. ‘And the trouble is, I’m going to be so vulnerable. If Hugh reviews this book he will trash it. He and his cronies in the academic world will rubbish everything I’ve said. And if he doesn’t review it everyone will want to know why. Either way I’m sunk.’

‘Then you’ll have to fight him.’ Cathy grinned amiably. ‘Come on, lady, where is that feisty female who stormed in here just now spitting nails? And you know as well as I do,’ she added, ‘being completely cynical about it, that the more controversial the book is, the more you two row in public, the better it will sell. When are you going to give me a copy, by the way?’ With a rueful laugh she slipped down onto the floor to be on the same level as her guest and topped up both their glasses once more. Pablo stood up, stretched and stepped carefully across the table to sit instead on his mistress’s knee. ‘So, remind me. Why is this book so controversial?’ she went on. ‘What is so shocking about it that it has wound him up like this?’

Apart from the facts that weren’t facts, you mean. The details I have tried so hard to weed out which shouldn’t be there because they are not part of the historical record. The ‘fictional twaddle’ which Hugh had spotted at once! Viv didn’t say it. Instead she shook her head adamantly. ‘The only shocking thing is that I have had the temerity to finish it ahead of the book Hugh is writing himself!’

‘Yours is about Cartimandua and the Celtic tribe called the Brigantes, right?’

‘And it turns out that Hugh’s is about Venutios. Her husband!’ Viv scowled. ‘Two different views on Iron Age Britain around the time of the Roman invasion in AD 43.’

‘But surely,’ Cathy took a sip of wine thoughtfully, ‘that shouldn’t matter, should it? Won’t people be interested in the two different stories?’

‘You’d think so.’ Viv sniffed. ‘And they are very different.’ That much at least she would admit. ‘I’m coming from a woman’s point of view, writing about a controversial queen. The antithesis of Boudica. A gutsy, clever Celtic queen, yes, but she cosied up to the Romans and because of that she is – was – regarded by many, including her husband, as a traitor. A quisling.’

‘Ah.’ Cathy eased the purring cat into a more comfortable position on her knees. ‘And Hugh takes the opposite position to you.’

‘In everything. He is writing about a man who is regarded as a patriot because he opposed Rome, and about war and military tactics and stuff like that.’

‘I still don’t see why that should matter. Surely both points of view are valid?’

‘In a rational world, yes.’ Viv grabbed the bottle of wine and poured herself a refill. She stood up and walked over to the window. ‘I’ve blown it. He used to respect me. He was impressed by my research. He encouraged me to do my first TV show. We used to get on so well.’ She heard the wistful note in her own voice and frowned, despising herself for it. He used to like me. That was what she had been going to say. And I used to like him. A lot. Why was she so angry that he had seen through her? Had she really expected him not to react to that article? And when – or if – he read the book, had she really thought he would give it his seal of approval? She took another swig from the glass. ‘He’s jealous, of course.’

‘Of your success?’

‘Yes. Of my success. He hates it that I’ve appeared on TV more than he has. And that they’ve profiled me in the Sunday Times magazine with the article based on my book. And that I’m going to be in another programme – a discussion programme on Channel 4 –’ She broke off abruptly and glanced at her bag, lying on the coffee table. The box with the two-thousand-year-old brooch inside it was in there, lying in the bottom somewhere amongst the litter of her possessions. She hadn’t taken it out since she had thrown it into the bag; hadn’t been able to believe what she had done.

‘You have to stand up to him, Viv.’ Cathy was quietly insistent as she sat stroking the sleeping cat. ‘You can’t go on letting him get to you like this.’

‘No.’ Viv turned back to the window. ‘No, I know I can’t. I’m just not sure what I’m going to do about it. I have a copy of the book for you, Cathy, of course I have. Signed and everything. You must read it and tell me what you think.’

III

Pat Hebden was sitting slumped on the arm of the sofa in the living room of her small Victorian house in Battersea, staring into space, her mobile still in her hand. David Roach, her agent, had called her with the news as soon as he heard it. ‘I’m so sorry, Pat. I thought it was in the bag. It was so you, darling.’

The woman who had got the TV part was fifteen years her junior. ‘But I’m the right age, David. I have the experience. The part was me.’

‘I know, darling. I can’t believe it either.’ He had a slight American intonation. Fake. She knew he hailed from the East End of London. ‘But we’ll find the right part for you. It’s out there somewhere. It will just take a little bit longer.’ Ever pragmatic – and anodyne. She could hear the shrug. And the unspoken words: very few parts for women your age, darling. Unless you’re a character actress and the public know you. You’ve spread yourself too thin, that’s the problem. Too many irons in the fire.

She was still sitting staring into space five minutes later, disappointment washing through every fibre of her body. With a groan she stood up at last. Damn it, she wasn’t that old. Mid-fifties. Could pass for forty. Or less. With make-up. A lot of make-up. She chuckled wryly. Who was she kidding? They were right. She’d have been lousy in the part.

As she reached for her mobile again her eye fell on the notepad on the table, half hidden under yesterday’s Guardian. Pulling it out, she stared down at it. Cartimandua, it said. Queen. Romans. Celts. Viv Lloyd Rees. Play? Docu-drama? Ring Maddie Corston!!!

The way Maddie had described the story there was melodrama. Romance. War. A strong story. Commissioned. Overdue. A writer with huge talent but who had never written for radio before and was in need of a strong guiding hand. And maybe a female lead.

Glancing up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and frowned. Fantastic voice. Good face. Golden hair. Well, greyish with expert highlights! Just the right height – five foot five – well, perhaps five foot four if she forgot to stand up straight. Excellent cheekbones. Unconsciously she tilted her head slightly. She used reading glasses now, she had to admit, but that didn’t matter for in her head she had ceased to see herself as an actress. Now she was an academic. A mentor. The calm, skilled hand on the rudder which would bring a play first to the radio, then, who knows, to the TV. Big Screen? Stage? Maddie had hinted at an inexperienced and vulnerable author and a background of academic rancour. War behind the scenes. Perfect publicity. In the mirror the face she was scanning smiled. Ever optimistic, the defeat was forgotten. Ahead was a new scheme. A scheme she could get her teeth into. And one that involved a trip to Edinburgh.

