by Jules Watson
With a satisfied sigh he stretched his legs to the glowing coals of the brazier, a grey hound twitching in sleep at his feet. The scroll from his daughter Maeve lay loose in his ample lap. She had managed to get a message to him in the depths of winter – that and its contents confirmed once again how much she was like him. So ambitious! If only his two sons had lived longer, they too would have fulfilled the family promise. With his wife gone as well there was only Maeve now, and so he was fortunate that she and he were of the same mind, their ambitions channelled through the person of her son, Eldon’s heir. Not Cahir’s – he would soon see to that.
He stared into the coals, the old excitement tightening his loins. Though he did not rise so eagerly any more, his groin still stirred with the memory of hunger, the greed for more. It was money and land he wanted now, of course, not flesh, as was proper for a civilized Roman man.
And why stop at the kingdom of the Carvetii, magnificent though it was? What sane king would do that? His family’s long relationship with the Roman administration in supplying soldiers with grain and ale had brought wealth, but it was a system controlled by careful taxes and certain profit. The north, though, held out new and exciting opportunities to shovel more goods into the gaping maw of the Roman army – vast herds of cattle, their hides a ready supply of leather for military boots, straps, belts, shields and saddles; flocks of hill-sheep for wool cloaks, tunics and blankets, and to feed the markets on the continent. Dunadd would levy higher trade taxes if he were king, and he could take the pick of the Kernow tin, the Saxon amber and Rhenish wine before they ever reached Gaul or Britannia. And just as tantalizing, the Dalriadan kingdom had kin ties with Erin – Garvan had kin ties with Erin – and in Erin there was gold.
His heart was racing now, too, and it had been doing that too much lately, making him breathless. He thumped his chest impatiently and reached for his goblet of wine.
His hound sprang alert with a yip a moment before a timid slave tapped on the door, announcing messengers from the Dux. Eldon put down the wine, grasped for his gold pin and stabbed it into his cloak, and stood by his desk. Two soldiers appeared at the door. ‘Yes?’ he snapped briskly.
The two men looked through him, standing aside for a third. Before Eldon could speak again, the last man peeled back his soaking hood, brushing sleet from his grey hair.
‘My lord!’ Eldon exclaimed, unconsciously straightening, his belly thrust out. ‘This is … an honour.’
Fullofaudes merely nodded. ‘I decided that such a matter required my personal presence.’ He tossed his wet cloak over the nearest couch, amused by the irritation that flared in Eldon’s porcine eyes, and how instinctively he hid it. Swiftly, the Carvetii king caught up the cloak, draping it over his slave’s arms and trying not to look at the melting patches of sleet all over that fine wool.
‘Bring spiced wine and pastries,’ Eldon commanded his slaves in a ringing, pompous tone. ‘And hurry.’
The Dux dismissed his own men to drink ale in the kitchens, then waited as the slaves came back and bustled about with wine and platters of food, while Eldon fussed over which table to array them on – the shale or the cedar-wood? Fullofaudes turned a ridiculously vulgar lamp over in his hands, then glanced at the new paintings that covered the plaster walls. The style was a crude apeing of those from southern villas; in fact – he peered closer – he could swear that Venus had three breasts, and that tiger over there was sporting a mane.
He suppressed a smile, turning as Eldon proffered a glass goblet of rose-hued wine, the steam scented with spices. ‘So,’ the Dux said, taking it and seating himself in the nearest chair – Eldon’s favourite, judging by the slight pinch of the king’s nostrils – ‘you asked for my assistance, and here I am.’
Eldon eyed the mud from Fullofaudes’ boots smearing the wool rug but said nothing, sliding into another chair. ‘I did not expect you in person,’ he stumbled. ‘It must have been a terrible ride.’
‘Then I hope it is worth it.’ Fullofaudes kept his eyes on Eldon’s twitching face. He had perfected the art of not blinking, and found it came in very useful with petty kings – as this one was, however grand his pretensions. The room was overstuffed with objects of clashing hue, shape and material, arranged by greed and vanity rather than any artistic sense. The Dux had been born on a farm in Belgica, but despite his humble beginnings and his long military career, he had realized at the outset that if one wanted to rise high in society one had to meet the powerbrokers on their own terms, to speak to politicians and noblemen of art, history and oratory as well as trade and the dispositions of soldiers. Poor Eldon. Fullofaudes was taken by a mischievous thought of the Carvetii king floundering amid the marble halls of Trier like a fat fish plucked from a dirty river.
