by Jules Watson
She looked desperately to Cahir, but he only nodded with a tight smile. ‘We are protected by the laws of hospitality now, Minna. They are sacred all over Alba. Gede could not harm me at his hearth.’ He glanced at the leering skulls. ‘Even if he wanted to.’
The women’s hall was a small roundhouse with looms set near the door for light, and baskets of wool and fleece by the hearth. Other tools of women’s work were scattered around: spindles, coils of coloured thread, needles and awls, piles of soft leather.
Receiving Taran’s instructions, the three servants inside set aside their sewing and weaving, and bustled back and forth filling a wooden bathtub behind a screen. One pulled the bedraggled twine from Minna’s braids and another went to tug off her filthy clothes. She snatched at each piece as it was removed, self-conscious and then ashamed when the slave-ring came to light. The women peered at it, chattering in their own language, and she dropped her eyes.
One of the women spoke briskly, pointing at her linen shift. She glanced at the steam, her skin suddenly crawling with the film of dried sweat, blood and grime, her hair lank and itchy. At last, staring at the wall, she allowed her dirty shift to be peeled from her.
In the bath they scrubbed her hair and limbs, then rubbed her dry with rough linen so her skin glowed. Then they wrapped her in a thick wool robe, gave her bread and honey, and pointed at the bed before leaving. She bolted the food and nervously curled up. After a short time, even though she grimly fought it, she couldn’t help but fall asleep.
When she drifted into awareness, she knew that dusk was not far away, for though the door-hide was down a hint of rosy light crept under it. She also knew that someone was watching her.
She lay for a moment gathering her wits, then turned on her side with a yawn. The eyes peeping through the wicker bedscreen lowered with embarrassment, before a young woman stepped out into the open.
‘I was just making sure you were rested,’ the woman explained with a flutter of her hand. She spoke the Dalriadan language in a voice so stilted and soft Minna had to strain to hear. She was a few years older than her, with narrow, slightly bowed shoulders.
‘I am.’ Minna sat up with the furs around her chin. ‘Thank you,’ she added politely.
The young woman’s brown hair was caught in a net of gold thread, and her dress was blue and intricately embroidered. Her fingers were twisting themselves into knots, but when she noticed what she was doing she folded her hands. ‘I am Nessa, Gede’s queen.’
‘Oh!’ Minna couldn’t help the exclamation, but she would have imagined someone more haughty as a match for that king.
Nessa seemed to read her mind, her mouth twitching ruefully, which changed her whole face. ‘I did not mean to intrude while you slept.’ She perched on the end of the bed.
‘No … I thank you … for your hospitality.’ Minna wondered how to speak, what to say. ‘It was a very fine bath,’ she offered at last, and could have cursed herself for a fool.
The young queen’s grey eyes were startled, then amused. ‘My women said you were very unusual, lady. They said …’ Nessa paused, then rushed on, ‘that you had hair like the night sky and eyes like the sea.’ She glanced at her as if worried she might have caused offence.
Minna couldn’t hide a nervous laugh, for the directness of Alban women continued to amaze her. And she called her lady. ‘My name is Minna. Just Minna.’
Nessa tilted her head. ‘And the servants from the king’s hall heard the druids whispering that you speak with the gods.’
Minna was taken aback, then thought it better this queen swiftly knew some of her strange truth. She touched the tender skin beneath the iron ring. ‘I was captured from the Roman Province, lady, as a slave. In leaf-fall.’
The queen nodded, still scrupulously polite – then Minna remembered she walked at a king’s side now, and this woman knew it. ‘We don’t have slaves: it is a Roman fashion,’ Nessa said carefully. ‘But would it be … presumptuous … to ask where you are from? Only if it causes you no distress, of course.’
She was further disarmed by this respect. ‘Eboracum.’
‘Ah, I have heard of this place – this silk thread comes from there.’ The queen touched her sleeve matter-of-factly, as if she did not value her rich clothes.
Minna, however, was burning with her own questions. ‘Lady, how do you speak the Dalriadan language?’
Nessa smiled. ‘My father rules a dun in the west, and when I was a small child I was taken by the gaels after a battle, as a royal hostage. I lived in one of their northern duns.’