Outside it was a glorious summer day, though you wouldn’t guess it from here. The cherry trees which lined the narrow road were in full leaf and the air had a faint trace of freshness in it; a strong breeze from Battersea Park and the river beyond it, cutting through traffic fumes and the blankets of diesel which spewed down from the low-flying aircraft shaking the house every couple of minutes on their way to Heathrow. She glanced round the small narrow rectangular room which comprised virtually the whole of the ground floor area of her tiny house. Light seeped fitfully through the heavy lace curtains she kept constantly drawn across the front window to keep prying eyes out. The room looked tired and dusty. She ran a finger over the table ruefully and examined the ensuing faint line with a sigh. She was between cleaning ladies at the moment. She was always between cleaning ladies. She had caught the last one shooting up in her kitchen. Shame. She had been a nice, bright girl. Trustworthy, or so she had thought. On the slippery slope, so it turned out, from the third year of a degree course in modern languages to, no doubt, a horrible death under a bridge somewhere. Two days after the girl had gone the house had been done over. Pat sighed. She knew it was Sarah because of the things taken. Not the treasures which would have hurt so much. Not even her grandmother’s gold bracelet which she had left so carelessly on the table in her bedroom. Just the electronic stuff which could be replaced. The cash from the kitchen cupboard and the silver candlesticks which she and Sarah had agreed were really rather vulgar.

She had changed the locks now, finally made up her mind to install security bars over the front windows, and acknowledged a huge reluctance to become involved with yet another personality who would bring their problems to her door while vaguely pushing her vacuum up and down and flicking the dust from one surface to watch it settle on another. What she really wanted was to leave London for a bit.

‘Maddie?’ She had picked up the phone, almost without being aware of the fact. ‘I’ve given your suggestion some thought and I’d love to come and discuss it.’

2
I

Next morning, Viv found herself pacing up and down her living room thinking about the brooch. She had hidden it in the back of a drawer in her desk when she came in the night before, tucking it well out of sight.

She had to give it back. She couldn’t keep it. She shivered. She didn’t want to keep it. But how was she to return it without admitting what she had done?

The overnight rain had blown away and watery sunlight pooled across the rugs on the floor warming her as she came to a halt, arms folded, staring out of the window across the rooftops. She loved this view; being part of the historic heart of the City, so near the castle. It was for this that she tolerated the narrow twisting flights of stairs, the stone landings, the need to park her car so far away, the walk back up the steep hill in the evenings to the small alleyway off the Lawnmarket, her arms full of books, her shoulder weighted by the strap of her computer case. She had set up her desk on the far side of the room, knowing that if she sat in front of the window she would do no work, lost in dreams amongst the grey slates, the chimneys, the odd spot of colour from a flower pot on a window sill or rooftop oasis, the torn rags of smoke, the wheeling birds settling, sleeping, rising again into the air.

Behind her, her desk was neat. Tidy. The rejected manuscript of the play stacked carefully. The textbooks back on their shelves. The box files neatly lined up on the floor. In front of her the sky was the colour of a Canaletto lagoon.

The book itself was finished. Edited. Printed. Jacketed. There was a box full of copies on the floor beside the bentwood rocker near the door into the kitchen. She ought to be feeling content. Excited. Satisfied. One project complete, another on the drawing board. Instead she was on edge, worried. And guilty. Guilty about her research methods and guilty about the pin and worried about having to collaborate on the play. Collaboration was not something she was eager to contemplate. Especially not if it involved confessing her research methods to someone else.

But then the play was not going to work without help.

She gave a deep sigh. She had a thousand things to do, all the things which had been put on hold as she coped with lecturing, tutoring her students and writing a 231-page book – plus ten pages of notes and bibliography followed by two major articles, one for the Sunday Times and one for the History Magazine, to say nothing of marking the end of year papers for her first-and second-year students. She needed to buy some shoes; she needed to have her hair cut – she ran her fingers through the wild untidy red mop. She needed to sort out her finances, and now on top of all that she needed to start this bloody rewrite, so why was she standing, almost paralysed with uncertainty, staring out of the window?

The answer came as a whisper in the corner of her mind. The voice, the increasingly powerful voice she had been fighting for the last few months had come back, echoing to her over unimaginable distances. She felt an uneasy shiver tiptoe down her spine. She had been so sure it would go away once the book was finished. But it hadn’t. If anything it was more insistent than ever. And now it was beginning to frighten her.

The sound of her doorbell distracted her from her thoughts. There was one good thing about living on the top floor of a six-storey tenement house. No one was going to arrive without a good reason for being there.

Opening the door she found herself face to face with Steve Steadman, one of her post-graduate students. Calm, reliable, and universally popular in the department he was, she had to admit, at the moment, also one of her favourite people. He was a good-looking man in his early thirties, tall and sturdy, with a thatch of fair hair and a weathered, ruddy skin liberally sprinkled with freckles. He was also one of the very few people of her acquaintance who wasn’t completely out of breath after climbing the stairs to her front door.

‘Hi, Viv.’ He was holding a copy of Cartimandua, Queen of the North. ‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping by, but I wondered if you’d sign it for me.’

She stared at it, frozen to the spot. ‘Where did you get that?’ Then she relented. ‘Sorry. Of course I’ll sign it. Come in. It’s just that it’s not in the shops yet.’ She grabbed his arm and drew him inside the room. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Steve.’

Before he had a chance to reply she had gestured him towards the rocking chair as she went to hunt for a pen on her desk. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Hugh was writing about Venutios?’

Steve frowned. ‘I had no idea that he was.’

She turned to face him, pen in hand. ‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t told me.’ His voice wavered slightly as he caught sight of her face. ‘You didn’t know either, I take it?’

She sighed. ‘No. So, where did you get the book?’

‘Hugh gave it to me.’ He sat down on the edge of the rocking chair, balancing easily as he stuck his long legs out in front of him.

‘So, it’s a review copy.’ She gave a wry smile.

It was rapidly dawning on Steve that he was tiptoeing around a minefield. ‘I suppose he is sent so many …’ The comment trailed away as he began to see only too clearly that he had fallen into the Professor’s trap. ‘Go and ask her to sign it for you,’ he had said, with a gleam in his eye which Steve now suspected had been purely malicious. ‘She’s probably going to resign some time during the summer so you won’t be seeing much more of her, and I’m sure she would like to think she has a fan.’

Viv was riffling through the book. Had it been read? She was almost afraid she would find red lines striking out paragraph after paragraph – a phenomenon his students grew used to as the terms progressed. There were no marks that she could see. She breathed a sigh of relief and turning back to the title page, signed it with a flourish.

Steve took the book as she handed it back and tucked it into the tatty canvas bag he had dropped beside his chair. ‘The Prof hinted that you were thinking of resigning. It’s not true, is it? We’d miss you tremendously if you did.’ The remark was warm; totally genuine.