‘There is no question of worth,’ Eldon said smugly, picking up a discarded scroll. He bestowed an oily smile. ‘But I talk not of wealth, my lord – for of course you have no use for that, and I admire you for it.’
Fullofaudes suppressed a snort, sipping his wine.
Eldon’s chins wobbled with excitement as he sat forward. ‘But being the first and only Dux to take half of Alba and keep it this time – I think you’d be interested in that.’
Fullofaudes was, but did not intend to show it. He would give this man no hold over him. ‘All of Alba would be better,’ he commented drily.
Eldon laughed uncomfortably, then shrugged. ‘I cannot deliver the Picts to you, not yet. But no Roman army has ever managed to take the west completely; they’ve only ever marched up the flat lands of the east and as soon as they reached the mountains, been forced back. But by gaining Dalriada we’d command a single territory all the way from the Province into the very heart of Alba, and your troops would be able to penetrate the mountains from the west, using all those harbours and deep sea-lochs to land ship after ship. The Picts have never faced that scale of threat. They would not only have to guard their southern borders, as now, but in all directions. We’d almost have them surrounded, and surely it would only be a matter of time …’ he paused for effect, ‘… before you claim the whole island for your emperor.’
Fullofaudes didn’t blink. ‘There’s no question that I want the same as you, Eldon, so you can save your rhetoric’ He wondered if Eldon would know what that meant. ‘I want you to tell me what you have in mind. But before you do that, I must make one thing very clear.’ Now it was his turn to sit forward, and Eldon seemed mesmerized, uncaring now of his muddy rug or the spots of water marking his silk-covered chair. ‘No one can know of my involvement in your plans, not even my men. That is why I could trust this visit to no messenger. I have the emperor to answer to in Gaul, and any action against a barbarian king here who is nominally an ally would be seen as rash when the Empire has its hands full dealing with trouble elsewhere.’ Imprudence was not a reputation the Dux intended to forge for himself among his superiors. ‘If Cahir had rebelled against the new tax, that would have been something else, but he did not.’
And so now, he thought, you can do the dirty work for me, my friend, and I keep my own hands clean. He dropped his voice. ‘If anyone even finds out I have spoken to you, I would have to re-think all terms and arrangements with the Carvetii.” He bared his teeth in a smile. ‘All of them.’
Eldon gulped and nodded, breathing fast, the colour higher in his heavy, florid cheeks. Too much wine and too many pastries, the Dux thought with contempt. Eldon would do better to ride as he did, and eat sparingly if he would live to see his much-vaunted grandson on the throne of Dalriada.
‘So,’ Fullofaudes said pleasantly now, ‘you will tell me all your thoughts.’ And he held out his hand for the scroll.
On the day of the first snowfall, the Lady Riona appeared at the schoolroom as Minna was packing away the tablets, the girls having run ahead to badger Clíona for honeycakes.
Riona was agitated, her face alight. ‘Minna,’ she gushed, all her formality gone, ‘I am with child.’
She beamed at Minna’s stumbl
ing felicitations, then pressed a bronze armband into her hands. When she protested, Riona brushed that aside, too. ‘Nonsense. When a craftsman renders us a service, we gift them. I don’t want to hear anything else about it.’ For a moment the girl in her twinkled from her blue eyes. ‘My mother-in-law is treating me like a princess, and my husband is bursting with pride. That is worth more than gold to me.’
‘But … what about the Lady Brónach?’
Riona cocked her head. ‘I want to give this to you, and you alone. There, make an end of it now.’
After she departed, Minna stood before the window, staring at the armband outlined in her hands by that bright, snowy light. Slaves were not given gifts. She slowly touched the other ring about her neck, so familiar now she hardly noticed its rubbing in sleep, or the welt of shiny, hard skin over her collar-bones. Now she knew she would not notice it at all.
A spark of pride lit the darkness inside her, and Cian’s disappearance began to hurt a little less.
