by Jules Watson
‘And yet the fever and bruise you say she had is gone. This is not someone who knows nothing.’
Minna rubbed her face again, exhausted.
‘Do not fear me, child,’ Brónach said softly.
She lowered her hands slowly, so she did not have to look up. This unexpected thing was too tender to be exposed to this woman’s hard gaze, but she could not escape.
Suddenly, Brónach strode to the workbench and searching among the clay jars peeled off a waxen lid, waving it at Minna. ‘Smell that and tell me what it is.’
Resentment pierced her weariness. ‘At home …’ she said slowly in the barbarian speech, ‘it is the tongue of the … the dog. Dog’s tongue.’
‘What about that?’ The old woman pointed a bony finger at a scattering of leaves to one side. Minna knew the plant, but not the barbarian name. Anger flared again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘That, then.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, come, girl!’ Brónach snapped. ‘Are you as witless as a slave?’
That was enough; Minna was on her feet, her cheeks flaming. ‘That is thyme, then. We have it on the moors at home. That we call knit-bone, and that golden head. That we use for wounds and broken bones, and that for fever.’ The words spilled from her, hot and proud. Let Brónach see what was there, then; that she had not always been a slave.
The older woman stared. She had said once never to speak so boldly. Suddenly deflated, Minna swallowed her words.
But Brónach did not seem angry. ‘So you did not lie.’ She walked stiffly around and sank into her chair. ‘About the herb-lore.’
‘No.’
Brónach tented her fingers under her chin. ‘I would say,’ she observed, ‘that you are a girl who does not like to be confined.’
‘I have no choice about that.’
‘True.’ Brónach pursed her lips and abruptly changed tack. ‘You may wonder why I have no one to assist me.’
Minna had barely thought of this lady at all, too consumed by her own survival.
‘It is simple. No one has shown any interest or aptitude, but more than that, I couldn’t stand having some simpering maid around who did not know how to hold her tongue. A slave, though,’ Brónach mused to herself. ‘I never thought of that. A learned slave.’
Understanding flooded Minna’s mind, as if she could hear the old woman’s thoughts. A slave has no rights. A slave will not speak unless spoken to. A slave is a pair of hands, not a mind or a heart.
Brónach moistened her lips. ‘If you know that many of the more uncommon plants, do you also know the mushrooms?’ At Minna’s blank look, she added impatiently, ‘The pale cups that grow on logs? And berries … the little things like this, red, orange or black? It is late in the year, but there is still much to gather. Do you know these things, the ones that heal?’
‘Some of them,’ she replied warily.
‘Good. Then you will gather what is left before the frosts come, when I do not care to face the woods and moors.’
Her anger was eclipsed by hope. She needed fresh air, the outside world, as she needed food. ‘I would be honoured,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘Though it may be hard to find time. I am with the girls teaching, and then I have other tasks.’
Brónach’s eyes were like two wet pebbles. ‘And was it not you arguing with me that the princesses will benefit from the herb-lore? The queen is much occupied – as long as they are alive and being Romanized she will be content. As for your chores, this is more important than the others.’ She glanced towards the door, where cold night crept under the hide. ‘The snows will come soon, and of course I move … less swiftly than I did.’ That admission seemed to cost her; she looked as if she had swallowed something bitter. Without another word she briskly emptied a net bag and gave it to Minna, along with a digging stick and a pair of iron shears, the points blunted.
Looped over her shoulders, the net bag with the heavy shears swung against Minna’s thigh. The digging stick settled into her hand as if her palm had worn its shape smooth for years.
As if it knew who she was.
*
The next day was cloudy but dry. Finola was still resting, and Brónach said she would watch her so Minna could go gathering plants. Orla was darting fearful glances at her grim great-aunt, so Minna wrapped her up and took her as well. She clutched her digging stick to give her strength: this was the first time she was venturing off the crag.
They were nearly at the arched gate in the rock wall when the queen appeared on the path below, accompanied by an older man. For a moment Minna thought he might be the king returned from his travels, but the girls spoke of their father as some awe-inspiring, splendid god, and when Orla spotted this man she froze. Minna remembered then she had glimpsed him in the hall with the queen.