‘No, I’m not leaving, Steve, however much the Professor might wish it,’ she said firmly. ‘That was his little joke.’

Steve shook his head. ‘I’m glad! I must have misunderstood him!’

‘No, you didn’t misunderstand, Steve. Don’t worry about it. I’ll still be here next year.’ She paused as a thought occurred to her. Hugh had passed the book on unread because he was not going to review it. He didn’t think it was worth the bother. He probably hadn’t even glanced at it. She stood for a moment chewing her lip. Was she angry or relieved? It was going to be an insult, either now or more publicly later. But then, what had she expected? Had she really thought she would get away with it? Had she expected him to act as anything other than a curmudgeonly, narrow-minded, devious chauvinist? She grinned broadly. Even silently thinking the invective made her feel better. ‘I hope you enjoy the book, Steve.’ Once he had read it he would know, of course, why Hugh didn’t rate it. But then everyone was going to know soon.

Steve was smiling. ‘I’ve read it already. I thought it was excellent.’ He showed no sign of moving from the rocking chair. ‘I read it last night after he gave it to me. It’s brilliant. Really brilliant. It would complement the Professor’s book perfectly if he’s writing about Venutios. You make him out to be quite a bastard.’ He chuckled. ‘You mention Ingleborough a lot in the book, Viv. You did know I’m from there, didn’t you? My parents’ farm is just below the hill fort. Actually on the slopes, more or less. You say that was where Cartimandua was born and brought up.’ He didn’t notice the way Viv clenched her fists, the stress in her face. ‘I didn’t know that was a fact. It’s local legend, of course, but I’ve never seen it acknowledged in a history book before. Tacitus and the other historians wouldn’t have known or cared where she came from of course, and they never referred to the smaller sub-sects of the Brigantian tribes, did they? It’s strange, because of living there I feel I have always known Cartimandua really well. I was brought up with her ghost.’

Looking up at last, he noted Viv’s white face, her raised eyebrows, and he shook his head hastily. ‘Not literally, of course. At least, I don’t think so. Though my mother could tell you a thing or two about ghostly noises in the night. The clash of swords. Horses galloping by. That sort of stuff.’ He grinned. ‘Not the kind of thing I would tell the Prof!’

‘Indeed, not.’ Viv grimaced. ‘I went there, of course, but only for a couple of hours. I didn’t hear any ghosts.’

Liar! Of course she had. She had heard more than ghostly hooves. She had heard a voice.

Steve was shaking his head. ‘I wish I’d known. You could have stayed with us while you were visiting the area. My mother’s been doing B&B since the foot and mouth epidemic.’ He sighed. ‘You can’t leave the department, Viv. You mustn’t.’

‘I don’t intend to if I can help it.’ Viv met his gaze. He would know all about the row soon enough. The grapevine was pretty good and it was a small department and she doubted if Hugh was going to be even slightly discreet about his dislike of her book. She sighed, and realised suddenly that it was partly with relief. The moment had passed. Steve wasn’t going to ask her where all her information had come from. He was content that it was legend. For him at least that was good enough. He was picking up his bag and standing up.

‘Stay and have a coffee,’ she found herself saying. She didn’t want to be alone. Not at the moment, not with the voice still clamouring in her ear. ‘I want to hear about your mother’s ghosts. I’m intrigued. I can’t think why we’ve never talked about this before.’

He slid his bag off his shoulder and, clearly pleased with the invitation, dropped it on the floor before following her into her small kitchen. The sky outside the mansard window was a bright duck-egg blue now as the sunlight poured in, spotlighting the cupboards, the shelves, the jars and bottles, as she reached for the kettle. ‘I had some strange experiences myself while I was visiting the sites I’ve written about.’ Keep the tone casual. Humorous. Don’t let him see how much it all worried her. ‘The trouble is I was always on my own so I had no one to compare notes with.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. She mustn’t let him think she took this seriously.

Steve was leaning against a cupboard, arms folded, watching as she scooped coffee into the pot. He seemed to be considering what she had said. ‘My dad has lived there all his life.’ He had a soft Yorkshire accent which she had always found rather attractive. ‘The farm has been in the family for hundreds of years. I know there are all sorts of stories – there always are, aren’t there, in the country?’ He paused. ‘But you know farmers,’ he added, shrugging. ‘They see things, all sorts of things, but they won’t admit it.’ He glanced at her from under his eyelashes and she saw a strange mixture of emotions flash across his face. Caution. Suspicion. Maybe he was testing her reaction? But the moment had passed and he was his usual relaxed self again at once. ‘My mother is a local girl. From the dale. She loved the farm from the first day Dad took her up there to visit,’ he went on. ‘It’s so beautiful and remote and wild. She was all romantic then. And young.’ He paused. ‘It’s a hard life being a farmer’s wife.’

She looked up again, hearing the change in his tone. ‘It must have been awful when you got foot and mouth.’

He nodded. ‘The worst. My dad nearly gave up. Then she came up with this idea of doing B&B – advertising on the Internet and all that. At first we hated the thought of having strangers in the house – she more than anyone – but it’s not so bad.’ He shrugged.

‘I don’t suppose she has time to hear ghosts now.’ Viv plunged the coffee and poured it into two scarlet mugs.

‘She doesn’t go up on the hill much.’ He shrugged a second time, his face wistful. ‘She’s changed a lot. But she does still hear things. Sometimes I think she’s always been too sensitive. Dad’s far more down to earth. The visitors love it up there, of course.’ Again the quiet chuckle. ‘They come back some evenings with some cracking stories.’

Viv handed him a mug, then faced him, leaning against the cooker, her hands cupped around her own. ‘What sort of stories?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you really interested? Well, there’s the boggart holes, of course.’ He smiled. ‘And sometimes they think they’ve heard the barguest, shrieking in the night! They talk about horses, too. Galloping hooves. Sometimes they get quite spooked. There was one woman, she said she had ‘‘feelings’’.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She was a bit freaky, but I saw Mum’s face and I reckoned she knew what the woman was talking about.’ Again the quick glance at Viv. ‘That woman wanted to hold a séance, but Mum wasn’t having that. Not in our house. Dad wouldn’t stand for it and she thought it was wrong. Disrespectful.’

‘I’d like to meet your mum.’ Viv sipped her coffee thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I will book myself in some time. I need to do some more research –’ She stopped herself abruptly but Steve picked up on the word at once.

‘Are you going to write more about Cartimandua? You’ve found some new sources, haven’t you?’

