by Jules Watson
Ruarc stared down, eyes bright. He went to say something then swallowed it.
‘Secondly,’ Cahir went on, ‘though I acknowledge your bravery, you cannot keep these spoils. In disobeying your lord, the wealth is forfeit to me, to be distributed among the people for the long dark.’
Ruarc’s throat moved again. ‘Of course!’ he cried, after only a moment’s hesitation. ‘This is all for the people. We did not do this for wealth! Regaining our honour – their honour – is all that matters.’ He waved his sword over his head, and the people went wild, shouting and cheering.
Cahir watched with a half-smile. Gods, but he would make a fine king for the spectacle alone! He’d bedazzle the Romans into submission. Then he thought of the Dux’s hard face and knew he would never be bested by someone like Ruarc. He would eat him for breakfast, and then come calling on Dunadd with fifty ships at his back.
Cahir held a hand up. There must be a way to cool all this hot blood. ‘Your prowess, though admirable, will have inflamed our enemy. We are all in danger now of their revenge. So I am sending you to guard the hills, at least until snow blocks the passes. That is my will.’
At the moment Ruarc met Cahir’s eyes, something passed between them that recognized this as the best way. Cahir sighed inwardly. ‘In four days, we will slaughter one of the bulls and have a feast in honour of the gods who brought our warriors back safely.’
More excited murmurings ran across the crowd, and Ruarc broke into a triumphant smile. Cahir eyed him grimly. ‘Let that fill your belly for the cold moons you’ll spend on watch.’ He turned away, walking stiffly. In his anger, he had been tensing too much, and now his wounds throbbed.
Minna usually changed the king’s poultice when the girls were at lessons, but after the scene with Ruarc he did not come, and it was only at dusk that Donal drew her away from the king’s hall to the empty schoolroom.
The wind rattled the darkened window as Minna knelt beside Cahir in the lamplight. In the week she had been treating him, she kept her gaze confined to his wounds. If she attached that flesh to the muscles that moved as he breathed, the sweeping lines of his arms and neck, or worse, the weight of his golden eyes on her, she grew clumsy and thick-fingered.
She had never touched a man, and now she had to touch one that looked like this. And she found, frighteningly, that the feelings she had deadened long ago were stirring because the other parts of her were being broken open, too. Since first she touched him, the pain in the dreams had sharpened, like a knife through her heart. Whispers fluttered around her incessantly at night, just below her hearing, as she clutched the sheets to her chin. She did not understand.
She could barely eat for the sense of foreboding that hung over the dun. And now he made her feel this – when he was a king, cold and hard, unreachable, and she should be terrified instead. I do not understand. She was going mad.
Her palms were slippery, and she rubbed them irritably down her trousers. Disconcertingly, Cahir was studying her. At last he cleared his throat, and then it came at her like an arrow. ‘Orla told me about your dreams.’
Minna dropped the pot of comfrey salve into the folds of her tunic. ‘I have heard the tales from your bard, my lord,’ she stammered, retrieving it and clumsily putting the lid back on. ‘The songs, the stories, the new things around me … they give me nightmares. That is all.’
His eyes fixed on her, like a cat about to spring. ‘We know about such awake-dreams – there is no reason to hide them from me. I want to know …’ He blew out his breath, and she realized how disturbed he was. Self-preservation flooded her. ‘There is something you said in sleep, a war cry—’
‘I heard it from Davin!’
Cahir caught her wrist so hard it hurt, his eyes flashing. ‘Not the Boar of Eremon’s lineage that my own warriors scream every day! It is a far older oath, used by those at Dunadd before my ancestors came from Erin. The oath of Rhiann’s tribe: the Epidii, People of the Horse.’
Minna went cold, her lips moving in memory. The Mare. The Mare. A white horse on a blue banner, once raised alongside the boar in battle many years ago.
‘See?’ Cahir snapped. ‘No one says these sacred words any more, no one even knows them except for the druids – and me. And there is more.’
