The afternoon sun was very warm as the young woman with the golden hair worked her way along the line of vines. Occasionally, she would stop and wipe the perspiration from her face and listen to the sounds around her. Nearby, birds were singing lazily in the dark forest which bordered the northern edge of the vineyard and, in the far distance, she could also hear the sounds of hammering which indicated that her loving husband was busy repairing the roof on the west wing of their tall chateau built into the rock face overhanging the river. Millennia before, some great force had cleft the mountain apart and produced this corner of Gaul that was paradise.
Beroic had been her home for over a year and she loved the sun, the peace and her family. Her mother-in-law, Lady Elaine, was no longer young and would spend most of her time in the terraced gardens which sloped right down to the sparkling blue water while her maid, Marie, kept a close eye on her. Ędra smiled as she glanced at her young son playing on the silvery sand alongside the shallow stream which trickled out of the forest. She was very happy.
It was the sudden silence which caused her to become very still. The birds had stopped singing. The faint noise of hammering was still there, as was the gentle trickle of water over the yellow, schistose rocks which gave the area its unevenness. Slowly, she turned her head, listening for any strange sound: but there was nothing. Then cautiously, like a stalking cat, she edged her way towards where her young child played in the water.
Somewhere ahead, a twig snapped and she froze in mid-step, the bow slipping from around her shoulders with barely a sound. She could no longer see her two-year-old son, but could hear his faint giggles as small fish swam around his bare feet immersed in the cool water. Her fingers silently fitted the shallow notch of the arrow over the waxed cord and the string tightened slightly as her bare arm drew back.
Things then happened very quickly. There was a great crashing in the undergrowth and the sound of her child, frightened.
‘M’aidez,’ Paulinus called as he fell into the stream in an effort to get away. ‘M’aidez, Maman.’
Ędra ran to the end of the row of vines and looked toward her child and also at the giant brown bear which was raising itself onto its hind legs, looking down at the juicy dinner soon to satisfy its hungry cubs. Ędra stopped ten yards from the creature, its tongue panting against yellow teeth in the blazing heat of the day.
‘Allez, Brutus,’ she called to the animal softly but firmly. Ędra was a mother herself and knew what it was like to have a child in need of feeding. However, if her own young cub was the only food available today, the bear’s cubs were going to remain hungry.
The bear still hesitated and Ędra’s bare feet made no sound as they stepped carefully towards the sand.
‘Venez-ici, m’enfant,’ she whispered to Paulinus and the child started to scurry towards her. Afraid that quick movement would startle the hunter, she added sharply; ‘Lentement!’
The bear’s eyes left hers and the animal watched as the lunch it had come so low to collect widened the gap between them. With a mighty roar, it threw caution to the wind and splashed into the stream as the bowstring tightened.
‘Allez!’ Ędra shouted once more in a vain attempt to enforce her human superiority.
Had the bear been alone, it may have returned to the mountain where it belonged instead of risking making a two-legged enemy, but times were hard and this defiant human was a weak female of the breed, skinny and likely tough to chew.
Not ten feet separated them when Ędra opened her right hand. The arrow was made of seasoned beechwood fitted with an iron tip which did not hesitate as it ripped through the tough, furry hide of the creature’s chest. The bear stopped as if hit by a stone wall and stared at the second shaft already fitted to the taught string, the sharp tip pointing straight between its eyes.
Paulinus whimpered quietly as the blood started to trickle from the animal’s raptured heart and became matted in its fur. With a last, desperate lust for revenge, it rushed forward, straight into the path of the second arrow. There was a mighty splash as the bear fell into the water, causing a red-streaked wave to surge down the stream.
Ędra bent down and, with her right arm, scooped her son from the ground and cuddled him to her breast as she stared, sorrowfully, at the magnificent creature which had dared, in its desperation for food, to cross the invisible boundary.
With sadness, Ędra thought of the young cubs awaiting their mother’s return with exited anticipation–cubs who would now, because of her defensive action, go hungry tonight and, perhaps, for ever. Dropping the young child to his feet, she looked towards her home at the edge of the vineyard.