‘But that is terrible, to be sent away from your home!’
Nessa shrugged. ‘It was always going to happen, one way or another. My mother is of the Pictish royal line, and so therefore am I. Our noble blood runs through women, not the men as in Dalriada, did you know that?’
Minna didn’t, but she nodded anyway.
‘Then things change – people die, others have babes or lose them – and eventually I was needed back to bestow on a husband, and then a son, the kingship with my royal blood. Not that the gaels knew that! My people paid a ransom of gold and cattle to retrieve me. But this is all long ago – there are no hostages now. Just … deaths.’ Minna watched the pain flicker over her grey eyes like clouds.
A knock on the wall outside interrupted them. Taran strode in, hovering awkwardly, glancing with unease at the women’s things scattered about. ‘Lady,’ he addressed Minna. His manner was very different now. ‘King Gede requires your presence in his hall.’
‘Me?’ Minna repeated blankly.
The druid glanced at her, exasperated. ‘Are you not the one who spoke of your visions to me so passionately? Now my king wants to see you.’
‘But … but I have to get dressed.’
‘Then I will wait for you outside. Hurry.’
When he had gone, Nessa looked down at Minna, fear tight around her eyes. ‘I will lend you a dress,’ she offered. ‘You do not wish to feel vulnerable before Gede son of Urp.’
It took Minna a moment to remember she was speaking of her own husband.
Every surface in the Pict hall was painted or carved with wild designs: lines quartering spirals and circles; stags, boars and wolves; salmon and geese alongside unrecognizable beasts. There was a lavish use of gilding, and the hangings and cushions glowed with clashing hues and silver thread. The entire expanse of the encircling wall was covered in shields, spears, scabbards and crossed daggers, fracturing the firelight and the flames of the torches in Minna’s eyes.
Blinking, she sought for Cahir, who was at King Gede’s right hand with a cup of ale in a gold-rimmed horn. He looked grim, his glower only deepening at her appearance. His own men were ranged behind him, while Gede’s nobles took up the ring of hearth-benches. All of them were staring at her.
Minna’s fingers knotted in the crimson folds of Nessa’s dress; her knees, hidden by the heavy fabric, were quivering alarmingly. Then she touched the priestess ring, drawing strength from it.
Suddenly, Cahir broke in. ‘I said this is not necessary.’
The old druid frowned. ‘My king deems it so.’
Taran stepped between them. ‘Lady, this message stone is powerful, as are the forbidden words you have spoken to us. I ask you to state before my king – it was your visions that led you to this?’
Minna stared into Cahir’s set face. His eyes ordered her to deny who she was, to protect herself. But the druids wouldn’t believe him without her, they would know. Jump in, Mamo whispered. Jump into the dark water. It will hold you, as will I.
‘Yes,’ Minna said, but her voice seemed faint in the immensity of that hall. Then her glance fell on, of all people, Ruarc. The flickering torches lit up his defiant eyes, and Donal’s thinning pate, and the gold in Gobán’s beard. Ardal raised his chin as he folded his arms. They sought to give her courage, because of their pride in their king which she must sustain.
‘They are my visions,’ she said more strongly. ‘I was drawn to the valley and sh
own a grave from long ago.’
‘Whose is the grave?’ Gede demanded.
Minna closed her eyes. ‘The child of Eremon of Erin, the Dalriadan king’s most revered ancestor. I saw him place the … the baby there. He put the boar stone on her breast.’
The Picts muttered among themselves as this was translated. Another man spoke up, stocky and brutish as his king was sleek, with ragged dark hair and a beard forked into peaks. ‘And this so-called royal child was laid in our territory?’ he scorned.
Minna glanced again at Cahir, his mouth covered by his fingers, his eyes narrowed. She shifted her gaze to a wall hanging, and began to speak as Taran translated.
Cahir tapped the chair with one finger, the only thing betraying his emotion.
