24

‘I need my empress at my side!' Alone with his wife at last, Macsen, divested of his armour, and dressed only in his tunic, threw himself down on the couch, a goblet of wine in his hand. ‘How can you possibly say you want to go back to Britannia now?'

Elen was sitting at a table near the narrow window, a -letter unrolled before her. She had weighted it flat with her own -goblet and a polished marble paperweight. Her pen-case lay on the table nearby. She had dismissed her scribe and the servants as soon as Macsen had appeared. He looked exhausted. With a sigh she stood up and walked over to him, reaching out to smooth his curly hair back from his forehead. There were streaks of grey there now. ‘Running an empire is more tiring than you -expected?' She smiled.

He laughed. ‘Indeed it is.' Setting his goblet down on a side table, he pulled her to him and settled her on his knee. ‘And we have so little time together.'

She still felt that visceral longing when he touched her, but always the thought of Valeria somewhere out there in the officers' quarters came between them. ‘Your children miss you,' she said stiffly. She made to move, but he held her still.

‘And I them. We will have plenty of time once the world is at peace. So, who is the letter from?' He had noticed her pre-occupation as he came in.

‘Branwen. She is at Segontium.'

He nodded slowly. ‘And is all well there?'

She hesitated. ‘Nothing to bother you.'

‘Tell me.'

‘She worries that there is local unrest. They have sent for Conan to come and take charge.'

‘Conan? Why not someone from Deva?'

Because there is no garrison of any note there anymore. You took them away. She did not say it. ‘Branwen does not go into detail. This letter was sent several weeks ago. I am sure all is well by now.'

‘My own messengers say Britannia is peaceful. Conan ought to be in Armorica as I ordered. Your father is based at Camulodunum as high king. There should be no unrest.'

She smiled. ‘As always you have your hand on every province, my dear. Have no fear. All you need think about is your next campaign. But I would feel more use to you if I returned to Britannia with the children.'

‘No!'

‘You are forever preparing for war! Can you not be -content?' Surely he could feel that her fists were clenched as her voice rose. ‘Gratian has gone and your position is unassailable. -Theodosius seems happy to allow you the title of co--emperor of the West with Valentinian. Is that not enough? -Theodosius rules the eastern half of the empire from -Constantinopolis and young Valentinian is happy enough playing emperor in -Mediolanum. Sharing with him is no more than a sop to hispride.'

‘I intend to take Mediolanum and then Roma itself, to make it once again the centre of the world.' His eyes glittered.

She frowned. ‘I've every faith in you. You know that. I'm sure you will vanquish their opposition should they offer any, but surely it makes sense for your family to be removed to safety, at least for a while, until all is truly at peace.'

‘I want the children at my side.' He reached over for his wine. ‘I'm going to make our eldest son my heir.'

She felt a sudden chill. ‘Victor has proved himself in Britannia in your absence. I suppose that makes sense,' she said warily.

‘Not Victor Magnus.' It was their nickname for the son of his first marriage. ‘I speak of Flavius Victor, our son. I am going to create him co-emperor with me.'

Tearing herself free of his restraining arms, she slid off his knee and stood up, appalled. ‘You can't do that! He's a little boy.'

‘He is the emperor's son, Nel. Gratian made his -brother, -Valentinian, co-emperor with him at the age of four and-Valentinian, child as he still is, sends messages to -Theodosiusbegging him to help reinstate him in all his -brother's lands; lands I have conquered. Theodosius himself made his infant son Arcadius co-emperor with him only last year. I need to do the same to show my commitment to my dynasty and to the future.'

‘Then why not make your eldest son your heir?'

Macsen stood up. He walked over to the sideboard and reached for the jug of wine, topping up his goblet. ‘Because Big Victor is not your son!' He was getting angry. ‘It's your royal blood that makes my imperial line unquestionable. Little Flavius Victor is the descendant of kings. Besides'– he took a gulp of wine– ‘Big Victor is fully occupied elsewhere.' The air was heavy with unspoken words. His eldest son had been a disappointment to his father. He was hot-headed. He lacked judgement. His was not considered to be a steady hand. But the fact remained he was a grown man and a soldier. Surely she did not have to remind him that the mother of Victor and Constantine, Ceindrech ferch Reiden, had also been the daughter of a royal line.

‘If you do this the Emperor Theodosius will see it as a direct challenge,' she said at last.

‘And we can settle our dispute once and for all, in battle if need be. I intend to be emperor of the entire empire, not a mere half of it.'