Minna’s nostrils flared as he pulled her closer. ‘In your dreams you spoke of a hill: a crooked ridge that rears alone from a flat plain.’ He paused, his face grim. ‘It is the Hill of a Thousand Spears, our only description of this place, wherever it may be.’
‘I heard it from Davin … I heard the tale one night—’
‘Its appearance isn’t in any songs. Again, it is druid lore.’
Minna subsided into silence, panting.
‘I gained everything from Orla and Finola, Minna. They know more than you think, though they told me in innocence and, I have to say, love you well. But this does not detract from the real matter: you speak the names of my ancestors, shout the war-cries and see what few have seen, the greatest battlefield of all. So why is it that you, a Roman slave, summon my royal blood?’ His eyes staked her there. ‘Who are you?’
His fist was holding hers captive, his breath hot on her cheek. It was the first time he had touched her with his fingers, and they burned. ‘I know nothing. Please …’
Horror flared in Cahir’s eyes. ‘It cannot be that she told you to taunt me so? You are not her puppet after all?’
Maeve. ‘No! I would never betray you …’ she caught herself, ‘… your daughters. Never!’
‘Do you swear it?’
It was as if his power had taken hold of her, and Minna was drawn inexorably towards him, though she fought it, horrified. ‘I will swear on the spirit of the only person I have ever truly loved, my Mamo,’ she cried desperately. ‘I swear!’
For a long moment he searched her face, and she tried to lay herself bare, let him see she was no threat. She distinctly felt his awareness brush hers, as she had seen into him once. The world moved beneath her … his breath was scented with berries and ale … then she felt his fear of betrayal, sickening.
At last, Cahir released her wrist. His hands trembled as he placed them flat on his thighs, his face turned away. ‘When Orla told me, I thought after all you were a spy. Anyone could have planted you: my wife, her father, the Dux Britanniarum himself, for all I know.’
Minna rubbed her wrist. ‘I am no spy.’
‘I can see that now. I would not be a king if I could not read men – or women. You do not have the skills to dissemble. There is no slyness in your eyes, and so far I have seen you speak always without thinking.’ His voice was remote, but when he turned he was clearly shaken. ‘We call you a dreamer, though I had not heard of this gift among the Roman kind. If anything else comes to you, you must tell me. It is vital, to me, to my daughters, if you care for them at all.’
Why? Minna cried inside. The dreams were her burden, her pain. What could they mean when he knew all these things already?
She found herself nodding, not trusting her voice, the touch of his breath resting on her skin.
Cahir walked slowly away from the schoolroom and took his horse down to the sea, abandoning himself to the gallop along the moonlit path, the wild wind tearing at the trees, the waves foaming far out in the darkness.
The girl Minna, whose touch made him shiver, who looked at him as if she knew him, was a dreamer, a vessel of the gods. And of all the people in Dalriada, the messages were now coming through her.
Cahir’s own dreams had changed this past year, and he had startled sometimes when he was deep in thought by the fire, sure he had heard someone call his name. It was an echo that rose up through the air like a bubble from a deep pool – unlike any sound of Thisworld.
For years he had known something was stirring in him, long before this slave-girl ever set foot in Alba. He had ignored it, hoping and fearing at the same time that he was wrong. But now, to make it undeniable, they had brought a foreign dreamer here – a vessel with Roman
blood, no less – to shock him into accepting it was real.
His ancestors had spoken before, in his dreams, in his shamed heart. Now they cried out their summons, and he knew they were demanding he heed it. They wanted him to remember what lay unfulfilled in his blood, the failure that weighed on him, crushed him until he couldn’t breathe.
As if he could forget.
*
Minna was unsteadily making her way back to the hall when someone pulled her into a darkened yard, a hand covering her mouth. She bit back a cry when she recognized the smell of horse and leather.
She twisted free. ‘What are you doing up here? Gods, they will kill you if they find you!’ Frantically, she pulled Cian between the houses. ‘Come, you must get back through the gate, and quickly.’
‘Minna.’ Something about his cracked voice arrested her. ‘I had to see you.’