Oh God, so he had spotted all the extra stuff. Well, so he should have done. He was after all one of their best students and if he hadn’t noticed she would have been very surprised. She had let so many details slip in. Cartimandua’s tribe, her birthplace, were obvious traps; facts no one knew. Facts, if they were indeed facts, which she had no business to know.

Steve was nodding. ‘It’s frustrating, isn’t it, working just over the pre-history border; only having the Roman texts to go on. If only the Celts had written down stuff themselves.’

‘But they did.’

Viv was becoming more and more uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. She wagged her finger at him in mock reproof. ‘Remember that where necessary they wrote in Greek and Latin as well as Celtic using Latin script. We know the Celts had an oral culture but remember their phenomenal feats of memory did not mean they were illiterate. We can’t be certain they didn’t write history too.’ She paused. ‘Maybe they even wrote down the sacred stuff and it was destroyed. We just don’t know.’

Steve shook his head. ‘We’d have found something by now if they had. I’ve been doing exhaustive research on this, you know I have, for my thesis. Their traditions were broken. The memories lost. The Romans and the Christians utterly determined to root out their culture. So it is only the Roman and Christian sources left.’ He paused. ‘Unless …?’ He was looking at her hard. ‘Is that what’s happened? Viv? They wrote something down after all and you’ve found it?’

There was a moment of silence. Oh yes, she had found something. But it was not a scrap of old parchment. It was in her head. An echo out of time.

He was still gazing at her, taking her silence for acquiescence. ‘My God, how exciting! And Hugh is jealous because you found something he doesn’t know about? Wow!’

‘No, Steve –’

But he was already convinced. ‘No, don’t worry. I shan’t say a word to anyone. I promise. Where did you find it? You’re sure it’s not been faked like Iolo?’

Viv shook her head, taking a deep swig of coffee. Iolo Morganwg, the eighteenth/early-nineteenth century Welsh Celticist had faked and/or created, depending on which way you looked at it, numerous so-called Druidic and Celtic manuscripts which had convinced the academic world for a long time. This was getting far too close for comfort to something she did not want to face at the moment. She glanced at her watch. ‘Sorry, Steve, but I’m going to have to go. I have to be somewhere.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘We’ll talk some more about this, I promise. But please, please, don’t say anything to Hugh. It is nothing that would interest him or be remotely important for his area of research, honestly.’ She hesitated. ‘And maybe I will go and stay with your parents. I would like to go back to Ingleborough. It was enormously atmospheric.’

Closing the door behind him she paused, looking down at the card he had pressed into her hands:

Peggy and Gordon Steadman

Winter Gill Farm

High Fell

Ingleborough

N. Yorks

High Fell, Ingleborough. The name resonated in her head. Suddenly she was shivering with excitement.

II

It was focussing so closely and so constantly on Cartimandua that had first brought the woman closer. It must have been. It was as though she was there at the end of a phone line and it had begun soon after Viv had actually started writing the book following two years of intense research, two years of studying Roman texts, of following up the latest archaeological, anthropological and social studies. She had interviewed archaeological conservators, forensic archaeologists, philologists. She had, she used to say to herself, learned to extract blood from stones.

Then one day, out of nowhere, as she sat staring at her computer screen she had heard the voice. Not clearly at first. No words. Just a strange resonance deep inside her brain. It had worried her. She wondered if she was going potty; she took a couple of days off. Then it happened again and this time she had heard the one word clearly.

Vivienne.

A strange, foreign-sounding version of her own name and one she never, ever, used herself.

She worked harder every time it happened, fighting it; ignoring it. So the voice used another approach. In her dreams. And in her dreams she could do nothing to stop it.

She grew confused. Cartimandua was emerging from the shadows of archaeology as a flesh and blood personality. She had grey-green eyes with dark flecks in them, red-blonde hair which was thick and long, she had strong broad cheek bones and a generous mouth. A forceful character. She was clever. Sometimes amusing. Often troubled. Sometimes hard to understand.

It had been so difficult to ignore her. To stick to the facts. The facts as far as they are known through a few Roman historians and Cartimandua’s place within the historical context of first-century Britain.

Each time it happened she had fought it tooth and nail. Thrown down her pen. Another whole passage of the book to be erased. Romantic, imaginative rubbish. Her book was to be factual.

She had spoken to a colleague in the modern history department, cautiously, casually, not giving too much away, about getting too close to the subject of one’s biography.

‘Oh God, yes!’ he had said, roaring with laughter. ‘It’s spooky. You become so intimate with someone you get right under their skin. You feel you know them better than they know themselves. Don’t worry, old thing. We read too many letters and diaries in our job, that’s the problem.’

Viv had nodded and grinned and walked away. Too many letters and diaries?

No. Not in the Iron Age.

If only.

If Cartimandua had written letters and diaries they had long ago dissolved into the sodden mires of northern England where she had lived and loved and died, and academics are not supposed to know how the subjects of their biographies feel and think without those indispensable written sources.

Hugh was right. She was probably a novelist at heart. Someone who could write good convincing historical fiction.

‘But I’m not!’ The words exploded out of her, heard only by the pot plants on her window sill. ‘I am an academic, damn it! I have studied Celtic history for fifteen years. That’s why this has all come so easily. It’s not because of –’ She paused. ‘It’s not because of her.’

Viv’s editor had loved it. So had the publishers’ readers; the publicity department; the sales team. Parts of it which she had cut, her editor insisted on reinstating – the best bits – the most ‘imaginative’! And the first person to look at it who knew what he was talking about, Professor Hugh Graham, had spotted it immediately. Cartimandua’s voice was there. It shouldn’t have been.

And now Viv was hearing it again, more insistently than ever. The book was finished. The voice should have gone away. Instead it was louder and now there was no reason – no academic reason – not to listen. After all, there were so many pieces of the jigsaw still missing. So much she still wanted to know.

Walking slowly back into her living room, so empty after Steve’s departure, Viv was lost in thought. Where was the voice coming from? Was it from her imagination? Was it a memory? An echo? A ghost? Why did she have this strange feeling suddenly that on top of all the other reasons not to listen to the voice that called itself Cartimandua, there might be one overriding factor. That it was dangerous?

She stood staring at the phone thoughtfully. Perhaps she should tell Cathy what was happening. Cathy would know what to do. She was after all the psychologist; the expert. But then, supposing Cathy said it was stupid and potentially harmful and that she should stop?

The words of the first scene of her play resonated in her mind again suddenly. Once written, she had not been able to erase them. Most of them hadn’t gone into the book, but they were still there. In her computer. In her notes. In her head. They were the bit of the play that Maddie Corston had praised. They were the words that had first brought Cartimandua alive.