‘So half the known world is not enough for you?' It was a cry of despair. ‘You have to have more, always more! You plan to use my son as bait to lure Theodosius to meet you in battle! No, Macsen. I forbid it!'

‘ You forbid me !' He turned on her, furious. ‘You do as I say, Elen. I am creating our son heir to the empire. That is the end of the matter. And you and the children will stay at my side. You will not return to Britannia. And whatever seditious rubbish that old woman in Segontium has told you, you will ignore it. I forbid you to correspond with her anymore.' He strode across to the table and, seizing the letter, he screwed it up and hurled it to the floor. ‘Your place is with me and there you will remain, if I have to chain you to my chariot wheel!'

The shouted words jerked Cadi out of the story. She stared round the room, the quarrel still echoing in her head, the lamp-lit shadows of the great palace at Trier hovering around her in the cottage. She dropped her pen and found that her hands were shaking, the emotion of the story still raw. She stood up and walked over to the kitchen to fill a glass with water, sipping it as she stared out of the window into the darkness of the street. It was still raining and somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of marching feet, ominous, somehow inex-orable. With a shiver she leaned across the sink and drew down the blind. An echo. Or ghosts? Hobnailed sandals on Roman stone. An echo, trapped in the foundations beneath the tarmac for millennia, only waiting for someone with the ears to hear it. Marching men of the legion, on their way to do their duty wherever it lay, in fourth-century Gaul or Viking Wales, or here in a twenty-first century meadow threatened by someone whose aim was, for whatever reason, to obliterate history and perhaps to destroy her.

Hurrying to open the front door to the urgent knock next morning and hoping it was Charles, Cadi was surprised to see Rachel on the doorstep. ‘Don't tell me you weren't expecting me!' Rachel was not pleased by Cadi's moment of blank confusion. ‘Do you ever look at your emails?' She pushed past Cadi into the room and stared round at the mess of papers and books lying over every spare surface. ‘Bloody hell! What's been going on?'

Cadi smiled. ‘Sorry. No, I didn't see your email. When did you send it?' Automatically she headed for the kettle. ‘It's good to see you, by the way.'

‘I should think so.' Rachel laid the portfolio she was carrying under her arm on the table. ‘I've brought some sketches to show you. I told you, if you'd bothered to read my message, that I was on my way to meet a potential buyer of some of my paintings in Cardiff and I was going to drop in on the way. What on earth have you been doing?' She walked over to Cadi's desk where one of the large-scale maps was laid out over a heap of notebooks and sketch plans.

‘I'm still researching the meadow. All sorts of exciting things have been happening. They found a body.'

‘What!' Rachel stared at her. ‘A recent body?'

‘Not that recent. Well, probably mid twentieth century. They were a bit puzzled by the apparent age and the Roman context. The bones have been sent away for testing.'

‘And you saw them?'

Cadi nodded. ‘They had the police here and everything.'

Rachel whistled. ‘Exciting.' She accepted a cup of coffee and took a sip. ‘So, do you want to see what I've done for those last verses you sent me?'

Cadi nodded.

There were several minutes of total silence as Cadi flipped through the dozen or so watercolour sketches in the portfolio. They were pretty, misty, fairy-tale drawings of a lantern-jawed hero and a beautiful princess. She finished and shut the folder, shaking her head. ‘They're nothing like the real people. Sorry, Rachel, but they're not.'

‘But you said— This is what we discussed.' Rachel stared at her.

‘I suppose. But that was before. I've—' She was about to say, I've seen them, but she realised she hadn't. Not really. Not even in dreams. They were just there on paper and inside her head. She glanced up and saw the confusion on Rachel's face. ‘Sorry. I know we discussed it and that's exactly what we talked about and they are lovely but, they're just not right.'

‘Well, I think they're right. I think they're exactly right! That was why I brought them over.'

‘I thought you brought them over to ask me what I think. And I think they're wrong.' Cadi was surprised by the wave of impatience that swept over her. ‘They are beautiful and pretty and all that, and fairy tale, but that's just the point. They're not a fairy tale. These are real people in a real world. A world of blood and sweat and tears.'

Rachel sat down with a thump on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘Well, you've changed your tune. What happened to fairy-tale castles with medieval castellations in the shadows and heroines in beautiful medieval gowns?'

Cadi shook her head. ‘I know. I'm sorry. But I hadn't quite realised how flesh and blood these people really were.'