The moonlight fell on his gaunt face, bleaching his skin grey, turning his eyes into black, glazed pits. His bloodless lips moved. ‘I have to go now – I can stay here no longer.’ A shudder ran over him.
Alarmed, Minna chafed his cold hands. He didn’t even notice her touch this time.
‘They are murderers,’ he hissed. ‘Savages … animals … I cannot stand it.’ She was confused, then remembered the Pict head rolling on the ground. ‘The feast is in four nights … You heard them, they will all be on the meadow and, before dawn, will be lost in drink. We can steal horses … we must run then!’
His words struck her. ‘So soon,’ she whispered unthinkingly.
Cian stared into her eyes.
She should say, of course, yes, run. Her mouth even opened but nothing came out. And between one breath and the next, a vivid image flowered in her: the last time she stood on the crest of the crag gazing out over the marsh, when it seemed she was at the bow of a great, grey ship ploughing through a sea of rippling grass. The wind scoured her clean and the far hills sang to her, called to her …
‘They will not expect us to run in this season, but we can do it, we can.’
His voice reached her from far away. She should have felt excitement at the thought of freedom, but instead there was only a cold pang. As her silence lengthened, Cian said, ‘Minna’ in a darker tone.
But she could not reassure him. Her feet were rooted there as if tendrils of her soul had descended into the soil and she had no say over it at all. It was visceral, old, instinctive. Her heart beat with the knowing of the plants. Even the fear of Cahir’s eyes and demanding words seemed fainter, instead stirring a hunger to know why she cried these things she could not know.
It was all madness; she must go home to Broc, to Eboracum. But there was no home. And Broc hadn’t written once he left for the Wall, he didn’t care – she knew he didn’t, though she had shied away from this reality with all her will. He had handed her over to a man she hated, without a backwards glance.
As these thoughts ran through her, raising the hairs on her skin, the air heard her and whispered gleefully … yes, the blazing hills, the scent of soil, the light of Alba on the jewel sea … And into her heart something dropped, a tantalizing promise that the thing she had most longed for she would find in the cradle of this place, though she didn’t yet know what it was.
The contradictions swirled about her, like clouds around a pinnacle on which she desperately clung. She was split in two: what her mind knew to be sense feeling wrong in her heart, unreal. Then at last it all dissolved. Minna’s soul simply opened to her, and she had to face her own stark, baffling truth.
She was sick with the thought of leaving.
Cian searched her eyes and she saw the realization she could hardly voice to herself gradually dawn over him. His features slackened, like a wall crumbling, and for the first time she saw all the way into his naked self.
And all that was there was despair, an endless well falling down into eternal blackness. It sucked at her, wanting to take her with it.
She tried to speak, but he cut her off with a stifled cry. ‘So this is why you would not go – they have seduced you, too!’
Minna found her voice as he backed up against the wall. ‘No, that is not … I did not know before but now … so much has happened …’
He struggled, his pain wavering before it was abruptly wiped out by a great flood of fury, like a dam breaking. ‘No! You are Roman, Minna. How can you do this?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied unsteadily. ‘But I can’t leave until I understand. I know this place …’
‘No, you don’t!’ he spat. The whites of his eyes were livid in the dimness, and his hand rose before him as if to ward her away. ‘Oh, gods …’
‘Cian.’ She tried to break through, snatch at his hands, but he flung her off.
‘You are living in a fantasy, a world that doesn’t exist! These people kill and burn and care for nothing and no one but their own blood lust and glory. Nothing. And that makes you not just foolish but a traitor to your own kind. A traitor, do you hear me?’ He choked, the lump in his throat moving. “And I came back for you!” It came out in a wail.
She was thrust back by the disgust in his face, the storm of his emotion. She scrambled for her wits and at last clenched her fists by her sides, steadying herself. ‘We need to speak when you are calmer, when you can listen to me.’ She tilted her head up to him, pleading. ‘Wait for me, and I’ll tell you everything then, I promise.’
But Cian’s eyes went wide with anguish, and he stumbled backwards down the alley.
