Chapter Thirty-six

Ursula stared in astonishment at her former enemy. ‘What are you doing here? I thought we left you in Arturus’s world.’

Rhonwen smiled. Ursula wasn’t sure that she’d ever seen her smile before. The shadow of Rhonwen’s youthful beauty transformed her face.

‘Dan did not tell you I was here?’

Ursula shrugged. ‘If he did, I didn’t hear him.’

‘Ah, my poor, brave, lost girl. You are not yourself.’ She patted Ursula’s cheek with her cool slack-skinned hand.

Ursula was bemused: since when had she been Rhonwen’s ‘girl’? They had been enemies for most of their association.

‘I have travelled too many worlds since I left you at Camlann, telling the tale of Arturus and the battle for civilisation. I came here two or three years ago and Taliesin followed soon after.’

Ursula was confused by that. Rhonwen had fought for the Aenglisc, against Ursula and Taliesin and against Arturus, but then she had recanted at the last and changed sides. Here, both Rhonwen and Taliesin were siding with the Aenglisc: there was no logic to it.

‘I don’t understand,’ Ursula said. She wasn’t sure that she had understood anything since she came through the Veil.

‘You are still so young, I wouldn’t expect you to – but in the end I have come to see what is worth fighting for. I have come to believe that order and reason is better than chaos and madness. It isn’t a hard choice. Aelfred represents the forces of order.’

Rhonwen looked at her hard, searching her face for something Ursula could not guess. ‘It is so strange to see you still so childlike and beautiful after so long,’ she said, wonder in her voice.

‘I last saw you a few weeks ago,’ Ursula said. Was that true? She was no longer sure of anything. Rhonwen clucked her tongue.

‘You must find me much changed then.’ Her expression was sad. ‘I haven’t much power in this world – no real gift of illusion. You see the woman I have become and I see that, for all your beauty, you are in a very poor state.’ Rhonwen’s hand felt strangely cooling as she tested the temperature of Ursula’s head. ‘The magic is still burning you up. How do you feel?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ursula, I have not been your enemy for a long time – almost a lifetime. You can trust me.’

Ursula could feel Rhonwen’s earnestness emanating from her with its own kind of heat. She could not doubt that Rhonwen spoke the truth.

‘I don’t feel good. I keep getting pictures – images of other people, thoughts – I can’t shut them out. I am so full of power it is taking me over, diluting me, so that in all the magic in me there’s barely any Ursula.’ She gulped back tears. ‘The Danes, they were going to sacrifice twenty men to me. I’m trying not to use the magic, but it won’t let me go.’

‘There, there.’ Ursula had never expected to take comfort from Rhonwen. The old woman held Ursula against her thin body and patted her back as if she were a child. ‘You are overwrought as well as overwhelmed. I have something that will help you sleep; you need to rest. To be restored. I believe your sleep will be dreamless. The tincture will not harm you, I promise you that.’

Ursula nodded wordlessly. She did not know when she had last slept. It was hard to tell. Night and day, dreaming and waking: it had all been one to her for too long. Nothing that had happened to her had seemed real.

‘Do you think I can ever be free of it – the magic, I mean?’

Rhonwen sighed. ‘I know what it is to be without it,’ she said, pausing in the act of pouring out the tincture. ‘Do you really want to be free of it?’

That was a question Ursula could not easily answer, but she knew that she did not want to feel that it controlled her. She took the tincture from Rhonwen’s hands. It didn’t smell harmful and she was sure that she would know if it were. ‘I don’t know what I want, but I think it would be good to sleep.’

She drank the drink down quickly: it tasted as foul as the medicines her mother had given her when she was small. It seemed strange to link the sorceress Rhonwen with her mother’s homely comfort, but this older Rhonwen, lacking her imperious loveliness, was more motherly than Ursula would have expected. Ursula lay down on the straw-filled pallet and let herself relax and let sleep come.

It was dark when she woke up. She was sitting at the fireside in Guthrum’s hall, watching the Danes drink and relate their battle stories. Gunnarr was sitting a little apart, his handsome face clouded. It was clear to Ursula that he was being blamed for her disappearance and that it had gone badly for him since Finna had become so important. Finna! Ursula fled the scene before Finna could appear. She screamed and felt Rhonwen’s hand on hers.

‘It is all right, Ursula, come back to me.’

Ursula opened her eyes and saw Rhonwen as she had first seen her, before she had been horribly burned in the fire, before she’d become old. Ursula blinked and it was the old crone Rhonwen who stood over her, offering her clean water from a pottery beaker.

‘How did you sleep?’

‘Well to begin with, but then I saw Guthrum in his hall and I … I was afraid and came back here.’

‘Why are you afraid of Guthrum? He has no power to hurt you, at least not while you are here and he is at Cippenham.’

Ursula only hesitated for an instant. She needed an ally and Dan was not up to much. She would not have chosen Rhonwen, but Taliesin had brought them to this world under false pretences and no one else understood about the magic. She took a sip of the clean water and cleared her throat.