‘But, Cadi, we're not writing history. We're reproducing a version of the story in the Mabinogion. That was medieval! You're writing a modern version of a medieval allegory.' She stood up and moved over to Cadi's desk. ‘So, where is the poem? How much more have you actually written since I was here? You sent me two more verses. Where's the rest?' She picked up the map and dropped it on the floor, exposing the drifts of paper on the desk underneath. She rifled through them. ‘You -haven't done anything, have you. This is all your stupid automatic scribbling! I thought we agreed you were going to do both. You haven't given a thought to the poem.' She found the pile of printed sheets Cadi had transcribed that morning. ‘You haven't, have you. You're obsessed with all this stuff that reads like a novel!'

‘You knew I was doing them both,' Cadi said indignantly. ‘I thought you were fine with it. I didn't know you were coming over today– so soon after you were here last! If I'd known I would have concentrated on the poem.'

‘You would have known if you'd bothered to look at your emails. You were too preoccupied with all this stuff to even do that.' Rachel waved her hand over the desk.

‘I was preoccupied, you're right. Of course I was.' Cadi knew she looked guilty. ‘It's just I haven't had time to do both. There's been a lot going on. It's not just the story. It's the battle to save the meadow, the archaeology, the police. It's distracting. And, yes, it's linked to the story in my head. This was Elen's home. They've found the outline of the palace where she was born– I've seen the drought marks in the field– and it corresponds to the outline Meryn dowsed, and we know it was threatened by pirates who probably burned it to the ground. I've even seen the blackened stones here in my own garden.'

Rachel shook her head. ‘Pirates now!'

‘Yes, pirates. From Ireland.'

‘And am I supposed to paint them for you, with cutlasses intheir teeth and gold rings in their ears? Shamrocks tucked into their head rags?'

‘No. They're not in the poem. Of course they're not. I know what I'm going to put in the poem, I just think it would be nice if Elen and Macsen looked a little more realistic. Make them stronger personalities. Macsen is good, but too young, too handsome. He needs to be more like you painted him in that first sketch you did. And Elen,' she hesitated, ‘I know what I said, but she's strong, Rachel. A real woman, not a fairy-tale princess!'

Rachel narrowed her eyes. ‘I went to a lot of trouble over these. I'm inclined to tell you to stuff your poem!'

She sounded like a child and Cadi was reminded of the quarrels they had had when they were little. Both only children, the cousins were the nearest thing to siblings each had and when they met they hadn't always got on. It was only later they began to forge a closer bond. She scowled. ‘You can't do that. Your paintings are what make them so popular. Oh please, Rachel. Try to understand.'

‘I do understand. You're bored with the whole concept. Historical fiction is more fun and probably more lucrative.' Rachel turned away from the desk, went over to the kitchen table and slammed her portfolio shut. She picked it up. ‘I have to go to Cardiff.'

‘Rachel. Please, don't be cross. Those sketches are lovely. And listen! Do you remember when we were doing the last book, the story of Math, the mythical king of Gwynedd, we went to see the site of that Iron Age fortress on the clifftop? Dinas Dinlle. You did some fabulous sketches of it as it is now and as it might have been in the story? With Caer Arianrhod, the magical palace of the goddess, out there in the sea and we couldn't tell whether or not one can still see it because the glare of the sun on the water was so strong and we decided that's perfect for such a special place. Well, Dinas Dinlle has come up again, in this story. Not mentioned in the original, but in my version it was the fort where the local king was based with his tribesmen when Elen gets to Segontium.' She waited for a response from Rachel. None came. ‘OK. Tell you what. Let's leave them as they are and I'll send you some more of the poem. I promise. Soon. You did say you had other things going on, and you've obviously got other customers or you wouldn't be rushing off all the way to Cardiff to meet someone.' She bent to gather up the map, then stopped, frowning as a thought hit her. ‘You always used to say, if they won't come to see you in your studio by the sea, then they aren't going to understand your paintings enough to buy them,' she said softly. ‘What's changed?'

Rachel scowled. ‘I haven't got the choice anymore. I need the money.'

‘I thought you were doing OK.'

Rachel shook her head. ‘I've lived and worked in my beautiful studio by the sea for years without a thought for the future, but now my landlord has said he needs to sell.' She sighed. ‘He's being very fair. He's given me some time to try to get the money together, but it's a huge amount, Cadi.'

‘I didn't realise you didn't own it.' Cadi sat down heavily next to her. ‘Oh, my dear. I am so sorry.'