III

For as long as she could remember she had known that she would be a queen some day. It wasn’t a dream, or a memory of past existences or a knowledge of a destiny which was the result of birth or fortune. It was a certainty. A knowing in her blood. Besides, the goddess had told her. The first time she had heard the voice clearly she had been standing quite alone amongst the trees near the river in the lush valley below her hilltop home. She had left her pony to graze and was staring down into the glittering churning sweep of the brown waters, her mind a blank, mesmerised by the movement of the ripples.

Cartimandua

The voice seemed to echo off the stones beneath her feet, resound from the boulders, rustle in the leaves above her head. Cartimandua, Queen of the North.

Awed, she stared round. This valley was full of gods; it was a sacred place and this was a sacred river and a goddess had spoken her name. A goddess called Vivienne. She knew what she looked like, her goddess. She had glimpsed her green eyes in the reflections of the water, seen her hair, the russet of oak leaves in autumn, in weed streaming amongst the rocks. And it was there that, cautiously, shyly, for the first time, she answered the call of the goddess who called her queen.

Her brothers had laughed. Good-natured, tolerant, fond of their small sister, they encouraged her fantasy. They taught her all day, every day, to run, to throw a spear, to wield her small razor-sharp sword and to ride. To ride as though she were part of the horse itself. It was they who had given her her special name – Cartimandua, which meant Sleek Pony – teasing her as, soaked to the skin in the rain and the mist of her native Pennine Hills she leaned forward against the neck of her pale cream garron, her own long fair hair hanging in ropes about its neck, blending with its mane as they tore across the heather-clad fells and the dales and into the forest. It was her brothers and their friends who set her up to stand on an upturned box to address her troops, the children and young men and women of the hilltop fort on the high northern moors where they had been born, and who led the cheering as she rallied her followers to their next adventure.

She did not enjoy weaving.

Or sewing.

Or playing with other girls save those who, tomboys like herself, dreamed of being warriors alongside their menfolk.

It didn’t matter what she did. She was the apple of her father, the tribal chieftain’s eye, her uncle’s darling, and if she was the despair of her ambitious mother she didn’t care. She romped unchecked through the small township, her clothes peat-stained, her fingernails split and dirty, her straw-coloured hair unkempt. Until the autumn of her twelfth year. The year her world was to change forever.

Her own special hound, Catia, had whelped in the night. She was a small bitch and the sire had been huge. The birth had torn the dog badly. Gentle and strong as she always was with her animals Carta had done her best to help, her small fingers easing out the last of the pups, tearing apart the membranes the bitch was too weak to break with her teeth, plugging the baby to the teat even as she knew the mother was dying. Three of the pups were already dead. Her eyes full of tears, she was sitting in the watery dawn sunlight, her hand on the bitch’s head as it lay in the shelter of the log-shed outside the great round house, when a shadow fell across her and she looked up blindly. ‘She won’t live,’ she wailed. She did not ask for help. It never occurred to her to ask help from an adult. Already she was self-sufficient.

It was a stranger who stood over her. A tall lean man of some forty summers wrapped in a mantle of green and blue dyed wool. She had heard with some part of her the watchman’s horn and knew someone must be approaching the gates of the township, but had taken no notice, too preoccupied to care. He bent towards the dog, laying down his staff and the leather bag he carried and, going down on one knee he put a gentle hand on the dog’s flank.

‘She can still be saved.’ His voice was deep. ‘Take the surviving pups from her. She has no strength to feed them. Is there another bitch here to adopt them? If not I’ll twist their necks.’

‘No!’ Her eyes flashing fury Carta pushed at him, trying to place herself between him and the dog. ‘I will not have the pups killed. She has plenty of milk. They can feed till she dies. Then I will feed them myself with goat’s milk. And maybe she’ll be all right.’ Her certainty faded. ‘I will ask the goddess to bless her.’ She looked doubtfully down at the dog who lay, eyes closed, without moving.

The man studied Carta’s face briefly, then he reached forward and taking her hand examined her blunt, dirty little fingers covered in dried blood. ‘Is she your bitch?’

Carta nodded.

‘And you are willing to nurse her? And the pups if necessary?’

The girl nodded. She wiped her eyes defiantly with the back of her hand and set her jaw in determination.

‘Then we will try to heal her. The goddess needs our help in this, child. Or she will take the dog to herself where it will play forever in the summer lands. Do you want to help her?’ He glanced up and saw the eager nod, the sudden frown, the inclination of the head as though she was trying to recall some forgotten memory. He studied her face. ‘What is it, child?’

She shook her head as if irritated at some unknown failure. ‘The goddess does not want Catia. Not yet.’ The goddess whose voice she heard in the wind on the fells. The goddess who had spoken to her from the river. Vivienne.

He held her gaze for a moment, then he nodded as though satisfied at some conclusion he had arrived at in his own mind. ‘Go and fetch a pot of boiling water, and – wait!’ He had hardly raised his voice as she jumped to her feet but the authority in it turned her to stone. ‘Wash your hands before you come back.’

When she returned it was to find he had opened his bag and extracted packages of dried herbs and mosses, small glass phials, and a set of sharp bladed knives and scalpels. ‘You are a healer?’ Her eyes were round with relief. ‘Why didn’t you say?’ She was carefully carrying a pitcher of hot water drawn from a cauldron hanging over one of the cooking fires.

He was sliding moss between the bitch’s back legs.

‘I am here to settle matters of dispute, child. But I retain an interest in healing, certainly. Here, put these to steep in the water till it cools.’ He handed her a small wooden pot of herbs and dried berries. ‘Now, whatever you say, we must remove these puppies. They will drain her life force. They can come back to her later when she is stronger.’

Her eyes had widened. He was a Druid, then. She had not noticed his robes under the warm mantle. A wise man come to settle the legal disputes within the huge hill fort compound formed by the hilltop ramparts. Her father, king of the Setantii, had his own Druids, of course. They ran a school and a college in the forest near the river in the valley below the fort and two of their most senior members were his advisers at the tribal councils. This man must be very special and very senior to have been summoned specially. She was dimly aware of there having been quarrels amongst her father’s followers; the reason for them did not interest her. She reached out for the puppies, detaching them with much whimpering and squealing from their mother’s teats and snuggled them into her arms. ‘I can put them with my brother’s hound. She is so stupid she won’t notice the extra.’