‘There was a girl with Guthrum. She has no power of her own but she called to mine.’ Ursula could not stop her voice from shaking a little as she spoke of Finna. ‘I dare not use magic or she will find me. It was she who made Guthrum make the sacrifice. She had strange power.’ Ursula swallowed hard. ‘She has influence now with the Vikings. She acted as my mouthpiece when I was lost to the magic. I could not resist her. She made me prophesy and I don’t understand how she could compel me, but I had no choice but to do what she asked. What if she had asked me to do something really bad?’

Rhonwen sat down heavily on the stool beside Ursula. ‘Ah. That is not good news, though it is also not so much of a surprise. I have seen this girl you call Finna in my own dreams and I believe Taliesin knows of her too.’ She hesitated. ‘He asked me if I knew anything about the gift of using the power of others. I thought he was being insulting because I called on his power, not my own, to draw him near.’ She sighed. ‘One day Taliesin will learn to be more direct. She may have tried to use him too. He has never said.

‘I can sense magic, you see, even though I cannot wield it. Taliesin has some power here, enough for him to be useful to the King.’

‘Do you miss using magic?’ Ursula felt less overwhelmed in Rhonwen’s cottage with a board floor and a bed between her flesh and the naked earth, but her nerves still felt raw and exposed, as if her skin was too thin, and even the gentle draught from under the door made her flinch as though from an assault. She knew that the magic was only dormant within her, quiet for a time.

Rhonwen’s eyes searched Ursula’s face. ‘What do you think?’

‘I hoped that maybe it mattered less …’ She hesitated and Rhonwen cackled. ‘You thought it might matter less now that I’m old and ugly?’

‘No – I didn’t mean that …’ Ursula said hastily, but Rhonwen waved away her objections.

‘Don’t deny it. I do still miss it, but not as badly as I once did. It no longer drives me mad with longing. I can do small things – I see glimpses of the future, I can do a bit of healing, some magic detection, and I am gifted in the mixing of sleeping draughts. I have peace here – except when Asser chooses to cause trouble. He has an instinctive understanding of magic if only he’d admit it. He knows exactly when I have used a gift greater than potions.’

‘He does not approve?’

‘What does not come from God must come from the dark one.’

‘Can it not come from God?’ Ursula whispered, suddenly frightened. She had never thought that her magic was evil, not until she had come across Finna anyway.

‘Your old friend at the court of Arturus, Brother Frontalis, thought so, but he was a rare man. Asser is a great believer in miracles, but very suspicious of any that come from women. It is not entirely his fault. He has been a monk all his life and has been taught to fear us. Still, he is a good man, though Aelfred takes too much notice of his counsel. He would do better to worry less about the state of his soul and look to the state of his kingdom.’

‘Are things very bad?’ Ursula said dully. She found it hard to care about the state of Aelfred’s kingdom; the state of her own soul was worrying enough.

Rhonwen looked serious. ‘If he does not rally his supporters soon, it will be too late. His nephew has been crowned in his stead and has the support of some of the ealdormen and the archbishop of course, but the real power lies with the Danes who pull the strings of a puppet King. The rest of the ealdormen will carry on as before, but their allegiance will be to the strongest leader and at the moment that is looking to be Guthrum.’

Ursula shivered at his name. ‘He is not a good leader. He is vain and cruel and only interested in his own wealth, and I do not know what Finna wants exactly, only that she has power over him. She was not blamed for my escape.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. The Danes are susceptible to the influence of a good seith-wife, a powerful sorceress. Aelfred has to beat him – I have seen what happens otherwise. Order depends on Aelfred.’ She looked grim-faced.

‘Rhonwen, what am I going to do? What if Finna can find a way to use my power against us? Dan will never get home if he does not fulfil his oath and if he can’t overcome the beast in him. Have you not seen it?’ Rhonwen nodded. ‘Somehow I have to help Dan and yet I cannot use magic or Finna will find me and if I can’t get rid of my magic I will never get home either. All I wanted was magic and now … it is destroying me. What can I do?’

There was a long pause and Ursula wondered if Rhonwen had heard her. Then at last she spoke.

‘You do not ask easy questions, but then you don’t have easy problems. Let’s think about Dan first. Let me ask you a question: do you love Dan?’

‘Yes,’ Ursula answered without hesitation.

‘Does he love you?’

‘Yes.’ She knew it was true. She could not doubt it. He had accepted pain and risked death to save her at Camlann. He had opened the Veil for her after she’d nearly killed Lucy in the library. He had come to Cippenham to save her.

‘Dan is soulsick and the magic of this place is making him worse. You may think this strange, but Asser is the expert on souls. He may be able to help Dan, and here, as everywhere, love has power that even Asser cannot think ungodly. I think we should talk to Asser.’

‘Now?’

‘We need Asser on your side and on Dan’s side or he could make things difficult for you. He is already suspicious of you and he has so much influence over the King. He must not believe that you are evil. He does not have much truck with women, but he understands love.’

Ursula was confused – again. Was Asser an enemy or a friend? Could he actually help Dan or just keep the King from rejecting him? She caught the shawl that Rhonwen threw in her direction and wrapped it around herself for warmth. Rhonwen’s presence had always had an effect on her: in this world it made Ursula feel safe and almost herself again. She did not know if it was due to the rest, the tincture or some gift of Rhonwen herself but her thoughts were less disrupted by the pulse of power. She followed Rhonwen’s lead and walked out into the darkness.