Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Well, we did what we could to persuade him to write them off, but he'd have none of it. They were the nucleus of a unique collection, he said. Anish and I threatened to stay behind while he went after them, but when he said that he'd give what was left of our store of jewels, even the kurundams, to get them back, we thought it wisest to fall in with his wishes.

Which is why and how we got to be on the field of the most terrible battle I have ever seen. But. first, Uma must bring us up to date with what had been happening to her.

I was, you remember, at the cross in Market Square, Hereford, mourning my lost love, my poor dead love. Eddie recognises me, of course, as readily as I recognised him.

'Let the dead bury the dead," he says, and holds out a gauntleted hand towards me.

Ilook down at Owen's head. It's grey now, like lead, drained. The eyes are slits of white between almost closed lids. The hair seems thinner than I remember it when he lay on my breasts and I ran my fingers through it. The cold and the stillness of death have twisted his lips into an obscene rictus. This is not Owen Tudor. This is a thing. Let them do with it whatever they want – it's not mine any longer. I blow out the last candle-flames, stand and suddenly feel the cold. I have a shawl which i pull round my shoulders – it's useless and I begin to shiver like an aspen leaf in a breeze.

I follow him a step or two, then turn and go the opposite way. One of the three women who helped me with the candles falls in with me and takes me to her house. Her name is Gwynnedd. She is the widow of a knight who died in an earlier battle. For safety and comfort she has chosen to dwell in town rather than out in the Marches where his small manor house had been in effect a fort.

She makes me eat some old bread wanned in hot milk and puts me in her bed. When she sees I will not sleep she comes and sits beside me.

'Why did you help me.' I ask, 'with the candles? And the other ladies too?'

Gwynnedd pauses, reaches out to a chest covered with an embroidered cloth, picks up a needlework ring and begins to sew as she speaks.

'Owen ap Maredudd ap Tewdyr was the Wizard. The King. The King of all Britain and the high priest of the old religion. He carried the most royal blood of any in these islands. He was descended in the direct line from the King of the first of our race, he who came with the bronze celt, the war-axe of our tribe, copper and gold. His name was Brutus and he was the grandson of Aeneas, the son of Priam of Troy, who founded the Roman race. Empires are in our blood.'

'Are you yourself of that blood, then?'

'Yes. A cousin.'

I look more closely at this woman, whom I had taken to be nothing out of the ordinary. Gwynnedd is of middling height, and at her age – in her late forties, I suppose – would not instantly attract attention, her face being lined with pain and grief lines, her breasts slack, her hips broad. But there is fire, passion there, and dignity too, the compact strength women have when there is not much left to do but hold on and help those who still must struggle with the tricks life, and men, play on us.

'And why are you so ready to help me? What you have done might well bring danger to you.'

'You are the Marry Gyp. We knew of you before you came. We have heard of your journeys round Coventry and your trials, even of your miracles, the stories of which are already much exaggerated.'

Here she gives a shy little smile, the conspiratorial smile small girls share when they know more than they are meant to know.

'Still, you are the Marry Gyp, and you have been Owen's lover. That is enough. But we hope, too, you might have been impregnated by him. If that is so then perhaps your child might take the place of that dull grandson of his and become the leader of the British nation, the peoples who live west of the Severn and the Dee.'

But here, as I explain to her, I have to disappoint her. Until now I have done those things women do to ensure conception cannot take place. The blood on my petticoats is not Owen's from where I had wiped my hands of it, as might be supposed, but menses just beginning to flow.

'Well, never mind. We already know, from casting runes, that you will make it possible that Owen's blood will flow in a line of monarchs. That much is certain. If you choose the destiny the goddess has prepared for you.'

I think this all through for a bit. Then with determination swing my legs off the bed.

'I'd better get back to Eddie, then, if I'm to have a say in how things turn out. You must help me.'

When I turned away, showing that I would not follow him, he walked on. I knew therefore that I must not pursue him. He must find me. For that to happen I must put myself in his way, but by such means as will make him think it is he who is the hunter.

This is not difficult to arrange. It is known Eddie will go as quick as may be to London, or rather St Alban's, to support Warwick, and that his first stop on the way will be Gloucester where more newly recruited troops wait to join him. There are two roads between Hereford and Gloucester, one by Ross-on-Wye and one by Ledbury. His army will split, and all we have to do is be sure we know which of the two he will take. Gwynnedd soon discovers he is going by Ross-on-Wye. She lends me a pony and her man to show me the way – I would say to look after me too, but he is fifty years old and can scarcely walk, though he can ride. Any man younger and fitter has already been pressed into the army.

We reach the forested hill that overlooks the river Wye above Ross, and I hide in a thicket where the old man ties me to a silver birch tree that grows amongst the brambles. Eddie, as befits a king, is riding at almost the front of his troops and we hear them clattering, thumping, trudging up the other side, the squeal of the cannon wheels and the carts not far behind. The old man lets the squadron of twenty knights in front of the King go past, then bursts out of the wood. Almost one of Eddie's minders chops his head off there and then, but stays his hand long enough.

'My mistress,' he screams, 'she is in the thicket. Even now three ruffians are raping her. Help, help!" and so forth.

Well, Eddie may be a king, but he's still a teenager. Spurs to Genet's flanks, a leap over the ditch, his sword out, he almost gallops past me, but a low bough nudges the gold circle he now wears round his unvisored helmet, and he reins in for a moment.

'Help, help!' I call, and he hacks through the undergrowth and finds me. He looks down at me.

'So, Mistress Uma. you are not so proud now.'

'My lord, I never was,' I reply, letting him see my bosom, which I have left exposed as if my gown has been ripped from it, one breast bleeding a little from the bramble I have dragged across it. 'I was grieving.'

'Do you still grieve?'

'For Owen Tudor, no.'

'For whom, then?'

'For the death of chivalry that has left me thus bound in front of a youth who should know better.'

Well, he laughs at that. He knows it's trickery, but he remembers the ship from Calais to Dover and thence to London; he remembers the nights in Alderman Dawtrey's loft, and as his bodyguard rides up he leaps down and unties me, remarking that, with a little ingenuity, which he knows I have, I should have been able to free myself.

'Not, my lord, with those two ruffians molesting me.'

'Your servant said three," and he laughs again.

That night, at Gloucester, we return again to what Lord Clifford and Lord Scales interrupted so annoyingly a year and a month ago.

I delight him. Oh, yes, I delight him. Were I a man and the memory of my dead lover so fresh in my mind I doubt I could so deceive him, but for a woman, as any whore will tell you, it is not a problem, and before long he is mine again.