The red dress brought a glow to Minna’s skin and a gloss to her dark hair, which was caught back in some kind of gold net. With the donning of the noble clothes, something had come to the fore in her bearing that was hidden before. A bronze belt moulded the cloth to her narrow waist and swelling hips, and Cahir’s desire heated his anger. He wanted to admire her and throttle her at the same time. Even the way she tilted her chin destroyed any chance he had of pretending she was some bed slut who meant nothing.
As she spoke, the Pict druids leaned together and murmured animatedly, waving their hands. Gede, as usual, betrayed no feeling in his hawkish face.
Minna suddenly turned on Taran. ‘Perhaps the battle is why the child was buried in your lands. Whatever it was, there was trust enough between your people and ours for them to mark it in stone for ever, enough for them to go to war together.’ Her nostrils flared.
Minna! Cahir despaired. He could have accomplished this alone. But the druids were having none of it.
The chief druid came stiffly to his feet. ‘We know the stone is old, and what it says, and the name of he who is not named. The letter symbols are sacred to druidkind, and no untruth can be so written. But there is one more vital test, girl. We wish to know more of these visions of yours. You will see for us.’
Cahir shot out of his chair. ‘No. She has given you what you need of the past – now we must speak of the future. That is my realm, my risk.’
The old druid faced him with a sneer. ‘You ask us to accept something that goes against all our lore, from a slip of a slave-girl? You seek to turn years of enmity on its head because of a grave offering lost to the years?’ He pointed at Minna, his hand trembling with age. ‘If she truly is god-blessed, then she must be tested by the Water of Seeing, for it reveals only truth. My king will accept no less than this show of faith.’
Cahir saw Minna’s face set with determination. Before he could move, she strode before Gede himself. ‘I accept this test.’
‘No!’ Cahir repeated. ‘I will not allow it.’
Her lips compressed and she lowered her eyes – though he wasn’t fooled. ‘My lord, your subjects are expected to show their loyalty to you, each in their own way. It is what you demand of them. So why will you not demand it of me?’ Despite her tone, her eyes flashed up and twin flares of indignation passed between them.
Gede’s evident amusement silenced Cahir. The Pict king eyed Minna up and down, then said something to Taran.
The druid coughed, embarrassed. ‘My lord wants to know what slave speaks thus to a sworn king, and what king would suffer it?’
Minna and Cahir were both caught out. Then the words that came to Cahir’s lips shocked him, rising from what had always been a barren place and filling all the aching, lonely reaches inside him. He instantly knew he could no more deny this impulse than deny his own fate – for she simply was his fate. Since the night in the hut by the pool, when Minna had uttered the sacred war cry, he had been ruled by feeling and instinct alone, and so he was taken over by this now like a rush of flame. In a heartbeat, the flare rose and consumed all he had been before, and in its wake the tension in him utterly surrendered.
‘She is no slave, but the seer of my hall.’
Minna’s eyes widened with confusion, but they were tender, shining, and suddenly it seemed as if he and she were alone. ‘And she is my lennan.’
Cahir barely registered the grunts of surprise that came from the direction of his own men. But then the old druid let out a phlegmatic cough, and he and Minna were wrenched back to a room of hard-eyed Picts, the walls ablaze with firelit weapons.
‘Royal kin makes no difference to us,’ Galan huffed. ‘Only the Water of Seeing can prove whether she is seer or not.’
Minna dragged herself away from Cahir’s charged gaze. ‘I will undergo that test,’ she repeated. ‘Whenever you desire.’
‘Now,’ King Gede announced, on his feet in one swift movement.
His chief druid nodded. ‘She must be at the pool at moonrise.’
‘She should rest another day before facing any cold pool, or any spirit test at all,’ Cahir protested.
The druid shrugged bony shoulders. ‘Tired, rested, it matters not if one is truly a seer.’ His unblinking eyes rested on Minna. ‘She should know that when the mind is dulled by the privations of the body … then can the visions come more clearly.’
Minna touched Cahir’s arm, softly. ‘I will go now and prepare, if you will it,’ she said to Galan.
‘At moonrise,’ the druid confirmed. ‘When the tides run high in sea and blood both.’
Chapter 35
Pictish guards escorted the Dalriadans to a guest lodge then flanked the inner doorway. Cahir held Minna back, hidden by the screen of the porch. Above them, a pitch torch flickered and dipped in the sea-wind.