Maeve waved an indolent hand as she walked, so deep in conversation she did not at first see them. ‘The timing would not be good,’ she murmured in Latin. ‘There is a council soon; we should wait and see what transpires.’
‘The king will only dance along that thin line again,’ the man replied silkily. ‘He chooses neither one way nor the other. His hand may need to be forced.’ The man was as polished as his accent, with trimmed, greying hair and a neat, pointed beard. He wore a white Roman tunic and sober cloak, with one subtle bronze pin. Like the queen he smelled of oils and unguents.
The two saw Minna with Orla and stopped. ‘Daughter.’ Orla pressed into Minna’s side as the queen’s kohl-rimmed eyes fluttered over her like restless butterflies, searching for something more interesting on which to alight. It was Minna. ‘By the sacred Christos, girl, you look like one of my husband’s scouts!’ She frowned. ‘Can you not dress more fittingly?’
Minna’s face remained still; she was learning. ‘I need to be so dressed to keep up with your daughters, domina,’ she improvised swiftly. Nikomedes’ words rolled off her tongue. ‘The Greeks teach that young people must be active in the outdoors for their good health, and the discharge of excess energy keeps them obedient.’
The queen snorted, eyes already fluttering away, bored. The man’s gaze, however, sharpened. ‘Domina: how nice to hear such an address,’ he murmured. ‘It reminds one of home.’ Beneath a domed forehead his grey brows were two extravagant sweeps, but his dark eyes were small and cold.
‘Yes, Lord Oran, the traders bought me a new slave – a Roman girl of some education, if you would believe.’ The queen flashed a sly smile at him. ‘How amusing when Cahir finds out what has dropped in my lap, with no effort on my part! We needed a new nurse, after all.’
Minna’s attention was caught by the reference to herself as a ‘what’ rather than ‘who.’ Her hand tightened around the digging stick.
‘And how are your lessons coming?’ Maeve addressed her daughter.
‘Well, Mama,’ Orla answered in a tiny voice. Her grip on Minna’s hand was numbing.
‘It has not been long, domina,’ Minna interrupted hastily. ‘But we have started learning some letters already. The girls are very well-behaved.’
And they were, even the headstrong Orla, trying already to please Minna and make her smile with approval. She had supposed it was because they were starved of attention, like neglected plants in a garden. Seeing Orla with her mother, she knew she was right.
‘Writing?’ Maeve repeated distractedly. ‘Ah, good, though it is when Garvan returns that your real work begins, of course.’
The Lord Oran’s eyes remained on Minna. ‘And where are you going with the princess, girl?’
Minna dropped her chin, belatedly remembering the demeanour of slaves. ‘For her exercise, as well as learning, we are going into the woods after herbs, at the request of the Lady Brónach.’
‘Then you must be well-guarded.’ The Lord Oran hooked one hand in his belt. ‘Your charges are valuable to us. Do take care.’
Maeve waved them on, falling back into conversation with Oran, their two heads close together. ‘So when?’ Minna heard behin
d her, in a whisper.
Chapter 13
Minna’s shoulders drew up as she and Orla approached the village gates. People flowed back and forth under the towers, leading stamping horses to stable, loading sacks of seed into carts, chasing after children.
She imagined all those eyes on her, but when she raised her head they weren’t paying her any attention, of course. A pallid sun had cleared the clouds, and women were hurriedly boiling sheets and hanging them between the houses, beating rugs and cushions, raking up the tiny yards to gather turnips and the last beans. The smith’s hammer clanged as they passed the forge, hoes lined against the wall for repair, for it was sowing time, Orla said.
‘Hurry up!’ she cried, dashing for the stairs that led on to the timber palisade. ‘Come and see.’
Minna reluctantly followed, but at the top she stopped, paralysed. The walls were awash with warriors, their polished swords, spears and shields flashing in the sun. A group of young ones lounged about playing dice and, despite the early hour, slugging ale. Older men paced the gatetowers, leaning on their spears to gaze sternly over the shining river.