‘Take them.’ He smiled at her, reading perhaps more into her comment than she had intended. This bright, wilful girl obviously had little respect for the sibling whose dog she described so dismissively. ‘Then come and watch what I do. Your hands are strong and gentle. You have the makings of a healer.’

As she had suspected, the pups settled to their foster mother at once with no sign of surprise or hesitation on either side as she lay in the shade of the wool store with her own litter. Carta watched for a moment, making sure the week-old pups did not push the newcomers aside, but there seemed space for all and with one or two indignant squeaks and a gentle inspection and lick from the new mother all was peaceful. Threading her way through the dozen or so houses with their attendant granaries, barns, stores, work-shops and stables which comprised the settlement where she had grown up, she found a small respectful circle of spectators had formed around the visitor and the sick dog in the beaten-earth courtyard in front of her father’s house.

She pushed between them impatiently only to find her father standing in the way as he addressed their visitor. ‘Welcome, friend. I am sorry this child has waylaid you. She had no business bothering you with such trifles.’ Her father was a tall well-built man, handsome and much respected within the tribe. He was, she noticed, wearing his best mantle with the silver circlet denoting his kingship around his shaggy mane of reddish hair.

Their visitor looked up. ‘The life of a dog is not a trifle, Bellacos. On the contrary,’ he smiled gravely. ‘Matters of law can wait. Let us see what we can do for this creature, then I shall come to your fireside later.’

That evening, certain that Catia was sleeping soundly on the rug on her own heather bed and that the puppies were content and replete with their new mother, Carta crept back at last into the great feasting hall of the Setantii. Built several years ago beside her father’s house, this hall, slightly larger than her family home and without smaller rooms around the circular walls, formed a great ceremonial space, kept for tribal gatherings and entertainments and for communal meals. Richly decorated with colourful woven wall hangings, elaborately carved support pillars, and everywhere riots of colour and design, it was lit by dozens of lamps. As the population of the settlements crowded in, the great hall was smoky from the central fire and the lamps and smelling strongly of the food which was even now being carried in on great heavy trays. Carta arrived in time to see her father passing their guest a horn of the best mead. She wriggled onto the bench between the two men, almost deafened by the noise of shouting and laughter as the whole community crowded in to see their visitor and to share the evening meal. By the flickering light of the flaring lamps, meat from the firepits and ovens in the kitchens was being passed round on platters swimming in rich blood gravy together with bowls of stew and baskets of bread and hunks of fine rich cheese. By the wall Enocios, the harper, was strumming a gentle background music all but inaudible in the hubbub around him.

Bellacos and his visitor, engaged in serious talk, had not seemed to notice the small girl who had forced her way onto the cushioned bench between them, but now the newcomer glanced down. He laid his knife beside his platter and wiped his fingers on the napkin before patting her unruly head. ‘So, is the bitch comfortable?’

Carta nodded. ‘She’s asleep on my bed.’

He smiled gravely. ‘And where will you sleep, little one?’

‘Anywhere. I don’t care.’ She was immediately on the defensive. She was aware that her father’s attention had already wandered. He was scanning the company for someone. Her uncle was there, on the other side of their visitor, so it must be her eldest brother, Triganos, he sought. She scowled, hoping fervently that Triganos would as always be somewhere else, lurking in the stables or the arms hall with his friend and foster brother, Venutios. If they came over she would be chased away to sit with the other children or sent to sit at her mother’s side at the far side of the fire and forgotten. She hadn’t stirred beneath the stranger’s hand. It was light. Gentle. Warm. Normally she would have wriggled away, ducked aside and fled but he fascinated her and he had won her trust as easily as he had won that of her dog.

‘So, child. What do they call you?’ His voice was deep and melodious. He took his hand away and she felt for a moment bereft.

‘My birth name was Áine. Radiance. But my brothers call me Sleek Pony.’ She shrugged in acceptance. ‘Cartimandua.’

‘And does it suit you, this new name?’ He was smiling.

Her father answered for her. ‘Indeed it does.’ He gave a roar of laughter. ‘Carta is a child of Epona and no mistake.’ A huge muscly arm encircled her bony shoulders and he gave her a bear hug.

‘And what does your mother plan for you?’ The stranger was looking down at her thoughtfully.

‘Nothing. Or if she does, there is no point.’ Carta looked up at him and fixed him with large eyes which were in some lights blue-grey and in others the green of the mountain lakes. ‘I am going to be a queen.’

Her father’s shout of laughter was echoed by the men and women around them who had overheard the exchange. It was warm, loving laughter. She was popular, their leader’s small daughter, much loved and much admired for her courage and her wild beauty.

The stranger didn’t laugh. He was looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Who told you this, child? Your mother?’

She shook her head.

‘Then who?’

‘The Lady.’

She saw his pupils dilate as he held her gaze and she felt a moment of fear. ‘She speaks to me when I’m by myself sometimes,’ she said defiantly. ‘She is called Vivienne.’

A hush had fallen on the hall. The stranger was nodding wisely. ‘Remind me, Bellacos. This child is a daughter of Brigantia. Through your blood a daughter of the Setantii. But also of the Trinovantes through her mother, is that not so?’

Carta’s father sobered rapidly. He shot a quick glance across his daughter’s head towards their guest. ‘Indeed. The bards tell us that her mother’s mother’s mother was the daughter of Mandubraccios of the Trinovantes. After his death, his wife, also a princess of Brigantia, of the Corionototae, brought her home to her people here in the north. It was not safe to remain in the south. Cassevellaunus’s heirs were hunting for anyone of his blood. To wipe them out.’

‘And your mother’s line?’

‘The daughter of the king of the Textoverdi.’

‘So. This little one has many lines of royal blood in her veins. A bloodline which makes you the most likely choice as next high king of the Brigantes in your turn.’ The Druid stroked his chin for a moment. ‘And she has no sisters? Only brothers?’ When Bellacos nodded he thought for several more moments, then abruptly he made to stand up. ‘I will retire to consult with the gods. Her destiny is written, Bellacos, and she knows it.’

Bellacos’s mouth dropped open. ‘But she is only a child.’

‘Children grow up, my friend.’ The Druid had climbed to his feet. He rested his hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘And the time may come when there is no one else of the royal blood to lead your people. When you and your sons and your brothers’ sons have gone to join the gods she may be the only one left of the family.’ In the silence that followed everyone held their breath. He was foretelling not only Carta’s future, but the death of the king and of his sons. His eyes held those of his host calmly. What the gods ordained would come to pass whatever attempts were made to circumvent their plans. ‘If it is her destiny,’ he went on into the silence, ‘if she is to be chosen as queen, then she will need to be trained for her life to come and no longer allowed to run wild with the ponies.’ He touched Carta lightly on the forehead with his index finger. ‘I will look into the future for her tonight. Tomorrow we will speak further.’