She buried the armband beneath her mattress, far from Brónach’s sharp gaze.
Then one day, as Minna and Keeva dressed geese for the pot, Clíona stood before her. ‘One of the maids has started bringing up her breakfast, and she’s got a fever,’ the older woman announced gruffly, her eyes on the fire. ‘I want you—’ She checked herself. ‘It would be good for you to come and see if there’s anything to do for her.’ Keeva’s smile mirrored Minna’s own shock.
Soon Minna came down with the same cough as the others, and it was still bad at midwinter. The druids and nobles left one dusk for the stone circle in the ancestor valley, conducting a rite to call the sun back from its wanderings. With a flurry, Clíona emptied the king’s hall of men for the female servants’ own ritual.
As one of the maids beat a tiny drum, and Keeva played a bone pipe, the unmarried maidens threw hazelnuts on the fire. How they cracked and leaped from the flames told them who they would bed, or marry. Minna sat wrapped in her cloak around the cheerful fire, listening to the squeals and lilting music, coughing. It had been deemed too cold for the princesses to accompany their parents to the ancestor valley, and so she had one sleepy child under each arm, nestled into her body, and the puppy gnawing a bone nearby.
When it was Keeva’s turn, she muttered a name and tossed the hazelnut. After a time it emitted a pop and flew out of the fire in a great arc. The maidens all shrieked. ‘Keeva, Keeva, who is he?’
‘Whoever he is, he’s going to keep you so busy in bed you’ll have a whole tribe of lads and lassies!’
Keeva peered critically at the nut. ‘The tribe he can keep, the bed I’ll take.’ More giggles ensued.
Minna’s loneliness as the days grew shorter had been acute. But she was slipping into a fever daze now where the music and laughter about the fire felt right, and safe. Not like a prison. Keeva whispered in her ear: ‘Don’t tell them it’s Lonán, or they will all be after him!’
Clíona came to Minna then before everyone and handed her a cup of hot mead, her eyes sharp with interest. She took it, thinking, I am a traitor to my kind. And when Keeva grinned at her she looked away and closed her eyes – only to find herself unwillingly remembering, as she often did, the silkiness of the king’s skin under her fingers. Finola murmured in a doze, curling up in her lap like a kitten. Traitor, Minna said to herself again, more feebly.
‘Minna!’ She opened her eyes. A young girl had come into the king’s hall with a squirming baby. The women’s laughter died as Keeva leaned in, rosy with mead. ‘She was asking for you.’
The girl squeaked, ‘My brother has a rash on his nether parts. Mama wants you to make it go away.’ She heaved the child into Minna’s lap.
As Minna coughed on a pungent waft of urine, Keeva’s black eyes gleamed. ‘Looks as if our Lady Riona has a loose tongue.’
Cahir worked out his frustration training the warriors on the meadow.
The anger and shame over the rationing had made the men sullen and glowering. In answer, the king stalked up and down the lines of sparring fighters in his wolf-fur cloak, setting his face into wind, rain, snow, sleet and fog as if somehow it would scour him clean.
With angry bellows he flung spears at targets, exhorting the men on as he paced beside them, then striding in to break up escalating fights as their fury turned on each other. He waded in with his own blade, just to feel the weight in his hands and stare down one angry warrior after another. The tension smouldered like coals under peat.
Sometimes he broke off and went up on the walls to gaze over the struggling masses of men, hock-deep in mud. He would search, trying to see in the wavering lines and wheeling pairs a pattern, to discern any other message that his ancestors had for him – anything other than what was staring him in the face. But all he saw was chaos, and Ruarc charging through the midst, his wet hair flying and his eyes defiant as he paused to glance up at his king.
When it threatened to drive him mad, Cahir went down to the cliffs at night, arms wide, cloak rippling in the wind. There he cried to Eremon: What do you want from me? Speak to me! No answer ever came, only the sea-wind.
But when Davin sang another tale of Rhiann and Eremon one night, he found himself watching Minna the slave very closely. She was serving ale but as Davin began she paused in the shadows, and Cahir could swear he saw a glimmer of tears on her pale cheek. When she turned to the torchlight, her knuckles were white around the jug handle.