Orla dashed between them all, unafraid, but Minna’s legs would not move as the men stopped talking and stared boldly at her. One caught Orla’s cloak as she flew by. ‘Ho, little princess, what are you doing up here this fine day?’
Minna could just follow what he said. He was very young, with flaming red hair that reminded her of Broc. Orla grinned broadly. ‘I am showing Minna the walls, because she doesn’t know anything, and then we are going to pick plants.’
This gained the attention of a guard at the gatetower. ‘I have orders that you must not go anywhere without an escort, princess.’
After a pause, a young voice cried, ‘I’ll go!’
A burst of laughter followed. ‘And a fine protector you’ll make, boy,’ someone taunted. ‘You have to be able to lift that sword of yours if the Picts come!’
The laughter swelled. Out of the corner of her lowered eyes Minna saw a fist come flying and a kick being returned. She shrank back against the palisade.
‘Though it seems that’s all we’re good for,’ another young warrior muttered, leaning in and dropping his voice. ‘So our king gives us naught to do now but babysit little girls and pretty slaves.’
The murmured responses were grim, and the older warrior at the gate frowned, the lines across his sun-burned forehead deepening. Then the clack of dice was cut by a ringing voice, as fair as struck glass. ‘You squabble like wolf-pups, my friends. Enough!’
Orla’s face lit up, and she stood on tip-toe to see over the palisade. Minna joined her, clenching one of the oak stakes. Sitting tall on a black horse before the gates was Cian’s new master. Her fingers curled up, pricking her palm on the rough wood. Not him.
‘Ruarc,’ the older guard greeted him, his voice carefully even. ‘I am surprised you can pull yourself away from that beast at all. If its coat was any shinier, you could curl your hair in it.’
This elicited a great shout of laughter, and the young men downed their dice and draped themselves over the palisade. ‘He’s right, Ruarc,’ one called. ‘You wash that horse more than you wash your own balls!’
‘That may be because he gets so personal with it. Have to make it smell pretty as a maid, eh, Ruarc?’
‘Prettier than a maid, I reckon.’
Ruarc bared his teeth in a mocking smile. Again he was resplendent in a yellow tunic that matched his hair, his posture nonchalant, supremely confident. The horse side-stepped nervously at the laughter, until someone stepped from behind to catch the bridle. Cian.
There was a new cut under his other eye, and his bruises were now a sickly, mottled green. He saw Minna, and answered her stricken stare with a thin half-smile. He hadn’t listened.
Ruarc’s green eyes flicked between them, and he turned to Cian. ‘Stop loitering, boy, and making moon eyes at the girl, or it’ll be my fist blushing your other cheek.’
Cian’s face suffused with blood as the warriors guffawed. Minna’s nails bit into her palms; she grabbed Orla’s hand and nudged her down the stairs, then braced herself as they walked out under the gate arch.
Ruarc’s eyes followed her. With one graceful movement he dismounted and tossed the reins at Cian, who led the horse away with a last, unreadable glance at Minna.
‘Ruarc,’ Orla demanded, ‘can’t we take him? Can’t I ride him?’
Ruarc patted her head, his other hand resting on the ornate hilt of his sword. ‘Not now, little one. He’s a stallion, and you’d need to be a trifle taller first.’
Eyes on her feet, Minna flicked her gaze to the side. Ruarc’s hair was gilded, his skin burnished, but up close she saw he was only a few years older than her, which made the awe in which he was held by the men more surprising. He looked like Apollo, the sun-god, though whereas Apollo was a healer, a law-giver, this golden snake could strike at any time.
‘Ardal!’ he bellowed, beckoning to someone on the walls. ‘And you, Mellan, and Lorcan: you are the lucky fellows to play escort today.’
‘What about you, Ruarc?’ someone taunted.
Ruarc traced a heated gaze over Minna’s body, his fingertip lightly touching her chin. He smiled as she went rigid, then carelessly dropped his hand. ‘Oh, I have better things to do than play nursemaid for our king.’ Then he winked at Orla and turned away, his interest cooling as swiftly as it came.
Minna was swamped by relief, though it swiftly died when the other warriors came bounding out, brash and loud, eying her up and down.
At first, it seemed she would be left alone.