‘I need time!’ she cried.
He paused. ‘Time won’t change what you’ve become,’ he spat. ‘One of them.’ He whirled, his feet thudding away.
The reality of what was happening crashed over Minna and she started after him. But a noblemen was passing, frowning at the disturbance, and instead she shrank back into the shadows, desperately trying to collect her thoughts.
Cian would come back, she told herself, pressing her shaking hands against the wall. After he worked off his anger, he would come back. He had to.
Chapter 22
LONG DARK, AD 366
Cian was gone.
For days Minna repeated this to herself, unable to believe it.
He didn’t wait for the feast but stole Ruarc’s stallion that very dawn, just as he said he would, slipping away as he watered it at the river. No one paid any attention to him, for despite his height he could move silently when he wanted, blending into shadows. Or so Minna heard, heartsick.
Ruarc’s fury was incandescent. After a harsh interrogation, during which she only whispered that she knew nothing, riders were sent out to scour the bare woods. No trace of Cian was found.
And so Minna faced the coming of the snows without him.
The ground hardened, frost rimed the eaves and the water troughs froze. Clíona kept her busy drying and bottling elderberries, crab-apples, rowan and late brambles, and roasting and grinding hazelnut meal. Mired in work, she found herself slipping into the same numbness as the cold land; her mouth forming the words when she taught the girls in the dim schoolroom, but her eyes blank.
Cian was Rome to her, like the memory of Broc with his clipped hair and Mamo, whose clothes had smelled of rosemary. A last whisper of family, an echo of her own tongue. And yet she had turned away from all that. She could hardly bear to face the confused tangle of feelings inside, like a skein of knotted threads. Or the loneliness that ached in her core, even though she curved both arms around her ribs, rocking her cold body to sleep.
The king had ordered rationing after the tithes, and soon people grew pinched on the thin barley gruel and dried strips of salt beef. The warriors were penned inside by rain and sleet, and fights woke Minna and the girls nearly every night. As the tension festered, her dreams became more vivid, until she was unable to tell the battle cries apart from the shriek of storms.
Then a rash of fevers spread through the dun among the malnourished, the old and young. As the number grew, Brónach grimly ordered Minna to assist her. She turned fr
om dried berries to tinctures in goat-milk and draughts in ale, dosing people with brews in the night while the wise-woman crawled back to her bed.
The old woman was wasting away herself, her limbs gnarled as dead roots, disappearing from the dun so often that Minna was left to care for many alone. Each time Brónach returned she was thinner and grey-faced, and spoke more sharply. She appeared silently at Minna’s shoulder as she worked the pestle, staring almost hungrily at her hands as they moved and then at her face, which Minna kept rigidly still.
At least the long nights of racking coughs and fevered children helped Minna not to think of Cian. For when she did, fear caught her heart in its teeth.
Three hooded riders emerged from the swirling sleet at the gate of Luguvalium, its stone walls frosted in the moonlight. The guards hurried up to the tower, helmets angled into the wind. ‘Who goes there?’
One of the riders pulled a muffler away from his chin. ‘The hawk flies farthest who sees keenest,’ he called, giving the officer password for that month.
The cross-bars were slowly grated back, the gates creaked open and the riders clattered into the deserted marketplace across icy cobbles. The streets were dark, the freezing wind whistling under eaves and plucking at tightly-latched shutters edged in lamplight. Starlight glittered on frozen puddles and the central fountain, now a bowl of shining ice.
The riders made their way along the bleak streets, their horses’ hooves striking the cobbles like flints, echoing along bare alleys. At last they reached the centre of the maze of laneways and shops, where a door in a high, stone hall was flanked by two Roman wall-lamps, their horn casings barely sheltering the struggling flames.
Inside, King Eldon was alone in his study, surrounded by papers, quills, inkpots and the Roman delights his family had filched over the years: fluted wine jugs, glass goblets, pewter plates, hanging bronze oil-lamps, and small marble statues. He liked to have them here, where he could feast his eyes on them in private.