She knew he would try to argue again, but there was something more important to address. She caught the front of his tunic, the strength she had found before all those warriors beating in her breast, sweeping all shyness away. ‘Do not say a single thing about being careful or being tired or straining myself. What is this lennan?’
For a moment he struggled to find words, then merely cupped her cheeks. ‘It means sweetheart … lover … but more than that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It is the wife, Minna, taken for love, not treaty. The second wife, but some say the true wife.’
Heat surged up Minna’s body. She tried to clear her throat and failed. ‘And is this not something you ask someone, whether they want to be a lennan?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Or do you just make your mind up and get around to telling her later?’
Cahir’s hands buried themselves in the silky strands of hair that escaped the net. ‘I didn’t have a chance to tell her, because it came to me all of a sudden. But now she can say no if she wants.’
Minna’s breath caught on a laugh that was half a sob. ‘But we are not … lovers.’ Her blood leaped, wilful and swift.
‘Then that is your decision, too.’ There was a fire in his eyes she had not recognized before, and it turned her belly.
Slowly, conscious of the Pict guards standing so close, her thumbs traced the angle of his high cheekbones, moulded the fine hollows and curve of his brows. His eyes shut briefly, as her fingers brushed his wide, full mouth with a shy wonder. ‘My decision,’ she repeated. And it came to her in a rush that she had choices now, where before she had none. Not like a slave.
She buried her face in the curve where Cahir’s neck met his shoulder, breathing his skin, touching her lips there. Giving him her answer.
There was little time until moonrise. The warriors ate a meal of roast venison and bread, gathering close by the hearth to talk unguarded. Her cheeks still warm, Minna darted glances at them from the corner of her lowered eyes. In a moment, everything had changed.
Mellan and Ardal were not even trying to hide the speculative, wondering looks they sent back and forth from Minna to their king, though they swiftly turned away when they caught her eye. But a smile was playing about Donal’s mouth. Seeing that, Minna felt the tension begin to leave her body. She dared a glance at Ruarc. He sat back, arms folded, but though he never once looked at her, his eyes on his king were fierce and proud, not hostile. Perhaps al
l it took was a woman nearly killing herself by cold and exhaustion, Minna thought, the mingled bubble of joy, shock and fear inside making her light-headed.
She ate nothing, instructed by Taran to fast, though she sensed the Water of Seeing waiting for her, moving and shimmering with her thoughts. She dragged her attention back to the men.
‘What I want to know, Cahir, is what you will propose to Gede once they are happy with this,’ Gobán broke off and turned slightly to Minna, his head sketching the merest nod, ‘seeing business of … of the lady’s.’ There was only a faint stumble and, ever gruff, he frowned it away. The ale had veined his nose and heavy cheeks.
There was a distinct gleam in Cahir’s eye as he answered. ‘It depends on what my lady sees,’ he said distinctly. Then he placed both hands on his knees, looking at each man in turn. ‘But I promised I would share my heart when I knew it, and now I have seen Gede, the pieces have already come to me more clearly.’ They all leaned forward, heads almost touching, the firelight aglow on their eager faces. ‘Neither Gede nor I have ever had the numbers to resist the Romans as an army – Gede could never do more than raid the Wall. No people outside the Empire possess that power on their own, not the Saxons over the northern sea, though they shake their axes, nor the Attacotti in the Western Isles. The Erin chiefs might have it, though they squabble among themselves too much to band together. But think on this.’ His voice dropped. ‘Gede told me he has made strong trade alliances with the Saxons that he thinks he can easily turn to military support, for they are greedy for plunder and glory. So they will follow him. The Attacotti are already our allies, and the Dalriadans in Erin under Fergus are our kin. They will all follow me. It is the merging of our two peoples – Pict and Dalriadan – that will draw in the others and create the greater force: an army of five peoples that spans the northern sea.’ He sat straight, pride in his shoulders. ‘Nothing like this has ever been wrought before.’
‘Not even by Eremon,’ Donal said softly.
Cahir met his eyes. ‘No.’