They crossed the river on a crude wooden bridge. The three warriors crouched beside the rushing water, muttering to each other, as Orla played in the wet autumn leaves. Minna hunted for mushrooms and any interesting plants, trailing stalks indicating roots below ground. She picked scarlet rowan-berries, juniper and hawthorn. She kept one eye on the warriors and one on the ground, but after a while she forget the men altogether, for the feel of the plants and the fresh, cold air soon took her mind away.
Fields spread north of the river, the furrows dotted with people sowing seed and raking cartloads of stinking seaweed into the fallow soil. Woods of red and gold edged them, and to these Minna was drawn, winding between the alders and feathery birches to copses of oak.
She knelt, the earth staining her fingers, absorbed in the scents of damp leaf-mould and wet wood. In the silence, with only the wind in the trees, it was then she heard the call.
Like a note plucked on a ghostly lyre string, a fine, high chord quivered in the air. It came from everywhere around her … and nowhere. The land sang.
She straightened, her pulse quickening. She slowly rose, holding to the bole of a hazel tree. The snatch of airy music came again, and in the next silence she was tugged onwards, pushing her way through the trees, nudging branches aside more urgently until they began to thin. Out to the north the woods gave way again to pasture, and at last she stepped into the open.
Minna’s very breath, voice and thoughts were simply taken from her. The land that had been clouded by rain for weeks was suddenly revealed to her in all its sunlit glory, and above it reared the majesty of the mountains, unveiled for the first time. Every colour was ablaze as if Alba were on fire, from the flame of the red bracken to the golden crowns of birches. The hills curved up from gilded woods to vast expanses of russet slopes and bare scree, and finally to soaring peaks crusted with snow.
She could do nothing but sink to her knees. That blaze spoke to her own soul: her vivid heart was reflected in those colours, her strength echoed in the hills. And the wind-song was no longer ethereal now but demanding, insisting that she listen. It said, don’t forget … remember who …
The warrior called Lorcan stepped in front of her.
Minna flinched back, but he swiftly crouched down, bracing himself against a tree trunk as he groped her arm. ‘Come, girl,’ he murmured, with a knowing grin and intent eyes. ‘You look pa
le – perhaps you should come back into the trees.’
His hand brushed her breast. Brónach’s words arrowed into her mind: The nurse died with child. Her nerves leaped, and she didn’t pause to think as the shears flashed up then down, one blade catching the edge of the youth’s hand as it buried itself in the bark.
For a moment they both stared at the welling blood, equally astonished. As the youth’s eyes widened, his face contorting, she staggered to her feet, holding the shears before her like a sword. Their blades glistened with blood.
‘You little … bitch!’
He stepped towards her with his other hand raised to strike, but instantly Minna felt words rise to her lips from a well-spring inside. ‘Ná déan é, a mhic.’ Don’t do it, my son. ‘Onóróidh tú an mháthair.’ You will honour the Mother.
The shears wavered between them. ‘By Rhiannon,’ she muttered desperately, not knowing what she said. ‘By Hawen, by Manannán.’
Shock clouded Lorcan’s eyes, followed by fear. He edged back, muttered something to himself. Then, his cheeks mottled with embarrassment, he stalked away.
‘Minna!’ Orla shouted from the distant riverside.
When she emerged on the river meadow, the young warrior was already striding angrily ahead, his friends laughing and pummelling his arm as he cradled his hand to his chest. Orla’s eyes were large as platters, but after one look at Minna’s face she swallowed her chatter, hurrying alongside.
Minna walked fast, her eyes blurred, the net bag banging on her thigh. When she reached the bridge she stopped. ‘Orla.’ Her voice quavered. ‘Who is Rhiannon? Who are Hawen and Manannán?’
Orla smiled, relieved. ‘In Alba Rhiannon is the great goddess, the Mother Goddess,’ she explained. Honour the Mother. ‘Manannán is the sea-god, her husband, and Hawen is the boar god of the warriors. They revere him and take his name as an oath.’
A loud shout from the gates interrupted Minna’s wonder. As Orla raced ahead, she drifted along behind. When they got to the gatetowers, people were talking excitedly.