‘These things happen. Everyone needs money these days. He wouldn't be doing it if he didn't have to. It's all one godawful knock-on effect. Someone is pushing him so he has to push me, and I expect someone else is pushing that person and so on up the chain.'

‘And your mum can't help?'

‘No, of course she can't help.' Rachel's mum, Cadi's aunt, lived in Wrexham. Rachel's father, apart from donating his name and a fairly hefty artistic gene to his talented daughter, had never featured in her mother's life and therefore never in hers. As far as Rachel knew, he had ‘buggered off to who knew where', as her mother so elegantly put it, before she was born.

‘But, Rach, what we get for the book isn't going to go far; not enough to buy a house.'

‘I know.' Rachel sat glumly silent for a few seconds, then she climbed to her feet. ‘All the more reason to get to Cardiff asap. Sorry to be grumpy. I'll be in touch.'

‘And I will work on the poem, I promise. I'll email it to you bit by bit so you can get on with the sketches. And you're right. They're perfect for what we're doing. It's a completely different animal from the other weird stuff I'm producing. I wasn't thinking straight.' Cadi put her arm round Rachel's shoulders as they walked over to the front door. ‘Keep your chin up. Something will turn up.'

Charles knocked on the door an hour later. ‘I saw the car outside, so I walked on past and went to hang over the gate into the meadow until your visitor had gone. There is absolutely nothing happening out there. Steve said it would take a while before they got round to testing the bones, and when I asked if he was being chivvied by the owners of the field he went all po-faced and said I should know him better than thinking anyone could chivvy him.' He chuckled. ‘The longer the better, I say. Can I take you to lunch?'

It dawned on her that she had been afraid he might have changed his mind about coming back, as almost without realising it, she launched into an explanation of Rachel's situation. They were sitting at a corner table in the café. ‘It's such an awful thing to happen out of the blue. She must have been there at least fifteen years and it never occurred to her she had no security of tenure. She's spent her own money on doing the place up and creating her studio. It's the most idyllic place up on a cliff looking out to sea.' There she was, once again confiding in him as if he were an old friend.

‘Is she sure she hasn't got any rights?'

Cadi nodded. ‘She said she had consulted a lawyer. He's a neighbour who has a holiday home in the village. And her landlord is a friend. She doesn't want to go to war with him. It sounds as though she's stuffed.'

‘Could she take out a loan?'

The trouble was, she was finding him increasingly easy to talk to. ‘I doubt it. What collateral would she have?' She sighed and sat thinking, her eyes fixed on her plate. She had ordered quiche with salad and Charles had chosen a ploughman's. ‘Poor Rach. What a complete disaster. But, it's not our problem.' She looked up at him with a watery smile. ‘I'll talk to her again in a day or two to find out how she got on with her buyer in Cardiff. In the meantime, she wasn't pleased to see how much time I was spending on my prose-writing about Elen.' She gave another heartfelt sigh. ‘And I can understand why. I'm not pleased either. I'm supposed to be working on my version of "The Dream of Macsen Wledig", not invoking my own dream. And the only thing I can do to help her is to produce it as soon as possible so we can give the completed manuscript to the publisher and collect some money. We won't get a huge advance. Far from it, but it's better than nothing for two ladies neither of whom have a proper day job.'

Charles laughed.

‘Do you think I'm mad?' Cadi glanced up at him. ‘To pursue this whole Elen business. Beyond the poem, that is.'

‘You're asking me, an ancient historian!'

‘Not so ancient.'

‘OK. I've heard that one before.' He grinned amiably. ‘I'm fascinated by the whole process that's going on here. How could I not be? I don't understand it and I find it quite creepy, if I'm honest,' he held her gaze, ‘but I'm ready to go with the flow. I'mas anxious to see what happens as you are. I've looked up the history, of course I have, to remind myself of this point towards the end of the empire. Your Macsen– Magnus -Maximus– hasa fairly well documented, if rather brief, place in what I would call proper history. His wife less so. She immediately tips into legend. I have colleagues in the Celtic Studies department who would be far better placed to talk to you about her, but I don't feel that would be of much help to you. Or not yet. So, let's see what happens in your version.'

‘Meryn wants me to concentrate on one of the lesser characters in the story. A Druidess. A wise woman who seems to be able to see into the future.'

‘In other words an avatar of you.'

‘Me!'

‘Yes, you. You can see into the future as far as your characters are concerned. You know what's going to happen. Can I read it?'