IV

Hugh Graham was sitting at his desk at home in his grey stone Gothic house behind its tall hedges of laurels in the pretty village of Aberlady. The story of Venutios was ringing in his head. Cursing, he tried once again to banish it. The notes on his desk were about the Roman invasion; legionary dispersements; the south of England. He had not yet reached the part of his book where he would concentrate on the Brigantes, let alone the story of Venutios. He was wishing profoundly that he hadn’t mentioned the book to Viv. He had implied that it was to be about the Brigantian king, and it wasn’t. Oh yes, Venutios would feature in it, indeed play an important part, but not to the exclusion of all else, so why was the man’s story suddenly obsessing him like this?

He glared at the piles of books around him. It was the third time he had sat down. He had been walking restlessly up and down the floor, unable to settle at anything since his interview with Viv. He frowned in irritation. He should be in the department this morning; had had two important appointments this afternoon which now he had been forced to ask the departmental secretary to reschedule. Why?

Why had he left in such a hurry after Viv had stormed out yesterday? Too much of a hurry to check where the brooch was in the litter of his desk and lock it up for safe-keeping. That worried him. He was treating it with almost deliberate carelessness and he wasn’t sure why. He shivered. He hadn’t wanted Viv to touch it for a very good reason. It felt poisonous. When, cautiously, with his fingertips because he had no special gloves on, he had touched it himself, he had almost dropped it, appalled by the cold sense of evil the thing exuded.

So, why had he left it on his desk at all? Because for some insane reason he had wanted it to sit, if only for a few moments, in a ray of clean, hot sunshine. For a few seconds he contemplated the irrationality of the thought.

The atmosphere in the room had been Viv’s fault of course, not the brooch’s. The anger she had left behind her had been tangible. No one could settle down to work after that. He sighed, even more irritated with himself to find he was thinking about her again, especially considering the annual review upon which he was supposed to be working. He dragged his attention to the backlog of papers on his desk.

The exams had gone well this year. There would be fewer resits over all, and none in the second year and that was largely down to Viv. She was a good teacher, he had to admit it. He frowned. She was also an infuriating woman, wasting her life with this popular – and there was no doubt it would be popular – claptrap !

He pushed his chair back again and went to stare out of the window at his garden. It was a mess. Alison used to adore the garden. Perhaps it had taken the place of the children they had never had. She had had green fingers. Everything she touched flourished. It was as if all her life force had seeped away into the flowers, leaving her with nothing of her own to fight the vicious cancer that had taken her in only seven short months.

‘Look after my plants, Hughie.’ She had reached out to take his hand only a day or two before she died. ‘I know you. You’ll stick your head in your books and forget them.’

She had indeed known him so well.

He cleared his throat loudly and walked back to his desk, staring down at the letter lying there on top of all the other papers. It was about the funding of research projects in his department. With an angry exclamation he noticed Viv’s name was still there. Snatching up his pen he scratched through it three times. The odd thing was he could picture Viv’s hurt and anger so clearly he could almost see her standing there in the room with him, with her unruly red hair and vivid eyes, a vision which recurred strangely often. In the silence of the house he could imagine Viv’s voice. Her peels of laughter; her irreverence. Even the thought of her anger made the place seem less lonely. He scowled and drew the pen through her name a fourth time before throwing the letter down on the blotter.

Alison had liked Viv. ‘She’s a natural historian, Hugh.’ She had giggled at the unintended ambiguity of the phrase. ‘Instinctive. Women can make leaps of deduction which turn out to be right, you know.’ She would have loved Viv’s article in the Sunday Times and the profile of Viv herself, devoured every word and rung Viv to enthuse about it for hours on the phone.

One of Alison’s favourite excursions had been to drive out to Traprain Law with its Iron Age fort; to stand, staring out at the view from the top, or to go on perhaps towards the Lammermuirs or down to the Eildon Hills, where he had scattered her ashes, the magical, Celtic hills where Thomas the Rymer met the faery queen, and where King Arthur sleeps with his knights. He shook his head in exasperation. No wonder she had liked Viv. They had both been wrapped up in all this myth and magic, legends and pseudo Celticism, fun in its own way, but not real. Never real. He had tried so hard to put her right, explained that the population densities around these great hill forts would have been high, probably far higher than today if aerial photography and archaeology were anything to go by. A crowded landscape of farms and round houses, walls and tracks, centred on a central township, which would probably have been a settlement already for some two thousand years at least before the Iron Age. A real, busy, populated place, not some misty magical other-worldly fairy land. And even if Alison had not been able to get her head around the reality beyond the myth, Viv should be able to. Viv of all people should understand the realities of history.

Picking up his keys he abandoned the desk and the departmental review, left the house and headed for his car. He always found solace in the bracing air of the hills. There he could clear his head and concentrate on a new and strangely persistent backdrop to the lonely song of the skylark. The voice of Venutios.

V

Cathy had invited Viv to supper the following Sunday. Her partner, Pete Maxwell opened the door. He was tall, painfully thin, with skimpy hair and the deeply tanned complexion of a man who has spent most of his life in the sun.

‘Sorry, I’m early.’ She handed him two bottles of wine she had picked up at the nearest off-licence and reached up to kiss his cheek.

‘Always good to see you, Viv, you know that.’ He glanced warily out onto the landing. ‘I’m expecting my ex with my daughter. Once she’s dropped her off I can relax,’ he said, by way of explanation.

Viv grimaced in sympathy. Over the years she had heard a lot about Pete’s marriage from Cathy. The current point of contention was the daughter of the marriage, Tasha. Until now she had been no problem. She went to school in Edinburgh and had lived with her mother in Cramond. Holidays had been divided between Sweden and Scotland but now Greta wanted her to go to school in Sweden. Pete, dear laid-back Pete, hadn’t really thought about it at all. Problem? What problem? Tasha wanted to live with them in the term time and stay at school in Scotland. Something that ought to be OK in theory but of course it wouldn’t be. Greta, she gathered from Cathy, would see to that.

‘Cathy’s in the kitchen. Come through.’ Pete turned and led the way down the corridor.

Cathy was peeling potatoes. ‘Hi, Viv. Grab yourself a glass. Did Pete tell you, Tasha is joining us.’

‘He did.’ Viv poured herself some wine as Pete disappeared into the depths of the flat to answer the phone in his study.

