29

In her bed in the guest chamber in the palace of Augusta -Treverorum Branwen groaned and turned over, her dream growing ever more real. How could a bowl of water hold so many flames? She swirled the water gently and watched as the walls crumbled, the roof fell in and one by one the well-loved landmarks turned to ash. They were still there, the men who had fired the palace, shouting with glee, dancing in the glow of the embers as darkness fell, raking through the ash for anything that might have survived. She saw one, with a yell of triumph, point towards a figure emerging from the ruins. A guard from the villa, a retired legionary, sword in hand, had ducked out of the smoky shadows and was running for his life towards the shelter of the trees and the safety of darkness. The invaders spotted him and with shouts of rage began to give chase as he ran, ducking across the meadow where the horses had grazed. He didn't notice the pale flickering lights spiralling in the deeper shadow down by the stream, he was too intent on escaping the pursuers behind him. In moments he had run into the strangely uneasy silence of the spiralling lights and in an instant he was lost to sight, leaving his pursuers milling in confusion in an empty field. They all heard the one clear report echoing through the trees, the sound of a shotgun being fired in another age.

So Branwen had foreseen what was going to happen. She had even heard the shot. Cadi put down her pen and stared unseeing at the page before her. It was several long minutes before she picked up the pen again to see what happened next.

Still in her dream, Branwen put down the scrying bowl. Ducking out of the round house with its woven hangings and carved oak furnishings, she hurried across the roadway towards the gatehouse with its high lookout tower. Climbing the steps, she was relieved to see that the palace was untouched. It looked normal. Sleepy.

She screwed up her eyes in the bright sunlight and now she could see signs of life. There were men in the fields cutting the barley and others working in the vegetable gardens. There were vines in rows in the south-facing vineyard and the hay had been safely stooked and most of it brought into barns against the wet weather that would surely come. All looked peaceful and secure, but if she shifted her gaze across the tinder-dry countryside to the glitter of water that was the estuary of the great river Sabrina, she could see a distant cluster of black dots approaching from the sea.

She shivered. She did not have to see them more clearly to know that this heralded another incursion of pirates and there was no one to protect the palace. She had already seen what was going to happen.

‘You have seen them as well?' The elderly man behind her had been standing there for several moments before she noticed him. He was leaning heavily on his staff. Behind them the villagers, seeing their concentration on the distant river, began to climb the steep flight of steps to gather around them, staring out across the forest.

‘You must warn them,' Branwen said to him quietly.

‘I'll send messengers down to speak to the steward. He will have to inform everyone so they can hide what they can and bring the people and stock up to us. They will be safe here.' The old man glanced round at the ramparts of the hill fort. Rising hundreds of feet above the forest even the most determined invader would baulk at trying to storm their defensive earthen walls and intervening ditches.

‘I wish I could be here with you, grandfather,' Branwen said. ‘But I have no fear for our town. It is the palace below that will burn. It is undefended and will be rich pickings. If only the pirates could see its potential and settle here to work the land. One day they will, but not this time. You must send messages to the high king, but whatever he does it will be too late to save it.'

‘You saw it burn in the bowl?'

She nodded. ‘Hurry. They still have time to save themselves. And the animals and crops.'

Only one man would die, that one guard who was to travel inadvertently through the corridors of time to an unlooked-for death in a distant and unwelcoming age.

‘And you?' The old man looked at Branwen sharply. ‘Where will you be?' He knew he too was dreaming. He knew he must soon wake up.

‘I am going to come back to Albion and then I will go north into the mountains. I have to prepare to receive Elen's children.'

He frowned. ‘But they are with her in Gaul.'

Branwen smiled. ‘And she is already regretting it. They have a destiny to fulfil in Albion and it's written that they will come home.'

He scanned her face intently and nodded. ‘Then go with the gods, my child, and with my blessings. Have no fear. I will heed your warning. We will save the people from the palace.'

Alerted by the old man's dream the duty guard rang the great alarm bell that hung by the watchtower. As its bronze note rang a warning across the hills and the forests into the dawn, the people of the fort streamed down to help their neighbours in the palace and the remaining servants and slaves frantically gathered their belongings, rounded up the stock and loaded hay and harvested crops and as much foodstuff as they could carry onto carts to drag up to safety even before the fleet of ships were visible in the estuary. No one queried the warning of a dream. Such messages were sent by the gods.

Cadi sighed. So, the palace had burned at the hands of the Irish pirates, towards the end of the fourth century, in Elen's -lifetime, and just as they had guessed a fleeing guard had escaped through the wormhole to be killed by a man with a shotgun some fifteen hundred years later. Quietly opening the back door she walked out into the night, and across the wet grass to stand on the place where they had exposed the piece of burnt stone walling here in her own garden. It had stopped raining and the sky had cleared. Meryn had gone up early and she reminded herself thathe was not a young man. He had come to be with her here, but he was still busy, working on his own book. The night was dark and very silent. She stepped nearer to the hedge. There was a quick rustle of leaves as some small animal took exception to her presence. She stepped closer and reached out towards the closely knit branches of hazel and dogwood and yew and found she could peer through a gap into the starlit meadow beyond. The tent was still there and the fluttering police tape, almost luminous against the dark hedgerow beyond it.

She was starting to untangle herself from the wet embrace of the hedge when she paused. She caught her breath. She could hear it now, the steady march of feet out in the lane beyond the gate, the steady crunch of hobnails on stone and, -frighteningly clear, a barked command as the file of men turned into the field and came to a halt before the smoking ruins. Somehow she knew they had come from Isca. Paralysed with fear, she watched. She could see them clearly, helmets, swords, spears, shields, a standard carried by the man at their head.

‘Too late,' she heard the words distinctly. And then they were gone. She pulled back out of the hedge and stood for a moment, feeling her heart thudding in her chest. She was shaking all over. Slowly she tiptoed back towards the house, then as the shock subsided she started to run, diving through the door, locking it behind her with shaking hands. Hugging herself she took several deep breaths. It was still there in her nose, the smell of burning, the sour ashes that were to lie in the field for sixteen hundred years. The field where the repercussions of that night were still being played out in the echoes of the past. Echoes that she could hear again and again in the street outside as men came to the rescue too late.

Too late . The words echoed in her head. They were the words Elen had heard when she had tried to see the future as -Bran-wen did. The results of that fateful night had terrified her so much she never attempted it again.

It seemed like hours before Cadi was able to walk over to the sink to reach for the kettle, an automatic action, filled with normality, reassuringly ordinary. While she waited for it to boil she went back to double-check the lock on the veranda doors, then the back door, then returned to pull down the blind. The window was dark, the last hint of daylight gone. Glancing out as she reached up for the cord, she froze. Was that a figure in the front garden? She stood paralysed, unable to move, staring out past her own reflection. A man. A soldier? Ifan? Ifan was in the garden. He had been staring in at her while she had been oblivious to anything but her own frozen terror. In a moment of instant, uncontrollable fury she found herself scrabbling with the latch and before she knew what she was doing she was out on the front path. ‘What the hell are you doing here, spying on me!' she yelled.

She was calling into the empty night. Whoever had been there had gone. Only the gate, swinging in the wind, showed where someone had hurriedly left. The road was deserted. -Arwel's house was in darkness.