and then a roar. When the women heard it and turned, it had already taken hold, devouring the wall, leaping towards the roof beams, racing back across the floor towards them.
One of them ran to ring a tocsin to summon the men, but they would be too late to save the hall. The others bundled the unconscious princess into her bedding and carried her as fast as they could towards the door. Outside Einion frowned: it seemed the princess would live; yet it was foretold that she would die.
Rhonwen was to be the child’s nurse. She stood for a moment looking down at the baby crying on its sheepskin blanket. So little a mite, the last daughter of the Prince of Aberffraw; the granddaughter of John Plantagenet, King of England.
A burning beam crashed across the floor near the bed. Rhonwen smiled. The fire was a sign. Bride, lady of the moon, was a goddess of fire. This child was thrice blessed and touched by destiny. She would inherit Bride’s special care. Stooping, she gathered the baby into her arms, then she turned and ran amongst a shower of falling timbers for the door.
As the wind sucked the flames higher Einion Gweledydd raised his face to the east and his eyes widened in shock. The heavens too were aflame. The racing clouds flared orange and crimson and gold; where the wind had whipped the waves into towering castles they were purple and scarlet and gilded with sparks. The howl of the wind and water mingled with the greedy roar of the fire and the crash of thunder overhead. Before his awed gaze the clouds ran together and coalesced, their borders streaming flame as they reared up overhead. He saw the form of a great bird slowly spreading across the sky, its wings outstretched from the fire-tipped peaks of Eryri to the gold of the western sea.
The sun eagle. Eryr euraid. No! Not an eagle, a phoenix! His lips framed the word soundlessly. The bird of fire on its pyre as the sun was born in the east; as the last child of Llywelyn Fawr was carried from the burning hall; the child of Bride; the child of the fire; the child of the phoenix.
1228–1230
I
HAY-ON-WYE
‘Don’t look down!’ Balanced precariously on the wooden walkway at the top of the scaffolding which nestled against the high wall, the child turned and peered into the darkness. ‘Tuck your skirts up in your girdle,’ she called imperiously. ‘No one’s going to see your bottom in the dark!’ Her giggle was lost in the wail of the wind. ‘We’re nearly there. Come on!’
Far below the dangerous perch the courtyard of Hay Castle lay in darkness. A fine mist of rain had driven in across the Black Mountains and slicked the wooden scaffold poles and the newly dressed stone. Beneath their leather slippers the planks grew slippery.
Isabella de Braose let out a whimper of fear. ‘I want to go back.’
‘No, look! Three more paces and we’re there.’ Eleyne, the youngest daughter of Llywelyn, Prince of Aberffraw, and his wife, the Princess Joan, was ten, a year her friend’s junior. By a strange quirk of marriage and remarriage she was also Isabella’s step-great-aunt, a fact which caused the girls renewed giggles whenever they thought about it.
Eleyne gripped Isabella firmly by the wrist and coaxed her forward step by step. They were aiming for the gaping window of the gutted tower to which the new wall abutted. In another week or so the masons would be starting work on renovating it so that it could once again become the focal point of the castle, but as yet it was a deserted, mysterious place, the doors at the bottom boarded up to stop anyone going in amongst the tumbled masonry and charred beams.
‘Why do you want to see it?’ Isabella wailed. She was clinging to the flimsy handrail, her fingers cold and slippery with rain.
‘Because they don’t want us to see what is in there,’ Eleyne replied. ‘Besides, I think there’s a raven’s nest inside the walls.’ Letting go of the other girl’s wrist, she ran along the last few feet of planking and reached the wall of the old tower. Exhilarated by the wind and by the sting of the cold rain on her face, she could hardly contain her excitement. She felt no fear of heights. It had not crossed her mind that she might fall.
‘Come on, it’s easy.’ Peering over her shoulder she narrowed her eyes against the rain. Below, the roofs of Hay huddled around the castle, with here and there a wisp of rain-flattened blue smoke swirling in the darkness. She was very conscious suddenly of the brooding silence beyond the town where the great mass of black mountains stretched on either side of the broad Wye Valley into the heartland of Wales.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Of course you can. Here.’ Forgetting the mountains, Eleyne ran back to her. ‘I’ll help you. Hold my hand. See. It’s easy.’
When they were at last perched side by side in the broad stone window embrasure, both girls were silent for a moment, catching their breath. They peered into the black interior of the tower. The ground, four storeys below, was lost in the dark.
‘It must have been an incredible fire,’ Eleyne murmured, awed, her eyes picking out, cat-like, the blackened stumps of beam ends in the wall. ‘Were you here when it happened?’
Isabella swallowed and shook her head. ‘It was before I was born. Let’s go back, Elly. I don’t like it.’
‘There was a fire when I was born,’ Eleyne went on dreamily. ‘Rhonwen told me. It destroyed the hall at Llanfaes. There was nothing but ash by morning when my father came.’
‘This was burned by King John.’ Isabella glanced down into the darkness, closed her eyes hastily and shuddered. ‘There’s no nest here, Elly. Please, let’s go.’
Eleyne was silent. She frowned: King John. Her mother’s father, descendant, so it was claimed, of Satan himself. In her mind she chalked up another black mark against her mother’s hated family. Hastily she put the unpleasant thought aside and turned back to the problem in hand. ‘The nest must be on a ledge somewhere on the walls inside. I’ve watched them flying in and out.’ She stretched her hands out into the darkness as far as she dared. ‘I’ll have to come back in daylight. Rhonwen says the raven is a sacred bird and I want a feather for luck.’
‘The masons will never let you in.’
‘We could come at dawn, before they start work.’
‘No.’ Determinedly, Isabella started edging back on the sill, feeling with her foot for the wooden planks. ‘I’m going back. If you don’t want to come, you can stay here alone.’
‘Please. Wait.’ Eleyne was reluctant to move. She loved the cold rush of the wind, the darkness, the loneliness of their eyrie. And she was very