‘Let me do those.’ Viv perched on the bar stool at the worktop.

As Cathy handed over the peeler she glanced at Viv’s face. ‘You look a bit peaky. Are you OK?’

‘Sure.’ Viv gouged a potato viciously. ‘Well, sort of.’ She gave a wry grin. ‘Call me paranoid!’ She took a gulp from the glass. ‘But I think I’m being haunted.’ She hadn’t meant to say it; but the words were out before she could call them back.

‘Haunted?’ Cathy frowned. ‘By whom? Or what? I hope you don’t mind bangers and mash. That’s the one thing I can be sure Tasha will eat.’

‘Sounds great.’ Viv grinned. ‘You know me. I love my nosh.’ She reached for another spud. ‘By Cartimandua, I suppose. By the book.’ Now that it was out she couldn’t stop herself. She gave a small shudder. ‘I suppose I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms.’

Cathy glanced up at her as she laid the sausages out in a grill pan. ‘It sounds very likely. So, what exactly are the symptoms?’

Viv shrugged. ‘An inability to separate myself from the story, I suppose.’ She kept the description deliberately vague.

‘I think you should start a new book as soon as you’ve got this play sorted.’ Cathy put the sausages under the grill. ‘Start incubating the next child.’

Viv gave wry nod. ‘I thought it would be to do with umbilical cords. It’s all a bit physical, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Cathy picked up her own glass. She stood for a moment, thoughtful. ‘Yes, it really is. After all, you’ve been living with that book for, what, two years? It was bound to be a shock to your system to stop writing suddenly. I bet you were longing to finish and get it over and another part of you was dreading it. In fact, I know that’s how you feel. You’ve more or less said so.’

‘Have I?’ Viv looked surprised. ‘Well, I was right, I suppose. And I wanted Hugh to be supportive. I thought he would be. I suppose I thought the book would make him acknowledge the fact that I am an authority on my subject.’

‘And it’s done the opposite.’ Cathy was watching her over the rim of the glass.

‘Quite the opposite. It’s stupid, but you, know, I feel really disappointed now that the anger has worn off a bit.’

Behind her the doorbell rang. Moments later they heard voices in the hall.

Viv watched amused as a tall, blonde woman appeared in the doorway followed by her daughter, a small, slim child with her mother’s pale hair and delicate features. There was no sign of Pete. ‘Cathy, you will have to take Tasha to the orthodontist after school tomorrow, and she wants new sandals for the summer. I won’t have time at the end of term before I take her to Sweden, so you must do it. I have written down the makes that are acceptable.’ The woman put a piece of paper down on the worktop.

‘Greta, I don’t think you’ve met my friend, Viv.’ Cathy ignored the paper.

Greta glanced at Viv briefly and nodded. She didn’t smile. ‘I have to go. Don’t let Tasha stay up late as you did last weekend.’ Her accent was very faint, her words precise.

‘I thought you might stay and have supper with us, Greta.’ Cathy’s expression was eager. Too eager. Viv suppressed a smile.

‘Thank you, but no.’ The glance Greta threw around the kitchen implied incipient botulism at the very best. In a moment she had gone, without goodbyes to her daughter or Pete who were hovering in the hallway, leaving only a faint whiff of expensive scent behind her.

As the door closed, Cathy and Viv subsided into giggles. ‘What would you have done if she had said yes?’ asked Viv weakly.

‘Died of shock.’ Cathy sobered with an effort.

‘Does she always behave like that?’

‘Always.’

‘Wow.’ Viv took another deep swig from her glass. ‘And what is the daughter like?’ It seemed incredible that she had never met Cathy’s almost-stepdaughter and her mother before, but Cathy was usually careful to keep Pete’s family at arm’s length from her friends.

‘I’m very fond of her, but she can be a handful, I have to admit.’

As Viv was about to find out.

‘I have become a vegetarian! How could you eat poor dead animals!’ Tasha had taken one look at the table and the pan of sizzling brown sausages and assumed an expression of extreme disgust, so like the one her mother had displayed only minutes before.

‘No probs.’ Cathy was unfazed. ‘Eat the mash and vegetables and tomorrow we’ll go and buy some special stuff at Sainsbury’s on the way to the orthodontist. I think you’re quite right, you know. It’s much more healthy to be a veggie.’ She put three sausages on Viv’s plate. ‘Help yourself to onion gravy, Viv. No, sorry, Tash. It’s non-vegetarian.’

The child was staring at her plate. ‘Mummy thinks potatoes make you fat,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Mummy is probably right.’ Cathy shrugged. ‘So, just peas, then?’

Pete was sitting in silence, watching the scene. Viv thought there was a twinkle in his eye. ‘There are some tomatoes in the fridge, Tash.’

‘Dad! You know I hate tomatoes.’ The child was almost in tears.

‘You know …’ Viv thought it was time she said something helpful. ‘As those are free-range sausages, and organic – organic, Cathy?’

‘Definitely.’ Cathy nodded firmly.

‘They come from happy, healthy animals. It is tremendously important to support organic and free-range husbandry. Unless we do, farm animals will go on being treated badly.’

Tasha frowned. ‘But my friend Susie says –’

‘Viv is a university lecturer, Tasha,’ Cathy said quietly. ‘She knows about these things.’

‘Have one sausage, Tasha, for the sake of the poor animals.’ Viv caught Cathy’s eye. ‘And you can eat the gravy too. For the same reason.’

‘This puts an interesting spin on the range of Celtic history.’ Cathy grinned. ‘You being an expert on free-range and organics and stuff. But then they did do human sacrifice, didn’t they. Were they cannibals, too? If they ate their victims they would obviously have been organic so I’m sure a few pork sausages wouldn’t have been a problem.’

‘What?’ Tasha threw down her knife and fork.

‘Joke.’ Cathy held up her hands. ‘Got you!’

‘Oh yuck!’ Tasha made a face. For a moment, as the plate was put down in front of her she hesitated and Viv watched in amusement to see if Cathy had mishandled the situation fatally. She needn’t have worried. Within seconds the child was tucking into her supper.

They had all been eating for several minutes, enjoying the food and wine, when Viv noticed that Tasha had thrown several quick curious glances in her direction. Viv, still considering the concept of the organic Celts, met them with a grin but as Tasha stared at her more and more intensely she began to feel uncomfortable. ‘What is it, Tasha. Have I got a bird’s nest in my hair?’ she asked at last.

Tasha frowned. She looked scared. ‘Who is that woman behind you?’

Viv froze.

Cathy 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!

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