‘Allez en Marie,’ she instructed and watched her son waddle off towards the chateau where the housekeeper would be looking out for their return. Ędra’s blue eyes followed the child’s progress until she deemed him safe and then she turned towards the thick, uninviting forest on the far side of the stream. Slipping the bow over her shoulders, she stepped into the refreshingly cool water and began to climb the wet rocks into the deep darkness.
Instantly, he was in another world, a domain where no human feet had ever trodden before. The demarcation had been violated and now she must make her peace with the nature which had invaded her realm.
Ędra parted the leaves in front of her, her feet making no warning sound as she crept up the stream bed, the cool breeze from the mountain whispering through the otherwise still woodlands. Ahead, the forest was lighter where the sun beamed down in long shafts to illuminate the stream where it trickled through a small clearing. It was there she found the cubs.
She sniffed the air cautiously as she had learned to do and the odour was distinctly one of the animal kingdom. A smile came to her lips as she sat down on a rock in the darkness, watching them play and frolic as they waited for the food their dead mother would never bring them. It was a sense of fairness that had brought Ędra here. She had not just killed the attacker of the child, she had also taken away the only means of sustenance these young before her had.
Of a father, there was neither sight nor smell but she sat for a long time to make sure that the cubs were, in truth, alone. Circling the clearing, Ędra then used the position of the sun to make her way to the west where the forest opened out onto the scree slopes of Pic Hautain. The birds ignored her progress and joined in the chorus as she stepped through the soft undergrowth, singing in a soft voice which harmonised with nature itself.
After half a mile, the forest thinned and she crept from tree to tree onto the slopes which plunged to the river far below as it cascaded over a long cliff only to crash, in a maelstrom of foam, into the lake at the head of the valley. Her eyes scanned the scree until they focused on the sight she had come to see.
The slopes which would never have supported the great bulk of Brutus without causing an avalanche supported her as she crept surreptitiously towards the small group of deer pulling at the sparse tufts of grass on the hillside. One of them would keep the cubs fed for a few days. After, that, they would have to learn to fend for themselves.
Ędra’s toes curled round the loose stones as she sneaked across the open mountainside, her bow slipping slowly from her tanned shoulders. Downwind from the herd, she fitted the arrow snugly onto the string as it gradually tightened and stretched the supple willow.
It was at that moment she heard it. Lifting her head slightly, the string slackened as she strained to hear the call from far away, the call she had not heard in a long time, the call she had hoped she would never hear again.
Abandoning both deer and cubs, she ran full-tilt down the treacherous scree slope, an act of complete and utter madness. Bow in hand, she raced ahead of the gathering movement of stones and rocks behind her, jumping from rock to rock, slithering where she could not gain a foothold. The call was still in her ears as she leapt over the stream close to where the flies had already accumulated over the half-submerged carcass. It grew louder while she ran, as if for her life, between the rows of vines and burst into the courtyard of the chateau.
‘Galahad,’ she called, fighting to get her breath back.
The handsome young man on the roof looked down at her, hammer in hand, and smiled. ‘Are you that hungry?’
Ędra ran into the barn and he was more than a little puzzled when she emerged, leading the horse which had brought them to Gaul a year ago. Slipping down from the roof, Galahad jumped onto a low barn and thence to the ground and grabbed hold of her arm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I must go,’ she said frantically.
‘Go?’ he queried. ‘Go where?’
‘To Britannia, they need me.’
‘Just hold on,’ he said with a smirk. ‘How do you know?’
‘Ędred called to me.’
Galahad was confused. ‘But your brother is in Yorwick. How could you hear his voice?’
‘He used the power. He called to me in desperation.’
‘The power?’
‘How else do you think we communicate? We are twins, Galahad, we have the power.’
‘But why would Ędred call you, here in Gaul?’
‘He must be in very great danger, a danger which threatens to destroy the whole of Britannia.’
He turned to saddle up another horse. ‘Then I will come with you.’
‘No!’ She grabbed his arm. ‘It is not the kind of danger which can be remedied by the might of the sword.’
‘Is it the great evil of which you spoke last year? The evil which will come from the north and destroy many?’
‘No, it is not yet time. This evil must be far greater.’
‘What could be greater and more evil than that?’
‘I don’t know. However, this evil must be a very great one indeed if my brother feels it can only be overcome by the return of King Arthur’s Brood.’
CHAPTER TWO
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