‘No.' It was an automatic response and she was shocked by the force with which she had replied. ‘No,' she repeated. ‘Sorry. Perhaps at some point, but not now. Not yet. Do you mind? It's nothing personal, it's just that I don't want to do anything that might switch it all off. Your reaction might be enough to put me off completely. When Meryn told me it read like a romantic novel I was gutted.'

‘So, he's read it.'

‘Some of it. I'm not showing him the rest.' She could feel herself going red with embarrassment. ‘I guess I'm not confident in what I'm doing, Charles. I feel a complete fraud. And a fool. This automatic writing is something I used to do when I was a child and a teenager. I shouldn't have even mentioned it to you. I wouldn't have if I wasn't so wrapped up in it, but now with all this going on, the body and everything, I'm not sure anymore. It's all crazy. The man was shot! This is not romantic nonsense. This is real.'

‘And exciting.' His smile was sympathetic. ‘I can see why you would want to go on with the story.'

‘It's like reading someone else's novel. A thriller. The sort of thing you find yourself reading late into the night because you can't put it down.'

‘It sounds as though you're a novelist manqué,' he commented thoughtfully. ‘And a poet, of course, but surely you can be both?'

‘I have to be both. For Rachel's sake.'

‘A great many other people read your poetry apart from Rachel,' he put in gently. ‘It seems to me you don't have much confidence in yourself, Cadi. I looked you up.' He raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘I know. I should have heard of you. I'm sorry. I'm a historian without an ounce of poetry in my soul, but I loved your stuff. I found a volume of your collected work in my local bookshop and one of your Mabinogion books. They are very beautiful.'

She could feel the heat in her cheeks, deepening them to scarlet. ‘Oh, please!'

‘Sorry. I shouldn't embarrass you. But it needs to be said. I suspect your nasty neighbour hasn't encouraged your confidence, and nor did his unpleasant son.'

‘No.' She shook her head. If he only knew. Sally's voice echoed in her head. The virgin poetess!

‘Right.' Charles stood up. ‘Wait there. I'm going to go and buy us each a coffee while you compose yourself.'

She watched him thread his way between the tables to the counter, order the coffees, point to two pastries in the display shelf and proffer his card. As he waited for the coffee he glanced down at his phone and returned it to his pocket.

By the time he returned with a loaded tray she was calm again. ‘I'm sorry. I'm an idiot.'

‘Subject closed.' He had chosen two chocolate eclairs. ‘I've just had a message from Steve. We should know the date of the bones and their possible provenance within a couple of days.'

‘And what about the mosaics? Surely the ground testing stuff would have shown them up?'

‘Apparently he's been told there's no possibility of them surviving the deep ploughing so it wasn't worth surveying the whole meadow or putting any trenches across.'

‘What deep ploughing?'

He pushed a plate towards her and handed her a fork. ‘Presumably the farmer—'

‘No. That's ancient meadow. No one has ever ploughed it. Dai has taken hay off it once or twice a year ever since I've lived here, and put his sheep to graze there, but it's never been ploughed.'

He frowned. ‘Not even in the war? Are you sure? I wonder who told him otherwise.' He raised an eyebrow. ‘Hold on. Let me ask him.' He pulled out his phone and began tapping out a brief message.

‘We can guess, can't we,' Cadi put in. She speared her eclair and sucked some chocolate and cream off the fork.

The reply was pinged back within seconds. He held out the phone so she could read the screen.

Orders from above. Will investigate further. Watch this space.

‘Who told you about the mosaics, or was it part of our paranormal experience?' he asked. He was concentrating on his -pastry and didn't look up.

‘It was Maggie Powell,' she said, amused. ‘Nothing paranormal about her. She was talking about riding in the meadow when she was a child. She's probably in her eighties. She might be worth talking to.'

‘Are you sure she's that old?' He was fiddling with his phone again. ‘She's pretty social-media-savvy for an eighty-year-old. She's put all her pictures of the dig on Facebook.'

Cadi laughed. ‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't judge other people by my own failings. I'm the one who's not all that media-savvy round here! It hadn't occurred to me to look.'

‘Hang on.' He was tapping away again and handed her his phone. ‘Don't forget as a lecturer my life is constantly interacting with my students so I've got to try and keep up with them a bit.'

Cadi squinted at the photos scrolling down the screen. ‘She's a good photographer, isn't she. But her comments are -pretty barbed. I wonder what Peter Williams thinks about it. His employer can't be too impressed, whoever it is.'

‘Perhaps he doesn't know. Are you up for going and asking her about the pavements?'