Then Cahir knew he was imagining nothing, and his blood was speaking. It was speaking through her.
BOOK TWO
LEAF-BUD, AD 367
Chapter 23
It was dawn on a freezing morning, and only Minna and Clíona were awake. The older maid was at the hearth, grumbling under her breath. How was she supposed to sleep with such flushes and itching skin? she demanded. ‘Away with you!’ she snapped irritably, batting Lia away from the pot, the pup now all gangly legs and twitching snout.
Minna fed twigs on the fire and sat back on her heels. ‘I can make a good brew for that.’ She cupped her hands and coughed into them. ‘My Mamo used to drink it when I was young.’
Clíona eyed her as if she’d just suggested cutting her open. Pride wavered with need, then she sniffed, rubbing the small of her back. ‘I suppose if it is good enough for the Lady Riona …’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You won’t poison me, or make me grow hair where I shouldn’t?’
Minna merely raised her brows, and Clíona dusted her hands down her dress. ‘Then only if it doesn’t taste like dung, and only if you don’t breathe a word to anyone.’
‘I promise.’
The porridge was simmering when a great thump on the doors flung them open. The other hounds leaped up from the fireside, growling, as a man stumbled in swathed in fur. He pushed the door shut, clawed his cloak from his chin.
Clíona’s spoon clattered in the pot. ‘Who—?’
‘Niall,’ the man cut her off. ‘Dun of the Rock. Get me the king and the wise-woman at once.’
‘What?’ Clíona stood her ground. ‘It’s not even light, man! I’m not dragging anyone from their beds until you tell me—’
‘Quiet, woman! I haven’t ridden all night to be challenged by a serving maid!’ The man’s cheeks were wind-bitten above a straggly black beard. ‘This is a matter of life and death. Hurry, before my balls freeze to my arse!’
‘Death?’ Clíona bustled to one of the alcoves. ‘Come to the fire, then, and warm yourself. There will be porridge soon.’ She nudged a sleeping boy on a pallet with her toe, and set him to wake the king.
While he scurried up the stairs, Clíona tucked strands of hair back in her braids. ‘What is going on, then?’
Niall hung his head. ‘I will deliver my news only to the king.’
Cahir came down the stairs blinking in the firelight, buckling on his sword. His dark hair was rumpled, his tunic on inside-out. Minna dropped her eyes, stirring the porridge more briskly.
Niall immediately went down on one knee, his chest heaving. ‘M
y lord,’ he choked, ‘the Picts have attacked one of our outlying duns, near the mountains. They have fled now, leaving many dead.’
Cahir’s face paled. ‘How many?’
‘I do not know. The warriors stayed to defend the steading while their women and children fled to my own chief’s dun.’ His voice broke. ‘They had to trek to us across the peaks in terrible cold, and many fell ill. The babies …’ He faltered.
Cahir gripped the man’s shoulder. ‘Go on.’
‘The women recovered, but the babes are gravely ill. Some fever swept through them – and spread to the ones in our dun. Even my own child.’ He looked up, pleading. ‘We need help. We think the Picts are gone but we are not sure, and then the children … we have been without a wise-woman for months and we cannot save them. It is the seal cough.’
Minna was on her feet. ‘Seal cough?’
The man’s gaze slid to her slave-ring, and Clíona flapped her skirt impatiently at him. ‘The girl has the healing knowledge. The wise-woman trains her.’
The man shrugged wearily. ‘Seal …’ He let forth a hoarse bark. ‘They cough like this.’
Minna knew that horrid sound: the dog cough, the Romans called it.
Cahir rubbed his face as if pulling himself back from some dark dream. ‘Peace, Niall. You are not alone now.’ He looked at Minna, the pain exposed in his face. ‘Go and wake my aunt and tell her we must leave at first light. I will rouse the warriors.’
She chewed her lip. ‘She is not here,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was fine yesterday, and I saw her ride out. She hasn’t come back.’
Cahir cursed, his face darkening. His eyes were intense upon her. ‘Then you must do it.’ Minna went cold. ‘You know this illness, I heard you.’
‘I do, but—’
‘Then this is my order. Hurry up.’ He was already turning away, waking men from their pallets, sending the serving boys to inform the nobles.